Tag: Google

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Supplier Report: 4/5/2019

March went out with a fizzle when it came to major tech news, but there are a few trends to be aware of…

The EU continues to regulate complex technology with far reaching effects on European users and the entire global population. If critics are correct, the EU’s Copyright Directive Article 13 could split the internet in 3 (Europe, China, and the rest of the world).

Microsoft is showing more aggression against SalesForce via partnerships with Adobe and SAP to leverage LinkedIn to improve marketing integrations and to ensure customers have an easier time moving their cloud data around.

…And Google is getting back into robotics.

Acquisitions

  • Alibaba has acquired Teambition, a China-based Trello and Asana rival, in its enterprise push

    There were rumors of an acquisition circulating yesterday in Chinese media. Alibaba has now confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch but declined to provide any other details.

    Teambition had raised about $17 million in funding since 2013, with investors including Tencent, Microsoft, IDG Capital and Gobi Ventures. Gobi also manages investments on behalf of Alibaba, and that might have been one route to how the two became acquainted. Alibaba’s last acquisition in enterprise was German big data startup Data Artisans for $103 million.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/29/alibaba-has-acquired-teambition-a-china-based-trello-and-asana-rival-in-its-enterprise-push/

  • Daimler Trucks buys a majority stake in self-driving tech company Torc Robotics

    Daimler Trucks is the world’s largest truck manufacturer and a division of the larger Daimler Group.

    Torc, meanwhile, was founded in 2005. For most of its history, it specialized in self-driving software and sensors for commercial, industrial and military use, before recently shifting its attention to consumer vehicles. Earlier this year, it announced a partnership with public transportation company Transdev to create autonomous shuttles that connect people to transit.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/29/daimler-acquires-torc-robotics/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google is taking a cautious step back into the world of robotics

    The new operation is simply named Robotics at Google and will be led by AI scientist Vincent Vanhoucke. According to the Times, Google is focusing on using machine learning to teach robots how to grasp objects and navigate environments, but it’s far from clear where the company’s ambitions in this area lie.

    Although Google is a pioneer in AI research, its efforts in robotics have produced no commercial successes to date. The company’s last significant foray into the field started in 2013 with a program named “Replicant” led by Android co-founder Andy Rubin. An initial flurry of activity led to the purchase of six up-and-coming robotics companies, including Boston Dynamics and DARPA challenge winner Schaft.

    But these efforts stuttered, likely because the ambitious machines Google purchased were far away from commercialization

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18283645/google-robotics-program-ai-manipulation-vincent-vanhoucke

Cloud

  • Sundar Pichai met with President Trump about Google’s ‘commitment to working with the US government’

    “I just met with Sundar Pichai, President of Google, who is obviously doing quite well,” President Trump tweeted after the meeting. “He stated strongly that he is totally committed to the U.S. Military, not the Chinese Military. [We] also discussed political fairness and various things that Google can do for our Country. Meeting ended very well!”

    Reached by The Verge, Google confirmed the meeting and its subject matter. “We were pleased to have productive conversations with the President about investing in the future of the American workforce, the growth of emerging technologies and our ongoing commitment to working with the U.S. government,” a Google representative said in a statement.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18284415/sundar-pichai-donald-trump-meeting-white-house

  • Microsoft, Adobe and SAP prepare to expand their Open Data Initiative

    The core principle of the alliance is that the customers own their data and they should be able to get as much value out of it as they can. Ideally, having this common data schema means that the customer doesn’t have to figure out ways to transform the data from these vendors and can simply flow all of it into a single data lake that then in turn feeds the various analytics services, machine learning systems and other tools that these companies offer.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/27/microsoft-adobe-and-sap-prepare-to-expand-their-open-data-initiative/

Security

  • Android users’ security and privacy at risk from shadowy ecosystem of pre-installed software, study warns

    The researchers behind the paper, which has been published in preliminary form ahead of a future presentation at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, unearthed a complex ecosystem of players with a primary focus on advertising and “data-driven services” — which they argue the average Android user is unlikely to be unaware of (while also likely lacking the ability to uninstall/evade the baked in software’s privileged access to data and resources themselves).

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/25/android-users-security-and-privacy-at-risk-from-shadowy-ecosystem-of-pre-installed-software-study-warns/

  • How IBM is Rethinking its Data Protection Line-Up

    In this particular case, data protection, you now have two products:

    IBM Spectrum Data Protect: the good, old, TSM. While this product is one of those that have written Backup’s history and supports a myriad of Operating Systems and applications as well as backup, it is complex to operate and designed for large environments. Furthermore, it was designed well before the advent of hypervisors and modern applications, making it really tough to protect this environment efficiently.

    IBM Data Protect Plus: a new product designed from the ground up for modern environments, including hypervisors, NoSQL DBs and more. It has a very modern snapshot-based design that pairs nicely with VMWARE CBT (change block tracking) for example. It’s easy to use and can be adopted by IT organizations of all sizes.

    https://gigaom.com/2019/03/29/how-ibm-is-rethinking-its-data-protection-line-up/

Software/SaaS

  • Adobe, Microsoft team to take on Salesforce

    Adobe (ADBE) today announced an extension of its partnership with Microsoft and a new integration with LinkedIn that will accelerate account-based experiences (ABX) through new marketing solution integrations. Adobe and Microsoft are aligning key data sources to populate account-based profiles in Adobe Experience Cloud, including Marketo Engage and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales. This will empower B2B marketers and sellers to easily identify, understand and engage B2B customer buying teams. This partnership will drive better orchestration, measurement and delivery of targeted content for a more personalized experience at both the individual and account level on key B2B platforms like LinkedIn.

    https://seekingalpha.com/news/3445688-adobe-microsoft-team-take-salesforce

  • Cisco CEO: ‘People Didn’t Think We Could Do’ Network Subscriptions

    Robbins says the company is “on track” to meet its pledge to have software and services account for 30 percent of its revenue over the next three years.

    Cisco’s focus on software and services is helping ePlus not only gain new customers, but go deeper with its existing client base, he said. It’s also making the renewal process a “nonevent.”

    “When you start selling software in a multi-year fashion, you don’t want to sell services only when it’s time to do the renewal,” he said. “The solutions we are selling today are taking a different course in terms of how we interact with customers to make them successful.”

    https://www.crn.com/news/networking/cisco-ceo-people-didn-t-think-we-could-do-network-subscriptions

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Tech companies not ‘comfortable’ storing data in Australia, Microsoft warns

    This week the Australian tech industry renewed calls for further amendments to controversial encryption-cracking legislation at an industry forum in Sydney.

    Also on Wednesday, Labor’s spokesman on the digital economy, Ed Husic, told the StartupAus forum in Sydney he wished he could “turn back time”, expressing regret for Labor’s role in passing the bill and explaining the opposition feared it would be blamed for a terrorist attack over Christmas if it refused.

    In Canberra, Smith told the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia the law had not yet changed Microsoft’s operations in Australia, but the company was worried about the law’s “potential consequences”.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/27/tech-companies-not-comfortable-storing-data-in-australia-microsoft-warns

Other

  • Europe is splitting the internet into three

    Despite setbacks, the most controversial clauses of the Copyright Directive — Article 11 or the ‘link tax’ and Article 13 — have remained pretty much intact.

    Article 11 lets publishers charge platforms like Google News when they display snippets of news stories, while Article 13 (renamed Article 17 in the most recent draft of the legislation) gives sites like YouTube new duties to stop users from uploading copyrighted content.

    In both cases, critics say these well-intentioned laws will lead to trouble. Article 13, they say, will lead to the widespread introduction of “upload filter,” that will scan all user content uploaded to sites to remove copyrighted material. The law does not explicitly call for such filters, but critics say it will be an inevitability as sites seek to avoid penalties.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18283541/european-union-copyright-directive-internet-article-13

  • IBM purged “gray hairs” and “old heads” as it launched “Millennial Corps”: lawsuit

    “In 2015 and 2016, IBM doubled down on its efforts to replace its long-tenured, older employees with the younger Millennials it sought to recruit,” the suit alleged. “IBM made presentations to its senior executives calling for IBM to evaluate its long-term employees more harshly, to use those negative evaluations to justify selecting long-term employees for lay-off, and to replace these employees with ‘EPs’– IBM management short-hand for ‘early professionals.’”

    A 2016 presentation concerning one section of the company “specifically called for managers to exempt all ‘early professional hires’ from layoff, regardless of performance,” the suit claimed. “The long-serving, older employees were provided no such exemption.”

    https://www.denverpost.com/2019/03/28/ibm-ageism-lawsuit-millennial-corps/

  • Amazon To Create 800 New Jobs At Austin Tech Hub

    In a press release, Amazon said the jobs will be in the areas of software and hardware engineering, research science and cloud computing. Amazon said that since it opened its Austin Tech Hub, it has created more than 22,000 full-time jobs in Texas and has invested more than $7 billion in the state, including on infrastructure and compensation to workers.

    “In the last four years, we have created more than 1,000 jobs in Austin,” said Terry Leeper, general manager of Amazon’s Austin Tech Hub, in the press release. “With a strong pool of technical talent in Austin and a dynamic quality of life, we are excited to continue to expand and create more opportunity in this vibrant city.”

    https://www.pymnts.com/amazon/2019/austin-tech-hub-jobs-ecommerce/

Photo by Kido Dong on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 3/29/2019

The tech industry is focused on playing games. Google has dedicated significant time and energy on a cloud-based gaming platform, and Apple is rumored to be announcing a service soon. Meanwhile, gaming veteran Microsoft is expected to have a major service update as well.

These companies are spending tons of money on retail, consumer-based services. Xbox shows it can be profitable, but is there money if the market keeps splintering?

Meanwhile Oracle is quietly going through a round of job eliminations and the President of the United States and his staff continue to struggle with technology.

Acquisitions

  • Apple Has Reportedly Acquired Italian Startup Stamplay

    Stamplay describes itself as a “low code workflow automation platform, empowering organizations to streamline manual work by integrating data and business applications used every day.” The “API-based development platform” enables developers to build and launch “full-featured cloud-based web apps.”

    https://www.macrumors.com/2019/03/21/apple-reportedly-acquired-stamplay/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Trump’s views about ‘crazy’ self-driving cars are at odds with his DOT

    Just last week during SXSW in Austin, Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao announced the creation of the Non-Traditional and Emerging Transportation Technology (NETT) Council, an internal organization designed to resolve jurisdictional and regulatory gaps that may impede the deployment of new technology, such as tunneling, hyperloop, autonomous vehicles and other innovations.

    “New technologies increasingly straddle more than one mode of transportation, so I’ve signed an order creating a new internal Department council to better coordinate the review of innovation that have multi-modal applications,” Chao said in a prepared statement at the time.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/18/trumps-views-about-crazy-self-driving-cars-are-at-odds-with-his-dot/

  • Oracle adds more AI features to its suite of sales tools

    Rob Tarkoff, who had previous stints at EMC, Adobe and Lithium, and is now EVP of Oracle CX Cloud says that the company has found ways to increase efficiency in the sales and marketing process by using artificial intelligence to speed up previously manual workflows, while taking advantage of all the data that is part of modern sales and marketing.

    For starters, the company wants to help managers and salespeople understand the market better to identify the best prospects in the pipeline. To that end, Oracle is announcing integration with DataFox, the company it purchased last fall. The acquisition gave Oracle the ability to integrate highly detailed company profiles into their Customer Experience Cloud, including information such as SEC filings, job postings, news stories and other data about the company.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/19/oracle-adds-more-ai-features-to-its-suite-of-sales-tools/

  • What AI Is Still Far From Figuring Out

    The basic technique is to give the computer millions of examples of games, images or previous judgments and to provide feedback. Which moves led to a high score? Which pictures did people label as dogs? What did the curators or judges decide in particular cases? The computer can then use machine learning techniques to try to figure out how to achieve the same objectives. In fact, machines have gotten better and better at learning how to win games or match human judgments. They often detect subtle statistical cues in the data that humans can’t even understand.

    But people also can decide to change their objectives. A great judge can argue that slavery should be outlawed or that homosexuality should no longer be illegal. A great curator can make the case for an unprecedented new kind of art, like Cubism or Abstract Expressionism, that is very different from anything in the past.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-ai-is-still-far-from-figuring-out-11553112473

Cloud

  • Google is about to reveal its plan to take on the $140 billion gaming industry, but experts are skeptical it has a chance

    Google’s streaming service could change that model by letting users stream top games to the devices they already own, like a laptop, smartphone or streaming box connected to a TV.

    “Cloud gaming will enable publishers to broaden their reach even further by potentially taping into new audiences on any device and any screen,” Forrester vice president and principal analyst Thomas Husson told CNBC. “Beyond music or video, gaming represents another opportunity to offer recurring streaming revenues for companies in the gaming ecosystem. For cloud platforms like Amazon, Google or Microsoft, it will also become an opportunity to offer cloud storage and services to game publishers, who spend more and more in their IT infrastructure.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/17/google-yeti-gaming-announcement-expectations.html

    Apple might reveal its game subscription service at Monday’s event

    For the game bundle subscription, Bloomberg notes that Apple is “likely considering” paid games only. Any titles that depend on a freemium model — free-to-play but with in-app purchases — won’t be part of the deal. That would result in hits like Fortnite and PUBG Mobile being left out, but Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Heads Up!, Monument Valley 1 and 2, and NBA 2K19 are all the kind of paid games that could be eligible.

    Customers would be charged monthly to access a bundle of those premium games, and game developers would be paid based on how frequently members of the service play their title. “The company would collect these monthly fees, then divide up the revenue between developers based on how much time users spend playing their games,” Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/23/18278450/apple-gaming-subscription-service-iphone-ipad-march-25-rumor
    Microsoft’s Xbox boss responds to Google Stadia, promises ‘we will go big’ for E3

    Thurrott has published the full memo, and it reveals that Spencer feels validated by Google’s efforts. “Their announcement is validation of the path we embarked on two years ago,” says Spencer. Microsoft is also creating its own cloud gaming service, dubbed xCloud, that will rival Google and many others for streaming games to phones, tablets, PCs, and TVs. Microsoft recently demonstrated xCloud publicly for the first time, and it’s promising trials of the service later this year.

    “There were no big surprises in their announcement although I was impressed by their leveraging of YouTube, the use of Google Assistant and the new WiFi controller,” explains Spencer in his memo. Google is leveraging YouTube to allow people to view game clips and then instantly launch the game, or share an exact game save to the video service.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/20/18273991/google-stadia-microsoft-xbox-phil-spencer-response-comments

  • Giant Military Contract Has a Hitch: A Little-Known Entrepreneur

    The software giant Oracle, which is widely considered ill equipped to land the deal, has aggressively criticized the one-vendor approach. As part of its opposition, the company is arguing in federal court that Mr. Ubhi’s ties to Amazon shaped the contract in the company’s favor

    Before the case was filed last year, the Pentagon found that Mr. Ubhi had no improper influence, and it continued evaluating the proposals despite Oracle’s lawsuit. But in late February, the government said it had received “new information” about Mr. Ubhi that it needed to investigate, essentially delaying the process.

    A Pentagon spokeswoman, Elissa Smith, declined to say what new information about Mr. Ubhi had been brought to the department’s attention. The Pentagon had said that the winner of the contract was projected to be announced in April. But Ms. Smith said the inquiry into Mr. Ubhi was “expected to impact the award date.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/20/technology/military-contract-deap-ubhi.html

Security

  • Facebook admits it stored ‘hundreds of millions’ of account passwords in plaintext

    Facebook confirmed Thursday in a blog post, prompted by a report by cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs, that it stored “hundreds of millions” of account passwords in plaintext for years.

    The discovery was made in January, said Facebook’s Pedro Canahuati, as part of a routine security review. None of the passwords were visible to anyone outside Facebook, he said. Facebook admitted the security lapse months later, after Krebs said logs were accessible to some 2,000 engineers and developers.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/21/facebook-plaintext-passwords/
    What a surprise, an article about Facebook not properly managing personal data…

  • Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Use Private Accounts for Official Business, Their Lawyer Says

    The chairman, Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, said that a lawyer for Ms. Trump, President Trump’s daughter, and Mr. Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, told the committee late last year that in addition to a private email account, Mr. Kushner uses an unofficial encrypted messaging service, WhatsApp, for official White House business, including with foreign contacts.

    Mr. Cummings said the lawyer, Abbe Lowell, also told lawmakers that Ms. Trump did not preserve some emails sent to her private account if she did not reply to them.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/us/politics/jared-kushner-whatsapp.html

Software/SaaS

  • IBM Launches A Blockchain-Based Global Payments Network

    IBM has now revealed a World Wire, which is a real-time global payments network for the regulated financial institutions, that is accessible in a growing number of markets.

    The payment system which is designed to simply optimize and accelerate the foreign exchange, remittances and cross border payments. World Wire is the first blockchain network as of now its kind to integrate the payment messaging, clearing and settlement on a single unified network, which even allows the participants to dynamically choose from a wide range of digital assets for settlement.

    World Wide has also enabled payment location in more than 70 countries, with 44 bank points and 47 currencies. Some of the local regulations will continue to guide the activation, and IBM is now actively growing the network with additional financial institutions across the globe.

    https://www.techiexpert.com/ibm-launches-a-blockchain-based-global-payments-network/

  • How Salesforce paved the way for the SaaS platform approach

    It turns out that Force.com was actually the culmination of a series of incremental steps after the launch of the first version of Salesforce in February, 2000, all of which were designed to make the software more flexible for customers. Company co-founder and CTO Parker Harris says they didn’t have this goal to be a platform early on. “We were a solution first, I would say. We didn’t say ‘let’s build a platform and then build sales-force automation on top of it.’ We wanted a solution that people could actually use,” Harris told TechCrunch.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/22/how-salesforce-paved-the-way-for-the-saas-platform-approach/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Microsoft Says the FCC ‘Overstates’ Broadband Availability in the US

    Microsoft this week was the latest to highlight the US government’s terrible broadband mapping in a filing with the FCC, first spotted by journalist Wendy Davis. In it, Microsoft accuses the FCC of over-stating actual broadband availability and urges the agency to do better.

    “For example, in some areas the Commission’s broadband availability data suggests that ISPs have reported significant broadband availability (25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up) while Microsoft’s usage data indicates that only a small percentage of consumers actually access the Internet at broadband speeds in those areas,” Microsoft said.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pan48b/microsoft-says-the-fcc-overstates-broadband-availability-in-the-us

  • Apple will let you add 256GB of RAM to an iMac Pro for $5,200

    You could buy a second iMac Pro for the cost of that single RAM upgrade. To put that in perspective compared to Apple’s other RAM upgrades, the iMac Pro comes with 32GB of RAM by default. Upgrading to 64GB costs an extra $400, and upgrading to 128GB costs an extra $2,000. Both of those prices are dwarfed by the new 256GB option.

    https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/3/19/18272523/apple-256gb-ram-imac-pro-5200-update-configure-build

  • How phones went from $200 to $2,000

    That’s in large part because phones are getting harder to sell. Far more people own a smartphone today than just a few years ago, and people are holding on to their phones for longer (perhaps because they’re so good, or perhaps because those two-year contracts are dead). That’s left smartphone makers with an option if they don’t want to see their revenues fall: sell more phones or sell more expensive phones. Obviously, they’ve chosen the latter.

    We’ve seen options for bigger screens and more storage push the price for flagship phones into the $1,500 range. Even the starting price for today’s flagships is closer to $1,000 than the $649 of just a few years ago.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/18/18263584/why-phones-are-so-expensive-price-apple-samsung-google

Other

  • Oracle Swings the Layoff Axe and Clear-cuts Teams of Engineers

    Rumors are flying, but the count appears to be heading into the thousands worldwide, with the lowest estimate at 500. One anonymous poster on theLayoff.com, a site that hosts discussion boards for people affected by layoffs, appeared to offer real numbers, indicating that the total target is 10 percent of Oracle’s global head count, which in 2018 was around 137,000. Cuts will be made in three phases this year, he indicated, with around 5000 employees cut in this first phase.

    Layoffs are nothing new for Oracle; in 2017 the company slashed nearly 1000 jobs in Silicon Valley, mostly from its SPARC and Solaris teams. But the sudden and secretive nature of this layoff operation came as a surprise to employees and observers. The lack of transparency and abruptness of the operation was reminiscent of IBM’s waves of layoffs in the past.

    https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-careers/oracle-swings-the-layoff-axe-and-clearcuts-teams-of-engineers.amp.html

  • Google hit with another EU antitrust fine: The grand total now comes to €8.2B

    This morning, the European Union slapped Google with a €1.5 billion fine, which comes to a little over $1.7 billion. This latest fine was over its antitrust practices with its advertising business.

    Essentially, for years Google didn’t allow its AdSense customers to feature rival search engines on their sites. Over the years, the company eased up on these rules, but European officials still decided the practice amounted to illegal behavior. This may be an especially tough blow for Google, since AdSense’s contribution to the company’s overall revenue has been steadily decreasing over the last six-plus years, according to Bloomberg.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90322678/google-hit-with-another-eu-antitrust-fine-the-grand-total-now-comes-to-e8-2b

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 3/22/2019

The technology industry saw multiple outages last week. Apple, Facebook, and Google all suffered from seemingly unrelated issues bringing services down. Facebook experienced their biggest outage in years.  The combination of these events highlight that the internet and online services are still fragile.

Apple suffered additional bad news with a ruling that the company infringed on Qualcomm’s intellectual property and will owe Qualcomm $31M.

On the topic of owing money… the EU is looking to shove their hands in Google’s pockets one more time.

Acquisitions

  • Nvidia to Acquire Mellanox, Its Biggest Deal Ever at Roughly $7 Billion

    With Mellanox, Nvidia is buying a maker of Ethernet switches and adapters that connect computers to each other, wiring together networks where users can rapidly exchange information. The company is a major supplier of equipment that conforms to the so-called InfiniBand networking standard widely used in supercomputers.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/nvidia-to-acquire-mellanox-for-about-7-billion-11552304615?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Apple Acquires Machine Learning Startup in Boost for AI Group

    Laserlike was active for four years and concentrated on an “interest search engine” that could fetch news, video, and general Web content relative to each user. A key assumption was that people may want to know about things that don’t necessarily pop up in their usual sources, such as a car recall or an upcoming music festival. The app for the engine is no longer available.

    The Laserlike crew has reportedly joined Apple’s AI division, led by John Giannandrea, who was hired away from Google in 2018. His unit oversees the strategy for AI and Machine Learning across all Apple products, as well as the development of Core ML and Siri.

    https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/03/13/apple-confirms-buyout-of-machine-learning-startup-laserlike

Artificial Intelligence

  • DeepMind and Google: the battle to control artificial intelligence

    Google’s financial heft was attractive, yet, like many founders, Hassabis was reluctant to hand over the company he had nurtured. As part of the deal, DeepMind created an arrangement that would prevent Google from unilaterally taking control of the company’s intellectual property. In the year leading up to acquisition, according to a person familiar with the transaction, both parties signed a contract called the Ethics and Safety Review Agreement. The agreement, previously unreported, was drawn up by senior barristers in London.

    The Review Agreement puts control of DeepMind’s core AGI technology, whenever it may be created, in the hands of a governing panel known as the Ethics Board. Far from being a cosmetic concession from Google, the Ethics Board gives DeepMind solid legal backing to keep control of its most valuable and potentially most dangerous technology, according to the same source.

    https://www.1843magazine.com/features/deepmind-and-google-the-battle-to-control-artificial-intelligence

Cloud

  • Oracle’s Revenue Declines as It Struggles to Catch Up in Cloud Services

    Oracle has been slower than some of its rivals to develop cloud-computing technology—services customers rent on demand over the web. That has put competitors in a better position to win business as customers shift away from managing their own computing operations.

    The company expects to post revenue that is flat to down 2% in the current quarter, co-Chief Executive Safra Catz said during a conference call with analysts. Oracle shares, which fell a penny to $53.05 during regular trading Thursday, slid 3.9% after hours.

    Brad Reback, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co., said the current spending environment for information technology is the most robust in two decades. “The world is passing Oracle by,” he said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/oracles-revenue-declines-1-11552595788

Software/SaaS

  • Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are still down for some users around the world

    According to DownDetector, it looks like the outages are mainly in New England; Texas; Seattle, Washington; parts of Latin America, including Peru; the UK; India; and the Philippines. Users have written in from Canada, Las Vegas, and Turkey to note outages there as well. We’ve reached out to Facebook and Instagram to learn more.

    Also

    It wasn’t until over 24 hours later that Facebook finally gave the all clear, attributing the downtime to a “server configuration change.” “We’ve now resolved the issues and our systems are recovering. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate everyone’s patience,” the company said via Twitter.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18264092/facebook-instagram-down-partially-post-messages-profile-loading

  • Apple’s iCloud recovers after a four-hour outage

    The company’s system status dashboard was blanketed in yellow warning notes for more than four hours Thursday, indicating mass outages of its iCloud service.

    The page didn’t offer much in terms of detail as to why the services experienced problems, only saying that “some users are affected” and “users may be unable to access this service.” Apple didn’t say what caused the outage once iCloud recovered.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/14/apples-icloud-is-having-an-outage-too/

  • And Google had an outage too…

    At Google, some services, including Gmail, were slowed or outright inaccessible from Tuesday evening into early Wednesday on the East Coast. Google blamed a “cascading failure” that began after its engineers made tweaks to an internal storage service.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-and-instagram-suffer-lengthy-outages-11552539752

  • After the “adult content” ban, Tumblr users have ditched the platform as promised

    Tumblr’s global traffic in December clocked in at 521 million, but it had dropped to 370 million by February, web analytics firm SimilarWeb tells The Verge. Statista reports a similar trend in the number of unique visitors. By January 2019, only over 437 million visited Tumblr, compared to a high of 642 million visitors in July 2018.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18266013/tumblr-porn-ban-lost-users-down-traffic
    This is an example of a company putting a goal or objective over profit. They had to know that was going to happen.

  • Apple Music launches on Amazon Fire TV

    This change of pace from Apple’s standard walled-garden approach to services was most prevalent at CES 2019 where Apple said that iTunes will soon be available on Samsung smart TVs. In what was eventually dubbed a bug, Apple Music also appeared briefly on Google Home units but was never active before it was pulled offline.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/13/apple-music-for-amazon-fire-tv.html

Other

  • A Better Way to Break Up Big Tech

    The problem with applying a one-size-fits-four model to tech, as the industry analyst Ben Thompson has written, is that the large tech companies have different business models that pose different anti-competitive risks. The stranglehold that Google and Facebook have on the digital advertising market is different from the way Amazon muscles out e-commerce brands, which is different from the way Apple uses its App Store to force burdensome terms on developers.

    The possibility of unintended consequences means that tailoring regulations to address each of these problems is important. A law that banned Amazon from competing with third-party sellers on its platform could also cripple Chromebook laptops, or prevent iPhone users from getting access to their iTunes libraries.

    Rather than one giant package that crams everything together, a set of effective tech regulations would treat each problem discretely, and address each with surgical precision.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/technology/elizabeth-warren-tech-companies.html

  • Facebook’s Data Deals Are Under Criminal Investigation

    It is not clear when the grand jury inquiry, overseen by prosecutors with the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, began or exactly what it is focusing on. Facebook was already facing scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. And the Justice Department’s securities fraud unit began investigating it after reports that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, had improperly obtained the Facebook data of 87 million people and used it to build tools that helped President Trump’s election campaign.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/technology/facebook-data-deals-investigation.html

  • Apple dealt legal blow as jury awards Qualcomm $31 million

    The $31 million in damages — or $1.41 per infringing iPhone — is a drop in the bucket for Apple, a company that briefly became a $1 trillion company last year. But it marks an important victory for Qualcomm, burnishing its reputation as a mobile components innovator. The win also lends credibility to the notion that much of the company’s innovation is reflected in iPhones.

    https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-qualcomm-patent-infringement-verdict/

  • Google faces third EU antitrust fine next week: source

    Alphabet unit Google is likely to be hit with a third EU antitrust fine next week related to its AdSense advertising service, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday, with the sanction expected to be much smaller than previous fines.

    The AdSense case may not be end of Google’s EU antitrust woes.

    EU antitrust enforcers have asked Google’s rivals if it unfairly demotes local search competitors, according to a questionnaire seen by Reuters, a move which could lead to a fourth case.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-google-antitrust-idUSKCN1QW1X0

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 3/15/2019

Elizabeth Warren is going after large IT companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon and stating her desire to break them up if elected President.

As IT establishes itself as one of the primary drivers of the US economy (and THE major competitive advantage over foreign countries), can a 70-year-old politician really understand what these proposed “monopoly busters” would do to the US innovation engine?

Meanwhile, Facebook is handing politicians like Warren a narrative to break up the company with their inability to get privacy under control (while continuing to make a profit) and as Amazon grows (unchecked) in almost every major market.

Acquisitions

Cloud

  • Microsoft Azure Is Catching Up to Amazon AWS

    Brad Zelnick referred to the RightScale 2019 State of the Cloud Report from Flexera, which is based on a survey of 786 technical professionals in a note to investors.

    The report said that overall Azure adoption grew from 45% to 52% to narrow the gap with AWS. As a result, the report said, Azure adoption has now reached 85% of AWS adoption, up from 70% last year.

    “Azure continues to catch up with AWS overall especially among enterprises, where Azure adoption increases slightly from 58% to 60%, while AWS adoption in this group is relatively flat at 67%. This puts Azure with 89% of the AWS adoption based on the overall number of respondents using each cloud,” the Cloud Report said, noting that Google maintains its third-place position, increasing slightly from 18% to 19% adoption.

    https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/azure-closing-the-gap-with-aws-14885053

  • Democrats to push to reinstate repealed ‘net neutrality’ rules

    Democrats in the U.S. Congress plan to unveil legislation on Wednesday to reinstate “net neutrality” rules that were repealed by the Trump administration in December 2017, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.

    Pelosi told lawmakers in a letter that House Democrats, who won control of the chamber in the November 2018 elections, would work with their colleagues in the U.S. Senate to pass the “Save The Internet Act.”

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-internet-idUSKCN1QL1W0

  • SAP’s restructuring – Hunger Games, Game of Thrones or both?

    It seems that SAP has determined that it cannot realistically compete with AWS, Google and Microsoft for cloud platform offerings and is, therefore, scaling those back. That’s one easy way to unload staff and should be of no surprise to anyone in particular. Even though SAP touts a cloud platform, it never figures in any of the surveys of runners and riders. And despite the obvious allure as evidenced by AWS numbers (and Microsoft’s recent rocketing performance) SAP isn’t going to fight battles it can’t win. However, that still leaves the problem of engineering for each of those choices. That’s BIG engineering work that requires a considerable resource for very little obvious payback other than protecting existing application investments.

    Also

    From what I can gather, SAP started its program in Germany, including at its Walldorf HQ, offering early retirement to some of the ABAP ‘greybeards.’ In addition, employees are being offered the opportunity to apply for one of the 3,000 openings elsewhere. This is where I get my Hunger Games metaphor. 4.5 down with 3 up is a competitive environment.

    https://diginomica.com/saps-restructuring-hunger-games-game-of-thrones-or-both/

    Looks like SAP is letting go of several Hana and development subject matter experts…not good.

Security

  • Do You Trust Your VPN? Are You Sure?

    The CEO of one top VPN company, Silicon Valley–based AnchorFree, told me in a phone interview that he suspects one of his top rivals is secretly based in China—which would raise a red flag for many privacy advocates because of the Chinese government’s aggressive surveillance regime. An executive for that rival, ExpressVPN, insisted that isn’t true, though he wouldn’t disclose where the owners are actually based or even who they are. (The company is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.) He argued the secrecy is actually a virtue because governments can’t apply pressure to ExpressVPN’s principals to give up user data if they don’t know who, or even where, those principals are. Indeed, many VPN users consider offshore providers preferable to U.S.-based firms.

    Also…

    How about the VPN that gets the best reviews? Ah, but there are dozens of review sites, their findings often conflict, and their criteria aren’t always transparent. Two of the more reputable tech sites that review VPNs, PCMag and CNET, both give Panama-based NordVPN the top spot, citing its speed, ease of use, and privacy features. But two others, Wirecutter and Tom’s Guide, found NordVPN slow and buggy. And, like ExpressVPN, NordVPN goes to great lengths to obscure its ownership. As Tom’s Guide notes, it’s a subsidiary of a Panama-based holding company called Tefincom S.A., which appears to be a shell company. (As with ExpressVPN, there are potential justifications for that anonymity.)

    https://slate.com/technology/2019/02/best-vpn-companies-trust-privacy.html

  • Facebook only cares about privacy because it has to

    Zuckerberg also talks about how ephemeral content (posts that don’t last forever) are key to Facebook’s evolution. That should come as no surprise given the rise of Instagram Stories, which now has over 500 million daily active users. That’s more than double of Snapchat — you know, the app Facebook essentially ripped off to create Stories. Zuckerberg says this doesn’t mean the News Feed is going away anytime soon, but it does raise the question: How does Facebook plan to turn its privacy-focused strategy into cash? Again, that’s a question that Zuckerberg doesn’t seem to have an answer for at the moment. Presumably, Facebook will still need to make money. And you have to wonder, if you’re not giving up your privacy, what will you have to give up for the company to turn a profit?

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/07/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-privacy-focused-strategy/
    Why Facebook’s pivot to privacy could backfire

    My view is that if you accept that Facebook’s News Feed and other feed-based products will eventually fade away, as they have already begun to do in North America, Facebook will need to transform its business completely. Rallying around privacy, encryption, and ephemeral messages — while buying time to build out new businesses around commerce and payments — seems to be as good an idea as any.

    Zuckerberg nods weakly to a belief in the continuing importance of the News Feed in his post. But over the past year, he also moved top News Feed talent to parts of the company that he needs to grow faster: Adam Mosseri to Instagram; designer Geoff Teehan to the blockchain division, and so on. These moves, coupled with the decline of original sharing in the News Feed in North America, lead me to believe that Zuckerberg — ever paranoid about the company’s long-term survival — feels pressure to start building lifeboats.

    https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/3/8/18255480/facebook-pivot-privacy-mark-zuckerberg-pr-stunt

Software/SaaS

  • Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon and Facebook

    The proposal — which comes on the same day Ms. Warren will hold a rally in Long Island City, the Queens neighborhood that was to be home to a major new Amazon campus — calls for the appointment of regulators who would “unwind tech mergers that illegally undermine competition,” as well as legislation that would prohibit platforms from both offering a marketplace for commerce and participating in that marketplace.

    Ms. Warren’s plan would also force the rollback of some acquisitions by technological giants, the campaign said, including Facebook’s deals for WhatsApp and Instagram, Amazon’s addition of Whole Foods, and Google’s purchase of Waze. Companies would be barred from transferring or sharing users’ data with third parties. Dual entities, such as Amazon Marketplace and AmazonBasics, would be split apart.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-amazon.html
    Elizabeth Warren Wants To Break Up Amazon, Google And Facebook; But Does Her Plan Make Any Sense?

    But I fear that nearly all of these plans to “break up” big tech actually make that harder. It doesn’t open up new opportunities for a protocol-based approach, and simply assumes that the world will always be managed by giant platform companies — just slightly smaller, and highly regulated, ones. And that might actually lead us to a much worse future, one that is still controlled by more centralized systems, rather than more decentralized, distributed protocols where the users have power.

    The internet is a constant challenge with lots of new upstarts hoping to disrupt the big guys. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. We should be wary of companies with too much power abusing that position to block competition. And I’m certainly open to looking at specific situations where it’s alleged that these companies are blocking competitors, but a general position that says breaking up the internet giants seems more opportunistic and headline-grabbing than realistic.

    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190308/10591041767/elizabeth-warren-wants-to-break-up-amazon-google-facebook-does-her-plan-make-any-sense.shtml

Other

  • Amazon’s joint healthcare organization is called ‘Haven’

    Haven, the website says, is a nonprofit that aims to make primary care easier to access, make prescription drugs more affordable and insurance benefits easier to understand. When the partners first announced the endeavor, they said they want to accomplish those goals with the help of technology. That hasn’t changed: they explained that they’re looking at new ways to use data and technology to better the healthcare system.

    The organization will start with addressing the healthcare needs of 1.2 million Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase workers in the US. Ultimately, the partners intend to use whatever they learn from that initial period and the solutions they come up with to improve the system for everyone.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/07/amazon-joint-healthcare-organization-haven/

  • Amazon to close all of its 87 pop-up stores in the US beginning in April

    “Across our Amazon network, we regularly evaluate our businesses to ensure we’re making thoughtful decisions around how we can best serve our customers,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC. “After much review, we came to the decision to discontinue our pop-up kiosk program, and are instead expanding Amazon Books and Amazon 4-star, where we provide a more comprehensive customer experience and broader selection.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/06/amazon-to-close-all-of-its-pop-up-stores-in-the-us.html

  • Amazon’s HQ2 deal isn’t looking great for Arlington County

    The contract doesn’t require Amazon to provide construction workers with a living wage, what would typically be called a project labor agreement, and it doesn’t ask Amazon to contribute to Arlington’s affordable housing trust fund. Housing fund requests are typically made after a company comes back to Arlington with more specific development plans.

    All Amazon needs to do in Arlington is hit office space requirements. It must occupy 64,000 square feet of office space by the end of July 2020, 252,800 square feet by 2021, and 5.576 million by 2034. As Amazon hits its office space goals, it will receive partial payment of the $23 million.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/5/18252093/amazons-hq2-deal-arlington-county-living-wage-affordable-housing

Photo by Toby Yang on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 3/8/2019

Amazon was all over the news this week. There is still fall out from the company’s decision to pull back from NYC, there are grumblings about Bezos’ divorce impacting operations (and ownership), and they announced they are opening grocery stores… separate from the Whole Foods brand.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is introducing some very cool Excel scanning technology and Google is optimizing wind energy in their data-centers.

Acquisitions

  • Web Content-Recommendation Firm Outbrain to Acquire Native-Ad Specialist

    New York-based Outbrain has agreed to purchase the Cologne, Germany-based firm, in an all-stock transaction. The deal’s financial terms weren’t disclosed.

    The acquisition, which Outbrain says is its largest ever, is meant to help the company capture more of the market for native advertising, or ads that mimic the look and feel of the content around them. Ligatus operates a so-called supply-side platform that helps publishers sell native ads.

    Companies like Outbrain, whose recommendations often appear at the bottom of news articles, have faced criticism for promoting low-quality content.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/web-content-recommendation-firm-outbrain-to-acquire-native-ad-specialist-11551177120

Artificial Intelligence

  • Machine learning can boost the value of wind energy

    Using a neural network trained on widely available weather forecasts and historical turbine data, we configured the DeepMind system to predict wind power output 36 hours ahead of actual generation. Based on these predictions, our model recommends how to make optimal hourly delivery commitments to the power grid a full day in advance. This is important, because energy sources that can be scheduled (i.e. can deliver a set amount of electricity at a set time) are often more valuable to the grid.

    Although we continue to refine our algorithm, our use of machine learning across our wind farms has produced positive results. To date, machine learning has boosted the value of our wind energy by roughly 20 percent, compared to the baseline scenario of no time-based commitments to the grid.

    https://www.blog.google/technology/ai/machine-learning-can-boost-value-wind-energy/

Cloud

  • Lyft has to pay Amazon’s cloud at least $8 million a month until the end of 2021

    Buried in there is the revelation that Lyft is contractually obligated to pay at least $300 million to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s market-leading cloud-computing business, between January 2019 and December 2021. Some quick napkin math shows that — depending on when exactly the contract began in January 2019 and ends in December 2021 — Lyft is committed to spending between $8.33 million and $8.57 million a month on AWS, which hosts its entire app and platform.

    Notably, Lyft said that if its usage of Amazon’s cloud doesn’t hit or exceed that $300 million threshold, it’ll have to pay the difference. Lyft committed to spending at least $80 million in each of the three years of the deal, with the stipulation that it will spend $300 million in aggregate overall.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/lyft-ipo-amazon-web-services-2019-3

  • AWS chief Andy Jassy says it’s ‘really easy to cut prices’

    “It’s actually really easy to lower prices,” Jassy told Jim Cramer on CNBC’s “Mad Money” on Thursday. “It’s much harder to be able to afford to lower prices.” In the past decade, AWS has cut prices 70 times, he said.

    Other key areas where Amazon tries to stay ahead of the competition include geographic reach and the variety of tools that are available.

    “We’re much more focused on the long term than most companies,” Jassy said. “We are trying to build a business and a set of customer relationships that outlasts all of us. And as such, we think if we help our customers get more done and are successful on their own, even if it means lower margin percentages, over time we’ll drive more absolute margin dollars, and they’ll be more successful, and we’ll ultimately be more relevant.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/aws-ceo-andy-jassy-its-really-easy-to-lower-prices.html

    Hey Andy – tell that to Lyft

Software/SaaS

  • Microsoft Excel will now let you snap a picture of a spreadsheet and import it

    Microsoft is adding a very useful feature to its Excel mobile apps for iOS and Android. It allows Excel users to take a photo of a printed data table and convert it into a fully editable table in the app. This feature is rolling out initially in the Android Excel app, before making its way to iOS soon. Microsoft is using artificial intelligence to implement this feature, with image recognition so that Excel users don’t have to manually input hardcopy data. The feature will be available to Microsoft 365 users.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/1/18246429/microsoft-excel-covert-photos-data-tables-editable-table-ai-feature

  • Warren Buffett says he ditched his stake in Oracle because of his experience getting burned by IBM

    “[Cofounder and CTO] Larry Ellison’s done a fantastic job with Oracle. I mean I’ve followed it from the standpoint of reading about it. But I felt like I didn’t understand the business,”

    “Then, after I started buying it, I felt I still didn’t understand the business. I actually changed my mind in terms of understand and not in terms of evaluating it. I think, I mean, Oracle is a great business. But I don’t think, particularly after my experience with IBM, I don’t think I understand exactly where the cloud is going.

    “You know, I’ve been amazed at what Amazon has done there. And now Microsoft is doing it as well. So I don’t know where that game is going.”

    https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-oracle-ibm-2019-2

  • Accenture Works With Mastercard, Amazon to Boost Circular Supply Chain Using DLT

    Within the announced initiative, Accenture is collaborating with major global companies including cloud computing firm Amazon Web Services, blockchain supply chain firm Everledger, international development organization Mercy Corps and multinational financial services corporation Mastercard.

    According to the release, the new blockchain-enabled circular supply chain capability will allow customers to identify small-scale suppliers and growers on the supply chain and make rewards by using direct payments.

    Additionally, the new capability is designed to provide better management of inventory and waste elimination, transparency across the supply chain and authenticity of products.

    https://cointelegraph.com/news/accenture-works-with-mastercard-amazon-to-boost-circular-supply-chain-using-dlt

Datacenter/Hardware

  • HP Sales Rise, but Fall Short of Estimates

    HP Inc.’s sales missed Wall Street targets in the most recent quarter, weighed down by the weaker-than-expected sales of printing supplies to commercial customers. Revenue from the printing segment, which includes the supplies business, fell to $5.06 billion from $5.08 billion a year earlier.

    Meanwhile, sales in the personal-systems segment, which includes its PC business, rose 2.3% to $9.66 billion, also missing analysts’ expectations. Total units sold fell 3% from the year earlier, as notebook units sold declined 1% and sales of desktops fell 8%, HP said.

    Overall, HP reported a first-quarter profit of $803 million, or 51 cents a share, down 59% from the year earlier, when the Palo Alto, Calif., company got a boost from the U.S. tax overhaul. Excluding restructuring charges and other items, profit was in line with analysts’ estimates at 52 cents a share, up from 48 cents a share a year earlier.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/hp-sales-rise-but-fall-short-of-estimates-11551301659

Other

  • WeWork confirms it has laid off 300 employees

    Headquartered in New York, the layoffs were performance-related, part of the company’s routine process of shedding underperformers. Among the departments impacted by the cuts were WeWork’s engineering team, product and user experience design.

    “Over the past nine years, WeWork has grown into one of the largest global physical networks thanks to the hard work and dedication of our team,” the company said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “WeWork recently conducted a standard annual performance review process. Our global workforce is now more than 10,000 strong, and we remain committed to continuing to grow and scale in 2019, including hiring an additional 6,000 employees.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/01/wework-confirms-it-has-let-go-of-300-employees/

  • Amazon to Launch New Grocery-Store Business

    The new stores aren’t intended to compete directly with the more upscale Whole Foods stores and will offer a different variety of products, at a lower price point, these people said. Whole Foods doesn’t sell products with artificial flavors, colors, preservatives and sweeteners, among other quality standards.

    Suppliers with big brands have hoped to have inroads into Whole Foods since Amazon bought the chain nearly two years ago. While Whole Foods has gradually expanded the big brands it carries—such as Honey-Nut Cheerios and Michelob beer—a conventional grocer can carry a much larger assortment of items.

    Amazon has had mixed results with its food-delivery business, and it wants to better understand how it can cater to grocery shoppers, according to people briefed on the company’s strategy.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-to-launch-new-grocery-store-business-sources-say-11551461887?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

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