Tag: Microsoft

Posted on

Supplier Report: 6/15/2018

The DOJ said it would not block AT&T’s $85B acquisition of Time Warner on Thursday, within hours the acquisition was deemed complete. AT&T wasn’t the only company making moves… Workday bought TWO companies and data analytics companies Slack and Tableau both announced acquisitions this week.

Amazon was in the press for poor labor conditions in their Alexa supply chain. Foxconn workers making the devices have been found to be mistreated and underpaid. Amazon’s own audit of the situation confirms the report.

Oracle shares dropped due to a JP Morgan CIO report documenting a decrease of purchasing interest of Oracle products and services from IT executives.

Acquisitions

  • AT&T Completes Acquisition of Time Warner Inc.

    Under the terms of the merger, Time Warner Inc. shareholders received 1.4 shares of AT&T common stock, in addition to $53.75 in cash, per share of Time Warner Inc. As a result, AT&T issued 1,185M shares of common stock and paid $42.5B in cash. Including net debt from Time Warner, we now have $180.4B in net debt.

    https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180614006343/en/ATT-Completes-Acquisition-Time-Warner

  • Workday acquires Rallyteam to fuel machine learning efforts

    In this case, Workday appears to be acquiring the talent. It wants to take the Rallyteam team and incorporate it into the company’s engineering unit to beef up its machine learning efforts, while taking advantage of the expertise it has built up over the years connecting employees with interesting internal projects.

    “With Rallyteam, we gain incredible team members who created a talent mobility platform that uses machine learning to help companies better understand and optimize their workforces by matching a worker’s interests, skills and connections with relevant jobs, projects, tasks and people,” Workday’s Cristina Goldt wrote in a blog post announcing the acquisition.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/08/workday-acquires-rallyteam-to-fuel-machine-learning-efforts/

  • Workday acquires financial modelling startup Adaptive Insights for $1.55B

    Workday, the cloud-based platform that offers HR and other back-office apps for businesses, is making an acquisition to expand its portfolio of services: It’s buying Adaptive Insights, a provider of cloud-based business planning and financial modelling tools, for $1.55 billion. The acquisition is notable because Adaptive Insights had filed for an IPO as recently as May 17.

    Workday says that the $1.55 billion price tag includes “the assumption of approximately $150 million in unvested equity issued to Adaptive Insights employees” related to that IPO. This deal is expected to close in Q3 of this year.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/11/workday-acquires-financial-modelling-startup-adaptive-insights-for-1-55b/

  • Tableau gets AI shot in the arm with Empirical Systems acquisition

    The startup was born just two years ago from research on automated statistics at the MIT Probabilistic Computing Project. According to the company website, “Empirical is an analytics engine that automatically models structured, tabular data (such as spreadsheets, tables, or csv files) and allows those models to be queried to uncover statistical insights in data.”

    The product was still in private Beta when Tableau bought the company. It is delivered currently as an engine embedded inside other applications. That sounds like something that could slip in nicely into the Tableau analytics platform. What’s more, it will be bringing the engineering team on board for some AI knowledge, while taking advantage of this underlying advanced technology.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/13/tableau-gets-ai-shot-in-the-arm-with-empirical-systems-acquisition/

  • Splunk to Acquire Software Problem-Solver VictorOps for $120 Million

    Big data-cruncher Splunk is acquiring VictorOps, a Boulder, Colo.-based startup whose tools help software developers collaborate and resolve engineering issues, for $120 million mostly in cash with some stock equity. The deal is expected to close before August.

    VictorOps’ tech brings together software engineers so they can overcome technical issues as they arise. The system generates notifications, pulls relevant parties into chat groups, presents pertinent documents, and keeps detailed records as teams work through coding problems.

    http://fortune.com/2018/06/11/splunk-acquire-software-startup-victorops/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Accenture wants to beat unfair AI with a professional toolkit

    “We’re seeing increasing focus on algorithmic bias, fairness. Just this past week we’ve had Singapore announce an AI ethics board. Korea announce an AI ethics board. In the US we already have industry creating different groups — such as The Partnership on AI. Google just released their ethical guidelines… So I think industry leaders, as well as non-tech companies, are looking for guidance. They are looking for standards and protocols and something to adhere to because they want to know that they are safe in creating products.

    “It’s not an easy task to think about these things. Not every organization or company has the resources to. So how might we better enable that to happen? Through good legislation, through enabling trust, communication. And also through developing these kinds of tools to help the process along.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/09/accenture-wants-to-beat-unfair-ai-with-a-professional-toolkit/

Cloud

  • Oracle shares drop after JP Morgan downgrades on lost business to Amazon and Microsoft

    Oracle’s “specific metrics in our large-scale CIO survey have arced over into negative territory, which makes us uncomfortable because the results of our CIO surveys over the years have been highly predictive,” analyst Mark Murphy said in a note to clients Thursday. “Oracle spending intentions have only looked lukewarm in our CIO survey work in the recent past, but the data takes a dive in the current survey. … In our discussions, CIOs have clarified that they are migrating Oracle databases to Microsoft SQL Server, Amazon databases and PostgreSQL.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/14/oracle-shares-drop-after-jp-morgan-downgrades-on-lost-business-to-amazon-and-microsoft.html

Software/SaaS

  • Microsoft will ‘lose developers for a generation’ if it stuffs up GitHub, says future CEO

    “We are buying GitHub because we like GitHub; our plan is to continue to invest in the GitHub roadmap, and make GitHub better at being GitHub,” Friedman wrote.

    That means no ads in public repos, because Friedman said Sourceforge became “a swamp of banner ads and pop ups and delayed downloads to expose users to more ads”. He added that “GitHub’s clean interface and developer-centric approach can be seen in part as a reaction against Sourceforge” and suggested GitHub’s ascendency shows a no-ads approach has proven the correct approach.

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/08/nat_friedman_github_ceo_elect_ama_session/

  • Yahoo Messenger is shutting down on July 17, redirects users to group messaging app Squirrel

    “There currently isn’t a replacement product available for Yahoo Messenger,” the company writes. “We’re constantly experimenting with new services and apps, one of which is an invite-only group messaging app called Yahoo Squirrel (currently in beta).” Squirrel is a group messaging app Yahoo started testing last month. You can request access to the beta here.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/08/yahoo-messenger-is-shutting-down-on-july-17-redirects-users-to-group-messaging-app-squirrel/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • IBM and the DoE launch the world’s fastest supercomputer

    Summit, which has been in the works for a few years now, features 4,608 compute servers with two 22-core IBM Power9 chips and six Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs each. In total, the system also features over 10 petabytes of memory. Given the presence of the Nvidia GPUs, it’s no surprise that the system is meant to be used for machine learning and deep learning applications, as well as the usual high performance computing workloads for research in energy and advanced materials that you would expect to happen at Oak Ridge.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/08/ibms-new-summit-supercomputer-for-the-doe-delivers-200-petaflops/

  • Qualcomm Is Cutting Up to Half of Jobs in Data-Center Unit

    The company will eliminate 241 positions at its design center in Raleigh, North Carolina, and 43 in California, according to notices filed with those states. The total number of cuts, including those not covered by such notices, will represent a third to half of the server-chip unit’s employees, according to a person familiar with the process. The reduction comes on top of the previously announced elimination of about 1,500 workers across the company.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-14/qualcomm-is-said-to-cut-up-to-half-of-jobs-in-data-center-unit

Other

  • Verizon CEO to Retire, Succeeded by a Newcomer

    Verizon Communications Inc. VZ 0.35% named Hans Vestberg as its next chief executive, choosing a relative newcomer to run the wireless giant at a time when its industry is being reshaped by megadeals.

    Mr. Vestberg, who joined the company about a year ago and is its chief technology officer, will succeed longtime CEO Lowell McAdam on Aug. 1. Mr. McAdam will remain executive chairman until the end of the year and then become nonexecutive chairman.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/verizon-ceo-to-retire-replaced-by-a-newcomer-1528455600?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • After report on ‘appalling’ conditions, Foxconn will investigate plant that makes Amazon devices

    Though regular workers were better compensated in terms of wages and benefits, China Labor Watch says both groups were subjected to long hours and low wages, with workers putting in more than 100 overtime hours during peak season, even though the legal limit is 36 hours, and some working consecutively for 14 days. Workers on average earned wages between 2000 to 3000 RMB ($312.12 to $468.19), significantly less than Hengyang’s monthly average wage of 4,647 RMB ($725.22), but often had their overtime hours as punishment for taking leave or having unexcused absences.

    The report also claimed that the factory had poor fire safety in its dormitories, lack of sufficiently protective equipment, verbally abusive managers and the “absence of a functioning labor union.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/10/after-report-on-appalling-conditions-foxconn-will-investigate-plant-that-makes-amazon-devices/
    Workers not paid legally by Amazon contractor in China

    Amazon disclosed that its own auditors visited the Foxconn factory in March and found that it had hired an illegally high number of agency workers and was not paying them properly for working overtime.

    Agency staff – known as dispatch workers in China – do not get sick pay or holiday pay and can be laid off without wages during lulls in production. China changed its labour laws in 2014 to limit their use to 10% of any workforce in an attempt to stop companies exploiting them to cut costs.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/09/amazon-contractor-foxconn-pay-workers-illegally

Photo by Michael Prewett on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 6/8/2018

That sweet Github candy - Joey Lombardi | The Source

Microsoft is purchasing code sharing site GitHub for $7.5B. The logic behind the acquisition is to push more code and development activities towards Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and away from AWS.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is worried about cloud lock-in. While Amazon does have more tools than other providers to help move off the platform, it is still a costly decision if a customer wants to go to another cloud service.

Google is opting not to continue their military AI contract and is creating corporate guidelines that prevent the company from weaponizing artificial intelligence in the future.

Acquisitions

  • Microsoft Is Buying GitHub for $7.5 Billion in Stock

    The deal values GitHub at nearly four times the $2 billion valuation given by private investors in a fundraising round three years ago. GitHub has grown into a major nexus for software developers to share and collaborate on code—it claims 28 million users. The 10-year-old company, which charges corporate customers, doesn’t disclose revenue or profit, and its financial performance isn’t clear.

    Acquiring GitHub could help Microsoft persuade more developers to create applications for its cloud-computing business, where customers rent digital resources and applications on demand. Microsoft is racing to catch up to industry leader Amazon.com Inc. in that business.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-to-acquire-github-for-7-5-billion-in-stock-1528118504

    Of course… it has to be weaponized…

    This is why Microsoft should buy $2 billion startup GitHub and turn it into a weapon against Amazon

    So the opportunity for Microsoft is fairly straightforward. If it can get the Microsoft Azure cloud tightly integrated with GitHub — basically, give developers an easy way to get a GitHub project up and running in the cloud — it can kill two birds with one stone. Developers could love GitHub even more, and it would drive more usage of Microsoft Azure.

    https://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/This-is-why-Microsoft-should-buy-2-billion-12961533.php

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google reportedly won’t renew its controversial military AI contract

    According to three individuals who attended a weekly Google meeting this morning, Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene announced that the Project Maven contract would not be renewed when it expires next year. She said the backlash over the deal had been bad for the company and that the contract was pursued during a time when the company was actively seeking military work.

    Internal emails obtained by Gizmodo showed that Google’s plans for the project may not have been as low-key as the company wanted people to think. Google reportedly put at least 10 employees on the project, viewed the deal as a gateway for future military and intelligence contracts and sought and received security authorizations that would allow it to work on additional government contracts. The Project Maven contract is also apparently worth more than Google executives once said, pulling in around $15 million instead of the $9 million that was previously reported. Its budget also had the possibility of growing to as much as $250 million. Additionally, emails show that Google planned to build a surveillance system for the Pentagon that would let analysts “click on a building and see everything associated with it.”

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/01/google-will-not-renew-military-ai-contract-project-maven/

  • Google pledges not to develop AI weapons, but says it will still work with the military

    While the new principles forbid the development of AI weaponry, they state that Google will continue to work with the military “in many other areas.” Speaking to The Verge, a Google representative said that had these principles been published earlier, the company would likely not have become involved in the Pentagon’s drone project, which used AI to analyze surveillance footage. Although this application was for “non-offensive purposes,” and therefore hypothetically permitted under these guidelines, the representative said it was too close for comfort — suggesting Google will play it safe with future military contracts.

    As well as forbidding the development of AI for weapons, the principles say Google will not work on AI surveillance projects that violate “internationally accepted norms,” or projects which contravene “widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.” The company says that its main focuses for AI research are to be “socially beneficial.” This means avoiding unfair bias; remaining accountable to humans and subject to human control; upholding “high standards of scientific excellence,” and incorporating privacy safeguards.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/7/17439310/google-ai-ethics-principles-warfare-weapons-military-project-maven

  • IBM says it’s reaching for the ‘moon’ with Watson Health. That hasn’t stopped layoffs.

    All told, once the Truven deal closed, IBM had “invested more than $4 billion to acquire and build an unparalleled array of cognitive healthcare capabilities,” it said, having previously stressed that each of the acquisitions came with client lists and databases.

    The databases were certainly among the most important components of the deal because machine-learning systems like Watson rely on having a large number of cases to comb through in their search for analytic breakthroughs.

    Kavanaugh published a 53-page report last summer that questioned whether the investment in Watson will ever pay off for IBM, mostly on the grounds that competitors like Google and Amazon seem better-positioned to win what he called “the A.I. war.”

    http://www.heraldsun.com/news/business/article212325914.html

Cloud

  • Bezos doesn’t want AWS customers to feel ‘trapped’

    Though cloud computing can often lead to a vendor “lock-in,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Amazon Web Services works hard to prevent customers from feeling “trapped” in its services, speaking at the annual shareholder meeting last week, reports GeekWire.

    However, Bezos pointed out that adopting another cloud provider after already implementing one because of the time and money invested in the process can be costly. Developers taking time to learn application programming interfaces (APIs) is what directs many businesses to maintain a singular cloud vendor instead of “managing two different systems,” Bezos said.

    https://www.ciodive.com/news/bezos-doesnt-want-aws-customers-to-feel-trapped/524889/

  • SAP and IBM marry their cloud services in a partnership aimed at private cloud deploymentsa

    IBM Corp. and SAP SE today announced plans to launch an edition of the SAP Cloud Platform running on the IBM Cloud for private cloud deployments. The companies said the collaboration will help clients in regulated industries build new applications on the cloud without jeopardizing security and control.

    IBM has recently established or tightened cloud partnerships with Red Hat Inc., VMware Inc. and New Relic Inc. with the goal of helping enterprise customers move more easily to the cloud and take advantage of recent innovations like containers. “Our goal is to provide the cloud of choice for every enterprise, and particularly for enterprise workloads,” said Bradley Knapp, IBM’s offering manager for IBM Cloud for SAP.

    https://siliconangle.com/blog/2018/06/06/sap-ibm-marry-cloud-services-partnership-aimed-private-cloud-deployments/

Security

  • The damage from Atlanta’s huge cyberattack is even worse than the city first thought

    On Wednesday during a budget meeting, Daphne Rackley, Atlanta’s Interim Chief Information Officer and head of Atlanta Information Management, disclosed new details about the extent of the damage. As Reuters reports, at least one third of the 424 software programs that the city runs remain offline or partially inoperable. Almost 30 percent of those programs are deemed “mission critical” by the city meaning that they control crucial city services like the court system and law enforcement. In the meeting, Rackley explained that the city initially believed only 20 percent of the city’s software programs to be affected by the attack, none of which affected critical systems.

    While reporting the updated numbers, Rackley estimated that $9.5 million would need to be added to the department’s $35 million budget to address the remaining damage. That amount is on top of the more than two million dollars in emergency procurements sought by Atlanta Information Management following the attack.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/06/atlanta-cyberattack-atlanta-information-management/

Software/SaaS

  • Gartner recognises SAP Ariba as Procure-to-Pay leader

    With more than 3.3mn connected companies in 190 countries transacting over $1.7trn in commerce on an annual basis, the Ariba Network is the world’s largest business-to-business trading platform.

    SAP Fieldglass’ cloud-based, open platform, which has a 99% customer retention rate, has been deployed in more than 180 countries and is used by organisations around the world to find, engage and manage all types of flexible resources.

    “We feel that our standing as a Leader in this Magic Quadrant reflects our value as an integrated end-to-end solution,” said Vish Baliga, Chief Technology Officer, SAP Fieldglass.

    https://www.supplychaindigital.com/procurement/gartner-recognises-sap-ariba-procure-pay-leader

  • Coupa: Valuation At A Dangerous Tipping Point

    Coupa also possesses few of the fundamental traits that typically accompany such a highly valued stock. The 37% y/y growth rate Coupa posted this quarter was, at least relative to other high-growth SaaS stocks, fairly middling. There are companies growing at 40-50%, like MongoDB (MDB), that are valued at only 8x forward revenues. And while investors may cheer on Coupa’s ability to generate free cash flow (which is, admittedly, a rarity in the SaaS sector and impressive at Coupa’s early stage), its FCF margin of 20% still can’t be considered best-in-breed, as other companies like Dropbox (DBX) have FCF margins closer to 30%.

    https://seekingalpha.com/article/4179374-coupa-valuation-dangerous-tipping-point

Datacenter/Hardware

  • IRS to Spend Nearly $300 Million on IT in Tax Overhaul

    The Internal Revenue Service plans to spend $291 million updating 140 computer systems to help it implement the new tax law, according to a previously undisclosed agency document.

    Those information-technology costs and other back-office operations will consume more than 90% of the money Congress is giving the IRS for implementation. The IRS is also bracing for a 17% increase in phone calls, planning to revise 450 forms and publications and organizing 40,000 hours of training, according to the document.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/irs-to-spend-nearly-300-million-on-it-in-tax-overhaul-1527871564?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Other

  • Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

    Facebook’s hands-off stance changed around 2016. WhatsApp topped one billion monthly users, and it had eliminated its 99 cent fee. Facebook told investors it would stop increasing the number of ads in Facebook’s news feed, resulting in slower advertising-revenue growth. This put pressure on Facebook’s other properties—including WhatsApp—to make money.

    That August, WhatsApp announced it would start sharing phone numbers and other user data with Facebook, straying from its earlier promise to be built “around the goal of knowing as little about you as possible.”

    With Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg pushing to integrate it into the larger company, WhatsApp moved its offices in January 2017 from Mountain View, Calif., to Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters about 20 minutes away. Facebook tried to make it welcoming, decorating the Building 10 office in WhatsApp’s green color scheme.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-messy-expensive-split-between-facebook-and-whatsapps-founders-1528208641?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Photo by Kyle Cottrell on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 6/1/2018

Supplier Report: 6/1/2018

Amazon had good news this week as their AWS cloud hosting platform continues to dominate commercially and critically. The company took the top spot again in Gartner’s annual cloud quadrant report.

The company did have a bit of a PR problem this week with news that their Alexa home assistant accidentally recorded a couple’s private conversation and sent the recording to someone in their contact list.

The EU is putting the PR in GDPR (get it?) thanks to news that an Australian privacy group is filing GDPR privacy complaints based on Facebook and Google forcing users to adopt a “take it or leave it” approach regarding privacy options. There could be billions of dollars of fines (but I doubt that will happen… but it is the EU).

Acquisitions

No acquisition news this week…

Artificial Intelligence

  • Eric Schmidt says Elon Musk is ‘exactly wrong’ about AI

    “He doesn’t understand the benefits that this technology will provide to making every human being smarter,” Schmidt said. “The fact of the matter is that AI and machine learning are so fundamentally good for humanity.”

    He acknowledged that there are risks around how the technology might be misused, but he said they’re outweighed by the benefits: “The example I would offer is, would you not invent the telephone because of the possible misuse of the telephone by evil people? No, you would build the telephone and you would try to find a way to police the misuse of the telephone.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/25/eric-schmidt-musk-exactly-wrong/
    Here’s why Elon Musk isn’t “exactly wrong” when it comes to A.I.

    This is not the first time that Schmidt has pushed back on people’s fears about A.I. and the inevitable rise of the machines. Google DeepMind researchers may disagree with their former boss, though. The AI research group suggested that bots may eventually learn to interfere with humans and suggested creating a “big red button” to turn off AI and prevent them from fighting back. So, while Musk may be “exactly wrong” about many things (particularly this week) despite what Schmidt says, even Google thinks he may not be “exactly wrong” about A.I.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40577884/heres-why-elon-musk-isnt-exactly-wrong-when-it-comes-to-a-i

  • How a Pentagon Contract Became an Identity Crisis for Google

    The polarized debate about Google and the military may leave out some nuances. Better analysis of drone imagery could reduce civilian casualties by improving operators’ ability to find and recognize terrorists. The Defense Department will hardly abandon its advance into artificial intelligence if Google bows out. And military experts say China and other developed countries are already investing heavily in A.I. for defense.

    But skilled technologists who chose Google for its embrace of benign and altruistic goals are appalled that their employer could eventually be associated with more efficient ways to kill.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/technology/google-project-maven-pentagon.html

Cloud

  • Gartner drops 8 IaaS vendors off Magic Quadrant in favor of broader market players

    Amazon Web Services once again came out on top of Gartner’s Infrastructure as a Service Magic Quadrant, cinching a spot in the top right of the leaders’ quadrant. Microsoft came in second, almost on par with Amazon in terms of “completeness of vision” but a little farther behind in “ability to execute,” while Google eked out of the visionary category and into the bottom of the leaders group for 2018.

    Alibaba Cloud, Oracle and IBM rounded out the niche players category, scaling back from positions in the visionaries category last year.

    https://www.ciodive.com/news/gartner-drops-8-iaas-vendors-off-magic-quadrant-in-favor-of-broader-market/524524/

  • IBM Exec: We Have Ways to Stand Out in the Cloud Wars

    IBM, Oracle (ORCL) and Alibaba (BABA) (tops in China) are now labeled as “Niche Players” rather than “Visionaries.” And eight other firms, including CenturyLink (CTL) , Rackspace and Dell EMC’s Virtustream unit, have been thrown out of Gartner’s report altogether.

    IBM did, however, get some praise for its ability to migrate mainframe clients to its cloud, as well as its large global footprint. In a talk with TheStreet, Jason McGee, the CTO of IBM’s Cloud Platform unit, argued Big Blue’s strong support for hybrid clouds is a competitive strength, as are unique offerings in fields such as security, blockchain solutions and AI/machine learning (Watson). He also noted IBM’s cloud partnerships with the likes of Red Hat (RHT) , New Relic (NEWR) and Box (BOX).

    https://www.thestreet.com/investing/ibm-exec-we-have-ways-to-stand-out-in-the-cloud-wars-14604579

Security

  • Google and Facebook are already accused of breaking GDPR laws

    Both companies are engaging in “forced consent” according to privacy group noyb.eu. Forced consent is a “take it or leave it approach” where a company requires that users opt into data terms it sets or blocks them from accessing their service entirely

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40577794/google-and-facebook-are-already-accused-of-breaking-gdpr-laws
    GDPR: Google and Facebook face up to $9.3B in fines on first day of new privacy law

    Google, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp have been hit with privacy complaints within hours of GDPR taking effect Friday — complaints that could carry fines of up to $9.3 billion in total.

    https://www.cnet.com/news/gdpr-google-and-facebook-face-up-to-9-3-billion-in-fines-on-first-day-of-new-privacy-law/

  • Google Emerges as Early Winner From Europe’s New Data Privacy Law

    Since the law went into effect Friday, Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager, or DBM, a major tool ad buyers use to purchase targeted online ads, has been directing some advertisers’ money toward Google’s own marketplace where digital-ad inventory can be bought and sold, and away from some smaller such ad exchanges and other vendors. That shift has hurt some smaller firms, where Google says it can’t verify whether people who see ads have given consent.

    Google is applying a relatively strict interpretation of how and where the new law requires consent, both on its own platforms and those of other firms. The stringent interpretation helps Google avoid GDPR’s harsh penalties and pushes the company to buy more ad inventory from its own exchange, where it is sure to have user consent for targeted advertising.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/eus-strict-new-privacy-law-is-sending-more-ad-money-to-google-1527759001?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Amazon Alexa-Powered Device Recorded and Shared User’s Conversation Without Permission

    Amazon said the Portland incident involved a series of such misunderstandings. It said the Echo woke “due to a word in background conversation sounding like ’Alexa.’ Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a ’send message’ request. At which point, Alexa said out loud ’To whom?’ At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list.” Amazon said Alexa then asked for confirmation and interpreted further background conversation as giving it.

    Amazon also recently said it was adding a fix for Alexa-powered devices after users reported the machines started laughing for no reason. The company also attributed that to the software misunderstanding what it heard.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-alexa-powered-device-recorded-and-shared-users-conversation-without-permission-1527203250?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • AT&T and Verizon both want to run massive ad-tracking networks to rival Facebook

    To sum that up, AT&T’s plan is to use the data it tracks and collects about customers on its networks — including location data and all the media they consume over those networks — to serve targeted ads for high prices against Time Warner content.

    This is obviously quite upsetting from a privacy standpoint, but it’s actually a familiar strategy for a major carrier. When Verizon bought AOL and Yahoo and combined them into the tragically-named Oath in 2017, the company was explicit the goal was to use Verizon’s network data to better target ads on Oath’s millions of pages of content across Yahoo and AOL’s various zombie brands. Oath CEO Tim Armstrong spent years buying tons of mid-level ad-tech companies, and Verizon inserts “super cookies” across its entire network to track every site you visit along with the location of your phone. (I wrote about the Oath ad tracking nightmare in the past, if you would like to giggle at companies with names like Adapt.tv and Vidible.)

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/30/17410942/att-verizon-facebook-ad-tracking

Software/SaaS

  • Don’t read this, Oracle… It’s the rise of the open-source data strategies

    While databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Apache Cassandra have long scored points with web developers, historically they didn’t compete on Oracle’s core database turf.

    But that was then, this is now. According to recent Gartner analysis, open-source databases now constitute 7.6 per cent ($2.6bn) of the global database market, worth $34bn. If that doesn’t seem like much, consider that over the past two years the open source DBMS market averaged 75 per cent growth, compared to a more tepid 7.7 per cent growth in the total market.

    Where is that growth coming from? In part, it reflects developers’ desires to run new applications with modern databases. Those decisions have been made much easier by AWS, in particular, which has taken many of the most popular open source databases and turned them into services, removing the complexity of managing them. As such, according to DB-Engines, which ranks database popularity across a number of factors, half of the world’s most popular databases are now open source.

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/31/rise_of_the_open_source_data_strategies/

Other

  • IBM’s Watson Health wing left looking poorly after ‘massive’ layoffs

    IBM has laid off approximately 50 and 70 per cent of staff this week in its Watson Health division, according to inside sources.

    The axe, we’re told, is largely falling on IBMers within companies the IT goliath has taken over in the past few years to augment Watson’s credentials in the health industry. These include medical data biz Truven, which was acquired in 2016 for $2.6bn, medical imaging firm Merge, bought in 2015 for $1bn, and healthcare management business Phytel, also snapped up in 2015.

    Yesterday and today, staff were let go at IBM’s offices in Dallas, Texas, as well as in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Cleveland, Ohio, and Denver, Colorado, in the US, and elsewhere, it is claimed. A spokesperson for Big Blue was not available for comment.

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/25/ibms_watson_layoffs/

  • Microsoft surpasses Google’s Alphabet to become 3rd most valuable company

    At the end of trading, Microsoft’s market value was $760 billion, holding off Alphabet, whose market value was $746 billion. Only Apple and Amazon.com are worth more, at $922 billion and $788 billion, respectively. The ballooning valuations have fueled speculation as to which U.S. tech company will be the first to reach a $1 trillion-market cap. (Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/05/30/microsoft-surpasses-googles-alphabet-to-become-3rd-most-valuable-company/?utm_term=.e0c02267f019

Photo by Kelly Jean on Unsplash