The Economist (September 18)
For years, digital advertising has been “largely impervious to the business cycle” and “dominated” by Google and Meta. These “verities” may be falling as companies tighten marketing budgets. “Until recently, that would have meant cutting non-digital ads but maintaining, or even raising, online spending. With most ad dollars now going online, that strategy is running out of road. Last quarter Meta reported its first-ever year-on-year decline in revenues. Snap, a smaller rival, is laying off a fifth of its workforce.”
Tags: Business cycle, Decline, Digital advertising, Dominated, Google, Impervious, Marketing budgets, Meta, Non-digital ads, Online spending, Revenues, Rival, Snap, Strategy
Financial Times (May 9)
To increase market access and streamline operations, “many of the world’s largest financial exchanges are transforming the way they run global capital markets” by adopting cloud computing technologies. CME Group “will move its IT infrastructure and markets to the cloud” through a partnership with Google while “Nasdaq and Amazon Web Services announced a similar collaboration” to transfer Nasdaq’s “North America-based markets to a cloud computing environment.” As the transition progresses, AI and quantum computing look poised to play more integral roles.
Tags: AI, AWS, Capital markets, Cloud computing, CME Group, Collaboration, Financial exchanges, Global, Google, IT infrastructure, Market access, Markets, Nasdaq, Operations, Streamline, Transforming
San Francisco Chronicle (February 23)
“For American tech companies seeking talent, Ukraine’s highly educated population, with heavy emphasis on sought-after STEM specialties, is appealing, as is the fact that salaries there are about one-third to one-quarter of those for comparable jobs in the Bay Area.” Now these tech companies (including Google, Snap, Oracle, Grammarly, Ring, and JustAnswer) are urgently “revising contingency plans to protect their workers and businesses.”
Tags: Bay Area, Contingency plans, Educated, Google, JustAnswer, Oracle, Protect, Salaries, Snap, STEM, Talent, Tech companies, Ukraine
Seattle Times (August 4)
“In a sign of growing momentum for vaccine mandates, Microsoft has reversed course and will now require employees to be fully vaccinated to enter the company’s U.S. offices and other worksites.” The revised policy “follows similar moves last week by other employers including tech rivals Google and Facebook, along with Disney and Walmart.”
Tags: Disney, Employees, Employers, Facebook, Google, Mandates, Microsoft, Momentum, Offices, Policy, U.S., Vaccine, Walmart, Worksites
Bloomberg (January 25)
Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is “ridiculous” on many fronts, but France’s recent $57 million fine of Google suggest much worse. If they are merely making “an example of Google,” this suggests “Europe intends to wield these rules — as it does so many others — to punish Silicon Valley giants and protect local rivals.” If on the other hand, they are planning to hit every company with crushing fines, that suggests even worse.
Tags: Crushing fines, Europe, France, GDPR, Google, Local rivals, Protect, Punish, Ridiculous, Silicon Valley
WIRED (November 1)
The walkout at Google was “just the latest sign of tech worker unrest.” Tech workers are “starting to recognize that even well-paid tech jobs are not immune to” harassment and other internal workplace issues, as well as ethical concerns over the products they sell. Thursday’s protest was just “the latest in a string of collective actions by tech workers against their employers” that has included “similar attempts inside Microsoft, Salesforce, and Amazon.”
Tags: Amazon, Employers, Ethical, Google, Harassment, Microsoft, Products, Salesforce, Tech worker, Unrest, Walkout, Well-paid, Workplace issues
Wall Street Journal (November 16)
“Google became the world’s go-to source of information by ranking billions of links from millions of sources. Now, for many queries, the internet giant is presenting itself as the authority on truth by promoting a single search result as the answer.” Many of the results, Google selects, however, “are contentious, improbable or laughably incorrect.”
Tags: Authority, Contentious, Go-to source, Google, Improbable, Incorrect, Laughable, Queries, Ranking, Truth
The Economist (July 1)
The European Commission levied a record-setting fine on Google. “The size of the fine the tech giant will have to pay for abusing its monopoly in online search, €2.4bn ($2.7bn), sets a record for European antitrust penalties,” but it remains to be seen whether Google will have to cough it up. The tech firm has promised an appeal. By no means is this case clear-cut, but its resolution should further thought on the extent to which “network effects create high barriers to entry in online markets.”
Tags: Antitrust, Barriers to entry, European Commission, Fine, Google, Monopoly, Network effects, Search, Tech
U.S. News & World Report (February 6)
“A report published last year stated that more than 37 percent of workers in Silicon Valley are foreign-born.” Not surprisingly, given that, “a group of nearly 100 tech companies have filed an amicus brief to a federal appeals court voicing concerns over President Donald Trump’s stalled immigration-focused executive order.” Among them were “Google, Apple, GoPro, Facebook, Dropbox, eBay, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Netflix and Twitter.”
Tags: Amicus brief, Apple, Dropbox, EBay, Facebook, Foreigners, Google, GoPro, Immigration, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Netflix, Silicon Valley, Tech companies, Trump, Twitter, U.S.
The Economist (September 3)
“An epic struggle looms. It will transform daily life as profoundly as cars did in the 20th century: reinventing transport and reshaping cities, while also dramatically reducing road deaths and pollution.” Across several industries companies have grasped “the transformative potential of electric, self-driving cars, summoned on demand.” With Uber poised to lead this race, “technology firms including Apple, Google and Tesla are investing heavily in autonomous vehicles; from Ford to Volvo, incumbent carmakers are racing to catch up.”
Tags: Apple, Autonomous vehicles, Carmakers, Cars, Cities, Daily life, Electric, Ford, Google, Pollution, Reinventing, Roads, Self-driving, Struggle, Tesla, Transformative potential, Transport, Uber, Volvo
