Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos the world's richest man, making his long-awaited first-ever appearance before a congressional hearing faced no questions at all for nearly two hours, before offering an inconclusive answer on whether the company uses data to undermine its third-party merchants. Amazon is still facing allegations that one of its executives misled Congress about that same issue last year.

The virtual testimony comes at a time of rising legal jeopardy for the major tech companies, who are the subject of antitrust and consumer-protection probes in Washington, multiple U.S. states and Europe.

Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) set the tone early, with an opening statement vowing to check the power of the "emperors of the online economy." But so did Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the full Judiciary panel, who laid out a long series of alleged slights against conservatives by top social media companies and later got into a shouting match after a Democrat accused him of promoting fringe conspiracy theories.

See live highlights from the hearing below.

Amazon is making more money from sellers fees because more third-party sellers are using its services, CEO Jeff Bezos told lawmakers, countering the idea that his company is unfairly profiting from the merchants.

But the Amazon CEO acknowledged that the marketplace algorithm may indirectly favor those who pay the company to fulfill orders.

Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) cited a new report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance that found Amazon brought in nearly $60 billion from seller fees last year 21 percent of Amazons total revenue and that the e-commerce giant keeps about 30 percent of each sale. That amount is up from 19 percent of each sale five years ago.

Bezos said the increased amount is because sellers are spending more money with Amazon by using additional services such as Fulfillment by Amazon, where the company stores and ships products on behalf of third-party sellers.

When you see these fees going up, sellers are choosing to use more of our services we make available, he said. Previously they were shipping their own products from their own fulfillment centers so they would have had costs doing that. Now they are doing that through Fulfilment by Amazon.

Bezos also acknowledged that the Buy Box which preselects the seller for when a user clicks on a product indirectly favors sellers who use the Fulfilled by Amazon services.

Indirectly, I think the Buy Box does favor products that can be shipped with Prime, he said. The Buy Box is trying to pick the offer that we predict the customer would most like. That includes price, that includes delivery speed, and if youre a Prime member, it includes whether the item is eligible for Prime."

In response to questions from Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ill.) about stolen and counterfeit goods, Bezos said he believes that Amazon requires sellers to provide a real name and address, but wasnt sure whether a phone number is required. He also said he didnt know how many resources Amazon devotes to seller verification.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took a rare swipe against a core feature of his Silicon Valley competitors late in todays hearing, singling out social media as destructive for free expression.

What I find a little discouraging is that it appears to me that social media is a nuance destruction machine, Bezos said. And I dont think thats helpful for a democracy.

Bezos offered his critique while testifying by videoconference, alongside the head of social media giant Facebook.

He was responding to House Judiciary ranking member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who was invoking the idea of cancel culture and the notion of online mobs that shout down unfashionable opinions. The lawmaker was assessing whether lawmakers were concerned about the polarizing idea, which some question as overblown.

I am concerned in general about that, Bezos told Jordan.

Other tech CEOs also appeared sympathetic to Jordans cancel culture worries.

Apple CEO Tim Cook noted he wasnt all the way up to speed on the idea but expressed concern: If youre about where somebody with a different point of view talks, and theyre canceled, I dont think thats good. I think its good for people to hear from different points of view and decide for themselves.

Im very worried about some of the forces of illiberalism that I see in this country that are pushing against free expression, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Jordan, without identifying specifics.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai simply noted the interest in building platforms to allow freedom of expression. John Hendel

The Chinese government steals U.S. technologies, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said making him the only one of the four tech CEOs willing to say that plainly in response to a question from Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.).

I think its well-documented that the Chinese government steals technology from American companies, Zuckerberg said.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said he had no personal knowledge about Chinese technology theft.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai initially followed Cooks line, but later corrected the record to confirm that in 2009 China stole Google information in a well-publicized cyberattack.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who answered last, acknowledged that he had read many reports about technology theft by Beijing, but had no first-hand experience beyond knock-off products sold on Amazon.

All four CEOs passed on the opportunity to suggest how Congress could better help defend U.S. companies abroad, against either technology theft or excessive regulation. Leah Nylen and Ryan Heath

Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), who heads the Houses probe into tech giants, accused Facebook of tolerating a fountain of misinformation that benefits the companys engagement-driven business model even on topics as deadly as the coronavirus.

Theres no competition forcing you to police your own platform, the House antitrust subcommittee chairman told CEO Mark Zuckerberg. During the greatest public health crisis of our lifetime, dont you agree that these articles viewed by millions on your platform will cost lives?

The lawmaker cited articles that drew millions of views on sites like Facebook while making claims about Covid-19, including those describing President Donald Trumps musings about placing disinfectants inside the body or allegations that coronavirus hype is a political hoax.

Cicilline said Facebook allows such content to reap advertising dollars. But Zuckerberg countered that this kind of noxious material is not helpful for our business.

It is not what people want to see, and we rank what we show in Feed based on what is going to be most meaningful to people and what is going to create long-term satisfaction, Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg defended Facebooks policy of taking down bogus information that could cause imminent harm and its attempt to highlight authoritative guidance. But Cicilline brought up a Monday video from the conservative website Breitbart, which dismissed the necessity of masks and called hydroxychloroquine a Covid-19 cure and which experienced soaring Facebook traffic over several hours before Facebook removed it.

A lot of people shared that, Zuckerberg said. And we did take it down because it violates our policies.

After 20 million people saw it after a period of five hours? Cicilline countered. Doesnt that suggest, Mr. Zuckerberg, that your platform is so big that even with the right policies in place, you cant contain deadly content? John Hendel

Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks via video conference during the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law hearing. | Graeme Jennings/Getty Images

Apple didnt consider the impact on its own parental control app when it removed some of the most popular apps that limit screentime from its App Store, CEO Tim Cook told lawmakers.

Apple introduced its own Screen Time app, which allows parents to limit how much time kids spend on their phones, in September 2018. After that, the company removed a number of competing apps. Qustodio and Kidslox, two of the leading parental control apps, have filed a complaint with the European Commission about their removal.

Cook said Apple removed the apps because of privacy concerns.

We were worried about the safety of kids, Cook said in response to questions by Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.).

Demings asked Cook why the company removed many of the most popular screentime apps but not Absher, an app created by the Saudi Arabian government that uses the same technology.

It sounds like you applied different rules to the same apps, Demings said.

Cook said he wasnt familiar with Absher, but said the App Store has about 30 parental control apps after it changed its policy last year. Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.), who returned to the issue later in the hearing, noted that Apple eventually allowed the apps back into the App Store after six months without requiring major changes.

We apply the rules to all developers equally, Cook said. I see Screen Time as just an alternative. Theres vibrant competition for parental controls out there. Leah Nylen

Facebook has certainly adapted features from competing services, CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged Wednesday, but he denied it has threatened to copy start-ups if they wouldnt sell to his company.

But Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) expressed skepticism about his answer, reading from text messages between Zuckerberg and Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom and messages between Systrom and a venture capitalist. She asked Zuckerberg whether he threatened Systrom and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel by saying he would clone their products if they didnt sell to Facebook. The company bought Instagram in 2012, but Snap rebuffed offers to sell to the social network.

The House subcommittee also posted those documents to its website Wednesday.

Im not sure what you would mean by threaten, Zuckerberg said, referring to the companys effort to build an app called Facebook Camera. It was public we were building a camera app at the time. That was a well-documented thing.

It was clear this was a space we were going to compete in one way or another, he said. I dont think those are a threat in any way.

Jayapal reminded Zuckerberg he was under oath while testifying.

In closing her questioning, Jayapal said she didnt believe threats should be a normal business practice.

Facebook is a case study in monopoly power, in my opinion, because your company harvests and monetizes our data and then your company uses that data to spy on your competitors and copy, acquire and kill rivals, she said. Youve used Facebooks power to threaten smaller competitors and ensure you always get your way. These tactics reinforce Facebooks dominance. Leah Nylen

House Judiciary Democrats lost a big potential GOP ally if they had any hopes of bipartisan recommendations to update antitrust law as part of their probe into tech giants.

I have reached the conclusion that we do not need to change our antitrust laws, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the top Republican on the antitrust subcommittee, said hours into the hearing on alleged bad behavior by Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook. Theyve been working just fine. The question here is the question of enforcement of those antitrust laws.

The subcommittees probe has been led by Chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.), who has been preparing a report to conclude the long investigation. GOP buy-in would strongly bolster its conclusions, including potential recommendations for updates to antitrust law.

Notably, Sensenbrenner seemed to support the probe itself and said hes been working with the chairman for over a year on this bipartisan investigation. His support runs counter to some Republicans who have disparaged Democratic handling of the probe.

But Congress shouldnt toss out a century of precedent, added the retiring House Republican. He said lawmakers should instead pressure antitrust regulators like the Federal Trade Commission, an agency that has faced accusations of going lightly on companies like Facebook and Google. John Hendel

Tempers flared more than two hours into the hearing after Rep. Mary Scanlon (D-Pa.) began her questioning with a dismissal of what she called fringe conspiracy theories of House Judiciary ranking member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

That prompted an outburst from Jordan, who had just pressed Google on whether its biased toward Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden and said he had internal evidence of the search giants interest in encouraging Latino voters in 2016.

The only problem: It was no longer Jordans time to speak, as Democrats immediately reminded him as they shouted him down.

Mr. Jordan, you do not have the time! antitrust subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) declared amid gavel slamming.

When someone told him to wear a mask, Jordan sought to bring up the unmasking in the surveillance sense of former Trump White House national security adviser Michael Flynn.

When someone comes after my motives for asking questions, I get a chance to respond, Jordan said before letting the hearing proceed.

For the record, Google CEO Sundar Pichai maintained that his company is apolitical. John Hendel

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the company is still investigating whether employees may have used data it acquires from its third-party sellers to launch competing products an issue that has prompted allegations that the company misled House lawmakers a year ago.

We have a policy against using seller-specific data to aid our private label business. I cant guarantee you that that policy has never been violated, Bezos said in response to questions from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), whose district includes Amazon headquarters. If we found someone violated the policy, we would take action against them.

The Wall Street Journal reported this year that Amazon employees frequently looked at seller data to help determine what products the company should offer, contrary to what an Amazon executive told the House a year ago. Jayapal also quoted a former Amazon employee as telling the panel that seller data is a candy shop. Everyone can have access to anything they want.

Bezos also acknowledged that while company policy might prevent employees from looking at a specific sellers information, they could look at aggregate data. Jayapal and The Wall Street Journal story noted that Amazon workers took advantage of that by pairing a successful seller with one who had little business to gain insights into particular products.

You have access to data that other sellers do not have, Jayapal said. The whole goal of this committees work is to make sure that there are more Amazons, that there are more Apples, that there are more companies that get to innovate and small businesses get to thrive. ...That is why we need to regulate these marketplaces so that no company has a platform so dominant that it is essentially a monopoly. Leah Nylen

The first batch of questions saw the CEOs collectively struggle to directly answer lawmakers, who came armed with well-researched questions and strong opinions a shift in gear from previous congressional tech hearings.

The one exception was Jeff Bezos, who escaped all questions for the first hour.

As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended his companys management of Instagram, citing the Federal Trade Commissions original decision not to challenge the companys 2012 merger with Instagram, hearing chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) dismissed Zuckerberg, saying the failures of the FTC in 2012 do not alleviate Facebooks current antitrust challenges.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai tried to fend off questions by citing examples of individual vendors using Google to grow their business, before Cicilline cut him off for not answering the question.

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) reeled off a list of possible links and alignment between Google and the Chinese Communist Party, leaving Pichai to say only that Google had only a very limited presence in China. He repeated that answer to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who repeated charges by tech investor Peter Thiel that Googles China links are treason, and concerns from Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said in 2018 that Googles artificial intelligence work in China puts the U.S. military at a competitive disadvantage. Ryan Heath

Apple CEO Tim Cook rejected allegations that the companys App Store rules for developers are enforced arbitrarily and argued that the company must compete with rivals to interest developers in building apps for its iPhone and iPad.

We treat every developer the same. We have open and transparent rules, Cook said under questioning from Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.). Those rules apply evenly to everyone.

Cook said the majority of apps sold through the App Store, 84 percent, pay no fees. The remainder pay either a 30 percent or 15 percent commission, he said.

Johnson noted that Amazon has an agreement with Apple to allow users to bypass the iPhones in-app payment service, and its 30 percent fee, and instead use the credit card on file in their Amazon account for the Amazon Prime Video app. Cook said that would be available to anyone meeting the conditions, though he didnt outline what those conditions are.

The Apple CEO also argued that the company must compete to attract developers, who could offer apps for Googles Android, Microsofts Windows or XBox or Nintendos Playstation.

Theres a competition for developers just like theres a competition for customers, Cook said. Its so competitive I would describe it as a street fight for market share in the smartphone business. Leah Nylen

Were starting to see some fruits of the subcommittees year-plus investigation, and its got Zuckerberg on the defensive.

The Facebook CEO and New York Democrat Jerry Nadler went back and forth over internal company emails in which, Nadler said, Zuckerberg told a colleague back in 2012 that it was buying the photo-sharing Instagram because it could meaningfully hurt us without becoming a huge business.

Zuckerbergs thinking at the time could become a critical piece of evidence if it bolsters the idea that Facebook was abusing its dominance and deep coffers to eliminate budding rivals. Facebooks buying up of Instagram has become a key focus for critics of the company, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and others saying the deal should be unwound. Thats a threat for Facebook: Instagram has become wildly popular in its own right, and is central to Zuckerbergs plan to keep a toe hold with younger generations who are otherwise flocking to sites like TikTok.

Did you mean that consumers might switch from Facebook to Instagram? Nadler asked.

Congressman, started Zuckerberg, attempting to make the case that no one at the time saw Instagram has a general social network app, rather than a really good photo-sharing app. Nadler pressed on: Yes or no: Did you mean that?

Then Nadler went for the kill, asking what Zuckerberg meant when he wrote that what were really buying is time, adding, Mr. Zuckerberg: Mergers and acquisitions that buy off potential competitive threats violate the antitrust laws.

Zuckerberg tried again, insisting that the Federal Trade Commission knew how Facebook was thinking about Instagram back when it signed off on the merger almost a decade ago. Thats when antitrust subcommittee David Cicilline (D-R.I.) jumped in: I would remind the witness that the failures of the FTC in 2012 of course do not alleviate the antitrust challenges that the chairman described.

Translation: Dont think this is over just because that agency down the road said it was.Nancy Scola

A top House Republican used his questioning to press Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over a recent content moderation squabble involving Donald Trump Jr., the presidents son, with Twitter.

It was reported that Donald Trump Jr. got taken down for a period of time because he put something up on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the top Republican on the Judiciary antitrust subcommittee. Although Sensenbrenner said he wouldnt take the medication, the lawmaker said, I think this is a legitimate matter of discussion.

Why has that happened? Sensenbrenner asked Zuckerberg.

Congressman, first, to be clear, I think what you might be referring to happened on Twitter, so its hard for me to speak to that, the Facebook CEO said. But I can talk to our policies about this.

Zuckerberg said Facebook would take down any claim a proven cure for Covid-19 exists when there is none, given the potential imminent risk for harm, although he said the social platform would allow free discussion about drug trials and what people may think more generally about a treatments prospects.

Our goal is to offer a platform for all ideas, Zuckerberg told Sensebrenner. Frankly I think weve distinguished ourselves as one of the companies that defends free expression the most. John Hendel

Google CEO Sundar Pichai denied that the search giant steals content from other websites and rejected reports alleging that the company steers users to its own products and sites rather than sources elsewhere on the web.

We have always focused on providing users the most relevant information, Pichai said in response to pointed questions from House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee chair David Cicilline (D-R.I.), who said the panel had seen evidence about Google taking content from other websites and placing more ads on its search results. The vast majority of queries on Google, we dont show ads at all.

Cicilline cited an investigation by The Markup that showed Google has devoted more space on the first page of search results to its own products -- which earn the company more revenue that if users go to other webpages. Pichai said that Google only shows ads when consumers are seeking to buy products and argued that they compete with other e-commerce platforms, like Amazon, where consumers often go directly to try to find products.

When I run the company Im really focused on giving users what they want, Pichai said. We see vigorous competition, whether it be travel or real estate, and we are working hard to innovate.

The Federal Trade Commissions investigation into Google in the early 2010s found Google scraped content from other websites, including Yelp and TripAdvisor. The company agreed to allow other companies to opt out of having their content scraped through 2017. Leah Nylen

One surprise so far in the hearing: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who generally likes to stick fairly religiously to a script in his public appearances, went far afield from his written testimony including strongly arguing that his 2-billion-member social network is an underdog when you look at the behemoths hes testifying alongside.

Link:

Watch Tech Giants Testify at House Antitrust Hearing ...

On Wednesday, July 29, 2020, the CEOs of some of the biggest tech giants in the world testified (virtually) before Congress. Some characterized the bipartisan questioning as a brutal beating, but others reported that not much new was accomplished.

These hearings are the current ones in a series of actions at the federal and local governments and have involved other big tech such as Microsoft as other industry service providers

What can we learn? What were the impacts? How do these regulatory issues affect state and local governments? Most important, what can and should be done next by public and private sector leaders and their partners?

These are a few of the items I explore in this blog, with the help of long-time state government policy expert Andris Ozols who worked for many years with me in Michigan government before his retirement a few years ago. Andris was also a significant contributor to my recent blog efforts on elections security.

Background on the Congressional Hearings

First, the media coverage of the testimony was widespread before, during and after the virtual event. Here are a few headlines and relevant excerpts:

Washington Post: Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google grilled on Capitol Hill over their market power

Excerpt: The leaders of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google took a brutal political lashing Wednesday as Democrats and Republicans confronted the executives for wielding their market power to crush competitors and amass data, customers and sky-high profits.

The rare interrogation played out over the course of a nearly six-hour hearing, with lawmakers on the Houses top antitrust subcommittee coming armed with millions of documents, hundreds of hours of interviews and in some cases the once-private messages of Silicon Valleys elite chiefs. They said it showed some in the tech sector had become too big and powerful, threatening rivals, consumers and, in some cases, even democracy itself.

NPR.org: Heads Of Amazon, Apple, Facebook And Google Testify On Big Tech's Power

Excerpt: Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., the subcommittee chairman, spent all of his first five-minute block of questions on Google the company at most immediate risk of antitrust action. The Department of Justice is reportedly preparing to sue the company over its advertising business, and could be joined by state attorneys general who have also been investigating Google.

Cicilline pressed CEO Pichai on whether Google's business model presents a conflict of interest, because it has an incentive to give search results that keep users on its own site rather than anywhere else on the Internet.

New York Times: Lawmakers, United in Their Ire, Lash Out at Big Techs Leaders

Excerpt: The chief executives of Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook, four tech giants worth nearly $5 trillion combined, faced withering questions from Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike on Wednesday for the tactics and market dominance that had made their enterprises successful.

For more than five hours, the 15 members of an antitrust panel in the House lobbed questions and repeatedly interrupted and talked over Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Google.

Forbes: Why Big Tech Should Regulate Itself

Excerpt: Big Tech faces two main options. They can go on acting as if nothing is amiss and hope that government action will take a long time to become a reality. Or they can take proactive steps to recognize the legitimacy of the issues and regulate themselves with a commitment to reengage with acting honorably and doing no evil. The latter course of action will be the smarter and less painful one.

Fox News: Big Tech backlash: Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon CEOs grilled on Capitol Hill

Excerpt: House lawmakers on Wednesday grilled the heads of some of the world's largest tech companies - with Democrats questioning whether the companies violated U.S. antitrust laws and stole from competitors, while Republicans slammedthem over alleged censorship and bias against conservatives.

BBC News (UK spelling) - Big Tech: What comes next for the US giants?

Excerpt: It's highly unlikely though that anything much will happen before the US elections in November.

As well as the presidential vote, all the seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs, as well as about a third of the Senate.

And so we reach a fork in the road for Big Tech in America.

A Republican win would probably see the tech giants scrutinised further over how they police free speech. Section 230 - which gives social media companies immunity from prosecution for what is published on their platforms - would probably be looked at.

If the Democrats win, expect more regulation in an attempt to inject more competition into the tech industry.

Consequences to State and Local Governments and Potential Actions

There are both direct and indirect consequences on state and local governments, and in order for the states and locals to both maximize the benefits as well as ameliorate the effects of regulations, the state and local governments need to understand these effects and their causes and work collaboratively among themselves and with the technology partners.

Collaboration involves shared assessments, solution design, programs, education and training, advocacy and more. Selected examples include:

Understanding State and Local Direct Impacts of Regulatory Issues

Direct impact issues are issues that are part of the federal review, litigation and hearing agendas and state Attorney General related agendas. Contested IT related issues involve direct business practices, platforms, hardware, software, services at variance with state and local government public values and ethics, policies, strategies, standards and agreements including accuracy, operations, outputs or outcomes.

Emphasis is placed on: State legal requirements; state and gubernatorial priorities; action and decisions needed for this decision cycle; potential for maximum effects on outcomes; facilitating integration, collaboration among governments; options available for sustained innovation involving the greatest range of state and local government services and customers.

1 - Direct effects of federal regulatory issues. Key issues identified in federal big tech, and related hearings include: Limiting options in services, decrease in control or discretion in managing services, decreased trust in government protection of security and privacy, accuracy and truthfulness of information.

2 - State and local regulatory issues. Key issues addressed in state Attorney General initiatives also include: Limiting options in services, decrease in control or discretion in managing services, decreased trust in government protection of security and privacy, accuracy and truthfulness of information.

Collaborative state initiatives announced last week for New York and California are accelerating the process and provide new models for state and local initiatives. This article from The Guardian (UK) is entitled, New York unveils landmark antitrust bill that makes it easier to sue tech giants.

New YorkState is introducing a bill that would make it easier to sue big tech companies for alleged abuses of their monopoly powers. New York is Americas financial center and one of its most important tech hubs. If successfully passed, the law could serve as a model for future legislation across the country. It also comes as a federal committee is conducting ananti-trust investigationinto tech giants amid concerns that their unmatched market power is suppressing competition. Also, The New York Attorney General's office will join the California Attorney General's office and the Federal Trade Commission's investigation intoAmazon's online marketplace.

3 State, local and federal regulatory roles and balance. Balance in roles and authority in regulations is a policy and legal point of contention among levels of government and also determines how the regulatory issues are prioritized. This includes topic like what stakeholders need to be involvedand timing for action. One of the NGA chairs priority issues for 2020 2021 will be federalism issues and questions of balance of roles and authority.

4 - State and local stakeholders and collaboration. States have established public and private sector collaborative networks (cite examples), but the current issues call for reinforcing relationships and strengthening ones with NGA, fiscal officers (https://www.nasbo.org/home ), procurement National Association of State Procurement Officials - NASPO , auditors NASACT , legislators (National Conference of State Legislatures) and their associations. Also, the perspectives of federal Congressional and Executive assessment sources such as Partnership for Public Service, GAO, GSA, CBO and public policy administrators would be helpful, including ASPA. https://www.aspanet.org/ASPA/

Understanding Indirect Impacts: Information, Procurement, Smart, Digital Government and Public Sector Policy and Procedural Issues

Indirect issues are those resulting from direct IT services such as hardware, software, services, outputs serving as IT inputs that support or enable other functions, processes, programs or services. In addition to processes and services, these may also affect policies, standards, decision-making, customer values, perceptions, satisfaction and trust.

In particular, these issues and how they are resolved help define and pre-structure the options available for smart, digital communities and governments.

1 Information Control and Management. Information and information management is a foundational issue, the wizard behind the curtain. Ownership, control, accuracy, misinformation and information management plays a central role in a number of the support platforms for smart, digital government - such as internet of things, mobile and location aware services, cloud, integrated and autonomous AI.

2 Procurement. Procurement management is the gateway to public / private relationships, partnerships, standards, performance, accountability, policy and value alignment, etc. Includes RFIs, RFSs, RFPs and contracts. National Association of State Procurement Officials - NASPO is a crucial partner on this issue and NASCIO has a strong established relationship.

3 Smart, Digital Government. Smart, digital government and communities and cities are vital constructs describing the connection, integration of technologies to transform how governments, citizens and businesses interact. Some of the regulatory issues can impact on smart government priorities; timing and scheduling; platforms; information ownership; privacy; security; accuracy and reliability; processes; state and local government control; public trust and others.

While many roadmaps for smart governments and communities address the role of regulations, not all of them do, and the pandemic as well as the overlap of the flu and hurricane seasons will further accentuate the risks. In general state and local assessments, policies, standards, plans and roadmaps do not consistently address the role of regulations or the consequences of not complying. However, there are sufficient examples and models such as NGA work on on Smart Transportation and Smart Energy roadmap, with sections on regulations from the Smart Community and State Initiative that can serve as models.

4 - Key State and Local Service Sectors. There are differential regulatory effects on service sectors and realignment of priorities and solutions. For example, differential effect of selected platforms on IT supported health and education services, distance learning and work, election processes, security, disaster management and recovery.

5 Key 2020 2021 Events and Decision Points. The juxtaposition of the pandemic, hurricane season, pending flu season in context of elections, economic disruptions a revenue and budget short-falls are altering priorities, reducing funding allocation levels, stressing state and local service capabilities and calls for modifications in disaster and management and recovery approaches and the supporting platforms in which Big Tech is involved.

Recommendations for Collaborative Action

The public sector IT community needs to work together in both recognizing the benefits of Big Tech and integrator services as well as addressing and resolving adverse effects. This needs to involve both the public and private sector communities and build upon existing networks and public private partnership models.

The following recommendations address both the three-month cycle before the election, the three months after the election, and reference issues for potential future action.

The next five or six month period covers the front end of most state and local government assessment, design and development cycles and also includes a number of state and local association and support group working sessions and planned deliverables that could include a regulatory issue perspective. The following four groups share a collaborative history are illustrative of potential opportunities and next steps regarding non-profits supporting state and local governments:

National Governors Association (NGA) - https://www.nga.org/

Follow-up to federalism issue after the Summer 2020 virtual session can include both infrastructure and regulatory issues from an IT perspective.

The Smart Transportation and Smart Energy roadmap sections on regulations, from the Smart Community and State Initiative can be one of the inputs in developing shared templates.

National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) http://www.nascio.org

Center for Digital Government (CDG) https://www.govtech.com/cdg/about/

Public Technology Institute (PTI) / CompTIA https://www.pti.org/

Recommended Collaborative Actions

1 Advocacy on Federal Hearing Report. Coordinate state and local advocacy on the pending federal hearing report and recommendations as well as follow-up with the executive branch and Congress.

2 Potential IT Related Advocacy and Potential Participation State AG Initiatives. Develop a coordinated and collaborative state and local review of AG initiatives from an IT perspective and recommendations, including the New York and California proposed actions. The federal hearings and NY initiatives are fulcrums for state and local IT related actions and may serve as models for selected state actions.

3 Enhance Role of Regulations in State and Local IT Policies, Strategies, Operations, Roadmaps and Advocacy. Collectively develop templates for addressing regulations in state and local policy and procedural guidelines, including procurement, operational and performance management, audits and others.

4 Conduct an Assessment and Recommendations of IT and Regulatory Effect and Support Capabilities for Pandemic Effects and Election Processes. Conduct a collaborative assessment of the capabilities and opportunities of IT support for the pandemic and election process, other pending emergencies and potential interactions with the regulatory issues. Develop recommendations for state leadership, NGA, NCSL and federal government.

5 Develop a Forum for IT Stakeholder Collaboration on Regulatory Issues. Identify scope of potential stakeholders for supporting recommendations and further action, and develop a forum for organizing a state, local, federal and private sector collaborative. This forum can be a Web based forum, perhaps hosted as part of the NASCIO virtual fall session.

Final Thoughts

Back in 2018, Deloitte Consulting wrote this: Regulations or absence of regulations can also alter or limit both direct government operations as well as stakeholder, customer benefits, and limit development or innovation options. As new business models and services emerge, such as ride-sharing services and initial coin offerings, government agencies are challenged with creating or modifying regulations, enforcing them, and communicating them to the public at a previously undreamed-of pace. And they must do this while working within legacy frameworks and attempting to foster innovation.

Here is another excellent piece by Deloitte on regulation and cybersecurity: National security and technology regulation. I also think it worth reviewing these biggest takeaways from the Washington Post on the antitrust hearings.

CNBCs expert analysts believe these companies will never be broken-up due to the U.S. desire to compete with companies from China and elsewhere. Nevertheless, they also say there is likely more regulation coming.

One thing is clear: Well be back to cover this topic many times in the coming years. The issues are not going away.

Time to do your homework and get ready for more in 2021 and beyond - regardless of who wins the upcoming election.

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Impacts and Recommendations After Big Tech Congressional Testimony - Government Technology

One solution would be the creation of a regulator that couldgive local authoritiesand organisations in the UKcommunal ownership of data in a way that protects privacy, the report claims.

The regulator would be part of a new Office for the Digital Common, and would have the power to protect valuable UK digital data, such as that derived from the NHS, from unfair international exploitation.

It also recommends steps to bring the value created by data under local and regional control, as is already being pioneered by innovative cities such as Amsterdam and Barcelona.

"Local authorities, metro mayors and devolved administrations can do the same in the UK," said Mr Meadway.

For instance, they could compelcompanies to share data as a pre-condition of winning a service contract, and push for locally collected data to be made open to use by others.

"Competition policy alone, at least in the sense of simply trying to break up some of these digital giants, could both reduce the value to the public of operating at scale and, by creating smaller digital companies with similar business models, could simply reproduce some of the socially damaging behaviour we have seen," saidMr Meadway.

Big Tech faced a grilling from the US Congress last week over its swelling powers in an unprecedented hearing that saw the bosses of Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple all appear together by videolink for the first time.

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UK regulator is needed to keep powers of tech giants in check - Telegraph.co.uk

In a set-back for Googles plan to acquire health wearable company Fitbit, the European Commission has announced its opening an investigation to dig into a range of competition concerns being attached to the proposal from multiple quarters.

This means the deal is on ice for a period of time that could last until early December.

The Commission said it has 90 working days to take a decision on the acquisition so until December 9, 2020.

Commenting on opening an in-depth investigation in a statement, Commission EVP Margrethe Vestager who heads up both competition policy and digital strategy for the bloc said: The use of wearable devices by European consumers is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. This will go hand in hand with an exponential growth of data generated through these devices. This data provides key insights about the life and the health situation of the users of these devices.Our investigation aims to ensure that control by Google over data collected through wearable devices as a result of the transaction does not distort competition.

Google has responded to the EU brake on its ambitions with a blog post in which its devices & services chief seeks to defend the deal, arguing it will spur innovation and lead to increased competition.

This deal is about devices, not data, Google VP Rick Osterloh further claims.

The tech giant announced its desire to slip into Fitbits data-sets back in November, when it announced a plan to shell out $2.1BN in an all-cash deal to pick up the wearable maker.

Fast forward a few months and CEO Sundar Pichai is being taken to task by lawmakers on home turf for stuff like helping destroy anonymity on the Internet. Last years already rowdy antitrust drum beat around big tech has become a full on rock festival so the mood music around tech acquisitions might finally be shifting.

Since news of Googles plan to grab Fitbit dropped concerns about the deal have been raised all over Europe with consumer groups, privacy regulators and competition and tech policy wonks all sounding the alarm at the prospect of letting the adtech giant gobble a device maker and help itself to a bunch of sensitive consumer health data in the process.

Digital privacy rights group, Privacy International one of the not-for-profits thats been urging regulators not to rubberstamp the deal argues the acquisition would not only squeeze competition in the nascent digital health market, and also for wearables, but also reduce what little pressure there currently is on Google to compete in relation to privacy options available to consumers (both existing and future Fitbit users), leading to even less competition on privacy standards and thereby enabling the further degradation of consumers privacy protections, as it puts it.

So much noise is being made that Google has already played the we promise not to card thats a favorite of data-mining tech giants. (Typically followed, a few years later, with a we got ya sucker joker as they go ahead and do the thing they totally said they wouldnt.)

To wit: From the get-go Fitbit has claimed users health and wellness data will not be used for Google ads. Just like WhatsApp said nothing would change when Facebook bought them. (Er.)

Last month Reuters revisited the concession, in an exclusive report that cited people familiar with the matter who apparently told it the deal could be waved through if Google pledged not to use Fitbit data for ads.

Its not clear where the leak underpinning its news report came from but Reuters also ran with a quote from a Google spokeswoman who further claimed: Throughout this process we have been clear about our commitment not to use Fitbit health and wellness data for Google ads and our responsibility to provide people with choice and control with their data.

In the event, Googles headline-grabbing promises to behave itself with Fitbit data have not prevented EU regulators from wading in for a closer look at competition concerns which is exactly as it should be.

In truth, given the level of concern now being raised about tech giants market power and adtech giant Google specifically grabbing a treasure trove of consumer health data, a comprehensive probe is the very least regulators should be doing.

If digital policy history has shown anything over the past decade+ (and where data is concerned) its that the devil is always in the fine print detail. Moreover the fast pace of digital markets can mean a competitive threat may only be a micro pivot away from materializing. Theories of harm clearly need updating to take account of data-mining technosocial platform giants. And the Commission knows that which is why its consulting on giving itself more powers to tackling tipping in digital markets.But it also needs to flex and exercise the powers it currently has. Such as opening a proper investigation rather than gaily waving tech giant deals through.

Antitrust may now be flavor of the month where tech giants are concerned with US lawmakers all but declaring war on digital robber barons at last months big subcommittee showdown in Congress. But its also worth noting that EU competition regulators for all their heavily publicized talk of properly regulating the digital sphere have yet to block a single digital tech merger.

It remains to be seen whether that record will change come December.

The Commission is concerned that the proposed transaction would further entrench Googles market position in the online advertising markets by increasing the already vast amount of data that Google could use for personalisation of the ads it serves and displays, it writes in a press release today.

Following a preliminary assessment process of the deal, EU regulators said they have concerns about [emphasis theirs]:

By acquiring Fitbit, Google would acquire (i) the database maintained by Fitbit about its users health and fitness; and (ii) the technology to develop a database similar to Fitbits one, the Commission further notes.

The data collected via wrist-worn wearable devices appears, at this stage of the Commissions review of the transaction, to be an important advantage in the online advertising markets. By increasing the data advantage of Google in the personalisation of the ads it serves via its search engine and displays on other internet pages, it would be more difficult for rivals to match Googles online advertising services. Thus, the transaction would raise barriers to entry and expansion for Googles competitors for these services, to the ultimate detriment of advertisers and publishers that would face higher prices and have less choice.

The Commission views Google as dominant in the supply of online search advertising services in almost all EEA (European Economic Area) countries; as well as holding a strong market position in the supply of online advertising display services in a large number of EEA countries (especially off-social network display ads), and a strong market position in the supply of adtech services in the EEA.

All of which will inform its considerations as it looks at whether Google will gain an unfair competitive advantage by assimilating Fitbit data. (Vestager has also issued a number of antitrust enforcements against the tech giant in recent years, against Android, AdSense and Google Shopping.)

The regulator has also said it will further look at:

The tech giant has already offered EU regulators one specific concession in the hopes of getting the Fitbit buy green lit with the Commission noting that it submitted commitments aimed at addressing concerns last month.

Google suggested creating a data silo to hold data collected via Fitbits wearable devices and where it said it would be kept separate from any other dataset within Google (including claiming it would be restricted for ad purposes). However the Commission expresses scepticism about Googles offer, writing that it considers that the data silo commitment proposed by Google is insufficient to clearly dismiss the serious doubts identified at this stage as to the effects of the transaction.

Among others, this is because the data silo remedy did not cover all the data that Google would access as a result of the transaction and would be valuable for advertising purposes, it added.

Google makes reference to this data silo in its blog post, claiming: Weve been clear from the beginning that we will not use Fitbit health and wellness data for Google ads. We recently offered to make a legally binding commitment to the European Commission regarding our use of Fitbit data. As we do with all our products, we will give Fitbit users the choice to review, move or delete their data. And well continue to support wide connectivity and interoperability across our and other companies products.

We appreciate the opportunity to work with the European Commission on an approach that addresses consumers expectations of their wearable devices. Were confident that by working closely with Fitbits team of experts, and bringing together our experience in AI, software and hardware, we can build compelling devices for people around the world, it adds.

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Google-Fitbit deal to be scrutinized in Europe over data competition concerns - TechCrunch

Trump escalates his campaign against Chinese tech companies, Facebook extends work from home until the middle of 2021 and Netflix adds support for Hindi. Heres your Daily Crunch for August 7, 2020.

The big story: Trump signs orders banning US business with TikTok owner ByteDance and Tencents WeChat

Both orders will take effect in 45 days, but its specific impact is unclear since Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross will apparently not identify what transactions are covered until then.

This comes after Trump had already said that he was banning TikTok unless the app is sold to an American owner. (Specifically Microsoft, which has acknowledged that its in acquisition talks.)

TikTok hit back against the order by saying that it was issued without any due process and would risk undermining global businesses trust in the United States commitment to the rule of law.

The tech giants

Facebook extends coronavirus work from home policy until July 2021 Facebook has joined Google in saying it will allow employees to work from home until the middle of next year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Netflixs latest effort to make inroads in India: Support for Hindi Netflix has rolled out support for Hindi, a language spoken by nearly half a billion people in India.

Judge says Uber, Lyft preliminary injunction ruling to come in a matter of days Lyft argued that reclassifying drivers as employees would cause irreparable harm.

Startups, funding and venture capital

The rules of VC are being broken The latest episode of Equity discusses rolling funds and how they could change the VC landscape.

Mashroom raises 4M for its end-to-end lettings and property management service The startup pitches itself as going beyond the tenant-finding service to include the entire rental journey.

Wendell Brooks has resigned as president of Intel Capital Anthony Lin, who has been leading mergers and acquisitions and international investing, will take over on an interim basis.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

How to pick the right Series A investors Its important for founders to get to know the people coming onto their board, and Jake Saper of Emergence Capital has some thoughts on how to do that.

IoT and data science will boost foodtech in the post-pandemic era Three must-dos for post-pandemic retail grocers: rely on the data, rely on the biology and rely on the hardware.

Survey: Tell us what you think of Extra Crunch Like Extra Crunch? Dont like Extra Crunch? Tell us why!

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Civic tech platform Mobilize launches a census hub for the 2020 counts critical final stretch The new site, GetOutTheCount.com, will amplify nonprofits census efforts and collect them in one place.

Federal judge approves ending consent decrees that prevented movie studios from owning theaters U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres cited the rise of streaming services like Netflix as one of the reasons for her decision.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunchs roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If youd like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

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Daily Crunch: Trump bans transactions with ByteDance and Tencent - TechCrunch

On Thursday, Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, just became the worlds third billionaire to cross the $100 billion mark. Zuckerbergs net worth is now more than $100 billion for the first time since the social media giant has enjoyed a soaring stock price amid the coronavirus pandemic. According to a report published by Bloomberg, the 36-year-old billionaire joins fellow tech titans Bill Gates and Amazons Jeff Bezos, both of whom have already crossed the $100 billion mark. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates are reportedly the only individuals in the world worth at least $100 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The net worth of Facebook CEO is mainly derived from his stake in Facebook, and Zuckerberg has a 13% stake in the worlds largest social network - Facebook. The founder of one of the largest tech companies and other executives of online companies have enjoyed a mind-boggling accumulation of wealth during the coronavirus pandemic since people are locked into their houses and spend more time on their devices.

Mark Zuckerberg gained nearly $22 billion during 2020, and Jeff Bezos earned more than $75 billion. The staggering numbers have put the CEOs of tech giants under intense scrutiny. Last month, Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg, Apples Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Googles Sundar Pichai had to testify before Congress to defend allegations that the power and influence of these tech giants are out of control.

Currently, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, and Facebook have market valuations equivalent to nearly 30% of the United States gross domestic product. Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook from his Harvard University dorm room back in the year 2004 which is now the worlds largest social media platform. The 36-year-old billionaire says that he plans to give away 99% of his shares in Facebook over his lifetime.

Facebook stock hit a record high following the rollout of Instagram Reels. Reels allow users to create and share short videos on Facebook-owned Instagram app. The feature integrated into Instagram allows users to create and edit 15-second clips, much like the popular video-sharing platform- TikTok. Reels will be made available to users in over fifty countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, and India. Instagram Reels is touted to replace ByteDances TikTok. It is interesting to note that TikTok is reeling under the pressure of bans in some markets such as India and the United States.

Read next: How Rich You'd Be If You'd Invested $1000 in These Companies

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Mark Zuckerberg Becomes the Third Centibillionaire of the World after Facebook Stock Hits Record High Following the Roll Out Of Instagram Reels -...

Even though women play a significant role in the tech industry, there remains a clear pay difference between them and their male counterparts, recent research shows.

At an average, a woman earns 80.7 cents for every dollar a man earns at a full-time position. According to data issued by the US Census Bureau, womens median annual earnings are $9,909 less than mens.

When considered in the tech sector, women are offered 3% less than men for the same job at the same company, reports job portal Hired.

In this regard, self-reported salary data from PayScale was analyzed by Small Business Prices who looked at salary info for the top 10 Fortune 100 tech companies. They compared the salaries of both men and women and concluded that men reportedly earned more than women.

For instance, Facebook has roughly 50,000 employees globally. The average salary at the tech company is $120,000 while for men, the average is reported to be around $129,000. The same salary is $112,000 for the female, indicating one of the largest gender wage gaps.

Similarly, PayPal and Apple offer women employees $12,000 less than men at an average.

Other leading tech giants such as Microsoft, Oracle, Google Alphabet, Cisco, and eBay have a lower salary package for female workers.

To our surprise, the only company where women excel or make a higher income than men is Adobe. The American multinational software company has more than 22,000 workers worldwide. The average salary here is reported to be $104,000. But women at the firm are earning a whopping $126,500 while men are averagely offered $105,500 approximately $21,000 less than female.

Seems like leading tech companies should reconsider their business protocols and focus more on equality in all areas of their practices. just this week, Apples Tim Cook, Googles Sundar Pichai, Amazons Jeff Bezos, and Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg are scheduled to appear before the Congress and defend the allegation that they are not stifling competition.

Read next:ACSI E-Business Report 2019-2020: Consumer Satisfaction with Social Media Falls 2.8 Percent

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What Gender Pay Gap Looks Like at Google, Facebook, Apple and Other Top Tech Companies - Digital Information World

Rocket Companies, the now publicly traded parent company of Detroit's Quicken Loans, originated $72.3 billion in residential mortgages during the second quarter a 40 percent increase from the first three months of this turbulent year.

They also added 100,000 clients to their portfolio of 1.93 million mortgages they service each month.

And the company's 19,000 employees largely handled this growth from their home offices, basements, kitchen tables or wherever they've been encamped since mid-March to avoid contracting the coronavirus.

"Working from home has been demonstrated it works and it can be very, very efficient," Rocket Companies CEO Jay Farner said Thursday on CNBC just before the company debuted on the New York Stock Exchange. (See story, below.)

For a company that just reaped at least $1.8 billion in stock sales and is known for wringing out every bit of productivity from its white-collar workforce, working from home has been a success.

It's also probably here to stay.

A recent Crain's survey of metro Detroit C-suite executives found 53 percent of companies either haven't asked employees to return to the workplace or are making it voluntary.

"It's panned out well," said Vince Mattina Jr., president and founding partner of the accounting firm Mattina, Kent & Gibbons, P.C., which has offices in Rochester and Lapeer. "I would anticipate this is going to be a more permanent situation with the ability to do less time in the office virus or not."

The big tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Facebook have announced plans to extend work-from-home into mid-2021. Twitter has told its employees they can work outside of the office "forever."

When the coronavirus pandemic hit Michigan five months ago, most assumed that working from home would be a temporary phase until the public health threat subsided.

The virus would pass, we wrongly assumed.

We'll get back to the office by summer. Wrong again.

In late March, I went into the Crain Communications office and packed up a monitor, keyboard, mouse and computer docking station for my home office, assuming I'd be working there until Memorial Day or Fourth of July at the latest.

Now I think it's safe to assume we'll be mostly working from home or wherever there's strong WiFi and strong coffee until next Memorial Day.

The virus isn't going away, in part because as a society we still haven't come to grips with the necessary social distancing and human isolation needed to wrestle it under control.

With all of the rancor over mask-wearing in public, business travel looks highly unappealing and downright scary for some workers.

In the Crain's C-suite survey, nearly 73 percent of executives surveyed said they were not comfortable attending a business conference.

The survey found 46 percent of executives said they're not asking employees to travel and just 12 percent said they would reinstitute travel in 2021. Fewer than one in every 15 of the executives surveyed said they've taken a business trip outside of Michigan since mid-March, while less than 10 percent said they planned to reinstate company travel this calendar year.

The nearly nonexistent business travel also may be a result of cost-cutting measures to survive. About 82 percent of CEOs surveyed said their businesses had sustained a revenue loss of 10 percent of higher, while 58 percent said they've laid off workers. Another 23 percent said they've imposed across-the-board pay cuts to weather the pandemic recession.

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Analysis: Work from home is here to stay, but it sure isn't sitting still - Crain's Detroit Business

Sushma Ramachandran

Senior Financial Journalist

The chief executives of the worlds four most powerful tech companies were grilled recently by the US lawmakers on a wide range of issues, ranging from competition to alleged theft of data by China. Apple, Facebook, Googles parent company Alphabet and Amazon had to face a barrage of questions that could ultimately decide the future course of monopoly laws in the US. Simultaneously, Australia has laid down regulations to ensure that tech giants will have to pay for the use of news from media outlets. Both developments are of immense relevance in India as these same companies dominate the digital arena here.

Even as Big Tech is facing potential curbs, these entities are also seeing a huge surge in growth and profitability at a time when the global economy is facing severe disruptions owing to the pandemic.

Amazons profits, for instance, rose by 40 per cent in the April-June quarter. Over the same period, Facebooks profits spiked by an unreal 98 per cent, while Apple recorded a 12 per cent growth. Alphabet was relatively a laggard with three per cent profit, but revenue increased by 13 per cent.

In contrast, the world economy is set to contract by as much as five per cent during 2020. The divergence is because the consumption of online content has risen exponentially while the overall demand for other products has fallen precipitously.

Amazon has benefited not just from its Prime Video content but also from the ease of online deliveries at a time when buying from brick and mortar retail outlets has slowed down. Other streaming and OTT platforms have also got a boost globally and in this country.

This has altered the established advertising-cum-subscription model, with ad revenues dipping and subscribers rapidly growing. Some media reports say subscribers have risen by as much as 60 per cent ever since the pandemic began.

The top player in the Indian market currently is the Disney-Hotstar brand with an estimated eight million subscribers followed by Amazon Prime, SonyLiv, Netflix and Voot as well as a host of others.

The other gainers in the digital space are gaming apps which have seen an enormous growth during the lockdown period. Fantasy sports apps are expected to see a spurt as soon as the IPL is revived. The digital arena, thus, continues to thrive at a time when the global Covid outbreak has threatened the very existence of traditional businesses.

A parallel occurrence to the growth of tech giants has been a widening of the digital divide in this country. This has followed a shift to online education after the schools closed down all over the country since the lockdown was imposed at the end of March.

Children with access to devices like smartphones, tablets, computers or even televisions, have been able to utilise the new mode of teaching.

Others, including the urban poor and those in rural areas, have simply been left rudderless without any teaching facilities for months on end now.

Tragic stories have surfaced of children and even parents committing suicide because they could not afford to buy smartphones. Voluntary organisations and individuals have begun drives to provide computers and televisions to children in many parts of the country.

An initiative has even been launched to provide used devices to the needy students. The fact is that this is just not enough to cover the millions of children who need to use online education. Official data says there are over 35 crore students in the country, but no data is available to show how many have access to digital devices or the Internet.

A study done by an NGO of over 40,000 children, covering 23 states in April, found that about 56 per cent children did not have smartphones. Apart from the devices, the other issue was connectivity problems with the Internet.

The Kerala government has tried to overcome this problem by offering classes on television. But this approach has a lacuna as there is no possibility of an interaction with the students.

With online education likely to remain a reality for some more time, it is time to adopt innovative solutions to ensure that millions of children do not lag behind their more affluent peers. One way could be to copy the model of universal healthcare and adopt the slogan of universal smartphones for schoolchildren.

Indigenously made smartphones or tablets could be mass produced and provided to all students of government schools. This would not only provide students with the much-needed devices, but also give a fillip to indigenous smartphone production, a cause close to this governments heart.

But this could take a while and fail to solve the immediate crisis facing the countrys students. Another option could be to open the schools gradually, keeping social distancing norms in place.

And finally, the third and most attractive option could be to tap the deep pockets of the tech giants that are raking in profits right now

during the pandemic. Let them use their enormous resources to provide tech-based solutions to the millions of underprivileged children who cannot access any form of education right now. The fact is, unless the digital divide is bridged, there will be a long-term, adverse impact on these young students. The prosperity of the tech giants is growing owing to their access to the Indian market.

It is thus entirely in the fitness of things that they join hands with policymakers here to provide a concrete solution to the digital divide at this critical juncture.

The government needs to open a dialogue with Big Tech companies and try to solve this problem with their help. Otherwise, the prolonged break in the educational process could have profound ramifications for the youth of the country.

See the rest here:

Tap tech giants to bridge digital divide in education - The Tribune India

Whats the difference between Mark Zuckerberg and John D Rockefeller? Exchange the trainers for a pair of spats, and the T-shirt for a frock coat, and the answer is not all that much, according to lawmakers in Washington: a robber baron is a robber baron whether he wears a top hat or a baseball cap.

The US has a history of bringing antitrust cases against monopolies that stretches all the way back to the breakup of Rockefellers Standard Oil back in 1911.

Now it is the turn of the tech giants to be put under the spotlight, which is why Facebooks Zuckerberg, Amazons Jeff Bezos, Apples Tim Cook and Googles Sundar Pichai were summoned to Capitol Hill last week appropriately, via video stream.

David Cicilline, the chair of the House of Representatives antitrust subcommittee, made it abundantly clear what he thought. All four companies wielded monopoly power and some of them should be broken up. Their control of the marketplace allows them to do whatever it takes to crush independent businesses and expand their own power, he said.

Worryingly for Zuckerberg et al, it was not just Democrats such as Cicilline who were fired up. Republicans on the committee made it clear that they thought the social media companies had demonstrated blatant bias against conservatives. Inevitably, Donald Trump weighed in, saying that if Congress refused to act then he would.

Amazon, Alphabet, Apple and Facebook, together with Microsoft, have sailed through the lockdown and now account for getting on for a quarter of the S&P 500 by market cap

No question, the big four tech companies deserve to be subjected to the closest scrutiny. While none of them has the market dominance that Standard Oil enjoyed at its peak, they all have huge reach. Two of them, Google and Facebook, have no serious rivals.

And they want to keep it that way. The evidence amassed by Congress suggests that whenever Google or Facebook have spotted a potential rival they have used their clout to see them off: sometimes by squeezing firms out of business, sometimes by swallowing them up.

Zuckerberg put up the best defence when he said he had done it the American way, starting with nothing and succeeding by offering better products that appealed to consumers. Companies arent bad just because they are big, he insisted.

Thats absolutely true. There is no law in the US against a small company becoming a household name. There are, though, laws that are designed to prevent companies that make it big from eradicating competitors. Yes, at the moment, it is hard to argue that the tech giants are gouging consumers: Google and Facebook are free, Amazon wins market share by undercutting rivals, and there are plenty of cheaper alternatives to Apple devices.

Even so, there are two reasons why that will not and should not spare the big four from the threat of breakup. The first is that monopolies stifle innovation and that is bad news for consumers in the future. The second is that the concept of the harm that monopolies can do has been broadened out to include potential damage to debate and democracy. Thats the real difference between Standard Oil and Facebook: there was never any suggestion that Rockefeller could swing elections by manipulating the oil price.

All that said, immediate action against the tech giants looks improbable despite the sabre- rattling from both Capitol Hill and the White House. Why? Because Amazon, Alphabet (the company that owns Google), Apple and Facebook together with Microsoft have sailed through the lockdown and now account for getting on for a quarter of the S&P 500 index by total market capitalisation. Does Trump want to crater the stock market by breaking them up? Does Congress? Not really.

Provisions for bad loans landed with a thump at the banks last week. The share prices of Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and NatWest fell as their boards took a conservative approach to planning for Covid-created losses.

Regulators, however, can give themselves a pat on the back. Amid the lenders grim economic projections, almost no one thinks the UKs big banks need more capital. This happy state of affairs goes almost unremarked, but shouldnt. Lessons from 2008-09 were learned; the recession would be worse with a financial crisis on top.

NatWest, as Royal Bank of Scotland has renamed itself, is sporting a core capital ratio of 17.2%, many times what it had in the bad old days. Lloyds and Barclays arent far behind. The scope for loss absorption, in the jargon, should be enormous. But shareholders, who have essentially funded such strong capital buffers, would like something in return a return of dividends.

The Bank of England effectively banned them in March in the interests of safety, and investors worry that a supposedly temporary measure will be extended again and again. If a lender has more than enough capital to withstand a heavy storm, they ask, why shouldnt it be allowed to distribute the excess? Isnt that the point of investing in a bank? Its a reasonable view.

This battle could become intense. The Bank will review the ban later this year but its statement last week was taken as cautious. It will look at the level of uncertainty on the future path of the economy, market conditions, and capital trajectories prevailing at that time. An extended ban, in other words, is possible.

Necessary too, some would say. Maybe, but nor do we want banks to retreat into full-on safety mode, which wouldnt help the economic recovery. The dividend ban on banks should be as short as possible.

There is a sense of trepidation across the US this weekend after official figures showed the economy shrinking at an annualised rate of 32.9% between April and the end of June.

This fall is more than the 30% drop seen over 15 quarters between 1929 and 1933, and brings home the magnitude of the Covid-19 pandemic. Never before has the US economy experienced anything like it, and to say the figures left economists stunned is an understatement.

The shock was compounded by the realisation that Washington is poised to switch off the unemployment benefit supplement that has kept many families from needing food banks and defaulting on loans since the pandemic gripped the nation in March.

Democrats have pleaded for a change of direction after recent figures showed that the recovery had already stalled. Unemployment claims in the US rose for the first time in four months last month. For people who have lost jobs and now live on credit, the coronavirus benefit supplement is a lifeline.

Meanwhile, GDP in the eurozone declined by 12.1% in the second quarter, the largest quarterly decline on record. It could be said that the same stuttering recovery that characterises the US, and the UK for that matter, is also taking place across the 19 eurozone countries.

However, there is one major difference. The nations that drive the currency blocs economic growth Germany, France, Spain and Italy have pledged to maintain subsidies for businesses and households, knowing that only a consistent and prolonged level of support can prevent the recovery from stalling. A 750bn package of grants and loans for business put together by Brussels, while flawed, helps to reinforce that message.

A second wave of the virus will be a blow to every country that succumbs, but the seriousness with which eurozone countries are dealing with the economic as well as the health effects of the pandemic is likely to prove a winner.

Read more:

Yes, the tech giants are big in truth, probably too big to break up - The Guardian

Microsoft is the oldest on the list but one of the most successful companies in the world. Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, it has had its ups and downs since its inception as well as leadership changes in the last few decades.

Like Amazon, Mircosoft is extremely diversified even with runner up products like Bing.

Bing, however, is still profitable growing at a rate of 914% per quarter and still accounts for almost 6.4% of Microsofts total revenue (more than a service like Linkedin). They are also growing at a modest 14.56% since the last quarter of March 31 in 2020, putting them in a favorable growth rate over some of the other tech giants in the list.

One of the major advantages Microsoft also has over other businesses is their influence within the enterprise space. With this, the company has had significant success with not only Microsoft Azure and their office products but recently, with products like Microsoft Teams.

With such a big enterprise footprint, Microsoft has been able to expand newer products into its B2B customer base and also grow their cloud footprint.

This diversified portfolio of products, as well as a huge footprint within the enterprise space, cements Microsoft for many more years to come and will be the unlikely tech giant to fall first along with Amazon.

The only drawback is, in a lot of these product categories, including search, cloud, and gaming, they are only second to the market leader (E.g., Google for search and Amazon for cloud).

The only drawback is, in a lot of these product categories, including search, cloud, and gaming, they are only second to the market leader (E.g., Google for search and Amazon for cloud).

Read the rest here:

Which Tech Giant Is Likely To Fall First? - Medium

In the future, software in products like the Amazon Echo Studio will feature give-and-take conversations.

Two years ago, Amazon announced a new feature for Alexa: the ability to ask questions.Hunches, as they're called, have slowly rolled out since the announcement, and now it's fairly common to hear Alexa move outside her old "answer questions, obey commands" routine. The voice assistant usually asks these questions as follow-ups to your commands or questions, and they're a result of Alexa trying to anticipate your requests -- for instance, reminding you to lock the door at night.

Hunches are only the start.

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During July'sAlexa Live developers conference, Amazon announced another new upgrade: give-and-take conversations with the voice assistant. The tools for such conversation are already being implemented by third-party developers and it wouldn't be a surprise to hear Alexa, in the next few months, begin to ask follow-up questions after you give the usual commands.

These might seem like incremental improvements, but they could dramatically change how we understand and use voice assistants. After all, we've seen movies in which AI creations banter with their creators, but few of us have actually spent time wondering if we'd actuallywantto spend much time chatting with Alexa over coffee each morning. And more importantly, we haven't grappled enough with the costs of such advances.

It's almost passe to talk about the immense troves of data companies like Amazon and Google can tap nowadays, but that data is the fuel powering the smart home's proverbial engine -- and Alexa is the fracking apparatus gathering it.

Amazon's release of the Echo Dot with Clock last year gave a small window into the usefulness of such data: Alexa fields questions about the time of day over a billion times per year, so Amazon built a device to answer that question more effectively. It's simple supply and demand, but where Amazon can quantify the demand with unprecedented precision.

2019's Echo Dot with Clock represents Amazon's data-gathering tools in action.

Now, Amazon is testing out more proactive behaviors for Alexa, having the assistant prompt users on occasion -- and the company can track in real time the rate of success in those predictions. People are responding positively (that is, affirming Alexa's suggested actions) "the vast majority of the time," according to Vice President of Smart Home at Amazon Daniel Rausch.

Rausch and I spoke on the phone before July's conference and he was as excited as ever about the innovations in the voice-driven smart home space. He said more developers than ever are designing Alexa skills and devices to work with the voice assistant -- over 750,000 were registered for the conference -- and it's cheaper than ever to incorporate Alexa-compatibility into any given device, at a jaw-dropping $4.

The growth in third-party development means the instant feedback loop, in which Amazon can roll out features, test them and receive immediate customer response data, is only growing in value for Amazon -- especially as they push deeper into uncharted consumer territory.

Amazon's voice assistant is making itself at home in more than the house, thanks to the Alexa app, Echo Auto and other out-of-home devices.

Perhaps, like the hours of time we spend on our phones each day, we'll arrive at a new norm without ever having time to seriously consider the route we're taking, the destination ahead. Or perhaps, the time to consider such things is now.

The EU is currently looking into Google, Amazon and other tech giants for precisely this kind of data-driven market dominance in the smart home space in Europe -- though the stated goal is to maintain healthy competition.

Another type of inquiry -- formal or informal -- is in order: What exactly could the unforeseen outcomes of expanded voice technology be? Is there a way to progress technologically without risking such outcomes?

Daniel Rausch and others at Amazon are typically hesitant to talk about specific goals in the far future, but the investment the tech giant is making into its voice technology tells us more than you might think about the vision Amazon is pursuing. It's a vision that's simultaneously exciting and concerning.

We're not likely to reach the sci-fi levels Iron Man,Moonor Her too soon, but as we become more accustomed to a give-and-take mode of interacting with Alexa, we're moving toward voice technology taking a much more central spot in our daily lives. As Rausch told me over the phone, Alexa use has quadrupled in the past two years and the increase in Alexa-use is non-linear: Growth over the next year will likely outpace growth over the past year.

As Alexa and other voice assistants find homes in new devices -- controlling our TVs, phones and even microwaves -- and as they also become more predictive and proactive in their interactions with us, we could see the voice landscape dramatically change in increasingly short periods of time.

The Amazon Basics microwave is likely only an early example of what will become normal over the next decade: voice-driven appliances.

More concretely: Within a year, we could conceivably see Alexa (and other voice assistants) hear you walk into the kitchen using abilities akin to Alexa Guard (which can distinguish between human and pet footsteps), ask if you'd like it to preheat the oven for your usual lunch and so on -- all unprompted. Many customers might be happy for such convenience, even given the cost to privacy it represents.

It's not just privacy at stake: People are turning to voice assistants for information on the COVID-19, on mental health, on exercise and more -- and Alexa dutifully provides skills, sometimes hundreds of skills, to address such needs. As one Atlantic writer mused about the future of voice assistants, "With their perfect cloud-based memories, they will be omniscient; with their occupation of our most intimate spaces, they'll be omnipresent. And with their eerie ability to elicit confessions, they could acquire a remarkable power over our emotional lives."

As Alexa changes, so do we. Many of us who use voice assistants regularly have found tricks to interacting with them. Alexa never understands when I ask for the album KTSE by Teyana Taylor, for instance, so I have to play an individual song from it, then tell the assistant to "play this whole album." My wife, who is convinced Alexa is sexist for never understanding her commands as well as the assistant understands mine ("I have more practice," I always assure her, only mostly certain of myself), is much more willing to insult Alexa -- and, strangely enough, to apologize.

I worry about how our three- and four-year-old will interact with voice assistants and I honestly don't know what type of interaction is "right" anyway.

In short, Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri and any number of other assistants are changing privacy norms, changing culture and changing us.

Cameras connected to Alexa and other voice assistants only add another layer of complexity to the conversation.

Can we preserve our privacy -- and ourselves -- and also experience the convenience afforded by such advances? If we try, it will certainly slow things down -- something companies like Amazon are likely keen to avoid.

Privacy policy, messy as it may be, is important here. Bills like California's CCPA (which has only just started being enforced as of July) help cite businesses for violating user privacy or failing to properly inform users about the data being collected on them. Such bills, with the rapid expansion of voice and smart home technology, need to be living documents, developing alongside Alexa and other voice assistants, challenging them where appropriate.

On an individual level, it's still worth practicing privacy hygiene -- deleting apps from your phone if you don't use them regularly, opting for the strictest privacy options from social media and voice assistants and so on. More fundamentally, now is the best time to start asking ourselves what we want our futures to look like, and how much access voice assistants should have to our lives, our homes and our selves.

If a time traveler from the future had told us in 2007 the sleep problems and behavioral changes touch screens would usher into our lives, would it or should it have changed the trajectory of our phone innovations over the next thirteen years to 2020?

If the answer is yes, then another question is worth asking: As we see Amazon actively build toward a future that centrally positions its voice assistant in the home, should we do more to protect what privacy we have left?

Link:

Alexa is starting to ask questions. How should we respond? - CNET

1. Jeffrey Scharf, Everybodys Business | Do tech giants deserve the wrath of Congress?  Santa Cruz Sentinel
2. Tech Giants Face Growing Calls for Tougher Regulatory Treatment  Yahoo Finance
3. Tech industry group highlights positive role in US economy  ZDNet
4. A Battle With Big Tech In The Making? 2020  CL Charlotte
5. Congress presses Big Tech on competition  BayStateBanner
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Jeffrey Scharf, Everybodys Business | Do tech giants deserve the wrath of Congress? - Santa Cruz Sentinel

On 6 August US President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning transactions related to TikToks developer ByteDance Ltd. and Chinas WeChat mobile application, beginning 45 days after the documents signing, citing a continued threat to national security.

Chinas widely-popular WeChat app has been making headlines recently, alongside video-sharing social networking service TikTok, after they became the target of a newly-issued executive order from US President Donald Trump, seeking to prohibit transactions on the platform by any person or involving any property under the United States' jurisdiction, due to cited national security concerns. The order, lobbed at the apps, echoes similar moves taken against Shenzhen-based tech giant Huawei and other Chinese firms.

However, its worth noting that the popular texting app WeChat, which is used in China for handling a broad range of aspects of daily life, can be said to have triggered an intriguing arms race among American tech giants, such as Facebook, Google and Apple, writes Business Insider.

The Tencent-owned Chinese messaging app WeChat, which has become embedded into the lives of hundreds of millions of people in China, launched in 2011 and was initially used to send audio and text messages as well as post pictures, or 'Moments'.

The messaging platform launched its "mini apps" feature in 2017, allowing users to access apps within it without downloading them on their phone.

Since then, WeChat has become the centrepiece of daily life in China; it is the epitome of a single do-it-all app, offering users the opportunity to do everything from book flights and doctor's appointments, to make payments, transfer money, pay utility bills, shop, and even file for divorce, writes the outlet.

Companies like Facebook, Apple, and Google, not to be outdone, entered the fray, and sought to refit their digital messaging offerings to match WeChat's versatility.

Thus, the US tech giants similarly started to allow third-party apps and services to plug into their own messaging platforms.

Not all efforts took off, however, writes the outlet, with the exception of Apple's iMessage, with Facebook and Google subsequently pivoting the directions of their digital messaging apps.

In 2016 Facebook undertook an attempt to transform its Messenger chat app into a platform, seeking to transform it into a more all-encompassing hub, along the lines of WeChat, used for making business interactions, books and playing games.

However, the approach was later partially abandoned in favour of enhancing the Messenger apps speed and communication focus, in a race to compete with Snapchat, introducing a rehashed version of Messenger earlier in 2020, that dropped the "Discover" tab for finding services that work within the app.

Also in 2016, Apple began allowing third-party apps to plug into its iMessage texting app, and currently offers its own mini App Store.

Accessible directly within a text thread, it allows users to download sticker packs, keyboards, and games.

App Clips, a novel iPhone feature, was also unveiled by Apple, and is set to launch in the company's iOS 14 software update this autumn.

App Clips enables users to access certain features of apps without having to download and install them on ones phone.

Thus, one can scan a code on a parking meter and pay from ones phone without having to download a corresponding app for the purpose.

Google was not going to be left in the dust, and launched a messaging app in 2016 called Allo.

The now-defunct app provided a built-in Google Assistant, allowing users to ask questions and perform diverse routine tasks, like booking reservations while remaining within the chat thread.

However, towards the end of 2018, Google stopped supporting Allo, redirecting its focus on its Messages app for Android.

Thus, Chinas WeChat served as a trailblazer, writes the outlet, proving that messaging apps could be useful for so much more than just communication, and seemingly inspiring other tech companies to pick up the pace.

View post:

How Chinas WeChat app sparked new 'arms race' among US tech giants - The Nation

Earlier this week, Google parent Alphabet raised $10 billiondespite already sitting on $121 billion in cash a decision no doubt fuelled by the Feds souped-up money printer and record low interest rates.

But the Mountain View giant is not alone; the rest of US tech is hoarding too.

In 2012, the companies currently featured in the tech-heavy NASDAQ 100 (NDX) stock index collectively held $405 billion in cash and other small investments.Now, theyve amassed more than $927 billion more than half a trillion dollars saved in eight years.

As one might expect, the biggest tech giants have the deepest pockets. But five companies in particular are saving more than any other: Microsoft, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook.

Together, theyve added $323 billion since 2012. Now,the reserves of those five tech companies represent more than half of the total cash controlled by the entire NDX, which includes around 100 firms.

On the other hand, some would rather deplete their war chests. Hard Fork found networking mainstay Cisco saved the least, now with $20 billion less compared to 2012; biotech play Amgen $14 billion has less; and eBay $3.8 billion.

Still, more than 80% of the companies currently in the NDX added cash to their kitties since 2012.

The real question is: what does Big Tech plan on doing with all its billions? Some companies use extra cash to reward shareholders with dividends, and others opt to buy back their own shares to inspire demand, or some kind of combination.

[Read:Big Tech told Congress theres loads of competition. This chart says otherwise]

But considering the sheer size of the fortunes amassed by techs biggest companies,its equally likely we could see even more acquisitions in the near future no doubt only when all that pesky antitrust nonsense with Congress is over with. Surely.

Published August 6, 2020 17:09 UTC

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NASDAQ 100 sits on nearly $1T in cash and weve got the charts to prove it - The Next Web

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei, Aug. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- A Partnership Agreement was signed virtually between Datastream Digital Sdn Bhd (DST) and MultiSys Technologies Corporation (MultiSys), a Software Engineering Solutions company based in the Philippines to strengthen their core into the realm of digital transformation and innovation in Brunei and the Philippines.

The virtual signing ceremony was officiated by both Radin Sufri Radin Basiuni, Chief Executive Officer of Datastream Digital Sdn Bhd (DST) and David Almirol Jr., Chief Executive Officer of MultiSys Technologies Corporation (MultiSys) together with the Guest of Honour, Yang Mulia Haji Sofian bin Haji Mohammad Jani, the Chairman of Datastream Digital Sdn Bhd (DST).

In attendance to witness the virtual signing ceremony in Brunei were His Excellency, Christopher B. Montero, the Ambassador of the Philippines to Brunei, Her Excellency, Puan Hjh Johariah Hj Abd Wahab the Ambassador of Brunei Darussalam to the Philippines, who has joined us virtually from the Philippines and Yang Mulia Tuan Hj Muhammad Yazid bin Dato Paduka Hj Mahadi, Deputy Chairman of Datastream Digital Sdn Bhd (DST). Present virtually in the Philippines were Al Panlilio, President of Smart Communications, Inc. and Jovy Hernandez, President and Chief Executive Officer of ePLDT, Inc.

With this partnership between DST and MultiSys, both parties are leveraging in each other's strengths in telecommunication technology and software engineering solutions to be able to deliver a better access and a smoother user experience across any environment. This collaboration will also present an amazing opportunity to jointly develop and tap the overseas market with innovative solutions.

The proposed development of various technologies will potentially pave the way for DST and MultiSys to expand their Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B) solution offerings within their respective ecosystems. Furthermore, MultiSys' existing platforms will also be powered by DST and gradually expand into various MultiSys solutions.

Story continues

Radin Sufri Radin Basiuni, the Chief Executive Officer of DST commented "To be successful in the quest of DST's digital transformation, as a Digital Service provider with its key mission in 'Creating Convenience and Value through a leading Digital Lifestyle Ecosystem,' DST is collaborating with likeminded key players who share similar digital DNA with DST. Multisys is the collaborative partner to DST. Multisys will provide the digital building block that will be powered by DST."

He continued, "Our partnership with Multisys will enhance further with layering digital services on top to better the customer services and engagement to our customers."

MultiSys is working with several government units across the Philippines for its Smart City project. This project is a flagship program launched in 2019 to further ease local government transactions through the creation of application and installation of cashless payment kiosk machines in various government offices and local communities. MultiSys is also in partnership with global tech giants such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google for its projects.

David Almirol Jr., the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of MultiSys said, "We are particularly excited about the strategic partnership with DST as we will jointly explore and develop various opportunities that would present a greater digital transformation for both markets. This is especially monumental, not just for the company, but for our country as well as to further highlight the Filipino's tech ingenuity abroad."

This partnership will complement DST in continuing its digital transformation journey in enhancing their digital customer experience to provide a better Smart lifestyle and supporting the Brunei Government's Smart Nation objectives, as MultiSys' system platforms has the capability to support paperless transactions and streamline government processes.

This will enable and empower DST to fully explore and exploit the possibilities of enhancing their service offerings beyond the traditional telecommunications service providers' standard services. DST's digital platform is not an end to DST's transformation agenda. DST is poised to collaborate with other leading digital key players in Brunei Darussalam and abroad in building and integrating further digital platforms outside the realm of telecommunications. This venture will allow DST to utilize this Digital Platform in the region and even to the extent of going beyond Brunei Darussalam.

Company Profile

About Datastream Digital Sdn Bhd (DST)

DST is Brunei's largest telecommunications service provider offering mobile and fixed telecommunications services. With over two decades of providing nationwide mobile services, DST continues to strive in improving and providing the best quality of products and services. Now, DST continues its roadmap of transformation by evolving from a telecommunications service provider to an integrated services provider whilst supporting the Nation's Vision 2035 pushing towards a dynamic and sustainable economy.

About MultiSys Technologies Corporation (MultiSys)

MultiSys is a leading software engineering solutions firm based in the Philippines that provides a wide range of cost-effective, full-scale software services, system platforms and integration services that are being used by more than 2,500 companies and organizations. MultiSys is the technology arm of the MVP Group of Companies which includes PLDT and Smart, two of the Philippines' telecommunications service providers, as well as Meralco, a major electric power distribution company in the country, including its capital region, Metro Manila.

Media Contact

Name: Nurul Nabihah Haji Mokhsen Position: Copywriter, Sales and Marketing, DST Email: nabihah.mokhsen@dst.com.bnTelephone: +6738928383

Name: Freddie Ting Position: Associate Vice President, Digital Business, DST Email: freddie.ting@dst.com.bnTelephone: +6737179293

Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20200805/2877106-1-aPhoto - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20200805/2877106-1-b

SOURCE DST

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DST Expands Digital Transformation and Innovation across Brunei with Tech Giant, MultiSys from the Philippines - Yahoo Finance

The US is expanding its China-targeted Clean Network program to include Chinese-made cellphone apps and cloud computing services that it claims are security risks, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Wednesday.

Mr Pompeo said the US wants to ban untrusted Chinese apps from the app stores of US mobile carriers and phonemakers.

"With parent companies based in China, apps like TikTok, WeChat, and others are significant threats to the personal data of American citizens, not to mention tools for CCP content censorship," he said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

But he added that the US also wants to block American-made apps from being pre-installed, or made available for download, on Chinese-made phones and wireless equipment from global giant Huawei and other makers.

"We don't want companies to be complicit in Huawei's human rights abuses or the CCP's surveillance apparatus," the top US diplomat said.

Mr Pompeo also said the US government will seek to limit the ability of Chinese service providers to collect, store and process sensitive data in the United States.

He cited specifically Chinese tech giants Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent.

His announcement came two days after President Donald Trump told Chinese tech company ByteDance to sell its hugely popular TikTok app to an American company or see it shut down by mid-September.

Washington says TikTok gleans massive amounts of personal data from hundreds of millions of users, which could be passed on to Chinese intelligence.

The targeting of app usage and cloud services expands the 5G Clean Path program the State Department unveiled on 29 April.

At its core the program is a multi-country initiative to prevent Huawei and other Chinese telecom suppliers from dominating next-generation or 5G wireless telecom services.

The United States says Huawei technology could open the door for Chinese intelligence to easily tap communications in other countries.

The US government has banned Huawei equipment and strongly discouraged authorities and businesses around the country from using it.

China's ambassador in London Liu Xiaoming condemned on Wednesday the Clean Network program as bullying and called it contrary to free trade ideals.

"The US bullying on the issue of 5G not only undermines fair international trade rules, but also damages the environment of free global market. The US is not qualified at all to build so-called 'Clean Network,'" Mr Liu said in a tweet.

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Mike Pompeo says US is cracking down on the way Chinese tech giants store sensitive data - SBS News

The chief executives of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple were called before a House antitrust committee this week, ostensibly to answer questions about whether they have too much power and whether that hurts consumers.

The tech bosses, who appeared via videoconference, fended off questions about being cyber barons, saying they have plenty of competition and that consumers have other options for the services they offer.

But do they? Last year, in an effort to understand just how dependent we are on these companies, I did an experiment for the tech news site Gizmodo to see how hard it would be to remove them from my life.

To do that wasnt easy. From my years writing about digital privacy, I knew these companies were in the background of many of our online interactions. I worked with a technologist named Dhruv Mehrotra, who designed a custom tool for me, a virtual private network that kept my devices from sending data to or receiving data from the tech giants by blocking the millions of internet addresses the companies controlled.

Then I blocked Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft, one by one and then all at once over six weeks. Amazon and Google were the hardest companies to avoid by far.

Cutting Amazon from my life meant losing access to any site hosted by Amazon Web Services, the internets largest cloud provider. Many apps and a large portion of the internet use Amazons servers to host their digital content, and much of the digital world became inaccessible when I said goodbye to Amazon, including the Amazon Prime Video competitor Netflix.

Amazon was difficult to avoid in the real world as well. When I ordered a phone holder for my car from eBay, it arrived in Amazons signature packaging, because the seller used Fulfillment by Amazon, paying the company to store and ship his product.

When I blocked Google, the entire internet slowed down for me, because almost every site I visited was using Google to supply its fonts, run its ads, track its users, or determine if its users were humans or bots. While blocking Google, I couldnt sign into the data storage service Dropbox because the site thought I wasnt a real person. Uber and Lyft stopped working for me, because they were both dependent on Google Maps for navigating the world. I discovered that Google Maps had a de facto monopoly on online maps. Even Googles longtime critic Yelp used it to tell computer users where businesses could be found.

I came to think of Amazon and Google as the providers of the very infrastructure of the internet, so embedded in the architecture of the digital world that even their competitors had to rely on their services.

Facebook, Apple and Microsoft came with their own challenges. While Facebook was less debilitating to block, I missed Instagram (which Facebook owns) terribly, and I stopped getting news from my social circle, like the birth of a good friends child. I just assume that if I post something on Facebook, everyone will know about it, she told me when I called her weeks later to congratulate her. I tried out an alternative called Mastodon, but a social network devoid of any of your friends isnt much fun.

Apple was hard to leave because I had two Apple computers and an iPhone, so I wound up getting some radical new hardware in order to keep accessing the internet and making phone calls.

Apple and Googles Android software have a duopoly on the smartphone market. Wanting to avoid both companies, I wound up getting a dumb phone a Nokia 3310 on which I had to relearn the fine art of texting on numerical phone keys and a laptop with a Linux operating system from a company called Purism that is trying to create an ethical computing environment, namely by helping its users avoid the tech giants.

Yes, there are alternatives for products and services offered by the tech giants, but they are harder to find and to use.

Microsoft, which is not in the antitrust hot seat this time around but knows what it feels like, was easy to block on the consumer level. As my colleague Steve Lohr notes, Microsoft is mainly a supplier of technology to business customers these days.

But like Amazon, Microsoft has a cloud service, and so a few sites went dark for me, as did two Microsoft-owned services I used frequently, LinkedIn and Skype. Not being able to use tech giant-owned services I love was a hazard of this experiment: As The Wall Street Journal noted, the tech giants have bought more than 400 companies and start-ups over the last decade.

Critics of the big tech companies are often told, If you dont like the company, dont use its products. My takeaway from the experiment was that its not possible to do that. Its not just the products and services branded with the big tech giants name. Its that these companies control a thicket of more obscure products and services that are hard to untangle from tools we rely on for everything we do, from work to getting from point A to point B.

Many people called what I did digital veganism. Digital vegans are deliberative about the hardware and software they use and the data they consume and share, because information is power, and increasingly a handful of companies seem to have it all.

There were two very different types of reaction to the story. Some people said that it proved just how essential these companies are to the American economy and how useful they are to consumers, meaning regulators shouldnt interfere with them. Others, like Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and ex officio member of the Houses antitrust committee, said at the time that the experiment was proof of their monopolistic power.

By virtue of controlling essential infrastructure, these companies appear to have the ability to control access to markets, Mr. Nadler said. In some basic ways, the problem is not unlike what we faced 130 years ago, when railroads transformed American life both enabling farmers and producers to access new markets, but also creating a key chokehold that the railroad monopolies could exploit.

If I were still blocking the tech giants today, I wouldnt have been able to watch this weeks antitrust hearing online. C-SPAN streamed it live via YouTube, which Google owns.

After the experiment was over, though, I went back to using the companies services again, because as it demonstrated, I didnt really have any other choice.

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I Tried to Live Without the Tech Giants. It Was Impossible. - The New York Times

Banning TikTok was only the tip of the iceberg.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday announced a new "Clean Network" initiative, aimed at blocking off large swathes of China's internet from the US.

This comes the same week as President Trump ordered that hugely successful social media app TikTok which is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance sell off its US business to an American company or else face getting banned.

"The Clean Network program is the Trump Administration's comprehensive approach to guarding our citizens' privacy and our companies' most sensitive information from aggressive intrusions by malign actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party," Pompeo wrote in the announcement of the program.

The plans will stoke worries that the internet is set to become increasingly balkanized, with citizens unable to access certain apps or services thanks to geopolitical tensions.

Pompeo outlined five ways in which the initiative aims to keep China away from America's internet, although he was not entirely clear about how they might be technically enforced.

Pompeo said this part of the initiative is: "to ensure untrusted People's Republic of China (PRC) carriers are not connected with US telecommunications networks. Such companies pose a danger to US national security and should not provide international telecommunications services to and from the United States."

It is not clear from the press announcement exactly how this will work, whether it will bar Chinese telecoms carriers from operating in the US, or whether it might make it impossible for people in China and the US to call one another.

The "Clean Store" part of the initiative aims: "To remove untrusted applications from US mobile app stores," meaning Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store.

This explanation for this runs: "PRC apps threaten our privacy, proliferate viruses, and spread propaganda and disinformation. American's [sic] most sensitive personal and business information must be protected on their mobile phones from exploitation and theft for the CCP's benefit."

This may mean booting Chinese apps, currently permitted on both the major app stores, out entirely.

The "Clean Apps" part of the initiative is: "To prevent untrusted PRC smartphone manufacturers from pre-installing or otherwise making available for download trusted apps on their apps store."

Pompeo specifically names Chinese tech giant Huawei as an example, calling it "an arm of the PRC surveillance state." The US government has long accused Huawei of acting as a proxy for the Chinese government to spy, which Huawei denies.

"These [trusted] companies should remove their apps from Huawei's app store to ensure they are not partnering with a human rights abuser," Pompeo writes.

Currently, US apps including Amazon's shopping app and Snapchat are available on Huawei's App Gallery.

Pompeo says this is: "To prevent U.S. citizens' most sensitive personal information and our businesses' most valuable intellectual property, including COVID-19 vaccine research, from being stored and processed on cloud-based systems accessible to our foreign adversaries through companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent."

Pompeo writes this part of the initiative is: "To ensure the undersea cables connecting our country to the global internet are not subverted for intelligence gathering by the PRC at hyper scale. We will also work with foreign partners to ensure that undersea cables around the world aren't similarly subject to compromise."

It's not clear how exactly this part of the plan will manifest itself, but in June a DOJ telecoms committee advised the FCC to block the construction of an undersea cable to Hong Kong.

Get the latest Alibaba stock price here.

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The Trump administration unveiled a wild plan to wall off China from the US internet - Business Insider - Business Insider

NEW YORK (AP) Big Tech continues to steamroll through the pandemic, and strong gains for some of the markets most influential companies on Friday helped Wall Street close out its fourth straight winning month.

The S&P 500 rose 24.90 points, or 0.8%, to 3,271.12 following blowout profit reports from Apple and several other tech titans. The gains didnt come easily, though, and the stock market flipped up and down through the day amid worries about the economy and whether Congress can find agreement on more aid for it.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down as many as 300 points before finishing the day up 114.67, or 0.4%, at 26,428.32. The Nasdaq composite jumped 157.64, or 1.5%, to 10,745.27 on the strength for tech stocks, which also accelerated in the last hour of trading.

Despite the gains, caution was clearly present across markets as the coronavirus pandemic continues to cloud the economys prospects. The 10-year Treasury yield touched its lowest level since it dropped to a record low in March. Gold also continued its record-setting run as investors searched for safety, while the majority of stocks in the S&P 500 sank.

Among the laggards were companies that most need the economy to get back to normal and the pandemic to subside, including many in the travel industry.

Expedia Group slumped 4.6% after it reported weaker results for the latest quarter than Wall Street expected. The companys CEO, Peter Kern, called it likely the worst quarter the travel industry has seen in modern history.

Energy companies were also weak as the pandemic sucked away demand for oil. Chevron dropped 2.7% after it reported a worse loss for its latest quarter than Wall Street expected.

The economy cratered to its worst quarterly performance on record during the spring, and worries are high that continuing waves of coronavirus infections may halt what had been a budding recovery. An extra $600 in weekly unemployment benefits from the U.S. government is expiring with Julys end, and Congress continues to argue about how to provide more support for the economy.

Whether Washington can agree on more aid for out-of-work Americans and quickly is the biggest risk for the market in the near term, said Yung-Yu Ma, chief investment strategist at BMO Wealth Management.

If it doesnt happen in short order, theres going to be a lot of disappointment and unease, he said. I think lawmakers are perhaps underestimating how quickly things could spiral downward without an extension in place. It would take only a few weeks before millions of people are cash strapped.

The S&P 500 made its final leg back into positive territory for the day as top Democrats announced a meeting with White House representatives for Saturday morning to continue talks.

Also helping to prop up the S&P 500 was the power of big tech-oriented stocks. Amazon, Apple and Facebook each reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than Wall Street expected late Thursday, and each rose at least 3.7% in their first trading following the reports. Theyre three of the biggest companies in the world, making up nearly 13% of the S&P 500 themselves, so their movements hold great sway over indexes.

Apple was particularly influential, rocketing up 10.5% following what Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives called a Picasso-like performance for its latest quarter.

Googles parent company, another behemoth in the market, also reported stronger profit than analysts had forecast, but its stock stumbled.

Not only are Big Tech companies growing faster than the rest of the market, some investors have even begun seeing them as safer bets than other stocks because the pandemic is pushing more people online and directly into their wheelhouses. Its a far cry from 20 years ago when tech stocks were seen as the riskiest investments.

The strength for tech is one of the reasons the S&P 500 rose 5.5% in July, its best month since April. Continued, massive amounts of aid from the Federal Reserve has been another linchpin. The index has climbed back within 3.4% of its record set in February after earlier being down nearly 34%.

The gains came even though companies have broadly been reporting sharp declines in their profits, as investors hope that a vaccine can be developed in the next year to corral the pandemic and get the economy closer to normal.

The market knows earnings are going to be terrible now, with a few select exceptions, for the majority of companies, Ma said. Whats really holding up the equity markets is this idea that Yes, its a terrible situation now, but the outlook for 2021 and beyond is markedly better.

Other markets have not shown as much exuberance, though. The yield on the 10-year Treasury ticked down to 0.53% from 0.54% late Thursday. It touched its lowest level since March 9, the day it dropped to its record intraday low just below 0.34%. The yield tends to move with investors expectations for the economy and inflation.

Gold for delivery in December, the most actively traded contract, rose $19.10 to settle at $1,985.91 per ounce after earlier climbing as high as $2,005.40.

Benchmark U.S. crude oil rose 35 cents to settle at $40.27 a barrel Friday. Brent crude rose 37 cents to $43.31 a barrel.

European and Asian markets closed broadly lower.

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AP Business Writer Yuri Kageyama contributed.

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Tech giants lead gains as S&P 500 closes 4th winning month - The Associated Press