Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc., listens during an Economic Club of Washington discussion in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Sept. 13, 2018.

Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The blockbuster antitrust hearing featuring CEOs fromAmazon,Apple,FacebookandGooglescheduled for Monday will likely be postponed, two people familiar with the matter told CNBC, due to a conflict with the memorial service for the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.

The House Judiciary Committee and the Antitrust Subcommittee, which is set to host the hearing, have not yet confirmed the move and spokespeople did not immediately comment.

The hearing, which was set to feature Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, is meant to be the culmination of a more than year-long investigation into the four tech giants. Following the hearing, lawmakers plan to issue a report based on their findings throughout the investigation and propose legislation that would aim to bring antitrust laws up to date to be responsive to issues unique to digital marketplaces.

The project has been delayed already by the public health crisis that's interrupted Congress' normal course of business. Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline, D-R.I., said in January he expected the report to be completed by early April, but that timeline has since been shifted at least several months.

It's not yet clear when the hearing will be rescheduled.

A special ceremony is scheduled in honor of Lewis on Monday at 2 p.m. ET at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. After, he will lie in state at the Capitol.The antitrust hearing had been scheduled to begin at noon.

-CNBC's Ylan Mui contributed to this report.

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WATCH:How US antitrust law works, and what it means for Big Tech

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Tech CEO hearing will probably be postponed, sources say - CNBC

The testimony is scheduled for a hearing Wednesday by the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust.

Four Big Tech CEOs Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Google's Sundar Pichai and Apple's Tim Cook will answer for their companies' practices before Congress at a hearing Wednesday by the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust.

The panel has conducted a bipartisan investigation over the past year of the tech giants' market dominance and their effect on consumers.

It's the first such congressional review of the tech industry. It has aimed to determine whether existing competition policies and century-old antitrust laws are adequate or if new legislation and more funding for enforcement are needed.

The four CEOs are expected to testify remotely.

The hearing originally was set for Monday. It was rescheduled to allow lawmakers who are committee members to participate in commemorations at the U.S. Capitol on Monday and Tuesday for Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights icon and longtime Georgia congressman who died July 17.

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Zuckerberg, Bezos, other tech CEOs to testify on competition - WBIR.com

Politicians and officials in Germany are scrambling to tighten up the regulatory oversight of fintech companies following the collapse last month ofWirecard, the online payment processor.

The company, once worth more than $27 billion,filed for insolvency after admitting that a huge fraud had been perpetrated and that more than $2 billion was missing from its accounts. The CEO, Markus Braun, resigned and was arrested.As Europes largest fintech, Wirecard was widely regarded as a national champion in Germany, and so the collapse has caused a national bout of soul searching.

The authorities were really horrified. The regulators were horrified. Investors were horrified. The Finance Ministry were horrified. Everybody was horrified, said professor Dorothea Schaefer, research director, financial markets at the German Institute for Economic Research DIW Berlin. It is felt that this inflicts great damage on Germany as a financial center.

The damage stems from theapparentcredulity of German regulators and the financial community as a whole. It wasnt that long ago that Wirecards CEO, now under arrest on suspicion of false accounting, was hailed as a financial mastermindand a rarity in Germany a tech boss able to compete with the giants of Silicon Valley. At last years NOAH Conference of internet executives and investors in Berlin, Braun was given a platform to brag about his companys superb performance.

I do not like to show off normally, but we have delivered every year an average share price increase of 36% since we went public in 2005, he said.

And yet alarm bells had been ringing about Braun long before last months shocking announcement that huge amounts of money had gone missing.

You dont get to a 2 billion euro [$2.3 billion] hole in your accounts overnight, said Dan McCrum of the Financial Times in London. Something clearly had to have been happening over quite a prolonged period oftime.

McCrum had been writing about Wirecards accounting for years and had provoked the companys ire in the process.Itaccused him of market manipulation of driving down the price of Wirecard sharesin order to make a profit from short selling. To McCrums astonishment, the German regulator sided with Wirecard and launched a criminal investigation against the him, even though he was working for a reputable newspaper .

You do feel a little like the world has turnedupside down when you discover that youre under criminal investigation just for doing your job as a journalist, he said.

McCrum and Wirecards other criticshave been vindicated by the companys collapse. Conversely, Germanys reputation has been tarnished.

Its definitely very embarrassing at a time when the German financial sector is trying to make a renewed play to be the main base for European financial operations after Brexit, said Chris Green, an independent tech analyst.

Frankfurthas been pushingitself as Europes key financial center, able to pick up the mantle from the city of London after the United Kingdom leaves the regulatory jurisdiction of the European Union at the end of this year. Berlin has also been pitching to attract more tech companies from Britain.

Wirecard is a definite setback, Green said. It will make Germany a harder sell for technology companies looking to use it as a base.

But German accountingexpert Henning Zuelch of HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management maintains that Wirecard is an exception, what he calls one bad case out of 1,000 good cases.

Zuelch insists that theres nothing wrong in principle with Germanys regulatory framework. The Wirecard debacle, he said, was partly due to serious understaffing at the enforcement level: Only 15 people have been monitoring companies across the whole German capital market.

We can fix that, he said. We will learn a lot from the Wirecard scandal and make big improvements. This is a temporary embarrassment.

And, he said, such a saga is hardly unprecedented: A stock market darling bats away allegations of dodgy dealing while the regulator misses a trick and investorsgladly accept a companys denials so long as the share price continues todazzle. Not a uniquely German story.

Also, the scramble to tighten things up will not be confined to Germany. Wirecards auditor, Ernst & Young, which stands accused of failing to spot the irregularities, is one of the Big Four accounting firms based in the U.K. The British regulators annual review of auditingquality has just concluded that fully one-third of audits by the leading firms need improvement.

Were going to get our butts kicked again over Wirecard, observed one senior U.K. bean counter.

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The collapse of tech giant Wirecard triggers national angst in Germany - Marketplace

But the countrys answer to Americas Nasdaq is not for the faint of heart

Jul 22nd 2020

SHANGHAIS STAR market, a stock exchange for Chinas home-grown technology firms, celebrates its first birthday today. It has much to cheer about. Launched with an ambition to rival Nasdaq, a venue in New York where many American tech giants are listed, the toddler has surpassed the older ChiNext exchange in Shenzhen and already ranks second globally by capital raised in IPOs so far this year. And it just received a lovely present. On July 20th Ant Group, the financial-services arm of Alibaba, an e-commerce giant, said it had chosen STAR as one of two exchanges on which it is planning its long-awaited listing (the other winner is Hong Kong, which has also grown popular among fast-growing Chinese companies). Though the exact size and timing of the offering are still unknown, it could well turn out to be the largest IPO ever. Ant was last valued at $150bn in 2018; listing even a small portion of its shares could place it above Saudi Aramcos IPO last year, the largest yet at $26bn.

Two factors explain STARs appeal to issuers. First, it enjoys rock-solid political backing. Chinas government sees it as a way to channel capital towards young technologies it wants to nurture, from high-tech sensors to quantum computing. To help money flow, it has loosened restrictions that apply to stock offerings elsewhere (eg, on other Chinese exchanges, an informal price cap of 23 times earnings and a 44% ceiling on first-day gains). It has also fast-tracked IPO approvals, which can take years on other exchanges. Second, the mood has soured against Chinese companies in America, where many promising companies from the mainland would have traditionally considered listing. America has threatened to impose sanctions on Chinese officials. Earlier this year, the Senate also passed legislation that could force American-listed Chinese firms to delist if they fail to show their audit work papers to American regulators for three consecutive years. That makes Asian alternatives more palatable.

It helps that investors like STAR too. Some offerings have attracted orders amounting to thousands of times the quantum of shares up for sale; some stocks have rocketed tenfold within hours of listing. But STAR is not for the faint-hearted. The prices of shares listed there are sometimes way off those of similar securities listed on more mature markets, hinting that they may be divorced from company fundamentals. The Shanghai price of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, a chipmaker that raised 53.2bn yuan ($7.6bn) in early July through a dual IPO, is more than three times its Hong Kong price, for example. Such inconsistencies can exist on the way down, as well as on the way up. As investors sell older stocks to pile into the newest and flashiest offerings, prices can slide by double-digit percentages, suggesting the market may not have the liquidity yet to absorb large IPOs in quick succession.

This creates a conundrum for Chinas rulers. Investors positive reaction to STAR may prompt regulators to ease stockmarket rules on other mainland exchanges, leading to more efficient, liquid markets and allowing the government to funnel capital to strategic sectors. But untamed speculation by fickle punters makes bubbles more likely, and the political, PR and financial risks of market crashes rank among the things that keep Chinas masters awake at night. If it proves little else than a fashionable casino, STARs allure could dim fast.

See the rest here:

China's newest technology stock exchange is thriving despite the pandemic - The Economist

Washington (AFP) - A highly anticipated congressional hearing on anti-competitive practices, bringing together the heads of four US technology giants, has been rescheduled for noon (1600 GMT) Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee has announced.

The heads of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple -- the world's biggest technology companies -- will be testifying at a time of growing complaints about their dominance and amid calls by some politicians and activists to break them up.

The hearing, originally set for Monday, was rescheduled. The committee did not offer a reason, but civil rights icon and long-time congressman John Lewis will be lying in state in the US Capitol on Monday and Tuesday.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the four tech leaders -- Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Tim Cook (Apple), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Sundar Pichai (Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube) -- will be allowed to appear virtually if they wish.

It will be a first congressional appearance for Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post.

Pressure has been growing both from the right and the left -- and sometimes internally -- to do something about the overwhelming dominance of the internet platforms.

The Judiciary Committee has spent more than a year conducting a sweeping investigation into the four companies to determine whether they are guilty of any antitrust abuses and, if so, to consider possible remedies.

See the original post here:

US Congress to question heads of tech giants on Wednesday - Yahoo News

Dell is considering spinning off VMware next year, raising questions on the future of a critical player in cloud computing.

Dell acquired VMware in 2015 after its $67 billion merger with EMC ,giving it control of a powerhouse in virtualization software, which made it possible for businesses to tap disparate computer systems, reducing the need for hardware. VMware in particular has struck partnerships with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft making it a secret superpower in the cloud wars.

Dell announced last week that it was exploring the spinoff which it said would benefit the shareholders, partners and customers, although it is also open to maintaining its 81% ownership of the software giant.

Some experts point to another scenario: VMware being acquired by another tech giant.

VMware's virtualization technology made it a rising star of cloud computing, the fast-growing trend which allows businesses to set up their networks in web-based platforms, making it possible to scale down or even abandon private, on-premise data centers.

VMware has become even more important in a newer trend called hybrid cloud, in which businesses maintain networks in web-based platforms, while keeping huge chunks of data and applications in private, on-premise data centers.

These trends actually made VMware, an influential players in the cloud, and a valued partner for its top players: Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

"The virtualization layer arbitrates whatever is below and above it," analyst Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates told Business Insider. "VMware is the king of that. VMware would be a valuable property to any company in the enterprise space with the means to execute the deal. What any of them gains is a competitive edge."

But he also said VMware is "a pretty big fish to swallow. So, whoever bought it would have to have a pretty big war chest."

VMware has a market cap of about $57 billion. Analyst Ray Wang of Constellation Research estimated that VMware's price tag would be at least $70 billion, which means the pool of would-be buyers would be limited.

These are 5 tech giants that may be interested in buying VMware if Dell decides to sell it, according to experts:

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These 5 tech giants could buy VMware if Dell chooses to sell the software giant, according to analysts: 'VMware would be a valuable property to any...

Stocks traded lower on Thursday as Microsoft led shares of major tech companies lower and traders pored through disappointing unemployment data.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 271 points, or 1%. The S&P 500 slid 1% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.9%.

Microsoft shares were down by 3.7% despite reporting better-than-expected earnings for the previous quarter.Though the company's results were largely positive, Microsoft said its transactional license purchasing continued to slow and that subsidiary LinkedIn was negatively impacted by the weak job market.

Other tech giants were also under pressure. Amazon dropped 3%. Apple traded 3.7% lower. Netflix slid 1.9%. Tesla, meanwhile, gave back its earlier gains falling 4.2% despite reporting earnings thatblew past analyst expectations.Elon Musk's automaker also said it's set "for a successful second half" and reiterated its goal of delivering 500,000 vehicles this year.

Christopher Harvey, senior analyst at Wells Fargo Securities, noted these "uber-cap" tech stocks have led the sharp gains off the 2020 lows, adding: "We are seeing growing similarities to the late 1990's."

"Overall, our intermediate-term worry is that a melt-up may destabilize the marketplace and easy come, easy go i.e., as stocks aggressively discount easy 1H21 comps but do not factor in political risks," Harvey said in a note.

The latest unemployment figures also dented market sentiment.

U.S. weekly jobless claims came in at 1.416 million for last week, marking the 18th straight week in which initial claims totaled more than 1 million. Economists expected another 1.3 million workers to have filed initial claims for state unemployment benefits, according to Dow Jones.

"The surge of COVID cases in the Sun Belt and the stalling out of reopening activities in other states has seemingly caused another round of layoffs that has stymied the nascent labor market recovery," said Thomas Simons, money market economist at Jefferies, in a note.

This stalling in the labor market comes as lawmakers work on an additional stimulus package for those impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

On Wednesday, sources told CNBC that Republicans wereconsidering extending a $600-per-week unemployment benefit at a reduced rate of $100 per week. On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin saidan extension in unemployment benefits will be based on "approximately 70% wage replacement."

CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed to this report.

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Stocks fall to session low, with Dow the dropping 250 points as tech falters - CNBC

Swiss keyboard startup Typewise has bagged a $1 million seed round to build out a typo-busting, privacy-safe next word prediction engine designed to run entirely offline. No cloud connectivity, no data mining risk is the basic idea.

They also intend the tech to work on text inputs made on any device, be it a smartphone or desktop, a wearable, VR or something weirder that Elon Musk might want to plug into your brain in future.

For now theyve got a smartphone keyboard app thats had around 250,000 downloads with some 65,000 active users at this point.

The seed funding breaks down into $700K from more than a dozen local business angels; and $340K via the Swiss government through a mechanism (called Innosuisse projects), akin to a research grant, which is paying for the startup to employ machine learning experts at Zurichs ETH research university to build out the core AI.

The team soft launched a smartphone keyboard app late last year, which includes some additional tweaks (such as an optional honeycomb layout they tout as more efficient; and the ability to edit next word predictions so the keyboard quickly groks your slang) to get users to start feeding in data to build out their AI.

Their main focus is on developing an offline next word prediction engine which could be licensed for use anywhere users are texting, not just on a mobile device.

The goal is to develop a world-leading text prediction engine that runs completely on-device, says co-founder David Eberle. The smartphone keyboard really is a first use case. Its great to test and develop our algorithms in a real-life setting with tens of thousands of users. The larger play is to bring word/sentence completion to any application that involves text entry, on mobiles or desktop (or in future also wearables/VR/Brain-Computer Interfaces).

Currently its pretty much only Google working on this (see Gmails auto completion feature). Applications such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, Telegram, or even SAP, Oracle, Salesforce would want such productivity increase and at that level privacy/data security matters a lot. Ultimately we envision that every human-machine interface is, at least on the text-input level, powered by Typewise.

Youd be forgiven for thinking all this sounds a bit retro, given the earlier boom in smartphone AI keyboards such as SwiftKey (now owned by Microsoft).

The founders have also pushed specific elements of their current keyboard app such as the distinctive honeycomb layout before, going down a crowdfunding route back in 2015, when they were calling the concept Wrio. But they reckon its now time to go all in hence relaunching the business as Typewise and shooting to build a licensing business for offline next word prediction.

Well use the funds to develop advanced text predictions first launching it in the keyboard app and then bringing it to the desktop to start building partnerships with relevant software vendors, says Eberle, noting theyre working on various enhancements to the keyboard app and also plan to spend on marketing to try to hit 1M active users next year.

We have more innovative stuff [incoming] on the UX side as well, e.g. interacting with auto correction (so the user can easily intervene when it does something wrong in many countries users just turn it off on all keyboards because it gets annoying), gamifying the general typing experience (big opportunity for kids/teenagers, also making them more aware of what and how they type), etc.

The competitive landscape around smartphone keyboard tech, largely dominated by tech giants, has left room for indie plays, is the thinking. Nor is Typewise the only startup thinking that way (Fleksy has similar ambitions, for one). However gaining traction vs such giants and over long established typing methods is the tricky bit.

Android maker Google has ploughed resource into its Gboard AI keyboard larding it with features. While, on iOS, Apples interface for switching to a third party keyboard is infamously frustrating and finicky; the opposite of a seamless experience. Plus the native keyboard offers next word prediction baked in and Apple has plenty of privacy credit. So why would a user bother switching is the problem there.

Competing for smartphone users fingers as an indie certainly isnt easy. Alternative keyboard layouts and input mechanism are always a very tough sell as they disrupt peoples muscle memory and hit mobile users hard in their comfort and productivity zone. Unless the user is patient and/or stubborn enough to stick with a frustratingly different experience theyll soon ditch for the keyboard devil they know. (Qwerty is an ancient typewriter layout turned typing habit we English speakers just cant kick.)

Given all that, Typewises retooled focus on offline next word prediction to do white label b2b licensing makes more sense assuming they can pull off the core tech.

And, again, theyre competing at a data disadvantage on that front vs more established tech giant keyboard players, even as they argue thats also a market opportunity.

Google and Microsoft (thanks to the acquisition of SwiftKey) have a solid technology in place and have started to offer text predictions outside of the keyboard; many of their competitors, however, will want to embed a proprietary (difficult to build) or independent technology, especially if their value proposition is focused on privacy/confidentiality, Eberle argues.

Would Telegram want to use Googles text predictions? Would SAP want that their clients data goes through Microsofts prediction algorithms? Thats where we see our right to win: world-class text predictions that run on-device (privacy) and are made in Switzerland (independent environment, no security back doors, etc).

Early impressions of Typewises next word prediction smarts (gleaned by via checking out its iOS app) are pretty low key (ha!). But its v1 of the AI and Eberle talks bullishly of having world class developers working on it.

The collaboration with ETH just started a few weeks ago and thus there are no significant improvements yet visible in the live app, he tells TechCrunch. As the collaboration runs until the end of 2021 (with the opportunity of extension) the vast majority of innovation is still to come.

He also tells us Typewise is working with ETHsProf. Thomas Hofmann (chair of the Data Analytic Lab, formerly at Google), as well as having has two PhDs in NLP/ML and one MSc in ML contributing to the effort.

We get exclusive rights to the [ETH] technology; they dont hold equity but they get paid by the Swiss government on our behalf, Eberle also notes.

Typewise says its smartphone app supports more than 35 languages. But its next word prediction AI can only handle English, German, French, Italian and Spanish at this point. The startup says more are being added.

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Typewise taps $1M to build an offline next word prediction engine - TechCrunch

With help from John Hendel and Cristiano Lima

Programming announcement: Our newsletters are evolving. Morning Tech will continue to publish daily for POLITICO Pro subscribers, but starting in fall 2020 will consolidate to a weekly newsletter for all others. There will be no changes to the policy newsletters available to POLITICO Pro subscribers. To continue to receive Morning Tech daily, as well as access POLITICO Pros full suite of policy tools and trackers, get in touch about a Pro subscription. Already a Pro subscriber? Learn more here.

Airwaves in the air: Senators will dive in today on ways to get the U.S. ready for 5G, a debate coming right as a long-awaited FCC spectrum auction kicks off.

Surveillance fight continues: More Democrats are backing bicameral legislation banning the federal governments use of facial recognition, including former presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Ten points for Twitter: Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, one of the civil rights leaders spearheading the #StopHateforProfit advertising boycott against Facebook, commended Twitter for doing what he thinks Facebook wont.

ITS THURSDAY; WELCOME TO MORNING TECH! Im your host, Alexandra Levine.

Got a news tip? Write Alex at [emailprotected], or follow along @Ali_Lev and @alexandra.levine. An event for our calendar? Send details to [emailprotected] Anything else? Full team info below. And don't forget: Add @MorningTech and @PoliticoPro on Twitter.

TODAY: 5G AIRWAVES IN THE SPOTLIGHT Wireless spectrum will take center stage across a number of fronts today. At 10 a.m., the Senate Commerce telecom subcommittee will hear from a slate of industry and analyst witnesses about how the FCC and administration have managed the airwaves in the wake of a series of high-profile 5G spats.

If wireless companies dont have enough airwaves, rural areas will fall behind in getting 5G, subcommittee chair John Thune (R-S.D.) plans to warn in opening remarks. Hell call for the federal government to focus on making more efficient use of its own federally held airwaves and to better use the Spectrum Relocation Fund, a federal pot of money that helps cover the cost of agencies moving to new spectrum bands. We need to make sure the interagency process when making these decisions is transparent, the GOP whip will say.

Tom Power, general counsel for wireless trade group CTIA, plans to warn of global implications surrounding limited availability of prime mid-band spectrum. Other nations are beating us to the punch, Power will testify. Hell recommend the lower 3 MHz band, currently held by the Pentagon, as the next best target.

And watch for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who just introduced new spectrum legislation, S. 4234 (116), with fellow GOP Texan Sen. John Cornyn. The Ensuring Public Safetys Access to Airwaves Act would safeguard public safety spectrum known as the T-band while also imposing deadlines on the Commerce Department to identify government-held airwaves to reallocate for the private sector.

One timely hook: The FCC is today kicking off its first auction of this prized mid-band spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band. If given my choice, I would have started it three years ago, Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who has long advocated for freeing such mid-band spectrum, said during an event Wednesday. In todays auction, 271 applicants won the right to bid, including big carriers like T-Mobile.

FACIAL RECOGNITION BAN BILL: WHOS IN, AND WHOS OUT? Digital rights group Fight for the Future and members of the Ban Facial Recognition coalition are pressuring members of Congress to come out for or against recent legislation that is one of the most ambitious Capitol Hill crackdowns to date on facial recognition technology. The Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act would stop the federal governments use of facial recognition in the U.S., but the bill still has no GOP backers.

Even so, support among Democrats is growing: In addition to Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who jointly introduced the legislation in late June, the bill has picked up about a dozen new co-sponsors across both chambers of Congress, most notably former 2020 hopefuls Warren and Sanders. At a time when Americans are demanding that we address systemic racism in law enforcement, the use of facial recognition technology is a step in the wrong direction, Merkley said Wednesday. The federal government must ban facial recognition until we have confidence that it doesnt exacerbate racism.

An online congressional scorecard launched by the advocacy groups on Wednesday is keeping tabs on who has and has not formally gotten on board.

Jim Jordan. | Kevin Dietsch/Pool via AP

JORDANS LATEST BIG TECH HEARING ASK Top House Judiciary Republican Jim Jordan of Ohio on Wednesday called for the committees Democratic leaders to invite Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to the upcoming blockbuster hearing with the Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon chiefs. Jordan wrote in a letter that he wants to hear from Twitter about its power in the marketplace, its role in moderating content on its platform, and the causes for its recent highly publicized security breaches. Twitter, which is dwarfed by rivals like Facebook, has not been a target of antitrust scrutiny. But Republicans have accused it of stifling conservative viewpoints.

Some big tech critics said adding Twitter would divert from the sessions focus: allegations of anticompetitive behavior by the four tech giants. Republicans concerned by Google & other Big Tech companies (i.e. not Twitter, which is less than 1/20th the size of Facebook) should be alarmed by this strange demand, said Luther Lowe, SVP of public policy at Google competitor Yelp. Its only effect would be diluting the substance of a historic hearing with the 4 CEOs.

Dont expect to see @Jack on the (virtual) dais: Its the third such letter by Jordan calling for changes to the hearing format, and thus far, Judiciary Democrats havent indicated any interest in following through on his demands. He has not been invited, a spokesperson for Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), chair of the antitrust subcommittee hosting the hearing, tweeted Wednesday in response to a post about Republicans call for Dorsey to testify. Twitter declined comment. (More on how groups and lawmakers are jockeying to shape the hearing here.)

Plus: Do tech companies have too much power to shape politics? A majority of Americans think so, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. 72% of U.S. adults say social media companies have too much power and influence in politics today, and just one-fifth feel the tech giants have the right amount of political power, per the study. About half of Americans would like to see more regulation of these companies.

THUMBS UP FOR TWITTER, DOWN FOR FACEBOOK One of the civil rights leaders behind the ongoing Facebook advertising boycott jabbed the social network Wednesday as he praised one of its rivals. Twitter that day announced a clarification on its treatment of Jewish symbols on the platform, characterizing the 'yellow star' or yellow badge symbol [as] being used by those seeking to target Jewish people and as a violation of the Twitter Rules. Twitter declared that the Star of David, on the other hand, should not be classified as a hateful symbol, despite some accounts being incorrectly flagged over those images.

Greenblatt praised Twitter for clarifying the difference between images used to harass and when used to express identity and empathy, adding that the league had reached out to the company to help it understand and fix the issue. Notable that they moved swiftly to correct this problem, Greenblatt said, taking a subtle swing at Facebook: While we can't expect social media platforms to be perfect, we can expect them to correct problems when they learn of them. #StopHateForProfit.

The ADL is also out with a new video this morning accusing Mark Zuckerberg of still giving hate groups the biggest platform theyve ever had, profiting from hate, and keeping intact a business model that rewards division. It continues: Are you finally going to listen to us, Mark? Are you willing to stop profiting from hate?

Julie Elmer, a former trial lawyer with the Justice Departments antitrust division, has joined the law firm Freshfields as a partner. Matthew Haskins, former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for legislative affairs, is now working for the new public policy practice of Amazon Web Services. Jack Wilmer, the Pentagon's top cybersecurity official, is slated to leave his post at the end of July, POLITICO reports.

Lobbying latest, via POLITICO Influence: Twitter has added TwinLogic Strategies to its lineup of outside lobbying firms, which also includes the Integrated Solutions Group and the Joseph Group. And T-Mobile has hired BL Partners Group to lobby on telecommunications, financial services and tax reform issues, according to a disclosure filing. The company also recently brought on Howard Symons of Jenner & Block and retains about 30 other Washington lobbying firms.

Setting a precedent: After Twitter did so first, other Silicon Valley companies, including Facebook and YouTube, said they were also considering crackdowns on QAnon, WaPo reports.

Opinion: Europe must not rush Google-Fitbit deal, a group of academics and antitrust and privacy experts in Europe write in POLITICO.

ICYMI: A Senate committee Wednesday approved a bill to ban federal employees from downloading or using video-sharing app TikTok on government devices, a proposal gaining broad momentum across Washington, Cristiano reports.

Eyeballs watching emoji: A group of U.S. tech investors has launched an ambitious plan to buy TikTok from its Chinese owner, as the popular short-video app tries to escape being banned by the White House, Ars Technica reports.

A message from Facebook:

Facebook launches Global State of Small Business Report. At Facebook, we are committed to helping small businesses succeed. We partnered with the World Bank and the OECD to survey businesses in 50+ countries and regions to understand the challenges they face and ways we can better support them. Go further: Read the first report

View from the West Coast: These California privacy initiative opponents might surprise you, via POLITICOs Katy Murphy in Sacramento.

Reality check: Elon Musks controversial comments about the pandemic had little effect on Teslas bottom line, WaPo reports.

Funny seeing you here: The DoD recently gave a slice of cash from the CARES Act to U.S. drone companies, POLITICO reports, hoping it would juice the domestic market in the Trump administration's latest gambit to try to undercut Chinese dominance in the drone marketplace.

New on the competition scene: Slack is accusing Microsoft, which has long escaped antitrust allegations, of corporate bullying taking the complaint to European regulators, WaPo reports.

Tips, comments, suggestions? Send them along via email to our team: Bob King ([emailprotected], @bkingdc), Heidi Vogt ([emailprotected], @HeidiVogt), Nancy Scola ([emailprotected], @nancyscola), Steven Overly ([emailprotected], @stevenoverly), John Hendel ([emailprotected], @JohnHendel), Cristiano Lima ([emailprotected], @viaCristiano), Alexandra S. Levine ([emailprotected], @Ali_Lev), and Leah Nylen ([emailprotected], @leah_nylen).

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5G takes the Senate stage - Politico

Peter Altmaier (CDU), Federal Minister of Economics and Energy, speaks at the virtual Gaia-X expert forum of the Federal Ministry of Economics.

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The two biggest economies in the European Union hope they have an answer to the domination enjoyed by American and Chinese companies in the cloud computing industry: Gaia X

Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Alibaba are the four main players globally when it comes to cloud services. However, European policymakers have grown anxious about their dependence on a small number of major tech companies, which aren't European.

That has been the case in particular since the United States enacted a law in 2018 that compels U.S. firms to hand in data to American authorities, even if the latter is stored elsewhere in the world. Germany and France have concerns that the data of European citizens is at risk.

"Gaia X is a two-fold approach to a problem we face in Europe and a problem that every company in the world faces right now," Marco-Alexander Breit, head of Task Force Artificial Intelligence at the German economy ministry, told CNBC's "Beyond the Valley" podcast.

"We combine infrastructure services like data storage, data processing in Europe, but it is open for participation even for companies that are not from European origin, as long as they stick to our rules and adhere to our standards," said Breit, who heads the Gaia X project in Germany.

It is about realizing that relying too much maybe on external players, whether they are American or Chinese or from anywhere else, is not great in the new economy...

Dexter Thillien

senior industry analyst, Fitch Solutions

The Franco-German project, born in 2018, aims to provide a secure infrastructure for data, while simultaneously allowing companies to move data across borders. Its overarching principle is to enable European nations to become digitally sovereign a concept that has gained traction in recent years and could prove challenging for the traditional tech giants.

It's a "first step toward a broader ambition," said Dexter Thillien, senior industry analyst at Fitch Solutions.

"It is about realizing that relying too much maybe on external players, whether they are American or Chinese or from anywhere else, is not great in the new economy where data is going to be more important, and you need a European alternative," he added.

More than 300 organizations worldwide are involved with the project so far, including Orange, Deutsche Telekom and SAP. The goal is to launch the infrastructure in late 2020 or early 2021.

Gaia X would, for instance, give health care providers the ability to exchange data and algorithms in a safe way with other hospitals in their proximity. That could in turn help with emergency transplants and other life-threatening conditions.

However, the initiative has to become more attractive than the big players if it wants to succeed, Thillien said.

"It is not going to be easy for that product to find its place," he said, citing budget and technical constraints.

The annual budget for Gaia X is 1.5 million euros ($1.7 million).

Nonetheless, Breit said he believes those seemingly limited financial resources "are not important."

"The X framework and the X entity has only the responsibilities to make the ecosystem work, to negotiate the standards, to negotiate the rules, and to provide standardized IPs for example to make the software run," he said, adding that the major advancements in artificial intelligence would remain a task for the big tech companies themselves.

IP, or internet protocol, refers to a set of rules that facilitates the movement of data across networks. There are varying IP standards.

Read the rest here:

Meet Gaia X Europe's answer to the power of U.S. and Chinese cloud giants - CNBC

Major League Baseball will look to Big Tech companies like Apple and Google to help with its shortened season that is scheduled to begin Thursday.

On Monday, MLB provided a preview of how games will look and sound during the pandemic, with features like artificial crowd noise and an upgraded replay system for fans watching from home.

Two games are scheduled for opening night: The defending World Series champion Washington Nationals host the New York Yankees at 7 p.m. ET, followed by theLos Angeles Dodgers hosting the San Francisco Giants at 10 p.m. ET.

As part of the league's Covid-19 health and safety protocols, MLB said it would ban traditional video stations shared throughout clubhouses. The league took advantage of its 2016 partnership with Apple to expand the dugout iPad program. It will now distribute 15 iPads to each team for players and staff to dissect performances and additional team content like scouting reports.

Google will also play a part, with all 30 teams using Google Cloud to run MLB's stat-tracking system, Statcast, and provide digital infrastructure for everything from team websites to online ticket sales.

MLB partnered with the Google in March to be the league's official cloud partner.Jason Gaedtke, MLB chief technology officer, said Monday that the league selected Google for the firm's "strength in large scale data processing, analytics and specifically machine-learning."

With its Statcast 3D platform powered by Google, MLB said broadcasts can re-create game footage in a variety of virtual perspectives. Concepts like displaying a player's home run trails, pitching angles from a catcher and umpire's perspective and how play is affected by weather conditions will now be available for national and regional broadcast partners.

Before Covid-19 delayed the current season, MLB completed its first significant technology refresh, an overhaul of its replay operation. It's the first upgrade since the league rolled out its expanded instant replay system in 2014, according to Chris Marinak, MLB executive VP of strategy technology and innovation.

Canadian telecommunications company Mitel assisted league with its new Replay Center located in New Jersey. The system can receive 48 channels of video and take in 24 isolation cameras from all over the field, said Marinak.

Also, the league placed 4K cameras to overlook fields. The cameras are generally used to look at a base runner's placement and "other wide-angle things that may not be available during the broadcast," Marinak said.

MLB said the tech upgrades will help get footage to umpires faster to cut down on the time spent reviewing plays. It will also help the team to decide whether or not to challenge a call.

And with the new camera angles added, MLB decreased the time a team can decide to dispute a call from 30 seconds to 20 seconds for the 2020 season.

Another critical partner will be Sony.

Ballparks will have 12 4K cameras and feature Sony's Hawk-Eye tracking system, which MLB said will help it better track player positioning and movement and "everything that is happening on the field, with no blind spots," according to Gaedtke.

Sony, which renewed its deal with MLB last December, will also provide teams artificial crowd noise. Clubs are required to use some form of fake sounds designed to emulate regular contests with spectators, since games will be held in empty stadiums.

Sony has made available 75 samples of crowd sounds from its MLB video game. The league will provide teams with an iPad filled with the samples that will be controlled by an audio technician during games.

Ryan Zander, MLB vice president of broadcast products and services and new broadcast technology, said clubs would continue to provide traditional organists and batter walk-up music in games, too.

"The idea is to enable the clubs with as much as possible as it relates to creating a realistic environment," Zander said, adding that broadcasters will pick up the sound with natural microphones normally used for crowd noise.

MLB said its baseball operations department would handle any disputes around the artificial sounds, but added it's not anticipating any problems.

MLB will also use virtual ads this season to "make up for lost brand exposure" and "create some new inventory for our partnerships," according to Marinak.

The league generally uses virtual signage at premier events like postseason games and the MLB All-Star Game, but not for regular season regional games.

MLB will oversee the ads on national broadcasts and clubs will manage local ad placements. But if a club decides to install physical ads for a particular game, MLB could restrict virtual ads.

"What we've done this season is qualified a bunch of technologies and devised a plan and framework to make this technology available for all clubs who want to take advantage of the program," said Zander.

Zander added there are guidelines to ad placements in efforts to "make the signage look as authentic as possible, not have it be disruptive to the viewer." The ads can be placed in areas including seating sections, foul ball territory and the pitcher's mound. Teams will be allowed to rotate virtual ads every half inning.

And with fans tuned in, some teams could take advantage of more augmented reality experiences. The New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies experimented with AR options in 2017and Michael Harris, Phillies VP of marketing and new media, told CNBC the team also had success with an their AR bobblehead promotion last season featuring pitcher Aaron Nola.

Here is the original post:

Apple, Google and Sony will be critical to MLB season shortened by coronavirus - CNBC

The U.S. commerce department is adding 11 China-based companies on the list of companies allegedly committing human rights violations against the Uighur, an ethnic group in east and central Asia, The Telegraph reported.

But how did Amazon, Google, Apple, and other tech companies find themselves into this issue?

Right as these Chinese companies are added to the list for allegedly committing human rights abuses against these minorities and Muslim groups from the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, one of these companies, Nanchang O-Film Tech is reportedly partnered with several mainstream tech and automobile companies.

These companies include Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Dell, GM, Google, and more.

(Photo : World Uyghur Congress / Facebook)World Uyghur Congress shares photos of the campaign for human rights.

The U.S. commerce department said that these companies have committed "mass arbitrary detention, forced labor, involuntary collection of biometric data and genetic analysis" against these minorities, and will face restriction on American products, particularly in technology.

According to another report on Digital Trends, information from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's International Cyber Policy Centre entitled Uyghurs For Sale, revealed that since 2017, millions of Uighur and members of the Turkic Muslim minorities are sent to camps in Xinjiang for re-education, but are subject to forced labor and political indoctrination to give up their current beliefs.

The Institute is a think tank supported by the Australian government, and funded by the country's defense department, the report further noted..

"Beijing actively promotes the reprehensible practice of forced labor and abusive DNA collection and analysis schemes to repress its citizens," commerce department secretary Wilbur Ross said. "This action will ensure that our goods and technologies are not used in the Chinese Communist Party's despicable offensive against defenseless Muslim minority populations."

The company being accused, Nanchang O-Film Tech, has made no comments with the media as of press time. Even the tech companies they are partnered with, Amazon, Apple, GM, Microsoft, and Dell have not responded to the accusation.

These actions are part of the efforts from the U.S. government to curb these illegal activities from mainland Chinese companies. O-Film is allegedly using cameras, fingerprint sensors, and more to impose their principles upon these minorities, as they source out their information.

For instance, Apple is known for its yearly reports on its supplies, but apparently, it seems to hide several poor working conditions, including child labor and workers' safety. Also, Amazon has been accused of not providing sufficient health benefits to their employees in light of the pandemic.

There are now more than 40 companies listed by the U.S. Department of Commerce that allegedly violates human rights policies. These efforts are expected to further protect the rights of these groups.

Also Read: U.K. News: After Interfering with Gov't on Huawei Deal, the Tory Rebels Now Wants Chinese Nuclear Station Out

2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

Read more from the original source:

11 China-based Suppliers of US Tech Giants Sanctioned Over Alleged Human Rights Abuses vs the Uighur - Tech Times

A concept image of Net City. Source: NBBJ

For a long time, the concept of smart cities powered by sensors, artificial intelligence and big data have captured our imaginations. And while these concepts wont fall into place overnight, we are beginning to see them slowly take route in the urban environments around us.

As we approach what we hope are the tailwinds of the Covid-19 pandemic, we also approach a point of reflection. The potential power and practicality of smart cities continues to be a topic of debate. A recent TechHQ article documented Sidewalk Labs abandoned plans for a smart city development in an area of Toronto.

With lingering question marks over privacy and the monetization of citizens data, many cities and governments are skirting around the unmediated adoption of smart city technology. However, with life in the fast lane stymied the world over and with the chance to think differently about the use of space around us the case around smart city technology is as prominent as ever, and some tech giants are pressing on with what they see as rethinking cities to be for and about people.

Chinese technology Tencent is one such business. As we covered recently, it has drafted up plans for a 2 million square meter smart city to occupy the southeastern region of Shenzhen, dubbed by some as Chinas Silicon Valley. According to Jonathan Ward, design partner at the smart citys architectural firm NBJJ, the area has been planned to focus its technology on people and the environment first.

Net City. Source: NBBJ

This sentiment speaks to an idyllic model of urban planning, detaching itself (linguistically, at least) from data-oriented concerns surrounding other smart cities, but it will likely portend the way that public bodies increasingly introduce smart city concepts to citizens as we continue to emerge from the pandemic, and as smart city technology continues to permeate in the years to come.

Net City will comprise Tencent offices and residences for its employees, as well as public amenities such as parks and a waterfront area. Ward goes on to claim that the city which will have few streets for cars and hence very few vehicles is a model for the future of city building [] such a precedence on green spaces points to advanced urban agriculture and a rethinking of traditional city values.

Alongside cutting-edge technology in artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous vehicles, all under the shadow of metallic buildings, Ward believes urban innovation should go hand-in-hand with the design of spaces, buildings and cities that are restorative [] with plentiful indoor-outdoor spaces. As society reboots after a pandemic, we will see whether these kind of smart city experiments bear fruit within the coming decade, or begin to churn up some of the same concerns as Sidewalk Labs dalliance.

Kris Hartley, assistant professor, Education University of Hong Kong, upholds such optimism, but with a word of warning. If technology is to shape the post-Covid world and theres no doubting that itll play a big role then technological progress must [] assert itself as a tool for positive change in urban residents everyday lives.

For smart cities to really be smart, then, Hartley suggests they must prioritize sustainability by reducing car use, increasing planning strategies around the needs of people, allowing greater public access, and with increased environmental conservation. At the same time, powered by thousands, if not millions of IoT sensors and AI technology, connected cities also mean data-intensive ones. Will efforts to make cities clean with technology simply offload their carbon footprint to the data center?

A piece in The Engineer mulls this very question, and points to work across UK, US, Germany and India where digital transformation and tech is being used as a unifying asset. Ravi Gopinath, chief cloud & product officer at AVEVA, talked of the potential for tech to overcome its own energy issues to contribute to a citys resilience.

A rendering of the Quayside, part of the now scrapped Sidewalk Labs Toronto smart city concept. Source: Sidewalk Toronto

The outlook from Michael Ganser an engineer with German telematics systems firm Kapsch TrafficCom is similarly bright. He forecasts that the introduction of new digital technologies like networked cars and adaptive traffic lights if installed in all of the worlds cities with populations of more than 200,000 people would save the planet 2% in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

More than 500 smart cities are being built across China, according to government data. These cities are equipped with sensors, cameras, and other gadgets that can crunch data on everything from traffic and pollution, to public health and security. The data anxiety can certainly be excused, and such concerns are not going to go away.

Throughout the coronavirus lockdown, surveillance took on an even more pertinent role than usual, and in smart cities this kind of monitoring will be at worst a kind of under-the-surface, biopolitical hazard. In China, Covid-19 has left the door open for Beijing to ramp up citizen surveillance by introducing new and invasive methods under the guise of fighting the pandemic, whether thats talking drones berating people for not wearing masks, or CCTV installed outside the homes of quarantined individuals.

In the case of Tencents proposal, there may be implications, with time, for Shenzhens neighbor to the South: Hong Kong. In Chinas communist state, though, the general public has less say (Xu Chengwei; public-policy researcher at Singapore Management University).

Smart cities are and will remain, according to authorities a major part of Chinas plan to spur growth amidst a global economic downturn. Hartley warns that the narrative around Covid-19 recovery and resilience is likely to be shaped around urbanism. There may well be an increase in purpose-built towns as demonstration projects or test-bed experiments.

Whether Net City proves to be such a test-bed for heightened surveillance and problematic data processing or whether it can pave the way for the post-Covid, green city revolution remains to be seen. Its construction is scheduled to begin later in 2020.

Go here to see the original:

Could the pandemic affect our perspective on smart cities? - Tech Wire Asia

Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.

Google on Thursday said it's nixing commission fees for retailers selling products on the company's shopping platform, as the search giant tries to catch up to Amazon and its dominant ecommerce operation.

Previously, Google charged merchants to list items with the company's Buy with Google program, which lets people buy items directly through Google's website instead of being sent to an outside digital store. The fee was about 10 to 15% of the sale, comparable to Amazon's rates. The pilot is starting in the US before expanding internationally.

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The apparent goal is to build up Google's shopping service by luring sellers to list their items there in addition to other platforms, instead of skipping Google because of extra fees.

"This removes a major barrier for marketplaces to participate because the duplicate commission has gone," Bill Ready, president of Google's commerce division, said in an interview. "Now they can more easily participate."

For consumers, the change could mean seeing a bigger selection of products when they search on Google. The company could then try to persuade sellers to run more paid product ads on its platform. As it stands now, Google isn't a major ecommerce player. In the US, Amazon is the undisputed leader in online sales, with 38% of the share, according to research firm eMarketer. Walmart is a distant second, with just shy of 6%, followed by eBay's 4.5%. Google doesn't crack the top 10.

Google also said it will let sellers import their inventory data to Google's service from other ecommerce platforms, including Amazon. The company is also partnering with PayPal and Shopify, which helps people create online stores, for payment processing and order management.

The changes intensify an already fierce rivalry with Amazon. The two tech giants have been warring on multiple fronts, including smart home technology. Google's Home smart speaker and Assistant voice software have been sprinting to catch up to Amazon's Echo and Alexa.

Ready wouldn't address Google's competition with Amazon. Google also declined to disclose how many merchants it has in its Buy with Google program, or how much revenue the company has generated through commission fees in the past year.

Thursday's updates come as Google makes a bigger push into ecommerce. In April, the company brought free retail listings to its search engine's shopping tab. Last month, Google expanded the listings to be shown directly in the company's search results, some of the most prized real estate on the internet.

Google has drawn blowback in the past for its shopping efforts. Two years ago, Google was hit with a $1.7 billion fine from the EU for what the commission called "abusive" ad practices, especially when it came to the placement of Google's shopping ads.

Next week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai will join the heads of Facebook, Amazon and Apple at an antitrust hearing as part of an investigation by a House Judiciary subcommittee. Google is expected to address questions about its digital ad business, as well as accusations the company's platforms give preferential treatment to its own products.

Read more:

Google has a plan to lure shoppers away from Amazon - CNET

Jim Cramer

Scott Mlyn | CNBC

CNBC's Jim Cramer said Monday that the moves of three major tech stocks were "truly insane and unlike any i have ever seen in my life."

Cramer's comments in a tweet came as shares of Amazon and Microsoft, two of the largest U.S. stocks by market cap, jumped by 7.9% and 4.3% respectively during Monday's session. Electric vehicle company Tesla also surged 9.5%, continuing a blistering run that has seen its shares rise 60% since June 29.

The gains helped to push the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite up 2.5% on Monday.

Amazon's move represents a share reversal for the e-commerce and cloud company, which saw its shares sink all five days last week. Monday's jump erased almost all of those losses.

Both Amazon and Microsoft, which fell in four of five sessions last week, have outpaced the broader market this year, with their subscription and cloud businesses proving to be resistant to the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.

Tesla has left both of those tech giants behind with is run this year, rising nearly 300%. Tesla and Microsoft are scheduled to report quarterly earnings results on Wednesday.

Read more here:

Cramer says moves in tech stocks are 'truly insane' as Amazon and Tesla climb - CNBC

Executive Summary

In the digital economy, innovators often lose out to more agile imitators who can leverage new know-how very quickly and creatively. The best way to avoid that trap is to focus on innovation in products and services requiring complex solutions whose many elements can be continuously recombined and repurposed.

In the digital economy, the race is often won by imitators who turn out to be more agile and creative than even the most successful first movers. Take the case of Snapchat. Created in 2011, it quickly reeled in millions of teenagers and young adults with a standout app on which shared photos disappear after 24 hours. Facebook reportedly tried, but failed, to buy Snapchat. So it did the next best thing: copy.

Facebook-owned Instagram simply replicated the main features of Snapchat Stories, rolling out Instagram Stories in 2016. Within a year, Instagram had crossed Snapchats daily active user (DAU) numbers and then some while the latter faltered. Although Snapchat has since regained some of its early influence, its experience shows that barriers to entry in the digital realm are low, even for established platforms that have already captured a significant user base.

The usual approach taken by first movers to protect their lead involves heavy investment in deploying their innovative know-how through in-house knowledge transfer and collaboration, the idea being that the company with the idea can stay ahead if it leverages its knowledge more quickly across employees and encourages teamwork. The problem, as weve argued in a recent paper, is that companies that invest in leveraging their knowledge internally can actually end up benefiting the competition as much as themselves, particularly when the knowledge is easy to copy and can be shared among many rivals. We call this the knowledge-spillover sharing effect.

Given this, is there any hope for an innovator to succeed in the face of copycats?

The right formula, as we demonstrate in our paper, is one of complex continuous innovation, where individuals in the firm use recombination to repeatedly reconfigure elements of their existing knowledge, fusing this together to deliver new product solutions. While such a strategy can overcome the innovators imitation dilemma by thwarting rivals knowledge-spillover sharing effects, we also show that it can only do so if innovators tackle complex opportunities that are composed of many interdependent features. Lets look at a couple of case studies demonstrating the approach in action.

How TikTok outsmarted Facebook

The meteoric rise of TikTok, the short-form video sharing service owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, is instructive. Created in 2017, TikTok has reached 1 billion users faster than any other platform, and is consistently one of the top downloaded apps. According toMark Zuckerberg, it is the first consumer internet product built by one of the Chinese tech giants that is doing quite well around the world.

TikToks growth and (near-term) sustainable competitive advantage comes from its ability to combine and recombine products and services from different categories. On the consumer side, TikToks algorithms quickly learn individual preferences by capturing users likes, comments, and time spent on each video. On the producer side, AI simplifies video editing and suggests music, hashtags, filters, and other enhancements that are trending or have been proven popular. Essentially, TikTok has recombined elements of these different technologies and applications to create a new category of bite-sized amateur entertainment, distinct from the chronicling of real life offered by Facebook.

Facebooks efforts to replicate its triumph over Snapchat through imitation have thus far come to nothing. The social-media giants nixing of Lasso, the TikTok clone, in July speaks to the difficulty of emulating the Chinese app.

Outracing imitators the Spotify way

Another good example of using complex continuous innovation to stave off copycats is Spotify. Its seemingly simple music-streaming service is in fact a complex combination of a dynamically changing user-interface, behavioral prediction algorithms, and an ever-expanding catalog of music. Spotify learns a customers preferences and uses population-level predictions to suggest content that will ensure stickiness.

So successful is Spotify at innovating in a complex opportunity space that it has kept mighty Apple at bay. Despite extensive promotion of its service, Apple Music has not been able to capture a significant share of the music streaming market. Spotify meanwhile has continued to innovate via recombination, adding new features and categories that marry technology with content. The most recent example is its foray into podcasting, hitherto Apples domain, with a $100-million exclusive deal with popular podcaster Joe Rogan.

Ganging up on the innovator: Ubers troubles

Weve also found an interesting competitive dynamic working against the first mover. Copycats are willing to learn from one another probably more so than the original innovator. This makes it easier for them to catch up and overtake the first mover.

Look at what happened to Uber. Although the ride-sharing platform the company pioneered in 2010 was unique, it was relatively simple to replicate. Before long, rivals like Lyft in the US and Didi, Gojek, and Grab in Asia offered similar services and siphoned Ubers market share. These companies learned by copying not only Uber but also one another, effectively ganging up on the more established innovator, whose early market dominance may have made it complacent.

Grab, Gojek, and Didi quickly adapted Ubers map function to their own product, which they then adjusted based on one anothers modifications. There is some evidence Grab adapted Ubers rider promotions and driver incentives, only to see Gojek use the same ideas. Copying continued to heat up as all three Asian players then pursued a hyper-diversified super app strategy. Grab appeared to copy Gojeks proliferation of services in Indonesia, such as insurance, with their own offerings. And some believe Gojek entered Singapore with data it scraped from Grabs maps. The result was a highly competitive marketplace that led to Ubers exit from the region.

***

Given the knowledge-spillover sharing effects of the sort weve described, firms grappling with the imitation dilemma need to be careful about just how they mobilize their in-house knowledge resources. Trying to be faster than copycats, or focusing only on in-house knowledge transfer and collaboration, wont be a sustainable strategy. Rather, they should focus on thwarting potential imitators by recombining knowledge in novel ways to tackle complex opportunities.

See original here:

How Spotify and TikTok Beat Their Copycats - Harvard Business Review

Apple has defended the fees it charges developers to sell their digital products via its App Store.

The iPhone-maker says a study it commissioned shows content makers give away a similar cut to dozens of other online markets, and an even bigger share if their goods are sold offline.

Apple is facing complaints about the matter on both sides of the Atlantic.

The EU launched a competition probe in June, and chief executive Tim Cook will give testimony to Congress on Monday.

He will appear before the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee alongside counterparts from Amazon, Facebook and Google. The tech giants all face claims that they have abused their market-leading positions.

It has emerged that ahead of the hearing, Microsoft's president briefed the panel that his firm had concerns about the way Apple operated the App Store.

According to a report in the Information, Brad Smith has drawn attention to issues including::

The is the second time in two months that Apple has published a report from the Analysis Group about its digital store.

In June, the Boston-based consultancy suggested that the App Store had "facilitated half a trillion dollars" of trade in 2019.

But that report was quickly overshadowed by the European Commission's announcement that it was investigating complaints from the music streaming service Spotify and e-book store Kobo. They alleged that Apple's rules gave its own digital products an unfair advantage.

To compound matters, Apple also got involved in a public spat with the makers of email app Hey, who were refusing to give it a share of their subscription fees.

Apple subsequently announced changes to its apps review process as a concession. But the latest report indicates it is not willing to compromise over the charges it imposes.

The Analysis Group compared Apple's App Store to 37 other digital and e-commerce marketplaces.

It found the firm's standard demand of a 30% cut of sales was in line with what Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Samsung took.

But there were some exceptions. The group said:

The study also suggested that developers and publishers got a smaller share from offline "bricks-and-mortar" channels, where stores and other intermediaries typically take:

The report also highlighted that other e-commerce marketplaces also had rules to prohibit sellers from directing buyers to pay offsite in order to avoid fees. Examples given are:

However, when pressed on this last point, one of the report's authors conceded that while shoppers were aware they could always go elsewhere to buy physical goods, they did not always realise they could buy subscriptions and other digital products outside an app.

Developers often offer cheaper deals on their own sites as they do not have to split the charge with Apple, but the tech firm forbids them from alerting users to the possibility via a link or other "call to action" within their own apps.

The Analysis Group said it believed most users would be aware it was possible to subscribe to Netflix and the bigger brands via a smart TV or website, but acknowledged this was not the case for smaller publishers.

Apple is under fire - from developers big and small, from politicians and from regulators - over the way it runs its App Store.

The firm has indicated this report doesn't necessarily represent the testimony Mr Cook will offer when quizzed by the US Congress next week.

But if he does rebut claims of unfair practices with "we're no worse and sometimes better than Amazon, Google, Uber and Microsoft", he may not win over the politicians.

That argument certainly won't impress developers like Basecamp's David Heinemeier Hansson, who fell out badly with Apple over his email app Hey.

Although that dispute was settled, Mr Hansson still wants radical change.

"The power of Apple and the rest of the big tech monopolies is insufferable," he told me, making it clear he was working with regulators and politicians to change things.

"That's where permanent relief is going to come from."

Apple can expect a long battle, but we've begun to see the shape of its defence.

See the article here:

Apple digs in over its App Store fees - BBC News

The potential power and practicality of smart cities continues to be a topic of debate in the midst and tailwinds of Covid-19. A recent TechHQ article documented Sidewalk Labs abandoned plans for a smart city development in an area of Toronto. With lingering question marks over privacy and the monetization of citizens data, many cities and governments are skirting around the unmediated adoption of smart city technology.

However, with life in the fast lane stymied the world over and with the chance to think differently about the use of space around us the case around smart city technology is as prominent as ever, and some tech giants are pressing on with what they see as rethinking cities to be for and about people.

Chinese technology Tencent is one such business. It has drafted up plans for a 2 million square meter smart city to occupy the southeastern region of Shenzhen, dubbed by some as Chinas Silicon Valley. According to Jonathan Ward, design partner at the smart citys architectural firm NBBJ, the area has been planned to focus its technology on people and the environment first.

Net City. Source: NBBJ

This sentiment speaks to an idyllic model of urban planning, detaching itself (linguistically, at least) from data-oriented concerns surrounding other smart cities, but it will likely portend the way that public bodies increasingly introduce smart city concepts to citizens as we continue to emerge from the pandemic, and as smart city technology continues to permeate in the years to come.

Net City will comprise Tencent offices and residences for its employees, as well as public amenities such as parks and a waterfront area. Ward goes on to claim that the city which will have few streets for cars and hence very few vehicles is a model for the future of city building [] such a precedence on green spaces points to advanced urban agriculture and a rethinking of traditional city values.

Alongside cutting-edge technology in artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous vehicles, all under the shadow of metallic buildings, Ward believes urban innovation should go hand-in-hand with the design of spaces, buildings and cities that are restorative [] with plentiful indoor-outdoor spaces. As society reboots after a pandemic, we will see whether these kind of smart city experiments bear fruit within the coming decade, or begin to churn up some of the same concerns as Sidewalk Labs dalliance.

Kris Hartley, assistant professor, Education University of Hong Kong, upholds such optimism, but with a word of warning. If technology is to shape the post-Covid world and theres no doubting that itll play a big role then technological progress must [] assert itself as a tool for positive change in urban residents everyday lives.

For smart cities to really be smart, then, Hartley suggests they must prioritize sustainability by reducing car use, increasing planning strategies around the needs of people, allowing greater public access, and with increased environmental conservation. At the same time, powered by thousands, if not millions of IoT sensors and AI technology, connected cities also mean data-intensive ones. Will efforts to make cities clean with technology simply offload their carbon footprint to the data center?

A piece in The Engineer mulls this very question, and points to work across UK, US, Germany and India where digital transformation and tech is being used as a unifying asset. Ravi Gopinath, chief cloud & product officer at AVEVA, talked of the potential for tech to overcome its own energy issues to contribute to a citys resilience.

A rendering of the Quayside, part of the now scrapped Sidewalk Labs Toronto smart city concept. Source: Sidewalk Toronto

The outlook from Michael Ganser an engineer with German telematics systems firm Kapsch TrafficCom is similarly bright. He forecasts that the introduction of new digital technologies like networked cars and adaptive traffic lights if installed in all of the worlds cities with populations of more than 200,000 people would save the planet 2% in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

More than 500 smart cities are being built across China, according to government data. These cities are equipped with sensors, cameras, and other gadgets that can crunch data on everything from traffic and pollution, to public health and security. The data anxiety can certainly be excused, and such concerns are not going to go away.

Throughout the coronavirus lockdown, surveillance took on an even more pertinent role than usual, and in smart cities this kind of monitoring will be at worst a kind of under-the-surface, biopolitical hazard. In China, Covid-19 has left the door open for Beijing to ramp up citizen surveillance by introducing new and invasive methods under the guise of fighting the pandemic, whether thats talking drones berating people for not wearing masks, or CCTV installed outside the homes of quarantined individuals.

In the case of Tencents proposal, there may be implications, with time, for Shenzhens neighbor to the South: Hong Kong. In Chinas communist state, though, the general public has less say (Xu Chengwei; public-policy researcher at Singapore Management University).

Smart cities are and will remain, according to authorities a major part of Chinas plan to spur growth amidst a global economic downturn. Hartley warns that the narrative around Covid-19 recovery and resilience is likely to be shaped around urbanism. There may well be an increase in purpose-built towns as demonstration projects or test-bed experiments.

Whether Net City proves to be such a test-bed for heightened surveillance and problematic data processing or whether it can pave the way for the post-Covid, green city revolution remains to be seen. Its construction is scheduled to begin later in 2020.

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What does the pandemic mean for the smart city revolution? - TechHQ

Earlier this month, Google announced that it had picked up a 7.7% stake in Reliances Jio Platforms, weeks after a similar deal by Facebook. Given that both the tech giants have a history of buying stakes in other firms, the phenomenon is not new. However, such big deals may not really help the digital platforms sector: a new study suggests that they tend to create a kill-zone" that drives out startups incentive to innovate.

The study, whose authors include former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan, was published as a working paper by the US National Bureau of Economic Research. It uses data on seven startups acquired by Google and two by Facebook between 2006 and 2018, for more than $500 million each.

The paper finds that in the three years after a typical Facebook or Google acquisition, venture capital investments in startups in the market space of the acquired firm fell 40% on average and there were 20% fewer deals in the sector.

New startups in the digital space depend on the network effect to attract users, wherein a new user values a platform based on the number of users already on it. When a tech giant acquires a new platform, it incorporates the platforms innovative features. This, the authors say, discourages users from switching to new platforms, bringing down the valuation of startups, and driving out funding. This also discourages technological innovation, the authors add.

The study recommends three key policy solutions to reverse this trend. First, interoperability would reduce the customers cost of switching platforms and give them access to wider networks. Second, if users were allowed to sell their own data, digital platforms can use it to improve their technology. Finally, the study proposes antitrust regulations to keep foreign giants out of domestic markets as a solution to foster innovation in the startup space.

Also read: Kill Zone

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How buyouts by big tech stifle innovation - Livemint

As the public face of BlackRocks more-than-$2-trillion fixed-income division, Rick Rieders enthusiasm around the long-term prospects of highflying tech shares can come as a surprise to those more used to hearing his opinions on the ups and downs of Treasury yields.

Part of Rieders increased focus on the stock market and the impressive gains in the technology sector reflects the growing number of hats donned by the BlackRock bond investing chief. Since taking over the firms one-stop-shop global asset allocation fund last year, Rieder has played a larger role in how the worlds biggest money manager advises investors to spread their funds across financial markets and around the world.

I dont want to get pigeonholed as a fixed-income person. Ive been doing equities in portfolios for many years but it is a fair assessment that Im doing a lot more of it now, he said, in an interview with MarketWatch last week.

Since he took over the management of BlackRocks Global Allocation Fund MKLOX, +0.40% at the end of last March, it has recorded a 9.9% return as of June 30, even as competing funds lost on average 1.1% over the same stretch.

In Rieders view, traditional equity investors overlook the merits of a companys ability to accumulate cash in favor of how its profits grew. On top of that, they didnt investigate how money traveled from the business to an investors pockets, an exercise more often practiced by bond buyers figuring out who was first in line to a companys cash.

Earnings are subject to enormous accounting variation, and at the end of the day, what the coronavirus amplified was this theme of its all about your cash flow, said Rieder.

For that reason, he said equity investors should buy shares of tech and healthcare businesses that carried explosive upside convexity, or the potential to see rapid growth in the cash they produce over time.

Many investors have balked at the eye-popping climb in tech shares, which have driven a 20% gain in the Nasdaq Composite COMP, -1.26% this year while the S&P 500 SPX, -0.47% and Dow DJIA, -0.36% struggle to return to their previous heights.

Read: Is the great rotation in the stock market under way as coronavirus cases surge? Or is it a false dawn? Heres what experts think

Despite their tremendous run-up, Rieder says he remains bullish on the long-term prospects of tech companies, especially those that know how to make use of data to improve their operations.

His fascination with data extended to how he uses numbers to methodically track and augment his health and workout routine. On his wrist, Rieder wears both an Apple Watch and a Whoop, which monitors a persons resting heart rate and sleep patterns. He noted this habit briefly aroused confusion on Twitter among those who mistook the Whoop as a second Apple Watch.

Were going through the greatest technology revolution of all time, and its all about data and how you assimilate it, he said.

Rieder said the biggest tech companies leading the stock-market such as the FAANGs Facebook Inc. ( FB, -1.54%, Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, -2.90%, Apple Inc. AAPL, -2.92% , Netflix Inc NFLX, -1.66% and Google parent Alphabet Inc. GOOG, -2.64% GOOGL, -2.44% were unencumbered by expensive factories and other physical infrastructure, allowing them to quickly expand and dominate promising new fields by analyzing reams of data and spending big on research.

Read: Tech has been a pandemic savior for the market and has been richly rewarded. So what happens now?

Yet in the past, the time and cost involved in developing a brand or a complicated logistical and transportation network prevented businesses from changing tack when new opportunities arose.

Now you can do things in hyperspeed, he said.

He acknowledged the knack of the U.S. tech giants to squeeze out their competition had worrisome potential to draw backlash from antitrust regulators. But they will have to balance the risk of a crackdown against how it might affect companies that had improved the welfare of consumers.

Theres an incredible balance that has to be struck between things that are not in the public good, with regard to freezing out other entities that want to compete, and the fact that a lot of these products are actually bringing down a lot of costs for consumers or that consumers love their products, he said.

If tech allowed investors to capture the incredible returns from the new economy, he said any good asset allocation fund should also figure out the best way to limit losses.

On that front, Rieder said he struggled to understand why many stock investors would play defense through shares of utility companies, an industry where, he argued, it made more sense to buy their bonds. He pointed out a utility companys annual profits as a share of companys equity was effectively capped by regulators at around 10%.

Why would you buy that? he said, adding that investors shouldnt waste their equity dollars on companies that are really stable.

In other words, Rieder said that when investors think about their portfolios, they should align the qualities of a particular investment with how a companys earnings and cash flows were projected to change in the future.

In the broad investment world, a lot of the returns are about picking between bonds and stocks and deciding where youd rather be, he said.

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Heres why BlackRocks bond chief says hes bullish on highflying tech stocks - MarketWatch