Daily Archives: January 24, 2022

By Cecilia Kang and David McCabe, The New York Times

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are readying a major push on bills aimed at restraining the power of the countrys biggest tech companies, as they see the window of opportunity closing quickly before the midterm elections.

In a significant step forward, a Senate committee Thursday voted to advance a bill that would prohibit companies such as Amazon, Apple and Google from promoting their own products over those of competitors. Many House lawmakers are pressing a suite of antitrust bills that would make it easier to break up tech giants. And some are making last-ditch efforts to pass bills meant to strengthen privacy, protect children online, curb misinformation, restrain targeted advertising and regulate artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies.

Most of the proposals before Congress are long shots. President Joe Biden and top Democrats in Congress have said addressing the industrys power is a high priority, but numerous other issues rank even higher on their list. These include passing voting rights legislation, correcting labor and supply chain constraints, enacting a social services package and steering the nation out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Still, the next few months are probably the last best chance for a while. After that, attention will turn to the midterm elections, and Democrats, who support the efforts aimed at tech in far greater numbers than Republicans, could lose control of Congress.

This is a problem that has been brewing for a long time, and its become pretty obvious to everyone, said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who has led the push for tougher laws on the tech companies. But when you get to the fall, it will be very difficult to get things done because everything is about the election.

Congress has unified around a growing concern about the technology giants over the last several years. Still, dozens of bills have failed to pass, even as many other countries have beefed up their regulations for the industry.

When Biden took office last year, he promised to inject more competition into the economy, particularly in the tech sector. He appointed vocal tech critics to lead antitrust agencies, and this month, his press secretary said Biden was encouraged to see bipartisan interest in Congress in passing legislation to address the power of tech platforms through antitrust legislation.

Bruce Reed, White House deputy chief of staff, and Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, met Wednesday with executives from companies including Yelp and Sonos, which have lobbied for antitrust action against the tech giants. They discussed the difficulties that entrepreneurs, brick-and-mortar retailers, and other businesses face competing in sectors dominated by a few large platforms, White House officials said. The administration said it anticipated working with Congress but has not endorsed any of the specific legislation aimed at the companies.

Complicating matters is that even though the two parties widely agree that Congress should do something, they often disagree on what that should be.

In the past few years, dozens of privacy, speech, security and antitrust bills have withered amid disagreements over how to balance protecting consumers while encouraging the growth of Silicon Valley. Some bills, such as those that address online content moderation, are especially polarizing: Democrats have called for measures that would push the companies to remove from their sites more misinformation and content that contributed to real-world harm. Republicans have backed laws to force the companies to leave more content up.

Everyone has a bone to pick with Big Tech, but when it comes to doing something, thats when bipartisanship falls apart, said Rebecca Allensworth, a Vanderbilt Law School professor who specializes in antitrust law. At the end of day, regulation is regulation, so you will have a hard time bringing a lot of Republicans on board for a bill viewed as a heavy-handed aggressive takedown through regulation of Big Tech.

The bill that the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Thursday, for instance, could prevent Amazon from steering shoppers to its Amazon-branded toilet paper and socks while making it harder to find comparisons for those products from other brands. It could force Apple to allow alternatives to Apple Pay within iPhone apps. And it could prevent Google from putting its own services such as travel prices, restaurant reviews and shopping results at the top of search results.

Introduced by Klobuchar and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the legislation aims to address concerns that a handful of tech giants act as gatekeepers to digital goods and services. Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft have a combined market capitalization of more than $9 trillion. Several Republicans voted in favor of the bill, which passed 16-6. Although Mike Lee, R-Utah, repeated a consistent party talking point of unintended consequences to future businesses that can be swept under the law, others said the threats posed by tech giants outweighed those worries.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, voted in favor of the bill and emphasized that his greatest concern was how giant social media companies have moderated content. He and other Republicans on the committee said they believe companies such as Apple, Google and Facebook have censored conservative voices by banning apps such as Parler, a right-wing site, and by taking down accounts of conservative figures.

It would provide protections to content providers that are discriminated against for the content they produce, Cruz said. I think that that is a meaningful step forward.

Klobuchar described the vote as a historic and important moment as the first antitrust bill aimed at tech to advance out of the committee.

As dominant digital platforms some of the biggest companies our world has ever seen increasingly give preference to their own products and services, we must put policies in place to ensure small businesses and entrepreneurs still have the opportunity to succeed in the digital marketplace, she said.

But she acknowledged there is much work ahead for her and Grassley to persuade congressional leadership to support final passage of legislation.

Consumer groups and a coalition of dozens of tech startups back the bill. Some consumer advocates have compared the legislation to a law that forced monopoly TV providers to offer all networks access to cable customers. That action, they say, did not lead to the demise of the cable television business, but kept monopoly providers from shutting out competition.

Consumers will benefit from this bill by making it easier to install, choose and use alternative apps and online services, said Sumit Sharma, a senior researcher for tech competition at Consumer Reports, enabling both consumers and small businesses to more easily switch between ecosystems by mixing and matching services from different providers.

Silicon Valley lobbyists have fought the bill in published opinion pieces, ad campaigns and one-on-one appeals. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Googles parent company, Alphabet, and Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, have called lawmakers to oppose the bill.

The companies lobbyists have argued that the legislation could make it harder to ward off malware and bugs in devices and could make their services less useful. In a blog post Tuesday, Googles chief legal officer, Kent Walker, painted a dire vision of the impacts that it and other bills could have: The company may have to stop including a map of vaccination sites in search results if the law passes, he said. It may have to stop blocking spam in Gmail. It may not be able to show someone searching for medical help clear information and instead be required to direct you to a mix of low-quality results.

The companies have also said the proposals focused on their bigness would hurt small businesses. In recent months, Amazon has urged the merchants who sell products through its marketplace to contact lawmakers with concerns about the bills.

Brian Huseman, Amazons vice president of public policy, said in a statement that the legislation could imperil the companys ability to offer Prime shipping benefits to those sellers or allow them onto its platform at all.

Klobuchars bill in particular targets a growing business for Amazon: competing directly with those outside merchants by offering its own products, such as its Amazon Basics line.

Amazon argues that many major retailers, including Costco and Walmart, do the same thing. The bills authors are targeting common retail practices and, troublingly, appear to single out Amazon while giving preferential treatment to other large retailers that engage in the same practices, Huseman said. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla, two Democrats from California, repeated the companies arguments, saying the Silicon Valley giants were being unfairly targeted by a bill that could help the rise of rivals in China such as TikTok and Tencent.

Klobuchar said tech companies have lobbed misleading attacks. They dont like our bill, she said. You can see the ads on TV.

Before Thursdays session, Klobuchar and Grassley proposed changes that they said would address concerns about user privacy and hindering subscription services such as Amazon Prime. The new version also appeared likely to cover TikTok.

Even though Klobuchars bill moved beyond the Judiciary Committee on Thursday, its sponsors face the steeper challenge of getting 60 senators to support it. In the House, advocates of the antitrust bills also need to get enough Republicans on board to account for Democrats who oppose the proposals.

Theyve talked about the cascade of legislative possibilities, said William Kovacic, a former chair of the Federal Trade Commission. None of it has happened. And the clock is running.

This article originally appeared inThe New York Times.

Continued here:

Efforts to Rein in Big Tech May Be Running Out of Time - Good Times Weekly

With help from Rebecca Kern

Editors Note:Morning Tech is a free version of POLITICO Pro Technology's morning newsletter, which is delivered to our subscribers each morning at 6 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the days biggest stories.Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.

Lobbying surge:The major tech companies boosted their lobbying spending by more than $21 million in 2021, and their smaller rivals spent more, too.

Natsec takes center stage:Big tech companies are mobilizing around the message that antitrust reform could hurt U.S. national security.

Privacy warning: In the latest volley in the back and forth over federal privacy legislation, a tech-funded research paper argues that the growing patchwork of state privacy laws could cost the industry more than $1 trillion.

HAPPY MONDAY. Im your temporary host, tech lobbying and influence reporter Emily Birnbaum. What stood out to you in the 2021 lobbying disclosures?

Contact me on Twitter with lobbying tips @birnbaum_ e or by email at [emailprotected]. Got an event for our calendar? Send details to [emailprotected]. Anything else? Team info below. And dont forget: Add @MorningTech and @PoliticoPro on Twitter.

TECH LOBBYING SURGE Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook spent a total of more than $55 million on lobbying the federal government in 2021, according to newly filed lobbying disclosures, breaking their own records and outstripping other top-spending industries in Washington, such as defense and pharmaceuticals, for another year in a row. In comparison, the Big Four tech companies spent about $34 million on lobbying in 2020.

Behind the increase: Googles spending jumped roughly 27 percent, from $7.5 million in 2020 to $9.5 million in 2021, as the company has sought to fend off antitrust legislation and has dealt with concerns about YouTubes contribution to right-wing radicalization.

Facebook and Amazon broke their own spending records, with Amazon shelling out $19.3 million and Facebook spending more than $20 million. Facebooks spending spree came as the company dealt with fallout from whistleblower Frances Haugens revelations; Amazon has faced antitrust heat as well as significant labor complaints.

Apple, which has had a more muted presence in Washington, spent $6.5 million in 2021 a small number compared to its Big Four peers but still vastly more than smaller tech companies such as Spotify, which spent $820,000 in 2021.

Speaking of those smaller rivals 2021 was a huge year for the small- to medium-sized tech companies, which say they have been harmed by gatekeeping by giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple. Complaints from companies like Oracle, Yelp, Tile and Spotify have taken center stage and informed antitrust legislation now moving through the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. As a result, Big Techs rivals are spending more than ever, too:

Oracle, the software company known for taking on Google, spent $9.1 million on lobbying in 2021, up from about $8 million the year before.

Microsoft, though hardly a small company, has gained a reputation for lobbying against its tech-sector rivals. It spent about $10.2 million on lobbying in 2021 compared to $9.4 million in 2020, an increase of roughly 8 percent.

Fox Corp., the media company owned by Big Tech antagonist Rupert Murdoch, increased its spending by about 22 percent between 2020 and 2021, as the company lobbied in favor of the antitrust bills in both chambers. Fox spent $3.6 million in 2021, compared with $3 million in 2020.

Epic Games, which is locked in a legal battle with Apple over Apples App Store, registered its first in-house lobbyists during the last month of 2021, reporting $40,000 in in-house lobbying spending. Epic also tapped a pair of high-powered outside lobbying firms last year, the Gibson Group and Subject Matter.

Overall, this spending pales in comparison to the tens of millions spent by Facebook, Amazon and Google. But its still notable that these companies are dialing up their presences in Washington, readying themselves for all the fights ahead.

NATSEC HAWKS ARE CIRCLING As the tech antitrust bills pick up steam in the Senate, Google has been the tech company most forcefully pushing the idea that reforms could threaten national security.

Handicapping Americas technology leaders would threaten our leading sources of research and development spending, Googles president of global affairs and chief legal officer, Kent Walker, wrote in a blog post last week. He argued that the bill that received a markup, S. 2992 (117), would give a free pass to foreign companies and cited a letter from last year from twelve former U.S. national security officials who argued the antitrust bill could hurt U.S. competitiveness. (All 12 former officials have ties to major tech companies, as POLITICO previously reported.)

The legislation would prohibit Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google from favoring their own products and discriminating against rivals on their platforms. Google spokesperson Julie Tarallo told MT that the company believes S.2992 risks threatening our global competitiveness and security, which is why we will continue urging Congress to take more time to consider these and other unintended consequences.

Meanwhile, The Taxpayers Protection Alliance, which receives funding from Google and is backed by groups connected to conservative billionaire Charles Koch, last week announced a seven-figure digital ad buy criticizing the antitrust legislation, emphasizing how the bills could harm national security and American jobs.

How its landing: Several Democratic and Republican lawmakers during last weeks markup raised concerns that one antitrust bill, S.2992, could make the U.S. less competitive with China, echoing the companies arguments. I want to make sure we are not inadvertently harming national security, Sen. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) (D-Vt.) said during last weeks markup. Two congressional aides, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak on the record, told MT that Google and Amazon have been relying on those arguments particularly with China hawks in the Senate, such as Sen. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR).

Kicking into high gear: Amazon, Facebook and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a tech trade group of which they are members, in recent months have all started donating significant sums to the Center for International and Strategic Studies, a leading defense and national security think tank. Their new donations highlight how the companies are leaning into national security messaging as CSIS becomes more involved in the antitrust debate. (A spokesperson for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said Meta supports CSIS along with a number of nonprofit groups.)

CSIS updated its corporate donors list last month to show that Amazon and Facebook are now big supporters, with Facebook giving between $200,000 and $499,000 (the highest corporate donor bracket) and Amazon giving between $35,000 and $64,999. CCIA also joined as a donor in the $100,000 to $199,999 category. Google and Apple were already donors in some of the smaller brackets.

The counterargument: Embattled industries have long argued that regulation. could harm U.S. competitiveness and security, only to be proven wrong once antitrust action is taken. Qualcomm, for example, argued that the Trump administration was risking ceding the future of 5G to China by pursuing a case against the company; AT&T in the 1980s told the Defense Departmentthat the governments antitrust lawsuit could make the U.S. vulnerable to attack. Those doomsday predictions did not bear out.

The argument they make is that gigantic tech companies are the only ones who can innovate and compete with China, said Ernesto Falcon, senior legislative counsel with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. But this completely misses the point. When companies have monopolies, they have no reason to innovate, since they have captured the market.

Digital rights groups like EFF argue that these national security arguments ring hollow because companies loyalties are to their shareholders, not to U.S. national security. In fact, top tech companies like Apple and Googlehave done extensive business in China .

Relying on large monopoly corporations to act in the best interest of national security is futile and goes against their very legal and operational foundations, advocacy groups, including the American Economic Liberties Project, wrote in a letter sent to House leadership last year.

A message from Charter Communications:

Were proud that Spectrum Internet ranks No. 1 in the U.S. News & World Report 2021-22 Best Rural Internet Service Providers rankings. This recognition underscores our ongoing commitment to connecting more communities from coast to coast, including rural areas. And were just getting started.

STATE PRIVACY LAWS ADD UP: Over a 10-year period, a patchwork of privacy laws across all 50 states could lead to company compliance costs exceeding $1 trillion, according to a report from a tech-funded think tank, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. In the absence of a federal privacy law, conflicting compliance regimes for companies could cost companies between $98 million to $112 billion annually, the report found. ITIF receives funding from the tech industry, including Apple, Microsoft, Google, Intel and more.

The report provides evidence for policymakers to decide what are the economic ramifications if they dont pass a federal law, Daniel Castro, a vice president at ITIF and report author, told Rebecca.

Privacy advocates perspective: Some tech critics have argued that its better for U.S. states to pass strong legislation than for the federal government to pass a watered-down privacy law. But many of the state laws that have passed over the past year have been panned by privacy advocates as weak, prompting both privacy groups and industry to push for their own preferred models of federal privacy legislation.

To date, Congress has failed to reach bipartisan agreement on a federal privacy bill, so California, Virginia and Colorado have passed their own laws. This means tech companies will have to comply with privacy rules in-state and out-of state if they operate in multiple states.

Im cautiously optimistic that there's a willingness to compromise because businesses want a federal law, Castro said. That might be the motivation it takes to get something done.

FIRST IN MT: AI REGULATION GETS PUBLIC BACKING More than 80 percent of Americans favor regulating all or most uses of artificial intelligence technologies, according to a survey from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Respondents identified self-driving vehicles, law enforcement and health care as the top uses of AI they want to see regulated, based on the survey of 1,000 respondents throughout the country.

More than 80 percent of respondents said the U.S. should lead in AI tech development in general. Americans surveyed also recognized that there will be job loss due to automation 42 percent of respondents said believe AI will lead to some job loss in the U.S.

BSA | The Software Alliance is adding Alteryx and Dropbox as global members. Chris Lal, chief legal officer at Alteryx, will join BSAs board of directors. Data analytics company LightBox has contracted with the state of Montana to supply its GIS technology and SmartFabric tools (unveiled last month) as part of the states efforts to create more accurate broadband maps, the company is announcing today Ellen Canale, who has directed communications for Mozilla, is joining Stellar Development next month Karen Modlin, who has managed corporate communications at Dish Network, has joined Zayo Group as director of communications

The story of an Amazon warehouse: How a small town in England has adapted after an Amazon warehouse was built in its midst, via The Wall Street Journal.

Another obstacle: Congress antitrust effort has been complicated by hate speech concerns, Protocol reports.

Merger surge: Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet announced more acquisitions in 2021 than any other year in the past decade, according to CNBC.

A message from Charter Communications:

Stock scrutiny: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene sold up to $15,000 worth of Activision Blizzard stock on the day Microsoft announced its acquisition, Business Insider reports.

Parents sue Meta, Snap: A girls mother is suing Meta and Snap, alleging social media was to blame for the suicide of her 11-year-old daughter, according to Bloomberg.

ICYMI: Republicans say the FCC disregarded advice from its own inspector general for preventing fraud in its $14 billion broadband program. John has more for Pros.

A message from Charter Communications:

Access for all means opportunity for everyone. Thats why were investing billions to extend our network to reach those who need it most. Over the next several years, Charter will build more than 100,000 miles of new U.S. broadband infrastructure that will deliver reliable, high-speed internet access to even more communities from coast to coast. Thats an extension long enough to circle the equator four times.

This $5 billion initiative will connect an FCC-estimated one million currently unserved, mostly rural families and small businesses to reliable internet service with speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second.

TTYL!

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Tech spent big on lobbying last year - Politico

Most companies that signed the letters were midsize tech and consumer brands trying to attract younger customers and workers, says Jen Stark, senior director of corporate strategy at Tara Health Foundation, which engages the private sector on reproductive rights and helped organize the letters. The largest tech companiesAlphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoftstayed mum. Notably silent, Stark says.

Companies were caught flat footed by the threats to abortion rights. Now theyre kind of scrambling.

Anthony Johndrow, corporate adviser

WIRED contacted 16 tech companies with sizable Texas workforces about the law and its impact on workers. Alphabet, Amazon, Cisco, Dell, Dropbox, eBay, Indeed, Meta, Oracle, PayPal, Samsung, SpaceX, and Tesla did not respond. Intel and Microsoft declined to comment. HP Enterprise has not taken a position on the law, but the company said, We encourage our team members to make their voices heard through advocacy and at the ballot box. The company said its medical plans cover out-of-state medical care, including abortion.

We're not asking companies to weigh in on when life begins, Stark says. We're simply asking for companies to understand abortion as a workforce issue that impacts worker well-being and the achievement of an individual's full potential, and see its connection to equity issues around gender and race. Tara Health asks companies to stop donating to anti-choice politicians and to review their benefits to mitigate the impact of abortion restrictions on their workforces.

Although the majority of Americans think abortion should be legal, a sizable minority believes the opposite. According to Pew Research, 39 percent of Americans think abortion should be illegal in most or all cases, including 37 percent of women. Thats a large group, including customers, shareholders, and employees who are going to get really, really angry with you for taking a position, says Paul Argenti, a Dartmouth corporate communications professor who wrote an article titled When Should Your Company Speak Up About A Social Issue?

But as the spate of LGBTQ corporate activism demonstrated, companies do sometimes speak up, even when it makes people mad. A 2020 George Washington University study of Fortune 500 companies proposed one reason: pressure from employee resource groups. The researchers found that in highly educated workforces, LGBTQ employees persuaded companies to take stances on their rights, even when it may have been costly to business.

Years ago, companies were reluctant to speak out on LGBTQ issues, says Shelley Alpern, director of corporate engagement for the investment firm Rhia Ventures, which submits shareholder resolutions supporting reproductive rights. Part of what got them to move away from that taboo is that their employees started to speak up through LGBTQ affinity groups, she says. That made a huge difference because I think corporate managers realized this was not an abstract question. This has a real impact on employees.

Employee mobilization around abortion rights has yet to reach this level. Johndrow, the reputation adviser, says his clients have not mentioned workplace organizing around the issue. To my knowledge, and I work with a fair number of big companies, there were no groups like that, he says. Im sure theyre forming now.

They are, says Deena Fidas, managing director of the LGBTQ workplace equality nonprofit Out and Equal. Fidas is trying to apply the lessons of LGBTQ workplace organizing to reproductive health. LGBTQ pressure campaigns were decades in the making, she says, starting at a time when these workers lacked legal protections against employment discrimination. Now, Fidas works with Tara Health and other organizations to convene womens employee resource groups and help them advocate for access to reproductive care. She says employees are starting to raise the issue as one where their employers should weigh in. Change is definitely afoot.

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Why Big Tech Companies Have Been Quiet on Texas Abortion Law - WIRED

Young happy Asian couple playing video games in living room. Cheerful people having fun with computer gaming concept.

Blue Planet Studio

The business of video games is having a moment.

Less than two weeks after Take-Two announced its $12.7 billion for Zynga, and just days after Microsoft announced its record-breaking $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Netflix co-founder and co-chief executive officer Reed Hastings said Thursday that building out video gaming to where Netflix can "amaze our members by having the absolute best in the category" is his goal.

"We have to be differentially great at it," Hastings said during Netflix's earnings conference call. "When mobile gaming is world leading, and we're some of the best producers, like where we are in film today, having two of the top ten, then you should ask what's next. Let's nail the thing and not just be in it for the sake of being in it."

That's a tall task for Netflix, which is building its gaming unit from scratch. Netflix chief operating officer Greg Peters said Thursday the company plans to license "large game" intellectual property that "people will recognize" later this year. Hastings added Netflix will use its "walk, crawl, run" strategy around gaming, where it purposefully grows the business gradually to learn about user habits and use resources efficiently.

Netflix, of course, has used this general strategy before in streaming video. The company licensed well-known movies and TV shows to build out its user base as a cable TV supplement before slowly wading into original content. After years of experimenting on a show-by-show or film-by-film basis, Netflix felt its recommendation algorithm and user data could accurately predict new popular original content. Today, Netflix spends billions of dollars each year on originals.

The Microsoft acquisition and the Netflix commentary is a general acknowledgment that gaming has become an important part of global entertainment, especially with young audiences. Netflix has often pointed out that gaming, such as Fortnite, competes with its core streaming service for eyeballs.

This isn't new, exactly. Microsoft has owned Xbox for decades. But it's obviously never spent nearly $70 billion to acquire anything, let alone a video game company.

Gaming has jumped to the forefront of many people's attention as companies like Meta and Roblox build strategies around a vaguely defined immersive consumer computing strategy called the "metaverse," which will almost certainly involve gaming at some level.

But the acquisition rush likely suggests something far simpler: Gaming has become ubiquitous. Mobile devices and online play, connecting people to play real-time games, has given gaming a wider audience and significance in youth culture. The Entertainment Software Association, the U.S. video game's trade association, claims more people play video games than ever before.

Big tech and media companies have flirted with gaming in the past, with mixed success. Disney and Google are among the large companies who decided to abandon their video game aspirations in recent years. And it's probably far too early to position a company for the metaverse, when it's still entirely unclear what the metaverse encompasses.

But gaming is clearly a major interest two of the world's largest tech companies. That's meaningful, and it probably means there's more large gaming consolidation to come.

WATCH: There's probably more risk than people realize, says Michael Nathanson of MoffettNathanson

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Netflix and Microsoft show that video gaming has become too big for tech giants to ignore - CNBC

This might sound strange, but Israelis are growing horns more than ever before;unicorn horns, that is (why, what did you think I was talking about?). World, pay attention: more than 35 companies in Israel reached unicorn status over the last year or raised private capital at a valuation of over $1 billion.

Some of the newest Unicorn Club members are only one year old. Only a few years ago, valuations of $1 billion or more were reserved for the most established, large companies. In the era of Covid, with new problems to solve, and the need to adjust to a new normal, many Israeli companies seize the day and made a fortune providing innovative solutions.

More than 35 companies in Israel reached unicorn status over the last year or raised private capital ... [+] at a valuation of over $1 billion.

Even before Corona, the US stock market was at low tide; meanwhile this has turned out to be the longest period of this kind in its history. Consequently, the private money market has been flooded with more and more new entrants. Private investment and venture capital doubled to more than $3 trillion by 2020. Together with hedge funds and real estate investment funds, these sums have already reached $10 trillion. There was so much money in the private market that capital raised soared to a peak of $2 trillion in early 2020.

At that time, dozens of unicorns were born in Israel, which was a fantastic phenomenon, but then Covid hit. After a short while of paralysis, the stock market began to recover, and the private investors were back . Israeli companies stood by, waiting to pick the fruits.

In 2021, Israeli startups raised over $25 billion, (which is 2.5X of last years amounts and about 25X what it was 15 years ago). In recent years, Israel has experienced a major scale-up, with an exponential increase in financing and unicorns. Some attribute this to world-class talents trained in the top R&D units of the IDF as well as its unique intellectual property; Israel is notably a domain expert in the fields of cyber security, AI, computer vision, adtech, semiconductors and sensors, among others. Some credit the formation and density of startups: there are 6000-9000 active startups and around 1000 new companies are formed every year.

Masters of Their Domain

While the newly minted unicorns in Israel are based in diverse industry segments, the strong domains are enterprise software, cyber security, fintech and insurtech.

In the past year, several companies in new business segments reached unicorn status. These segments include semiconductors (Wiliot, Valens, Innoviz, Hailo and Next Silicon); digital healthcare ( K Health, Immunai) and the industrial sector (Augury and Fabric).

Yahal Zilka, serial entrepreneur, cofounder and managing partner at 10D, is a long time veteran of the VC industry. He has led multiple well-performing global funds and has been an early investor in numerous unicorns, including: Waze, DriveNets, Fundbox, Valens ( NYSE: VLN), Appsflyer, and Innoviz (Nasdaq:INVZ). The companies have one thing in common besides their over a billion dollars value: theyre all Israeli. Israeli companies, says Zillka as he attempts to explain the secret sauce of the Israeli unicorns, are by and large focused on deep technology, out of the box unique offerings and the ability to develop solutions that are scalable.

From Tech Focused to Full Scale Solutions

Historically, Israeli entrepreneurs focused on products which provided a component or subsystem. Nevertheless, they were not directly selling to customers. Over the past few years, Zilka says, with greater availability of capital, the focus has shifted to providing a full solution and offering while directly serving the customer. Israeli entrepreneurs, founders and management teams are keen to develop and provide multiple solutions, thus advancing in the the value chain. Therefore valuations are also impacted upward. This is demonstrated by companies such as Waze and Solaredge.

"With greater availability of capital, the focus has shifted to providing a full solution and ... [+] offering while directly serving the customer." Yahal Zilka

Despite the dynamic startup industry, Israeli companies have had to cope with a geographic glass ceiling; they were excluded from the main global markets. Due to this handicap, Zilka suggests, remote skills were adopted and developed and eventually brought to the forefront by the pandemic, which succeeded in flattening the world.' This long-term competitive advantage for the Israeli tech ecosystem was created, eliminating the distance component. These are challenges Israelis have been working to overcome for years. They have had ample time to hone their remote skills in sales, onboarding, implementation, customer success and more.

No Exit

Jewish mothers used to wish their kids would grow up to become doctors or lawyers. In the past 30 years, with the rapidly growing startup nation, this traditional hope was replaced with the desire for a startup exit. In 2022, this shifted once again. In the past, Zilka says, most Israeli startups were acquired by leading technology corporations for hundreds of millions of dollars, mainly due to the obstacle of building large scale companies outside of Israel and the availability and scarcity of growth capital. In the past twenty-four months this has changed dramatically. With this new growth of capital, both entrepreneurs and investors believe they will build very strong companies that will be leaders in their field.

SPAC/PIPE, a new financial vehicle that appeared in 2020 provides new financing opportunities for younger companies that are recognized leaders but only have bookings to show, rather than revenue track records. In addition, there has been a major shift to IPOs as these startups choose to stay independent and build full scale businesses, reaching valuations in the billions, insists Zilka as he lays out the very good reasons companies are no longer in a rush to exit. In 2021 alone, several companies have achieved valuations of over $10 billion; this is a feat that was previously achieved only once every 5-10 years.

Biotech startup Immunai earned its unicorn status with a $215 million Series B investment round. The Israeli company has developed a technological platform that maps the entire immune system for better detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. It was founded in 2018 by Noam Solomon (CEO) and Luis Voloch (CTO); the company has raised $295M in funding to-date.

CEO Noam Solomon says that only a year ago, the company had to invest resources to attract the attention of big pharma companies. Now we get requests from C-level executives that already know the company and want to partner, which clearly help us grow faster.

There is something about the direct and straightforward nature of Israelis. Noam Solomon

The pandemic greatly accelerated their unicorn status: Our mission is to fully map and unlock the secrets of the human immune system and develop better medicines. Covid19 had a huge impact on the world and on all of us, and it demonstrated how critically important understanding the human immune system is. Our unique value proposition became more attractive to investors and partners and ignited our growth. He credits much of the companys success to the Israeli culture: There is something about the direct and straightforward nature of Israelis, who feel more comfortable sharing their disagreement without apologizing, that when coupled with a strong team above I mentality, can create a whole much larger than the sum of its parts.

Tipalti, a leading global payables solution, announced it has raised $270 million in series F funding at a valuation of $8.3 billion, bringing total funding raised to date to just over $550 million and placing it among the most valuable private fintech companies in the world. Thousands of global companies, from Amazon Twitch, GoDaddy, Roku, to WordPress.com, and ZipRecruiter etc., use Tipalti to reduce operational workload by 80%.

The recent shift by which Israeli entrepreneurs are no longer seeking an "exit" at a moderate ... [+] valuation is a sign of the mature approach." Chen Amit

CEO Chen Amit admits that the companys unicorn status has impacted employees, hiring, and the ecosystem as well as the customers. Covid played a huge role in the companys growth: With remote work, there is the need to digitize finance processes that were previously manual. He defines the growing unicorn phenomena as part of the industrys maturity. The recent shift by which Israeli entrepreneurs are no longer seeking an "exit" at a moderate valuation is a sign of the mature approach. I believe that considering Israels small population, it was overrepresented in the tech economy, and now it is overrepresented in the unicorn community. Chen goes even further and says that the term unicorn is obsolete. It's no longer such a unique and fantastic being. There are too many unicorns around for this term to be relevant. I wish that there was a different term for $1B companies, and perhaps the real unicorns today are companies valued at $50B or $100B which is really rare for private companies.

Believe You Will Find a Solution to Any Given Problem

Melio, a leading B2B payments platform for small businesses whose mission is to Keep Small Business in Business has raised over $500 million to date, with its latest funding round in September bringing the companys value to $4 billion. Matan Bar, CEO, says that just two years ago, pre-Covid, the company had 30 employees. Today it has almost 500. The strong culture we built made this expansion possible; however, there is also a growing trend by which people are interested in transitioning from large corporations to pre-IPO startups like us. Covid created the ideal opportunity, he admits. We were in the right place at the right time and are now the fastest-growing B2B payments company in the U.S. There are $14 trillion in funds in the U.S. that are transferred in checks between businesses. But during the pandemic, businesses that were used to paying their suppliers in checks suddenly found that they had to transition to digital payments. Also, many small businesses faced more frequent and severe cash flow challenges due to global financial volatility. We grew our team quickly to make sure we provided the right level of support during a time they needed us the most. He credits much of their success to Melios Israeli roots: Creativity is usually sparked when there are obstacles to overcome and Israel has faced many obstacles since it was established.

We were in the right place at the right time and are now the fastest-growing B2B payments company ... [+] in the U.S." Matan Bar

Orca Security, the cloud security innovation leader, is valued at $1.8 Billion. Today, the company provides instant-on security and compliance for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, and many more. CEO Avi Shua says that in 2021 alone, Orca Security achieved more than 800 percent year-over-year growth, expanded rapidly around the globe, gained notable customers across industries, went from dozens to hundreds of employees, and opened a London office as well as a U.S. headquarters in Portland, Oregon. Like many of the other new Israeli unicorns, the company noted a huge increase in demand when Covid struck, and that demand is only growing. I spent a decade in Unit 8200 of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and another decade at Check Point Software as its chief technologist. The most important cyber security defense lesson I learned in the IDF was that security basics are always more important than shiny new security toys because attackers will use the simplest means possible to breach your defenses. Theres a popular Unit 8200 mantra, he shares, that also rings true for entrepreneurs: Believe youll find a solution to any given problem. Never assume that existing approaches are the only possible solutions. So, we invented an entirely new approach to cloud security that doesnt rely on installing and maintaining agents or network scanning tools. Those legacy approaches didnt provide complete coverage back then and they certainly dont work for the cloud.

"Believe youll find a solution to any given problem." Avi Shua

A Unicorn Bubble?

Zilka admits there is clearly a concern with some of the valuations, as they represent 50-300X over next year revenues. Though revenues are strong, expenses are also mushrooming. Nevertheless, the majority of these companies have clear Product Market Fit, strong pull from customers, unique offerings, meaningful revenues, strong growth rates, as well as strong leadership and management teams.

As for the driving force behind the major growth, Zilka credits the Israeli entrepreneurs who have the experience and desire to swing for the fences. Whether its the large pool of second-time entrepreneurs, the graduates of the elite military units taking their knowledge of building large scale complicated software solutions to the private sector or the seasoned technologists who put in the time at leading multinational corporations, the breadth and depth of this talent pool is putting the Israeli ecosystem ahead of the pack.

Link:

More And More Israelis Are Growing Horns: Startup Nation Out, Big Tech Nation In - Forbes

Leading experts share their predictions

VILNIUS, LITHUANIA / ACCESSWIRE / January 24, 2022 / Data management professionals getting the central stage in business, focus on ethics increasing, pressure on Big Tech affecting the landscape of public web data industry - these will be among the most prominent trends in the big data industry in 2022, according to a public data gathering solutions provider, Oxylabs. Their experts predict what to expect in the year ahead.

Growing markets for external data

Tomas Montvilas, Chief Commercial Officer at Oxylabs, says that more industries will discover the benefits of using external data in the upcoming year. He lists a few:

"The market of SaaS products that use external data to provide insights for their clients will grow further in 2022. The successful IPOs of such companies like Semrush, Similarweb, Zoominfo and others are driving further investments in the field and we are likely to see more stars emerging," Tomas says.

Another important area he sees for the web scraping industry's growth is cybersecurity. Cyber threats are becoming more advanced and require new measures of defense. This is where web monitoring and scraping technologies come in.

"Constant monitoring of both public web and dark web can help identify malicious sites and programs early. It can also help catch data leaks sooner by finding data sets when they go for sale on the dark web, and recognize the actions of hacker groups. Meanwhile, proxies can serve well in email protection, by providing the ability to scan emails from different IP addresses," he explains.

Data management role in business further increasing

With the recent explosion in digitizing everything, data management and analytics became central roles in business. Data departments have been experiencing exponential growth during the past few years and the growth will continue well into 2022.

Gediminas Rickeviius, Vice President of Global Partnerships at Oxylabs notes that the increasing importance of data departments can be easily illustrated by budgeting trends. According to several recent surveys Oxylabs conducted in the UK's finance and ecommerce industries, most data departments are expecting to increase their budgets (51% ecommerce, 43% financial services).

Story continues

Another trend Gediminas predicts for data departments will be the increasing outsourcing of automated public web data gathering tools. There will be several reasons for this. First of them being obvious - as companies become dependent on external data, manual data gathering processes are simply not sufficient. Another important factor is the current job market landscape.

"With "the great resignation" and lack of human resources being the dominant topics of 2021 it became even harder to find in-house professionals that could dedicate all their time for maintaining and adjusting web scraping infrastructure. Outsourcing this task allows optimizing resources and focusing on data analysis rather than acquisition," says Gediminas.

Pressure for Big Tech could affect web data industry

Recent years were marked with the growing pressure for Big Tech from governments around the world. 2022 will be no different - there will likely be push for new regulations, especially around personal data and its acquisition and aggregation.

According to Denas Grybauskas, Head of Legal at Oxylabs, the data gathering industry should not turn a blind eye on these processes. In light of the government pressure, some big tech companies might already be in the process of restricting access to public web data which could affect many businesses.

"Some companies are preparing for the old as life tactic - pointing fingers. That is what, at least in accordance with the leaked emails, Meta (Facebook) is planning to do in terms of personal data leaks and data scraping companies - to shift the attention from leaks by stating that personal data got out in the wild not due to Facebook's mistakes, but those of scrapers," Denas says.

Moving towards industry self-regulation

When it comes to strategic development of the data gathering industry, ethics and legal implications will remain the hot topic in 2022, pushing the industry to continue raising the standards. Ethical proxy acquisition and strong KYC practices will dominate the conversation, predicts Julius erniauskas, CEO of Oxylabs.

He explains that as with most new technologies, web scraping is developing faster than the regulation that could safeguard it from potential misuse cases. Therefore, the industry itself has to take the lead in developing the self-regulation guidelines and standards for the proper use of technology.

"In 2022, the issue is set to become more mainstream for several reasons. First of all, as the largest industry players are setting the tone, smaller players are likely to follow. Secondly, brands that use proxy services are putting more emphasis on the nature of proxies too, as potential misuse could damage their reputation as well," says Julius.

About Oxylabs

Oxylabs is a leading global provider of premium proxies and data scraping solutions for large-scale web data extraction. The company's mission is clear: To give every business - whether big or small - access to big data. With unmatched hands-on experience in publicly available web data gathering, Oxylabs is in trusted partnerships with dozens of Fortune 500 companies and global businesses, helping them unearth hidden gems of business intelligence data through state-of-the-art products and technological expertise. For more information, please visit: https://oxylabs.io/.

Media Contact:

Vytautas KirjazovasEmail: press@oxylabs.ioWebsite: http://www.oxylabs.io

SOURCE: Oxylabs

View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/685161/The-Future-of-Big-Data-What-to-Expect-in-2022

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The Future of Big Data: What to Expect in 2022? - Yahoo Finance

By Woody White

At this moment in world history, we are the richest, healthiest, smartest and most connected humans that have ever lived. Our drinking water is cleaner than it has ever been. Our GDP is the highest, babies are healthier, lifespans are longer and our food is abundant. (Ex: 150 years ago, a cow produced 1000 pounds of milk in a year. Today, a cow produces 16,000 pounds annually.)

Progress in every measurable category continues to move forward. We have learned that the earth is round, we eradicated slavery in much of the world, achieved womens suffrage, invented railroads, airplanes, discovered quantum physics, electricity, indoor plumbing and how to perform organ transplants. We even sent men to the moon and now here we are at a coffee shop with our ubiquitous smartphones and their portal into a universal store of all human knowledge ever known.

These advances occurred due in large measure to the foundational institutions that had held us together even in those times (like now) when we were tearing each other apart; our commitment to an unwritten social compact; the rule of law; our rights to the free exercise of religion and speech; and the premium we place on due process.

The cornerstone of everything we know about building a successful society has been the idea of fairness and equality. Starting with the Magna Cartas rudimentary acknowledgment of democratic rights, to the Declaration of Independence setting in motion our national democratic experiment, then the loosely applied but practical Articles of Confederation that bound us together until the Constitution and its Bill of Rights enshrined universal civil liberties and led to the official founding of the nation.

With each chapter in history, our commitment to fair and just has deepened its root system in our lives, including in the modern age, as we have retained the Senate filibuster rule to protect us from the fevers of a rabid majority. And our appellate courts still publish dissenting opinions to recognize the value of differing points of view.

But in the span of a few years, everything has changed in how we view what is fair. The methods we use to govern ourselves and communicate our disagreements have led to an erosion of public trust, once unquestioned but now undeniable, in our most revered institutions: each new days fresh outrage and crisis results in someone dying a death by a thousand tweets.

Just short of halfway through this American experiment, we survived a bloody civil war fought over the Constitutions structural inconsistencies. Indeed, it was a worse time than what we are living through. But not by much. The prospect of sewing it all back together today seems as elusive and beyond our grasp as it probably did in the months before the first battle of Bull Run in 1861.

The lines of civil discourse are blurred out of existence. We have our TV stations, Twitter accounts, echo chambers of groups within groups, where we seek one-dimensional validation of our viewpoints, with little chance of acquiescence to a point well-made by someone with whom we might disagree.

Socrates subjected his opponents to a series of cross-examining questions in the public square, with logic and reason providing the framework of conflict resolution.

Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas stood on wooden stages for hours, on seven different occasions, in the intemperate Illinois weather, to explain their different visions of America. As in all elections, one won, the other lost. Life went on.

But todays 24-hour social media news cycle rages in a never-ending debate, where there are no winners.

What are we going to do?

Since most of our public policy conversation takes place on the social media stage, if we are to find a way out of our self-made Sargasso Sea, it must be in a mass repudiation of big tech. Not in the sense that large tech must cease to exist, but the way we use it must change. If we fail to find a better way to communicate with each other, the democratic experiment we value will morph into something worse than anything we could imagine.

Each time the thought police censor and delete views on their platforms, they become incrementally less relevant. It may feel good in the short term for these tech giants to hit delete on unapproved posts or to suspend accounts, but over time, reasonable people start to take notice and do not like it when voices are silenced, even when it is one with which they disagree.

Our basic notion of fairness stubbornly persists. Recent jury verdicts and the ascension of the Joe Rogan Podcast are just two examples of how our sense of fairness has overcome our new biases. For the most part, Americans are fair and decent people.

We are not systemically racist. We do not support censorship. We do not pull for cheaters. When we see an unfair application of rules, we do something about it. Or at least, we used to.

If the rules of censorship and cancel-culture were applied consistently, it would be bad enough. But reasonable people know that rules which allow terrorists to tweet, but not former presidents and current members of Congress, something is inherently unfair.

And the people making these disparate judgment calls in real-time are political activists/employees of big tech, recent devotees to The Hunger Games dystopia, sitting in Silicon Valley cubicles manipulating us to achieve what they see as a larger utopic, pre-arranged outcome.

But guess what: as a whole, people are smart, and eventually, we figure out when we are being herded into a pasture, we prefer not to graze. This phenomenon is referred to as a pendulum swing. And while COVID-19 has reconfigured everything we thought we knew about how society functions, the double standards in public health, sports and everyday life that we have endured for the greater good have now brought us full circle. The herd mentality is starting to go the other direction.

And it is because we still value our basic sense of fairness. Somehow, through all of historys upheavals, here we are at the pinnacle of human achievement, invention and progress. It is starting to dawn on us that unless we get a grip on all this unless the sane grownups in the room do something we could go backward for the first time in a while.

It has happened before.

Victor Hugo once wrote that There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

The time has come when we must change our relationship with, and expectations of, large tech. They must adopt the rules of fairness that underpin every other facet of our lives. If we do not insist that they do so, it may be the final straw in the downward spiral we see all around us.

This guest opinion piece by Woody White, of Wilmington, N.C., was made available by The Carolina Journal.

FOR MORE COLUMNS AND LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, CHECK OUT OUR OPINION SECTION HERE.

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Guest Opinion: Our relationship with big tech must change - The Coastland Times | The Coastland Times - The Coastland Times