Category Archives: Google

A brief outage on Googles Cloud Platform led to failures at Gmail, Snapchat and the smart home company Nest on Wednesday afternoon.

The failure, which began at 3.35pm BST, affected a number of tools that Google uses internally and provides to other companies to host web services.

At the root was a tool called Cloud IAM, which hooks together a number of other products all used to make the internet work.

Mitigation work is currently under way by our engineering team, Google said. We believe that most impact was mitigated at 0740 US/Pacific [1540 BST], allowing many services to recover. Impact is now believed to be limited more directly to use of the IAM API.

The outages came after a period of intense growth in web traffic, which has caused problems at a number of companies, including Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. Google did not answer questions about the cause of the problems but said it was still investigating.

The outage led to emails failing to be delivered at Gmail, and some security cameras hooked up to Nest temporarily failing to record footage.

It also took out Snapchat completely, for more than an hour. The service was still down as of 5pm BST. Gmail was quickly restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future, Google said. The affected users are able to access Gmail, but may experience delays in sending or receiving messages. Google declared the outage resolved at 4:57pm BST.

Big cloud providers such as Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure underpin a significant amount of the internet, which means failures there can cascade into widespread outages. In 2017, a configuration error at Amazon broke AWS so severely that the company was unable even to update the website that reported outages for two hours, and left much of the US east coast without access to services including Amazon, Netflix and Twitter for most of the day

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Google outage hits Gmail, Snapchat and Nest - The Guardian

Former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt has been through debilitating crisis like the Great Recession of 2008-9, but nothing like COVID-19.

The strongest companies recover quicker than the weaker ones, Schmidt, who was CEO of Google GOOGL, -0.03% GOOG, +0.09% for 10 years until 2011 and executive chairman until 2017, said in a Zoom conference with about 200 business executives, investors, celebrities, and the press late Tuesday. (MarketWatch was one of the attendees.) To put this delicately, use the opportunity of the crisis to reconfigure and ensure the decisions you make now make you stronger when this lifts -- a year or maybe less.

Schmidt, who is technical adviser to Google parent Alphabet Inc. and teaches at Stanford University, was speaking to an eclectic group world-wide that included Oscar-winning actress Goldie Hawn, an executive from Square Inc. SQ, +3.80% , and restaurateurs. The topic, Where we go from here: Predictions for the post-COVID-19 world, was hosted by analytics company Collective[i].

The pandemic-economic crisis underscores the necessity for a national broadband policy to reach rural areas, and a more even playing field for the economically disadvantaged who either dont have access to laptops or Wi-Fi to take advantage of technology from Google or Zoom Video Communications Inc. ZM, +5.68% , according to Schmidt.

We need a plan, and we dont have one, he said. We have an opportunity to move to something called TeleEverything... for health, education, manufacturing. And fixing bandwidth accessibility for everyone.

At the same time, big tech has evolved in moderating content as more people express their views through social media and online video outlets, he said. There was this belief 10 years ago, it was OK to have open dialogue, Schmidt said. Now, some tech companies [he did not name any] are rightfully going after liars and manipulators of misinformation, especially around coronavirus. Now, we have a moral responsibility.

There are five or 10 examples, which are excellent, Schmidt continued, evidently alluding to Google and Facebook Inc. FB, +0.52% . It is a welcome maturation in the industry to police the dangerous, crazy people.

Schmidts take on COVID-19 came several hours after MarketWatch spoke with longtime Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO, -1.29% CEO John Chambers, who believes the pandemic will wreak havoc on the world economy for nine months to a year. He believes, however, that some startups and Fortune 500 companies will emerge stronger from the rubble if they make the digital transformation to big data, artificial intelligence, 5G, and edge computing.

See also: The CEO who built Cisco into a powerhouse has a sobering coronavirus diagnosis: At least nine months of economic pain

Schmidt shares the same vision and roughly the same timeline. And, like Chambers, he is hesitant to compare COVID-19 to anything before it.

This [situation] is not a comparison, said Schmidt, who navigated Google through the Great Recession of 2008-09. In 2008, for example, Google repriced stock options to employees to stabilize its workforce and retain talent. It was the right decision at the time, Schmidt said.

With the planet paralyzed amid nearly 1.5 million cases and more than 85,000 deaths world-wide, government and business leaders face a challenge never encountered before, Schmidt cautioned.

This is the first time as a species we have had to face the same problem as a planet, Schmidt said near the end of the 90-minute forum. About 11,000 years ago, when we hard to learn how to do farming. We can either join together or split apart.

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Former Google CEO: This is the first time as a species we have had to face the same problem as a planet - MarketWatch

A Wing delivery drone hovers over a customer's house in Christianburg, Va.

The Virginia town of Christianburg is getting a preview of what life will be like when delivery by drone becomes practical. Forced to stay at home amid the coronavirus pandemic, more residents are ordering from a pilot residential delivery service run by Wing, a unit of Google GOOGL parent Alphabet, the company says. The most popular items: Coffee, toilet paper and cookies.

Wing says its made more than 1,000 deliveries over the past two weeks in Christianburg and at test sites in Helsinki and two Australian cities where movement has also been restricted to stem the spread of the disease. Thats a dramatic increase from our standard rates, says Jacob Demmitt, a spokesman for Wing.

The company wont break out numbers for Christianburg.

A local bakery and a coffee roaster recently added to the service are hoping that drone delivery will help keep them afloat. In their first day of availability on Saturday, which has been the busiest day for Wing, Mockingbird Caf owner Donna Speaks says that drone delivery customers bought roughly double the number of croissants, muffins and almond macarons that she would normally sell in store. Right now its a super great bonus for us, she told Forbes.

Wing has been offering delivery of Walgreens merchandise in Christianburg since October, making it the first residential drone delivery service in the U.S., under a program run by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to test integration of unmanned aircraft into airspace in 10 locations around the country.

The merchandise is stocked at a Wing facility, from which drones fly at a cruising altitude of 150 feet and a speed of 65 mph over the town of 22,000 people. When a drone gets to its destination, it descends to 23 feet and lowers a laminated paper cargo box suspended from a rope. Cargo capacity is 3 pounds.

Amid the pandemic, Walgreens has expanded its delivery options to include, pasta, pasta sauce and other items that can be used to make a meal, and Wing decided to expedite adding local food merchants to its service.

Its been a lifeline for Speaks, 61, who has a storefront in a former Model T dealership in the towns deserted downtown. Shes shrunk her menu and gone from four full-time employees to running the business by herself with part-time help from her daughter, who makes the bakerys fancier desserts.

Speaks says shes gone into almost full production mode again. I think well get back to normal faster through this.

Luke Brugh, who runs Brugh Coffee, says Wings sales of cans of his cold brew on Saturday were double his normal daily in-store take.

Wing isnt adding a delivery charge to the cost of his $3.50 cans of joe or Mockingbirds $2.75 croissants or blueberry muffins its trying to figure out how to make drone delivery work rather than make any money at this point. Another bonus: customers dont have to tip the drone, says Demmitt.

Full coverage and live updates on the Coronavirus

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In This City, Toilet Paper Comes From The Sky Thanks To Googles Drones - Forbes

Google has removed an Android VPN program from the Google Play store after researchers notified it of a critical vulnerability. The app, SuperVPN, has been downloaded over 100 million times.

Virtual private networks (VPNs) let users create encrypted connections to online servers that then serve as their gateway to the Internet. They enable users to tunnel safely to the internet when using untrusted local connections such as those in public places like coffee shops. In theory, they should stop intruders from sniffing your traffic on insecure networks. SuperVPN is one of dozens of programs that supposedly serve this function for Android devices.

VPNpro, a company that reviews and advises on VPN products, warned in February of a vulnerability in the product that could cause a man in the middle (MITM) attack, enabling an intruder to insert themselves between the user and the VPN service. It said at the time:

What this VPN app has done is to leave its users, people seeking extra privacy and security, to actually have less privacy and security than if theyd used no VPN at all.

The program was sending encrypted data, but it hard coded the decryption key, the review site said. Decrypting the data revealed information about SuperVPNs server, certificates, and authentication credentials. VPNpro was able to replace that data with its own.

That means the attacker can force SuperVPN to connect to a fake server, enabling them to see all of the users data including passwords, private text, and voice messages, VPNpro said.

VPNpros researcher Jan Youngren discovered the vulnerability in October 2019, adding that its developer, SuperSoftTech, likely based in Beijing, didnt respond to its notification. Instead, it notified the Google Play Security Reward Program (GPSRP), operated for Google by HackerOne. That team couldnt get a response from SuperSoftTech either, so it removed the program from the Google Play store on 7 April, 2020.

This isnt the first time that SuperVPN has cropped up in vulnerability research. It also got a mention in a 2016 paper that researched security risks in Android VPNs. That research, presented at the Association for Computing Machinerys 2016 Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), found that 13 antivirus programs detected malware activity in the software. It took third place in a ranking of Android VPNs most often flagged with malware-like activity by antivirus programs.

SuperVPN wasnt the only Android VPN to raise VPNpros concerns. It identified nine others in its February blog post that it said had critical vulnerabilities leaving their users vulnerable to to MITM attacks. A quick check shows that several of them are still available for download on the Play Store.

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Google removes Android VPN with critical vulnerability from Play Store - Naked Security

Googles UK staff earned an average of 234,000 each last year as the tech firm paid more than 1bn in wages and a share scheme but only 44m in UK corporation tax.

Google, which increased UK staff numbers by almost 800 to 4,439 last year, footed its first 1bn-plus wage and salary bill for the year to the end of June. The 1.04bn total was a 25% increase on the 829m paid to staff in 2018, according to the companys latest financial filings in Britain.

The accounts show UK staff received a 441m bonanza in share-based bonuses, thanks to Googles surging stock price and financial performance in 2019. This is 29% more than the 342m pot the previous year.

The pay bill was spent on 1,723 marketing staff, 2,171 research and development employees and 545 classified as management and administration. The average payout of 234,000 is 8,000 higher than the 226,000 average pay package in 2018.

The accounts show Google paid 44m in UK corporation tax, down from 66m a year earlier, as pre-tax profits fell slightly from 246m to 225m. Cost increases in the year included the hiring of almost 400 research and development staff, as spending in this area rose from 387m to 462m year on year.

As an international business, we pay the vast majority more than 80% of our corporate income tax in the US, which is our home country, a spokeswoman for Google UK said. We also pay all of the tax that is due in the UK. We continue to strongly support the OECDs [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development] work to develop a new international framework for how multinational companies are taxed.

The government is pressing ahead with plans to impose a 2% digital services tax on the UK revenues of online companies including Google, Facebook and Amazon.

Google UK reported 1.6bn in revenues last year, up from 1.2bn, but this does not reflect how much it makes in total advertising revenues in the UK as they are reported in other jurisdictions.

The research company eMarketer estimates that in reality Google made about 5.7bn in ad revenue in the UK last year, accounting for 39% of the total digital ad market, and will make more than 6bn this year.

In October, it emerged that Facebooks UK operations paid 28m in corporation tax last year despite achieving a record 1.6bn in British sales. EMarketer estimates that in reality Facebook, the second-biggest player in the UK digital ad market behind Google, made 3.6bn in online ad revenues, and will make 4.2bn this year.

Google UK operates as the marketing and sales division of its European operation, which is headquartered in Dublin, where taxes are lower.

The UK operation makes most of its reported revenue through an annual research and development fee from its US headquarters and a marketing services payment from Dublin.

Google, which has a market value of more than $800bn, made $111bn in total global revenues and profits rose to $34bn last year. In the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, revenues rose 13% from $44.7bn to $50.6bn.

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Google's UK staff earned average of 234,000 in 2019 - The Guardian

In the internet age, the big technology companies are making money off what they know about you.

Bucknell information systems professor Eric Santanen has been researching the trends in internet data collection and privacy for several years. Santanen has an article called "Weaponizing Personal Data to Undermine Democracy," scheduled for publication in the upcoming quarterly edition of CrossCurrents magazine.

"Google never forgets," Santanen said. "You reveal things to the search engine you never tell to family or friends or neighbors."

"It's the consensus of all of the philosophers that have studied privacy that its the key ingredient for individual dignity," Santanen tells NorthcentralPa.com. "A really silly example, but something that illustrates it quite potently, is to strip a person of dignity is all you need to do is strip them of their privacy in front of an audience."

"From a privacy standpoint," Santanen says, "it's hard to distinguish between a phone and an ankle monitor."

Besides the tracking data involved in a phone, even the most idle of interactions with sites like Facebook can provide an array of predictive data. Stanford professor Michal Kosinski did a study that found that Facebook "likes" could be used to predict information about a person like upbringing, sexual orientation, race, political affiliation, and vices.

"Based on 68 Facebook likes you can predict someones skin color with 95 percent accuracy, sex orientation with 88 percent accuracy," Santanen said. "With 150 likes you can know someone better than your partner knows you. With 300 likes you know better than you know yourself."

Studies have shown that people tend to rate their financial and medical data as more important, and everything else - pictures, web searches, internet shopping - are rated as less important.

"This is the data that has potential to cause greatest amount of trouble in ways people dont fully appreciate," Santanen said.

As Santanen has continued his studies in information technology, starting from a place of looking at the benefits of tech for organizations, he has become more concerned about what the internet is doing to people's ability to find privacy and make autonomous decisions.

Bucknell professor Eric Santanen. Photo provided

"Space allows people to develop new and radical ideas, in a manner that allows you to refine them and make them more robust and able to withstand public scrutiny," Santanen said. "Galileo, who said Earth is not the center of the universe. Mahatma Gandhi and the German monk Martin Luther, who said religion is something between the individual and deity and you dont need the church as a middleman to be a player. Martin Luther King Jr., who envisioned equal rights for all. People who have dared to utter and think things other than that what was socially acceptable at the time."

The Cambridge Analytica use of Facebook data to push specific narratives to specific people in the 2016 American election cycle is of particular concern in Santanen's work.

"It's easy to create an electronic blueprint of emotional cues to push peoples buttons," Santanen said.

For true privacy, there's no alternative to staying off social media, Santanen said.

"The biggest challenge we face in this domain is the way these companies create their policies," Santanen said. "The company provides it to you in a little scrollbox window several thousand words long, written in legalese that makes it hard for average user to comprehend ... The strongest things is not to agree to terms and conditions, but everyone wants the app."

Santanen suggests that people avoid those personality quizzes on social media and never save a password. Use one browser to log into services like Google, and another one for everything else.

"Any feature that provides to you convenience is going to rat you out for your privacy," Santanen said.

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'Google never forgets:' Bucknell professor on effects of social media on privacy - NorthcentralPa.com

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Google is involved in a lawsuit that has the potential to result in the company revealing its long-guarded algorithm secrets.

As part of the lawsuit, Google has been given an ultimatum by UK courts to either withdraw evidence to its defence or disclose the details of its search algorithm.

Not only would Google have to hand over the details of its algorithm, it would have to hand them over to a working SEO consultant.

For obvious reasons, Google does not want to give up its algorithm secrets.

However, Google also doesnt want to withdraw evidence which is vital in helping the company win the lawsuit.

Those are the only two choices Google has right now when it comes to fighting the lawsuit.

The only other choice would be to settle the lawsuit, which would reportedly involve millions in damages.

Not to mention that a settlement creates the perception of Google admitting to doing something wrong.

The best case for Google right now is if the company opts to withdraw evidence and somehow still wins the case.

We glossed over a plethora of details up to this point well get into them now.

This whole situation stems from a lawsuit against Google by a company called Foundem dating back to 2012.

Thats the year the lawsuit was filed, but actual events pertaining to the lawsuit date back to 2006.

Foundem alleges it was the victim of anti-competitive practices by Google.

According to Foundems claims, Google deliberately ranked its own products ahead of Foundem in search results starting in 2006.

Foundem is seeking damages for the loss of business it incurred as a result being ranked down in Google search.

Foundem was a vertical-search engine for finding the lowest online prices.

It was initially only available to a limited group of users before being opened up to everyone.

Prior to being available for everyone, Foundem still appeared in search results.

Foundem appeared quite prominently in search results, in fact, often appearing on the first page for shopping-related searches.

In only two days after launching to everyone, Foundem was buried in Googles search results.

Foundem dropped from the first page of search results to dozens and, sometimes, hundreds of pages lower.

What makes this suspicious is Foundems search rankings only dropped in Google. It still ranked well in other search engines.

Thats what lead Foundem to the notion that this was a deliberate effort to stifle competition against Google Shopping.

Foundem filed a lawsuit against Google in 2012, which is still being fought to this day.

In an effort by Google to prove it didnt engage in anti-competitive practices it provided confidential documents to the UK High Court.

The documents were filed as court exhibits by Google engineers Cody Kwok and Michael Pohl.

The judge presiding over the case says the documents aim to explain the operation and aims of Googles ranking algorithms, and how they have been applied to shopping comparison sites generally and Foundem in particular.

The details of Googles search algorithm would be too technical for lawyers to understand, Foundem argues, so it wants to bring in an SEO expert.

Specifically, Foundem wants to bring in Philipp Kloeckner to interpret the details of Googles algorithm.

Google argues that giving its algorithm information to an SEO would compromise the integrity of its ranking process:

The integrity of Googles ranking processes relies upon all webmasters or website owners having the same degree of access to information about Googles ranking This will no longer be the case if information of this kind is made available to some individuals offering commercial services to assist companies to improve their Search ranking.

Not satisfied with this response, Foundem suggests Google could simply withdraw the documents in question so no one ever has to see them.

Google then argues the documents are vital to proving its defence.

In other words without these documents there is no case.

That brings us to where we are now.

In order to move the case along, the judge stepped in and said Google can either withdraw the documents or let them be seen by Philipp Kloeckner.

Now heres where it gets really interesting.

If Google stays firm on neither withdrawing the documents or providing them to Kloeckner, the judge will grant Kloeckner the permission to view the documents himself.

The judge is giving Google reasonable time to make a decision, which surely cant be an easy one to make.

Well have to wait and see how this plays out for Google. We could be on the verge of an historic event in search history.

Sources: The Register, The New York Times

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Google May Be Forced to Reveal its Search Algorithm to an SEO - Search Engine Journal

Of all the massive variety of animals on this planet we call Earth (there are over 5,000 known species of mammals!), Googles 3D animals feature in search only supports 26. Those do include the big ones! Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my! But there are definitely some that Google could add in the future. Which would you want to see?

We recently held a poll asking which of the currently-available animals are your favorite (spoiler alert: Tiger won by a long shot! Tiger King, anyone?), but this poll is a bit different. Instead of focusing on the animals that Google is already letting you access, lets talk about which animals arent yet available. Clearly, Google has a lot of room for improvement if theyre only allowing you to view a few dozen species of 3D animals!

Want to access these yourself? We have some guides put together on how to do exactly that whether you want to pretend to be the Tiger King or you want to teach your kids about the animal kingdom! Most Android phones work great with this feature you just need a phone that supports ARCore from this list.

Check out all of the currently-available animals in Googles 3D animals AR objects in the below video put together by our very own Damien Wilde. And then, head below to the poll and let us know which animals you think are missing from this official lineup! Whale? Wildebeest? What do you think?

Let us know which animals you most hope to see added to the 3D animals feature in the poll below!

Leave a comment below if you have a suggestion that isnt on the list!

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Which 3D animals are missing from Googles AR objects feature? [Poll] - 9to5Google

If youre still having trouble filing for unemployment, the Empire State has good news for you.

The New York State Department of Labor announced Monday that it has partnered with Google to fix its website for out-of-work New Yorkers who need to file for unemployment. The Labor Department website crashed in mid-March as tens of thousands tried to get benefits due to non-essential businesses shutting down amid the coronavirus pandemic; more than 10 million Americans have filed initial claims nationwide in the past two weeks.

Melissa DeRosa, secretary to Governor Andrew Cuomo, said Monday that the state has gone from four servers to 50 to try and handle the huge increase in website traffic.

Just so everyone understands, at the peak of the 2008 crisis, the single largest day of claims was 13,000 in one day. We had six times that just two days ago. So, this volume is something that weve never experienced before," DeRosa said, according to CBS 6 Albany.

Its frustrating, its horrible, its unacceptable, but we just ask that people remain patient.

According to the Times Union, the Labor Department is also working with Google to develop a new website with a better interface, and has hired 300 more people on top of 700 staffers added last month to help keep up with phone calls and other inquiries.

We are trying to do everything we can to attack this issue, DeRosa said.

New York state said its seen a 1,075% increase in jobless claims so far in 2020, compared to 2019, but those numbers do not include people who have been unable to file due to website issues and a large volume of phone calls. One Upstate woman said she filled out an online unemployment application, but learned she needed to talk to a representative to finish the claim, and had to call the department more than 4,000 times over two weeks just to complete it.

CBS 6 reports DeRosa said anyone struggling to file will get benefits back to the date of their unemployment, even if there was a delay in getting signed up.

Due to enormous volume there will be considerable wait time. Please be patient; everyone who is entitled will get their benefits, the labor department website says.

The best way to file an unemployment claim is online at https://applications.labor.ny.gov/Individual.

Do not call the Telephone Claims Center unless you are instructed to call to complete your application, the labor department says. If you are instructed to call to complete your claim, the only valid number is 1-888-209-8124.

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Need to file for unemployment? NY partners with Google to fix labor department website - syracuse.com

Across the media landscape, advertising is disappearing, one more casualty of the global economic shutdown. New technology wont be a savior; this is an equal-opportunity problem across print, TV, digital, radio, and outdoor advertising. Advertisers are quickly slashing or pulling budgets, canceling or reducing campaigns, zapping billions in ad dollars from media income statements, and endangering the future of media businesses regardless of form.

The reason is simple: Even the most prominent ad buyers lack reasons, and often the means, to buy ads. Global travel is on hold; for airlines, hoteliers, cruise lines, casino operators, and car-rental firms, there are no products to promote. With auto factories shut, there is little need to push cars. With movie theaters closed, there are no film trailers. And aside from grocery stores, pharmacies, and large box-store chains, most retailers are shuttered. Meanwhile, many of the small and medium-size businesses that buy online ads are struggling to stay solvent.

In terms of comparable periods, history wont be much help. When the Spanish Flu hit in 1918, the first commercial TV broadcast was still more than two decades away. During the financial crisis, digital advertising was still in its infancy. J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth notes that in 2008, digital advertising was roughly 12% of the overall ad budget, so share gains helped to offset some of the overall weakness. Now, he says, digital advertising is 55% of overall budgets.

The digital business has changed so much in 12 years, says David Cohen, president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, or IAB, an online-ad industry trade group. Its very hard to draw any clear connections between then and now.

The industry is grasping for clues. Ad agency Magna now sees linear-TV spending dropping 12% in 2020, including a 20% drop in the first half, with a more modest 2.5% decline in the second half. The firm sees a relatively quick bounceback, with overall ad spending up 4% next year, when optimists are counting on a flood of delayed events like the Olympics to bring advertisers back into the fold.

IAB surveyed nearly 400 ad buyers about the state of the industry, and the results are grim. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed say the current ad downturn will be worse than the financial crisis in 2008. About a quarter of those surveyed by IAB have pulled all of their advertising through the second quarter. Another 46% are reducing their ad spend for the same period. Some of the respondents expect conditions to improve at least a little in the second half.

Digital spend for the March-to-June period will be down 33%, according to the IAB survey. Traditional media spend is expected to be off 39%.

Investors arent waiting around for the actual numbers. Theyve already punished ad-supported businesses. Barrons analyzed more than two dozen publicly traded companies: digital media sites, ad agencies, publishers, radio broadcasters, TV businesses, and cable operators. Through this past Thursdays close, the average stock in the group was down 46% from the markets Feb. 19 peak, about twice the decline of the S&P 500 index. Nearly a third of the companies in the group have fallen by more than half.

Heres how the shutdown is affecting specific ad sectors:

Digital Advertising Michael Levine, an analyst with Pivotal Research, is particularly worried about how the shutdown is affecting small businesses, which he estimates account for 40% to 45% of Facebooks (ticker: FB) revenue and 50% to 55% of Googles revenue. If the economy is locked down as long as two months, he thinks the failure rate of small businesses could be as high as 30%.

Both Facebook and Twitter (TWTR) have already warned that they will take a hit from the downturn. Alphabets Google (GOOGL) no doubt is seeing the same effects, but so far hasnt discussed the matter.

Facebooks disclosure was on the vague side. The social network said in a blog post that it has seen a weakening in our ads business in countries taking aggressive actions to reduce the spread of Covid-19. Traffic isnt an issueFacebook has seen record use almost every day, but it isnt monetizing much of the growth on platforms like Messenger and WhatsApp.

Twitter has been more specific and could serve as a guidepost for everyone else. After originally forecasting first-quarter revenue of $825 million to $885 million, or growth of 10.5% year over year, the company now sees revenue being down slightly. Like Facebook, Twitter has seen a spike in traffic, but the extra traffic is doing nothing to help revenue.

If we assume that Twitter suffered its entire revenue miss in the month of March, that would suggest ad volumes at Twitter are running close to 30% below what they were before the virus, not far off the numbers in IABs report.

The comments from Twitter and Facebook indicate that Alphabet, Snap (SNAP), and Pinterest (PINS) will face similar issues. The vanishing market for local advertising is a particular problem for Yelp (YELP), the online recommendation engine.

Shares of Facebook and Alphabet have held up better than much of the ad-supported industry. As Barrons wrote in a recent Tech Trader column, both companies have piles of cash and little debt. They arent insulated from the downturn, but the businesses will survive in the coming months, and will be in a strong position to thrive when conditions normalize.

Basic Cable Theres a triple-whammy of issues for ad-supported broadcast and cable networks such as those owned by AMC Networks (AMCX), whose shares are down 40% from the markets peak; ViacomCBS (VIAC), down 64%; and Discovery (DISCA), down 39%. As noted, advertising dollars are drying up, viewership of subscription services is spiking, and the lack of sports programming could set the stage for an acceleration in the long-running cord-cutting trend.

The Giants The largest U.S. media businesses Comcast (CMCSA), AT&T (T), and Walt Disney (DIS)have actually held up better than most other ad-dependent businesses. All three are likely to survive the crisis more or less intact, but there are trouble spots. The three media giants have basic cable networks that will be hurt as advertisers slash budgets. AT&T, which owns TBS and TNT, and Disney, which owns ESPN, are struggling without professional and collegiate sports. Comcast, with Peacock, and AT&T, with HBO Max, are readying the launch of new streaming services under far different circumstances than they had imagined. Comcast, in particular, was counting on its 2020 Olympics broadcast to serve as a springboard for the Peacock launch. Meanwhile, Comcast, parent of NBCUniversal, and Disney are stuck with shuttered theme parks that could stay closed for months, meaning zero revenue despite ongoing costs.

But Comcast and AT&T have a crown jewel: massive broadband networks, which have become lifelines for the countrys homebound population. And Disney has one of the worlds best brands. A quarantine should also be a boon for the companys new Disney+ streaming service. AT&Ts shares, down 25%, are buoyed by the stocks better-than-7% dividend yield, although the company has suspended its aggressive stock-buyback plan.

Newspapers The falloff in advertising adds new pressure to the beleaguered newspaper group. Shares of the New York Times (NYT) have tumbled 27% in the latest slide, which makes it the strongest performer of the print media stocks. News Corp (NWSA)owner of Dow Jones, the publisher of Barrons and The Wall Street Journalis down 43%, magazine publisher Meredith (MDP) is off 66%, and Gannett (GCI), which has announced job cuts at more than 100 newspapers across the country, is down 85%.

Radio and TV Stations The sudden disappearance of commutes is a problem for the already-troubled radio sector. Shares of iHeart Media (IHRT), which recently returned to the public market after emerging from bankruptcy, are down 69% from the markets peak. Cumulus Media (CMLS), which owns the sports-programming business Westwood One, is also off 69%.

Outdoor Billboards are built for a steady stream of drivers on the roads, another model that has been decimated by the suspension of commutes. Both Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings (CCO), off 77%, and Outfront Media (OUT), down 65%, have pulled their guidance and taken steps to cut costs and shore up their balance sheets.

Avoiding Ads Altogether The best performing stocks in the media universe, not surprisingly, are those with no significant exposure to ads. Netflix (NFLX) is down just 4% from the February peak. The company has never sold advertising, and it is likely to emerge from the crisis with more subscribers.

Pure-play broadband providers like Charter Communications (CHTR) and Altice USA (ATUS) could also be winners. And the arrival this year of new gaming consolesthe PlayStation 5 from Sony (SNE) and Xbox Series X from Microsoft (MSFT)comes at an opportune time, with many people probably still stuck at home and hungry for entertainment.

This will be a defining moment in how consumers spend their time with media, and what technologies they use, says eMarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg. And some of those changes will be long-lasting.

Write to Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com

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Advertising Is Getting Crushed by Covid-19. Why Facebook, Google Cant Save the Industry. - Barron's