Category Archives: Google

Regardless of the size of your smartwatch, inputting information on it can be a pain. Text input is done best by voice, which makes that tech crucial to get right. On Samsungs Galaxy Watch 4, the default is Samsungs engine, but its easy to switch over to Gboard for some big improvements.

Samsungs default keyboard uses Samsungs voice engine which, frankly, isnt very good. Well have more details in a coming review, but in the past two weeks using the Galaxy Watch 4 Ive had more than one frustration with the voice-to-text being slow and inaccurate.

This is where Samsungs use of Wear OS comes in handy. Its not pre-installed, but you can download Gboard from the Google Play Store and when installed, itll give you both a new keyboard layout option and better voice-to-text. Its pretty widely known that Googles voice-to-text is both accurate and fast, so its a great addition to the Watch 4. Notably, though, it can still take a second to start recognizing voice input just like Samsungs option.

Googles keyboard also makes a better option, at least in my opinion, on the Galaxy Watch 4. Samsungs default keyboard is locked to T9 input which, while small-screen-friendly, is slow and a pain for inputting longer bits of text, such as a Wi-Fi password. Gboard, meanwhile, gives the Galaxy Watch 4 a proper QWERTY layout that has been tried-and-true on older Wear OS devices with fairly easy input and good predictive text.

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Gboard for Wear OS works on the Galaxy Watch 4 w/ Googles voice-to-text, QWERTY layout - 9to5Google

Here's what you need to know about Google One VPN.

Google's mobile virtual private network service -- Google One VPN -- is branching out. Once restricted to Android users in the US, the VPN is now a perk bundled with the search giant's cloud-based subscription storage service, Google One. Earlier this month, however, Google made a change to its developer documents, as reported by 9to5Google. Android users in Canada and Mexico gained access to the service, along with those in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.

In October 2020, when Google launched its own standalone VPN as part of its $100 annual bundle package for Google One, subscribers with a 2TB or greater account got access to the service perk for the first time. While the idea of an Android-tailored VPN conveniently rolled into a Google One mobile app might seem appealing as a quick-fix privacy option, there are more than a few privacy concerns to give you pause.

If you're checking into Google's service for the first time, here are a few key things to know about the mobile encryption offering.

Read more: Do I really need to use a VPN on my phone? Yes, and it only takes 10 minutes to set up

Yes. According to the tech detailed in Google's white paper, Google One VPN acts as a traditional VPN does: It diverts all the internet traffic from your device through an encrypted tunnel, sends it through a Google VPN server and passes it along to the website you're browsing toward -- effectively hiding your browsing. It even goes a step further by separating its user authentication process from your browsing, too.

I haven't yet tested Google One VPN, so I can't tell you whether it can help you bypass Google's own geoblocking on country-specific apps in the Google Play Store, or if it can help you access your home country's Netflix catalog while you're traveling abroad.

You might want to take caution before completely relying on the Google One VPN for all of your privacy needs.

As we wrote in June, Google One users simply looking for an extra layer of protection while using free public Wi-Fi could find this VPN to be a convenient fit. But there's an elephant in the room here.

By using Google One VPN, you're actively feeding every piece of internet-bound data on your device to Google. Then you're trusting Google to not peek at that data, and to shield you from the same third-party tracking tech that it only stopped profiting from in March.

This is the same Google that required a lot --Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, a lengthy legislative haranguing over privacy concerns, three major antitrust lawsuits (including a landmark case by the US Department of Justice) and another complaint by a bipartisan coalition of states -- before it decided to phase out those third-party tracker cookies in its Chrome browser. Google is only just starting that process, which also doesn't apply to mobile Google devices.

We reached out to Google, and will update this story if we hear back.

VPNs function by routing all of your data through a single company's servers. So when we recommend VPN providers, we evaluate not only the relative strength of their encryption tech and application security, but we also examine the VPN providers' data privacy and retention policies, and any instances where the provider has been proven to have collected or shared user browsing data.

Read more: How we evaluate and review VPNs

We frequently advise users against adopting free VPN services except when indulging in a 30-day trial of a recommended provider, primarily as a precaution against undesirable data collection by shady VPN providers and their data brokers. If any of our recommended VPN providers had even half the access to your private digital life that Google so often does, I'd advise against using that provider's VPN to protect your privacy, regardless of how strong its encryption is.

So if you're interested in keeping your browsing, internet traffic and usage data private from corporations and government entities, you should carefully consider Google's long, storied history of sharing and collecting user data before you use any of its products, VPN included. Ask yourself whether it might be better to trust your data to a company whose singular aim appears to be privacy, rather than algorithm farming.

Now playing: Watch this: Which VPN should you pick?

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Thanks to far-reaching gag orders and secret subpoenas, the US government has overseen the collection of more data from internet users than we can feasibly or objectively measure at this time. As such, I recommend against choosing a VPN service with a US jurisdiction, which would include Google One VPN -- though it's worth noting that non-US VPN companies are still far too opaque to operate entirely independent of user trust.

But when even Uncle Sam has to sue a VPN company over data abuse? It may be worth selecting a different fox to guard your digital henhouse.

If you're a subscriber to the Google One 2TB plan and just looking for light protection as you browse public Wi-Fi, the Google One VPN may do the job. But if you're looking for more robust privacy, we'd recommend subscribing to one of our tested and recommended VPNs instead.

For more, check out our picks for the best Android VPNs, the best iPhone VPNs and the best cheap VPNs.

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Google One VPN: What you need to know about this privacy tool - CNET

Yesterday marked the release of Googles $449 Pixel 5A with 5G, and the company has just released a two-minute video that celebrates one of the phones very best hardware features. No, its not the new IP67 dust and water resistance. Its not the larger screen or the biggest battery in a Pixel yet.

Its all about the headphone jack, or the circle as this very Jony Ive-esque spot constantly refers to it. Google is truly getting out there with its YouTube advertising, and youve probably never seen a video about a headphone jack quite like this. I mean, the ad uses footage of a space station docking to underline the satisfying feeling of click you get when plugging headphones into Googles latest phone.

My favorite part is when it dives right into the nitty-gritty of headphone jack terminology: Google says the Pixel 5A is designed to welcome both 1/8th-inch three-pole TRS and four-pole TRRS connections.

Even the videos description is on point:

Calling this perfectly-symmetrical, technological marvel, a headphone jack may feel like an understatement...but technically, thats what its called, so... fair enough. Behold! The Headphone Jack, on the Google Pixel 5a with 5G.

The narrator declares the Pixel 5As headphone jack to be a glorious achievement that draws from our past as it propels us into the future.

But something about that line got to me. Because now, my friends, we must come tumbling back to reality, where that future only applies to the midrange Pixel. Googles next flagship smartphones, the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, wont have the circle. However perfect it might be, its been absent on the top-tier Pixels since the Pixel 2.

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Googles new ad goes full Jony Ive on the Pixel 5A headphone jack - The Verge

Once again, Google is headed back to the drawing board to rethink its healthcare strategy. As first reported by Business Insider, the tech giant is dissolving its single, unified Google Health division, founded in 2018, in favor of a distributed approach to building health products. The head of the division, David Feinberg, is leaving the company, while an unknown proportion of Google Health employees will be sent to other teams at Google (like Search and Fitbit) to work on specific services, according to Googles AI head Jeff Dean.

Its a messy change for what was already a messy initiative. Tech giants like Google and Apple have become increasingly interested in the healthcare industry in recent years, but have failed to make in-roads in such a fractured ecosystem. Googles efforts in health have at least been fittingly disparate, covering everything from Android fitness apps, to AI-powered eye-disease detectors, to bungled data deals, to medical study apps, to sleep-tracking features in the Nest Hub, to machine learning tools for clinicians. And so on.

Google Health was supposed to unify these efforts, giving some sense of purpose and direction to the companys sprawling ambitions. The brand dates back to 2006, but Google seemed to be embarking on a more serious path in 2018 when it hired respected healthcare exec Feinberg. As this recent news suggests, that hasnt worked out, though the Google Health brand will live on. As tweeted by Dean: @GoogleHealth is no longer just a single team, but a significant company-wide effort that touches many of our products. Moving forward the @GoogleHealth name will encompass all our health initiatives.

What does that mean for you, the avid Google Health consumer? Diddly squat, really. If you enjoy using any of the companys current health products whether thats wearing a Fitbit or Googling why am I tired all the time at 3AM in the morning then these core experiences will likely continue exactly as before. Whether or not Google can offer anything more meaningful from its healthcare strategy, though, remains to be seen.

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Google dismantles Health unit in favor of tried-and-tested throw everything at the wall strategy - The Verge

Its no surprise its so convenient to Google something in mobile Safari. Photo: Caitlin McGarry / Gizmodo

Google seems to have no problem doling out cash to ensure it remains the search engine of choice. Documents have shown the company offers financial incentives to smartphone manufacturers to keep its app store front and center, and it pays developers to offer their games in Google Play. The company also pays Apple a hefty sum to remain the default in the companys Safari browserthis year, its estimated to be about $15 billion.

That number comes from Bernstein analysts, who expect Google will fork over that much to retain its status on Apple devices. The amount is likely to increase to about $20 billion in 2022. Those estimates are based on patterns found in the latest available financial documents from both companies. And unless something changes significantly in the next year, Google is likely to continue to pay many billions to stay front and center for iOS users.

Jane Horvath, Apples senior director of global privacy, said earlier this year that the company defaults to Google because its the most popular search engine. And Safari allows you to switch from Google to another search engine if you choose.

It seems Apple and Google have a sort of symbiotic relationship as a result of this deal. The big payout from Google technically falls under Apples Services division, which has undoubtedly helped Apple increase that revenue line over the years. Thats helpful, as the company has diversified its business beyond hardware.

Considering the word antitrust is floating around Google like an errant fruit fly, analysts note this arrangement could be considered a regulatory risk. If its seen as evidence of Googles anti-competitive practices, Bernstein analysts estimate it would cost Apple a potential 4-5% decrease in gross revenue. Google could also decide to stop paying Apple altogether, but analysts believe that wont happen as Google is likely paying to ensure Microsoft doesnt outbid it.

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Google still makes a majority of its cash from advertising revenue. The company posted a record $61.9 billion in profit, led by search, which made $7 billion on its own. But its unclear exactly how much Safari contributes to Googles bottom line, and whether paying Apple billions is really worth it when the alternative is... Bing.

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Google Will Continue to Pay Apple Billions to Keep You From Using... Bing? - Gizmodo

Google Talk, Google's first-ever instant messaging platform, launched on August 24, 2005. This company has been in the messaging business for 16 years, meaningGoogle has been making messaging clients for longer than some of its rivals have existed.But thanks to a decade and a half of nearly constant strategy changes, competing product launches, and internal sabotage, you can't say Google has a dominant or even stableinstant messaging platform today.

Google's 16 years of messenger wheel-spinning has allowed products from more focused companies to pass it by. Embarrassingly, nearly all of these products are much younger than Google's messaging efforts. Consider competitors like WhatsApp (12 years old), Facebook Messenger (nine years old), iMessage (nine years old), and Slack (eight years old)Google Talk even had video chat four years before Zoom was a thing.

Currently, you would probably rank Google's offerings behind every other big-tech competitor.A lack of any kind of top-down messaging leadership at Google has led to a decade and a half of messaging purgatory, with Google both unable to leave the space altogether and unable to commit to a single product. While companies like Facebook and Salesforce invest tens of billions of dollars into a lone messaging app, Google seems content only to spin up an innumerable number of under-funded, unstable side projects led by job-hopping project managers.There have been periods when Google briefly produced a good messaging solution, but the constant shutdowns, focus-shifting, and sabotage of established products have stopped Google from carrying much of these user basesor user goodwillforward into the present day.

Because no single company has ever failed at something this badly, for this long, with this many different products (and because it has barely been a month since the rollout of Google Chat), the time has come to outline the history of Google messaging. Prepare yourselves, dear readers, for a non-stop rollercoaster of new product launches, neglected established products, unexpected shut-downs, and legions of confused, frustrated, and exiled users.

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A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging apps - Ars Technica

Google has finally released a Wear OS app for YouTube Music, which could seem like welcome news for people who have been waiting for a way to play their music off Googles streaming service after the company shut down Google Play Music on Wear OS in August 2020. But the new app comes with a few caveats.

The biggest catch is that the new app only works on one of Samsungs two new watches powered by Wear OS 3, according to Google. Those watches wont be available until August 27th, so even if you want to try the new app right now, you wont be able to unless you have a Galaxy Watch 4 or a Galaxy Watch 4 Classic.

If you are lucky enough to have one of the new watches, the YouTube Music Wear OS will let YouTube Premium subscribers download music right to their watch, meaning you can listen to tunes with just a watch and a pair of Bluetooth headphones, even when you dont have an internet connection. However, based on 9to5Googles hands-on with the app, it sounds like there might be some frustrating caveats youll have to keep in mind when youre actually using the Wear OS YouTube Music app.

9to5Google says there doesnt appear to be a way to stream music from the app it appears that you can only download music right now. And annoyingly, you can only download songs while the watch is on a charger, 9to5Google reports.

Still, its nice that a YouTube Music Wear OS app is available at all, even in its currently limited form. Google hasnt shared details about when the app might be available on other Wear OS devices.

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Google finally releases YouTube Music Wear OS app, but only for Samsungs new watches - The Verge

Google's Wing drone, with a package for delivery.

Googles drone delivery service will complete 100,000 deliveries this weekend, the company says, and is growing fast: 500% last year, and more deliveries in the first quarter of 2021 than in all of 2020 combined. Thats probably just the beginning, because Google says it is expanding this year, including in the United States.

Just one of its delivery operations, in Queensland, Australia, is the largest residential drone delivery service in the world, according to Google.

There, Google Wings completed deliveries have included:

Wings drones are a sort of hybrid drone/fixed wing aircraft that cruise at about 45 meters (100 feet). They carry small packages: up to about 1.2 kilograms or just under 3 pounds, and deliver within about a six-mile radius, with delivery in under six minutes. (90% of last-mile deliveries are under five pounds, the company says.) The drones dont actually land; they descend to around seven meters or 23 feet, then lower and release the package automatically.

Whats completely obvious from looking at that shortlist of some of Google Wings deliveries is that drone delivery is a complete game-changer.

Same-day or next day service might have been revolutionary five years ago, and its still pretty good for books or printer ink or toilet paper. But next-few-minutes delivery breaks the historical model of what delivery is and can do, allowing people get near-instant access to quickly-perishable items. Coffee, for instance, had better be delivered basically immediately, or it simply will not be consumable. Manna, a drone delivery service in Ireland that is poised to expand in the EU soon, is also delivering extreme perishables: coffee, ice cream, burgers, fries.

In other words, drone delivery is custom-built to supercharge the on-demand economy.

Something else thats obvious? When people can get what they want instantly, they like it. A lot.

Not only did Google Wing ramp service 500% last year and double that in a single quarter, the company says that August which is not yet over has been another record month. And a Virginia Tech study in Googles first drone delivery region in the U.S., in Christiansburg, Virginia, found that 90% of those who were exposed to the service liked it and supported it.

I asked the companys head of communications, Jonathan Bass, for a few more details.

John Koetsier: What makes Wing different from competing drone delivery companies?

Bass: Wing is operating live, automated drone delivery services in Australia, Finland and the U.S, and making thousands of deliveries each week to customers, on-demand. Our operation in Queensland, Australia is the largest residential drone delivery service in the world, available daily to 19 suburbs with a population of 110,000 people. Weve made nearly 100,000 deliveries to customers on demand, on top of hundreds of thousands of additional test flights. These deliveries have primarily been made directly to homes, but also to offices and apartment buildings, and weve even offered delivered to customers on-demand in public parks.

Wing has built a drone delivery platform not to deliver our own stuff, but to deliver everyone elses. Our aircraft is lightweight, we require very little space to operate and flight systems are highly automatedits easy for a wide range of businesses to set up and use nearly anywhere at a fraction of the cost of ground delivery.

John Koetsier: You're accelerating growth. When do you see this becoming available for most people in the US?

Bass: Were still in the early days of drone delivery, but things are starting to move quickly. Deliveries grew over 500% from 2019 to 2020, then we made more deliveries in the second quarter of this year than in all of 2020, and now August has been another record month. We have plans to expand this year within the U.S., and look forward to sharing more specifics soon. One reason we feel so positive about the future of drone delivery is because of the feedback were receiving from the people who are actually able to access it.

Just recently, Virginia Tech did a study of residents in Christiansburg, Virginia where Wing launched the first commercial drone delivery service to homes in the U.S. and found nearly 90% support for drone delivery. This is vastly higher than prior studies of people who had not had the opportunity to see drone delivery up close. To us, thats a strong proof point that when the service is available, people find it incredibly useful. In the end, that positive sentiment around drone delivery is what will power its expansion.

John Koetsier: Is the US regulatory environment a challenge? What needs to change?

Bass: Each country has its own regulatory approval process. Weve conducted hundreds of thousands of test flights, and were operating high volume operations in urban and suburban environments, and weve had extremely positive responses from the communities we serve. That being said, progress in the US has been slower than we would have hoped relative to other countries that we operate in, such as Australia. However, were optimistic that our permissions to operate in the U.S. will expand to more closely resemble our permissions in other parts of the world in the coming months. Safety continues to be a top prioritywere closing in on half a million flights without incidentand the bottom line is that every delivery that is conducted by a 10 lb drone like Wing's aircraft, and not a car or truck, makes US communities safer, reduces traffic congestion and emissions.

John Koetsier: Who are you partnering with in terms of retail sales? Can any business connect and start doing deliveries via you?

Bass: Our goal is to build a drone delivery platform that anyone can plug into. Currently we work with over 30 businesses around the world to deliver their goods to customers. These range from large, multinational companies like Walgreens, to grocery stores, hardware stores, to bakeries, coffee shops and other restaurants. We can deliver virtually anything under 3 lbs that fits in our custom-designed box. With nearly 90% of last-mile deliveries being made up of packages weighing under 5lbs, there is a lot of opportunity for drone delivery.

John Koetsier: What are the biggest issues to work out, still?

Bass: Expanded regulatory permission is our primary obstacle at this stageour services are capable of doing more than they are allowed to do today. One reason were so excited about our growth in Logan, Australia is because it shows that we can build a safe, scalable service that communities will embrace. There are hundreds of cities around the world just like Logan in terms of size: New Orleans; Manchester, England or Florence, Italy, just to name a few. Logans success implies a not-too-distant future in which similar high-volume drone delivery services could be replicated in cities and metro areas around the world.

John Koetsier: Thank you for your time!

Read next: Drone Delivery Is Live Today, And Its 90% Cheaper Than Car-Based Services

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Google Now Owns The Largest Residential Drone Delivery Service In The World - Forbes

Google Pay is apparently just as much a disaster internally as the app transition has been externally.That's the big takeaway from a recentBusiness Insider article detailing an exodus of executives from Google's payment division, lower-than-expected app adoption, and employees frustrated with the slow movement of the division.

Business Insider spoke with ex-employees and learned that "dozens of employees and executives have left" the Google Payments team in recent months, including "at least seven leaders on the team with roles of director or vice president." The most prominent departure, of payments chief Caesar Sengupta, kicked off the exodus in April, and now employees are worried about another reorganization and even slower progress. Many rank-and-file team members have reportedly departed, too, with the story saying, "One former employee estimated that half the people working on the business-development team for Google Paya group of about 40 peoplehave left the company in recent months."

In 2018, Sengupta took over the payments division, which oversees the Google Pay app andthe wider Google payments infrastructure, and the report says that "much of Sengupta's attention was on bringing the US Google Pay app more in line with the version Google built for India."

That's a reference to Google Pay's big March revamp, which killed the existing app and website and essentially replaced it with an entirely new service.We weren't big fans of the update, which featured a lot of reduced functionality and a clumsy transition plan for existing users. It seems like we weren't alone in our disappointment; the report quotes a former payments employee as saying, "Caesar [Sengupta] leaving was the capstone on a lot of frustration felt by employees. The product wasn't growing at the rate we wanted it to."Sengupta departed Google one month after killing the old Google Pay and making his new app mandatory for all users in the US.

The new Google Pay app launched in November 2020in the US, and for about four months, Google was running two "Google Pay" apps: the old Google Pay (which had been around since 2011, first as Google Wallet, then Android Pay, then Google Pay) and this new Google Pay, which was a ground-up rewrite the company started for the Indian market. April 2021 capped off the final death of the old Google Pay service, which had been winding down since January. The two services were both called "Google Pay," but other than that, they weren't related in terms of features, contacts, or accounts.

We reviewed the new Google Payright around this time and found it to be a pretty poor service compared to what Google had previously. The new service used SMS instead of a Google account for your identity, meaning that it didn't support multiple devices, didn't support multiple accounts, and no longer supported website use. Your phone was the only way to access a functional Google Pay, and everything was tied to your carrier's phone number.

According to Pulse network (a wing of Discover card) Google Pay has 3 percent NFC market share.

Google's upending of Google Pay isn't completely unmotivated. A survey last year by Pulse, a Discover company, said that Google Pay had a measly 3 percent market share, while Apple Paywhich joined the NFC payment market years after Googlehad a 92 percent share of mobile payments. Something probably needed to change for Google Pay, but these are stats for NFC payments, and New Google Pay changed basically nothing about NFC payments.

Next up for the New Google Pay app is the launch sometime this year of a "Plex" banking service, which will be a full-blown Google bank account, thanks to a partnership withCitibank. One of the employees Business Insider spoke to said, "Plex was entirely [Vice President] Felix [Lin] and Caesar [Sengupta's] brainchild," and now both of those executives no longer work at Google. Progress on the bank account has already been "slower than expected," according to the report, and without its two leading architects, Plex may be delayed.

There's one question I'm not sure anyone on the payments team has asked, and it might be worth looking into: Does anyone out there actually want a Google bank account?

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Google Pay team reportedly in major upheaval after botched app revamp - Ars Technica

Google's new London headquarters.

Google

LONDON Technology firms in London are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit tech workers as Silicon Valley tech giants scale up their operations in the U.K. capital.

U.S. tech behemoths including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Palantir and Twitter now employ tens of thousands of tech workers in swanky offices across London, and some have major expansions underway.

Oscar White, CEO and founder of venture capital-backed travel start-up Beyonk, told CNBC that the expansions were making recruitment more challenging, adding that they have prompted inflated salary expectations and a scarcity of tech resource.

Alphabet, Google's parent, is in the process of building a vast complex in King's Cross with enough room for up to 7,000 Google employees and around 1,000 DeepMind staff. A few miles away, Apple is planning to move 1,400 staff into a new Apple Campus at Battersea Power Station. While the builds have been held up by coronavirus lockdowns, they're still going ahead. Elsewhere, Facebook and Amazon have recently opened big multi-story offices in London.

Facebook currently has 266 open positions in London, according to its career website, while Google has 172 and Apple has 103. Amazon is on the hunt for 162 software developers, 143 solutions architects and 72 technical managers in the city.

"Software developers are in higher demand than ever before, which is likely to worsen as more tech company campuses spring up around the city," White said. "For start-ups on tight budgets, who heavily rely on technology resource as the key enabler for growth, this presents a real challenge."

Twitter and Palantir declined to comment. None of the other aforementioned U.S. tech giants immediately responded to a CNBC request for comment.

Many start-ups in London will struggle to attract software developers if they offer salaries below 80,000 ($110,000), according to White, who said experienced developers can now command salaries of up to 120,000 a year.

Tom Richardson, CEO of money management app Lumio, told CNBC that it's "so hard" to find the right people.

"We are a start-up and with only a seed round and we cannot attract devs or great product managers," he said. "Starting salaries are mad."

To get around the issue, Richardson is considering relocating his business or hiring more remote workers, but he said both have their risks.

Another CEO of a London tech firm, who asked to remain anonymous over concerns it may sound like their company was struggling to recruit, told CNBC that big U.S. tech firms have tried to poach several of their staff in recent years. They said one employee's response was "when Manchester United knocks on the door you have to answer."

The U.S. tech firm, which the CEO did not name, offered the employee the same salary but a much stronger overall package that included share options and a car allowance. "We ended up retaining them but had to make it worth their while and give them an offer they couldn't refuse," the CEO said.

Amazon had attempted to poach more of the London tech firm's employees than any other U.S. tech giant, the CEO said, adding that Amazon has approached several project managers and account managers.

In a bid to ensure the company retains its best people, the CEO said they had developed a "more rounded benefits package" that included share options for high performing staff and career progression plans.

Venture capitalists and tech investors have a relatively broad view of the recruiting landscape as they're involved with multiple start-ups.

Simon Menashy, a venture capitalist at MMC Ventures, which has invested in dozens of start-ups including meal kit delivery firm Gousto and travel start-up Love Home Swap, told CNBC the new Silicon Valley outposts in London were "definitely contributing to salary inflation," adding that the big tech firms compete with local start-ups for engineers.

But London start-ups were also competing with other start-ups in the city for some workers, according to Menashy.

"When our portfolio companies lose candidates for senior executive talent it's to other start-ups and scale-ups, not to big established tech companies," he said.

Eze Vidra, a former investor at Google Ventures who now works as a managing partner at Remagine Ventures, told CNBC it's more difficult for London start-ups to keep good employees as they get "lured by ever growing packages and perks" from larger tech firms and better-funded start-ups.

Meanwhile, Ian Hogarth, an angel investor who sold his music start-up to Warner Music Group, told CNBC he's not convinced the Silicon Valley expansions were making it harder for London start-ups to hire, adding that there are a few factors at play.

Hogarth argued that the rise of remote working has allowed companies to scale up without having everyone in a physical office. For example, Hopin, which is headquartered in London but is fully remote, has scaled from one to 800 people in two years, Hogarth said.

While Brexit may have made it harder for companies in London and the rest of the U.K. to hire, the growth of the U.K. tech ecosystem means there is more experienced talent available overall than before, according to Hogarth.

Alice Bentinck, co-founder of start-up investment firm Entrepreneur First, told CNBC that Silicon Valley firms increase competition in London in the short term.

"But long term I don't think it's a bad thing," she said. "It's a sign London's tech ecosystem is thriving."

The rest is here:

London tech firms struggle to hire as Silicon Valley giants scale up in the city - CNBC