Company / division: Alphabet
Waze and other traffic dodging apps prompt cities to game the algorithms – USA Today (Mar 6, 2017)
My “Tech Disrupts Transportation” narrative feels particularly appropriate for this story, which really highlights the degree to which technology can radically change the way transportation operates in a city. In this case, it’s car traffic in busy cities and towns, and the way in which navigation apps have begun sending traffic through quiet residential streets and other short cuts to avoid that traffic. On the one hand, you could argue – as Google does – that the apps are doing exactly what they’re designed to do, which is to find the most efficient route at any given point in time. On the other, you can argue that they do so without taking into account the impact on the streets down which those cars will drive – the algorithms don’t seem to be programmed to avoid quiet residential streets or to make another sort of value judgments. City planners naturally don’t like this – their job is to send subtle and not so subtle signals with road layouts and traffic management schemes in order to get people to drive in a certain way, and the apps entirely ignore that. This kind of clash between technology and government officials isn’t new or unique – it’s the kind of thing that will continue to happen over and over again, and the answer usually isn’t fighting the technology but either working with it or adapting to it.
via USA Today
Google’s featured snippets are worse than fake news – The Outline (Mar 6, 2017)
This is the second of two fake news stories this morning (the first concerned Facebook), and this one doesn’t look so good for Google. Google has long pull excerpts out of search results in order to provide what it deems to be the answers to questions, as a way to get people to what they’re looking for faster. For undisputed facts, like what time the Super Bowl starts or how old a movie star is, that’s very useful and unobjectionable. But the problem is that Google has algorithms designed to find these answers for almost any question people might ask, and in an era of fake news, some questions and the ostensible answers are driven entirely by conspiracy theories and false reporting, which means that the right answer doesn’t even appear anywhere online. So it’s snippets serve up answers exclusively from fake news and conspiracy sites, as if these were incontrovertible, lending them an air of considerable authority, and causing many users to take those answers as gospel. The simple solution here is for Google to back way off from this snippets approach and limit it to questions that are both frequently asked and also answered by a wide range of sites including reputable ones. I don’t know whether Google will take that approach, but it’s going to be very hard for it to solve the problem in any other way.
via The Outline
Google Announces Progress in Using Deep Learning to Detect Cancer (Mar 3, 2017)
Yet another story about using either AI or deep learning (or both) to solve a real-world problem, from Google. This time, it’s an application miles away from any of Google’s current businesses (though perhaps a little relevant to some of the Other Bets), but the point is that Google is finding a very broad set of applications for its capabilities here, which can of course be applied back to lots of things which are relevant to the core Google business (as well as providing tangible human benefits if adopted by other organizations).
via Google
Apple’s Devices Lose Luster in American Classrooms – New York Times (Mar 2, 2017)
This trend has been a long time coming, with Google becoming very aggressive about getting deeper into schools in the last few years, and having quite a bit of success, while Apple has lost ground despite some good enhancements to its own education offerings, including the Swift Playgrounds app. Apple used to have an outsized share in education thanks to the simplicity of both using and managing its devices, but Chromebooks have some of the same simplicity and manageability benefits at a much lower cost, and are starting to displace products like Macs and iPads in schools. And the education market is much more important than the relatively small amount of revenue it generates in the overall context of the tech industry, because it influences the devices and services kids will continue to use as they grow up. A kid reared on Macs and iPads in school will likely continue to use them when she goes to college, but one raised on Chromebooks and Google Apps will favor those when he graduates. This battle is by no means lost for Apple, but it needs to continue to up its game if it’s to claw back some of that lost share.
via New York Times
Google unveils playable ads for Android game developers and other tools – TechCrunch (Mar 1, 2017)
This feels like a clever little idea from Google – showing people ads for games in which a tiny version of the game itself is embedded, making the ad playable. It could also be part of an eventual path to Progressive Web Apps and other web-app hybrids Google is working on, just as some of these tools are already served up in search results. There are some other clever enhancements here too – it feels like app ads are far from done as a medium.
via TechCrunch
Google is Providing SDN, NFV and Other Network Technology to Carriers (Mar 1, 2017)
Google has a long history of working with carriers – after all, Android was originally presented as a partnership with carriers to create an open mobile operating system, and in the last few days it’s deepened its carrier push around the RCS technology for messaging. This announcement, though, is a bit different, because it’s pushing Google where historically only specialized network equipment and OSS/BSS vendors have gone before, deep into carrier networks to help with software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV), two of the hottest buzzwords in this fairly arcane world. This is a big departure for Google, which has a somewhat contentious relationship with at least some carriers around the world, not least in Europe. But some carriers are also far more willing than others to outsource key technology to others – Bharti Airtel in India is one of those, and is one of Google’s two launch partners here, though I’m less familiar with SK Telecom’s historic stance on this issue. At a time when Alphabet’s focus overall has seemed to be narrowing, this is an interesting counter-example.
via Google
Uber’s self-driving unit quietly bought firm with tech at heart of Alphabet lawsuit – Reuters (Mar 1, 2017)
This is an interesting angle on the Uber-Waymo lawsuit over the alleged stealing of LiDAR technology by Anthony Levandowski – it appears Levandowski’s Otto acquired a company which specialized in LiDAR technology before it was itself acquired by Uber, providing an alternative theory for how the company was apparently able to get up to speed so quickly on the technology. One of Waymo’s key arguments in its suit was that Levandowski appeared to make unreasonably rapid progress on LiDAR following Otto’s founding, and that the only explanation was theft of ideas, designs and so on from Waymo. As an interesting side note, see also this newly-released October 2016 interview with Anthony Levandowski from Forbes, in which he somewhat bizarrely volunteers the information that he didn’t steal any IP from Google when he left. He also talks through his long history with autonomous driving technology, which raises a key point here: clearly Levandowski learned a lot about this technology over the years, and taking that knowledge with him to a new employer clearly isn’t stealing. So how does Waymo prove in court that Otto/Uber used the documents he allegedly downloaded rather than his personal knowledge (or technology from somewhere completely different) in designing LiDAR systems? If you know the best way to build a LiDAR system because you’ve done it before, are you obligated to act as if you have no idea how to do it when you move to a new employer? I’m not a lawyer, but I think some of these questions are fascinating, and are likely to be critical in this case.
via Reuters
YouTube Bets It Can Convince Youngs to Pay for TV – Bloomberg (Feb 28, 2017)
It looks like Bloomberg got a pre-brief on the YouTube TV announcement this afternoon, and has posted its article just as YouTube’s event gets underway. The service is called YouTube TV, it’s $35 per month, and the headline is that it includes all four major broadcast networks, but not several big cable networks (no Viacom, Discovery, AMC, A&E, or Turner networks including CNN, TBS, and TNT). From what I’m seeing on Twitter as the event unfolds, it looks like the service will only launch in local markets where the broadcasters have affiliates, which means people like me (I live in Utah) are out of luck. As I predicted a couple of years ago in the context of a potential Apple TV service, local and sports are the big challenges, and YouTube hasn’t really cracked this on a national basis yet. The US TV market continues to be incredibly resistant to real disruption – every over the top streaming alternative to traditional pay TV is handicapped in at least one way, and often several. YouTube TV will offer cloud-based DVR as a differentiator, but the missing cable networks are a big downer. This is basically a four-way deal with the big broadcasters and their cable affiliates, but it means if you want any of the other networks you’re still going to have to buy Sling, DirecTV Now, Sony Playstation Vue, or whatever else comes down the pike later this year. There’s a certain irony to the fact that, though these services are nominally disruptive, they actually offer even less choice individually in many cases than the pay TV services they’re aiming to replace. These companies are each so determined to reach a $35 price point that they’re making decisions on behalf of customers about what should be included, and in all cases they’re excluding some channels a lot of consumers are going to want. We’re still a long way from being able to choose a bundle of channels that makes sense to us, rather than having to buy a bundle someone else configured for business reasons.
via Bloomberg
Google calls time on the Pixel laptop – TechCrunch (Feb 28, 2017)
This is a minor news item, but a slightly surprising one – the first product to bear the Pixel brand at Google was a laptop, but the company won’t be making any more of those in the foreseeable future, apparently. With the big hardware push underway at Google, I had been anticipating that we might well see updates to both the laptop and the tablet that also bear the Pixel name alongside a revision of the Pixel phone this fall, but it seems Google’s hardware vision isn’t quite as expansive as I thought. It would be great to hear from Google at some point some sort of specific vision of why it’s in the hardware business, and why it wants to be in some categories and not in others (even some it’s done in the past).
via TechCrunch
Uber’s SVP of engineering is out after he did not disclose he left Google in a dispute over sexual harassment allegation – Recode (Feb 27, 2017)
Another day, another ugly story about Uber. This time, it’s that its brand-new SVP of engineering, who joined Uber just last month, appears to have left Google under a cloud surrounding allegations of sexual harassment. There was an initial investigation and apparently some planning towards firing Singhal, but as he resigned proactively those plans were never carried out, which certainly helped keep the allegations under wraps. But Singhal apparently failed to inform Uber of these circumstances when he left, and he’s now been asked to resign from Uber. I suspect that, were Uber not having the month it’s having, Singhal might have survived, but in the circumstances there was no way he could be allowed to stay. Singhal’s hiring was seen as a coup when he arrived (see the comment linked above), and it’s into such a senior role I wonder how Uber is going to fill the gap. Clearly, it though that was less important than making a quick, clean break here.
via Recode
How YouTube Serves As The Content Engine Of The Internet’s Dark Side – BuzzFeed (Feb 27, 2017)
Though Facebook bears the brunt of criticism among the tech industry’s largest players for its role in spreading and/or failing to stem the spread of fake news, it’s worth noting that others play their roles too. Though Google search has been mentioned quite a bit, YouTube hasn’t been mentioned nearly as much, and yet this article argues there’s tons of fake news video content on YouTube, which goes essentially un-policed by the site. YouTube itself responds that it only curates legitimate news sources for its official channels, but of course many of the creators of this fake news content are making money off that content through YouTube’s ad model. Since Google shut down its ad platform on third party sites which focused on fake news, it’s arguable that it should apply the same policy here too, something it so far doesn’t seem willing to do.
via BuzzFeed
Comcast is integrating YouTube into its set-top box — just like it did with Netflix – Recode (Feb 27, 2017)
Comcast’s Netflix integration seems to have gone well – both companies have talked about it on recent earnings calls, and although Netflix has downplayed the significance of the partnership from a user growth perspective, it’s really Comcast that benefits the most from this integration. That’s because this is basically just a way to keep people on the Comcast set top box instead of jumping to a different box to watch Netflix, and it’s very much the same strategy that applies with YouTube here. Keep people on your box, in your interface, and you at least have the opportunity of showing them more of the programming you bring to them (and for which they pay over $80 on average per month). Do that, and there’s a greater chance that they stick with your product (and your bundle) rather than canceling it or scaling it back. Keep them in your recommendations interface, and they may even in some cases become less aware of where the content is coming from, further cementing your role as the primary video provider.
via Recode
Google’s digital assistant comes to new Android phones – Reuters (Feb 27, 2017)
This, to my mind, is one of the bigger announcements coming out of MWC – that Google will finally allow other smartphone makers to use the Google Assistant, after several months of keeping it exclusive to its own Pixel smartphone. I described that decision at the time as representing a big strategic shift for Google, and probably a mistake, and the evidence since has borne that out. The Pixel has sold in small numbers, Amazon’s Alexa has extended its lead considerably as the voice platform of choice for hardware makers, and even at MWC itself Android vendors announced Alexa integration despite Google’s shift here. The good news is that it’s only been a few months, but the bad news is that this change in policy will come too late to hit the new flagships debuting at MWC, including the new ones from both Samsung and LG. It will likely become available later, but shipping as an integrated part of these new smartphones would have been much better. I’m betting that Google will continue to pay for this strategic misstep for some time to come – even once it’s available, OEMs will want to offer more differentiation than the Google Assistant allows them, which will continue to make Alexa an appealing alternative.
via Reuters (more on Techmeme)
Android Messages will be the new default texting app Google wants you to use – The Verge (Feb 24, 2017)
There are two separate stories here – firstly, a reminder that Google has two separate messaging apps on Android, and it’s still actively pushing both; and secondly, that Google is doubling down on its commitment to the RCS standard and working with carriers and device makers to spread its use on Android. The former is a long-standing story: Google has always had several different apps for the same use case on its devices, a problem that only gets worse when OEMs and carriers add their own. To some extent, though, this standardization around RCS should help with the OEM / carrier side of that, by consolidating the SMS apps into a single standard Android app. But this is also about the richer features enabled by RCS, which is a telecoms-driven standard for richer messaging which is always at least several years behind the feature set offered by third party messaging apps at any given point in time. This is Google’s effort to create an equivalent to iMessage, but one which is far more open and inclusive than iMessage itself is, for better or worse. Google doesn’t control the standard, which is basic in its functionality, and that makes it a tough differentiator for Android, but it may be the best Google can do in this space.
via The Verge
Apple and Google condemn Trump’s decision to revoke transgender bathroom guidelines – Recode (Feb 23, 2017)
This issue feels like it’s attracting a lot less attention than the immigration executive orders from a few weeks back, but that doesn’t mean that tech companies aren’t weighing in all the same. This article has comments from Apple, Google, and Salesforce opposing the administration’s actions, but John Paczkowski of BuzzFeed has been tweeting commentary from a number of other companies today including Facebook, IBM, and Dell. Unlike the immigration bill, where at least part of the rationale for opposing the administration was business related, this argument is being made entirely in moral terms, echoing some of the opposition to North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” last year. That’s interesting territory for big public companies to wade into – something we discussed on the Beyond Devices Podcast two weeks ago.
via Recode
Waymo Sues Uber over Stealing of Confidential Information (Feb 23, 2017)
Alphabet autonomous driving subsidiary Waymo is suing Uber and its Otto subsidiary over alleged stealing of confidential information by Anthony Levandowski, who was one of the early executives at Waymo and subsequently left abruptly in early 2016 and immediately unveiled a self-driving truck company, Otto. That company, in turn, was acquired just a few months later by Uber. Waymo has done some fairly detailed investigate work that’s outlined in the complaint, and discovered that six weeks before Levandowski’s resignation, he downloaded lots of files from Waymo’s servers, and it argues that these in turn informed Otto’s (now Uber’s) LiDAR designs. As this blog post from Waymo says, fierce competition in autonomous driving technology is a good thing – it’s pushing the market forward rapidly and leading to some great innovations that should benefit consumers. But there are obviously lines companies shouldn’t cross as they compete, and this would be one of those, if it’s proven to be true. This is the second lawsuit in recent weeks involving employees moving between autonomous driving companies – the first involved Tesla and a startup. In both cases, the allegation is in part about stealing proprietary information. Given that Uber is already dealing with the fallout from a sexual harassment and discrimination blowup in the past week and still reeling from the #deleteUber campaign, this is terrible timing, but may also be a sign that the company’s aggressive stance on competition is hurting it in more ways than one.
via Waymo (full complaint here)
Google Cousin Develops Technology to Flag Toxic Online Comments – The New York Times (Feb 23, 2017)
I love the term “Google cousin” to describe the non-Google companies under the Alphabet umbrella (though confusingly Jigsaw’s website makes it seem as if it’s actually part of Google despite no longer being called Google Ideas). The bigger point here is that this is a clever use of machine learning to solve a real problem, which I’m always a big fan of. Online comments can be horrible and very time consuming to moderate, and this API can be used by publishers to filter out the most “toxic” of those moments. Having said that, the sample comments Jigsaw shows to demonstrate the tool highlight just how inane most online comments are regardless of whether they’re actually toxic, calling into question for me at least whether they’re worth having at all. But this Perspective tool seems to be part of a broader push around technologies for increasing “safety” in various scenarios – that’s definitely the message you get at the Jigsaw website.
Google and Intel had the most active corporate VC firms last year – Recode (Feb 22, 2017)
Corporate venture capital in Silicon Valley is always fascinating: these are the things big companies choose to invest in indirectly rather than directly, which often leads to fairly complex relationships between some of these companies (notably Google’s relationship with Uber). My Beyond Devices Podcast co-host Aaron Miller did a great breakdown of this feature of the tech industry a while back – have a listen to this episode if you’re interested. It appears Google and Intel were the biggest investors in 2016, with some really sizable bets made by Google in particular during the year. I wish I could see more details from the report, but CB Insights pulls a bait and switch in which it first asks for just an email address and then follows up with a demand for a phone number and job function, so I’m not downloading it.
via Recode (CB Insights report here)
Google Agrees to YouTube Metrics Audit to Ease Advertisers’ Concerns – WSJ (Feb 21, 2017)
It’s interesting to see Google working with the MRC around auditing now too – Facebook just announced MRC auditing a couple of weeks ago, but it had of course had an embarrassing series of screwups relating to metrics for advertisers and content providers, whereas YouTube didn’t. However, this is reflective of a broader mistrust of online advertising by big brands and marketers, and an inconsistency in the use of major metrics like viewability. From what I’ve read, the MRC standards are pretty minimal as far as what counts as a view, but at least there’s consistency there, which is a start.
via Google Agrees to YouTube Metrics Audit to Ease Advertisers’ Concerns – WSJ
Samsung’s reputation nosedives in the US after Galaxy Note 7 snafu – The Verge (Feb 20, 2017)
As usual, it would be great to understand in more detail the methodology behind this survey, but it’s not available. The Verge seems to have got the rankings wrong – from what I can tell, Samsung was 7th and not 3rd last year – but it’s also worth noting that Samsung’s score dropped from 80.44 to 75.17, which sounds a lot less dramatic than dropping from 3rd (or even 7th) to 49th. The fact is that there are a lot of companies clustered together between 75 and 87 points and so a small drop in the score produces a big drop in rankings. Since the survey was also conducted in November and December last year, when the Note7 debacle was still very fresh in people’s minds, I’m guessing it would score a lot better just a few months from now. Though the Verge picked up on Samsung’s drop as their headline, it’s worth noting where other tech companies sit too: Amazon is #1 (score 86.27), Apple #5 (82.07), Google #8 (82.00), Tesla #9 (81.70), Netflix #18 (79.86), and Microsoft #20 (79.29), all of which classify as either very good or excellent. It’s also worth noting that big cable companies like Comcast and Charter score in the low 60s, which qualifies as “poor”, while the major wireless carriers score 66-72 (“fair” to “good”), with T-Mobile top and Sprint bottom.
via The Verge (official release here)