Important Note

Tech Narratives was a subscription website, which offered expert commentary on the day's top tech news from Jan Dawson, along with various other features, for $10/month. As of Monday October 16, 2017, it will no longer be updated. An archive of past content will remain available for the time being. I've written more about this change in the post immediately below, and also here.

Each post below is tagged with
  • Company/Division names
  • Topics
  • and
  • Narratives
  • as appropriate.
    ★ Alphabet is Considering A Billion-Dollar Investment in Lyft (Sep 15, 2017)

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    Facebook Announces Ad Targeting Changes in Response to Racist Keywords (Sep 15, 2017)

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    Daily Podcast Episode 56 – September 14, 2017 (Sep 14, 2017)

    The daily podcast episode for September 14 is up now on SoundCloud and should be syncing shortly to iTunes, Overcast, and other podcast apps. As usual, the podcast spends about one minute on each of the items covered on the site today, and also points to a few other items in the news today which I didn’t cover but which are nonetheless interesting. You can find today’s episode on SoundCloud and all episodes on iTunes, Overcast, and so on. The additional items covered are below:


    Snapchat Launches Pre-ARKit Bitmoji-Based AR Feature in its Apps (Sep 14, 2017)

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    Google Sued by Three Women Alleging Systematic Pay Discrimination (Sep 14, 2017)

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    Google to Partner with Bose for Assistant-Enabled Headphones (Sep 14, 2017)

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    US Wireless Carriers Claim Less Aggressive Approach to iPhone Discounting (Sep 14, 2017)

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    Apple’s New Safari Cookie Blocking Angers Major Advertising Trade Groups (Sep 14, 2017)

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    Facebook Allowed Advertisers to Target Ads to Antisemitic Users (Sep 14, 2017)

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    Hulu Will Spend $2.5 Billion on Content in 2017 (Sep 14, 2017)

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    Google Announces Phone Event for October 4th, Teases Battery, Camera (Sep 14, 2017)

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    Verizon CEO Says No Longer Interested in Building a Cable Company (Sep 14, 2017)

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    Google is Reportedly Readying a Mobile Payment Service for India (Sep 14, 2017)

    Google is reportedly getting ready to release a new mobile payment service explicitly for the Indian market, with localizations intended to integrate with payment mechanisms unique to that country. The name is Tez, which means fast in Hindi, and it’s just the latest example of big tech companies making significant local adaptations to their products, services, and business models to fit into India, along with Amazon’s forthcoming first party smartphones (which I’m assured are launching soon), Apple’s local manufacturing, and Facebook’s work with local wireless operators and others. Other than its local manufacturing and fairly standard language support, though, Apple has largely resisted localization in India, unlike China, where it’s made far larger concessions to local customs and platforms. Others are arguably willing to bend their usual rules more to be successful there than Apple is, despite Tim Cook’s frequent remarks about how important the market is. That may need to change if Apple is really to break through, though there continue to be big additional barriers to Apple building a big business there (notably income levels).

    via TechCrunch


    ★ Apple Reportedly Siding with Bain in Toshiba Memory Bid (Sep 14, 2017)

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    Magic Leap Raising Money, May Price Device at $1500-2000 Within 6 Months (Sep 13, 2017)

    Bloomberg reports that Magic Leap is trying to raise additional funding, which might include an investment from Singapore’s Temasek fund (which was one of two sources of the money that recently bailed out SoundCloud), and would value it at $6 billion. It also says the company hopes to launch its product within six months, that it will cost $1500-2000, and that it will sit somewhere between glasses and today’s VR headsets in format and require the user to also carry a puck to provide processing. Though the funding is certainly interesting, it’s the other details that are far more interesting to me – those suggest a device which will be out of reach for all but a few consumers if it launches at that price, and which may sit awkwardly between other products in the market, not quite glasses-like enough to be wearable all the time. By all accounts, the technology is pretty amazing, though whether Magic Leap can really squeeze it into a production device with these parameters remains to be seen. But it’s another indication that truly wearable AR is many years away and we’re in for another few years of attempts that fall short in various ways.

    via Bloomberg


    Waymo CEO Says Ride Sharing and Trucking Likely First Uses of Autonomy (Sep 13, 2017)

    This isn’t huge news, and I think people who follow the transportation industry and autonomous driving technology closely would probably know this already, but it’s worth noting these comments from Alphabet subsidiary Waymo’s CEO on the timing of various applications of self-driving technology. He said at an event today that he sees trucking and ride sharing being the first applications for autonomy, and that either one might be the first to be commercialized at this point. That’s very much in keeping with the conclusions I’ve reached and what I’ve heard from various other industry players – the fact that trucking largely involves long distances and highways dramatically simplifies the driving task there and enables platooning of vehicles, all of which means it has a much clearer near-term return on the investment in autonomous technology than most other applications. Ride sharing, meanwhile, typically involves cars which have very high utilization rates versus private vehicles, and is often limited to a well defined geographic area, making the training and gathering of mapping data a more manageable task too. Of course, we still don’t know quite what the business model for either of these applications will be – whether a licensing of the technology, a direct participation or revenue sharing agreement for the ride sharing market, or something else.

    via Bloomberg


    Amazon is Reportedly Readying a Big New Distribution Center in Mexico (Sep 13, 2017)

    Reuters reports that Amazon is making arrangements to build a million-square-foot distribution center just outside of Mexico City as part of a ramp up in investment south of the border. As of right now, as far as I can tell, Amazon has one 400,000 square foot distribution center in Mexico, and the million square foot size is typical of Amazon’s larger centers in the US, so this would be a pretty big expansion. The Reuters article quotes Amazon’s revenues in Mexico last year as being around a quarter of a billion dollars, which would be 2% of its revenues generated outside its four largest countries (the US, Germany, Japan, and the UK), which in turn generate 92% of total revenues. So it’s a fraction of a fraction of Amazon’s global business today, despite being a neighbor to by far its largest market, the US. The Reuters article does a good job talking through some of the challenges for Amazon in operating in Mexico but also some of its early successes. Amazon has been able to become truly dominant in e-commerce in just a handful of markets globally, and it seems as through Mexico is in the mold of other countries where it’s been able to do so, rather than more like India or China, where it’s faced more obstacles. As such, Mexico could grow nicely in the coming years, but is never likely to become one of the biggest markets for Amazon.

    via Reuters


    Senator Franken Sends Questions to Apple About iPhone X Face ID Feature (Sep 13, 2017)

    Though the headline on the Recode piece linked below says Apple is facing questions from the US Senate on its new Face ID feature, the reality is that the questions are coming from one Senator: former comedian Al Franken, who’s always taken an interest in tech issues and tends to use them to raise his public profile. A number of the questions he’s posing have already been addressed by Apple (including in its public announcement of the feature) while others suggest Franken thinks Apple is Google or some other company which regularly uses data on its customers to target advertising. All of which suggests he either hasn’t taken time to understand the feature properly, or is simply grandstanding, which frankly feels more likely. Apple’s stance on privacy and security is abundantly clear at this point, as demonstrated by its approach to the Touch ID feature (which Franken previously investigated in a similar way). None of that will stop people freaking out about the feature, and coincidentally or not the Economist magazine’s cover story this week is about the dangers of companies collecting facial data. But Apple is storing this data on the device in ways inaccessible to anyone but the user or for purposes other than those intended by Apple and approved by the user.

    via Recode


    eMarketer Says Cord Cutting to Accelerate, TV Ad Spend Growth to Slow (Sep 13, 2017)

    Analyst firm eMarketer has some new numbers out on cord cutting and the impact it will have on traditional TV ad spending. Specifically, it says that later this year there will be over 22 million cord cutting households in the US, up about 5.5 million from 2016, while TV ad spending growth will slow down meaningfully, though it’s still projecting growth over the next few years. I’m in agreement with the broad trend described by eMarketer around cord-cutting: my own analysis has consistently shown accelerating cord cutting behavior, though at a rather slower rate than eMarketer is projecting – far closer to 2 million in the past year than the over 5 million eMarketer is suggesting by the end of this year. On ad spending, I’m also in agreement that growth will slow, but I think it will turn negative soon (it was already negative for the major TV companies over the past year, according to my own data gathering, thanks in part to last year’s strong election-related spending). I think a decline in the traditional TV ad business is inevitable at this point in the coming years, and the results will begin to be felt as traditional TV companies start to reduce spending to bring costs in line, which in turn will have significant effects on the overall industry.

    via eMarketer


    YouTube By Far Most-Used Video App on Android, Grosses More Than Hulu (Sep 13, 2017)

    Variety has a quick run-down of some new data from App Annie about the usage of various mobile video apps in the twelve months to July 2017, and it shows YouTube to be dominant in that category, with 80% of total time spent for the top 10 apps. Also notable is that YouTube grossed more than Hulu on the strength of its YouTube Red subscription service, suggesting that it may be doing better than widely perceived, though that may also reflect YouTube’s role as a more mobile-centric platform while many users may pay for their Hulu subscriptions through a computer or TV box. Also worth noting is that over half the top ten video apps come from non-traditional TV brands – only HBO, Starz, CBS, and Showtime hit the top ten, while the rest are all digital-native brands. Also notable is the fact that all of those traditional TV apps have pursued the same successful strategy of opening up their entire libraries for digital rather than trying to create a digital service that’s complementary to traditional TV – that’s the winning strategy in this space, and Disney should take note as it readies an ESPN direct to consumer service for early next year.

    via Variety