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Tag: #Amazon

The Dangers of Founder/C-Suite Myopia

The Dangers of Founder/C-Suite Myopia

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

The tech times, they are a-changing. Companies are laying off big time and basically across the board, meaning companies large and small, or are in hiring freeze mode. Google employees weren’t happy when they were told that their travel and swag budgets were being cut. Oh, in case you didn’t see the memo, the days of Tech Entitlement are over, too. The economy isn’t what it was during the halcyon days of tech and, news flash – the tech sector is not immune.

Speaking of behemoths, Amazon Abandons Home Delivery Robot Tests in Latest Cost Cuts, Reuters reported. Called Scout, “The slow-moving devices, accompanied by human minders during tests, were designed to stop at a front door and pop open their lids so a customer could pick up a package. Amazon said the battery-powered robots were part of an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in its delivery operations.”

Amazon is feeling the slower sales, too. Then again, the lockdowns are over, and people can go past their doorsteps once again and shop. With many smaller stores shut down in the lockdown era. Amazon was a go-to, and boom! Hockey stick growth. Now, not so much and they’re cost-cutting too, given their now ‘slow growth.’ Did the company think they’d maintain lockdown-level growth or conditions forever? Even hockey sticks have an end point – something tech and tech investors could seemingly never quite grok. Read More...

Health Tech and Big Tech: An Unhealthy Alliance

Health Tech and Big Tech: An Unhealthy Alliance

Image by ElasticComputeFarm from Pixabay

HealthIT funding is up right now,  despite the downturn in global digital health investment, with data collection being such a big part of the reason why investors are all in on the HealthIT sector.  Do note that Big Tech et al is paying close attention to the space and making acquisitions.

Dr. Amazon Will See You Now, said the Wall Street Journal, noting that “Amazon and other companies are trying to disrupt the giant, inefficient U.S. healthcare sector. They’ve made little headway but a crop of upstarts is offering industry giants a chance to buy their way in.

“Amazon.com’s repeated failure to disrupt the industry underscores just how hard it is to make meaningful change.. As hard as healthcare has proven to crack, it is also too big of an opportunity to ignore. That explains why Amazon is trying again: It agreed in July to pay $3.9 billion for One Medical, a concierge-type primary-care service with nearly 200 medical offices in 25 markets… and will give Amazon the foothold in healthcare it struggled to build organically. In a not-too-distant future, your Prime membership may include a free annual checkup.” Read More...

On Apples, Oranges and Mangos: An End of Summer Compote

On Apples, Oranges and Mangos: An End of Summer Compote

This week is the last hurrah of summer, so something different this time: a look at what’s been happening in Big Tech at large, primarily with  a number of the FAANG companies – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google, for those playing the home version – or more appropriately now MAANG, since Facebook is now Meta – and for our purposes here, MAANGO, as we’re including Oracle and some information that recently came to light. Plus, mangos are very much a summer fruit, after all.

Oracle

Speaking of just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water (not!):  Class-Action Lawsuit Accuses Oracle of Tracking 5 Billion People. “Oracle stands accused of collecting detailed dossiers on 5 billion people, with the information gathered including names, home addresses, emails, purchases online and in the real world, physical movements in the real world, income, interests and political views, and a detailed account of online activity,” PC Mag reported.

“This claim is backed up by a video on the ICCL website(Opens in a new window) of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison describing how the company’s real-time machine learning system collects this information and confirms the 5 billion profiles stored in the “Oracle Data Cloud.” The profiles are referred to as a “Consumers Identity Graph.”” Read More...

The Heat of Summer: Cue Up the Global Warming Warnings

The Heat of Summer: Cue Up the Global Warming Warnings

Photo by unsplashed

Since we’re in the heat of summer in most parts of the world, it’s a good opportunity to address climate change. For the record, according to Weather.com, last “July (was) on track to be the coolest in the U.S. since 2015, according to Todd Crawford, Director of Meteorology at Atmospheric G2.” Although not many of us were around to experience those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, to quote Nat King Cole, re last summer, how quickly we forget.

 

CNN has been all over ‘climate change’ and recently hosted the founder (whom CNN misidentified as the co-founder) of the Weather Channel, climatologist John Coleman. Read More...

Wee the People

Wee the People

Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay

We were half joking last week when we suggested that, in many cases in tech, so-called terms of service be renamed ‘terms of servitude.’ Given the amount of data scraping and surveillance we’ve seen because of the lockdowns (think the enormous spike in Amazon and Walmart online orders, while mom and pops were forced to close). It’ll be interesting to see what fresh hell comes next. The New Normal? Might want to think New Police State.

Or something like that.

  Read More...

Jesus Was a Blackbelt: A Lesson in Moving Forward

Jesus Was a Blackbelt: A Lesson in Moving Forward

Image by Artistraman on Pixabay

Last week, Twitter removed US President Donald Trump from the platform, tweeting that “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Never mind that Twitter Allows ‘Hang Mike Pence’ To Trend. Violent groups and terrorists have been using the platform for years to coordinate their activities, but we cover technology, not politics, and are more focused on the implications of Twitter’s move – as well as those of tech cabal members Google, who removed Parler from their app store, as did Apple, and Amazon, which eliminated Parler app from its servers.

As actress Emily Ratajkowski warned: If Mark Zuckerberg Can Shut the President Off Facebook, He Can Shut Any of Us Off. History will remind us that no one is truly immune.

There’s no doubt that censorship is alive and well and spreading – unchecked – and it’s not simply to do with politics but also having opinions that are not in lockstep with those of the cabal or the prescribed talking points. Example: Big Tech censors COVID-19 video featuring doctors, YouTube REMOVES viral video of two California doctors questioning stay-at-home orders  and Facebook declares war on anti-vaxxers as it pledges to remove conspiracy theories, never mind that Hundreds (were) Sent to Emergency Room After Getting COVID-19 Vaccines, and “Thousands of people self-reported being unable to work or perform daily activities, or required care from a health care professional, after getting one of the doses from the first tranche,” as the Epoch Times reported. Read More...

Antitrust in the Tech Industrial Age

Antitrust in the Tech Industrial Age

Facebook is being sued for antitrust violations and AGs in most of the states have signed on. According to the Chicago Tribune, “Lawmakers of both major parties are also calling for stronger oversight of Facebook and other tech industry giants. They argue that the companies’ massive market power is out of control, crushing smaller competitors and endangering consumer privacy and choice. Facebook insists that its services provide useful benefits for users and that complaints about its power are misguided… The FTC and the Justice Department reportedly have been investigating Amazon and Apple, respectively…and Justice Department prosecutors are pursuing a separate antitrust case against Google, one that mirrors its case against Microsoft 20 years ago. Microsoft lost that one, although it escaped a breakup when an appellate court disagreed with the trial judge’s order.”

Om Malik published this piece (My advice to the attorney generals: It’s not about Zuck) and we agree. His point: the Microsoft case didn’t help much in reining in the company. “I would argue that they are doing what they have always done – using their market size as a moat and expanding into new markets. We don’t realize it just yet. Today, they control two major professional networks that will have as big, if not more, significant impact on society in the future — GitHub and LinkedIn…

“My view is that it is okay for these companies to continue and buy younger companies, but they should be restricted to only buying companies that enhance their core and not allowed to buy into new markets. For example, Facebook should not have been allowed to buy Instagram or WhatsApp… In a previous article for The New Yorker, I pointed out, “This loop of algorithms, infrastructure, and data is potent. Add what are called network effects to the mix, and you start to see virtual monopolies emerge almost overnight…”When it comes to Facebook, I wrote, “The more we use it, the more data we give the company, and the more it is able to control where we turn our attention.” Facebook, as a result, “thanks to this loop of algorithms, infrastructure, money, and data, is a winner-takes-all company. Read More...

Fresh Eyes on the New Normal

Fresh Eyes on the New Normal

Image by Barbara Rosner from Pixabay

To hear the Wall Street Journal tell it, you’d think that the stay at home economy is here to stay.

Frankly, we’re not convinced that the votes are all in yet.

While amusement parks, movie theatres, gyms and many restaurants, et al have closed or have been permanently shuttered, are those verticals truly gone forever? Movie theatre sales had been down for quite some time, thanks streaming services, what to speak of the fact that many A list actors found it incumbent upon themselves to take political stances and lost a good part of their fanbase prior to this flu. The common folk expressed their opinions in box office receipts. Read More...

The Thing that’s Truly Driving Tech

The Thing that’s Truly Driving Tech

Silicon Valley is on the ballot this year – in its home state, no less.

California’s Proposition 22 is up for a vote November 3, where AB (Assembly Bill) 5, the state’s gig worker law that, among other things, forced Uber and Lyft to classify their drivers as employees, passed in September of 2019. Prop 22 aims to exempt ridesharing and food-delivery firms from AB5.

Said The New York Times, “Prop 22 would exempt the companies from complying with (AB5), while offering limited benefits to drivers. The law is intended to force them to treat gig workers as employees, but Uber and its peers have resisted, fearing that the cost of benefits like unemployment insurance and health care could tip them into a downward financial spiral. Read More...