Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 02/01 - The Apple/Facebook/Google Cold War

Episode Date: February 1, 2019

Turns out Google poked Apple in the eye also, layoffs hit Vice, Amazon reports earnings and reports that a ton of people responded to that minimum wage hike, and of course, the weekend longreads suggestions. Sponsors: DataDogHQ.com/ridehome Tiny.website Links: Apple restores Google's internal iOS apps after certificate misuse punishment (TechCrunch) Twitter removed some accounts originating in Iran, Russia and Venezuela that targeted U.S. midterm election (The Washington Post) Vice Media to Reorganize, Lay Off 10 Percent of Staff (Exclusive) (The Hollywood Reporter) Why the Outlook for Digital Media Behemoths is Worse than You Think (Talking Points Memo) Amazon Notches Third Record Profit in a Row (WSJ) Americans are lining up to work for Amazon for $15 an hour (QZ) Why Alexa usually won’t respond when someone says ‘Alexa’ on TV (VentureBeat) The SmartTouchUSA.com Weekend Longreads Suggestions The ShopTalkShow podcast Is Alexa working? (Benedict Evans) As I.P.O. Approaches, Lyft’s Chief Is Nudged Into the Spotlight (NYTimes) Why Technology Hasn’t Fixed the Housing Crisis (NYTimes) The Secrets of Lyndon Johnson’s Archives (The New Yorker) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the tech meme ride home for Friday, February 1st, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. It turns out Google poked Apple in the eye also.

Layoffs hit vice. Amazon reports earnings and also reports that a ton of people responded to that minimum wage hike they did. And of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. We wondered if Google might be doing the same thing Facebook was doing. And it turns out they were. Google was inviting users 18 and up to install and run an app called ScreenWise Meter to monitor phone usage on selected phones.

ScreenWise was side installed using Apple's enterprise certificate process. Same thing Facebook was doing. We wondered if Apple would be pissed if they found out that Google was doing the same thing Facebook got in trouble for, and it turns out they pissed. For a period of time yesterday, Apple blocked Google from, using internal iOS apps by revoking their enterprise certificate. That meant that Googlers, like their Facebook counterparts, couldn't use internal Gmail or calendars or YouTube apps,

couldn't even use their internal food and transportation apps. In other words, work at the Googleplex was super disrupted. This has now been resolved, at least in Google's case, Apple restored Google's certificates, but we also wondered if these disruptions, were just coincidental or actual shots across the bow of those offending companies. And it turns out, yeah, Apple was definitely meeting out punishment. This has been a wild story all around and one that might not even be over yet.

I'm hearing rumors that Amazon might be another offending party. It's also interesting that while Apple chose to slap Google on the wrist as well, they made the punishment sharp but brief. as Ina Freed pointed out, quote, Apple says it is quickly working to reinstate Google's enterprise certificates, while it didn't say anything similar, RE, Facebook. Google, though, quickly apologized, and is a big Apple business partner, end quote.

Yeah, there is that little matter of Google paying Apple tens of billions of dollars a year to make sure Google is the default search option on iOS. And it's wild how quickly this story has turned from what at the outset look like just another Facebook data scandal into a growing realization of Apple's awesome power in this situation. Here's Mark German, quote, in two days, Apple has knocked out some of the business operations of two of its biggest competitors at the flick of a switch, end quote. Sarah Jong, quote, Apple banning the Facebook and Google certs is extremely funny, but should also give us pause to think about how much of our daily lives depends on a handful of corporations. that have been engaging in a Cold War of compatibility for years, end quote. And Nilai Patel, quote,

Hi, I'm the nagging voice in the back of your head pointing out that it's pretty intense that Apple can simply decide to prevent people from running code on their phones, end quote. Twitter says it has removed thousands of malicious accounts on its platform that originated in Iran, Russia, and Venezuela for spreading disinformation about the 2018 midterm elections in the U.S. on that platform. And Facebook says it removed 262 pages, 356 accounts, three groups, and 162 Instagram accounts tied to Iran for the same sort of coordinated inauthentic behavior. It's hard to find a new way to tell you about what is probably going to be a Groundhog Day-style recurring event, sort of like how every few weeks or months I have to tell you about another data breach.

But that's kind of the point. I forget who said it. Someone recently pointed out, the Russians were the proof of concept on stuff like this. Once they showed the world that this sort of stuff was possible, was possibly effective and most importantly so cheap to pull off, why wouldn't every regime in the world do something like this? For a few thousand dollars, you can potentially sow internal disruption inside the borders of an adversary.

Not a shot fired. Sometimes you have plausible deniability. This is not going to stop any time soon. Also found this interesting as well. Quoting from the Financial Times, Nathaniel Gleiker, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, said that Facebook had been able to uncover the campaign after working with Twitter and that social media companies were now sharing notes on disinformation sooner than they had in the past. We're actually able to move more quickly and remove these larger networks, he said.

It's an encouraging example of the type of collaboration we're hoping to build across industry, end quote. So good. Pulling your information, sort of an interpool for these sorts of shenanigans. Of course, that would always depend on tech companies getting along with each. other and not being in a perpetual cold war with each other. Unfortunately, the digital media layoffs roll on and they've reached Vice. Vice is reportedly going to lay off 10% of its staff or around 250 people across the entire company. Vice says this is part of a restructuring effort to focus on growth in areas like film, TV, and branded content. Back in November, the Wall Street Journal reported that Vice was on track to bring in between $600 and $650 million in revenue in 2018.

But Vice is one of those companies we talk about that took a metric ton of funding. And so even that much in revenue might not be quite enough to impress investors, especially if Vice is not profitable at that level, which it might not be. Disney, for example, recently took a $157 million write-down on its stake in vice. And as Josh Marshall said on his website today, quote, does anyone want to own these companies for long-term and consistent, if modest profitability? As Josh wrote astutely echoing what Rafat Ali told us, the problem is who it is that invested in these companies, VCs and others who were hoping to 10x or better. Again, quoting Josh, if BuzzFeed operates in its current form and makes a

1% profit. Will anyone want to buy it for 1.7 billion or whatever its notional value is currently supposed to be? Unlikely, end quote. Oh, and hey, there was also this little news item from Amazon. For the third quarter in a row, Amazon reported all-time record profits. Q4 revenues came in at $72.4 billion up 20% year over year. The all-important AWS reported revenue of 7.43 billion, which was up 45% year over year, but the pride of place goes to the net income, which came in at $3 billion, up 58% year over year. AWS apparently accounted for 58% of Amazon's overall operating income in Q4. And remember how we're watching the growth in that other revenue category.

Literally, they call it other revenue where Amazon's advertising business lives. other revenue hit 3.39 billion up 95% year over year. You know what, let's hit a couple of other Amazon stories before the long reads. Remember when Amazon leveled up to a $15 an hour minimum wage? Well, it turns out that wasn't just good PR. Amazon says it got 850,000 applications for hourly U.S. jobs in October after announcing the minimum wage hike, which more than doubled its previous monthly record for job applications.

Quoting courts, analysts had worried Amazon's wage increase would cut into profits. So far, that doesn't seem to be the case. Amazon reported $3 billion in profit in the fourth quarter beating the consensus estimate of $2.8 billion among analysts tracked by fact set, end quote. And I know I'm supposed to spell it out to say A-L-E-X-A when we talk about her, since some of you have complained that if I say her name out loud, I summon her. But look, folks, it's kind of hard to do, so I might slip here. And if I was Amazon, I wouldn't even have to worry. In the U.S., the big game is this weekend.

And there's going to be some A-L-E-X-A ads in them featuring Harrison Ford and Force Whitaker. But don't worry, Han Solo won't summon she who should not be named if you've got your TV up loud. why? Something called acoustic fingerprinting algorithms. Basically, Amazon has been banking audio files of use of the wake word being used when Amazon knows she should not be awoken. Thus, there are fingerprints in the AL-E-X-A database for times when it's a false alarm, when she should not respond to even her wake word. And since Amazon produced the audio for the commercial itself, it's added a fingerprint to the database to correspond to Harrison Ford's voice in the commercial. Quote, these fingerprinting methods for which Amazon has patents, will together prevent as many as 80 to 90% of devices from responding to TV originated Alexa statements, the company says, end quote. So if I could just get Amazon to put episodes of me saying her name on this podcast into the system, then we wouldn't have this problem. I could just say her name. Except, I'm wondering, would that mean that I would have trouble saying her name in real life in my house?

Like, now that he's done this commercial, does Harrison Ford have trouble waking up his echo? And speaking of things that should not be spoken, there's a funny convention here in the U.S. that you shouldn't use the actual name of the big game in question because it's trademarked. Now, I don't know if that applies to nerdy little podcasts, but you know what big game I'm talking about, right? It rhymes with Grupertoll, which sounds like either some sort of weird fish fry or fish kill or else a great name for a Jethro Tull cover band. Grupper Toll. It's time for the weekend Long Reeds suggestions brought to by SmartTouch. SmartTouch provides design installation and integration solutions for home automation, home audio, whole house audio, home security, home control, including lighting, HVAC, and more.

smart home control and entertainment right at your fingertips. Check them out at smart touch USA.com. This week's podcast recommendation, the Shop Talk Show. Shop Talk Show is a podcast about building for the web. So front-end devs, WordPress fans, CSS and HTML nerds, jamstack, all the buzzwords of modern web development are covered on Shop Talk Show. I've actually heard about this pod forever, and I just recently checked them out, and it really is pretty great. It's even great at my level.

I'm not a serious hardcore dev or anything like that. Shop Talk Show has done more than 300 episodes where the host Chris Coyer and Dave Rupert talk shop about building for the web, along with guests from the web development world. They answer questions and generally just encourage you to learn and get out there and start building websites. Search the app you're listening to me on right now for Shop Talk Show, or you can check them out at shoptalkshow.com. First, for the long reads, we were just talking about A-L-E-X-A, and Benedict Evans has a piece up that literally asks, is A-L-E-X-A working? In essence, Ben looks at this from his typical, deeply analytical big-picture perspective. he thinks that AL-E-X-A has achieved some level of product market fit for consumers, but its real deeper strategic value to Amazon is what he calls option value.

One of the fundamental shifts that came with mobile was that the user's device became a lot less neutral. On the desktop, there were pretty narrow limits to what a web browser could do to control the economic models and interaction models of websites. On a smartphone, the management of everything from system permission, to default apps to notifications and interaction models, not to mention in-app purchases, means that Apple and Android are in much more direct control of what companies using these devices to reach customers can do.

Ironically, a major reason why Google bought and built Android in the first place was fear of what Microsoft and Nokia might do with such power. Now Amazon is faced with this. The endpoint has become much more strategic for web platform companies. So anything you can do to get an endpoint of your own has value for the future, even if no one today uses it to buy soap powder. Lyft is probably going to be the first out of the gate for the slew of big tech IPOs coming our way this year. But quick, who is Lyft's CEO that you don't know? There's a reason for that.

Check out the New York Times profile of Lyft CEO Logan Green, who has sometimes for personal reasons, but sometimes for strategic ones, taken a less high profile path than, say, I don't know, Travis Kalanick did? From the New York Times, why hasn't technology solved the housing crisis? There's big money in construction and real estate, and yet people are still getting priced out of homes everywhere. There's been a ton of investment in a space that people in VC land have taken to calling prop tech. But in the New York Times, Emily Badger says, the one thing that seems to be beyond their reach so far is the core issue, that of affordability. Emily looks at why. And finally today, if you've hung out long enough in certain corners of the internet,

you'll know that some of us are absolutely Robert Caro stands, Robert Carroll fanatics down to our bones. Author of one of my five favorite books of all time, The Power Broker, author of a multi-volume biography of President Lyndon Johnson that he's not done with yet, and frankly, I'm more worried about Bob Carrow dying before he finishes his masterpiece

than I am George R.R. Martin dying before he finishes the Game of Thrones books. Why this obsessive devotion to Robert Carrow? Well, if you've ever read him, you'll understand. He's a craftsman, as much as he's a historian, as much as he's a brilliant writer and an artist. But he has this obsession with and attention to detail and respect for the craft of what he does that I think software developers especially would appreciate.

He does the work. He puts in the time. He organizes. He thinks deeply. He sees the underlying patterns in the matrix. I've always thought that if he was born in a different time, Bob Carroll would be a master coder, because he sees the patterns, the algorithms.

You think you wouldn't want to read a book about LBJ because who cares, right? But I swear to God, no human being in history has done more to uncover the true roots and mechanisms and motivation of power, of the use of power, of the acquisition of power, the application of power in society than Robert Caro has. That's his true subject matter. And LBJ, Robert Moses, they're just his mutual. uses. He's created amazing books by digging deeper and more comprehensively than anyone else has any right to do. And he's done that by doing the work, putting in the hours, the elbow grease, being a craftsman. And that's why some of us respect him so, so, so, so much.

We aspire to be craftspersons like Robert Caro is a craftsman. That's why I was so thrilled when I learned he has a book coming out later this spring about his process called working. It was an instant pre-order for me. You want a taste of what working means to Robert Carrow? Check out the last link to the New Yorker piece that is written by him. That is an excerpt from the upcoming book, I'm pretty sure. You'll get a sample of what his writing is like and why it's so amazingly engaging, but also you'll get a glimpse into his process. I aspire to be one-tenth, the artisan, the technician, the absolute master of my craft that Robert Caro is, and you should as well.

That's all for the weekend long reads suggestions brought to you by SmartTouch. It's finally time to jump into the smart home future, and the folks at SmartTouch are the people to help you do it, especially if you live in New York or D.C., but anywhere in the country. If you're ready for a smart home, get in touch at SmartTouchUSA.com. There's two T's two T's in that, SmartTouchUSA.com, And because these are friends of the pod, if you get in touch, please let them know that Brian sent you.

That's all for today. I got nothing. Except that I'm cold. It's very cold here, too cold to heck with polar vortexes. Although it's going to be 60 on Tuesday, which means fully 55 degrees warmer than it is right now. Oh, hey, I posted this on the subreddit, but I'm also incredibly geeked about,

tomorrow Saturday's bonus episode, I got to host a J.N. Farhad show reunion. If you have no idea what that means or why I'm so thrilled about it, believe me, on Saturday, you're going to get a taste of some crazy podcast chemistry that we don't get enough of anymore. Talk to you on Monday.