Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 02/22 - The Most Acquisitive Unicorns

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 22nd, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Facebook is shutting down its controversial ANAVo app. Google's streaming gaming service might get some hardware to go along with it,

Starting point is 00:00:48 the most acquisitive unicorns, and, of course, the weekend Longreach suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Facebook has removed its Anavo VPN app from the Google Play Store. Not only that, Facebook will immediately stop. Stop pulling data from users who use the Onavo app for market research and will eventually shut down the app entirely. The Onavo app was the one that was fingered in TechCrunch's blockbuster investigation recently, at least sort of indirectly. Quoting from TechCrunch, Facebook has also ceased to recruit new users for the Facebook research app that still runs on Android but was forced off of iOS by Apple after we reported that it violated Apple's enterprise certificate program for employee-only apps. Existing Facebook research app studies will continue to run, though.

Starting point is 00:01:41 A Navajo built itself as a way to limit apps from using background data and use a secure VPN network for your personal info, but also noted it would collect the, quote, time you spend using apps, mobile, and Wi-Fi data you use per app, the websites you visit, and your country, device, and network type, end quote. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the change and provided this statement, quote, market research helps companies build better products for people. We are shifting our focus to reward-based market research, which means we're going to end the ANAvo program, end quote. Again, Facebook acquired ANAvo in 2013 for around $200 million. It later came out that the data from the ANAvo app was instrumental including Facebook into the rise in popularity of WhatsApp,

Starting point is 00:02:27 thus leading to that company being acquired by Facebook for $19 billion. Last year, Apple pushed Facebook to remove ONAVo from the iOS App Store over privacy concerns, but Facebook apparently repurposed that tech into the Facebook research app that TechCrunch revealed was side-loaded via Apple's Enterprise Certificate Program and was paying users money in violation of Apple's policy and led Apple to temporarily cut Facebook's access to the Enterprise Certificate Program full stop. Some follow-on Galaxy News, Samsung says it will be extending that Bixby button remapping feature that Chris told you about to all Galaxy phones running Android Pie.

Starting point is 00:03:15 This will happen in a future software update. You can assign the Bixby button to open a third-party app, as Chris told you, so it could open, say, Google Assistant or Spotify or really whatever you want, quoting from the Verge. So long as your device is running Android Pie, as well as the One Touch UI that sits atop it, Samsung says you'll get Bixby button customization through a future software update. We don't know exactly when that's coming. And for those that like using Bixby, you can still launch the digital assistant

Starting point is 00:03:44 using the dedicated button with either a single or double press. Whatever you choose to remap the button for will take up one slot with Bixby automatically filling the other, end quote. So if you're one of those people that love Galaxy phones but wanted Bixby out of your life, or at least out of sight, you can now do that if you want, even if you're using the S8 or S9 lineups, or the Note 8 and Note 9 lineups.

Starting point is 00:04:16 And a follow-up on this from earlier this week, remember that rumor about Google announcing a streaming gaming service soon. The rumor kicked off because Google announced a mysterious keynote at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on March 19th. Well, now, quoting from 9 to 5, Google, according to a source familiar with the matter, next month's event, which Google calls a keynote, will feature both the game streaming service

Starting point is 00:04:40 powered by the Project Stream technology and hardware to go along with it, end quote. Project Stream was demoed some months ago, allowing users to play Assassin's Creed Odyssey in Chrome for Mac, Windows, Linux, and even Chrome OS. Apparently, this is all part of a so-called Project Yeti inside Google, and Project Yeti is also working to gin up a hardware component to get games working on, say, TVs.

Starting point is 00:05:08 Quote, Kataku last June confirmed that hardware is in development and reported that Google has been in talks with big video game developers to gauge interest for the platform. Another source last year confirmed to us that a few studios have worked with Google to port existing games for internal testing, including one historically popular title. Furthermore, as of late 2018, we were told that the upcoming roadmap for Yeti is being locked down, end quote. In the universe of exits, there are IPOs, of course, but there are also acquisitions, usually, at least lately, by one of the big boys, getting bought out by a Facebook or an Amazon, say. But there's also a category that people tend to forget about. That category is acquisition by unicorn.

Starting point is 00:06:00 That can be an interesting outcome. You get your payday for your company, and then, depending on how the unicorn does, either when it IPOs or if it gets taken out by a bigger fish, you can get potentially an even greater payday than the one you signed up for. News broke today that Pinterest has confidentially filed for its IPO, for example. And guess what? It turns out that Pinterest has been quietly among the most acquisitive unicorns in recent years. So who tops the list for the most acquisitive unicorns?

Starting point is 00:06:35 Crunchbase has the numbers. According to them, Airbnb comes in first among the current crop of unicorns with 19, acquisitions through February of 2019. Followed by someone you wouldn't think of, probably. WordPress developer and hosting company Automatic has made 17 acquisitions. Then in third came Pinterest at 15 acquisitions, which again, surprised me a bit. After that, it's a whole bunch of others folks you would think of like Wii work, or the Wii company, I guess it is again.

Starting point is 00:07:05 Coinbase, Lyft, Stripe, etc. But yeah, some of those Pinterest acquisitions will soon find out if they're paid day will turn out to be even larger than they anticipated when they signed on that dotted line. Time for the weekend long read suggestions. I'm going to do something a little different today. I'm going to recommend more long reads than I usually do. But the last three are all on a single theme, so you should sort of think of reading them as all one coherent whole. First, the podcast recommendation, though, this week I decided to circle back to recommend a podcast probably

Starting point is 00:07:47 more core to our interests. Late Night Linux is a podcast that takes a look at what's happening with Linux and the wider tech industry. Every two weeks, they discuss the latest news and releases and the broader issues and trends in the world of free and open source software. All of the hosts of the show are Linux users and or developers. The host told me to tell you to expect drinking, swearing, strong opinions, and will being told to shut up about Ubuntu. So if this is the Sword of Waters you swim in, I can't imagine a better show to check out. Search your podcast app for Late Night Linux, and you can also find them at Late Night Linux.com.

Starting point is 00:08:30 First long read is from The Verge, given all the recent news about Apple's Enterprise App program and the shenanigans therein, Nick Statt has a super useful overall look at what the Enterprise App program even is, why Apple has it in the first place and how, as Nick says, it has been turned into the new Wild West of mobile apps. Or quoting Nick even more pithily, Apple dug a tunnel beneath the app store and the rats are getting through. In Vanity Fair, Nick Bilton has a piece up chronicling Elizabeth Holmes' final moments at Theranos. So if you read that book, Bad Blood,

Starting point is 00:09:05 this is the perfect sort of final chapter for that book. And even if you didn't read the book, this is a fantastic look at where the whole Theranos story stands at the moment. Also timely, the New York Times has a historical look back at how New York City actually became a tech town because Amazon notwithstanding. New York has been a tech town for quite a long time now. And I mean that even in the modern digital sense, IBM was always big here. Bell Labs was here before going out to New Jersey. Then you had all the dot-com companies that were here in Silicon Alley, double-click,

Starting point is 00:09:42 the globe. Tim Armstrong was Google's first employee here, tasked with dialing up the ad business before AdWords even existed. He worked out of his apartment by himself at first. Then, of course, Google bought DoubleClick. Then you had the explosion of digital media companies, BuzzFeed, Business Insider, and the second wave of companies, guilt, Etsy. Etsy was actually founded in the very building I am speaking to you in right now. Heck, as I said, the entire podcasting universe is here in Brooklyn. Nice summation of New York's history as a tech town. Ars Technica has one of its typically massive pieces. This time, it's a total comprehensive buyer's guide. The best Android phones to buy in every category from budget phone through flagship. In Mashable, Chloe Bryan has a

Starting point is 00:10:35 piece that got a ton of circulation this week. It's called the Curse of the Twitter Reply Guys. Ladies, you will no doubt have a shudder of recognition when you read this piece. Guys read this piece because you do not want to be one of the clearly defined nine types of reply guy identified here. And finally, the last three links are the three themed links. YouTube, this is an overall evolving narrative that I've probably been a little negligent by not covering. But that unfortunate story that Chris had to report on yesterday made it time to do this. Bottom line is this. Facebook gets all the headlines for its aggressive algorithms which push more, more, more,

Starting point is 00:11:23 in search of greater engagement and more money. But YouTube is also guilty of this same thing, and perhaps even more so. Again, it all comes down to algorithms and designing for addiction. You know what I'm talking about. You watch a video on a thing on YouTube, and then YouTube recommends you watch another video on a similar thing, and then another, and then another, and before you know it, you're all the way down the rabbit hole. And this is not news, that rabbit hole quickly gets dark and dirty and scary and icky. Somehow, watching a video on Martin Luther King can lead you to video suggestions for white supremacy videos. And for years, YouTube has been blamed for radicalizing terrorists, but now we're getting into the weeds in ways that are complex and difficult to think about.

Starting point is 00:12:16 There were headlines just this week about the ecosystem of anti-vaccination videos on YouTube. And of course, the universe of conspiracy theory videos is notoriously vast there as well. So what happens when YouTube can radicalize someone on any subject, even gray area ones? For example, YouTube story number one comes from The Guardian. It describes a recent paper wherein researchers pretty much have identified that the recent rise in the flat earth movement, people who believe the world is flat. The researchers think they can blame the rise of that movement almost entirely on YouTube. It describes a recent Flat Earther annual conference, quote, interviews with 30 attendees revealed a pattern in the stories. People told about how they came to be convinced that the Earth was not a large round rock.

Starting point is 00:13:03 spinning through space, but a large flat disk doing much the same thing. Of the 30, all but one said they had not considered the Earth to be flat two years ago, but changed their mind after watching videos promoting conspiracy theories on YouTube. The only person who didn't say this was there with his daughter and his son-in-law, and they had seen it on YouTube and told him about it, said Ashley Landrum, who led the research at Texas Tech University. The interviews revealed that most had been watching videos about other conspiracies, with alternative takes on 9-11, the Sandy Hook School Shoot,

Starting point is 00:13:33 and whether NASA really went to the moon, when YouTube offered up Flat Earth videos for them to watch next, end quote. So, from that, part two is a piece from Kevin Ruse in the New York Times. He mentions things like Flat Earth conspiracies. He notes that YouTube says it wants to curb this sort of, quote, borderline content.

Starting point is 00:13:53 But the problem there is that would mean curtailing some of YouTube's most popular content and, in fact, perhaps muffling some of its most popular stars. Roos describes YouTuber Shane Dawson, who has 20 million followers and recently posted a smash hit, 104-minute conspiracy-laced documentary. Quoting, Roos, part of the problem for platforms like YouTube and Facebook, which is also pledged to clean up misinformation that could lead to real-world harm, is that the definition of harmful misinformation is circular.

Starting point is 00:14:23 There is no inherent reason that a video questioning the official 9-11 narrative is more dangerous than a video asserting the existence of UFOs or Bigfoot. A conspiracy theory is harmful if it results in harm, at which point it's often too late for the platforms to act, end quote. Read the ruse piece to learn about algotransparency.org that will let you dig deep and actually see and figure out how YouTube's algorithms function. I found that fascinating. But it's that last bit that I just quoted for Moose that I think is key to think about here. Once a conspiracy theory can result in harm, it's too late for anything to be done about it. The genies out of the bottle. Take the anti-vaxxer thing.

Starting point is 00:15:01 Now, I want to stress that I am not at all taking a position on this. You believe what you want to believe. I'm not taking a side on that debate. But I'm going to use it as an example. What if YouTube or some other platform is growing the movement to avoid vaccinations? And one day there is a huge, I don't know, measles outbreak because of that and thousands of people get sick or even die? And then what if people blamed YouTube for that? At that point, YouTube would probably take the videos down right, but what would be the point?

Starting point is 00:15:33 It would be too late at that point. I mean, we learned this week that Pinterest has blocked all vaccine-related searches on its platform, full stop. That's one way to do it. But then where are we? Then we're deep in the weeds of a censorship debate, right? Because what would be the next topic that is verboten? And the next, and the next. The third piece, the final piece, is from Casey Newton in The Verge.

Starting point is 00:15:58 He looked at this through the lens of that infamous Tidepod challenge. It started out as a satirical video from The Onion. Then people posted their own satirical videos in response. And then suddenly kids were being rushed to poison control because they were eating Tidepods. As Casey says, these are insidious phenomena, even when no one believes the conspiracy theories at first. Quote, the Tidepods challenge. was just a joke. Until it wasn't.

Starting point is 00:16:27 Until a certain point, videos about it were pure entertainment. So when did that change? Imagine that you're working at YouTube. When do you flip the switch declaring the whole subject to be, quote, borderline content? I don't think this question is unanswerable. There was almost certainly a moment in the evolution of the Tidepod story where it became clear

Starting point is 00:16:46 that it had taken on a life of its own. But determining that moment in real time would require platforms to take on more of an editorial role than they have historically been comfortable with, end quote. But what if in the near future they're going to be forced to take on that role to avoid what is becoming a growing rumbling about liability implications? I think that's the calculation that Pinterest made, by the way, with a high-profile IPO coming.

Starting point is 00:17:13 And remember, I told you just this week about the UK Parliament report that suggested writing legislation to force platforms to police content or face liability. Anyway, it's a big, messy, I don't have a handle on it all yet, issue, but these three pieces will help you get a sense of the whole picture. Guess what, y'all, I did it. The tech meme ride home is now a flash briefing on ALEXA. If you go to the ALEXA Skills Store and search for Ride Home, you'll find this podcast. and you can make this podcast your flash briefing.

Starting point is 00:17:56 So once you load the ride home skill into her, and I'm going to try not to trigger her, you can say, hey, what's in the news? Or, hey, play my flash briefing, and my voice will immediately start playing. So there you go. A new way to listen to the show, maybe whilst making dinner after you've ridden home,

Starting point is 00:18:18 or maybe while getting ready to go to work in the morning before driving in. Hope you enjoy it and enjoy the bonus episodes this weekend as well. Talk to you on Monday.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 02/22 - The Most Acquisitive Unicorns

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