Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 08/19 – The Biggest Google Search Algo Change In Years?

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 TechMame right home for Friday, August 19th, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough today. Looks like Evan Spiegel is retrenching in his dreams of making Snap primarily a camera company.

Starting point is 00:00:45 Are we about to see the biggest Google search algorithm change in years? Does TikTok effectively have a keystroke logger and will this lead to more calls to crack down on them? And of course, the weekend long-read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. I'm trying to make an analogy to Zuck having to give up his Metaverse. dreams, but kind of doesn't fit. Sources say Evan Spiegel told staff that Snap is stopping future development of its Pixie flying selfie camera as part of a broader reprioritization of resources, quoting the journal.

Starting point is 00:01:25 Pixie is a small drone that takes off and lands in the user's hand. It was introduced at the end of April during Snap's annual partner summit with a $230 starting price. When it launched, Mr. Spiegel said it planned to sell a limited quantity of them. Snap will continue to sell the current iteration of Pixie, according to a person familiar with the matter. As of Thursday morning, it was available for online purchase. Snap's step back from Pixie echoes actions other tech companies have taken to reallocate resources in recent weeks. Facebook parent meta platforms has moved to give priority to efforts around the creator economy and away from its Facebook news tab and newsletter platform called Bulletin, the Wall Street Journal reported last month.

Starting point is 00:02:04 The changes come amid a broader shift within the company, toward the so-called Metaverse, a more immersive form of the internet, and its efforts to fend off competition from short-form video platform, TikTok. Launching successful hardware products has long been a goal for Snap. In 2016, Snapchat renamed itself Snap Inc. It has billed itself as a camera company instead of simply a social media platform. It launched a set of sunglasses with a camera in them called Spectacles for $130. Snap's latest decision around the pixie drone follows other belt tightening, the company has undertaken. Last month, it said that it would substantially reduce its rate of hiring

Starting point is 00:02:42 and that headcount would remain roughly flat. Meta and Twitter have also said they plan to throttle back on adding employees Robin Hood this month said it was slashing about 23% of its full-time staff, end quote. It's been a while since a major Google algorithm change seemed newsworthy. Where are my penguin and panda veterans at? But Google apparently plans to prioritize, quote, content made specifically buy and for people, end quote, in search in English, globally, covering shopping, tech-related content, and more, all part of a major new update. Quoting the verge. A general search ranking update named the helpful content update will start rolling out globally to English language users on Monday, August 22nd, according to Google spokesperson Jennifer Cuts. A second update, quote, to make it even easier to find high-quality original reviews is expected in the coming weeks. The tech giant has tweaked product review rankings many times before, most recently in December

Starting point is 00:03:47 2021 and March 2022. These updates might be particularly helpful to anyone using the append Reddit hack to filter out on helpful websites and search results in favor of real human experiences. You can see this in action when hunting for hardware reviews. For example, beginning a Google search for Sony W.H in the U.S. suggests two results with Reddit on the end in favor of the word review for the popular Sony WH-1000 XM series headphones. While Google's blog post doesn't mention Reddit as a source for the more personalized and authentic content, it's hard not to make the association given recent search trends.

Starting point is 00:04:26 Comparably, the Brave web browser recently released a new feature that also gives Reddit and Stack Exchange content a boost. These can be found under its discussions section without having to add anything to the end of search terms. The announcement for this browser feature alluded to beliefs that Google search is dying after noting that more people are turning to Reddit to get authentic reviews and answers to inquiries. Google is providing guidance for creators on its search central blog to ensure their, quote, creating content that will be successful after the company's new updates roll out, end quote. My go-to source for things like this is Barry Schwartz,

Starting point is 00:05:04 who writes at Search Engine Roundtable, quote, The helpful content update looks to weed out content written for the purpose of ranking in search engines that do not help or inform people. Google said this update will, quote, tackle content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines. The update will, quote, help make sure that unoriginal, low-quality content doesn't rank highly in search, Google added. So if you are writing content with the purpose of driving search engine visibility and traffic, you might be hit by this. It is my opinion that this update will change how SEOs perform content strategies going forward, much like Panda and Penguin changed how SEOs did content and link strategies respectively a decade ago, end quote.

Starting point is 00:05:50 There has been something of a steady drumbeat of concerned troll stories about TikTok recently, which makes me wonder if energy is building again to, I don't know, do something about them, like they attempted during the Trump years. Here's the latest. According to a report, TikTok's in-app browser injects JavaScript that can track users' keystrokes and taps into websites. TikTok confirms the code, but says it's for debugging purposes. Quoting TechCrunch, Beware in-app browsers is a good rule of thumb for any privacy-conscious mobile app user, given the potential for an app to leverage its hold on user attention to snoop on what you're looking at via browser software.

Starting point is 00:06:31 It also controls. But eyebrows are being raised over the behavior of TikTok. in-app browser after independent privacy research by developer Felix Krause found the social network's iOS app injecting code that could enable it to monitor all keyboard inputs and taps, aka key logging, quote, TikTok iOS subscribes to every keystroke text inputs happening on third-party websites rendered inside the TikTok app. This can include passwords, credit card information, and other sensitive user data warns Krause in a blog post detailing the findings. We can't know what TikTok uses the support.

Starting point is 00:07:06 subscription four, but from a technical perspective, this is the equivalent of installing a keylogger on third-party websites, end quote. After publishing a report last week, focused on the potential for meta's Facebook and Instagram iOS apps to track users of their in-app browsers, Kraus followed up by launching a tool called in-appbrowser.com that lets mobile app users get details of code that's being injected by in-app browsers by listing JavaScript commands executed by the app as it renders the page. He warns the tool does not necessarily list all JavaScript commands executed, nor can it pick up tracking an app might be doing using native code. So at best, it's offering a glimpse of potentially sketchy activities. Krause is careful to point out that just

Starting point is 00:07:49 because he has found TikTok is subscribing to every keystroke a user makes on third-party sites viewed inside its in-app browser, that does not necessarily mean it's doing anything malicious with the access. As he notes, there's no way for outsiders to know the full deep. details on what kind of data is being collected or how or if it's being transferred or used. But clearly, the behavior itself raises questions and privacy risks for TikTok users. TikTok argues that the key press and key down inputs identified by Krause are common inputs, claiming it is incorrect to make the assumption about their use based only on the code being highlighted by the research. To back this up, the spokesperson pointed to some non-Tick-Ticot

Starting point is 00:08:29 same code from GitHub, which they suggested would trigger exactly the same response being cited by the research as evidence of improper data collection, but is rather being used to trigger a command known as Stop Listening that they said would specifically prevent an application capturing what is typed, end quote. Time for the weekend long read suggestions. We covered this as it started happening, and I covered it skeptically at the time, but I'm starting to become a believer, I guess. The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the raft of new browser startups that are raising big rounds to take on Chrome and Safari. The browser company, I think, is especially interesting, quote. Google is incentivized to make Chrome one big Google search box, said Josh Miller, chief executive officer of the browser company of New York, which is creating a competing product named Arc that he said aims to serve the workflows and needs of the average internet user.

Starting point is 00:09:30 The browser company this month raised $15 million in a round of funding. led by Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, that included Shopify CEO Toby Lukie and Slack CEO Stuart Butterfield, valuing the nearly three-year-old company at $350 million, end quote. Next, since people are saying that in the end, maybe it was Three Arrow's Capital that was the root cause bringing down a lot of the recent crypto bankruptcies from intelligents, sir, a look at the dudes behind Three Arrow's Capital, quote. Among Crypto's smartest observers, there is a wide, widely held view that three arrows is meaningfully responsible for the larger crypto crash of 2022,

Starting point is 00:10:10 as market chaos and force-selling set Bitcoin and other digital assets plunging 70% or more, erasing more than a trillion dollars in value. I suspect they might be 80% of the total original contagion, says Sam Bankman-Fried, who, as CEO of FTX, a major crypto exchange that has bailed out some of the bankrupt lenders, has perhaps more visibility on the problem than anyone. They weren't the only people who blew out, but they did it way, bigger than anyone else did. And they had way more trust from the ecosystem prior to that, Bankman-Feed says, end quote. For a firm that had always portrayed itself as playing just with its own money, we don't have any external investors, Zhu 3AC's CEO had told Bloomberg as recently as February,

Starting point is 00:10:52 the damage three arrows cause was astonishing. By mid-July, creditors had come forward with more than $2.8 billion in claims. The figure is expected to balloon from there. Everyone in crypto from the largest lenders to wealthy investors seem to have lent three arrows capitaled their digital coins, even three AC's own employees, who deposited their salaries with its borrowing desk in exchange for interest. So many people feel disappointed and some of them embarrassed, says Alex Svanavik, the CEO of Nansen, a Singapore-based blockchain analytics company. And they shouldn't because a lot of people fell for this, and a lot of people gave them money, end quote. Then an updated variation on a theme we've touched on before as streaming finally topples cable TV in usage numbers,

Starting point is 00:11:38 a look at how streaming is starting to look a lot like cable from Lucas Shaw's newsletter, quote, What do you do when growth in your most lucrative market slows? You raise prices and or find a second source of revenue. Disney is raising prices for almost every major plan and introducing an advertising supported service in December. Warner Brothers Discovery hinted that the combination of HBO Max and Discovery Plus will cost more as it creates three tiers. Netflix and Amazon have been raising prices for years and both are investing a lot more money into advertising-supported video. Paramount Plus and Peacock don't have pricing power, but they do have ads. Apple TV Plus may have ads soon as well. The total cost of every major streaming service out there now rivals the cost

Starting point is 00:12:19 of cable, and that may have an adverse effect on subscriber growth for many of these companies, end quote. Actually, he has a chart in this piece showing that if you subscribe to every major streaming service, he tallies it all up, Amazon, Apple TV, Netflix, Paramount Plus, the whole lot, you're going to be paying $99.49 a month. Pretty convincing, isn't that? Sounds exactly like a cable bill. Next, know your meme tracked down the girl that, well, that is in that girl talking to guy at a concert or whatever meme, that literally everyone has been posting this week. Quote, when asked about the location and time behind the original picture, with the earliest known upload of the photo being on February 4th, 2019, Sanchez was able to recall

Starting point is 00:13:05 and shed light on the photo that it was, quote, on a night out in Argentina. The name was Chao Chi in 2018, referring to the Buenos Aires Club Chao Chi Clue. As for who she was talking to, Sanchez told us, quote, he was my boyfriend at the time, now he's my ex, end quote. The reason for the photo being taken of them was, quote, another girl took a photo and we were behind them, meaning that while Sanchez and her ex named Alphrey weren't the focus of the picture, they quickly became the center of attention

Starting point is 00:13:32 after the meme started to make the rounds originally in 2019. The meme took off before in 2019, when it was still circulating primarily within Spanish-speaking meme circles. This week, however, it crossed over into English meme circles, kicking the meme up a notch in terms of recognition, spread, and sheer examples. When asked about her feelings on the, the format crossing over to English memers, a language and culture she added that she isn't a part of.

Starting point is 00:13:57 Her response was, quote, I honestly had no idea that the meme resurfaced again, and I never realized the huge number of people who saw it. It makes me laugh a lot when everyone is surprised that it's me. Now I dyed my hair black, so it's harder for them to recognize me, but yes, it's me, and quote. And finally, history hat time, The Verge looks at how Nokia ringtones became the first viral earworms, about 20 years ago right now. Quote, ringtone culture arguably began in the mid-90s with the Nokia tune, which borrowed from the song Gran Vals by classical guitarist Francisco Tarega. Wherever you went back then, it was impossible to escape the sound of Tarega's greatest legacy. Timo Antila, one of Nokia's early in-house composers, bought his first phone a Nokia 2110 in

Starting point is 00:14:45 1996. Quote, suddenly everybody got their own phone and everyone wanted to have personal ringtones and background images, he says. First buzzer tunes were really annoying, but those were iconic and changed the sonic environment quite dramatically, end quote. When Nokia unveiled the world's first polyphonic ringtone in 2022, piercing melodies became a ubiquitous part of daily life and took on new significance as a form of personal expression. Around 2005, Antila realized that wherever he went, he could hear a ringtone that he'd either composed or collaborated on. By that time, everyone had their phone sounds on in public. There were ringtones everywhere, and most of the Finns had Nokia's. That was really weird, he says. Nobody knew who did this and the amount of

Starting point is 00:15:27 plays those tracks had globally every day. If you calculate the amount of phones, that would make the Nokia composers one of the most recorded artists ever, end quote. Not everyone appreciated the dulcet tones of Nokia's pioneering ringtone work, though. While working on various versions of the Nokia tune Livingston, who ended up installing a recording studio in his cellar, remembers a weak spot in the soundproofing that led to the kitchen. It used to drive my wife mad having to listen to the Nokia ringtones over and over again for hours and days on end, he says. Superstar musicians like Brian Eno, who famously wrote the Windows 95 sound, Kruder and Dorfmeister, and Ruchi Sakamoto got involved. Artists Alison Craighead and John Thompson conceptualized the first

Starting point is 00:16:08 silent ringtone on their experimental shop. A booming sub-industrial, sprang up around custom ringtones, especially when it came to pop songs and ringtone rap. In high school, I paid for $1 versions of Sandstorm and every Alice DJ song on my Nokia. Ringtones became a defining part of hip-hop production styles. By 2007, Nokia had a global market share of 50.9% and everyone had terminal ringtone brain. But it was the pioneering work of invisible composers like Castrin, Alverson, Antilla, Daw and their colleagues that shaped our psychological relationship with the modern earworm today, end quote. On my Nokia 8210, my first ever cell phone, I had Missy Elliott's Get Your Freak on as the best telephone ringing sound I've ever had, not the song.

Starting point is 00:16:59 You wouldn't hear her singing. It was just the MIDI, I guess, version of it, but it was perfect. Still wish I had it today. I tried to find it on the internet, but it seems it's lost to the sands of time. That's all for this week. No weekend bonus episodes for you with Chris traveling and me with a busy week. There was just no time. So, you know, enjoy a summer weekend. Northern Hemisphere listeners, we don't have too many of those left. Talk to you on Monday.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 08/19 – The Biggest Google Search Algo Change In Years?

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