Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 10/19 - Google Wants China, But Will China Want Google?

Episode Date: October 19, 2018

Facebook makes a hire that makes British Twitter laugh, here’s how much Google’s going to charge for Android, Google wants China but does China want Google and the Weekend Longreads suggestions. Links: Facebook Hires Nick Clegg, Former UK Deputy Prime Minister, as Head of Global Affairs and Communications, to Succeed Elliot Schrage (Financial Times) Twitter Suspends Pro-Saudi Bots Spreading Propaganda About the Murder of Jamal Khashoggi (Gizmodo) Twitter Pulls Down Bot Network That Pushed Pro-Saudi Talking Points about Disappeared Journalist (NBC News) Powerful Executives Have Stepped Away From the Saudis. Not SoftBank's. (New York Times) Google App Suite Costs as Much as $40 Per Phone Under New EU Android Deal (The Verge) Google Wants China. Will Chinese Users Want Google? (Wired) The Betterment Weekend Longreads Suggestions: Craig Newmark, Newspaper Villain, Is Working to Save Journalism (New York Times) How the West Was Digitized: The Making of Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption 2 (Vulture/New York Magazine) Drone Journalism's Battle for Airspace (Columbia Journalism Review) Mother Earth Mother Board (Wired) The Prophets of Cryptocurrency Survey the Boom and Bust (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 Right Home for Friday, October 19th, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Facebook makes a hire that makes British Twitter laugh. Here's how much Google's going to charge for Android. Google wants China, but does China want Google? And, of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. News broke this morning that Facebook has hired the right honorable Sir Nick Clegg, the former UK Deputy Prime Minister to be the new head of Facebook's global affairs and communications team. The Financial Times says Sir Nick will move to California to succeed Elliot Shrug, who announced

last June that he would leave Facebook after 10 years with the company. This news immediately did two things. First, it literally blew up UK Twitter, and it caused U.S. Twitter to go, who dat? So in deference to our more politically savvy friends in the UK, I'd like to read some selected tweets by people who have lived with Sir Nick's leadership. Benjamin Rahm from an undisclosed U.S. location tweeted, under Nick Clegg's leadership, the Lib Dems lost 85% of their MPs and the brand was destroyed. Here's hoping he can replicate this success at Facebook. Though Michael Spicer put it in a more British way, thanks to him, his party. is literally now five people and a mug of pens.

But sure, okay. Matt Gemmel and Edinburgh tweeted, This is actually a perfect match. Facebook needed someone with no credibility whatsoever who's used to being constantly overruled by a long-faced scruple-free opportunist who gets sweaty when questioned and likes the color blue. Clegg's qualifications are impeccable, end quote.

But the Financial Times, put it more soberly, quote, the decision by Facebook to hire Sir Nick, a former European Commission trade negotiator and member of the European Parliament suggests the company is trying to boost its connections in Brussels, where Facebook is facing escalating battles over data privacy, online disinformation, and hate speech, end quote. Following up on the ongoing story about the alleged murder of journalist Kamal Khuzro Gudji, Matt Novak, writing for Gizmodo, reports that Twitter has suspended an unspecified amount of Twitter bots based in Saudi Arabia.

The bots were responding to people who tweeted about the journalist and often retweeted pro-Saudi government messages. The bots were identified by IT specialist John Russell who handed a spreadsheet of suspected bot accounts to NBC News, which in turn gave the list to Twitter on Thursday. An unnamed Twitter official told NBC that efforts were already underway to suspend similar accounts and, quoting NBC, referred to it as a routine spam operation takedown, end quote.

Now, you know how obsessed I am with Masa San, the founder of Japanese conglomerate softbank, and the leader of that $100 billion vision fund. You may have heard that a lot of tech and media companies have been pulling out of planned conferences and events in Saudi Arabia in the last week or so. The New York Times reports that Saan finds himself in a bit of a bind over the upcoming future investment initiative,

The FII is a conference scheduled for next week in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. And as I say, business leaders have been pulling out in droves, responding to allegations about Kuzrogaji's disappearance and alleged torture and murder inside a Saudi consulate in Turkey. But Masasun has not publicly commented on whether he will cancel his planned attendance at the Saudi conference. Quoting from the Times, Mr. Sons has pointed out to business associates that the SoftBank Vision Fund has a response. to the Saudi citizens who had entrusted his company with $45 billion from their kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, according to soft bank officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. At the same time, these officials said he has conveyed to executives at companies in the Vision Fund's portfolio that they should not

feel obligated to follow his lead and must do what feels right to them, end quote. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund, as I have mentioned even recently, has been the single largest individual source of funding for the Vision Fund. In a major scoop, the Verge is reporting today on confidential details of what exactly Google plans to charge device makers that want to use its apps, including the Google Play Store, on Android devices in the EU. The fees will go into effect for devices activated on or after February 1, 2019. So before we get into the dollars and cents, there's a weird aspect to this deal. The fees are pegged to the pixel density of the screen on the device.

If a device has a 500 pixel per inch display or higher, the Google App Suite will cost $40 per device. And devices with lower pixel densities will cost less, but more on that in a minute. So why use pixel density as a metric for app costs? The apps do the same thing on all devices, regardless of how many pixels are crammed in. into the screen, but it turns out that pixel density is strongly correlated to the sales price of a device. The premium devices tend to have the highest density displays. The Samsung Galaxy S9, for instance, has a pixel density of 570 pixels per inch. So rather than Google directly saying they want the most money from the most expensive devices like the S9, they can point to this

pixel density chart that happens to achieve the same goal. Incidentally, the $40 fee, which is the big headline today, will not be the norm. since there aren't a ton of devices with that level of ultra-high density display, this fee will hit flagship devices hard, but there are lots of devices with lower density displays out there. Devices in the

400 to 500 pPI range will be subject to a $20 fee, and devices under 400 pPI are $10. In some countries, some low-end phones can access the same apps for as little as $2.50 per device. And here's the second entirely predictable part of this deal.

Google is offering separate incentives for device makers to install the now-optional Google Chrome and search apps. In the past, device makers have gotten a cut of search revenue on devices shipping with those apps. But now, if they leave them off the device, they are, of course, cut out of receiving that revenue share. So Google is setting up an incentive structure along the lines that the EU demanded. It has unbundled Chrome and search from the core Google apps and Android. Google will now charge a fee for the core apps, not something the EU required, but a logical thing for the company to do, given that the previous bundling generated search revenue for Google,

and this fee now replaces that revenue. And now Google presents device makers with a choice. Either pay the fee, then install Google's Chrome and search in the hopes of making back that fee in revenue share from Chrome and search usage, or get some other browser and search provider to offer a better deal. Of course, device makers could still. still just leave all the Google apps off their devices, but that seems an unlikely route,

given that the Google Play Store is vital to Android usage in general. So it's worth wondering how many players are actually positioned to provide a good Android browser, a good enough search engine, and some money to get device makers to use them. Given those constraints, I think it probably boils down to just Microsoft, and it's unclear whether they'll want to make a go at this. On Twitter, though, Nilai Patel summed it up in a two-part tweet. The way Google is structuring Android in Europe is designed to preserve the status quo.

You have to pay for the apps, but we'll pay you back to install Chrome. But there's a part of me that says it's good to make these types of deals explicit and optional. Also, it sounds silly, but this allows, say, Microsoft to just pay the money for Play Store on Android and make a Surface phone with Edge and Bing as the defaults, which was not possible before. Today, Tom Simonite reports for Wired on the challenges that Google will face if it really is intending to reenter the Chinese search market. Google CEO Sundar Pichai talked publicly for the first time at the Wired 25 summit this week

about testing a censored version of Google search for China. Pichai's comments were positive, and he claimed the existing search providers in the Chinese market are not serving customers well. Pachai said, quote, today people either get fake cancer treatments or they actually get useful information, end quote. That was a dig, by the way, at Baidu, the biggest player in the Chinese search space, which was involved in a scandal in 2016 when a Chinese student died after buying ineffective cancer treatments online based on a Baidu search. But today's Wired Piece asks the big question right in its headline. Google wants China.

Will Chinese users want Google? And the answer to that is genuinely unclear. A few data points in the story highlight the challenge. Google did operate a censored search engine for the Chinese market from 2006 to 2010. After Google shut that down and left the market, Chinese internet usage has grown by almost 70%. Quoting Wired, one challenge for Google is that it knows relatively little about those consumers, end quote.

And that's a real competitive disadvantage. since Chinese search rivals like Baidu and Sogo already have footholds in the market that will be hard to disrupt. One strategy Chinese companies have used is to partner with browser makers, much like how Google integrates its search product into its Chrome browser. What would convince a Chinese browser maker

to ditch a Chinese native search product in favor of Google? The only logical answers are a better search product and a ton of money. Google faces an uphill climb in having to both of those, given that China is a competitive market where search revenue and profit growth have both declined in recent years, and Google has been absent in that market for almost a decade now. Wired reminded me, at least, that Google isn't the only American search company working on search in China either. Microsoft has been running a censored version of Bing in China since 2019. I was not aware of that. It apparently isn't popular, though.

in fact it's actually so unpopular that since 2015 Microsoft has made bydo the default Chinese search engine for the Microsoft Edge browser built into Windows. And that's genuinely rough since in other global markets, Bing is actually pretty good. Microsoft's situation might be a cautionary tale for Google. Don't expect to walk into the Chinese search market and get the same results you've had at home. Now it's time for the weekend long reads brought to you as always by Betterment. Some settle for average investing, but others like TechMeme right home listeners demand better. Check out Betterment to see what the new modern way to invest is all about. First up this week, the New York Times profiles Craig Newmark, of course the founder of Craigslist,

who is giving millions of dollars away to fund journalism. But that strikes some people as kind of ironic because Craigslist is historically blamed for destroying the lucrative classifieds advertising that used to fund so many. papers. When newspapers lost that sweet, sweet classifieds revenue, that had a real impact on the business of journalism all around. For his part, Newmark says, if he hadn't disrupted the classified, somebody else would have. Quoting the times here, Mr. Newmark's media giving spree began in June with a $20 million gift to the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, which put his name on the door. This met with some criticism. Felix Salmon, a correspondent for

Axios tweeted, quote, it's utterly bizarre to name a journalism school after the man who almost single-handedly destroyed local newspapers, end quote. Read the profile for a look at what happens when a tech billionaire tries to help an industry that deeply resents him. From New York magazine by way of Vulture, we have a nice, long profile of Dan Houser, the writer behind, a pile of rock star games, including the new Red Dead Redemption 2, which comes out this week. The story is about the vast scope of making modern AAA video games. They're bigger than movies in many ways and take many years to produce. What's perhaps most surprising is how many actors they now employ. Rockstar hired 1,200 union actors to make their latest game. So if you've ever wondered what it takes to make these megagames,

or if you have any interest in the mind behind Grand Theft Auto 5, among many others, this is the piece for you. Next up, the Columbia Journalism Review brings us a fast, story about the role of drone photography in journalism, which is absolutely a thing, an up-and-coming thing, in fact, quoting from the story, journalism schools across the country now teach drone reporting, placing the FAA's guidelines at the core of their curriculum. In the past two years, the National Press Photographers Association and Poitner have prepared several hundred journalists for certification.

McClauchy has 43 licensed drone pilots on staff and CNN, which boasts nearly 30 drone pilots, launched a new unit CNN Air, which stands for aerial imagery and reporting based around drone coverage, end quote. Check out the article for a detailed look at how journalists use drones responsibly at the same time as they're often reporting about drones being used irresponsibly.

For the next long read, let's go all the way back to December 1st, 1996. This is Chris Higgins' favorite essay on the topic of transcontinental cable laying and it's written by famous sci-fi novelist Neil Stevenson. The story, which is called Mother Earth Motherboard, is a 40,000-word exploration of the world by way of the data cables that encircle it.

So this is possibly the longest read we've ever featured. Here's a snippet explaining why redundant cables are laid in the so-called flag system. Quote, this raises questions. The questions turn out to have interesting answers. I'll summarize them first. then go into detail. Question, why bother running two widely separated routes over the melee peninsula? Answer, because Thailand, like everywhere else in the world, is full of idiots with backhose.

Question, isn't that a pain in the ass? Answer, you have no idea. Question, why not just go south around Singapore and keep the cable in the water, then? Answer, because Singapore is controlled by the enemy. Question, who's the enemy? Answer, flags, enemies are legion, end quote. You can read the story on Wired in an unbelievably long single web page or in Stevenson's collection of essays titled Some Remarks. And finally today, the New Yorker brings us a deep dive into cryptocurrency once again.

But this is actually one of the most comprehensive from a historical perspective going into some of the other founders of the cryptocurrency movement beyond Satoshi Nakamoto. this is the most comprehensive look at the overall crypto community that I have yet seen. It gets way into the weeds, but in the best possible way. Here's a fun part from the article describing crypto 100 millionaire Vitalik Boutarin, who in case you didn't know, was the co-founder of Ethereum. Quote, Buteran was dressed that day as on the day before and the day after in gray turtleneck, black track pants, and laceless Adidas sneakers over turquoise socks. He often wears t-shirts,

with unicorns and rainbows. He likes to cite Lambos, as in Lamborghini, the Cryptobro Trophy Riot of Choice, as shorthand for the excessive trappings of wealth, which do not interest him. He's about as indifferently rich as a man can be. He owns little and travels light. Recently, I reduced my bag size from 60 liters to 40, he said.

40 is very tolerable. You can go on 15 kilometer walks with it, end quote. The Adidas, he said, were his only pair of shoes. That's all for the long reads brought to you by Betterment. Investment involves risk, but tech meme ride home listeners can get up to one year of their investment money managed for free. Just go to Betterment.com slash ride. That's betterment.com slash R-I-D-E. Betterment, outsmart average.

That's all for this week. I've been your host, Brian McCullough. And all week long, Chris Higgins has been doing the lion's share of the writing. So my sincere thanks to him. Looking forward to a long, lovely weekend of autumn and New York weather, as I say, October, guys, this is the month around these parts. Talk to you on Monday.