Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 11/01 - Google Acquires Fitbit

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 Techmeme ride home for Friday, November 1st, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Google acquires Fitbit. Apple TV Plus officially launches. Might the U.S. government be about to bring the hammer down on TikTok? And of course, the weekend Long Reads suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Google has acquired Fitbit for $2.1 billion or $7,000. $7.35 per share in cash. Actually, of course, it's Alphabet who is doing the acquiring, but of course you understand that. I don't remember if I talked about this or not, but in January,

Starting point is 00:01:21 Google paid $40 million for fossil smartwatch tech and IP. So it certainly looks like Google has decided it wants in on the wearables action. Sources are saying that Facebook held talks to acquire Fitbit as well, but only wanted to pay about half of what Google ended up paying. Quoting CNBC, following the announcement, Google's hardware chief, Rick Osterlo, released a blog post explaining how the acquisition can help Google advance its ambitions for WearOS, its software for smartwatches. By working closely with Fitbit's team of experts and bringing together the best AI software and hardware, we can help spur innovation in wearables and build products to benefit even

Starting point is 00:02:05 more people around the world, Osterlo said. Google also remains committed to WearOS and our ecosystem partners, and we plan to work closely with Fitbit to combine the best of our respective smartwatch and fitness tracker platforms, end quote. Google will not use health and wellness data from Fitbit for its ads, according to the announcement, end quote. For now, a lot of the initial chatter was indeed about that last bit, about Google promising not to use fitness data to target ads against you. Neil Seibert said, the fact that Google felt the need to make that statement, prominent in the announcement, says, all you need to know, quote, Fitbit and Google, no Fitbit users are not going to be thrilled to discover they are wearing a Google product on

Starting point is 00:02:49 their bodies, end quote. And Jeffrey Fowler said, quote, I also remember when Google acquired Nest and Tony Fidel said, home data would, quote, not go into the greater Google or any of its other business units, end quote. But also people were. raising their eyebrows about Google's willingness to do a major acquisition, actually another major acquisition, in the teeth of all of the recent antitrust winds blowing from Washington and other places. There is apparently a $250 million reverse termination fee. So if Google can't make the antitrust approval happen with the deal, it has to pay Fitbit 12% of the overall deal value, which is pretty steep.

Starting point is 00:03:34 Matt Howie also snarked, quote, Google can have 20 years of your search history, a microphone and video camera in your house, 24-7 GPS location from your Android phone, know when you're home and when you sleep, thanks to Nest, and now they'll know when and how you move around. Next year, I bet Google buys Casper and adds Bluetooth sensors in every mattress

Starting point is 00:03:58 so they can know when everyone, well, you know, let's call it, gets busy making babies. BTdubs, Google has also started rolling out incognito mode for Google Maps on Android. When incognito mode is turned on, your activity in Google Maps will not be saved to your Google account. This is Google's post on the matter, quote. When incognito mode is on, maps will not save your browse or search history or send you notifications, update your location history or shared location, if any.

Starting point is 00:04:36 use your personal data to personalize maps, and turning on incognito mode in Maps does not affect how your activity is used or saved by internet providers, other apps, voice search, and other Google services. How to turn on incognito mode? On your Android phone or tablet, open the Google Maps app, tap on your profile picture, tap on turn on incognito mode, end quote. As in gadget notes, echoing the above, it's not something you'll want to use. use all the time as some features will be disabled, and it's important to note that it doesn't turn off all tracking. Similar to incognito on Chrome, it's more useful as a depersonalized look at recommendations than as a full-fledged privacy protector and a way to make sure that

Starting point is 00:05:22 whatever you're searching for in this instance doesn't affect your recommendations later. Don't worry, we're not judging, end quote. Well, I guess today marks the official kickoff of the streaming wars proper. Apple TV Plus is live right now in more than 100 countries. Again, $4.99 a month gets you nine original titles. You can get one year free by purchasing any new Apple device. Well, not any, but most of them. And also, little Easter egg from Apple. The first two episodes of every launch series is available right now inside the Apple TV app without needing to subscribe or even sign up for a free trial. Also, if you sign up today, Apple will spot you 12 months for the price of 10 or $49.99 for the first year.

Starting point is 00:06:17 You can share a single subscription among six people using family sharing, and episodes can be streamed or downloaded to view whenever you want, whether you're online or not. Quoting 9 to 5 Mac. To watch Apple TV Plus open the TV app on your device. The TV app has been available on iPhone and iPad since iOS 12.3 and came to the Mac in MacOS Catalina. The TV app is available on third generation, fourth generation, and fifth generation Apple TV models. Apple has also brought the TV app to smart TVs and streaming sticks. Check out the full list in the linked article in the show notes. Apple TV Plus is launching with eight TV shows and one movie today.

Starting point is 00:07:01 Apple has released all 10 episodes for period drama Dickinson, but the other leading dramas, the morning show for all mankind and C, have dropped the first three episodes with the rest of the season releasing on a weekly basis. This means new episodes come out every Friday, end quote. Now, as for those eight shows and one movie, I didn't talk about this earlier this week, but let's just say that the early reviews of this content have not been kind. Variety said of the morning show, perhaps the highest profile show on the slate, quote, Rees Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston can't salvage this politically muddled, underthought, and underwhelming streaming misfire, end quote. The Hollywood reporter said, quote, after a brutally dull pilot and a meandering second episode, there are distinct hints in the third hour of a more satisfying and confident the morning show, one that actually gets value out of leading ladies Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, end quote. As for C, that, I don't know, is it fantasy or sci-fi show with Jason Momoa? Here's Variety again.

Starting point is 00:08:10 Spirling away from narrative controls as its first three episodes Unreal, this series about a post-apocalyptic future in which nearly everyone is blind wastes the time of Jason Momoa and Alphrey Woodard, among others, on a story that starts from a position of fun, giddy strangeness, and drags itself forward at a lugubrious pace, end quote. Probably the first time we've used the word lugubrious on this show. And then that space epic for all mankind, here's the Hollywood Reporter. The Apple TV Plus series is a solid effort at epic, alternate history storytelling, but feels a bit derivative and moves too slowly, end quote. Sources are saying that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States

Starting point is 00:08:59 has launched a review of BiteDances acquisition of Musically. Let me unpack that for you. BiteDance is the Chinese company that owns TikTok. Musically is what became TikTok after the acquisition. Quoting Reuters, while the $1 billion acquisition was completed two years ago, U.S. lawmakers have been calling in recent weeks for a national security probe into TikTok, concerned the Chinese company may be censoring politically sensitive content and raising questions about how it stores personal data. TikTok has been growing more popular among U.S.

Starting point is 00:09:33 teenagers at a time of growing tensions between the United States and China over trade and technology transfers. About 60% of TikTok's 26.5 million monthly active users in the United States are between the ages of 16 and 24, the company said earlier this year. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFAS, which reviews deals by foreign acquirers for potential national security risks has started to review the musically deal, the sources said. TikTok did not seek clearance from CFAS when it acquired musically, they added, which gives the U.S. Security Panel scope to investigate it now, end quote. A couple of quick takes from Twitter to give you a random sampling of both sides of this.

Starting point is 00:10:18 Here's Ben Collins. This seems like a panic to me. A lot of domestic companies are doing a lot worse right in front of our eyes. That said, I would love to know if. If TikTok is, in fact, silencing pro-democracy Hong Kong protesters, this is one way to find out, end quote. And friend of the show, Matt Stoller, quote, the most important regulation of social media isn't coming from the FTC, privacy law, or the antitrust division. It's coming from the national security world, which understands the threat of Chinese censorship organized through their control of social media, end quote. Time for the weekend long read's suggestions.

Starting point is 00:10:58 I'm not entirely sure why this didn't get bigger play like anywhere this week, even in the tech press, but the internet, as we know it, kind of was born 50 years ago this past week on October 29th. Not the internet internet, not the commercial internet, not the web, but the ARPANET. The first time computers were networked together in a meaningful way across space and time. It eventually led to the internet as we know it. But again, why this didn't get as much play as, say, the 50th anniversary of the moon landing? I don't know. But my first suggested long read is fast companies deep dive about what happened 50 years ago in room 3420 of UCLA's Bolter Hall.

Starting point is 00:11:48 Former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos continues to be among the most thoughtful observers of tech, at least in its current guys out there. So I highly recommend his sit-down discussion with Matthew Ingram at Columbia Journalism Review. Quote, we talk a lot about the free speech rights of speakers, but we don't think enough about the right of individuals to be exposed to information they have explicitly sought out. This is where I differ from some of my friends in the media who seem to be a bit too comfortable with the idea of Facebook policing the private discussions of adults who have explicitly opted into those discussions, end quote. This is a timely talk for all of the stuff that has been happening this week. Next, Alex Danko has a provocative piece titled, Everything is Amazing, but Nothing is Ours. He argues that the web was built of files and file systems that have proven to be more durable, if not more robust, than anything that we're doing today.

Starting point is 00:12:49 But now, everything on the web is made of dependencies. quote, that last line really hit a chord with me. That's exactly it. Worlds of scarcity are made out of things. Worlds of abundance are made out of dependencies. That's the software playbook. Find a system made of costly redundant objects and rearrange it into a fast, frictionless system made of logical dependencies. The delta in performance is irresistible and dependencies are a compelling building block. They seem like just a piece of logic with no cost and no friction, but they absolutely have a cost. The cost is complexity, outsourced agency, and brittleness. The cost of ownership is up front and visible. The cost of access is backdated and hidden, end quote. And there's been a lot of snark over the recent weeks, snark and debate on VC Twitter and other places, ever since the WeWork debacle. And it's been along the lines of, gee, I guess a bunch of people who really should have known better, just discovered gross margins are a thing. David Sacks, member of the PayPal Mafia in Good Standing, founder of Yammer, has this piece up summarizing the debate. Quote,

Starting point is 00:14:04 When software started eating the world, everything changed. Software was just one component of the service being offered. Software might be the disruptive element, but it wasn't the source of unit economics. These new, quote, tech-enabled businesses had major cogs, e.g. lea. at WeWork, drivers at Uber. The new tech-enabled startups had cost structures more similar to the companies they were disrupting, e.g. commercial landlords, the taxi cab industry, but they still thought like software companies. Good for innovation, bad for operational efficiency. Although growth solves many problems at startups, unit economics is not one of them. When you're losing money on every transaction, you can't make it up in volume. In fact, the more revenue that a business

Starting point is 00:14:50 with a negative unit economics generates, the more money it loses, end quote. Finally, let ProPublica tell you about the ransomware superhero of normal Illinois. Michael Gillespie is an obscure programmer at a nerds on-call repair store, and over recent years, he has helped hundreds of thousands of ransomware victims recover their files for free. Quote, Gillespie's tools are available on bleepingcom.com. and they can be accessed through a site he created and operates called ID ransomware. There, victims submit about 2,000 ransomware-stricken files every day to find out which strain has hit them and to obtain an antidote if one exists. As hackers and their corporate enablers, including cyber insurance providers and data recovery firms whose business models are based on paying ransoms, profit directly or indirectly from cybercrime,

Starting point is 00:15:44 one of ransomware's greatest foes lives paycheck to paycheck. Under his internet alias, Demon Slay 335, Gillespie tackles Ransomware either in his downtime, at nerds on call, or at night, in the two-story bungalow he shares with his wife, Morgan, and their dog, rabbit, and eight cats. Surrounded by pets, he lies on his living room couch, decoding ransomware on his laptop, and corresponding with victims desperate for his help. Although the FBI honored him in 2017 with an award for his website, it doesn't systematically recommend ID ransom. meaning that some victims may never learn of a resource that could help them avoid paying a ransom. Many of his friends, relatives, and colleagues don't know the extent of his war on ransomware. They do not have a clue because of Michael's modesty, said his wife's grandmother, Rita Blanche. Honestly, I don't think anyone in the family knows what he does for free.

Starting point is 00:16:37 I barely know, end quote. When he got the FBI award, she added, I sent out a family text and they're like, what, what are Michael? end quote. That is all for this week. There is one weekend bonus episode this weekend coming tomorrow an interview with the legendary founder of AOL, Steve Case, talking about the rise of the rest fund. But more importantly, what he's been seeing as he's been barnstorming around the country looking for startups outside of Silicon Valley and traditional tech hubs. Talk to you on Monday.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 11/01 - Google Acquires Fitbit

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