Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 07/27 – Googlers May Not Return To The Office Until NEXT July

Episode Date: July 27, 2020

Google’s offices might remain closed due to Covid for another full year. Australia has sued Google on competition and consumer grounds. Looks like Garmin is being ransomed. A handheld device to replace guide dogs for the blind. And you know Software as a Service, but get ready for Hardware as a Service. Sponsors: Today In Digital Marketing podcast Metalab.co Links: Google to Keep Employees Home Until Summer 2021 Amid Coronavirus Pandemic (WSJ) ACCC takes second swing at Google for allegedly misleading customers (ITNews) Samsung Galaxy Unpacked trailer teases five new devices to be unveiled on August 5th (The Verge) Garmin outage caused by confirmed WastedLocker ransomware attack (Bleeping Computer) VCs and startups consider HaaS model for consumer devices (TechCrunch) Mobility device for the blind works like a handheld robotic guide dog (New Atlas) 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 Monday, July 27th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Googlers may not return to the office until next July. Australia has sued Google on competition and consumer grounds. Looks like Garmin is being ransomed, a handheld device to replace

guide dogs for the blind. And you know software as a service, but get ready for hardware as a service. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google will keep nearly all of its employees working from home until at least July 2021. This policy will reportedly affect almost all of Google's 200,000 full-time and contract employees, quoting the journal. Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai made the decision himself last week, after debate among Google leads, an internal group of top executives that he chairs, according to a person familiar with the matter. A small number of Google staffers were notified later in the week, the people familiar said.

Mr. Pachai was swayed in part by sympathy for employees with families to plan for uncertain school years that may involve at-home instruction depending on geography. The new date plants Google firmly in the cautious camp of companies debating the efficacy and wisdom of remote work as coronavirus cases surge and employers try to balance worker safety with efforts to reopen the economy. Some multinational firms are eager to bring employees back and return to normalcy. Google could announce the extended timeline internally as soon as Monday. It applies to company employees in most of its major offices, including the headquarters of Mountain View, California, and other offices in the U.S. UK, India, Brazil, and elsewhere. Until now, Google had told its employees to expect to return to the office beginning in January. Mr. Pichai himself has been personally fascinated by the pandemic, according to people who have spoken with him.

He began reading research papers on the virus in January before it was headline news and spearheaded the initial March decision to close company offices. Google has partially opened some smaller offices in countries relatively unaffected by the pandemic such as Australia, Greece, and Thailand, end quote. So yeah, I'm going to go a bit beyond our usual tech remit for a second by saying, I think folks are really underestimating the fact that this virus is going to be disrupting our lives for longer than a lot of people are currently expecting. Silicon Valley, as I've mentioned before, and as that quote about Pachai underlines, was very early to anticipate the threat of this virus. And they seem to be quicker to react than almost any other industry. Silicon Valley companies were the first to go to remote work, and you can almost track at this point where the virus is flaring up again, depending on which stores that Apple

closes preemptively. So if that date of July shocks you, then maybe take this opportunity of Google going first to see some of the writing that's maybe on the wall. If Google does indeed announce this expect other tech companies to follow suit, and then you could always just do the math yourself. Once again, case numbers have plateaued, but they've plateaued at a terrible place. Approximately 50,000 Americans are confirmed to come down with the virus every day. That is double the numbers from the height of the first lockdown around March, April. The virus is simply not in any way under control at the moment, and there seems to be no willingness or guidance to do anything to bring the numbers down to what would be a controllable level.

So employers and employees will not expect to feel safe coming back to work for at least what, even if it ended overnight, maybe three months, at least six months. And don't get me started on schools reopening in the fall. That might be a pipe dream. But I digress. Back to doing the math. That July date, let's say that the best case scenario happens and an effective vaccine is developed by, say, December? It would, of course, take a couple of months to manufacture

it in sufficient quantities, and then how many months would it take for it to be delivered to mass numbers of the population? Yeah, July-ish is maybe the best possible scenario for, at least here in the U.S., us to return to some semblance of normalcy. It's not that Google has any great insight. It's just that they're reading the writing on the wall. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but again, Silicon Valley has been right on this so far, so maybe using them as a guide for the near future isn't the worst bet you could make. Sticking with Google for a second, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has sued Google for allegedly expanding the use of users' personal data

without gaining explicit consent from users, quoting IT News. The case is the second attempt by the ACCCC to take Google to court in nine months after the watchdog claimed in October last year that the company misled users about the way it collects stores and uses location data. The ACCCC today launched fresh federal court proceedings against Google, alleging the web giant misled users to obtain consent to expand its collection and use of personal information to increase its ability to deliver targeted advertising. We are taking this action because we consider Google misled Australian consumers about what it planned to do with large amounts of their personal information, including internet activity on websites not connected to Google, ACCCC Chair Rod Sims said in a statement. It is alleged that Google failed to properly inform consumers and thus did not gain their informed consent about its 2016 move to start combining personal information from users'

Google accounts with other information gained from users' activity on non-Google sites. The activity data was collected using Google advertising technology that was formerly known as Double Click, the Consumer Watchdog claimed. This, the ACCC alleged, enabled Google to link consumers' non-Google online activity to their names and other identifying information held by the company, whereas this information was previously kept separate from users' Google accounts and was not linked to an individual. The combined dataset helped Google improve the commercial performance of its advertising business, the ACCCC said, end quote. late last week, Garmin began shutting down its website, its Garmin Connect service, even shutting down production lines in Asia, and shutting down services used by aircraft pilots, all because, at least the rumors were last week, Garmin had been hit with a ransomware attack

and would need to basically turn everything off and turn it back on again to attempt to regain control. Well, a Garmin employee has subsequently confirmed to reporters, that the company's servers were indeed hit by Wasted Locker, a ransomware variant developed by the Russia-based cybercriminal group Evil Corp. Quote, a Garmin employee told Bleeping Computer that they first learned of the attack when they arrived at their office on Thursday morning. Bleeping Computer was told that the Garmin IT Department had tried to remotely shut down all computers on the network as devices were being encrypted, including home computers connected

via VPN. After being unable to do so, employees were told to shut down any computer on the network that they had access to. In a photo of a Garmin computer with encrypted files, shared with Looping Computer, you can see that the Dot Garmin wasted extension was appended to the file's name and ransom notes were created for each file. As part of this company-wide shutdown, the employee told us that Garmin did a hard shutdown of all devices hosted in a data center as well to prevent them from possibly being encrypted, end quote. Leaping Computer has also been told that the attackers are demanding a $10 million ransom, which might sound like peanuts to a company like Garmin, something that a company like Garmin

might be tempted to pay up just to end the nightmare. But, Bleeping Computer also notes that the U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned Evil Corp in the last year. So if Garmin were to pay up, they might find themselves violating U.S. government sanctions. Scheduling note for things coming up in the near future, the big tech hearing before the House of Representatives on antitrust matters that was supposed to take place today has indeed been rescheduled for Wednesday, which, by the way, Wednesday was when Facebook was supposed to report earnings, and, you know, Mark Zuckerberg not being able to be on the earnings call might be problematic if he was still on the Zoom call with Congress and couldn't get off in time. So Facebook has rescheduled earnings for Thursday, which means

this Thursday after the close of trading, Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, and now Facebook will all be reporting earnings at the same time. Anyone want to calculate what percentage of the S&P 500 that represents all in one afternoon? And one thing that has not been postponed, at least not yet, is the Galaxy Unpacked event. That is still on for August 5th. And Samsung has added another little teaser for that event, releasing a dark image that hints, at the silhouettes of five new devices, quoting the verge. The silhouettes of all five are shown at the beginning and end of the trailer, which is linked in the piece in the show notes.

And judging by the shapes and the leaks we've seen so far, this is what we're expecting to see. The new Galaxy Note 20, regular and ultra versions, the foldable Galaxy Fold 2, the Galaxy Watch 3, the bean-shaped Galaxy Buds Plus, and the Galaxy Tab S7 and S7 Plus tablets. So not quite a universe of galaxies, but a healthy number all the same, end quote. We're all familiar with software as a service, right?

In a way, SaaS has taken over the world, not just for software and all sorts of enterprise and consumer settings, but even increasingly, in all consumer settings, as consumers have gotten used to, you know, paying for digital things. I mean, you can think of Netflix as software as a service in a way. Well, are you ready for hardware as a service? Let me give you an example. Nura is a company that makes high-end earphones. The Nurophone, for example, is what the company calls the world's smartest headphones. You can buy the Nurophones today for $399, or if you pay $99.99 up front and subscribe to pay $9.99 a month, you can also, own the nirophone. This is not rent to own. This is subscribed to use. As long as you keep paying,

you can get a new nurophone device every 24 months. You can get the over-the-air software updates that keep the device improving and, oh yeah, keep the device working because if you stop paying, the device shuts off. Remember when there was that whole brouhaha about Sonos' end-of-lifing support for their earliest speaker systems? Yeah. get ready to hear a lot more about hardware as a service, quoting TechCrunch. In a recent email exchange, Duncan Turner, general partner at the HACS Accelerator, which backed Nura described HASS, Hardware as a service as, quote,

a great way to keep in contact with your customers and upsell them on new features. Most importantly, for startups, recurring revenue is critical for scaling a business with venture capital and will help appeal to a broad set of investors. Haas also often has a low churn. as easier to put onto long-term contracts, end quote. The upside to consumers is clear. You don't pay for everything all up front, and you're freer to experiment with new devices

in ways you wouldn't have been otherwise. This is especially important in a world where brick-and-mortar experience is increasingly rare, even before retail ground to a halt courtesy of COVID-19. There's also a clear appeal for those who are inclined to frequently upgrade devices. Quote, if it's providing continuous value, then it should be worth paying for.

why combinator partner Eric Mijikovsky tells TechCrunch, if not, stop using it and move on. It also is more sustainable. Hardware these days requires a lot of software to work, and the development and maintenance of that software costs money. Companies that have a continuous source of revenue will be able to continue to improve their product offerings through software updates, end quote. In a 2018 study, analysts Parks Associates noted a potential hurdle, however, quote, while a consumer reluctance to pay subscription fees is well documented, Haas models may get more traction where more value can be offered at less financial risk to the consumer.

The challenge is to create a service bundle with clear value that consumers find attractive. Consumers will pay for services that they perceive as valuable and complete tasks that they cannot or prefer not to do themselves, end quote. As another VC is quoted saying in the piece, and I've seen myself over the last few months, startups don't have to be talked into Hoss into this new sort of business model providing consumers can be talked into buying in as well

if there is a new hotness right now in startup pitches at the moment it is basically subscription but for X that's sort of the new Uber but for X and it's easy to see why this is so attractive to startups we've spoken endlessly before about how reliable and easily anticipatable revenue is provided by subscriptions, but also, if you have a subscription business, consider that you could achieve scale, not at the end of some years-long slog through the dark valley of losing

money, imagine you could achieve scale and essentially bootstrap your way to it off your own cash flows from basically day one. Finally today, this is not a product that is on the market yet. indeed, it's still a buggy prototype, but let me introduce you to a handheld gadget that might someday soon be a robotic device, a handheld device that could replace guide dogs for the visually impaired. Quote, the device is called Thiea and was conceived by industrial design student Anthony Camus, who drew inspiration from virtual reality gaming consoles and autonomous vehicles. The technology is currently in prototype form with a few kinks to be ironed out, but the basic premise is that Thiea acts as a robotic guide dog to help visually impaired users navigate to their

destination. Key to this is what's known as a control moment gyroscope, which often features as part of spacecraft attitude control systems, including that used on the International Space Station. This enables Thiea to provide force feedback depending on where it's headed and move the user's hand as a way of leading them to a desired direction, much like a guide dog's brace. The A.O. would find its way around through a LiDAR and camera system that enables it to build a three-dimensional image of the environment, much like a self-driving car. Users can enter their destination through voice commands, and onboard processors will determine the best path to take while even factoring in real-time data on pedestrian and car traffic as well as the weather. There remains some work to do before the device offers this kind of functionality with the current prototype prone to episodes of excessive vibrations and busted motors. But Camus hopes that with further development, he can overcome these teething problems and even enable Thiea to tackle more complex settings like elevators, stairs, and pedestrian crossings, end quote.

If you click through on the link to this piece in the show notes, there's a YouTube video that shows you the prototype in action. So yeah, if you check the pinned tweet on my Twitter account, you can take a gander at our 10-week-old Beagle puppy Archie, Archibald, if you're being formal, named E. after Carrie Grant. Google or Wikipedia that, if that doesn't make sense to you. Actually, his full name, per the kids, is Archibald Ice Cream Cone, Taylor Swift, McCullough. Happy to say that Archie is seemingly very happy and comfortable with us. He is sleeping under my feet as I speak to you now. So a little puppy energy back in our lives. Not a bad thing at all. Talk to you tomorrow.