Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 12/17 - Alexa Is A Hit, But Is It A Business?

Episode Date: December 17, 2019

More reported casualties in the Google Civil War, more strife between Amazon and FedEx, can Amazon turn Alexa into a healthy ecosystem, developers: get busy on Edge extensions, and the top apps of the decade have one big thing in common. Sponsors: TinyCapital.com GiveWell.org/ridehome Links: Google accused of firing another worker in union-busting drive (Engadget) Amazon Blocks Sellers From Using FedEx Ground for Prime Shipments (WSJ) Amazon Learns a New Skill: Making Money From Alexa (The Information) Amazon Brings in $1.4 Million in 2019 of Alexa Skill Revenue So Far — Well Short of the $5.5 Million Target According to The Information (Voicebot.ai) Microsoft Opens Edge Addons Store for Submissions (Winbuzzer) A Look Back At the Top Apps & Games of the Decade (App Annie) Controversial sale of .org domain manager faces review at ICANN (Ars Technica) Chess champion Magnus Carlsen moves to top of world fantasy football rankings (The Guardian) 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 TechMeme right home for Tuesday, December 17th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. More reported casualties in the Google Civil War, more strife between Amazon and FedEx. Can Amazon turn Alexa into a healthy ecosystem or not?

Developers get busy on edge extensions and the top apps of the decade have one big thing in common. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Well, now a fifth Google employee says she has been fired from Google. for what she claims was labor organizing related activities. Until recently, Catherine Spears worked on the Chrome security team, and she says she no longer does so because she added a pop-up to an internal browser informing her fellow employees of their labor rights, quoting and gadget. In a post on Medium, Spears says that Google was recently forced to publish a list by the NLRB internally,

outlining the rights its employees have. And in order to ensure that all affected employees knew about it, Spears added a pop-up notification to the company's internal Chrome browser. Apparently, this is a common practice inside the company allowing people to share hobbies or interests with their coworkers. In response to a request for comment, a Google spokesperson said that it had, quote, dismissed an employee who abused privileged access to modify an internal security tool. This was a serious violation, end quote. The company added that Spears apparently circumvented safeguards, including getting authorization from a superior and asking direct colleagues for code review. In addition, Google says that it would have taken similar action for any pop-up added to the browser

even in jest. A similarly worded email from Royal Hanson, Google Vice President, was sent to colleagues covering the company's actions. Quote, when I heard that Google had hired a union busting firm and started illegally retaliating against my coworkers, writes Spears on Medium, I decided to make sure that my coworkers knew about the list, end quote. Spears is referring to Google's recent hiring of IRA consultants, a company described by the New York Times as an, quote, anti-union consulting firm, end quote. When Google employees visited IRA's website or the internal guidelines, a pop-up would read, quote, Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities, end quote.

Like the previous employees who were fired by Google, the so-called Thanksgiving 4, she is filing unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB. However, in his email to employees, Google VP Hansen wrote, quote, I want to be very clear. The issue was not that the messaging had to do with the NLRB notice or workers' rights. The decision would have been the same had the pop-up message been on any other subject, end quote. Hot on the heels of yesterday's story about Amazon shipping half of its own stuff. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Amazon is blocking marketplace sellers from using FedEx ground for prime shipments, citing a decline in delivery performance, quoting from the journal. The ban on using FedEx's ground and home services starts this week and will last, quote, until the delivery performance of those ship methods improves, end quote, according to an email Amazon sent Sunday to merchant.

that was reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. Amazon has stopped using FedEx for its own deliveries in the U.S., but third-party merchants still had been able to use FedEx. Such sellers now account for more than half of the merchandise sold on Amazon's website, including many items listed as eligible for Prime. FedEx said the decision impacts a small number of shippers, but, quote, limits the options for those small businesses on some of the highest shipping days in history, end quote.

The carrier said, it still expects to handle a number of. a record number of packages this holiday season. Quote, the overall impact to our business is minuscule, a FedEx spokeswoman said. An Amazon spokesman said the policy change is to ensure customers receive their packages on time and the e-commerce company is managing delivery cutoffs so that orders arrive by Christmas. He said the ban is temporary and will be lifted once FedEx service levels improve, end quote. And staying on Amazon for a second, for all the ways that Alexa has been a home, run hit, could it be that Amazon is struggling to turn Alexa and the ecosystem into an actual

home run business? The information is reporting that Amazon only saw revenue of 1.4 million with an M dollars from Alexa in skill purchases in the first 10 months of 2019, which would be well short of its own target of $5.5 million. And this news, of course, comes on the heels of the much-reported fact that apparently shopping for things via voice hasn't exactly taken off anywhere. It should also be noted that Amazon takes the usual 70-30 revenue share that digital platforms and stores often take so you can extrapolate the overall ecosystem for money-making Alexa skills from that, quoting Voicebot AI. This arrangement suggests that Amazon expected total Alexa skill ISP revenue to exceed $18 million in the first 10 months of 2019, but the actual revenue

was closer to $4.7 million. Amazon significantly increased its marketing of ISP to Alexa skill developers in 2019. It is not clear if the shortfall was the result of too few developers participating in the program, lack of consumer interest in the offers, or some combination of both. However, Amazon also began curtailing its developer rewards program earlier this year, which currently provides a pool of funds for developers with popular Alexa skills that pays out Monthly. Some developers were receiving over $10,000 per month from this program, and many have seen payouts drop by more than 50% since the beginning of 2019, end quote. And quoting from the original information piece. Within Amazon, the company is batting around various ideas to

increase revenues from its devices, including some that take advantage of its expanding line of Echo Show products, which have screens. Amazon could nudge users towards skills they may find more helpful and premium content, the two people familiar with the matter said. While more specific parts of its plan couldn't be learned, the company could attempt to take a cut from subscription video services that Echo Show users sign up for through the devices. Another idea the company has discussed is partnering with the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times to share in the revenue from subscriptions purchased using Alexa. One of those people said, a person close to the journal said Amazon has not approached it with such a proposal. Amazon recently held talks with Spotify about sharing in the advertising revenue from Spotify's free advertising-supported music service. when it is streamed through Alexa devices to people familiar with the matter said.

One of those people said part of Amazon's pitch to Spotify was that it could take over the selling of ad inventory on the service and better target ads to users. The talks didn't move forward according to the other person, end quote. Microsoft is officially opening up the Microsoft Edge Adons store for submissions from developers ahead of Chromium Edge's launch in January. devs can submit through the Partner Center Developer Dashboard, and don't worry, any existing Chromium extensions can be migrated over automatically, quoting WinBuzzar. Developers can provide permission for Microsoft to automatically migrate their Edge HTML extensions to the Chromium base. Those developers will see their Microsoft Edge add-ons in the store without needing to do anything, end quote. And for more specific details on the upcoming launch,

Microsoft's own support docs say that the chromium-based edge will be automatically rolled out to PCs running the Windows 10 April 2018 update or newer starting on January 15th. The documentation also suggests that users will not have the option to keep the old edge, quoting Windows latest. To help our customers become more secure and up-to-date, Microsoft will distribute Microsoft Edge, chromium-based through automatic updates for Windows 10, RS4, and newer the company said. While the consumers will be forced to try the new Edge experience, Microsoft says it will launch a blocker toolkit for organizations so administrators can control the installation of the new browser on configurations with automatic Windows update enabled, end quote. Another end of the decade wrap up for you.

Quick, what do the top four most downloaded apps of the decade have in common? If you're a listener to the show, I assume you can guess. Yes, they are all owned. by Facebook, the top four most downloaded apps worldwide from 2010 through the end of this year were Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and then Instagram. Little surprised, Instagram wasn't above WhatsApp, but then I always forget how essential WhatsApp is everywhere else in the world. Number five on the list, Snapchat, followed by Skype. TikTok is coming in strong at number seven. Then UC browser from Alibaba, then YouTube, and finally Twitter rounds up the top 10.

The most downloaded games of the decade, I'm not going to read them all, but the top five were Subway Surfers, Candy Crush Saga, Temple Run 2, My Talking Top, and Clash of Clans. Wait, what is Subway Surfers? Apparently, it's a game that is super popular in India. Top five overall apps by Consumer Spend were Netflix, Tinder, Pandora, Tencent video, and Line. Spotify and YouTube are only numbers. 7 and 8 on the overall consumer spend list. ICANN says it is going to review the public internet registries controversial sale of the dot-org domain name system to ethos capital. Apparently they have 30 days to officially OK or nix the sale, quoting from Ars Technica.

ICANN, the International Corporation for assigned names and numbers, said last week that it sent requests for information to PIR in order to determine what. whether the transfer should be allowed. Quote, ICAN will thoroughly evaluate the responses and then ICAN has 30 additional days to provide or withhold its consent to the request, the organization said. ICANN, which is also a nonprofit, previously told the Financial Times that it, quote, does not have authority over the proposed acquisition, making it seem like the sale was practically a done deal. But even that earlier statement gave ICAN some wiggle room. I can, quote, said its job was simply to assure the continued operation of the dot-org domain, implying that it could only stop

the sale if the stability and security of the domain name infrastructure were at risk, the Financial Times wrote on November 28th. In its newer statement last week, ICANN noted that the dot-org registry agreement between PIR and ICANN requires PIR to, quote, obtain ICAN's prior approval before any transaction that would result in a change of control of the registry operator, end quote. The registry agreement lets ICANN request transaction details, quote, including information about the party acquiring control, its ultimate parent entity, and whether they meet the ICAN adopted registry operator criteria, as well as financial resources and operational and technical capabilities. I can noted. I can's 30-day review period begins after PIR provides those details, end quote. Thanks to all of you for weighing in on the $100 million dollar ARR companies. really quickly. The obvious answer to my request for a new name for these entities came in rather quickly on the subreddit, centars, because cent, of course, is the Latin root 400. But I also like the idea of trunicorns, true unicorns. Also, rhinos got a shout, and apparently

quoting user SWYX on the subreddit. Jason Calicanis is pushing the term Pegasus, horses that fly over rounds because they're doing so well. And sunicorns, near unicorns, end quote. Though I did also like Aaron Groot's suggestion that we just meld my dad joke from yesterday and call them centaurs. And not a few of you suggested that these companies should simply be known as viable businesses. Finally today, this is not exactly a tech story, but I think it's nerdy enough that you won't mind. Some of you might know Magnus Carlson. He's a Norwegian chess grandmaster, current world chess champion, and trails only Gary Kasparov in terms of the amount of time spent as the highest rated chess player in the world. Well, guess what? It seems that Magnus is good

at fantasy football, too. U.S. listeners, in case you weren't aware, soccer has fantasy leagues as well, and the English Premier League has a fantasy league that has more than seven million players. Well, good old Magnus Carlson for a time this week was also sitting atop first place in the official Premier League fantasy standings. He was number one, at least until yesterday's Crystal Palace slash Brighton match, at which point he dropped to number three. Quoting The Guardian, Carlson claims his success in fantasy football is down to luck. The chess champions team, Kiel Ankadol, finished among the top 3,000 players in the 20, 2017-2018 league following three other impressive seasons. It took Carlson just six weeks to make it into the top 1,000 this season, and he has been mounting a charge for the top ever since.

Asked to comment on his success this season, Carlson cited the opta data used by FPL players to track footballing form. Quote, in fantasy football, I'm both an optimist and an opta-mist, he told the Guardian in a one-line email. Carlson, like many Norwegians, is obsessed with both the Premier League and its Fantasy League spin-off. In 2017, eight players from Norway were in the top 50 FPL players in the world, end quote. So what could possibly account for skills from chess transferring over to fantasy sports? Lots of people are speculating that it comes down to memory. Good chess players can memorize moves and board positions in order to plot strategy, several moves down the road. And friends claim that Carlson's memory for EPL stats is indeed

prodigious, as indicated by him name-checking Opta, the company known for keeping sports stats in soccer. Having said that, as I'm sure a lot of you know, fantasy sports ain't easy, no matter how much you have stored in your brain in terms of stats. My own FPL team is currently 2.8 million positions behind Carlson's and among players in our mutant podcast Army League made up of listeners to this show. I am Smackdad in the mid-table, 13th out of 25. players. Congrats, by the way, to Eric De Silva, who's number one in the Mutant Podcast Army League. His all-dime PC is sitting on 1,011 points, ranking 67,000th in the world, much better than my own 847 points. And he didn't even have Mo Sala on his team this week, though he does seem to have been

writing Jamie Vardy through his recent hot streak. That's all for today. I've been reading things online all day, actually all night. That makes me think, I guess I need to catch up on Watchmen over the holidays next week because I dropped off after episode two. But I didn't realize that that might just be a one-off series or might not even be a season two. For some reason, suddenly knowing that makes me really want to watch it.

Seemed like a cool show, but I don't know. I guess my heart got stolen in the meantime by Mando. Talk to you tomorrow.