Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 12/19 – Google Might Owe You Some Money

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 Tech meme right home for Tuesday, December 19th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Google has settled lawsuits from the States, has agreed to offer new billing tools,

Starting point is 00:00:42 and may owe you some money as they've agreed to pay $700 million in restitution. What happens to Adobe and Figma now that they've got to go their own ways? Why do hackers love targeting game developers and game preservationists have uncovered a gold mine? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. I said it felt like people were rushing to get layoffs in by the end of the year, but now it also looks like regulators and legal decisions are racing the calendar and the clock as well. Google has agreed to pay $700 million and make app store changes like new billing tools in order to settle a 2021 antitrust lawsuit brought by 36 U.S. states and the District of Columbia,

Starting point is 00:01:24 quoting the journal. The settlement resolves claims by a group of states that Google operated its app store Google Play as an illegal monopoly, allegedly stifling competition from other app distributors on devices using the Google Own Android operating system. Developers will also now be able to use an alternative billing system to Google Play's billing option, which the company said it has been piloting for over a year. The settlement also requires that Alphabet simplify the process of downloading apps directly from developers' websites without using an online store such as Google Play, end quote. As I said, this resolves a complaint brought back in 2021, the complaint accused Google of creating obstacles to alternative in-app payment methods and

Starting point is 00:02:04 striking agreements to hinder other ways of distributing apps. In early September, Alphabet and the State Attorney's General spearheaded by Utah reached a preliminary settlement, but the details remained undisclosed until now. Alphabet maintains that its operating system and app marketplace offer consumers greater options than rivals. The company affirms its dedication to enhancing Android and Google Play by saying, quote, were pleased to reach an agreement that builds on that foundation, the company said. Now, what if I told you you could get money out of this? You might, just not very much. As a part of this settlement, an estimated 102 million U.S. Android users will split $630 million and an additional $70 million will go to other claims,

Starting point is 00:02:48 quoting the Washington Post. The states wrote in a court filing late Monday that they estimate at least 70% of eligible consumers or 71.4 million people will receive automatic payments without having to file a claim. According to the settlement terms, an eligible consumer for the payout is an individual whose legal address in their Google Payments profile was in one of the U.S. States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, or the U.S. Virgin Islands, when they purchased an app from Google Play or made an in-app purchase, including subscriptions through Google Play billing from August 16, 2016, through September 30, 2023. Google is still facing two other anti-monopoly cases filed by the U.S. Justice Department, one over the practices it uses to dominate the

Starting point is 00:03:28 online search market and the other over its control over the online ad sector, end quote. So in the aftermath of that failed acquisition, what now for Figma? What now for Adobe? Taking Figma first, history says companies left behind at the altar in acquisition tie-ups often don't fare very well. You do have the example of Plaid, which Visa tried to take out early on in its life, so people felt like Plaid dodged a bullet because they would be valued more than that acquisition price now, though that was in frothier times. More on that in a second. The acquiree in a failed merger often suffers because a lot of times the acquirer wanted to tie the knot for strategic reasons. They were willing to pay up for things other than just dollars and cents.

Starting point is 00:04:16 But if you need to show pure profitability or growth after a lack of merger, it can be harder to do that on your own. The information suggests that Figma might be okay. For one thing, they now have a billion dollars to play with in the form of the breakup fee Adobe has to pay them, but also because they expect to finish 2023 with more than $600 million in annual recurring revenue, which is up more than 40% year on year. The San Francisco-based company has also been generating cash for a few years, the people said. That financial picture makes it one of the best performing late-stage private tech companies, particularly in a year when many firms have struggled with sagging growth rates,

Starting point is 00:04:55 as corporate clients have cut their software spending. Still, Figma isn't worth nearly what it was when it agreed to sell to Adobe in September 2022. Figma could be valued as low as about $9 billion below the valuation of its last private round of financing if investors assess it at the same multiple of its annual recurring revenue as that for Canva, a larger, more consumer-focused privately held design software company. Investors last valued Canva, which had nearly $2 billion in ARR recently, at about $25 billion in a large secondary sale this year. Figma, however, focuses more on the corporate market, which means investors may value it more highly than Canva, which is focus more on the consumer market, end

Starting point is 00:05:38 quote. Yeah, that's what I was just saying about being valued on a dollars and cents basis, as opposed to, you know, people being willing to pay up because they don't want you independent anymore. It was worth way more strategically for Adobe to have Figma than just the revenue Figma was generating. Figma also has another problem, employee morale. a bunch of employees were about to get rich because of this deal, but now that liquidity door has shut. So Figma is likely in the process of lining up investors to buy shares from employees in a secondary offering in order to keep employee morale up. Problem there is, the investors would likely want to buy in at a price that, again, would be way below the $20 billion valuation Adobe

Starting point is 00:06:18 had agreed to. Now, whither Adobe. Adobe does have $6 billion in cash on hand. They can use that to buyback shares. They can use that to invest more heavily into AI, but for Adobe, the real issue is they still haven't solved the problem that caused them to go after Figma in the first place. Startups and disruptors are eating Adobe's lunch. Without the ability to acquire those disruptors, where does Adobe turn to get growth? Quoting Bloomberg. When the company struck the $20 billion deal for Figma last September investors worried that Adobe's core portfolio of creative software, including Photoshop and Illustrator, were running out of room to grow. Web-based startups such as Figma and Australia-based startup Canva were capturing the attention of younger users and rapidly gaining

Starting point is 00:07:01 customers. The deal's high price only further convinced Adobe shareholders that management was anxious about the competition. Much of that gloom has dissipated in 2023 as Adobe invested rapidly into generative AI, building proprietary models and launching popular features. The stock has gained 77% this year as investors expect AI to expand Adobe's user base, increase revenue per user, and cement its dominance among creative design professionals, at least for now. The long-term, threat of Canva, Figma, and new generative AI-based creative tools, remains a concern for Adobe, Tyler Radke and analyst at Citigroup wrote Monday after the companies announced they were

Starting point is 00:07:36 terminating the proposed deal. Still, the excitement about AI doesn't represent the same kind of immediate revenue generator for Adobe as Figma's product design app, wrote J.P. Morgan's Mark R. Murphy, end quote. One of the reasons I wanted to experiment with TikTok is because they're clearly going after longer form content. It's easier to put ads into content if the content is longer than the ad you want to put in, basically. Essentially, they want to become YouTube faster than YouTube can become them. More indications of that, as TikTok has updated its app for tablets and foldable devices, adding streamlined navigation bars and a landscape mode, quoting TechCrunch. Today's announcement comes a year after TikTok began testing a horizontal full-screen mode on mobile globally by rolling out a landscape mode on larger devices.

Starting point is 00:08:30 TikTok is inching further into YouTube's territory, which it has already been doing by supporting longer videos. Since TikTok has been supporting long-form content for quite some time now, it makes sense for the company to enhance the viewing experience for users who are watching things like cooking demos and beauty tutorials on their tablets. The company likely hopes that the new mode will convince people who usually watch YouTube on their tablets to spend their time on TikTok instead. While most people already know and love TikTok on their mobile devices, we know many also like to access it on larger screens and foldable devices the company wrote in a blog post. Whether they're watching the latest cooking trends or searching for the latest soccer

Starting point is 00:09:03 highlights, we're excited to share that TikTok is now better optimized for tablets and foldable gadgets. It's worth noting that TikTok optimization for foldables and tablets comes as Instagram, one of its main competitors, still lacks an iPad app. By rolling out updates for the app experiences on larger devices, TikTok is able to move beyond its mobile first approach at a time when the competition is still behind, end quote. You know my high standards for discussing breaches, but this number of people affected certainly crosses my mental threshold. Comcast's Xfinity service has disclosed that hackers breached a Citrix server. In October 2023, two weeks after Citrix issued a patch,

Starting point is 00:09:48 the hackers stole data on 35,879,455 people, quoting bleeping computer. While Xfinity says it has asked users to reset their passwords to protect affected accounts, customers report that they had been getting password reset requests last week without any indication as to why that was happening. One year ago, Xfinity customers also had their accounts hacked in widespread credential stuffing attacks, bypassing two-factor authentication. In a statement, the company said operations were not impacted and that it has received no ransom demands from the incident, end quote. Meanwhile, what is it with hackers targeting gaming companies? Is this a case of going where the money is, like the old YD. Rob Banks line suggests. Hackers have posted 1.67 terabytes of Insomniac Games' internal data, including an apparent upcoming Wolverine game,

Starting point is 00:10:42 also some internal HR files, Slack screenshots, and a Marvel Sony agreement. Quoting Cyber Daily. The Rysida Ransomware gang has posted a trove of Insomniac Games' internal data to its darknet leak site following the passing of its ransom deadline. The gang said in its leak posts that not sold data was uploaded, data hunters enjoy, and it appears some data was in fact sold to an enterprising bidder. Only 98% of the full data set has been uploaded. Rai Saita initially made its threat to publish on December 12th after publishing limited proof-of-hack

Starting point is 00:11:18 material, including passport scans, and was asking about $2 million for the data. Any buyer, including Sony, was welcome to bid. The files were uploaded in three parts, each linking to an online data catalog. Looking through the first set of data alone reveals a wide selection of level design and character materials and even design images and JPEGs, all from the Wolverine game. The leak also includes many files from Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 video game as well as internal HR documents such as I-9 employment forms and termination documents. Internal screenshots of Insomniac's Slack channels are included and the contents of several employee PCs have also been published. Of particular interest to gamers who are fans of the X-Men is a publishing agreement between Marvel and Sony Interactive Entertainment, signed by both Isaac Perlmutter, Marvel's chairperson of entertainment, and Jim Ryan, Sony's president. The document is effective as of July 26, 2021, and lists three upcoming X-Men games to be published under the agreement, the first being Wolverine and the rest as yet unnamed.

Starting point is 00:12:16 But the document does go into release dates and costs as well as many other details. Wolverine is to be published no later. than September 1, 2025, while the other two are to come before December 31st, 2029 and December 31st, 233, respectively. According to the agreement, Sony is expected to spend at least $120 million on each title. Cyber Daily reached out to Rysidea to learn a little more about the circumstances of the attack, and it turns out Sony and Insomniac were specifically targeted, at least according to Recita. Yes, we knew who we were attacking a Rysida spokesperson told Cyberdaily via email. we knew that developers making games like this would be an easy target, end quote. OpenAI says its board of directors, this new board, it should be noted, can hold back the release

Starting point is 00:13:08 of an AI model even if OpenAI's leadership says it's safe. They also announced a new internal safety advisory group, quoting Bloomberg. The arrangement was spelled out in a set of guidelines release Monday explaining how the chat GPT maker plans to deal with what it may deem to be extreme risks from its most powerful AI systems. The release of the guidelines follows a period of turmoil at OpenAI after Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman was briefly ousted by the board, putting a spotlight on the balance of power between directors and the company C-suite. Open AIs recently announced preparedness team said it will continuously evaluate its AI systems to figure out how they fare across four different categories, including

Starting point is 00:13:45 potential cybersecurity issues, as well as chemical, nuclear, and biological threats, and work to lessen any hazards the technology appears to pose. Specifically, the company is monitoring for what it calls catastrophic risks, which it defines in the guidelines as, quote, any risk which could result in hundreds of billions of dollars in economic damage or lead to the severe harm or death of many individuals, end quote. Open AI announced the formation of the preparedness team in October, making it one of three separate groups overseeing AI safety at the startup. There's also safety systems, which looks at current products such as GPT4 and superalignment, which focuses on extremely powerful and hypothetical AI systems that may exist in the future, end quote.

Starting point is 00:14:29 Finally, today, game preservationists are digging into a 1.2 terabyte cache of test flight data from roughly 2012 to 2015 that was found on the Internet archive containing a ton of old apps. Quoting the verge, the 1.2 terabyte cache, which is being called the Terra leak, could be a really big deal for preservationists, especially because many older apps are no longer available to download in any form. The apps are roughly from 2012 through 2015, according to an account on X, formerly Twitter, that's focused on the leak. It appears that the apps were scraped from the Test Flight website in early 2015, perhaps from misconfigured cloud storage.

Starting point is 00:15:09 Links on the Wayback Machine include mentions of Amazon's Cloudfront and S3 services for AWS. Before it was acquired by Apple in early 2014, Test Flight, let developers test apps on both iOS and Android. According to the archive's description, Apple shut down the old testflight app.com website in February 2015. The cache was uploaded to the Internet Archive by Archive Team in March 2015 and seems to have gone largely unnoticed since then. Apple and the Internet Archive didn't immediately reply to request for comment, end quote. Folks are actively developing methods to efficiently sift through all of these archived apps, and there's a Discord server exploring these archives too. Though you can't simply install these vintage apps on contemporary phones,

Starting point is 00:15:53 as they are incompatible with modern devices. Still, always thrilled when digital history can be preserved. Speaking of history, yeah, my outro yesterday about the Wright brothers was wrong, obviously. If I had stopped to think about it, I know, of course, that the first flight wasn't made in the 1920s. I mean, you had aircraft in World War I, for God's sake. So put that down to a rare case where I just spouted something on the show without actually thinking about it. I saw a tweet while I was editing yesterday. I misread it and got it wrong. Apologies, but please know, I did know the Wright brothers flight

Starting point is 00:16:36 was in the first decade of the 20th century. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 12/19 – Google Might Owe You Some Money

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