Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 05/08 - The Pixel 3a and Flagship "Lite" Phones

Episode Date: May 8, 2019

Google is talking big on privacy, but going after cookies helps their bottom line as well, why the Pixel 3a might usher in a new era of flagship “lite” phones, the huge Binance bitcoin hack and why does Bird want to sell you a scooter, not just rent you one? Sponsors: Metalab.co Vistaprint.com/RIDE Links: Google strengthens Chrome's privacy controls (TechCrunch) Facebook talked privacy, Google actually built it (TechCrunch) US digital advertising exceeded $100 billion in 2019 (TechCrunch) Google shows Apple and Samsung how ‘lite’ flagships are done (Engadget) Apple should bring back the iPhone SE and model it after Google’s Pixel 3a (MacWorld) Bird has a new electric scooter: it’s durable, comes in three different colors, and you can buy it (The Verge) DIY Artists Will Earn More than $1 Billion This Year. No Wonder the Major Labels Want Their Business (Rolling Stone) Subscribe to the ad-free feed! 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 ride home for Wednesday, May 8th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. Google is talking big on privacy, but going after cookies helps their bottom line as well. Why the Pixel 3A might usher in a new era of flagship light phones, the huge Binance Bitcoin hack, and why does Byrd want to sell you a scooter, not just rent you one? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. A tech conference is not just the keynote, of course. And among the more, the more, more in the weeds news to come out of Google's I.O. is the announcement that Google will soon be adding anti-fingerprinting tech to Chrome going

forward. Devs must now explicitly opt in for cookies that are meant to be used across websites. Again, this sounds in the weeds, but it's super important. Quoting from TechCrunch. The overall idea here is to provide users with more control over how their data is shared. While cookies are very useful to allow you. you to keep a persistent login to a site or store your preferences, for example, they are also being used to track you across the web. Few users, however, would want to block all of their cookies

and lose their conveniences. The compromise here is to only allow the site that originally set the cookie to access it and block third-party cookies, making it harder for others to track you using these cookies. To do this, Chrome will move to require developers to explicitly allow their cookies to be used across websites, using the same site cookie. attribute developers have to explicitly opt in to make their cookies available to others. Same site simply stops the browser from sending it when it receives a cross-site request. There are some security enhancements that come with this, but the main goal here is to prevent tracking.

Right now, all cookies pretty much look the same to the browser, so it's hard to selectively delete third-party cookies. Because this change also makes it easier to identify tracking cookies in the browser, though, users can then also more easily delete them, end quote. So you might have noticed that Google went hard on privacy at I.O. yesterday. There was a lot of talk about things like incognito mode for maps on-device data processing so you don't have to bleed your data into the cloud. And even that new Nest Hub Max smart home device has a physical switch to turn off the camera. Literally disconnects the camera from the motherboard. Quote, Google, it seems, has found religion. Privacy and advertising doesn't need to be mutually exclusive and it's applying that ethos across its products, Owen Williams wrote. Casey Newton wrote that at F8, Facebook talked a big game about privacy but didn't actually produce anything tangible. But Google at I.O. unveiled a slew of real-world

features, quote, for Facebook privacy is a talking point meant to boost confidence in sharing, deter regulators, and repair its battered image. For Google, privacy is functional, going hand in hand with on-device data processing to make features faster and more widely accessible, end quote. Well, color me skeptical about all that because what does this move to empower users to reject cookies do for Google whenever one of these platforms gives you something that's actually useful? You have to also, I know that this is jaded, you have to also think about what they're getting out of it. What does Google get out of this move? You know, actually hampering smaller competitors who rely on cookies to sell ads. Google already has the largest share of the digital ad pie.

Kind of sort of seems like genius to basically rewrite the web to make it so that ads might only work on their system. As the Wall Street Journal says, Cookies also boost competition in the advertising landscape by allowing hundreds of digital firms, large and small to collect their own user data and sell higher priced ads based on it. Any restriction on them is a boon to the biggest tech companies, including Google, which can target ads based on large amounts of other information they collect on users through their many products, end quote. In other words, Google already knows so much about you.

They don't need cookies anymore. Convenient for them. So I get that this would largely be a blow against those scummy third-party advertisers that we all tend to hate. But I guess I'm just pointing out that, like everybody else, Google might be getting privacy religion for good reasons, but you shouldn't miss the fact that there's something in it for their bottom line as well. Also doing this on the most popular browser in the world, might that have antitrust implications, given all of their recent issues with the EU, I assume they've thought all that through, right? Given what we were just talking about and given how much

all of the maneuvers these big tech platforms make are all in service of the advertising marketplace, I do like to keep track of these sorts of stats. So I'll note this briefly. According to the IAB and Pricewaterhouse Cooper's, U.S. digital ad spend was up 22% year-over-year in 2018, exceeding $100 billion for the very first time. Mobile ads grew 40% year-over-year to $69.9 billion, and video ads grew 37% to $16.3 billion. Mobile ad spending as a percentage of ad spend is reaching parity with time spent on mobile devices for the first time. The IAB report did not break out the ad spend that went to individual companies, although we know that Facebook and Google take the lion's share, but the report

did say that the top 10 advertising players collectively collected 77% of total advertising spend. I did want to come back to those Pixel 3A phones that were announced yesterday because they've been turning a lot of heads. In a time where flagship phones are basically $1,000 and up propositions, the idea of a damned high-quality mid-range phone coming in at under $500. Is the market correcting a bit? Has the pendulum swung too far in the expensive direction? Is this a trend?

In Gizmodo, Sherlin Lowe calls the Pixel 3A lineup a light flagship phone. Apple sort of has one with the 10R, and Samsung has the Galaxy S-10E. and heck, back in the day, Google had the whole Nexus lineup. But, quoting Sherilyn, At $400, the Pixel 3A is the cheapest of the light flagships and doesn't compromise on specs too much. You get almost the same class-leading camera that's on the Pixel 3,

a solid build, and even a longer-lasting battery than the Pricier flagship. Sure, you'll be relegated to a slower Snapdragon 670 processor, but Google's engineers have worked hard to make it soft. offer fly on that chipset. People who don't need wireless charging, water resistance, or wide-angle selfie cameras won't miss much. The fact that Google, Apple, and Samsung are edging into a slightly cheaper space means we can expect other companies in that strata to do better. Because the Pixel 3A offers so much for so little money, it could seriously up the ante, end quote. And over at Macworld, Michael Simon straight up says, this should inspire Apple to bring back the iPhone

S.E. Apple hasn't truly replaced the iPhone SE. Sure, it sells an iPhone 7 for $449 and an iPhone 7 plus for $569, but that's hardly a substitute. What made the iPhone SE such a great phone wasn't its 4-inch

display or retro design, it was that it was an inexpensive iPhone that wasn't old. At the time of release, it had the same A-9 processor as the iPhone 6S, along with several features the iPhone 5S didn't have a 12-mapsul camera, an SC sensor, a second-generation touch ID sensor, and a new rose gold color, end quote.

Michael's proposal for a return of the iPhone SE, quote, design-wise, it could look like a trimmer iPhone 8 with the fingerprint sensor on the back or built into the power button. The back would be plastic instead of glass, and it could include all of the computational photo tricks in the 10R. At $450, that would be a killer iPhone for people who can't or just. don't want to afford an iPhone with a notch. Apple wouldn't have to worry about eating into iPhone 10s sales, not that it would need to keep around the old models anymore. The choice would be clear, end quote. Michael ends by saying, quote, as iPhones have gotten more expensive, sales have leveled off. And a new iPhone SE could be the thing to get them moving again. Google has shown us

that it can be done. Now it's Apple's turn, end quote. Binance says it has discovered a large scale security breach that allowed hackers to withdraw 7,000 Bitcoins or around $41 million in Bitcoin, along with API keys, two-factor authentication codes, and possibly more. Quick refresher, most people know of Coinbase, but Binance is actually the largest crypto exchange in the world in terms of trading volume. Quoting in Gadget. The company said that hackers accessed a hot wallet that contained about 2% of its total BTC holdings. They used fishing and viruses to obtain user data and managed to bypass security checks, preventing Binance from blocking the transaction. The company said that, quote, no user funds will be affected and has an emergency fund that will cover the

incident in full. The hackers had the patience to wait and execute well-orchestrated actions through multiple seemingly independent accounts at the most opportune time, wrote Binance CEO Zhao Zhang peng in a statement, quote, we must conduct a thorough security review. The security review will include all parts of our systems and data, end quote. Binance was unable to block the transaction, but it triggered an alarm, and the company shut down all deposits and withdrawals. While trading can continue, all transactions will reportedly take a week to complete. Deposits and withdrawals will need to remain suspended during this period of time. We beg for your understanding in this difficult situation, the exchange wrote. We will continue to enable

trading so that you may adjust your positions if you wish. Please also understand that the hackers may still control certain user accounts and may use those to influence prices in the meantime, end quote. Apparently, the exchange has an insurance policy-like system called the Secure Asset Fund for Users that will cover the losses for any users affected. We know that Byrd will rent you an e-scooter by the minute, but now they will straight up sell you a scooter to call your own. Bird is now selling its newest custom-designed, more durable, longer-lasting e-scooter directly to consumers. $1,299 gets you the Bird Zero, a scooter with 30 miles of range on a single charge. When Bird launched in Santa Monica, California in 2017, its fleet was comprised mostly

of consumer scooters made by Jaumi and Segway 9Bot, which were never intended for heavy fleet use and depreciated quickly. Bird lost money on each trip, but it managed to... to scale up after raising millions of dollars in venture capital funding. Bird Zero was intended to be a more rugged scooter that could take a beating and keep on rolling for an average of 10 months, says Bird CEO Travis Vander Zanden. With Bird 1, Vander Zanden predicts its latest scooter will stay in circulation for at least 12 months. The company plans to phase out all of its consumer-grade scooters over the summer.

Bird says it will continue to use its Jami M-365 models for monthly personal rentals, and it will no longer purchase the 9-bought ES scooters, end quote. The Bird 1 tops out at 19 miles per hour and can carry a max weight of 220 pounds. Vander Zandin says if your purchased Bird 1 breaks down, they'll repair it for you. And Van der Zandin says this is all about reducing costs. The more scooters that get produced globally the cheaper, the scooters become for everybody. still, and I know they've no doubt thought all of this through, there's probably a mountain of spreadsheets somewhere where all of this makes sense. But does Byrd really want whatever one-time margin they can make selling scooters to what in theory would be their prime customers, people who are already e-scooter converts, as opposed to a lifetime of incremental revenue from those same customers?

I just kind of find this move strategically odd. Finally today, super interesting data point from Rolling Stone. Last year, independent, self-released musical artists made $643 million up 35% year over year, showing that DIY artists are a growing share of the recording music industry revenue pie. These artists are taking advantage of the likes of Spotify, YouTube, Pandora, Apple Music at all, but also platforms like TuneCore, CD Baby, distro kid and ditto music to release their art and make money as well. Why is this important? Well, artists are cutting out the middleman, at least the biggest legacy middlemen, the record companies, something I've been waiting for for 20 years, quoting Rolling Stone. Every DIY artist who writes

their own music will be due 100% of publishing royalties from any track they distribute via the likes of TuneCore or CD Baby, so long as this cash is properly registered and collected world And the two aforementioned services, alongside others such as song trust and centric music, are set up to do just that. Broad industry calculations suggest that publishing slash songwriter rights occur around a fifth of the money per track that recorded music rights generate from streaming platforms, which suggests that you could comfortably add another $100 million onto Media Research's $643 million estimate for 2018 if you to include publishing in your final tally, end quote.

Self-releasing artists are becoming a true volume business with TuneCore, CD Baby, and Distro Kid alone now cumulatively representing more than 1.1 million performers. These acts are all doing battle for streams in a daunting online arena. Spotify founder Daniel Eck confirmed last month that nearly 40,000 tracks are uploaded to the platform daily, working out to about one upload every two seconds. We are entering potentially the most transatlantic. transformative era that the record business has ever seen, says media researchers Mark

Mulligan. The rise of direct artists service companies and a whole host of other commercial models mean that unsigned artists have more choice and flexibility than ever before. These artists can create their own virtual record label, end quote. That's all for today. Hey, if any of you listening work at PayPal at 4 p.m. Eastern tomorrow. I'm going to PayPal here in New York City to give a talk about internet history and my book and all that jazz. I think it's going to be live streamed internally throughout PayPal. So tune in if you can and if any of you are able to attend the talk in person. Please make yourselves known as members in good standing of our mutant podcast army.

Talk to you all tomorrow.