Important Note
Tech Narratives was a subscription website, which offered expert commentary on the day's top tech news from Jan Dawson, along with various other features, for $10/month. As of Monday October 16, 2017, it will no longer be updated. An archive of past content will remain available for the time being. I've written more about this change in the post immediately below, and also here.
Amazon Talks to Developers About Providing Transcripts of App Interactions (Jul 12, 2017)
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Gartner Says PC Shipments Declined 4.3% in Q2, 11th Straight Drop, Hit 2007 Levels (Jul 12, 2017)
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Roku Hits 15 Million Monthly Active Accounts, 7 Billion Streamed Hours in H1 (Jul 12, 2017)
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Microsoft Announces AI Research Team, Launches AI Vision App for Blind on iOS (Jul 12, 2017)
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Apple Partners with Chinese Company for iCloud to Comply with New Regulations (Jul 12, 2017)
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Vizio Files Suit Against LeEco Over Merger Termination Fee (Jul 12, 2017)
LeEco was to have acquired TV maker Vizio, but after months of delays the deal finally fell apart earlier this year, and now Vizio is suing LeEco over non-payment of part of the termination fee the companies agreed when they made the deal. The suit also alleges that LeEco never had the means to complete the deal, using it merely as a way to bolster its perceived financial stability at a time when there were lots of reports about its cash constraints. Given that those financial problems have only worsened since the deal closed, I’m not sure Vizio is getting the money it wants anytime soon, even if it wins the case. But LeEco is just getting clobbered at this point as a result of problems entirely of its own making, all of which stem from expanding overly aggressively from what had been a reasonably strong position in the Chinese market.
via Variety
★ Amazon’s Third Prime Day Grows 60% Again, Echo Devices the Big Sellers (Jul 12, 2017)
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Daily Podcast Episode 11 – July 11, 2017 (Jul 11, 2017)
The daily podcast episode for July 11 is up now on SoundCloud and should be syncing shortly to iTunes, Overcast, and other podcast apps. As usual, the podcast spends about one minute on each of the items covered on the site today, and also points to a few other items in the news today which I didn’t cover but which are nonetheless interesting. You can find today’s episode on SoundCloud and all episodes on iTunes, Overcast, and so on.
Uber Investor Call Reports Bookings Up, Losses Down, May Settle with Waymo (Jul 11, 2017)
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Google’s Second Generation Pixel XL Renders Leak, with LG as ODM (Jul 11, 2017)
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Twitter Hires a Permanent CFO from Intuit (Jul 11, 2017)
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Harassment Affects 41% of Online Users, Affects Women More, Has Big Consequences (Jul 11, 2017)
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HomePod Purchase Intent is at 14% of iPhone Owners, per Raymond James Survey (Jul 11, 2017)
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Google Officially Launches Gradient Ventures, Engineer-Led AI Fund (Jul 11, 2017)
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Google Pays Professors and Researchers to Produce Pro-Google Papers (Jul 11, 2017)
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Facebook Begins Rolling Out Ads in Messenger Globally (Jul 11, 2017)
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AT&T is “Joining” Day of Action Opposing Net Neutrality Rule Changes it Supports (Jul 11, 2017)
In a somewhat bizarre (and brazen) move, AT&T is “joining” the day of action due to take place tomorrow in protest at the FCC’s proposed changes to net neutrality rules, even though AT&T is entirely supportive of the FCC’s policy. AT&T’s argument for doing so is that, if the protest is about preserving an open internet, it’s all for that, but just sees what that means and the ways to achieve that goal differently. But it’s predictably spurred a backlash from the organizers of the events and others who see AT&T not as an ally but as the enemy in this cause. As I’ve argued from the beginning, and as an earlier piece from Tony Romm makes fairly clear, the odds of the protest succeeding in changing anything are very slim indeed, and the organizers seem to concede that – they’re talking more in terms of “not going down without a fight” than in terms of not going down at all. And that’s realistic because FCC Chair Ajit Pai has the votes he needs to push this through and he’s been a consistent opponent of the rules from the time they were voted in over his objections, in stark contrast to his predecessor Tom Wheeler, who seemed taken aback by the opposition to his first proposals on net neutrality. We’ll see what actually happens tomorrow when the protest takes place, but I suspect AT&T would have been better off quietly sitting this one out rather than pulling this stunt, which seems far likelier to get it lots of negative publicity than to do itself any good. There are certainly reasonable arguments to be made that the net neutrality rules go too far, or that it should be regulated differently, but a move like this does little to advance the argument.
via Recode
Study Shows Programmatic Ad Buyers Drop, Native Ads Grow Fast in Q1 2017 (Jul 11, 2017)
A study from MediaRadar, reported here by Adweek, suggests that the number of advertisers buying programmatic ads dropped by 12% year on year, while the number spending on native ads rose 74% year on year. The latter is very much in line with a longer-term trend towards native advertising, which looks more like the content in or between which it is embedded, but the former is more newsworthy. The most likely reason appears to be the worries over automatically-placed ads showing up next to undesirable content on YouTube and through Google’s AdSense earlier this year. I said at the time the YouTube boycott began that, although the backlash was publicly aimed at Google’s properties, it was likely to affect programmatic buying generally as brands became more concerned about a lack of control over which content their ads would show up next to, and this is a bit of evidence that confirms that hunch. The two formats discussed here – native and programmatic – needn’t, of course, be mutually exclusive, and as an example Google’s recently introduced mobile ad formats could potentially be bought programmatically while being designed to appear as native ads on various sites. But programmatic buying itself, while Google has explicitly called out as one of a small number of major factors driving its ad performance in recent quarters, looks to be heading for a bit of a setback as at least some brands re-evaluate whether to use it.
via Adweek
Spotify Signs Deal with Sony Music, Leaving Just Warner Among Majors (Jul 11, 2017)
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★ Microsoft Announces Plan to Help Provide Broadband in Rural America (Jul 11, 2017)
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