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.
Instagram Adds Folders for its Bookmarking Feature (Apr 17, 2017)
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Google Forced to Unbundle Services from Android and Open to Search Competitors in Russia (Apr 17, 2017)
The EU is currently taking action against Google over what it sees as anticompetitive practices including bundling of its own services and blocking competing ones from being pre-installed in Android. As such, this Russian case takes on more importance than it might otherwise have, because it presents one possible outcome of the EU case, which is forcing Google to unbundle its own services from Android and allow competing search engines like Yandex to be pre-installed. That’s certainly a possibility in the EU case too, and would mirror the action taken years ago against Microsoft over browsers in Windows. If that were to happen, I’m skeptical many people (or OEMs) would choose alternative search engines on an Android phone, but it would potentially threaten Google’s Android business model, which is entirely about the apps and services it runs on the device (and the advertising they enable). For what it’s worth, as I wrote in this piece at the time the EU action was announced, I still think it’s misguided.
via Bloomberg
NYC Taxi Regulator Mulling Forcing Uber to Add Tipping Option in its App (Apr 17, 2017)
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LeEco Suspends Shares on Chinese Exchange Before Wednesday Restructuring Announcement (Apr 17, 2017)
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Facebook Takes 3 Hours to Remove Video of Murder (Apr 17, 2017)
A Facebook user apparently committed a murder on Sunday and claimed to be in the process of committing several more while streaming on Facebook Live video, but Facebook failed to take the video down for three hours afterwards. This certainly isn’t the first time something gruesome has been live streamed on Facebook, and the company has dealt with past situations both poorly and inconsistently. On the one hand, it’s clearly against its policies to broadcast something as disturbing as this, so taking the videos down should be simple from a policy perspective. But in some cases, it’s been accused of taking down videos which – despite their content – were enormously newsworthy, and therefore engaging in censorship. In this case, it seems baffling that Facebook didn’t take the video down much sooner, but it raises much bigger issues about how to police live video, which by definition has often done its damage before anyone at Facebook is even aware of it. Given YouTube’s recent struggles with monitoring non-live video for inappropriate content, one can only imagine the challenges involved in monitoring video in real time. Certainly, Facebook needs better tools for flagging such content and faster response times when videos are flagged, at the very least.
Update: Facebook has now responded, and says it’s going to do exactly what I said in that last line: that is, improve its flagging tools and shorten response times. It also posted a complete timeline. Worth a read.
via Fortune
NSA Windows Exploit Leak Latest Example of Risks of Government Hacking (Apr 14, 2017)
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Alphabet’s Life Sciences Unit Verily Reveals Watch-Like Tracker for Health Studies (Apr 14, 2017)
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Uber Shares Partial, Flattering Financial Data for 2016 with Bloomberg (Apr 14, 2017)
Uber’s financial results frequently leak through various online publications, and this year it seems to have decided to shortcut the process and speak directly to Bloomberg, which of course also gives it the opportunity to present the most flattering version of the numbers along with commentary. The highlights are that Uber grew revenues significantly year on year, but losses also grew. Uber emphasized that revenue growth outpaced growth in losses, but of course what you really want is for revenue growth to outpace cost growth, because that’s how you eventually become profitable, but that isn’t happening yet. Uber’s revenue growth was also helped by the different accounting treatment of UberPool rides (for which Uber records the full revenue as net revenue) versus other rides (for which it only reports its cut) which has the effect of making losses seem smaller in comparison to revenues, but is really just financial jiggery pokery. The headline financials shared with Bloomberg also exclude both the Chinese business, which was hugely loss-making for Uber, and various other items including car purchases (presumably as part of its autonomous technology testing operation). So these really are a pretty sanitized set of results, which nonetheless show significant and even growing losses.
via Bloomberg
LeEco Kills EcoPass Video Streaming and Services Subscription Plan (Apr 14, 2017)
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Apple Receives Permission to Test Autonomous Vehicles in California (Apr 14, 2017)
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NBC Lines Up Affiliates for Streaming Distribution Deals (Apr 13, 2017)
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Elon Musk Tweets About Future Tesla Products Including Semi and Pickup Trucks and a Convertible (Apr 13, 2017)
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Amazon to Provide its Echo Mic Array and Related Technology to Select Hardware Partners (Apr 13, 2017)
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Apple Says Three More Suppliers to Use Solely Renewable Power (Apr 13, 2017)
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Google Turns Image Search into an E-Commerce Funnel (Apr 13, 2017)
Google’s search advertising business is increasingly under threat from other sites pre-empting Google searches with their own search functions in specific areas, among them Amazon in e-commerce and Pinterest in fashion and other categories. As such, Google recently beefed up its image search function to serve up related results from its Shopping feature, and now also shows related images which show fashion products in use alongside other clothing or accessories. All of this is algorithmically generated without human curation, and leans on Google’s AI and machine learning technology. Google is going to have to get better and better at serving up results in these various categories if it’s to fend off the threat from the specialists, but if starting elsewhere has already become a habit for some users, they’ll never even see these Google advances.
via TechCrunch
T-Mobile, DISH and Comcast Among Big Winners in FCC Spectrum Auction (Apr 13, 2017)
The FCC recently held an auction of spectrum to be freed up by broadcasters and made available for wireless services, in the 600MHz band, which is well suited to long-distance and in-building coverage. T-Mobile was the only wireless carrier among the big winners, with the two largest carriers having cleaned up in the previous auction, and a cash-constrained Sprint sitting this one out too (AT&T did win licenses worth $900 million, but T-Mobile spent $8 billion). The other big bidders were DISH, which spent nearly as much as T-Mobile ($6.2 billion), and Comcast, which recently announced its wireless service based on Verizon’s network but could eventually launch its own network. Though T-Mobile has always crowed about how much spectrum it has per customer, that was always more of a reflection of its smaller number of customers rather than a massive spectrum trove, and it lacked low-band spectrum. It has now made big strides in solving that problem, and plans to put at least some of that spectrum to work right away (though much of it will be unavailable for several years while the broadcasters go through the process of vacating it, with much of that unavailable spectrum covering the densest markets). It’s also worth noting that no phones in the US today support the 600MHz band – that support is likely to come early next year with a new Qualcomm modem, so even if T-Mobile does put a third or so of its new spectrum to work this year, it won’t do anyone any good until then. So, if you’re a US wireless customer today, none of this makes any difference for now, and it’ll only make much of a difference a year or several down the line if you’re a T-Mobile customer (or in limited cases an AT&T customer). Or as and when Comcast and DISH decide to put that spectrum to use.
TV Channel Owners Consider Offering a Bundle for Non-Sports Fans (Apr 13, 2017)
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Uber Had a Program Called Hell Designed to Undermine Lyft (Apr 13, 2017)
It sounds like this it has now ended, but Amir Efrati at The Information has a report that Uber used to run a program named Hell which was designed to undermine its major US competitor, Lyft. The program pretended to be multiple Lyft customers and was therefore able to track where Lyft’s cars where in an effort to lure drivers to drive exclusively for Uber. One interesting side effect was that Uber actually offered bonuses to these non-monogamous drivers compared to what it paid those who drove for Uber exclusivity, which must seem a little perverse to those loyal Uber drivers. Amir also argues that Uber’s misuse of Lyft’s app was a violation of its terms of service and might also have broken the law, though I doubt Lyft will sue over it. This certainly isn’t the first time we’ve heard about Uber engaging in underhanded tactics to beat Lyft – there were lots of stories a couple of years ago about Uber reps calling Lyft cars and canceling, or getting in the cars and then trying to get the drivers to switch. It’s all part of the win-at-all-costs mentality that has always prevailed at Uber, and which has had nasty side effects both for drivers and for its employees.
via The Information
Apple Has Been Working on Glucose Monitoring Technology for Diabetes For Five Years (Apr 12, 2017)
There’s a nice scoop here for CNBC, which reports that Apple has had a team working on non-invasively monitoring glucose levels for diabetics for five years or more. What’s fascinating here is that Steve Jobs apparently came up with the idea, which gels with a theory my podcast co-host Aaron Miller has that Jobs’ own illness precipitated Apple’s investment in what became the Apple Watch. Tim Cook has said in the past that he didn’t want to build diagnostic or treatment features into the Apple Watch because of the laborious and unpredictable FDA approval process, but it seems the company isn’t averse to working on health-related technology elsewhere. Diabetes has been the focus of a number of Alphabet’s Verily healthcare initiatives too, and remains one of the most widespread chronic illnesses in the world, with an estimated 9.3% of the US population suffering from it and 415 million around the world. One source says 12% of global healthcare spending goes on treating diabetes, so it’s a big target to go after for anyone investing in health tech. But creating products around all this would be a huge departure for Apple, which generally creates general-purpose technology, though there are obvious ties to the fitness features of Apple Watch and the HealthKit and ResearchKit initiatives.
via CNBC
GM to More than Triple Cruise Autonomous Tech Employees in California Over 5 Years (Apr 12, 2017)
GM has filed for and received a tax credit in the sum of $8 million from the state of California in return for investing $14 million in office space and related items this year and committing to hire 1163 employees over the next five years for its self-driving tech subsidiary Cruise. Given how the importance of autonomous driving technology will grow in the coming years and the fact that California is the hub of much of the testing, it’s logical that GM would want to increase its base there significantly. However, these 1163 employees represent a more than three-fold increase in its employee base in the state, and the average salary GM is projecting for those employees is $116,000, so my guess is they’ll mostly be skilled engineers.
via Axios (the filing from which I pulled the data above is here)