07 October 2020

Google Assistant gets an incognito-like guest mode


Google is launching a few new privacy features today that include a refreshed Safety Center that’s now live in the U.S. and coming soon globally, as well as more prominent alerts when the company expects that your account has been tampered with.

The most interesting new feature, however, is a new Guest mode for the Google Assistant on Google-branded devices. Not to be confused with giving guests access to your Google Chromecast, for example, this new Guest mode is more akin to the incognito mode in your browser. With Guest mode on, which you invoke by saying “Hey Google, turn on guest mode,” the Assistant won’t offer personalized responses and your interactions won’t be saved to your account. It’ll stay on until you turn it off.

Typically, the Google Assistant saves all of your interactions to your account.  You can delete those manually or have Google automatically delete them after 3, 18 or 36 months. You can also prevent it from saving any audio recordings at all.

This new feature will roll out to smart speakers and displays in the coming weeks.

Talking about deleting your data, Google today also announced that you will soon be able to edit your Location History data in the Google Maps Timeline.

Also new: when you now search for “Is my Google Account secure” or use a similar query, Google will start displaying your security and privacy settings for you. That’s actually a useful step forward, given that we’ve reached a point where those settings are often hard to find.


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All-in-One


All-in-One

Instagram’s Threads app now lets you message everyone, like its Direct app once did


Last year, Instagram announced it was ending support for its standalone mobile messaging app known as Direct, which had allowed users to quickly create and share messages with friends. Shortly thereafter, the company launched Threads, a new messaging app focused on status updates and communication with only those you identified in Instagram as your “Close Friends.” Now, these two messaging concepts are merging. With the latest update to Threads, Instagram is again offring the full inbox experience, it says.

The changes were noted in the latest app update and were soon spotted by social media consultant Matt Navarra and noted reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong — both who keep a close eye on changes to popular social apps.

In the latest update, Threads will now present a two-tabbed inbox.

In the “Close Friends” section, you can continue to message with your most frequent contacts, as before. The new second tab, “Everyone Else” allows access to your larger Instagram inbox. The app will continue to prioritize the “Close Friends” tab, and your status will continue to only be visible to Close Friends as well.

Instagram also tells us that, by default, Threads users will continue to only receive notifications for their Close Friends. But this can now be adjusted in the app’s Settings if you want to receive notifications for all messages instead.

What’s interesting is that these changes are rolling out so closely following a major update to Instagram’s messaging platform.

Only last week, Facebook introduced cross-app communication between Messenger and Instagram, alongside other features.

That update allows Instagram users to opt to upgrade to a new messaging experience that includes the ability to change chat colors, react with any emoji, watch videos together, set messages to disappear and more. These “fun” features serve as a way to entice users to agree to the update, which then locks users further inside the Facebook universe as it opens up cross-platform messaging. That means upgraded users can use Instagram to message their Facebook friends.

With the changes to Threads, one has to wonder if Facebook is now envisioning the standalone chat app as another potential entry point into its larger messaging platform.

Instagram says that’s not the case today.

“Cross-app communication is an opt-in update for people using Instagram, and will not be enabled for Threads,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch.

That doesn’t mean Threads won’t be updated to later offer some of the other changes that Instagram users can now take advantage of, if they choose to upgrade their messaging experience.

In fact, we understand that Instagram is considering bringing some of those new features over to Threads in the future. There’s no exact timeframe for this project at this point, though.

Presumably, this would mean connecting the Threads app on the backend to the newly built messaging infrastructure. If that’s true, even if Facebook chose to keep cross-app communication an Instagram-only (and Messenger-only) experience, it would still be tying in another core app, Threads, to the new messaging platform. And this, in turn, could make it harder to unspool the apps in the case that Facebook is forced to break up its business, if regulators were declare it a monopoly.

It’s not clear, however, if Threads has yet been connected to that infrastructure or if it will further down the road. But it’s worth keeping an eye on.

The Threads update is live now.

 


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What kids can teach adults about asking for help | YeYoon Kim

What kids can teach adults about asking for help | YeYoon Kim

Do you need some help? It's OK to ask, says YeYoon Kim, a former kindergarten teacher who learned from her students how powerful and courageous it can be to reach out for support. Sharing the story of one of the most difficult periods in her life, Kim explores the happiness and joy that can come from leaning on those you love in times of need -- and encourages the rest of us to start asking for help more often.

https://ift.tt/3jH4Yzj

Click this link to view the TED Talk

Big tech blows a collective raspberry at the House’s antitrust report


Big tech has responded to the mammoth antitrust report put out by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee yesterday with blanket denials there’s any monopolistic behaviour or competitive imbalances to see here.

Below is a quick run down of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google’s rebuttals.

Among the committee’s (many) recommendations are structural separations and prohibitions on certain dominant platforms from operating in adjacent lines of business; interoperability and data portability requirements; non-discrimination requirements and a ban on self-preferencing; and beefed up merger and monopolization enforcement, as well as better administration of antitrust laws.

Amazon

In a lengthy but punchy blog post the ecommerce giant brands the committee’s views on antitrust “fringe notions” and “regulatory spitballing” — lathering on dire predictions of doom for small business and hoards of inflated-price-enraged consumers should lawmakers deign to dabble in any “misguided interventions”.

Sample quote:

The flawed thinking would have the primary effect of forcing millions of independent retailers out of online stores, thereby depriving these small businesses of one of the fastest and most profitable ways available to reach customers. For consumers, the result would be less choice and higher prices. Far from enhancing competition, these uninformed notions would instead reduce it.

The substance of Amazon’s argument against the need for antitrust intervention is the top-line claim that retail is “thriving and extraordinarily competitive” — with the tech giant saying it accounts for a tiny fraction of global retail and isn’t even the largest US retailer by revenues (that’s Walmart). Among the grab-bag of competitors Amazon lists as evidence that it’s a mere retail minnow are Best Buy, Costco, Facebook, Kroger, Google Shopping, Home Depot, Shopify and Target. (It doesn’t mention Whole Foods because it already consumed that competitor.)

The strategy here is to claim online and offline retail are just one giant market — because of course if lawmakers slice by online retail alone there’s no denying Amazon’s oversized punch.

Another chunk of rebuttal is against what it claims is “false narrative” that its own interests don’t align with “the thousands of small and medium-sized businesses thriving as sellers in our store”.

“The opposite is true: Amazon and sellers complement each other, and together we create a better customer experience than either could create alone,” it pouts, before going on to say SME sales account for around 60% of all physical products sold on its marketplace, and that it “typically” makes the same or more revenue on third-party sales — rubbishing the idea there could possibly be any conflict of interest at all from Amazon also selling own brand rival products on the same marketplace where only Amazon gets an overview of merchants’ data.

NB: European regulators aren’t so convinced about the lack of competitive risks on dual-sided platforms.  

Apple

Asked for its response to the committee report, Apple sent us an on the record statement in which it writes that it “vehemently” disagrees with the conclusions reached — adding the beautiful kicker to the sentence “with respect to Apple”. Epic trolling Tim.

It also said it would be issuing a more “extensive refutation” of the accusations levelled at its business in the coming days.

Here’s the rest of its statement:

Our company does not have a dominant market share in any category where we do business. From its beginnings 12 years ago with just 500 apps, we’ve built the App Store to be a safe and trusted place for users to discover and download apps and a supportive way for developers to create and sell apps globally. Hosting close to two million apps today, the App Store has delivered on that promise and met the highest standards for privacy, security and quality. The App Store has enabled new markets, new services and new products that were unimaginable a dozen years ago, and developers have been primary beneficiaries of this ecosystem. Last year in the United States alone, the App Store facilitated $138 billion in commerce with over 85% of that amount accruing solely to third-party developers. Apple’s commission rates are firmly in the mainstream of those charged by other app stores and gaming marketplaces. Competition drives innovation, and innovation has always defined us at Apple. We work tirelessly to deliver the best products to our customers, with safety and privacy at their core, and we will continue to do so.

In further background comments the gist of Apple’s argument boils down to ‘Don’t mess with a good thing’.

Aka billions of users across 175 countries can’t be wrong nor unhappy — nor can the tens of millions of developers making wares for its kit, given, for example, how many (1.8M) apps are now on the App Store. (Developers whose apps get excluded are unlikely to be so happy, of course.)

It also defends the 30% commission it takes on app sales — aka the ‘Apple tax’ — pointing to a recent study by Analysis Group that the structure is “similar in magnitude to those of other app stores and digital content marketplaces” — and further noting that for in-app subscriptions the tax falls to 15% after the first year.

Lastly it invokes privacy, pointing out that by reviewing apps and curating its users access to third party software it can offer protection from surveillance, as well as keep things clean by rejecting objectionable, harmful, unsafe, and illegal content. (Albeit, even the Apple gods can’t always do that.)

Facebook

In a brief on the record statement — presumably while it prepares the next chapters of its neverending ‘hard questions‘ series of lobbyist ‘literature’ — the social media giant sought to paint its business success as American as apple pie or, er, the freely unfettered market.

Here’s what it told us in full, with remarks attributed to a faceless “Facebook spokesperson”:

Facebook is an American success story. We compete with a wide variety of services with millions, even billions, of people using them. Acquisitions are part of every industry, and just one way we innovate new technologies to deliver more value to people. Instagram and WhatsApp have reached new heights of success because Facebook has invested billions in those businesses. A strongly competitive landscape existed at the time of both acquisitions and exists today. Regulators thoroughly reviewed each deal and rightly did not see any reason to stop them at the time.

So, in sum, there’s absolutely nothing to see here but successful! business! as! usual! is Facebook’s wafer-thin claim. Sure, it bought and assimilated rival social media businesses that could have gained enough market share to challenge its dominance of the category but that’s also just totally great business! Moreover, Facebook buying those really successful rivals just made them even more great and successful! But not so great and successful that there isn’t also “strong” competition in the space Facebook has dominated for 15+ years through its sheer force of business success.

Of course Facebook’s statement makes no mention of Onavo: A VPN app it acquired and used to spy on rival app usage to figure out which apps it should be buying or, er, crushing via cloning their innovations — but that’s a whole other story Facebook isn’t at all keen to talk about for some reason. Ditto the whole paying teenagers to spy on them thing.

In any case, the social media behemoth concludes, it’s the regulators who really screwed up here because they didn’t stop it buying Instagram and WhatsApp when they could have done. So ya! boo! sucks! it’s too late suckers! (we paraphrase).

Google

We also reached out to Google for a response to the antitrust report. The adtech giant had a statement ready to go — which kicks off by emphasising how much value its “free” products pump into the economy (not to mention all the “billions” it throws at R&D), before going on to chide policymakers for making “outdated and inaccurate allegations”.

The statement also features what’s become a go-to tech giant talking point as antitrust has risen up the political agenda in recent years — which is the claim that breaking up Internet giants wouldn’t actually fix anything.

Rather, Google warns (taking a similar tack to Amazon), of economic ruin awaiting the US economy — even from a ‘lesser’ intervention of tinkering with the sacred protections enshrined in Section 230 — and geopolitical doom for America’s tech leadership (taking a similar tack to Facebook). Or, in other words, cut Google and American bleeds. But also, no we’re not a monopoly, hell no! We’re just a verrrry fleet-o-foot operator in a “highly competitive industry”. So, er, which is it?

Interestingly, Google is the only tech giant to include some soft soap for lawmakers in this first response to the antitrust committee report — writing that it “support[s] Congress focusing on areas where clearer laws would help consumers”. (Translation: Stick with the small stuff and leave the important moneymaking business stuff to big tech.)

Here it invokes interoperability (because what technology solutionist doesn’t love a technology ‘solution’ to a monopoly problem); as well as claimed support for passing “comprehensive federal privacy legislation”. (Because a weaker federal framework is the only way to unpick state-level privacy laws with teeth like CCPA).

Here’s Google’s statement in full:

Google’s free products like Search, Maps and Gmail help millions of Americans and we’ve invested billions of dollars in research and development to build and improve them. We compete fairly in a fast-moving and highly competitive industry. We disagree with today’s reports, which feature outdated and inaccurate allegations from commercial rivals about Search and other services.

Americans simply don’t want Congress to break Google’s products or harm the free services they use every day. The goal of antitrust law is to protect consumers, not help commercial rivals. Many of the proposals bandied about in today’s reports — whether breaking up companies or undercutting Section 230 — would cause real harm to consumers, America’s technology leadership and the U.S. economy — all for no clear gain.

We support Congress focusing on areas where clearer laws would help consumers, a few of which are mentioned in today’s reports: Google has long championed the importance of data portability and open mobile platforms; we are arguing a case before the Supreme Court tomorrow for the important principle of software interoperability; and we have urged Congress to pass comprehensive federal privacy legislation. We look forward to engaging with Congress on these and other issues moving forward.

TechCrunch’s Taylor Hatmaker contributed to this report 


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Truecaller tops 250 million users


Popular caller-identification service Truecaller has amassed 250 million monthly active users and 200 million daily active users, demonstrating an accelerated pace of growth in recent quarters even as a global pandemic has hurt most businesses, it said on Wednesday.

The service, run by eponymous Stockholm-headquartered firm, allows users to avoid spam calls by identifying the callers and also filters similar texts. The service is popular in many parts of the world, but India, where everyone receives dozens of such calls each month, is Truecaller’s biggest market.

Even as Apple and Google have improved the caller ID feature in their mobile operating systems in recent years and taken several other steps to curb spam calls, Truecaller’s offerings remain unmatched.

Truecaller had 200 million monthly active users in February this year, and it reached 100 million daily active users milestone in April 2018. More than 150 million of its monthly active user base are in India. In fact, Truecaller is the only app not made by Google or Facebook on the list of top 10 most used apps in the country, according to mobile insights firm App Annie (data of which an industry exec shared with TechCrunch).

In recent years, Truecaller has expanded its platform to add messaging and payments services, which has also allowed it to broaden the scope to monetize users. The company told TechCrunch that its revenue grew 90% in the quarter that ended in September, compared to the same period last year. Earlier this year, the company launched a new product that allows businesses to authenticate users on their apps without giving them a call.

The 11-year-old, Sequoia Capital-backed firm is also preparing to go public within the next two years, its co-founder and chief executive Alan Mamedi told TechCrunch in an interview early this year.

On Wednesday, Truecaller also announced it has appointed Fredrik Kjell as its new Chief Operating Officer. Kjell previously served as Chief Product Officer at Kindred Group, an online gambling company.

“With Fredrik’s strong operational background from previous consumer companies, and vast experience in a large publicly traded company, we believe he will be a great addition to the company and the global executive team. We’re on an exciting journey to take Truecaller to the next level, and this is a great step towards it,” said Mamedi in a statement.


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Elvie adds a non-electric breast pump and cups to its growing femtech portfolio


Femtech hardware maker Elvie has added a softer, hands-free breast pump that uses natural suction to its portfolio two years after launching its debut ‘next-gen’ connected breast pump.

The Elvie Curve is described as “a wearable, silicone breast pump that allows for gentle hands-free expression when feeding or pumping from the other breast — or to express full breasts” — suggesting the UK-based startup intends for it to supplement the more expensive (and electronic) Elvie Pump.

The Elvie Curve is priced at RRP £49.99 vs around £250 for the Pump. The Pump is also slightly more capacious, holding up to 5 oz of milk compared to up to 4 oz for the Curve. The Curve is similarly designed to sit discreetly inside a bra.

As the Curve uses natural suction there’s no batteries (nor connectivity) involved. But Elvie says a valve lets the user control the suction strength — for a comfortable, low effort experience.

The startup has launched another new (non-connected) device today, called the Elvie Catch (RRP £29.99). This consists of a set of two slip-proof milk collection cups to prevent leaks, also designed to fit neatly inside a bra.

Elvie says the cups can be used “during feeding, pumping or on the go”.

“Unlike many other breast shells and nipple pads, Elvie Catch sits securely in a bra to prevent leaks and is reusable, collecting up to 1 oz of breastmilk per cup so nothing goes to waste,” it adds in a press release.

Last year the London-based startup raised a $42M Series B funding round, led by IPGL, which it said would be used to support the release of four additional women’s health products. (The company’s debut product was a connected pelvic floor exerciser, which it continues to sell as the Elvie Trainer.)

Commenting on its freshly expanded portfolio in a statement, CEO and co-founder, Tania Boler, said: “Elvie Curve and Elvie Catch mark the next steps in Elvie’s mission to modernise breastfeeding and pumping products so they fit into the lives of real, modern-day mums.

“We launched the silent, wireless and wearable Elvie Pump two years ago to make pumping a hands-free experience that empowers mums to pump on their own terms. But we know that the challenges of breastfeeding go beyond pumping.

“Breast milk is liquid gold, so these products are designed to make the most of every last drop – as well as fitting seamlessly (and discreetly) into the lives of mums, like all Elvie products!”

Both new products are slated as available to buy from today in the UK and the US via Elvie’s website.


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Turn Off Desktop Bottom Right & Action Center Notifications In Windows 10


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Are you fed up with the frequent banner notifications from apps on the Windows 10 desktop? Want to turn off all notifications or notifications only for apps that annoy you the most? In this guide, we will see how to do just that. Notifications are a great way for apps to keep users informed. However, […]

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Facebook says it will ban QAnon across its platforms


Facebook expanded a ban on QAnon-related content on its various social platforms Tuesday, deepening a previous prohibition on QAnon-related groups that had “discussed potential violence,” according to the company.

Today’s move by Facebook to not only ban violent QAnon content but “any Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts representing QAnon” is an escalation by the social giant to clean its platform ahead of an increasingly contentious election.

QAnon is a sprawling set of interwoven pro-Trump conspiracy theories that has taken root inside swaths of the American electorate. Its more extreme adherents have been charged with terrorism after acting out in violent and dangerous ways, spurred on by their adherence to the unusual and often incoherent belief system. BuzzFeed News recently decided to call QAnon a “collective delusion,” another apt title for the theory’s inane, fatuous and dangerous beliefs.

Facebook’s effort to rein in QAnon is helpful, but likely too late. Over the course of the last year, QAnon swelled from a fringe conspiracy theory into a shockingly mainstream political belief system — one that even has its own Congressional candidates. That growth was powered by social networks inherently designed to connect like-minded people to one another, a feature that has been found time and time again to spread misinformation and usher users toward increasingly radical beliefs.

In July, Twitter took action of its own against QAnon, citing concerns about “offline harm.” The company downranked QAnon content, removing it from trending pages and algorithmic suggestions. Twitter’s policy change, like Facebook’s previous one, stopped short of banning the content outright but did move to contain its spread.

Other companies, like Alphabet’s YouTube product, have come under similar censure by external observers. (YouTube says it reworked its algorithm to better filter out the darker shores of its content mix, but the results of that experiment are far from conclusive.)

Social platforms like Facebook and Twitter have also made changes to their rules after being confronted with a willfully mendacious administration ahead of an election, about which the same administration has propagated lies and disinformation about voting security and the virus that has killed more than 200,000 Americans. The pairs’ work to limit those two particularly risky strains of misinformation is worthy, but by taking a reactive posture instead of a proactive one most of those policy choices have also come too late to control the viral spread of dangerous content.

Facebook’s new rule comes into force today, with the company saying in a release that it is now “removing content accordingly,” but that the effort to purge QAnon “will take time.”

What drove the change at Facebook? According to the company, after it yanked violent QAnon material, it saw “other QAnon content tied to different forms of real world harm, including recent claims that the west coast wildfires were started by certain groups.” In Oregon, where forest fires recently raged, misinformation on the Facebook platform led to misinformed state residents who believed that antifa — a term applied to those opposed to fascism as an unironic pejorative — were torching the state, set up illegal roadblocks.

How effective Facebook will be at clearing QAnon-related content from its various platforms is not clear today, but will be something that we’ll track.


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TOP 4 MOST USER-FRIENDLY SPORTS APPS


You might be late getting your NFL fantasy draft going. Or It might be the fact that you realize you need more information and better tools to defeat your DFS foes. Heck, maybe you have started dabbling in sports betting, now that it’s legal in most states. The point is if you are neck-deep in […]

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Twitter tests a new way to find accounts to follow


Twitter is testing a new way to follow accounts. The company announced today it’s rolling out a new feature, “Suggested Follows,” that will pop up a list of other accounts you may want to follow on the profile page of someone you had just followed. The feature will be tested on Android devices, for the time being.

The feature offers a tweak to how following currently works on mobile. At present, when you tap “Follow” on a user’s profile page, you’re presented with a small list of suggested accounts you may also want to follow.

Twitter explains that its accounts suggestions are based on a number of factors, and are often personalized. But in the case of suggested follows, it uses algorithms to determine what accounts may be related to the profile you’ve just visited, or if people who follow that user tend to follow certain other users.

That’s why, for example, when you follow someone whose profiles notes they work at a particular company, the Suggested follows may then include others who also work there. Or why when you follow a celebrity of some sort, you may be presented with other high-profile accounts as suggestions.

Before, however, you would have to tap on the suggestions one by one if you wanted to follow them. Twitter’s new test instead, groups a larger number of suggestions that you can follow with just one tap. You can then opt to remove those accounts you may not want to follow after first adding the full group.

This could make it easier for users to gain follows, if their account is related somehow to another account that’s seeing a high number of follows. It could also help Twitter newcomers build out their networks, while helping existing users expand their own.

Some Twitter users may have already seen the feature in action, before today.

Twitter says the test is taking place on Android. The company didn’t note if or when the feature would expand to iOS.

 


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Arm CEO Simon Segars discusses AI, data centers, getting acquired by Nvidia and more


Nvidia is in the process of acquiring chip designer Arm for $40 billion. Coincidentally, both companies are also holding their respective developer conferences this week. After he finished his keynote at the Arm DevSummit, I sat down with Arm CEO Simon Segars to talk about the acquisition and what it means for the company.

Segars noted that the two companies started talking in earnest around May 2020, though at first, only a small group of executives was involved. Nvidia, he said, was really the first suitor to make a real play for the company — with the exception of SoftBank, of course, which took Arm private back in 2016 — and combining the two companies, he believes, simply makes a lot of sense at this point in time.

“They’ve had a meteoric rise. They’ve been building up to that,” Segars said. “So it just made a lot of sense with where they are at, where we are at and thinking about the future of AI and how it’s going to go everywhere and how that necessitates much more sophisticated hardware — and a much more sophisticated software environment on which developers can build products. The combination of the two makes a lot of sense in this moment.”

The data center market, where Nvidia, too, is already a major player, is also an area where Arm has heavily focused in recent years. And while it goes up against the likes of Intel, Segars is optimistic. “We’re not in it to be a bit player,” he said. “Our goal is to get a material market share and I think the proof to the pudding is there.”

He also expects that in a few years, we’ll see Arm-powered servers available on all of the major clouds. Right now, AWS is ahead in this game with its custom-built Gravitron processors. Microsoft and Google do not currently offer Arm-based servers.

“With each passing day, more and more of the software infrastructure that’s required for the cloud is getting ported over and optimized for Arm. So it becomes a more and more compelling proposition for sure,” he said, and cited both performance and energy efficiency as reasons for cloud providers to use Arm chips.

Another interesting aspect of the deal is that we may just see Arm sell some of Nvidia’s IP as well. That would be a big change — and a first — for Nvidia, but Segars believes it makes a lot of sense to do so.

“It may be that there is something in the portfolio of Nvidia that they currently sell as a chip that we may look at and go, ‘you know, what if we package that up as an IP product, without modifying it? There’s a market for that.’ Or it may be that there’s a thing in here where if we take that and combine it with something else that we were doing, we can make a better product or expand the market for the technology. I think it’s going to be more of the latter than it is the former because we design all our products to be delivered as IP.”

And while he acknowledged that Nvidia and Arm still face some regulatory hurdles, he believes the deal will be pro-competitive in the end — and that the regulators will see it the same way.

He does not believe, by the way, that the company will face any issues with Chinese companies not being able to license Arm’s designs because of export restrictions, something a lot of people were worried about when the deal was first announced.

“Export control of a product is all about where was it designed and who designed it,” he said. “And of course, just because your parent company changes, doesn’t change those fundamental properties of the underlying product. So we analyze all our products and look at how much U.S. content is in there, to what extent are our products subject to U.S. export control, U.K. export control, other export control regimes? It’s a full-time piece of work to make sure we stay on top of that.”

Here are some excerpts from our 30-minute conversation:

TechCrunch: Walk me through how that deal came about, actually, kind of what was the timeline for you?

Simon Segars: I think probably around May, June time was when it really kicked off. We started having some early discussions. And then, as these things progress, you suddenly kind of hit the ‘Okay, now let’s go.’ We signed a sort of first agreement to actually go into due diligence and then it really took off. It went from a few meetings, a bit of negotiation, to suddenly heads down and a broader set of people — but still a relatively small number of people involved, answering questions. We started doing due diligence documents, just the mountain of stuff that you go through and you end up with a document. [Segars shows a print-out of the contract, which is about the size of two phone books.]

You must have had suitors before this. What made you decide to go ahead with this deal this time around?

Well, to be honest, in Arm’s history, there’s been a lot of rumors about people wanting to acquire Arm, but really until SoftBank in 2016, nobody ever got serious. I can’t think of a case where somebody actually said, ‘come on, we want to try and negotiate a deal here.’ And so it’s been four years under SoftBank’s ownership and that’s been really good because we’ve been able to do what we said we were going to do around investing much more aggressively in the technology. We’ve had a relationship with Nvidia for a long time. [Rene Haas, Arm’s president of its Intellectual Property Group, who previously worked at Nvidia] has had a relationship with [Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang] for a long time. They’ve had a meteoric rise. They’ve been building up to that. So it just made a lot of sense with where they are at, where we are at and thinking about the future of AI and how it’s going to go everywhere and how that necessitates much more sophisticated hardware — and a much more sophisticated software environment on which developers can build products. The combination of the two makes a lot of sense in this moment.

How does it change the trajectory you were on before for Arm?


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Trump breaks platform rules again with false claim that COVID-19 is ‘far less lethal’ than the flu


Facebook and Twitter took action against a post from President Trump Tuesday that claimed that COVID-19 is “far less lethal” than the flu. Trump made the tweet and posted the same message to Facebook just hours after arriving back at the White House following a multi-day stay at Walter Reed medical center, where the president was treated after testing positive for COVID-19.

Facebook took down Trump’s post outright Tuesday, stating that it “[removes] incorrect information about the severity of COVID-19, and have now removed this post.” Twitter hid the tweet behind a warning saying that it broke the platform’s rules about spreading misleading or harmful COVID-19 misinformation.

“We placed a public interest notice on this Tweet for violating our COVID-19 Misleading Information Policy by making misleading health claims about COVID-19,” a Twitter spokesperson said.

Taking down one of the president’s posts is rare but it wasn’t a first for Facebook. In August, Facebook removed a video Trump shared in which he claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19. The clip originally aired on Fox News.

On twitter, Trump’s tweet will have “significantly limited” engagement, meaning that it can’t be retweeted without quoting, liked or replied to, but it will remain up because it’s in the public interest. By the time Twitter took action on the tweet it had more than 59,000 retweets and 186,000 likes.

Facebook and Twitter both created new policies to address the spread of pandemic-related misinformation earlier this year. In the pandemic’s earlier days, the false claim that COVID is comparable to the flu was a common refrain from Trump and his allies, who wished to downplay the severity of the virus. But after months of the virus raging through communities around the U.S., the claim that COVID-19 is like the flu is an even more glaring lie.

While much remains not understood about the virus, it can follow an aggressive and unpredictable trajectory in patients, attacking vital organs beyond the lungs and leaving people who contracted it with long-lasting health effects that are not yet thoroughly studied or understood. Trump’s own physician has said the president “may not be out of the woods yet” in his own fight with the virus.

In recent months, the president’s social media falsehoods had shifted more toward lies about the safety of vote-by-mail, the system many Americans will rely on to cast votes as the pandemic rages on.

But less than a day out of a multi-day stay at the hospital, where he was given supplemental oxygen and three experimental treatments, it’s clear Trump’s own diagnosis with the virus doesn’t mean he intends to treat with any seriousness at all the health threat that’s upended the economy and claimed more than 200,000 lives in the U.S.

Instead, Trump is poised to continue waging a political war against platforms like Twitter and Facebook — if the results of the election give him the chance. Trump has already expressed interest in dismantling Section 230, a key legal provision that protects platforms from liability for user-generated content.

He tweeted “REPEAL SECTION 230!!!” Tuesday after Twitter and Facebook took action against his posts saying the flu is worse than COVID-19.


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Daily Crunch: G Suite becomes Google Workspace


Google rebrands G Suite, Apple announces its next event date and John McAfee is arrested. This is your Daily Crunch for October 6, 2020.

The big story: G Suite becomes Google Workspace

To a large extent, Google Workspace is just a rebranding of G Suite, complete with a new set of (less distinctive) logos for Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs and Meet. But the company is also launching a number of new features.

For one thing, Google is (as previously announced) integrating Meet, Chat and Rooms across applications, with Gmail as the service where they really come together. Other features coming soon are the ability to collaborate on documents in Chats and a “smart chip” with contact details and suggested actions that appear when you @mention someone in a document.

Pricing remains largely the same, although there’s now an $18 per user per month Business Plus plan with additional security features and compliance tools.

The tech giants

Apple will announce the next iPhone on October 13 — Apple just sent out invites for its upcoming hardware event, all but confirming the arrival of the next iPhone.

Facebook’s Portal adds support for Netflix, Zoom and other features — The company will also introduce easier ways to launch Netflix and other video streaming apps via one-touch buttons on its new remote.

Instagram’s 10th birthday release introduces a Stories Map, custom icons and more — There’s even a selection of custom app icons for those who have recently been inspired to redesign their home screen.

Startups, funding and venture capital

SpaceX awarded contract to help develop US missile-tracking satellite network — The contract covers creation and delivery of “space vehicles” (actual satellites) that will form a constellation offering global coverage of advance missile warning and tracking.

Salesforce Ventures launches $100M Impact Fund to invest in cloud startups with social mission — Focus areas include education and reskilling, climate action, diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as providing tech for nonprofits and foundations.

Ÿnsect, the makers of the world’s most expensive bug farm, raises another $224 million — The team hopes to provide insect protein for things like fish food and fertilizer.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Inside Root’s IPO filing — As insurtech booms, Root looks to take advantage of a warm market and enthusiastic investors.

To fill funding gaps, VCs boost efforts to find India’s standout early-stage startups — Blume Ventures’ Karthik Reddy says, “There’s an artificial skew toward unicorns.”

A quick peek into Opendoor’s financial results — Opendoor’s 2020 results are not stellar.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

John McAfee arrested after DOJ indicts crypto millionaire for tax evasion — The cybersecurity entrepreneur and crypto personality’s wild ride could be coming to an end after he was arrested in Spain and now faces extradition to the U.S.

Trump is already breaking platform rules again with false claim that COVID-19 is ‘far less lethal’ than the flu — Facebook took down Trump’s post, while Twitter hid it behind a warning.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.


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Google’s new logos are bad


Google really whiffed with the new logos for its “reimagination” of G Suite as Google Workspace, replacing icons that are familiar, recognizable, and in Gmail’s case iconic if you will, with little rainbow blobs that everyone will now struggle to tell apart in their tabs. Companies always talk loud and long about their design language and choices, so as an antidote I thought I’d just explain why these new ones are bad and probably won’t last.

First I should say that I understand Google’s intent here, to unify the visual language of the various apps in its suite. That can be important, especially with a company like Google, which abandons apps, services, design languages, and other things like ballast out of a sinking hot air balloon (a remarkably apt comparison, in fact).

We’ve seen so many Google icon languages over the years that it’s hard to bring oneself to care about new ones. To paraphrase Sun Tzu, if you wait long enough by the river, the bodies of your favorite Google products will float by. Better not to get attached.

But sometimes they do something so senseless that it is incumbent upon anyone who cares at all to throw the company’s justification in its face and tell them they blew it; The last time I cared enough was with Google Reader. Since I and a hundred million other people will have to stare at these ugly new icons all day until they retire them, maybe making a little noise will accelerate that timeline a bit.

Sorry if I let myself prose a bit here, but I consider it an antidote to the endless design stories these almost without exception ill-advised redesigns always come with. I’ll limit discussion of how these icons go wrong to three general ways: color, shape, and brand.

Color

Color is one of the first things you notice about something, and you can recognize colors easily even in your peripheral vision. So having a distinct color is important to type and design in lots of ways. Why do you think companies go so crazy about all those different shades of blue?

That’s part of why the icons of the most popular Google apps are so easily distinguished. Gmail’s red color goes back a decade and more, and Calendar’s blue is pretty old as well. The teal of Meet probably should have just stayed green, like its predecessor Hangouts, but it’s at least somewhat distinct. Likewise Keep (remember Keep?) and a handful of other lesser actors. More importantly, they’re solid — except for a few that were better for their colors, like Maps, before its icon got assassinated.

There are two problems with the colors of the new icons. First is that they don’t really have colors. They all have all the colors, which just right off the bat makes it harder to tell them apart at a glance. Remember, you’re never going to see this big like in the image above. More often they’ll be more this size:

Maybe even smaller. And never that close. I don’t know about you, but I can’t tell them apart when I’m not looking directly at them. What exactly are you looking for? They all have every color, and not even in the same order or direction — you see how some are red, yellow, green, blue and one is red, yellow, blue, green? Three (with Gmail) clockwise and two anti-clockwise, too. Sounds unimportant but your eye picks up on stuff like that, but maybe just enough that you’re more confused. Maybe these would have been better if they all started with red in the top left or something, and cycled through. They don’t randomize the order of the colors in the main Google logo, right? Ultimately these little blobs just resemble toys or crunched up candy wrappers. At best it’s plaid, and that’s Slack territory.

At first I thought the little red triangular tabs were a nice visual indicator, but somehow they messed that up too. Each icon should have the tab in a different corner, but Calendar and Drive both have it on the bottom right. They’re different kinds of triangles, I suppose — that’s a freebie from trigonometry.

You’ll also notice that the icons have a sort of lopsided weight. That’s because against a light background, different colors have different visual salience. Darker colors pop more against a white background than yellow or the tiny bit of red, making the icons seem to have heavy “L” aspects to them, on the left in Gmail and Calendar, bottom left in Drive and Meet, bottom right in Docs. But in an inactive tab, the light color will be more salient, and those L’s will seem to be on the other sides.

Shape

This is a good segue into the shape problems, because the perceived shape of these icons will change depending on the background. The original icons solved this by having a solid shape unique to them, and the background didn’t really leak through. You have to be real careful about transparent parts of your design — positive and negative space and all that. If you surrender any part of your logo to the background, you’re at the whim of whatever UI or theme the user has chosen. Will these logos look good with a hole in the middle looking onto a dark grey inactive tab? Or will the hole be filled in with white, making it positive space when on a dark background and negative when on white?

Anyhow the issue with these icons is that their shapes are bad. They’re all hollow, and four of them are rectangular if you include Gmail’s negative space (and we do — Google taught us to). The general shape of a container is a perfectly good one, but at a glance four of them are basically just angular O’s. Do you want the tallish O, the pointy one, or one of the two square O’s with slightly different color patterns? At a distance, who can tell? They only now resemble the thing they’re supposed do if you look really closely.

Now that I think of it, those shapes really scream Office and Bing too, don’t they? Not great!

While we’re at it, the thin type in the Calendar’s open space is pretty anemic compared with the big thick border, right? Maybe they should have gone with bold.

And last, the overlapping colors make for trouble. For one thing it makes the Drive logo look like a biohazard symbol. But it adds a lot of complexity that’s hard to follow at a small scale. The original Drive logo had three colors, to be sure, and a little drop shadow so you’d see it was a Moebius strip implying infinity and not just a triangle (that’s gone too — so why keep the triangle?) — but the colors set each other off: Blue and yellow make green, two primaries and their secondary.

The new ones have all three primaries, one secondary, and two tertiary (if you count darkness as a color). They don’t help the shapes exist in any identifiable way. Are you looking through them? That doesn’t seem right. They kind of fold, but how? Are the strips these are made of twisting? I don’t think so. The shapes aren’t things — they’re just arrangements, suggestions of the things they once were, removed one step too far.

Brand

Google’s no stranger to throwing value in the trash. But you’d think that sometimes they’d recognize when they have a good thing going. The Gmail logo was a good thing. I have to say I preferred the old angular one when they switched to the rounded icon some years back, but it’s grown on me. The natural “M” shape of a the envelope is emphasized so well, and the red-and-white color is so instantly recognizable and readable — this is the kind of logo you hold onto for a long, long time. Or not!

The problem here is that now Gmail, which has essentially operated as its own, completely invincible brand for more than a decade (which is eons in tech, let alone tech logos), has been put on equal footing with other services that aren’t as trusted or as widely used.

Now Gmail is just another rainbow shape in a sea of very similar rainbow shapes, which tells the user “this service isn’t special to us. This is not the service that has worked so well for you, for so long. This is just one finger on the hand of an internet giant. And now you can never see one without thinking of the other.”

Same for all the rest of these little color wheels: You’ll never forget that they’re all part of the same apparatus that knows everything you search for, every site you visit, and now, everything you do at work. Oh, they’re very polite about it. But make no mistake, the homogeneous branding (for all its color heterogeneity) is the prelude to a brand crunch in which you are no longer just a Gmail user, you’re in Google’s house, all day, every day.

“This is the moment in which we break free from defining the structure and the role of our offerings in terms that were invented by somebody else in a very different era,” Google VP Javier Soltero told Fast Company.

The message is clear: Out with the old — the things that built your trust; and in with the new — the things that capitalize on your trust.


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Cambridge Analytica sought to use Facebook data to predict partisanship for voter targeting, UK investigation confirms


The UK’s data watchdog has sent a letter to parliament In lieu of a final report on a wide-ranging investigation into online political advertising which saw it raid the offices of Cambridge Analytica in 2018 after it emerged that the disgraced (and now defunct) data company had improperly acquired data on millions of Facebook users.

In the letter the regulator says the material that it reviewed included:

  • 42 laptops and computers;
  • 700 TB of data;
  • 31 servers;
  • over 300,000 documents; and
  • a wide range of material in paper form and from cloud storage devices

“The sheer volume of material seized meant that we were presented with a digital ‘haystack’ of information in various states and locations and this has prolonged the work involved in reviewing and assessing the material to help us understand what happened. However, by piecing together the timeline of events we were able to get a thorough evidential insight into what was likely to have taken place,” it writes before going on to sketch its understanding of how Cambridge Analytica/SCL was operating at the time it paid a Cambridge University academic, Dr Aleksandr Kogan, to improperly procure and process millions of Facebook users’ data with the intention of targeting US voters with ads.

“The conclusion of this work demonstrated that SCL were aggregating datasets from several commercial sources to make predictions on personal data for political alliance purposes,” the ICO writes. “For example, we recovered data which included Voter files (the US version of the Electoral Register), Consumer Data Sets, Social Media and Intelligence Data Sets that appeared to come from the following companies: Labels & Lists, InfoGroup, Aristotle, Magellan, Acxiom and Experian. Some data has the appearance of similar US voter data that has been subject to known cyber breaches and has been available on-line.”

The former CEO of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix — who was last month banned from running a company for seven years, after he signed a disqualification undertaking with the UK insolvency service — previously told the UK parliament that CA/SCL had acquired the bulk of the data it was using to build psychographic profiles of voters from major commercial data brokers such as Acxiom, Experian and Infogroup.

Per the ICO’s assessment, CA/SCL had been over-egging the depth of its people profiling — with the regulator saying it did not find evidence to back up claims in its marketing material that it had “5,000+ data points per individual on 230 million adult Americans”.

“Based on what we found it appears that this may have been an exaggeration,” it writes.

The ICO was satisfied that the Facebook data transferred to CA/SCL by Dr Kogan’s company was incorporated into a pre-existing larger database it already held — containing “voter file, demographic and consumer data for US individuals”.

“The data points collected by GSR [Dr Kogan’s company] with respect to [Facebook app] survey users and their Facebook ‘friends’ was specifically selected to enable a ‘matching’ process against pre-existing SCL databases,” it writes, explaining its understanding of how CA/SCL used the improperly obtained Facebook data. “Matching took place using file sharing platforms and by reference to name, date of birth and location – with SCL’s existing datafiles being ‘enriched’ and supplemented by GSR’s data about those same individuals – and this matched information being passed back into SCL systems.

“This resulted for example information including scores for voting frequency, whether likely republican or democrat, voting consistency, and a profile which predicted personality traits matched to information such as voter ID, name, address, age, and other commercial data.”

The investigation also confirmed CA/SCL applied AI techniques to the data to try to predict partisanship or other significant attributes of voters for the purpose of more effectively targeting them with political messaging. Although it says it was unable to confirm whether such techniques were used in specific campaigns.

“Through such processes the relevant US voter GSR data (about approx. 30 million individuals) was then further analysed using machine learning algorithms to create additional ‘predicted’ scores relating to partisanship and other criteria which were then applied to all the individuals in the database. Some of these focussed on likes as wide ranging as “gay rights”, “Obama the worst president in US history”, “Re-elect President Obama in 2012”, “the Bible” and “National Rifle Association”,” it writes.

“These scores were used to identify clusters of similar individuals who could be potentially targeted with advertising relating to political campaigns. This targeted advertising was ultimately likely the final purpose of the data gathering but whether or which specific data from GSR was then used in any specific part of campaign has not been possible to determine from the digital evidence reviewed. There is however evidence recovered that suggests that similar approaches and models based on the predicted personality traits and other measures were used with Republican National Committee (RNC) data.”

On CA’s/SCL’s data modelling methods the ICO concludes that the company was mainly using “well recognised processes using commonly available technology”.

“For example, open source data science libraries such as ‘scikit’ were downloaded by SCL – containing well established, widely used algorithms for data visualisation, analysis and predictive modelling. It was these third-party libraries which formed the majority of SCL’s data science activities which were observed by the ICO,” it writes. “Using these libraries, SCL tested multiple different machine learning model architectures, activation functions and optimisers (all of which come pre-developed within the third-party libraries) to determine which combinations produced the most accurate predictions on any given dataset. We understand this procedure is well established within the wider data science community, and in our view does not show any proprietary technology, or processes, within SCL’s work.”

The regulator further notes there are ongoing questions over the efficacy of such modelling for predicting individuals’ attributes — highlighting signs of internal scepticism over the approach.

“Through the ICO’s analysis of internal company communications, the investigation identified there was a degree of scepticism within SCL as to the accuracy or reliability of the processing being undertaken. There appeared to be concern internally about the external messaging when set against the reality of their processing,” it notes.

The ICO’s investigation also did not find evidence that the Facebook data that Kogan sold to Cambridge Analytica was used for political campaigning associated with the UK’s Brexit Referendum. “Our view on review of the evidence is that the data from GSR could not have been used in the Brexit Referendum as the data shared with SCL/Cambridge Analytica by Dr Kogan related to US registered voters,” it writes.

A lack of evidence that UK Facebook users’ data had been used for the political targeting was Facebook’s contention when it challenged the ICO’s £500k penalty for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The regulator eventually settled with Facebook last year — although the company did not admit liability.

The ICO’s letter also discusses the Canada-based data company AIQ, which was linked to CA/SCL, and did play a key role in the UK’s Brexit referendum — as it was used by several ‘Leave’ campaigns to target ads at UK voters via Facebook.

“There was a range of evidence that demonstrated a very close relationship between AIQ and SCL (such as evidence that described AIQ as the Canadian branch of SCL and evidence that Facebook invoices to AIQ for advertising were paid directly by SCL). However, AIQ has consistently denied having a closer relationship beyond that between a software developer and their client. Mr Silvester (a director/owner of AIQ) has stated that in 2014 SCL ‘asked us to create SCL Canada but we declined’,” the ICO writes.

The regulator says it investigated whether AIQ had used the same datasets to target adverts at UK voters on behalf of three different ‘Leave’ campaigns: Vote Leave, BeLeave, the DUP and Veterans for Britain — but it did not find evidence that this occurred.

“Initial information provided by Facebook had suggested that there were three audiences that were used for targeting by both Vote Leave and BeLeave. However, AIQ subsequently clarified that this was an admin error made by a junior member of staff while creating the BeLeave account. The error was corrected the following day and no information from those campaigns was disseminated through Facebook in the form of targeted ads,” it writes.

While the ICO’s letter-to-parliament in lieu of a more formal final report may appear to be something of an anticlimax to a long-running data misuse scandal, the regulator reiterates concerns over what the letter couches as “systemic vulnerabilities in our democratic systems”.

Although information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, does not further flesh out her earlier publicly stated concern that democracy is being disrupted by big data.

Instead the letter notes the ICO has provided “advice and guidance” with the aim of achieving better future compliance with the rules to several unnamed organisations on the remain and the leave side of the UK’s referendum.

“My audit teams have also concluded audits of data protection compliance at 14 organisations associated with the original investigation, including: the main political parties, the main credit reference agencies and major data brokers, as well as Cambridge University’s Psychometrics Centre. We have made significant recommendations for changes to comply with data protection legislation,” she adds.

The detail of those “significant” recommendations are pending reports of the ICO’s audits of the main political parties; the main credit reference agencies and major data brokers; and Cambridge University Psychometrics Centre — which the ICO notes will be published “shortly”.

One more interesting detail from the ICO’s CA/SCL investigation is it appears the company had been planning to relocate its data offshore to avoid regulatory scrutiny — presumably as the media furore around the Facebook data scandal cast a spotlight on its processes.

“We also identified evidence that in its latter stages SCL /CA was drawing up plans to relocate its data offshore to avoid regulatory scrutiny by ICO. We have followed up their complex company structure with overseas counterparts and have concluded that while plans were drawn up, the company was unable to put them into effect before it ceased trading,” is the regulator’s conclusion on that.

On the Facebook data-set itself, the ICO says its investigation found data “in a variety of locations, with little thought for effective security measures”. “We found that individuals of interest to the investigation held data on various Gmail accounts,” it notes. “Data was also found in servers and appeared to have been shared with a range of parties, for example there was evidence that data had been shared with staff at SCL/CA, Eunoia Technologies Inc [CA whistleblower Chris Wylie‘s company], the University of Cambridge and the University of Toronto.”

The letter also reveals that a number of unnamed “senior figures” associated with the scandal have continued to refuse to cooperate with the ICO’s investigation. “Several senior figures have continued to maintain their silence and have declined to be interviewed,” it notes.   


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Standing by developers through Google v. Oracle


The Supreme Court will hear arguments tomorrow in Google v. Oracle. This case raises a fundamental question for software developers and the open-source community: Whether copyright may prevent developers from using software’s functional interfaces — known as APIs — to advance innovation in software. The court should say no — free and open APIs protect innovation, competition and job mobility for software developers in America.

When we use an interface, we don’t need to understand (or care) about how the function on the other side of the interface is performed. It just works. When you sit down at your computer, the QWERTY keyboard allows you to rapidly put words on the screen. When you submit an online payment to a vendor, you are certain the funds will appear in the vendor’s account. It just works.

In the software world, interfaces between software programs are called “application programming interfaces” or APIs. APIs date back to the 1950s and allow developers to write programs that reuse other program functionality without knowing how that functionality is performed. If your program needs to sort a list, you could have it use a sorting program’s API to sort the list for your program. It just works.

Developers have historically used software interfaces free of copyright concerns, and this freedom has accelerated innovation, software interoperation and developer job mobility. Developers using existing APIs save time and effort, allowing those savings to be refocused on new ideas. Developers can also reimplement APIs from one software platform to others, enabling innovation to flow freely across software platforms.

Importantly, reusing APIs gives developers job portability, since knowledge of one set of APIs is more applicable cross-industry. The upcoming Google v. Oracle decision could change this, harming developers, open-source software and the entire software industry.

Google v. Oracle and the platform API bargain

Google v. Oracle is the culmination of a decade-long dispute. Back in 2010, Oracle sued Google, arguing that Google’s Android operating system infringed Oracle’s rights in Java. After ten years, the dispute now boils down to whether Google’s reuse of Java APIs in Android was copyright infringement.

Prior to this case, most everyone assumed that copyright did not cover the use of functional software like APIs. Under that assumption, competing platforms’ API reimplementation allowed developers to build new yet familiar things according to the API bargain: Everyone could use the API to build applications and platforms that interoperate with each other. Adhering to the API made things “just work.”

But if the Google v. Oracle decision indicates that API reimplementation requires copyright permission, the bargain falls apart. Nothing “just works” unless platform makers say so; they now dictate rules for interoperability — charging developers huge prices for the platform or stopping rival, compatible platforms from being built.

Free and open APIs are essential for modern developers

If APIs are not free and open, platform creators can stop competing platforms from using compatible APIs. This lack of competition blocks platform innovation and harms developers who cannot as easily transfer their skills from project to project, job to job.

MySQL, Oracle’s popular database, reimplemented mSQL’s APIs so third-party applications for mSQL could be “ported easily” to MySQL. If copyright had restricted reimplementation of those APIs, adoption of MySQL, reusability of old mSQL programs and the expansion achieved by the “LAMP” stack would have been stifled, and the whole ecosystem would be poorer for it. This and other examples of API reimplementation — IBM’s BIOS, Windows and WINE, UNIX and Linux, Windows and WSL, .NET and Mono, have driven perhaps the most amazing innovation in human history, with open-source software becoming critical digital infrastructure for the world.

Similarly, a copyright block on API-compatible implementations puts developers at the mercy of platform makers say so — both for their skills and their programs. Once a program is written for a given set of APIs, that program is locked-in to the platform unless those APIs can also be used on other software platforms. And once a developer learns skills for how to use a given API, it’s much easier to reuse than retrain on APIs for another platform. If the platform creator decides to charge outrageous fees, or end platform support, the developer is stuck. For nondevelopers, imagine this: The QWERTY layout is copyrighted and the copyright owner decided to charge $1,000 dollars per keyboard. You would have a choice: Retrain your hands or pay up.

All software used by anyone was created by developers. We should give developers the right to freely reimplement APIs, as developer ability to shift applications and skills between software ecosystems benefits everyone — we all get better software to accomplish more.

I hope that the Supreme Court’s decision will pay heed to what developer experience has shown: Free and open APIs promote freedom, competition, innovation and collaboration in tech.


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