Google’s Career Certificate Fund is aimed at creating a sustainable model of support for American job seekers.
Google is providing online training for Americans through its new Google Career Certificate Fund.
Google announced on Thursday that it will launch a $100 million Google Career Certificates Fund in an effort to increase the wages of American workers. The fund, which was announced via video in tandem with the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, is anticipated to reach 20,000 people via Google Career Certificates.
Unlike Amazon’s free college program for employees, Google’s program is aimed at job seekers. This certification program provides online professional training in subjects spanning from IT support to data analytics on Coursera with the goal of getting more people into high-growth industries and positions. Financial nonprofit Social Finance will be in charge of distributing the funds from Google to other organizations like Merit America and Year Up.
The program is designed for students to pay zero upfront costs for the three to six-month courses, but Google certificate students are expected to repay program costs if they land a job that pays at least $40,000 annually. While the exact amount of the monthly payments was not shared in the announcement, Google said it will be low no-interest payments for Social Finance to reinvest in the program for additional participants.
Google’s initiative relates to President Biden’s larger push for access to education and higher-paying jobs. “The Biden administration is laser-focused on creating good-paying jobs for American workers, and it is especially important for us to come up with creative solutions that enable women and parents to fully participate in our economy,” said Raimondo.
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Amber Burton (@amberbburton) is a reporter at Protocol. Previously, she covered personal finance and diversity in business at The Wall Street Journal. She earned an M.S. in Strategic Communications from Columbia University and B.A. in English and Journalism from Wake Forest University. She lives in North Carolina.
Labor unions have successfully stopped plans for new Amazon delivery centers across the Bay Area. Now they’re trying to do the same in downtown San Francisco.
A number of municipalities in California have started to impose moratoriums on new delivery centers.
Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: [email protected]), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
Like most people living in big cities, San Francisco residents want free and fast delivery — the freer and the faster, the better. Amazon wants to do that for them. But the company is now facing major opposition to its plan to build a large, new fulfillment center in the Mission Bay neighborhood.
The unions that represent truckers and grocery workers see the plan for the 7th Street facility as a threat to their future.
The two groups (which include tens of thousands of workers in the Bay Area), alongside other labor activists in San Francisco, have persuaded one of the city’s most important local politicians to try to put a moratorium on the future 7th Street development, as well as any other package delivery facilities in the city. San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton introduced legislation on Feb. 15 that would set new interim zoning rules to put an 18-month pause on delivery facilities in the city, including the Amazon project.
While neither Amazon nor Walton’s office responded to repeated requests for comment, Jim Araby, the strategic campaigns director for the UFCW local, told Protocol that he’s confident the Board of Supervisors will support the legislation.
Amazon has historically been welcomed into communities for providing jobs and speedy package delivery, but a number of municipalities in California have started to impose moratoriums like the one proposed in San Francisco, often after the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union lobby for the proposal. Contra Costa County set a moratorium on all new fulfillment centers in December; the city of Hayward forbade Amazon from considering two sites there; and the San Jose City Council vetoed a proposed distribution center in November. Most of the moratoriums use similar language, ordering temporary pauses on all development and expansion of delivery centers while it’s determined whether they have a measurable impact on traffic and noise, light and emissions pollution.
Despite their critical rhetoric toward Amazon, the Teamsters are actually dependent on the company for much of the business their truckers perform. Amazon contracts with UPS for many of its deliveries, and UPS workers are unionized with the Teamsters. So, as Amazon package delivery grows, UPS gets more business from Amazon, which equals more business for Teamsters’ workers. “UPS had their most profitable year in company history last year, and they have the ability to take those profits and put it back in the profits of our members, and to buy electric trucks, those are all good things. So we are not against Amazon,” Doug Bloch, the representative for more than 100,000 teamsters in California and Nevada, said.
But Amazon is the nation’s second-largest employer, and most of the new jobs it continues to add are in warehousing and delivery. No Amazon employees are unionized, meaning that workers entering those career paths at Amazon don’t interact with or join the Teamsters or the UFCW. Union fights are ongoing in Bessemer, Alabama — where Amazon won an election last year and is now facing a redo because of its illegal interference — and in Staten Island, where two warehouses may soon face their first election.
The Teamsters also voted last year to make organizing Amazon workers a national priority (though they likely won’t try to form formal unions immediately), and the plan doesn’t just include opposing new facilities in California. The union is currently lobbying for warehouse-worker transparency bills in a number of states, including Washington.
Both the Teamsters and the UFCW, which employ thousands of San Franciscans between them, said they joined together to push for all of these prohibitions and moratoriums because they want to force Amazon to include and deal with unionized labor in the planned San Francisco location. “What we’ve made clear to the politicians is, if this project goes through, and it’s a big if, it should be built union, and everybody that works in there should have the opportunity to join together in a union,” Bloch said. He also said that this is just the beginning of planned continued opposition to the company’s development goals.
The proposed Amazon center would take over a site previously used for San Francisco’s recycling and solid-waste company, Recology, meaning that the area is already zoned for industrial use. The site is controversial not just for the union workers (most of the workers at the previous Recology site were unionized), but also for local residents who are invested in the project because Recology originally proposed using the site for affordable housing units.
“The Bay Area is not Alabama. We have union jobs here, we have union density in this area,” Araby said. “We are going to use all of our tools in our toolbox to have Amazon understand that they are going to have to deal with [organized] labor in the community.”
Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: [email protected]), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
In a fast-moving world, keeping abreast of developments has never been more important.
Chris Stokel-Walker is a freelance technology and culture journalist and author of “YouTubers: How YouTube Shook Up TV and Created a New Generation of Stars.” His work has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian and Wired.
The world of cloud computing has become ever more complicated as the world relies increasingly on the underlying technology that powers our key apps, services and products. Data drives our world, and will continue to define our future. Edge computing, the proliferation of 5G and the rise of AI and big data all require cloud computing at a scale never seen before.
That has created a need and an opportunity for IT professionals to learn about new, advanced technologies. “Cloudification is driving critical demand for a broad range of cloud skills, including DevOps, Migration Execution, Data Planning, Cloud Security and CSP optimization,” said Rob Rollinger, Director of Intel® Cloud.U at Intel. Gaining a specialization in these areas offers the opportunity for experts to promote their work, build a career and gain new experiences that may lead to new job opportunities.
Intel Partner University, exclusively available to Intel Partner Alliance members, helps professionals succeed in positioning and selling Intel products and solutions through industry-leading curriculum with specialized training paths and personalized training recommendations. Courses educate experts on core competencies around Intel products and enable partners to maximize their revenue and profit potential by creating the right offerings featuring Intel-based products and services.
The university curriculum covers five key areas: data center and cloud, IoT, client, networking and storage and programmable solutions. Each area includes all the basics, plus a variety of sub-topics to learn from, at no cost to Intel Partner Alliance members.
Recently, Intel launched the Cloud Fundamentals curriculum on Intel Partner University. “Cloud Fundamentals is designed to deliver a solid foundation of knowledge around key cloud concepts, technologies and usage while helping users understand how to unlock the value of the Intel technology in the cloud,” said Rollinger.
The Cloud Professional series — set to launch in early 2022 — will provide partners with the ability to specialize further, either on the technical or business side. “The new Cloud Professional Series provides a deeper understanding of the cloud and the technology that drives it while also introducing role-based specialization through the Cloud Technical Professional and Cloud Business Professional competencies,” said Rollinger.
In all, Intel Partner University offers hundreds of courses for professionals, all tailored to specific needs of people in and around the industry. What’s more, every program has been tested on Intel’s own technical and sales teams to ensure not a single thing is overlooked.
Partners receive digital badges which can be used to promote their skills to customers, as well as help them feel more confident in their skills and knowledge. It’s all to assist partners in growing their business. By utilizing the skills learned at Intel Partner University, professionals can better support customers before, during and after a sale — with those on the technical side gaining a deeper understanding of the technologies they use day-in and day-out.
The flexibility and personalization of the Partner University platform is one of its greatest strengths. When a partner first logs on to Intel Partner University, they are asked several questions about day-to-day job function, goals and areas of interest. Based on that information, their homepage displays personalized content to help achieve those targets. Partners can also pick and choose content a la carte, filtering courses by format, market segment, sales skills or solution — or any combination of the above.
Many of the courses are available in 15 or more languages, so partners can learn in whatever language they speak and wherever they are in the world via mobile learning.
This hands-on, state-of-the-art training on Intel products is just one of the many benefits of being a member of the Intel Partner Alliance. Alongside the advanced training and competencies, Intel Partners have access to:
The Intel Partner Alliance is a fast track to deeper knowledge and engagement with Intel’s core suite of products — and through that membership, enrollment in Intel Partner University is a way to become more knowledgeable about the tools and services partners use every day. To access all the benefits of being an Intel Partner, and to catch up with the latest developments in the world of cloud computing, make sure to join Intel Partner Alliance today.
Chris Stokel-Walker is a freelance technology and culture journalist and author of “YouTubers: How YouTube Shook Up TV and Created a New Generation of Stars.” His work has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian and Wired.
The unexpected death of a content moderation worker at Bilibili brings the plight of Chinese censors into focus.
Content moderation is critical to keep platforms running, but the individuals toiling away behind the screens are certainly not treated as essential workers.
Shen Lu covers China’s tech industry.
Content moderation is challenging, largely hidden work all over the globe. China’s tens of thousands of content moderators are no exception: They’re an invisible, overworked workforce who keep social apps from Douyin and WeChat to Bilibili and Weibo running. But unlike other overworked groups, such as gig delivery workers, their plight was nearly unknown to the public until the recent tragic death of a worker at one of China’s leading video platforms.
On Feb. 4, a 25-year-old content moderator for Bilibili died from a brain bleed. Screenshots floating online that his colleagues at Bilibili leaked to a tech blogger showed that he was asked to work extra shifts during the Lunar New Year, when almost the entire country’s workforce was on holiday. But Bilibili denied in an internal email he had worked overtime before his death, emphasizing he only worked regular eight-hour shifts the previous week.
Bilibili’s response to the unexpected death and ensuing public criticism was to hire 1,000 additional moderators to reduce individuals’ workloads, and to offer additional health screening and mental health counseling to the existing censorship workers.
The tragic death startled tens of millions of Chinese web users, sparking heated online discussions about the demanding nature of low-level work in Chinese tech companies, as well as the pervasiveness of censorship in China. The incident also prompted many former and current censors for various Chinese internet platforms to come out and talk about their own grueling experiences.
Content moderation is critical to keep platforms running, but the individuals toiling away behind the screens are certainly not treated as essential workers. One former Bilibili content moderator, using the pseudonym Chen Rou, told Chinese news aggregator Sohu that cameras are installed throughout the office to monitor them 24/7, and team leaders micromanage workers’ lunch breaks. The worst part, they added, is the endless overtime and performance assessments: If a content moderator wishes to pass monthly assessments, they must spend no more than 24 seconds screening each video clip, and must screen at least 1,500 clips per day. If a new hire missed the target too often, they’d be fired during their six-month probation period. “To save their jobs, new hires often have to clock in voluntary hours to make up for the set quota,” the worker said.
The salaries don’t match the stress of the job, Chen added, telling Sohu that a front-line content moderator’s monthly take-home pay after taxes is about 4,000 RMB ($631). In comparison, the 2021 average monthly base salary for private sector workers in Shanghai was 8,528 RMB ($1,348). And if someone fails the monthly exam, they’ll only get half that pay, another pseudonymous former Bilibili content moderator, Zhou Zhuo, said. This wage has barely budged from what a content moderator was paid 10 years ago, according to Liu Lipeng, who worked as an internet censor and a content quality manager at several Chinese tech companies for nearly 10 years.
Just like other tech jobs in China, logging in overtime is commonplace. White-collar tech workers are theoretically no longer held to the so-called “996” schedule, but content moderators face an even more exhausting schedule. According to the former Bilibili censorship workers, they had to work a 12-hour shift every other day. On top of that, they were required to provide support from home during their off hours, and if their shifts ran long by less than two hours, there was no overtime pay for them. “To meet their KPIs, some people might log in an extra six to eight hours,” Zhou told Sohu.
Content moderation jobs are some of the most labor-intensive at any social platform in any country. Censorship workers at Chinese companies describe an unforgiving work environment much similar to what their peers at U.S. firms such as Facebook have reported: It’s an overly taxing, yet low-paying, job that leaves them barely any breaks throughout a long shift. The workers are heavily exposed to spam, crime, abuse, violence and more. In the U.S., a former content moderator in 2018 sued Meta (then Facebook), alleging that she developed PTSD on the job, resulting in Facebook paying $52 million in a class-action settlement.
But in China, the stakes are much higher. Not only do moderators have to handle objectionable content, but also they have to contend with outsized demand for political censorship. Workplace trauma is rarely discussed in public, even though Chinese content moderators arguably work under more extreme circumstances than their peers globally. In the U.S., censors missing something major could result in a bad PR cycle and maybe a Congressional hearing. In China, the consequences are more grave: The entire platform could be immediately shut down.
Even though many Chinese web users self-censor, and political speech comprises only a tiny part of deleted online content, “company executives are always on edge,” a former ByteDance tech worker told Protocol.
To mitigate risk, social platforms have developed AI-powered tools to make content moderators’ work more efficient. Still, they rely heavily on armies of censors to manually screen everything that’s posted online and, in the case of videos, before it goes live.
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, employs the biggest number of content moderators among Chinese tech companies by far: It has about 20,000 contract and in-house censors.
Not every Chinese tech company is as deep-pocketed as ByteDance, for sure. Bilibili, the firm at the center of the current controversy, revealed in a prospectus submitted to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that by the end of 2020, it employed 2,413 moderators. That was 28% of its total workforce at the time. In comparison, Meta has more than 15,000 content moderators handling content on its platforms, though many are employed by contracting firms.
Like Meta and other U.S. social media platforms, Chinese tech companies also are increasingly outsourcing their content moderator workers to lower costs. Contract content moderation firms in the past five years have sprung up in second- or third-tier Chinese cities such as Jinan, Tianjin, Chengdu and Xi’an. To help expand their content moderation forces, the companies also lowered the education requirement for the workers. Liu told Protocol that when he was first hired as a content moderator for Weibo in 2011, all the new hires had college degrees. Today, it’s common for graduates of vocational schools or even high schools to get those jobs, he said.
“To some degree, a Chinese tech company’s censorship mechanism determines the kind of social media product they can offer,” said Liu. “ByteDance is able to achieve a host of features in their products because of the size of their content moderation team.”
Shen Lu covers China’s tech industry.
Warehouse workers sensed the writing on the wall. It was still painful.
Laid-off Peloton workers are frustrated that bad business decisions put them in this spot. But mostly they’re sad to lose a solid gig.
Lizzy Lawrence ( @LizzyLaw_) is a reporter at Protocol, covering tools and productivity in the workplace. She’s a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, where she studied sociology and international studies. She served as editor in chief of The Michigan Daily, her school’s independent newspaper. She’s based in D.C., and can be reached at [email protected].
Brandon Carroll really liked his job. When he delivered Peloton equipment to customers in and around St. Louis, they were genuinely excited to see him. For many, Peloton is a glittering status symbol, the promise of a healthier, easier future. The day you get a Peloton bike or treadmill? That’s the happiest day of your week. Maybe even your month.
“No one is unhappy to see you,” Carroll said. “You feel like Santa Claus.”
Positive customer interactions helped keep morale up, despite the company’s various media and market snafus. Peloton warehouse workers could sense the writing on the wall. The company froze hiring in November and considered laying off 41% of its sales and marketing staff in January. Demand had fallen far below early pandemic levels, and the stock price was sinking. But field operation specialists still felt busy in the small but mighty St. Louis warehouse, Carroll said. “Pretty consistently we were one of the top-rated warehouses in the company,” he said.
So when Peloton laid off 2,800 people a few weeks ago, it wasn’t totally unexpected. But it hurt. The shakeup affected everyone, from recruiters to marketers to former CEO John Foley himself. The company laid off everyone at the St. Louis and Seattle warehouses and significantly cut down the Denver warehouse. Peloton declined to break down the demographics of the 2,800 people laid off, but told Protocol 20% were corporate employees. Peloton instructors — who rose to influencer status in the early pandemic — were not affected.
Protocol spoke to a handful of laid-off employees who were a part of Peloton’s delivery and manufacturing operations. The general consensus mirrored some of the gratitude reflected in ex-Pelotoners’ parting LinkedIn posts. The company offered satisfactory pay and benefits, as well as mentorship opportunities. They’re frustrated that bad business decisions put them in this spot (a sentiment reflected in recent Glassdoor posts). But mostly, they’re sad to lose a solid gig.
The St. Louis warehouse was tight knit. Demand ballooned in the early days of the pandemic, when everyone wanted Peloton equipment. Peloton needed more bikes, treadmills and workers, stat. It bought exercise equipment manufacturer Precor, and it even made plans to build its first U.S. factory in Ohio. It had to hire to keep up.
“There were all different kinds of people,” Carroll said about the approximately 34 workers in St. Louis. People trying to pay for school, people who had been affected by early COVID layoffs. Many came to Peloton after being referred by friends who already worked there, creating a workplace with personal connections. In St. Louis and other warehouses, many came from companies like Target or Amazon. “That was a network of people that were separated by one or two degrees because they already knew someone who worked there,” Carroll said.
A standard day at a Peloton warehouse involved morning meetings about warehouse reviews, checking inventory and going out for deliveries. The Peloton delivery process required some showmanship. A van with a prominent Peloton logo pulled into the driveway, in view of jealous neighbors. It always came within the two- or four-hour delivery window and always with notice. Masked workers decked in Peloton gear hopped out, promptly asking if they should wear disposable boot covers on their shoes before entering the home. After bringing the equipment in, the worker explained how to use it, ideally “with a certain charisma” Carroll said.
Workers felt Peloton’s allure; they believed in the product. Former Denver field specialist Skylar Stetler lost his job as a gymnastics coach in April 2020. He started at Peloton in November of that year, and it felt promising. “[Peloton] came in like ‘the sky’s the limit,’” Stetler said. “There are going to be new roles opening up. Imagine it, it will happen. They set themselves up with visions of grandeur.”
Wages were high compared to standard warehouse work. The base pay average for a Peloton field specialist is $22/hour, according to Glassdoor. The starting salary for North American and European-based hourly workers is $19/hour, according to Peloton. Laid-off Pelotoners told Protocol the COVID protocols were stringent, and the benefits were standard with 80 hours PTO per year. Before the layoffs, Stetler was aiming for mentorship for a supply chain analytics role.
But in the months leading up to the layoffs, their prospects felt shaky. Stetler noticed a lack of urgency to fill positions when people left. The company couldn’t offer temporary workers full-time positions. Carroll felt that with each passing day, his bosses had less information. Morale plummeted.
“Things just weren’t really adding up, and so you felt a bit lost,” Stetler said.
When former St. Louis field specialist Daniel Murphy got the layoff call, his first thought was “empty hole in my wallet.” Murphy was about to hand over his credit card to get his car fixed.
The St. Louis workers took a day to decompress, coming together that night for drinks. But the next day, it was hustle time. Carroll said he applied to 22 different jobs that morning. Some people had just had their first kid or gotten engaged or, in Carroll’s case, bought a house.
There were mixed feelings. “A lot of people might compare it to an amicable breakup of some kind. Things had kind of not been going great for a while,” Carroll said. The warehouse workers had grown accustomed to the fair pay and benefits. If they wanted to do a similar job elsewhere, they would likely get paid less.
Some employees thought back to the workers from XPO Logistics who were brought in during busy seasons. Before the mass layoff, roughly 60% of deliveries were carried out by Peloton workers. Peloton CFO Jill Woodworth said in the company’s earnings call that it will drop to 40%, with the majority of deliveries handled by third parties.
Some workers were concerned about XPO workers replacing them. A handful of workers at the St. Louis warehouse talked about organizing in response to this fear of outsourcing, though nothing came of those conversations. In an email to staff this month, Foley noted that the company has “scaled” partnerships with third-party logistics teams to keep up with demand. Now, Peloton’s significantly reducing “our owned and operated warehousing and delivery footprint.”
Peloton warehouse workers are laser-focused on customer satisfaction. It’s part of their regular assessment. Third-party workers have less financial incentive and training to deliver Peloton equipment with all the added bells and whistles, Carroll said. Some customers have voiced frustrations with XPO’s Peloton delivery process, particularly on Reddit. Peloton tries to address customer delivery issues as quickly as possible, Peloton spokesperson Amelise Lane told Protocol. XPO spokesperson Joe Checkler said scores for Peloton deliveries are between 95 and 100 out of 100. “We immediately act to rectify customer concerns whenever there’s an issue,” Checkler said.
But Carroll is troubled by what Peloton deliveries might look like without his warehouse. “To have this third-party service who is going to make your customers less happy, it just doesn’t add up to any of us,” Carroll. “I think that was what upset a lot of people.”
The ex-Peloton workers have varying hopes for the company. Carroll is concerned about the quality of delivery. Some may question how much delivery matters when it comes to Peloton’s desirability, though. A personalized delivery experience is a plus, but it might not matter as much when it comes to actually buying the Peloton.
Murphy wants to see the company succeed and hire back more people. He hopes the company retains its fair wages and transparent culture. “I really do hope that that continues and that more employees can benefit from that culture that they started with,” Murphy said. Stetler, who says he “drank the Kool-Aid” and became a big Peloton fan, would love to see Peloton bikes and treadmills marketed toward the masses instead of as luxury products.
As for their personal job pursuits, many felt a rush of support after the series of viral posts on LinkedIn. A few said it will likely be easier for those on the corporate side of Peloton to find positions. They’re generally more plugged-in to LinkedIn, and tech workers are entering a candidates’ market. But Stetler said he’s feeling some of the love: He landed some supply-chain-related job interviews in the past week.
Carroll is casting a wide net, applying to Peloton-adjacent jobs as well as jobs in media production. Murphy had been planning on using his Peloton wages to go back to school in the fall. He’s reevaluating those plans now. The two said the St. Louis warehouse workers are still in touch, helping each other find opportunities.
“We have the same needs because obviously, we worked the same job,” Carroll said. “We lived the same sorts of lifestyles for a while so we may as well look out for each other.”
Lizzy Lawrence ( @LizzyLaw_) is a reporter at Protocol, covering tools and productivity in the workplace. She’s a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, where she studied sociology and international studies. She served as editor in chief of The Michigan Daily, her school’s independent newspaper. She’s based in D.C., and can be reached at [email protected].
Protocol looked at the companies’ revenue, profit and other factors to determine their success.
Uber Eats and DoorDash have remained dominant food delivery businesses over the past year.
Sarah Roach is a reporter and producer at Protocol (@sarahroach_) where she contributes to Source Code, Protocol’s daily newsletter. She is a recent graduate of George Washington University, where she studied journalism and mass communication and criminal justice. She previously worked for two years as editor in chief of her school’s independent newspaper, The GW Hatchet.
There are countless players in the food delivery business, from Grubhub and Postmates to sole restaurants like Domino’s Pizza. But only two have remained top contenders on the App Store and elsewhere over the past year: Uber Eats and DoorDash. Now, it’s time to settle which is the best.
Both companies recently reported strong fourth-quarter earnings, with Uber’s delivery business — which mostly includes Uber Eats — turning a profit for the first time, and DoorDash hitting all-time high order numbers. But the food delivery business has long been viewed as a winner-takes-all market, where one player needs to offer “the highest quality, the greatest selection, and the most affordable price,” as former Facebook and Google leader Valerio Magliulo wrote back in 2016. To the victor goes the market, everyone seems to think.
The battle to be the best food delivery service is still very much on, as both DoorDash and Uber Eats look to prove they can remain strong as COVID-19 precautions wane. But Protocol broke down revenue, profit, number of supported restaurants and other factors from DoorDash and Uber Eats over the past year to determine which business reigns supreme.
Grubhub, which Just Eat Takeaway acquired last summer, is the third major player in this space. We didn’t include it in our analysis because Just Eat did not disclose revenue and profit for the company in the last two quarters. Just Eat did not return Protocol’s request for comment.
The number of DoorDash orders have climbed over the course of 2021. The company started with 329 million orders in Q1, increased to 345 million orders in Q2 and bumped up to 347 million orders in Q3. By the fourth quarter, the company reported a total of 369 million orders, prompting its shares to soar.
Still, Uber Eats appears to get far more orders. The company didn’t disclose the number of orders for its delivery business and didn’t respond to Protocol’s request for comment about the information. Still, you can get a decent approximation of its order volume by dividing the company’s gross bookings over the past four quarters by its average order price. Based on that math, the number of orders bumped from roughly 481 million in Q1 to 515 million in Q4.
Revenue for both delivery businesses has grown over the past year. Uber Eats brought in $2.4 billion in the fourth quarter after steadily climbing from $1.74 billion in the first quarter. DoorDash’s revenue increased as well, but it took in less money than Uber Eats: The company brought in $1.3 billion last quarter, up from $1.1 billion from the first quarter.
Uber’s delivery unit posted its first-ever adjusted EBITDA profit of $25 million. The business had been moving in that direction over the course of 2021, when it began with a loss of $200 million.
DoorDash turned a profit all four quarters last year, but its most recent income number is a drop from the previous two quarters. The company made its highest-ever adjusted EBITDA profit of $113 million in Q2, then fell to $47 million in Q4. DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said he expects the company to continue to thrive in the next year, even as pandemic-related precautions taper off.
“I think we’ve put to rest … this question of what happens to demand as diners go back and you didn’t cite restaurants,” Xu said during an earnings call Wednesday. “Clearly takeout and delivery … They are complementary. It’s very possible to eat inside of a restaurant and get delivery.”
DoorDash has consistently remained No. 1 on the App Store among food delivery apps, while Uber Eats has jumped between fourth and second place over the past few months, according to Sensor Tower.
One thing Uber has going for it: Eats supports far more restaurants than DoorDash. The business supports at least 750,000 restaurants, based on the company’s Q2 results, while DoorDash supported over 390,000 restaurants as of late 2020.
On its face, Uber Eats is an undeniably larger business in terms of the sheer number of merchants it supports and the amount of cash it takes in. But DoorDash has remained the most well-liked food delivery business on the App Store, and has incrementally brought up its revenue and customer base over the past four quarters.
Both have proven they can remain dominant businesses even as pandemic-related measures ebb and flow. The coming year will prove whether food delivery can remain just as strong, and whether one or the other can start to take over.
Sarah Roach is a reporter and producer at Protocol (@sarahroach_) where she contributes to Source Code, Protocol’s daily newsletter. She is a recent graduate of George Washington University, where she studied journalism and mass communication and criminal justice. She previously worked for two years as editor in chief of her school’s independent newspaper, The GW Hatchet.
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