Google is making a play for smaller teams of professionals with its new free, business-oriented suite of productivity tools.
The new version of Workspace, called Workplace Essentials Starter, is a free collaboration tool for teams.
Google launched a free version of its business-level Workspace office productivity service on Thursday that includes familiar tools such as Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and other apps.
The new version of Workspace, called Workspace Essentials Starter, is a free collaboration tool for teams that adds enhanced video and security capabilities to the traditional apps. This version was designed to be used with an already existing email address and offers the same amount of storage as the consumer version.
The launch of the Essentials Starter comes after Google’s announcement in January that the company would make “legacy free” G Suite users start paying for its services on July 1. Now with Essentials Starter, users can sign up for free access using their work email.
The launch of Essentials Starter is Google’s play to capture the enterprise by going after individual business users. “With Essentials Starter, we’re making it easy for employees to choose their own productivity tools and bring modern collaboration to work,” wrote VP of Marketing Kelly Waldher in the announcement.
If Google can convince employees and teams to sign up for Workspace, it may be easier to get the rest of the enterprise on board, too.
Correction: This story was updated to correct the features that come with the Workspace Essentials Starter version.
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Aisha Counts (@aishacounts) is a reporter at Protocol covering enterprise software. Formerly, she was a management consultant for EY. She’s based in Los Angeles and can be reached at [email protected].
Ah, nature is healing: Massages are reportedly back at Google.
The company’s Bay Area offices are also bringing back other plush amenities, including full shuttle service and unscheduled gym access, CNBC reported on Wednesday.
Employees will now be able to use massage chairs, music and game rooms and lounges that were off limits when COVID-19 case counts were higher, and have more options for where to eat breakfast and lunch, according to the report, which cited an employee memo from David Radcliffe, Google’s vice president of real estate and workplace services.
The changes come as COVID-19 cases plummet in the Bay Area. Google still requires employees who come to the office to get vaccinated if they haven’t been approved for an accommodation, a spokesperson told Protocol, but the company has stopped requiring workers to get tested weekly. Offices in Santa Clara County, including Google’s Mountain View headquarters, still require masks under local government rules.
Around 30% of Google’s Bay Area workforce went to the office last week, but coming to campus is still a choice. Google hasn’t yet set a date at which its workers will be required to come in three days a week.
The Justice Department is ending its three-year-old China Initiative that targeted economic espionage threats from China, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said in a speech on Wednesday. Instead, the department will launch a broader “Strategy for Countering Nation-State Threats” as the replacement guiding principle.
The China Initiative was unveiled in November 2018 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It was launched to combat trade secret theft, hacking, economic espionage, as well as “covert efforts to influence the American public and policymakers.” Since then it has been used to prosecute over 70 cases, of which only a quarter resulted in a conviction. Throughout the years, the academic and civil society communities have protested that the initiative was both ineffective and discriminative for its racial profiling nature.
In his speech, Olsen addressed these concerns and admitted that the initiative “helped give rise to a harmful perception…that we in some way view people with racial, ethnic or familial ties to China differently.”
He also said the singular focus on China didn’t meet the need to fend off broader threats. “By picking one country, what the China initiative did, it created in some ways a bit of a myopic approach which I don’t think really reflects the nature of the threat landscape,” Olsen told reporters before the speech, according to Reuters.
After concluding that “this initiative is not the right approach,” Olsen announced the Justice Department will replace the China Initiative with the “Strategy for Countering Nation-State Threats,” as he named China, Russia, Iran and North Korea as the major threats to U.S. national security. The Justice Department will also continue to use tools like the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to protect key technologies, private information about Americans and supply chains and industry.
The revision to the controversial initiative has been met with both celebration and skepticism. “Part of what the China Initiative did was to erect a stage for bad messaging that reeked of bias and prejudice. That stage has been removed and replaced with better messaging,” wrote Graham Webster, research scholar at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, where he leads the DigiChina Project.
“Though today’s announcement is a welcome step, it won’t prevent discrimination from seeping into the FBI’s investigations of Asian Americans and others going forward,” said Patrick Toomey, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project. “Getting rid of the name is not enough.”
Despite U.S. chip sanctions on China throughout 2021, China’s chip companies — mostly startups — raised a record $10.8 billion in a booming market driven by a global chip shortage.
By comparison, chip startups around the globe raked in $19.4 billion in financing in 2021, according to The Register. EqualOcean, a Chinese tech information service provider, reported Wednesday that the total funds Chinese semiconductor firms raised in 2021 increased 40.7% from 2021. This means that each chip company in China raised an average of $38 million in financing in 2021.
All told, China’s semiconductor firms booked 287 deals in 2021, up 67.8% from 2020’s 171. And last year’s financing activities in China’s semiconductor sector in 2021 primarily focused on chip manufacturing.
The largest funding round last year was a $1.5 billion investment in Chinese company Horizon Robotics, a provider of edge artificial intelligence.
Chinese tech companies rely heavily on foreign chips. Beijing has been trying to boost its domestic semiconductor industry for years, but it’s facing an uphill battle, especially in making advanced chips. Sanctions imposed by the U.S. government have greatly limited China’s access to the latest manufacturers globally and U.S. technologies. So Beijing is doubling down on building up capacity to become more self-sufficient in chips.
The burgeoning demand for consumer electronics, combined with a government push for expansion of the Chinese semiconductor industry, have created lucrative opportunities for China’s chip manufacturing and design firms in the past few years.
Twitter faced backlash Wednesday when it accidentally removed accounts that had been documenting Russia’s military actions related to Ukraine. The accounts have become rich pools of open-source intelligence for people monitoring the situation. Twitter attributed the removals to human error.
“We’ve been proactively monitoring for emerging narratives that are violative of our policies, and, in this instance, we took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error,” spokesperson Trenton Kennedy said. “We’re expeditiously reviewing these actions and have already proactively reinstated access to a number of affected accounts.”
Rumors swirled Wednesday that the accounts had been removed due to mass reporting by Russian forces. But that is “inaccurate,” Kennedy said.
Twitter’s head of site integrity Yoel Roth also responded to concerns about Russian forces gaming Twitter’s reporting system. “We do not trigger automated enforcements based on report volume, ever, exactly because of how easily gamed that would be,” Roth tweeted.
Still, mass reporting is a concern that platforms will have to contend with. As Protocol reported, platforms must also grapple with what it means to remove disinformation at a time when those posts may be considered evidence by policymakers, human rights experts and even historians, of the circumstances and narratives that drove what world leaders are now calling an invasion.
Kennedy said that Twitter is on the lookout for actions that violate its platform manipulation policy, which forbids artificially amplifying or suppressing information, as well as its policy against state-affiliated information operations. “[O]ur first priority is to enforce our rules and remove accounts engaging in this behavior,” Kennedy said. “When our investigations are complete, we disclose accounts and content.”
Twitch streamers have loudly complained that they’d like to get paid more reliably. The Amazon-owned streaming service’s solution: the Ads Incentive Program, which gives users an ensured payout from ads to help them have a “predictable monthly income.”
To qualify, users have to be Affiliate or Partner-level streamers, Amazon-owned Twitch said in a blog post announcing the program on Wednesday. Twitch will send out an “an incentive offer” to certain users detailing the monthly rates they qualify for. They must then stream the minimum number of hours requested in the offer.
“Reliable and predictable income is important for streamers, and managing ads can be a pain that takes time away from creating content,” the company said in the post. “No more guesswork when it comes to your monthly ad payouts. No more fiddling with ad timing.”
Possible incentives include $100 for 2 minutes of ads per hour, $300 for 3 minutes of ads per hour, and $500 for 4 minutes of ads per hour for streaming 40 hours minimum a month, according to an example image in the post explaining how the program works. Users will also earn their normal ad payout rate for any additional hours broadcast after finishing the streaming hours required by the offer.
Twitch’s default advertising offer for creators is a variable revenue split based on the number of views. Prior to this program, streamers made money from ads based on their audience, with revenue increasing along with viewership. The new program appears to offer an incentive for consistent streaming, even if audience levels vary.
The move is the latest by a social media company to help creators get paid. Facebook recently announced the global expansion of Reels, its TikTok rival, which added the ability to tack banner and sticker ads onto videos to monetize. YouTube also launched new tools to help creators make money through its short-form content, including brand partnerships, shopping and gifted memberships.
Everybody wants Facebook and Instagram to explain “the algorithm.”
But their parent company, Meta, doesn’t use just one algorithmic system or one machine learning model or one piece of technology to rank or moderate or label Facebook and Instagram posts. There are a variety of AI and non-AI based tools at play, sometimes in collaboration with actual human moderators or decision-makers. It means some standard approaches to explaining AI don’t necessarily work to explain Meta’s ever-elusive algorithms.
It’s why the company said today it is using a new approach to explaining its algorithmic systems to people. Meta’s Responsible AI team developed “system cards” and a related prototype tool they said, “has the potential to provide insight into underlying AI system architecture and help better explain how these systems operate.” A pilot system card is intended to show how technologies used to determine Instagram feed rankings work, and states: “When you open or refresh the Instagram app, the feed system ranks posts you haven’t seen yet from accounts you follow, based on how likely you are to be interested in each post.”
System cards might apply for other algorithmic processes such as those used by the company to translate languages, detect fashion items in images, flag harmful content, or for speech recognition. The system card concept was developed as a hybrid of other more commonly-used approaches to explaining AI including model cards, which detail how models were built and how they are intended to be used, and Datasheets for Datasets, a framework for showing information about the data used to train machine learning models.
But don’t expect Meta to give away the keys to its prized (yet also maligned) algorithms. The company made a point in its post about system cards to say the approach might not be able to illuminate how highly complex systems work. And, the company said might not reveal information in system cards that could be a security risk or expose systems in ways that allow people to reverse-engineer them.
Lobbying disclosures show that around a dozen firms in the crypto space — including Digital Currency Group and Blockchain.com — are collectively spending more than $100,000 a month to promote industry-friendly legislation in New York, according to Bloomberg.
More than 20 crypto-related bills have already been introduced in New York state since the start of the year, already surpassing the 2021 total of 16 crypto-related bills introduced in the state. There has been a similar uptick at the national level: 96 crypto-related bills were introduced throughout the U.S. in the first six weeks of 2022, compared to 13 in all of 2021.
BitLicense is one of the most consequential areas of potential de-regulation. Since 2014, New York has only allowed crypto companies to operate in the state if they obtain a BitLicense, and even then, licensed companies are limited in the types of digital assets they can sell. For instance, Coinbase can only offer about half the coins available on its platform to New York customers. Several crypto companies are lobbying to make the BitLicense approval process easier, according to Bloomberg.
The State legislature is also set to decide on a contentious bill that would place a moratorium on all crypto mining operations in the state. In the Finger Lakes region, private equity-backed Greenidge converted a coal power plant into a natural gas plant that fuels 24/7 Bitcoin mining operations. The facility has grown to become one of the largest crypto mining operations in the U.S..
“Given the extraordinarily high energy usage and carbon emissions associated with Bitcoin mining, mining operations at Greenidge and other plants raise concerns about their impacts on the global environment, on local ecosystems, and on consumer electricity costs,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote in a Dec. 2021 letter to Greenidge.
Greenidge says it is carbon neutral and voluntarily purchases carbon offsets. Still, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation found that greenhouse emissions produced by the plant grew almost tenfold between 2019 and 2020. Local environmental advocacy groups have expressed opposition to the plants.
Several of New York’s most powerful politicians are seemingly primed to support crypto-friendly regulation. New York City Mayor Eric Adams converted his paychecks to cryptocurrency as a gesture of goodwill and has expressed his desire for the city to become “the center of the cryptocurrency industry.” Likewise, Adrienne Harris, the state’s superintendent of the Department of Financial Services, sat on the board of the Digital Dollar Foundation, which was created to promote a U.S. central bank digital currency.
LinkedIn launched a new, professionally themed podcast network this morning, featuring 12 well-known creators who will cover topics ranging from mental health to startup trends. With the announcement, LinkedIn joins the ranks of tech companies attempting to become the favorite hub of content creators and influencers.
“As we looked around, one of the things that happened was that we started getting sponsorship interest in Jessi’s podcast,” said LinkedIn News Editor in Chief Dan Roth about their flagship pod, “Hello Monday.” “There were LinkedIn advertisers that were saying, ‘Hey, can I buy time on this podcast?’”
Over 4 million people have downloaded “Hello Monday,” the company told Business Insider. ResearchandMarkets.com estimates that the global podcasting market will reach $94.88 billion by 2028.
LinkedIn is far from the only company leaning into helping content creators earn more money on their platforms. YouTube, for example, announced last month that it would be implementing NFTs and live shopping, while Instagram and Twitter are both testing out creator subscriptions. Even tech VCs are getting into content creation, like a16z with its Future podcasts. And then of course, there’s Spotify, with their many high-profile podcasting deals.
For what it’s worth, the origins of LinkedIn’s creator program stretch back to late 2012, when the company launched its Influencer program. This allowed hand-selected creators to write the longform articles LinkedIn has become known for. There are now over 500 influencers, including Bill Gates, Arianna Huffington and Richard Branson.
The LinkedIn pods are designed around predictable themes. Big Technology newsletter writer Alex Kantrowitz will podcast about leading companies in the industry, while author Jonathan Fields will talk finding purpose and inspiration at work, for example. Other podcasts are dedicated to startup culture, mental health in the workplace and personal development.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the global podcasting market’s value. This story was updated on Feb. 23, 2022.
Meta wants you to understand anyone, from anywhere, no matter which language they speak. To achieve this the company is looking to build a universal, instantaneous speech translator, capable of translating any language to any other language — including languages that are primarily spoken.
Mark Zuckerberg announced this goal during an AI-focused event Wednesday, describing it as a key step toward a world-encompassing metaverse. “The ability to communicate with anyone in any language — that’s a superpower people have dreamed of forever, and AI is going to deliver that in our lifetimes.”
Meta’s ambitious universal translation project is part of a broader push to build out the company’s translation capabilities for the metaverse. “This is going to be especially important when people begin teleporting across virtual worlds and experiencing things with people from different backgrounds,” Zuckerberg said.
As part of these efforts, Meta’s AI researchers have begun to build an AI model called “No Language Left Behind” that is supposed to be able to learn new languages with less training data than existing machine translation models to more easily understand languages like Luganta, a language spoken by an estimated 2 million people in Uganda.
Going even further, the company’s “Universal Speech Translator” is supposed to be able to translate speech directly to speech without first transcribing it.
Zuckerberg and Meta’s AI researchers also used Wednesday’s event to announce a range of other AI initiatives meant to support the company’s metaverse push, including algorithms that will help people more easily create virtual worlds with the help of AI assistants. To this end, Meta’s researchers built a “Builder Bot,” which Zuckerberg demonstrated in a short clip that had his VR avatar create a beach scene, complete with palm trees and a picnic table, with just a few spoken commands.
“As we advance this technology further, you’ll be able to create nuanced worlds to explore and share experiences with others, with just your voice,” Zuckerberg said.
After a few setbacks, Zoom has officially entered the contact center space. The company announced the release of its contact center service on Wednesday, which adds a modern flavor to the traditional call center by infusing video.
Zoom wants potential contact center customers to think of the new service as a natural extension of the company’s leadership in remote work, collaboration and communications. The company hopes to engage current Zoom clients who may be looking to add contact center capabilities, but don’t want another vendor in their tech stack.
While the initial release of Zoom contact center won’t have all the features of the traditional players, the company plans to add new features and capabilities over time. Even still, Zoom’s video prowess could prove to be a differentiator in the market, especially when it comes to servicing high-touch customer interactions like those in wealth management or specialty retail.
This isn’t Zoom’s first foray into the contact center market. Last year Zoom made an attempt to acquire call center software company Five9, but shareholders rejected the $14.7 billion deal. Still, the company maintains partnerships with many of the major cloud players, including NICE InContact, Genesys and — of course — Five9.
The hiring process is still based on personal connections and gut instinct. That’s potentially creating a less fair and equitable job-filling process, according to a global analysis released Wednesday.
The survey, conducted by hiring platform company HireVue, includes responses from more than 1,600 hiring leaders across industries like finance and manufacturing. It revealed that companies are struggling to fill roles quickly, a common theme over the past year. But firms that have introduced job-matching technology such as chatbots and AI said they have had an easier time hiring qualified candidates and that those tools can save time in the process.
While some companies are adopting tech solutions to smooth the job-filling process, the survey found that more than a third of hiring teams still lean on gut instinct when making a decision on job applicants. HireVue noted in its press release that another third of respondents said they hire based on personal connections. The company said moving away from these subjective hiring tactics would ensure a more equitable process for job candidates.
HireVue CEO Anthony Reynolds said mass resignations and the ongoing pandemic haven’t made the hiring process any easier. “It’s encouraging, though, that when you drill down into the data, companies are solving talent bottlenecks with a forward-thinking approach to technology, coupled with a continued prioritization of diversity and belonging,” Reynolds said in the report, adding that “these strategic decisions are helping respondents with both hiring and retention.”
Companies that prioritized diversity, equity and inclusion efforts saw lower turnover last year, according to the report. Among the ways firms have met their DEI goals when it comes to hiring are focusing on skills-based assessments instead of resumes and dropping college degree requirements and putting greater weight on bootcamp certifications.
Bias in the hiring process is well documented beyond the gut instinct or personal connection issues identified in the HireVue report. For instance, asking an applicant for their criminal background continues to keep people out of work, while discrimination in AI systems used for hiring remains a major concern.
Apple will drop its mask mandate in most of its stores around the U.S., the company said Tuesday. It will also bring back its popular in-store device classes. The news is one more sign of a slow drift back to a new form of normal in business operations.
The changes follow the abandonment of mask mandates in a number of states around the country, many of which abandoned such mandates in the past few weeks. Some of the states in which Apple customers will no longer be required to wear a mask include Ohio, Kentucky, North Carolina and Georgia. The Apple website has been updated to indicate the latest masking guidelines at stores in each state, including stores for which masks are still a requirement.
As recently as December, Apple had reinstated a nationwide mask mandate in its stores as cases rose amid the omicron surge.
Some mask rules still separately apply to Apple’s retail workers. Employees said they will continue to be required to wear masks when working in stores, according to a report by Bloomberg. And though no longer required at all stores, the company will still recommend customers wear masks and have them available if needed.
The latest softening of mask requirements has continued even as the CDC still recommends people wear masks when indoors to protect themselves and others. The mixed guidance from states and the CDC has left the final call on masks up to businesses, in a return to an unsettled earlier stage of the pandemic.
Apple has deferred indefinitely a plan for corporate workers to return to the office. An earlier return-to-office plan specified mask-wearing. Santa Clara County, where Apple’s Cupertino headquarters is located, continues to require indoor masking, even though the state of California has dropped its mandate.
The Apple Park Visitor Center adjacent to Apple’s headquarters still requires masks, according to Apple’s website.
Facebook is digging deeper into short-form video. After initially launching in the United States, Facebook released Reels globally, Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday. The platform is also rolling out a slew of new ways creators can use and make money from Reels, its TikTok clone.
The platform is also adding a few tools to help creators get more comfortable with short-form video. Facebook is adding a clipping tool for live or long-form videos, the ability to share Instagram Reels as recommended content on Facebook, and the option to integrate Reels in Facebook Watch, its video-on-demand service.
In terms of monetization, Facebook is adding the ability to tack banner and sticker ads onto their Reels. The feature will roll out in the U.S., Canada and Mexico first and eventually expand to other countries. The platform will also soon introduce full-screen and immersive ads that play between Reels. The feature sounds similar to the way TikTok presents ads as individual, separate clips played in between videos.
Facebook is expanding Reels to 150 different countries now. The platform said it’ll gradually expand its Reels Play bonus program, which lets creators earn money from their Reels, to more countries. Creators make money based on the performance of their Reel, which takes into account views.
Social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram are gunning for short-form video to bring creators onto their platforms. Most recently, YouTube launched a suite of new ways Shorts creators can make money through brand partnerships, shopping and gifted memberships. All platforms are trying to keep up with TikTok, which now dominates the short-form video space.
The fight to unionize an Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama seems like it will never end.
Today, after more than a year of fighting over a union election in Bessemer, Alabama, union organizers with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union have filed more charges alleging that Amazon is once more interfering illegally with the election. Despite the fact that Amazon won the first union election by more than a 2:1 ratio last year, the new charges mean the union fight will likely continue even after the results are tallied in a second election currently underway.
No group of Amazon workers has ever successfully unionized. The company argues that workers don’t want to unionize because the company provides competitive wages and benefits; pro-union labor experts and advocacy groups say that current U.S. labor laws are too weak to protect union organizers from powerful anti-union campaigns. Only 6.1% of private-sector workers in the United States are in a union, but survey data shows that American support for unions has hit an all-time high over the last year. In addition to the ongoing fight in Bessemer, Alabama, Amazon will soon face two new elections in Staten Island warehouses, where workers unaffiliated with any major union (unlike the RWDSU in Alabama) have filed to try to become the first to successfully unionize.
Regardless of the results of the second vote in Alabama, labor attorneys with the RWDSU are forcing Amazon to once more battle charges that it is illegally interfering with the process of the election and workers’ rights. The charges allege that Amazon removed union advertisements and papers from break rooms, limited worker access to the facilities when they are off-shift and forced workers to attend anti-union meetings. If the NLRB rules that these allegations are true and violate labor laws, the results of the second election may be challenged by the union or thrown out by the NLRB judge.
“While we haven’t seen today’s filing yet, we’re confident that our teams have fully complied with the law. Our focus remains on working directly with our team to make Amazon a great place to work,” Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, wrote in an email to Protocol.
The RWDSU successfully made similar challenges after the Amazon victory last year, filing charges that, after months of arguments, persuaded the NLRB to throw out the first set of results and call for a second election. The second vote will not end until March 28, after which the NLRB will count votes and both sides will be able to challenge the validity of specific ballots. Regardless of whether Amazon wins or loses this second election, it may be months before the NLRB reaches a ruling on the new charges and any other fights that emerge between now and the conclusion of the election on March 28.
Slack is down for some users this morning. Maybe the universe doesn’t want us to go back to work this week.
Customers logged on Tuesday morning to find difficulties sending messages, viewing message threads or loading the platform at all. According to Slack’s status update site, “something’s not quite right” with login/SSO, messaging and posts/files. Slack is currently looking into the issue.
Down Detector showed a spike in reports of Slack outages at around 9 a.m. Eastern this morning, jumping from 1 to 2,481. According to Slack’s status site, some users weren’t able to connect to the platform for about an hour Monday afternoon. A change in code “caused a conflict” in the desktop app and web browser, preventing some users from sending messages. The company tweeted that it resolved the issue, but clearly is having more issues today.
Slack experienced an hourslong outage in January of 2021, initially caused by an AWS networking error. It’s unclear how long Tuesday’s outage will last. Slack is the “digital HQ” of choice for many companies, so without it, many may be scrambling to find a way to talk to each other.
Like with any major platform outage, many users turned to Twitter. (The real crises occur when Twitter goes down.) People joked about talking to co-workers over text, Microsoft Teams or even email. One user told Protocol her company created an impromptu Google Meet. Some people have turned to Discord. Discord doesn’t advertise itself as a work product, but people have been working in there anyway. A Discord spokesperson told Protocol back in October that the company thinks it’s great people are using it to “co-work”, but “our focus right now is making Discord the best place it can be for friends, communities and creators to hang out and have fun together.”
Software company Stark posted its Wordle thread conducted via email, declaring that “drastic times call for drastic measures.” CEO Cat Noone runs the 22-person company asynchronously, dispersed across nine countries. The company relies on Slack quite a bit, but “if Slack is down for a few hours, it’s not the end of the world for us,” Noone said. “Jokingly, we turned to email.”
But even this temporary outage raises questions on what a company would do if Slack went down for a long period of time. All of your communication history lives on Slack. How do you then access that useful information? This is especially serious for async companies like Stark, who rarely live chat with co-workers. “A few days or weeks or whatnot, then you start to get into funky territory,” Noone said. “You have these microneighborhoods and you have this microburst communication about things that are going on.”
The outage brings into sharp relief how essential Slack has become for finishing work. You might compare a Slack outage to a power outage in a physical office. We can still do our work, but it’s become more difficult. Right now, companies are developing ragtag backup plans while hopping to other platforms. Will today’s Slack outage convince companies to go elsewhere? Probably not. Switching platforms can be expensive and time-consuming. But it’s become clear that Slack isn’t the only option in a saturated workplace software market where people are increasingly passionate about the tools they want to use.
Slack’s site is still reporting an outage, though some users are able to use it on mobile. Today, many will be relieved of having to talk to co-workers. Except for the folks at Slack.
Silicon Valley is now wherever tech workers want it to be. Over four in 10 listings for higher educated white-collar jobs at tech companies are based outside of California, Oregon and Washington, according to an analysis by the Conference Board that Bloomberg reported Tuesday.
States including Texas, Virginia and New York are becoming increasingly popular destinations for tech work. Texas is the top place for tech companies, with Austin being a particularly hot spot for tech work. East Coast cities aren’t the only ones getting tech employees, either: Inland states such as Tennessee, Illinois and Colorado are also experiencing a jump in tech work, the study found.
In all, the percentage of job postings outside of the West Coast bumped from 30% at the start of 2019 to 43% now. The study also confirms an ongoing effort to offer tech workers more flexibility in where they work: While some large companies like Google are looking to expand in New York City, others including Shopify and Quora have become increasingly lenient with remote work. The ones adopting work-from-anywhere policies said they’ve been able to attract more talent as a result.
Constraint can breed creativity. So can an ad agency.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote a long Twitter thread early Monday morning explaining how the company came up with its wildly successful idea to run a floating QR code for its Super Bowl commercial. He lauded Coinbase for landing an idea with a tight budget and little time to prepare, saying companies don’t necessarily have to work with an agency to create a solid ad.
“If there is a lesson here it is that constraints breed creativity, and that as founders you can empower your team to break the rules on marketing because you’re not trying to impress your peers at AdWeek or wherever. No ad agency would have done this ad.”
Except, Coinbase actually did work with an agency on the ad, said Kristen Cavallo, the CEO of The Martin Agency. “It was actually inspired by presentations our agency showed your team on 8/18 (pages 19-24) and 10/7 (pages 11-18) with ad concepts for the Super Bowl with floating QR codes on a blank screen,” Cavallo tweeted at Armstrong.
Last week, Coinbase CMO Kate Rouch also credited the digital ad agency Accenture Interactive for its help on the ad. Rouch tweeted on Monday that multiple agencies, including The Martin Agency, suggested ideas with QR codes, but Coinbase ended up going with Accenture Interactive’s idea to insert the QR code into a meme. “The meme as a conceptual underpinning was creative genius and a unique use of the QR code and was what unlocked our [Super Bowl] success,” she said.
Armstrong added to his Twitter thread shortly after Cavallo’s response and acknowledged the creative firm Coinbase worked with to create the ad. “Honestly, felt like we were all one team so I didn’t fully realize it, thank you!”
The Coinbase CEO had some other thoughts about what makes a good Super Bowl ad. He took a jab at companies that bring in celebrities to sell their products and said Coinbase apparently got some inspiration from Reddit’s preview Super Bowl commercial. But Twitter hasn’t quite moved on from his mixup earlier in the day.
Virgin Hyperloop laid off more than 100 of its employees on Friday after embracing a plan to focus on cargo transport over passengers, according to a Financial Times report.
Friday’s layoffs came mostly because of supply chain issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the FT. Josh Giegel, the company’s co-founder, left the company in October 2021 after seven years, which reportedly spurred other executive exits over the last few months.
Virgin Hyperloop is the only company to ever successfully transport passengers within a system of magnets and vacuum tubes that make up the often theoretical hyperloop technology, and the company has a contract with the Saudi Arabian government for the technology’s development. Elon Musk’s Boring Company has also proposed several hyperloop transport projects in the United States.
Virgin Hyperloop did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Better.com is preparing for another round of layoffs, several unnamed people told TechCrunch on Friday. The real estate tech company has reportedly been bleeding senior executives since it let go 900 employees in a 3-minute Zoom call in December.
The current and former employees who spoke to TechCrunch said the latest wave of layoffs are expected to come in March, and could affect as much as 40% to 50% of the staff. Four top executives have resigned since the original round of layoffs: finance VP Clayton Coral, Head of Real Estate Christian Wallace, General Manager of Purchase Paul Tyger, and Head of Sales Stephen Rosen, according to the TechCrunch report as well as posts on LinkedIn and Blind.
On top of the executive-suite turmoil, two board members recently stepped down, and the company delayed a $6.9 billion SPAC deal indefinitely.
Better.com CEO Vishal Garg apologized for his handling of the firings in December, saying he “blundered the execution” in a letter to employees leaked on Blind. Garg also reportedly insulted an investor, calling him “sewage.” He took a leave of absence after the layoffs starting Dec. 10, and was reinstated in his position on Jan. 19 by the board of directors, but now faces a fraud suit from investors who allege he misused their funds to invest in startups.
A couple of key memos in the legal brawl between Ripple and the SEC finally became public Friday. Ripple immediately claimed victory in the disclosure, though the language in the controversial documents raised questions about the company’s arguments.
Ripple General Counsel Stuart Alderoty said the memos proved the company received legal advice in 2012 that XRP, the cryptocurrency Ripple uses for its payment network, would not be considered a security by regulators. The SEC sued Ripple in 2020, arguing that XRP is not a currency but a security, and therefore subject to strict securities laws.
“We are pleased with the Court’s order to release these documents to the public,” Alderoty said in a statement. “The documents show a ‘compelling’ legal analysis that Ripple received in 2012 that XRP is not a security.”
Alderoty also argued that “the fact that Ripple sought such advice in 2012 should be applauded. That fact that it took the SEC eight years to suggest they disagreed with that analysis — while XRP traded in a massive global market — is baffling.”
The SEC could not immediately be reached for comment. The regulatory agency had earlier argued that the memos would show that Ripple was aware that the XRP could be considered as a security under federal law, according to a Reuters report.
The SEC’s position appeared to be supported by one of the memos dated Oct. 19, 2012, in which Ripple’s lawyers told the company, “Although we believe that there is a compelling argument can be made that Ripple Credits [as XRP was referred to in the document] do not constitute ‘securities’ under the federal securities laws, given the lack of applicable case law, we believe that there is some risk, albeit small, that the Securities and Exchange Commission disagrees with our analysis.”
Two Chinese ecommerce services operated by Alibaba and Tencent were included in a Thursday update of the Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy, a list maintained by the Office of the United States Trade Representative.
One of the sites is Alibaba’s AliExpress, the international arm of the ecommerce giant that’s available in more than 190 countries. The other is Tencent’s WeChat ecommerce ecosystem, a loose grouping of several mobile-based channels for vendors to sell on China’s most popular communication tool.
The idea of “notorious markets” was first introduced in 2006, and the list has been updated annually by USTR since 2011. Its 2021 iteration includes 42 online markets and 35 physical stores.
Chinese tech companies appear frequently on the list. Alibaba’s Taobao, the domestic-facing ecommerce website, was first added in 2008, removed in 2012, and re-added in 2016. Other prominent Chinese tech companies like Pinduoduo and Baidu have also stayed on the list for years.
“We strongly disagree with the decision made by the United States Trade Representative and are committed to working collaboratively to resolve this matter,” a Tencent spokesperson told BBC. Alibaba told the Wall Street Journal that it “look[s] forward to continuing the work with governments to understand and address all concerns in IP protection across our platforms.”
Asked about the addition on Friday, China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said the ministry “urge[s] the U.S. side to stop politicizing economic and trade issues” and “view Chinese companies’ efforts and achievements in IPR protection in a comprehensive, objective and just manner.”
Company leaders love NFTs. Their employees, not so much.
The most recent example came this week when more than 400 Salesforce employees signed a letter pushing back on the company’s plans to launch an NFT cloud service that allows people to create and sell NFTs, according to documents reviewed by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The workers who signed the letter expressed concern over the environmental and economic impact of NFTs, especially in light of the company’s recent Super Bowl ad emphasizing its focus on sustainability. (Salesforce has also positioned itself as a climate leader, with CEO Marc Benioff backing controversial climate measures like planting 1 trillion trees.)
“I’ll find a company that lives by its stated values,” one Salesforce employee told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, adding that he’ll quit if the company’s plan goes through.
“We welcome our employees’ feedback and are proud to foster a culture of trust that empowers them to raise diverse points of view,” a Salesforce spokesperson told the publication. The spokesperson said Salesforce will hold a listening session sometime next week but didn’t say whether it will address criticism of its NFT plans.
Salesforce workers aren’t the only ones to criticize their company’s push into digital art that comes at a high carbon cost. Ubisoft employees expressed concern over their company’s foray into crypto, with one employee calling the day Ubisoft announced its NFT plans “deeply embarrassing.” When GameStop announced its own NFT project, employees took to the official GameStop subreddit to voice their discontent. Other gaming companies, including Team17 and GSC Game World, dropped their NFT projects following backlash from both fans and collaborators.
The reasons for pushing back on NFT plans seem to vary. While Salesforce employees cite climate concerns, GameStop workers said it would be unfair to invest in NFTs while refusing to give store workers a raise. Other gaming employees say adding NFT tech into their games simply isn’t necessary.
Chamath Palihapitiya is resigning as Virgin Galactic’s chair, the company announced Friday. Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive turned investor, will leave immediately to “focus on other public company board commitments,” and Evan Lovell will fill in as the interim chair.
“Chamath was instrumental in the launch of Virgin Galactic as a public company and, as our inaugural chair, his deep and astute insights have been incredibly valuable to both me and the company as we have grown and strengthened our business foundation,” Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said in a statement.
Palihapitiya’s reason for leaving — beyond the stated rationale of tending to his other investments — wasn’t evident. He joined the company’s board in 2019, just as Virgin Galactic went public, and has gained a reputation as “SPAC king” for supporting companies going public via blank-check vehicles. But SPACs, in general, aren’t doing too hot anymore, and shares in four companies that Palihapitiya’s SPACs have backed fell last year, according to DealBook.
“It has been an honor to help guide Virgin Galactic through some of its greatest milestones to date, including taking the company public, building a strong capital base for future growth, and assembling a best-in-class management team to bring the company to even greater heights,” Palihapitiya said in the announcement.
The now-former chair has also faced heat in recent weeks for his remarks that “nobody cares” about China’s repression of the Uyghur Muslims. He never exactly apologized for it either, though he expressed a broad support for human rights.
Virgin Galactic tapped executive search firm Spencer Stuart to look for a new chair, the company said. The company’s shares fell sharply Friday morning following the announcement.
In the fall, Palihapitiya sold 15% of his stake in SoFi, another company whose SPAC deal he had backed.
The U.S. Defense Department has a new office dedicated to advancing the use of AI throughout the military. Now the money from a $249 million blanket purchase agreement is starting to flow to several AI tech providers that also work with enterprises in other industries, including companies like Arthur that help monitor AI models to avoid bias and inaccuracy.
Arthur’s software tracks performance of AI models including computer vision and natural-language processing models. Arthur is among a burgeoning sector of companies providing software and services for auditing how machine-learning and AI models are built, and monitoring them for problems after they’re in use. The company collected $15 million in series A funding in December 2020.
The DoD also signed on earlier this month to use DataRobot’s cloud AI platform and services, including to detect, measure and prevent bias when building and operating machine-learning models.
Companies working with the Pentagon to provide AI and related tech have drawn their fair share of scrutiny, perhaps most famously when Google employees protested the company’s Project Maven effort to develop drone AI technology with the military. Less media attention went to C3.ai when it signed a massive $500 million deal to provide its enterprise AI products to all Defense Department agencies.
Defenders of the military’s push toward using AI point to ethical AI principles the Pentagon established in 2020, which included goals for responsibility and equity.
Other companies working with the DoD as part of the blanket purchase agreement include CrowdAI, a no-code computer vision company, and enterprise AI tech provider Veritone.
Chief metamate Mark Zuckerberg just got some bad news. His company is the subject of another SEC complaint filed by Whistleblower Aid, the group representing former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen, alleging the company has misled investors about its efforts to combat climate misinformation.
The complaint, filed earlier this month and reported by the Washington Post on Friday, alleges that while Facebook — now Meta — has touted its renewable energy buys and its investment in a Climate Science Information Center, internal communications tell a slightly different story.
Previously reported documents included in the tranche leaked by Haugen last year show that the Climate Science Information Center, a clearinghouse for climate facts on the platform, had relatively low penetration with users compared to viral posts chock full of misinformation. Employees raised concerns about a post by conservative group Turning Point USA that racked up 6.6 million views in a week despite being based on falsehoods. In comparison, Meta’s own data shows the Climate Science Information Center sees an average of 100,000 visitors per day.
Per the Post, Whistleblower Aid filed a complaint about these and other issues tied to COVID-19 misinformation, alleging that Meta made “material misrepresentations and omissions in statements to investors” about how it deals with misinformation.
“There are no one-size-fits-all solutions to stopping the spread of misinformation, but we’re committed to building new tools and policies to combat it,” Drew Pusateri, a spokesperson for Meta, said in an email, noting the company has pointed 2 billion people to accurate public health information and that its Climate Science Information Center is available in 150 countries.
While tools to combat misinformation once it’s out in the wild are part of the puzzle, cutting it off at the tap is also a surefire way to ensure it doesn’t spread in the first place. Yet Meta has declined to take those steps.
Investors have taken an increasing interest in companies’ climate goals, which makes this complaint one to watch. So, too, do the stakes of, you know, actually addressing climate change by reducing carbon pollution over the coming decades. Misinformation has polluted discourse for years, starting with oil companies using the pages of newspapers to run advertorials and concoct a concerted misinformation campaign modeled off of denying the link between smoking and cancer. That’s left the world facing a make or break moment. Emissions need to fall roughly 7% per year this decade to have a decent shot at keeping the planet from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, a crucial threshold outlined by the United Nations and numerous scientists.
Meta’s own employees seem to be aware of those stakes and the dangers of letting misinformation flourish. In the internal documents supporting the SEC complaint, an employee asked if the company was ready to face accusations that its lax approach to climate denial could “jeopardize the lives of billions of people over the coming decades.”
