(Photo Credit @jamessutton_photography)
** Update: Since I published this note in my newsletter on Fri 12/18, Google has been sued two more times with private lawsuits. Given the sheer length of time (years) that it will take for these lawsuits to play out in court, it likely won't have short-term impact on recruiting. And the stock market agrees --- GOOG and GOOGL are both up 200+ points since the first lawsuit dropped in mid-October.
For those in the northeast, many of us spent last week digging ourselves out from under at least a foot of snow! (My cousin’s house measured almost 40 inches!) Friday morning was one of those times where I appreciate working from home, so I could enjoy playing in the snow with the dog vs digging my car out before work. Reminded me to take a deep breath and be grateful for nature’s beauty.
#techtopic
In order to answer the question I posed in my subject line, we first need to understand why these lawsuits are being brought against two of the “BigTech” firms, Facebook and Google. (1) The first big volley was fired this fall in mid-October when the US Dept of Justice (DOJ) joined with 11 state attorneys general to file a lawsuit against Google. They accused the company of illegally stifling competition by contracting with phone manufacturers to ensure the Google search engine was the default one. (To hear a great in-depth discussion of this lawsuit as compared to the 1998 Microsoft case, check out this NPR podcast with Columbia law professor Timothy Wu.)
(2) The next pair of lawsuits were aimed at Facebook on December 10, with one suit from 40+ state attorneys general and the other from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). These suits allege Facebook acquired both Instagram and WhatsApp in order to quash competition, and recommend that they be broken apart. [To deflect some of the heat, Facebook is also involved in a public spat against Apple, which will be putting user privacy features front and center for its newest iOS release. Facebook claims that these privacy features will cut deeply into its revenue and damage the livelihoods of many small businesses in the process. The claim is that by pushing user privacy, Apple is helping its own revenue stream via the app ecosystem. It’s basically a “both are right” scenario -- and which business model are you, the consumer, more willing to support.]
This week brought more fun for Google, with two additional lawsuits on Wednesday and Thursday this week. (3) The Wednesday suit is led by Texas and 10 other state attorneys general and alleges that Google and co-conspirator Facebook have a monopoly on several parts of the online advertising market, and unlawfully fix prices in the ad auction market. (4) The Thursday lawsuit was brought by 38 states & territories and is also aimed at Google’s search monopoly, but suggests multiple other tactics used to maintain search dominance. It’s likely this suit may be combined with the one from October.
Overwhelmed yet??
(5) One spot of bright light for Google is that their proposed acquisition of Fitbit was approved by European regulators yesterday, as long as the company does two things: a) ensures interoperability for wearable devices on the Android smartphone platform, and b) no European Fitbit user can be targeted by advertising in relation to their health data.
#random
The coolest way to learn about machine learning AND compose an opera! https://artsandculture.google.com/experiment/blob-opera/
Reminds me of the Toy Symphony from the MIT Media Lab, which is also a very cool project to help anyone to make music.
