Tag: antitrust

Watch a popular bag maker roast Amazon for ripping off its design in this clever video

Posted onAuthoradmin

For years, merchants on Amazon have accused the company of ripping off their ideas and selling much cheaper versions under the Amazon Basics brand, but no one’s made the case quite like Peak Design. In a new YouTube video , the San Francisco-based bag designer points out the many similarities between its popular camera bag and Amazon’s, both of which are called the Everyday Sling. They have similar shapes, aesthetics, and pockets, and even their logos are in the same place. A key difference, though, is that Peak Design’s sling starts at $55 , while Amazon’s version currently sells for $21. The video then pretends to look in on the “crack team at the Amazon Basics department,” wearing googly-eye glasses and marveling at Peak Design’s sales before resolving to “Basic this bad boy.” Amazon Basics straight up ripped off the @peakdesignltd Everyday Sling (they even stole the product name). I know Basics does this all the time, but this is basically a carbon copy (minus quality). https://t.co/pGJmBZYn6C — Justin Duino (@jaduino) March 3, 2021 Of course, the two bags are not exactly the same. In the video, Peak Design calls out the areas where Amazon’s version falls short—plastic buckles instead of aluminum, cheaper zippers, floppy dividers—while also pointing to its own bag’s recycled materials, lifetime warranty, carbon neutrality, and “fairly paid factory workers.” “If you’re tired of supporting companies who innovate, and just not willing to pay for responsibly made products, don’t,” the video says, warning that “you’ll get exactly what you pay for.” Peak Design is the latest in a long line of product makers who say Amazon has copied their products and undercut them on price. As Bloomberg reported in 2016 , a company called Rain Design said sales of its popular laptop stand slipped after Amazon started selling a look-alike at about half the cost. In a 2019 interview with Fast Company , the shoe maker Allbirds accused Amazon of copying its Wool Runner shoe, but without the same sustainable design practices . A Wall Street Journal report last year also documented how Amazon would use data from third-party vendors to track popular items and launch its own versions. Those included a car-trunk organizer similar to one sold by a small startup called Fortem, and an office chair seat cushion from a company called Upper Echelon Products. Amazon had previously told Congress that it didn’t track data from third-party sellers when deciding which products to make under the Amazon Basics brand. Regulators have started to step in. Read More …

How interoperability could end Facebook’s death grip on social media

Posted onAuthoradmin

Reining in the power of big tech companies, including major social networks, is an idea with growing bipartisan support in Washington. Much of the debate so far has revolved around the idea of breaking up companies such as Facebook to limit their reach and influence. But such “structural remedies” require a difficult and costly court battle, and history shows that they can take a decade or more to play out. Based on comments during last week’s tech antitrust hearing in the House Judiciary Committee, it now seems possible that a more surgical approach will ultimately win the day. If one factor explains the competition problem in social media, it’s  network effects . The more members a social network onboards, the more valuable the platform becomes. After all, when all your friends and family are already on Facebook, you may feel the need to become a member in order to stay in the loop. And you might also end up spending far less time on other networks. This makes a tough road for all those Facebook alternatives out there. If past judgements such as U.S. v. Microsoft are a guide, U.S. courts don’t smile on big companies that get a competitive advantage simply by being big. One way to mitigate Facebook’s network effects would be to make it less (socially) costly for people to stay on smaller, competitive networks. That’s why the concepts of portability and interoperability are so important. Data portability proponents say that just as your phone number is portable when you switch from one carrier to another, your social identity and social content should be portable if you want to move to another competing social network. They also say that just as it’s easy for an AT&T Wireless customer to call a T-Mobile customer–because the networks are interoperable–social network users should be able to share content across networks. For example, it should be easy for a Facebook user to share social content with a friend on LinkedIn. Plenty of precedent These aren’t new concepts. As a way of giving new cellular carriers a fighting chance, the Federal Communications Commission in 1996 mandated that consumers be able to take their phone number with them from a wireline carrier to a wireless carrier, or vice versa Read More …

‘This is bigger than just Timnit’: How Google tried to silence a critic and ignited a movement

Posted onAuthoradmin

Timnit Gebru—a giant in the world of AI and then co-lead of Google’s AI ethics team—was pushed out of her job in December. Gebru had been fighting with the company over a research paper that she’d coauthored, which explored the risks of the AI models that the search giant uses to power its core products—the models are involved in almost every English query on Google , for instance. The paper called out the potential biases (racial, gender, Western, and more) of these language models, as well as the outsize carbon emissions required to compute them. Google wanted the paper retracted, or any Google-affiliated authors’ names taken off; Gebru said she would do so if Google would engage in a conversation about the decision. Instead, her team was told that she had resigned. After the company abruptly announced Gebru’s departure, Google AI chief Jeff Dean insinuated that her work was not up to snuff—despite Gebru’s credentials and history of groundbreaking research . The backlash was immediate. Thousands of Googlers and outside researchers leaped to her defense and charged Google with attempting to marginalize its critics , particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds. A champion of diversity and equity in the AI field, Gebru is a Black woman and was one of the few in Google’s research organization. “It wasn’t enough that they created a hostile work environment for people like me [and are building] products that are explicitly harmful to people in our community. It’s not enough that they don’t listen when you say something,” Gebru says. “Then they try to silence your scientific voice.” In the aftermath, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai pledged an investigation; the results were not publicly released, but a leaked email recently revealed that the company plans to change its research publishing process, tie executive compensation to diversity numbers, and institute a more stringent process for “sensitive employee exits.” In addition, the company appointed engineering VP Marian Croak to oversee the AI ethics team and report to Dean Read More …

What’s really at stake in Apple and Facebook’s war over user tracking

Posted onAuthoradmin

While the PR and media layer of Apple’s dispute with Facebook over user tracking by apps may still be going, at a strategic level the drama’s pretty much over, and it’s looking like Apple won. In a nutshell, Apple will soon require apps that want to track user’s movements within other companies’ apps or websites to get explicit permission to do so from the user. Facebook’s apps have long done this without such explicit permission. When the new feature, which Apple calls App Tracking Transparency , was announced earlier this year, Facebook complained loudly that the loss of tracking data will hurt Facebook—and will hurt small businesses more by reducing Facebook’s ability to carefully target ads for them. Apple said it has a responsibility to its users to give them transparency and choice over the way their personal data is used. Neither of those statements is inaccurate, but they leave little room for compromise. This isn’t the first privacy row between the two companies, but this time it was more heated. Apple CEO Tim Cook condemned Facebook’s business model and implied that it’s designed to profit from misinformation . Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ( reportedly ) said Facebook must “inflict pain” on Apple. But the fact remains that Apple plans to release iOS 14.5, which contains a feature requiring iOS developers, including Facebook, to get permission from users if they want to track said user’s movements across third-party websites and apps. The Apple-Facebook dispute is important for two reasons Read More …

The end of unlimited Google Photos storage is part of a bigger pivot

Posted onAuthoradmin

There are two ways to look at Google’s recent announcement that it will discontinue unlimited Google Photos storage starting next June. The first is Google’s official explanation: People are uploading a lot more photos and videos than they used to, making the service harder to sustain for free. “When we launched Google five years ago, the upload velocity that we had then, versus today’s mobile world, is a lot different,” Google Photos VP Shimrit Ben-Yair told me recently. But there’s another explanation that Google didn’t make quite as explicit: The end of unlimited Google Photos storage marks a pivot of sorts for the search giant, away from being so overwhelmingly dependent on targeted ads as its dominant business model. The future of Google could be as much about subscription revenue as advertising, with Google Photos’ push for paid cloud storage as the centerpiece of those efforts. Beyond the ad business Google’s shift away from an ad-centric model isn’t entirely new. While advertising made up nearly 90% of the company’s revenues in 2015, that share has since fallen to 83.9% last year and 80.6% over the first nine months of 2020. Nonadvertising revenue comes from the apps and media people buy from the Google Play Store, sales of devices such as Pixel phones and Nest speakers, subscriptions to services such as YouTube TV, and Google’s enterprise business, which includes cloud computing services and business-class productivity tools. Still, there are signs that Google may be accelerating those nonadvertising efforts, with subscription revenue as the focal point. Last month, for instance, Google discontinued unlimited cloud storage for business users as part of its rebranding from G Suite to Google Workspace . Instead of getting unlimited storage for $12 per user per month, teams with at least five members will get 2 TB of storage per user at that price. Companies must pay $18 per month per user for 5 TB of storage, and Google doesn’t even advertise the price of unlimited storage, which it only offers through its sales department. Google also sharply increased the price of its YouTube TV streaming bundle over the summer, from $50 per month to $65 per month. While other live TV services have also raised prices, and TV networks deserve most of the blame for making pay TV too expensive, the price hike shows that Google’s become more intent on making the service profitable. Google’s also added a few new subscription services over the last year or so. In September 2019, it launched Play Pass , a $5-per-month bundle of Android apps and games from the Google Play Store. A couple of months later, it got into the cloud gaming business with Stadia . And just last month, Google started selling Pixel phones on a subscription basis to customers of its Google Fi wireless service, helping to ensure that they stay connected to the company’s cellular plans over the long haul. All of this suggests that Google isn’t feeling as confident in the advertising business as it used to, and for good reason: Threats to its longstanding cash cow are everywhere Read More …