What's the catch? Google's business model revolves around keeping tabs on you so it can serve you relevant advertising. With few exceptions, you're generating data to feed its empire any time you're signed into your Google account. Sometimes even when you're not. The company also attracted ire this year when it announced plans to limit the free online storage option for Google Photos, showing how cheap, convenient, indespensible services can become expensive down the line.

While the iPhone-maker still produces some of the priciest gadgets in a number of categories, 2020 also saw it lean further than ever into services. To that end we saw a new budget smartphone in the iPhone SE, which starts at $679, and last year's iPhone 11 was dragged down to $999. Even the brand new iPhone 12 saw a smaller, comparatively less expensive variant in the $1200 iPhone 12 Mini, and we got an entry-level smartwatch with the $429 Apple Watch SE.

Apple One bundles provide access to multiple Apple services at a lower cost.

As for the services themselves, this year Apple rolled out a tiered subscription bundle called Apple One, which delivers some significant savings if you and your family switch to getting more of your entertainment via Cupertino. For $20 per month an entire family can get music, TV, games and cloud storage from Apple's various offerings, or for $30 you also get news and fitness. Note that you'll all need access to Apple-made devices to make the most of the services.

What's the catch? For the SE models you're obviously getting a stripped-back device. On iPhone that means a smaller, low-resolution screen, only one camera and none of the latest accessories. For Watch, it means no always-on display or blood oxygen readings. The big catch with Apple One is that it discourages using rival services. For example if your family's already cool with Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade, going with Spotify for music will be significantly more expensive than Apple Music.

Microsoft's gaming division has pivoted in recent years towards making video games as accessible as possible, envisioning a future where rather than buying expensive systems and games occassionally, you pay little bits frequently for a constant bombardment of content. Its Game Pass service has grown into a phenomenal value this year, with $11 per month getting your household access to hundreds of games old and new. The $16 per month Ultimate subscription gets you even more.

The Xbox Series S, right, plays the same games as the more expensive Xbox Series X.

In addition to the brawny Xbox Series X launched last month, the Xbox Series S offers a signicantly less expensive (and less powerful) path to next-gen gaming at $499. And Telstra customers can bundle a new console together with Game Pass Ultimate for a monthly charge of $33 (for Series S) or $46 (for Series X) over 24 months. Finally, Game Pass games can be streamed to phones and screens with no need to buy a gaming machine at all (this is in beta in Australia, with full launch next year).

What's the catch? Paying $33 per month for a brand new console, all the first party games and hundreds of others would have seemed impossible a few years ago. Game Pass is a great deal and will result in you playing more games than you could have otherwise, but you'll also likely spend more over time. Plus, games not published by Microsoft that you get through Game Pass may eventually leave the service, so you'll have to buy them at that point to continue playing.

Last year's Oculus Quest was a watershed moment for consumer VR; a high-quality dedicated headset that didn't need to be attached to a PC, console or smartphone, didn't require separate cameras or setup and could be used virtually anywhere. This year's Quest 2 offers several upgrades, including sharper and smoother visuals and more powerful internals, and yet somehow it comes in even cheaper than the original at $479.

The Oculus Quest 2 is a technical improvement over the original, and costs less.

What's the catch? Oculus is owned by Facebook, and the company has made that very clear with how it's approached its latest headset. Valid Facebook accounts are required for the device to function, meaning you also have to agree to let the social media giant collect data from your use of the headset. And if anything should happen to your Facebook account say if you deactivated it or were banned for any reason your headset could be rendered inoperative.

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Tim is the editor of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald technology sections.

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Tech giants are lowering the cost of their gadgets. Here's the catch. - Sydney Morning Herald

In this country, we have a longstanding peaceful transfer of power for the executive office, even in the wake of the hardest-fought elections. Certain circumstances have led many to question whether the tradition will continue come January 20. Despite his very vocal protestations, however, the current president has agreed to step aside, should all of his legal maneuvers fall short (something that seems all but a certainty at this point).

There is, of course, nothing in the Constitution that offers guidance the peaceful transition of passwords strangely, the forefathers of this country didnt possess the foresight to predict Twitter . The service has already outlined what happens to Trumps account when he leaves office. Namely, he loses the protections that come with being a political figure.

CEO Jack Dorsey noted this at last months congressional hearings, stating, If an account suddenly is not a world leader anymore, that particular policy goes away. But what of the incoming president? What will the transition look like for Biden? And what happens if Trump doesnt willingly give up the official @Potus account as has also been suggested?

He hasnt exactly been eager to accept the results of this election and hes not the sort to willingly give up a platform particularly one with 33 million followers (admittedly a fraction of Trumps main account).

Nick Pacilio, of Twitters Communications, Government & News team, offered TechCrunch the following statement, on the matter: Twitter has been in ongoing discussions with the Biden transition team on a number of aspects related to White House account transfers.

The company, perhaps understandably, didnt answer the question directly, but working with the incoming team is a simple enough way to circumvent any issues transferring more than one dozen accounts, as The Wall Street Journal notes. As has been reported, existing tweets will be deleted and the incoming administration will start from scratch a net positive for the Biden team, given thepolarizing nature of the previous presidents feed.

According to Bidens digital director, the POTUS and White House accounts will also reset to zero followers, marking a change over the Obama to Trump transition. Donald Trumps personal Twitter account has already lost one prominent follower. Earlier this week, CEO Jack Dorsey unfollowed the president, along with other prominent politicians, including Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

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Twitters POTUS account will reportedly be reset to zero followers when Biden takes over - TechCrunch

Developer @daeken on Twitter has gotten Nintendo Switch games to run on Apple Silicon Macs. The implementation is not quite perfect yet due to the technical limitations of the MoltenVK runtime library, which maps Vulkan to Apples Metal graphics framework. Even with these limitations, the emulation looks very promising.

In the video posted on Twitter you can see Super Mario Odyssey running on macOS. As the game begins, though, you can start to see those technical limitations. The developer has also installed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on macOS and is sure to test more titles.

The 8 Bit notes the likely reason that emulating Nintendo Switch games on M1 Macs is even possible and how an emulator could come to iOS and iPadOS.

Apparently, emulating a Switch CPU on Apple Silicon seems to be easy, given that the Switch itself runs on an ARM processor.

Speaking about the possibility of a similar port to iOS, apart from macOS, the developer notes in a reply that if Hypervisor.framework is ever made available on iOS, porting it would be pretty painless I imagine. The Hypervisor.framework is the same framework that initially enabled a developer tosuccessfully virtualize Windows ARM on Apple Silicon, as perThe 8-Bitsreporting.

Developers have been experimenting with M1 Macs ever since they were released, and its incredibly impressive to see the pace at which this kind of work is being done. Its important to note however that Nintendo takes a very anti-emulation stance when it comes to playing their games on other platforms and can get very litigious when it comes to developers creating or distributing their software and ROMs. Regardless, this is still an incredibly cool tech demo that highlights the increased flexibility that comes with the new ARM architecture that Apple Silicon is built upon.

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Nintendo Switch games have been successfully emulated on M1 Macs - 9to5Mac

Orchid

If I wanted to tell you why Orchid VPN is poised to be not only the next evolution of virtual private networks but also a futuristic answer to global online privacy threats, I could tell you its cryptocurrency-fueled decentralized bandwidth market makes it a blockchain-supported VPN-Tor hybrid ready to upend even the fastest, most secure VPN on the market.

And that's what I've beensaying since March, but for most people (myself included) it still sounds like I'm speaking cyberpunk marketing gibberish. So, instead, I want to tell you about bootleg whiskey and outrunning the law. Hop in.

Now, if you were going to do any respectable amount of moonshining in the 1920s, you were going to need more than just a bubbling still and a handshake with the sheriff -- you'd need a car. And not just any car. What you'd need is an unquestionably reliable machine with massive trunk space and hidden compartments. One that looked as unassuming as a church lady with a basket of biscuits, but one whose engine could -- at the toe-tap of a pedal -- roar to life with the fury of seven hells and leave cops wondering how to charge you with breaking the laws of physics.

Read more:The best VPN service of 2020

That's how stock car racing was born. It's also what the world of commercial VPNs looks like right now. VPN innovations are spurred by a competition to be fastest over long distances, to best hide your product (your data) and to offer the biggest bang per buck. Likewise, VPN companies can be aggressive in their hype-making -- their businesses live and die by whether they've ever been caught selling you out to a G-man and you'll find some of them bolster their reputations by swearing their competitors are all patsies.

The toughest part for you in all this, dear moonshiner, is that no matter how good a VPN might seem, you're still confronted with the core vulnerability shared by every VPN: Since you can't inspect the routes these VPNs travel and the servers through which your data passes, you've ultimately got to risk trusting one. For some of you, that trust is low-risk -- you're just looking for better online gaming or a wider streaming media library. For a slice of you, though, the stakes couldn't be higher -- evading censorship and government snooping in countries where VPNs are illegal can be a matter of life and death if you're caught.

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While I can inspect the nuts and bolts of all these VPNs for you and dig up dirt on the people associated with them, even I can't see the routes nor track all the shell companies behind their owners. Caveat emptor.

So imagine my face when this latest hot shot VPN rolls into my shop and I pop the hood to find not just an engine but a fractal of engines. Imagine my jaw dropping when I realize this thing isn't just one souped-up privacy vehicle but a fleet of its competitor cars, each of which is autonomous and paid per mile in anonymized currency to carry a tiny piece of your product in a hyper-coordinated yet seemingly chaotic convoy.

That's Orchid VPN. It's changing the nature of VPNs as we know them and resisting all attempts at categorization using my normal testing and review process. No, it's not ready for the mass market quite yet: It's not as fast as our top-tier VPN speedsters and it isn't as easy to handle for new users as some of our trusted standbys. And no, I can't even give you a specific monthly cost.

But this is what the future of VPN tech looks like. And you gotta see it.

This is normally the part where I give you a slate of speed test scores about a VPN and compare it to its nearest competitor. But it's hard to get a lock on average speeds for Orchid because it doesn't test the same. Orchid's service is unique in that its speed, its security and its cost are all inseparable and interdependent.

My normal speed testing routine includes extended multiplatform speed score averaging across at least five countries and a few oceans. Orchid's normal client, however, isn't yet fully available for Windows, so any attempt to average the scores would start out slanted. Also, Orchid doesn't allow you to connect to a specific country the way other VPNs do. Instead, you've got to manually add a "hop" to another VPN server by pasting that server's configuration file into a screen on your Orchid app. That VPN server can be selected from either from Orchid's global pool of service providers or from your own current, non-Orchid VPN provider.

The structure looks a lot like Tor's network, which obscures your traffic by letting you hop between user-run nodes. And while a multihop feature is a security boon in any VPN, it's not going to give us an accurate baseline speed comparison.

We put the Orchid mascot's speed to the test.

What's more, anyone can set up an Orchid node on the company's bandwidth marketplace, meaning the speed of each node you connect to will vary based on what kind of connection its operator is working with. The person running the node also gets to set their node's bandwidth price.

So I threw my framework out the window and decided to see how much this thing could handle.

Aiming to find the lowest likely base speeds, I loaded Orchid onto an Android device with less processing power than my normal MacOS testing device, connected to Wi-Fi and clocked a non-VPN speed of 372.47 megabits per second. Connecting to Orchid via a single US VPN hop, I pulled 45.5 Mbps. Not as fast as I'd hoped, but a perfectly usable connection speed for nearly any streaming media that yielded zero performance issues (for context, our Editor's Choice ExpressVPN pulled an average US speed of 66 Mbps, during our last tests). Then I went beyond the default VPN connection and added another cross-country Orchid hop to California, pulling 28.9 Mbps and still streaming video.

A key feature of Orchid is that you can add a server of your choice to your list of in-app hops. So I manually configured an additional OpenVPN protocol hop which would double-ricochet my traffic from California to an OpenVPN server in London for a total of three hops. For any VPN with a multihop feature (especially one sending your traffic overseas and back), three hops should be enough to throw pretty much anything off your trail, but it will slow you down. Sure enough, I was stalled to a sputtering 2.9 Mbps.

Using 5G mobile data, I saw comparable speeds. I measured a non-VPN speed of 212.6 Mbps. With one US Orchid hop, I saw 13.84 Mbps. At two US Orchid hops, I saw 9.82 Mbps. Replicating the same trio of hops described above, I still pulled 1.83 Mbps.

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While you might be able to get some streaming services to work on the slower of those speeds, you shouldn't count on it. I managed to get HBO Max playing on the slower of the two-hop connections, but it took a few tries. That may have been related to Orchid's sluggish pace at making that first connection. There's more lag than you normally find in a VPN app. Two-hop connections were even more touch-and-go about video calls, though voice calls and music apps held steady compared to what you'd see with other multihop VPNs, and I was able to play Netflix.

I was impressed. So, naturally, I tried to kill it.

Working on mobile data only, I took an elevator underground until I was directly beneath 290 feet of continuous-pour reinforced concrete framing enclosed by an aluminum curtain-wall system (in a very chic shade of 1960s turquoise blue), straining my connection until non-VPN test speeds were repeatedly under 60 Mbps. From this location, I kicked on Orchid, opened every data-sucking app I had, loaded media-intensive sites across multiple tabs in all the browsers and ran some tests.

No IP leaks. No DNS leaks. This version of the app may have its glitches, but even when I dragged Orchid all the way down to 0.7 Mbps and taunted it with intermittent signal disruptions, it never exposed my identity and I could still listen to Spotify before the VPN finally guttered out. Never mind speed. That's performance.

One reason I was able to get streaming content on a multihop connection is Orchid's own home-brewed protocol. While the backbone of its encryption is in the blockchain, Orchid's protocol is specifically designed to travel on the back of WebRTC -- the same technology your browser uses to facilitate high-quality video and audio calls. Not only does this give Orchid an advantage in streaming media content that you'd never be able to get using Tor, but it also makes your traffic look like just another video call.

Some privacy advocates will tell you that, given how opaque VPN corporate ownership is, you might as well just write off consumer VPNs altogether and stick to using Tor. They're not entirely wrong. Decades have passed without government entities fully cracking Tor's core technology and exposing users at will.

Tor has its limits, though. Tor traffic makes you stick out like a sore thumb to your ISP and network administrators. Sites can see it too and are often quick to block in-bound Tor traffic. Likewise, the CIA, NSA and FBI have all been known to camp out in Tor exit nodes or set up their own. If that weren't enough, you can't transport nearly as much data via Tor as you would a VPN, making voice and video calls nearly impossible over Tor's network of volunteer-run nodes.

On the VPN side of security, the encryption we normally test with (and which we consider the minimum security you should expect of a VPN) is OpenVPN protocol. It's generally considered by privacy gurus to be a healthy mixture of speed and security, and its popularity among consumer VPNs makes it a great control variable in testing. But OpenVPN is also getting up there in Internet Years, and has a history of being somewhat vulnerable if not deployed carefully.

Orchid's protocol is similar to OpenVPN but based on blockchain and, as a decentralized network, Orchid is built to adapt to different types of protocols. Normally, I wouldn't recommend any US-based VPN company, but decentralized blockchain encryption changes that altogether. Decentralized VPNs, in general, are the next step in end-user privacy tools because their nature prevents any single, central company from being able to keep logs of all of your activity.

And Orchid isn't the only one out there. Mysterium, Kelvpn, Tachyon, BitVPN and Lethean are all decentralized, peer-to-peer style VPNs aimed at resisting censorship efforts by creating a nearly subpoena-proof network of bandwidth providers over which your traffic is scattered. Orchid is ahead of the field here in several notable ways, among them its contracts with other VPN companies, which allows users to travel on its partner VPNs' networks.

If you really want to understand why decentralized blockchain is the next step for VPNs and why Orchid is brilliant, you'll need to know what blockchain and cryptocurrency actually are. Despite the hype, it's not that complicated.

A blockchain is basically just an encrypted, tamper-proof ledger for transactions. Everyone gets a copy of the ledger and everyone's copy automatically changes when someone adds a transaction to their own. You build computer networks on blockchain tech when you need a trustworthy record of information that a lot of people are working with at once -- financial trading, digital copies of paper documents, movements in food supply chains and global shipping, or art brokering.

The "block" is a block of data that is added to the ledger when a transaction occurs. The "chain" is the metaphorical ledger itself. Simple.

Orchid is built on blockchain, the technology that underpins Bitcoin cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrencies work on blockchain. Just like paper money has its anti-counterfeiting designs, each unit of cryptocurrency has its verifiable blockchain. When a transaction occurs and a block is about to get added to the chain, a whole network of computers working with that chain jumps in to verify the transaction is legit by checking its math. The first computer to prove the block's math gets paid.

That's called mining. It's how Bitcoin works. It's also a process that takes too long -- imagine standing at a grocery store register for 10 minutes while your cashier calls the bank -- and sucks up way too much computing power. But there are thousands of types of cryptocurrencies. One of those is Ethereum. It's faster because its verification process is different. Using Ethereum, Orchid developed its own cryptocurrency, called OXT.

In a 2018 explainer, CNET's Stephen Shankland offers one of the clearest and simplest explanations of blockchain I've read. I've cribbed from him liberally here, but that same explainer was remarkably prescient.

"There's lots of work to free blockchain from the problems of transaction speed and energy consumption, though," he wrote. "One idea, 'proof of stake,' uses no significant computing power and looks to be the future for the Ethereum Project, which is responsible for the ether cryptocurrency."

Proof of stake is how Orchid works. And Orchid's currency, OXT, is based on Ethereum.

As Shankland explained, "ether has popularized a newer idea called smart contracts. These are programs that run on the Ethereum network and take automated if-this-then-that actions. For example, a smart contract could look for the highest bid in an auction at a certain time and automatically transfer ownership rights to the auction winner."

That bidding system is also how Orchid works and bandwidth sellers are working in that automated, auction-like environment.

This is normally where I compare costs between VPNs in the same league as the one I'm reviewing. I'd love to do that here. But Orchid again defies simple explanation. There's no set monthly price and no one is in its league.

Instead, you pay for the bandwidth that you use in OXT and Ethereum, or ETH. The downside is that you're subject to market changes, so it can be difficult to estimate long-term cost and you've got to figure out how it works. On the plus side, you're only paying for what you use, you're more anonymous than you would be paying by cash or card and even a heavy data user will find it pretty affordable.

Mercifully, Orchid made the process easier when it obliterated an enormous barrier to entry in July. It now lets you buy your cryptocurrency within the app in semidisposable accounts (think: burner phones but for cryptocurrency wallets) instead of jumping through hoops to set up and connect an outside cryptocurrency account.

To get started, you need at least $4 worth of OXT and $1 in ETH. At current exchange rates, that'll get you around 60 gigs of VPN service. Not bad.

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I plan to keep fiddling with this service until I know it inside-out, but Orchid has some work to do before I can recommend it as everyone's daily driver VPN. Privacy hounds should absolutely give this a whirl and get a look at the future of VPNs. But for most of us, the onboarding is a little too complicated, the pricing too much guesswork and the learning curve still steep enough to be a major hurdle to adoption.

By itself, a crypto-financed hybrid VPN based on a bandwidth-trading market is already a hard pitch to make to the average person. This novelty of the underlying tech and its payment method mean the app's designers are under even greater pressure to create a welcoming, intuitive interface.

The app launches smoothly and its interface is simple and attractively designed. The home screen has one button for connecting and another to manage your hops, while other functions are hidden in a three-bar menu in the top-left corner. While this simplicity aims to create an intuitive experience, I found it too minimalistic where I needed more information and too complicated in places where I needed clarity. The experience left me unsure if I'd done it right, tapping around the app searching for confirmation of some kind that I hadn't missed a step or misconfigured a connection somehow.

The central button of the app is labelled with a universally familiar power icon that says "connect" when the app is opened, says "connecting" as it works and, when connected, changes to "disconnect." Once connected, the Orchid icon and its connection status appear at the top of your phone's home screen.

This would normally be fine design, but the option to stop or start Orchid from the device's main screen rarely works as intended, the app sometimes freezes while attempting to connect, and sometimes it says it's connected when it's not.

To check for data flow, you can access the Traffic Monitor feature in the three-bar menu, but if terms like "TLSv1.2" and "UDP" don't ring any bells for you, then that screen might not be useful. Glitchiness aside, if you're new to cryptocurrency, you might also struggle trying to figure out how much currency you have within the app, how much you're burning at any given time, how the unfamiliar in-app "tickets" work and how to gauge bandwidth value. We're going to need a little more hand-holding here from Orchid to get us neophytes all onboard.

Likewise, as VPNs are loosely understood to be technology that takes us from one location to another, Orchid could help visually signal that we've used the app correctly and that our connection is active by telling us what city we're now connected to on its main screen, and perhaps for how long we've been connected.

It's not fair that the app interface has so much heavy lifting to do on behalf of the technology, but it's Orchid's best vector for removing adoption obstacles and getting more of us where we all need to be for our own good -- on a decentralized VPN, leaving trust in the dust and outrunning the all-seeing eye of government surveillance.

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Orchid VPN review: It uses the tech behind Bitcoin to improve privacy - CNET

Even in a non-hell year, running a successful startup is a tremendous lift. After the events of 2020, however, no doubt many already lean businesses are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. For every company that saw increased interest in their offerings during the pandemic, there were several that simply couldnt make it through the finish line.

Weve put this list together for several years now. Its not a fun task, but it seems worthwhile to commemorate the startups that have closed up shop over the past 12 months. (Some of them were acquired by larger companies before shutting down, but all of them began their life as startups, and it still felt worthwhile to mark the end of their stories.) It also offers an opportunity to examine those issues from a bit of distance to see if there are any broader takeaways for the community at large.

This years list is among the most diverse weve done, ranging from standard smaller-name closures to big blockbuster crashes like Quibi and Essential . For some, the pandemic was the final nail in the coffin, but in many cases, cracks in business models were already starting to surface well before COVID-19 ground the global economy to a screeching halt.

Atrium (2017-2020)

Total Raised: $75 million

Atrium, a 100-person legal tech startup founded by Justin Kan, shut down in March after failing to find an efficient way to replace the arduous systems of law firms. The startup even returned some of its $75.5 million in funding to its investors, including Andreessen Horowitz.

The shutdown comes after the platform had pivoted just months earlier, laying off in-house lawyers and turning into a clearer SaaS play. Ultimately, Atriums failure shows how difficult and unprofitable it could be to disrupt a traditional and complicated system.

The closure came just three years after it launched with the goal to build software for startups to navigate fundraising, hiring, acquisition deals and collaboration with their legal team.

Essential (2017-2020)

Total Raised: $330 million

Image Credits: Darrell Etherington

Big plans, big names and a boatload of money should have been enough to buy Essential a lengthy runway. Sure, Essential was entering a mature and oversaturated market, but the Playground-backed startup was doing so with $330 million in funding, a team of top industry executives and some genuinely innovative ideas.

When I spoke to the company at launch, an executive outlined a 10-year plan to become a major player in both the mobile and smart home categories. Ultimately, the company was able to eke out just under three years of life after coming out of stealth. And while it did give the world a promising handset, its connected home hub never arrived.

Timing, broader marketing issues and troubling allegations of sexual misconduct were all contributing factors that stopped Essentials big plans dead in their tracks.

HubHaus (2016-2020)

Total Raised: $11.4 million

Image Credits: HubHaus

HubHaus, founded by Shruti Merchant, was a long-term housing rental platform rooted in the belief that adult dormitories would take off. The startup targeted working professionals in cities, and raised only around $11 million in known venture capital. When it came to raising a Series B, Merchant says the company struggled to close and lost investor interest due to WeWorks failed IPO.

After then pivoting to a self-funded company, HubHaus was just finding footing when the coronavirus pandemic arrived in the United States, drastically hurting the rental market (as shown by Airbnbs public struggles, as well). The housing company eventually decided to close down in September, leaving landlords, members and vendors in limbo and bringing on a fresh sweep of critique and controversy.

Affordable housing continues to be an issue in the Bay Area, and HubHauss departure from the scene underscores this truth.

Hipmunk (2010-2020)

Total Raised: $55 million

Image Credits: Hipmunk

Hipmunk, founded by Adam J. Goldstein and Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman, was one of the first travel aggregation platforms on the market. The company put together information on flights, hotels and car rental all into one place so consumers could compare and contrast prices with ease.

The focus was enough for the platform to get acquired by Concur, but now after four years, the travel startup shut down. Notably, the travel startups closure wasnt necessarily tied to the coronavirus pandemic. The site officially went dark on January 23, months before lockdowns came to the United States.

IfOnly (2012-2020)

Total Raised: $51.4 million

Photo: Thomas Barwick/Getty Images

IfOnly had created a marketplaces of exclusive events such as goat yoga a business that faced obvious challenges during the pandemic. The startup was actually acquired by one of its investors, Mastercard, late last year, but the acquisition wasnt announced until IfOnly revealed over the summer that it was shutting down.

Mastercard also said IfOnlys team and technology are still part of its Priceless experience marketplace: The IfOnly platform will continue to help advance our Priceless strategy and our combined team will be even better positioned and equipped to deliver exclusive experiences for cardholders globally.

Mixer/Beam Interactive (2014-2020)

Total Raised: $520,000

Image Credits: Microsoft

Microsoft shut down its Twitch competitor Mixer this year, handing off its partnerships to Facebook Gaming. The service had its roots in the software giants acquisition of Beam Interactive shortly after the startup won TechCrunchs Startup Battlefield in 2016.

Before giving up, Microsoft made some big investments in Mixers success, most notably signing streaming superstars Ninja and Shroud to exclusive deals. (They became free agents after the shutdown.) However, Microsofts gaming chief Phil Spencer said the company suffered from starting out pretty far behind the biggest players in the streaming market.

The Outline (2016-2020)

Total Raised: $10.2 million

Image Credits: The Outline

Despite a busy year of innovation and venture for news media platforms, The Outline, which branded itself as the next generation version of the New Yorker was shut down. The media site was started by Josh Topolsky and had an explicit focus on serving millennials with a digital-first news media brand.

The shutdown was part of a broader layoffs at Bustle Digital Group, which acquired the publication in 2019. Pre-acquisition, The Outline had already scaled back its editorial staff and refocused on freelance articles. (Input a tech site that Topolsky founded for BDG continues to publish.)

Periscope (2015-2020)

Periscope went out with more of a whimper than a bang. The startup was acquired by Twitter before it had even launched a product. With Meerkat bursting on the scene that year at SXSW, Twitter went on the offensive, buying the startup to build out its own live video offering.

Periscopes run was decent as far as these things go, and its technology will live on as part of Twitters video offerings, even after the app is officially discontinued next March. But in the end, Periscope was a shell of its former self. In fact, this is a rare instance where the pandemic may have actually delayed its shutdown.

The company notes, We probably would have made this decision sooner if it werent for all of the projects we reprioritized due to the events of 2020.

PicoBrew (2010-2020)

Total Raised: $15.1 million

Image Credits: PicoBrew

The company made beer-brewing machines that used coffee pod-style PicoPaks, then expanded into other categories like coffee and tea, but never quite attracted enough customers to make the business viable. It sold its assets earlier this year to PB Funding Group a group of lenders recruited by then-CEO Bill Mitchell in 2018 to keep it afloat.

Its possible that PicoBrew will live on in some form, as PB Funding Group says its seeking buyers for the companys patents and other intellectual property, and that it will keep the website running in the short term so that the machines dont stop working.

Quibi (2018-2020)

Total Raised: $1.75 billion

Quibi CEO Meg Whitman speaks about the short-form video streaming service for mobile Quibi during a keynote address January 8, 2020 at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)

More so than any tech company in recent memory (with the possible exception of Theranos), Quibis existence feels like a fever dream. $1.75 billion in funding later and what do we have to show for it? Fierce Queens, a nature documentary about female animals. The HGTV-style program, Murder House Flip. And, of course, The Shape of Pasta. A show about pasta.

Early reports of the services demise seemed premature if only because there was seemingly no way a company could burn through that much capital that quickly. By late-October, however, it was over. All that is left now is to offer a profound apology for disappointing you and, ultimately, for letting you down, founders Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman wrote in an open letter.

Sometimes startup failures are bad timing. Sometimes its just plain bad luck. With Quibi, the diagnoses of what went wrong can be summed up in one word: everything.

Rubica (2016-2020)

Total Raised: $15 million

Image Credits: Rubica

Rubica spun out of security company Concentric Advisors with the aim of offering tools that were more advanced than antivirus software, while still remaining accessible to individuals and small businesses. CEO and co-founder Frances Dewing said that when customers cut back on spending during the pandemic, the company tried to shift its focus to larger enterprise, but it failed to convince investors there was a business there.

We were all really surprised given how relevant and needed this is right now, she said. Investors didnt agree with that or see it in the same way.

ScaleFactor (2014-2020)

Total Raised: $104 million

Businessmans hands with calculator and cost at the office and Financial data analyzing counting on wood desk. Image Credits:Sarinya Pinngam/EyeEm / Getty Images

ScaleFactor was a startup claiming to offer artificial intelligence tools that could replace accountants for small businesses; it blamed the pandemic for cutting its revenue in half and forcing the company to shut down.However, former employees and customers told Forbes a different story that ScaleFactor actually relied on human accountants (including an outsourced team in the Philippines) to do the work.

While its hardly unprecedented for a startup to fudge the truth about their level of automation versus human labor, this reportedly resulted in error-filled accounting for ScaleFactor clients. (Responding to a fact-checking email, former CEO Kurt Rathmann said the email was filled with numerous factual inaccuracies and misrepresentation and declined to comment further.)

Starsky Robotics (2015-2020)

Total Raised: $20 million

Self-driving trucks startup Starksy Robotics began with this first, and problematic truck. Image Credits:Starsky Robotics

In 2019, our truck became the first fully-unmanned truck to drive on a live highway, Starsky Robotics co-founder and CEO Stefan Seltz-Axmacher wrote in a Medium post in March. And in 2020, were shutting down. After five years and $20 million in funding, the autonomous trucking company shut its doors that month. It wasnt for lack of ambition or demand it seems safe to assume theres still a bright future for self-driving trucks.

Ultimately, however, Starsky wont be along for that ride a fact Seltz-Axmacher blames largely on timing. A crowded market is certainly at play, as well, with countless companies currently pushing to bring autonomous technology to the road.

Stockwell/Bodega (2018-2020)

Total Raised: $10 million

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

Founded in 2018 by ex-Googlers, Stockwell AI shut down after being unable to find business for its in-building smart vending machines that stocked everything from condoms to La Croix. The company blamed the current landscape (also known as the global pandemic we are experiencing) for its closure.

Stockwell AI, formerly known as Bodega, was well-funded and well-known, with more than $45 million in funding from investors that included NEA, GV, DCM Ventures, Forerunner, First Round and Homebrew. Still, even venture capital couldnt make vending machines work well enough.

Trover (2011-2020)

Total Raised: $2.5 million

Image Credits: Trover

Another travel-focused startup bites the dust as the coronavirus limits the chance to safely explore the world (let alone your neighborhood). Trover, a photo-sharing hub for travelers acquired by Expedia, shut down in August. The startup was founded by Rich Barton and Jason Karas and was meant to connect people travelling to the same places. The startup had quite the life: it began out of the remains of TravelPost, a travel review site, and got scooped up by its parent company when it only had $2.5 million in funding. Unfortunately, its nine-year journey is over for now.

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Remembering the startups we lost in 2020 - TechCrunch

A monitor displays Peloton Interactive Inc. signage during the company's initial public offering (IPO) across from the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, U.S., on Thursday, Sept. 26, 2019.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Check out the companies making headlines in midday trading.

Peloton The exercise equipment stock jumped more than 11.7% and hit an all-time high after Peloton announced that it planned to buy equipment manufacture Precor for $420 million. The deal could help Peloton ramp up production to meet strong demand.

IAC Shares of IAC jumped more than 14.1% on Tuesday after announcing it is spinning off its full stake in video software company Vimeo. Vimeo will become an independent publicly traded company after the deal closes, expected in the second quarter of 2021.

Apple A gain of 2.9% helped Apple offset losses in the major indexes given the iPhone maker's $2.2 trillion market cap. Investors accredited the equity's strength to reports that Apple is advancing plans to manufacture self-driving cars by 2024, a massive undertaking the tech company has dubbed Project Titan.

CarMax The auto retailer reported quarterly per-share earnings of $1.42, topping the consensus estimate of $1.14 a share. Revenue also came in above Wall Street forecasts. But CarMax shares fell more than 8% after the company reported that comparable used-vehicle sales dropped 0.8% compared to a FactSet consensus estimate of a 1% increase.

Carnival, Norwegian Cruise Line, MGM Resorts Travel-related stocks came under pressure amid lingering concerns about the new coronavirus strain from the U.K.Carnival lost 5.9%, Norwegian Cruise Line fell 6.9% and Royal Caribbean dipped 3%. MGM Resorts fell 0.5%. Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and United Airlines all slipped more than 2.5%.

Sportsman's Warehouse Shares of the retailer surged 39.6% after the company said it agreed to be bought by Great American Outdoors Group. The parent company of Cabela's will pay $18 in cash per share of Sportsman's Warehouse, above the stock's Monday closing price of $12.65 per share.

RealReal Shares of the luxury clothing company popped 10.3% after Baird initiated coverage of RealReal with an outperform rating. The Wall Street firm called RealReal a "compelling open-ended growth story."

Rent-A-Center Shares of the furniture and electronics rental company added 1.2% after Loop Capital upgraded Rent-A-Center to buy from hold. The investment firm said in a note that the company's acquisition of Acima was a "game changer."

Illumina Illumina shares advanced 2.3% after Piper Sandler upgraded the maker of gene sequencing technology to an overweight rating. "llumina is well-positioned as the leader in NGS [next-generation sequencings], and we believe it can maintain and grow its position by continuing to lower sequencing costs and taking advantage of datascienceadvancestoimproveshort-readperformance," the firm said in a note to clients.

with reporting from CNBC's Jesse Pound, Pippa Stevens and Tom Franck.

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Stocks making the biggest moves midday: Peloton, Apple, IAC, CarMax and more - CNBC

As we head toward the exits of 2020, we have one more name to add to our roll call of private companies that have reached the $100 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) milestone. Well, one and a half.

But before we get into Nexthink and give Coalition a honorable mention, lets talk about the startups were looking for in 2021.

The $100 million ARR list came together by accident, a quirk of a news cycle that happened to have a few companies reach the threshold when I was in transition back to working at TechCrunch. So, when I got back into our WordPress install, the group of companies that had each recently reached nine-figure revenues was top of mind.

But looking at $100 million ARR companies proved less useful than we might have hoped. Mostly what we managed was to collect a bucket of companies that were about to go public.

That was always a risk. As we wrote at the time:

Perhaps the startup market would do well to celebrate the $50 million ARR mark even more loudly. At $50 million ARR, a startup is scaling to IPO size. Thats the goal, after all.

This is our aim for 2021.

If your startup is approaching the $50 million ARR mark, or the $50 million annual run rate threshold, I want to hear from you. Drop a line if your startup has an annualized run rate between $35 million and $60 million, is privately held, and you are willing to chat about how quickly it is growing. (The Exchange first raised this idea in November.)

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

But thats next year. Today, lets chat about Nexthink, what the hell digital employee experience is and whats good with cyber insurance and why its helping Coalition grow rapidly.

Nexthink is a venture-backed software company with headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland and Boston. According to PitchBook, Nexthink raised external capital in modest amounts from 2006 until 2014, when the startup picked up a $14.5 million Series D. That round was its first worth more than $10 million.

From there, Nexthink was a venture capital success story, presumably scaling quickly as it raised two larger rounds in 2016 and 2018 worth an estimated $40 million and $85 million, respectively. Nexthink was valued at a little over $558 million (post-money) following its 2018 round.

How did it attract so much external funding? By building digital experience monitoring software. Which, after doing a bit of research this morning, appears to be software aimed at tracking what corporate end users are doing with devices and how well software running on those devices perform.

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One final $100M ARR company and the startups we want to meet in 2021 - TechCrunch

In 2016, when the world felt like an entirely different place, Jordan Hewson launched a platform called Speakable. It was meant to let news readers take action on a cause or issue in the very moment they cared most: while reading a news article about it. The company partnered with publishers and NGOs to deliver an action button, right on the publishers website.

Skip forward to today, and people have become far more proactive about the causes they care about. Thats why Hewson is launching a new product called actionable, a library of actions mapped across dozens of causes, giving the user a clear view into how they can do something about the things they care about most.

Though donations are an option across the platform, there are other methods by which users can take action, including volunteering, contacting your representatives and signing petitions.

We were founded before the 2016 election, said Hewson. And Speakable was based on the hypothesis that if we didnt make action easy, people wouldnt do it. But so much has changed, politically and socially, that people are really breaking down the doors to find out ways that they can help in this moment that were in. So we really wanted to be able to provide our users with a platform where they can proactively seek out things that they want to do and deepen their community experience.

Issues on the platform include Education, Equal Rights, Environment, Health, Migration, Politics, Poverty, Racial Justice and more. When a user clicks on an issue, actionable breaks the results down into the type of action the user might take, from donating to volunteering to signing petitions. The platform also drills down into the specific mission of the organization to give users a clear look at how theyre spending their resources.

When Speakable launched, it offered its services for free in the hopes of scaling up rapidly. Today, the platform charges a 3% service fee for donations made through the platform, but Hewson doesnt see that as the companys primary revenue generator.

Rather, Speakable is partnering with brands to sponsor action buttons for their own purpose-based initiatives. Hewson explains that might take the form of a matching campaign or sponsoring the ability for you to reach out to your legislator on a certain issue, giving the publishers another way to generate revenue, as well as Speakable, while scaling campaigns and initiatives on behalf of the brand partners.

The company is currently partnered with about 90 publishers and, via an API, aims to list all the nonprofits that exist in the States.

Interestingly, actionable doesnt necessarily rank or curate the NGOs on its platform in an effort to maintain neutrality among nonprofits, according to Hewson.

Speakable has raised $2.5 million since inception. It has also powered 10 million actions, with the majority of those actions coming in 2020, with 5.2 million actions taken this year. Just this past week, in fact, Speakable facilitated more than $1.3 million in donations in a single day to Feeding America in partnership with the TODAY show.

The team is about 15 people. Sixty percent identify as women at the female-founded company, with 20% identifying as BIPOC and 10% identifying as LGBTQI+.

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Activism platform actionable helps users be proactive about the causes they love - TechCrunch

Tencent is further strengthening its ties with music giant Universal Music Group as it continues to dominate the Chinese music streaming market.

A consortium led by Tencent and comprising Tencent Music Entertainment, the internet giants music spinoff, is set to buy an additional 10% equity stake in UMG from French media conglomerate Vivendi SA, TME said on Friday.

The round values UMG at 30 billion, or $36.8 billion, and will increase the consortiums stake in the music company to 20%. TME continues to hold a 10% equity interest in the consortium, of which other members are not disclosed.

The transaction reinforces TMEs commitment to strengthening its strategic partnership with UMG.TME looks forward to an ongoing and deeper collaboration with UMG as both companies work together to bring unparalleled service and product offerings to artists and fans inChinas booming music entertainment market, the company said.

The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2021 and is subject to regulatory approvals, TME noted.

In August, TME and UMG said they were launching a joint label to discover, develop and promote Chinese artists domestically and to the world.

Tencent has been pally with all three music label giants, which have been licensing content to the Chinese firms music-focused apps. Both Warner Music and Sony Music Entertainment bought shares in TME when the latter went public in Hong Kong.

Warner Musics SEC filing earlier this year showed that it had sold a small stake to Tencent. And one should be reminded that Tencent also had a deal with Spotify from 2017 when the two swapped stakes.

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Tencent-led consortium will lift stake in Universal Music to 20% - TechCrunch

The European Union plans to introduce in coming weeks new proposals aimed at changing behaviorand, in some cases, business modelsat large online platforms, reasserting the blocs role as global tech cop.

The European Commission, the blocs executive arm, is completing regulatory plans outlining how online platforms should remove illegal content quickly and refrain from using their power to quash rivals or push their own products on their sites. The commission plans sanctions for violators that include fines and possible separation of assets, according to people familiar with the matter.

Under the plans, the bigger and more influential a companybased on criteria including market share and revenuethe more obligations it will shoulder. The rules, though not targeting any specific company, are likely to apply to U.S. tech companies including Alphabet Inc.s Google, Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., according to EU officials.

In response to the coming regulations, tech companies and industry groups have warned against creating a new set of competition rules that could hobble innovation.

Were at risk of limiting entire ecosystems because of concerns that a handful of U.S. companies have gotten too big, said Kayvan Hazemi-Jebelli, competition and regulatory counsel for the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a lobbying group that represents companies including Amazon , Facebook and Google.

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U.S. Tech Giants Face Tighter Regulation in Europe - The Wall Street Journal

Hardly any tech giant is spared an antitrust investigation these days. In the United States, Google is facing the biggest antitrust case in a generation. Across the Atlantic, the European Commission has brought formal antitrust charges against Amazon. In the UK, the Parliament has launched an enquiry into music streaming by platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and Google Play.

This was overdue. A decade of light to no regulation enabled a historical consolidation of platform wealth and power. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it painfully obvious how much we depend on digital platforms and how our lives are entangled with them. Crucial platform products and services like health technology (Google and Apple), food and groceries delivery (Deliveroo), transport (Uber) and the supply of essential goods (Amazon) underline to what extent they have become indispensable intermediaries of everyday life. Tech regulation is coming, and we need changes that thoroughly democratise their governance and challenge concentrated corporate ownership.

Breaking up platforms is a popular proposal for antitrust action. But this might not be enough to tackle the true source of platforms monopolistic power. Breaking up Facebook (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) or Alphabet (Google, Youtube, Nest) wont profoundly change their dominant position in their respective markets. Facebook and Google are dominant because they have built network effects. The value users derive from using the platform increases with the number of other users. Owning and operating the digital structure through which these users interact allows platforms to extract valuable data and charge for access to the platform (e.g. in form of subscription or commission fees). This essentially makes platforms the big rentiers of our time, receiving revenue flows from the digital space they enclose.

As long as platforms were perceived to add value and drive innovation they evaded widespread criticism. But this narrative has broken down and concerns about platforms abusing their intermediary power are mounting. The antitrust case against Alphabet focuses on Google harming competition by paying other companies to set its search engine as the default option. Amazon is being sued over using retail data they extracted from their marketplace to boost their own products and compete with sellers. Meanwhile a market study conducted by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) showed concern about Facebook and Googles role in stifling innovation and using their market power to raise the price of digital advertising.

The prevalent tech-solutionist discourse makes platform dominance sound inevitable, integral to our contemporary configuration technology and society. But there are alternatives. The challenge is to liberate the democratic potential of the platform from the logics of concentrated corporate ownership and profit maximisation. Crucially, while platforms have encouraged a sense of technological inevitability, the way that our digital economy is run is neither fixed nor certain. Platforms are legal as much as digital institutions; we can recode both and change how they operate and in whose interests. We can disperse and democratise economic coordination rights currently monopolised by the platforms, ensuring private power is not beyond democratic regulation. Central to this must be a new architecture of ownership and control.

Excerpt from:

Breaking up the tech giants won't be enough to rein in their power - Open Democracy

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clearer than ever that we are at risk of losing control of our economies.

Our institutions have increasingly struggled to meet the challenges of economic development before the crisis, and yet throughout the pandemic weve seen surging stock market valuations of tech giants including staggering CEO salaries the inability of anti-trust regulators, particularly in the United States, to effectively regulate markets and the rise of Chinas tech companies.

Tech giants are not just surviving the pandemic; theyre thriving.

Whats known as the superstar economy is one with a few hyper-productive, gigantic and highly profitable companies.

Superstar firms such as Walmart, Amazon or Facebook use new technologies to redefine markets, and benefit from what are known as network effects simply put, the value of a product is enhanced the more people use it. Facebook is an example people are more likely to join Facebook if their friends and loved ones are on it.

Initially, superstar companies bring new ways of delivering value to customers, but as they grow, they become powerful monopolies. Our institutions have struggled with how to deal with these relatively new firms and, for example, have allowed many mergers and acquisitions that eroded competition in their respective markets. Prominent examples include the acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp by Facebook.

Superstar firms have also contributed to the shift in wealth distribution from labour to capital. Wealth was once commonly built through labour, rather than via capital that is often inherited or otherwise privileged.

Many superstar firms also have the balance sheets of mid-sized economies and hold more information about us than any country. Take Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg probably knows more about you than your government. However, you have no way of finding out because data ownership is at best a complicated issue, and retaining your data would require you to have next to no online footprint.

That citizens dont have access to data about themselves is problematic. Clearly, the only person who should own your data is you. European data privacy laws are about to become even stricter, but in North America, the erosion began in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that resulted in laws that dramatically eroded our privacy. Those laws have provided firms with the right to use the abundant data they collect.

Google is an example. One of the reasons Google is the gold standard of search engines is that it uses advanced machine learning algorithms. These algorithms use our data to learn what we want to see when were online.

Any successful competitor to Google would need to outperform years of learning advantage. That makes competition at best very challenging.

Primarily, we have seen two attempts to address the sheer might of tech giants and their lack of competitors.

In China, superstar firms have been largely nationalized. The state is increasingly involved in the most powerful companies in the country. Chinese regulators recently quashed the initial public offering of a financial company, Ant Group, in a high-profile example of government involvement.

Read more: Ant Group is holding the biggest IPO of all time here's what it is

In such a regime, the state is set up to have unlimited access to your data, so the principles upon which western democracies were built do not apply.

Second, in the western world, we traditionally address issues of market domination with antitrust regulations. Antitrust laws have started to hit the superstar economy hard in Europe. Google alone had to pay fines of US$9.3 billion in the last three years.

However, antitrust measures have so far not been very effective given theres little room for action its either none at all or breaking up companies, which authorities are often hesitant to do.

Examples of such limited success from the past are Standard Oil and, later, AT&T. Standard Oil served America as a monopoly before it was broken up into 34 smaller companies in 1911. Many of these companies are known today under the names Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP and Marathon. Decades later, AT&T was also broken apart into seven smaller, regional companies.

The west also seems ill-equipped to regulate new markets that have emerged outside the traditional boundaries of an industry, including the highly digitized sectors that were fuelled by the growth of the internet over the past few decades.

Antitrust regulations for tech companies in the post-pandemic era need to change. Restricting networked companies to expand beyond their core business, and preventing mergers and acquisitions that inhibit the self-regulating character of markets, could increase the competitive forces in the market.

For example, Amazon as a platform for connecting buyers and sellers has transformed how we buy things. However, there is an obvious conflict of interest and a threat to competition when Amazon offers their own products on their own platform. Microsoft, as a provider of the most popular operating system for computers in the world, is a threat to competitors by offering its own browser.

There is no harm in restricting superstar firms to their core businesses, but a lot of harm when we dont.

Regulators need to better understand the innovative forces in industries and markets to prevent anti-competitive behaviour rather than looking at traditional measures like market share. More competitive markets would offer better outcomes for consumers.

Better antitrust measures also require applying national data security laws. In practice, this would mean that all online platforms need to fulfil the national regulations in the markets where theyre doing business as opposed to only in their home countries. These ideas are currently being advanced in Europe and will likely be a game-changer for tech giants.

A localized market approach could also reduce the effect of data breaches. Competition would become healthier as well, because superstar firms couldnt impose the rules of the game in the same way anymore.

We must better define the role of superstars in our economies and decide whether its wise to readjust our market principles to accommodate tech giants, or whether we should restrict tech giants to adhere to our market principles.

Capital-rich investors will certainly enjoy reaping the benefits from accommodating the Googles and Amazons of the world but the average customer likely wont.

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Why we should rein in the big tech giants in 2021 and beyond - The Conversation US

The Digital Age has been upon us for a while, and yet, as an industry we have been slow adopters, dipping the toe in the water with technology rather than being bold and diving in. The pandemic has been the catalyst that has forced the worlds fitness industry to embrace the possibilities on offer and adjust to meet the needs of the consumer. However, the increased consumer engagement with digital fitness, accelerated by global lockdown restrictions, has also awoken the sleeping giants of Silicon Valley.

As an industry, we have been caught on the back foot by tech giants such as Apple, Facebook, Mirror and Tonal who have been alerted to the consumers appetite for home fitness and fitness tech, recognizing the commercial opportunity, and have launched their own tech-driven fitness services and products. With bigger budgets, seemingly endless resources, established brand loyalty and a global audience, these newcomers to the fitness space have placed a huge amount of pressure on our industry, forcing us to expand digital offerings, enhance quality and meet customer demand in a fast-changing marketplace.

The biggest brands in technology, now with their sights firmly set on the fitness industry, will take no prisoners. How can club operators fight back in a David and Goliath style battle to win over consumers and secure their industry place for the future?

Anything that gets the population moving is a good thing. Getting more people more active more often is the whole reason we all work in the fitness industry. We all have a passion and drive to improve peoples physical and mental well-being through activity. So any new solution that promotes this is positive.

The focus that big players have placed on the fitness industry drives more investment, awareness and interest in exercise, creating a much bigger potential net of customers. As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats. It is also the case that as digital solutions help more people work out from home, confidence and ability increases, and these people may soon seek a facility or club as their next step.

More people engaging in activity is a good thing. The data that digital brings also allows companies to analyze at a whole new level, adjusting offerings to meet real-time engagement. But as a business in the fitness industry, recent moves by these companies have the potential to steal customers from facilities, tempting them with more accessible and affordable digital offers. They can rapidly develop new technology and new high-quality content, and they have the ability to stifle any creative moves the fitness industry makes to open new revenue streams through digital delivery.

An argument exists that some of these companies, including Apple and Google, are operating with a conflict of interest, as they can self-promote their own product, hold data from devices pushing their own product and operate in a developer-locked environment.

Health club operators offer fitness experiences, not just a workout. In-club activity offers a social aspect that cant be replicated through virtual experiences, and the four walls of a facility act as a cathartic change of scene, a space away from both work and home.

Many clubs also offer a range of activities, including spas, work-spaces, cafes and restaurants, sport facilities and child-care, as well as the unrivaled access to experienced professionals and support and a wide range of equipment options that cannot be matched by at-home gyms.

Digital fitness often offers no personal accountability, individual goal setting or performance reviews. This brings a risk of injury or a lack of professional support with no one focused on the assessment of technique. The nature of the digital fitness scene also highlights trainers with perfect bodies, the fitness ideal, but this is an unrelatable and unrealistic representation, especially to those new to fitness, which many of the home-fitness users are, and can have a negative impact on mental health, self-confidence and self-esteem.

In the United Kingdom, we know that roughly 16 percent of people participate in gym or fitness classes at least on a monthly basis. But these tech giants will attract to fitness a whole new consumer group, reaching a greater percentage of the population, not just in the United Kingdom but globally. Yes, this will grow the interest in fitness and in turn, the industry butand this is a big butunless we can compete we wont get a slice of this pie. When Silicon Valley does something, it does it well. The quality of this product will not be substandard, and we need to up our game with quality content and member engagement in order to remain in the game.One thing the fitness industry does have to its advantage is community. Despite the exciting appeal of some of these new developments, there is still something to be said for working out with people from your local area, socializing with them as a community, training with your trainer who knows you and your goals, and having loyalty for your local gym chain. No one wants to be a faceless number at the back of a digital class when they can be seen and heard, surrounded by a supportive community of people they know.

Digital is here to stay. But there is still a demand for the personable experience that in-club activity can deliverreal people delivering real experiences. Therefore, the hybrid model, a wrap-around combination of both in-club and digital on-demand offerings, is the perfect solution to meet consumer demands, providing personalization, accountability and connection to others while allowing the user the ability to select when and where they train.

Digital cannot replicate the in-person experience and community creation that drives a sense of belonging and the feeling that we are in this together or the face-to-face access to professional support. But digital options can supplement the in-club experience and help consumers integrate their fitness journey into their lifestyle, giving them the ability to train anywhere, anytime.

To date, Silicon Valley does not have the assets to deliver the in-person experience. As long as our sector has brick-and-mortar facilities, thisand the communities we create around themremain our standout unique selling proposition.

There is a lot of talk in the United Kingdom about the missed opportunity of our sector to be considered by government as essential to a preventive health care strategy. Currently, gyms are classified with pubs and cinemas. To protect our market position, we need to think much wider than the fitness outcomes we deliver and focus more on the wider health outcomes. We need to talk more about protection against infection and disease and prevention against long-term health issues such as diabetes, heart disease and some forms of cancer. Our language needs to shift from COVID secure to regulated.

If we shift into the health space and start to link our services more to government prevention rather than cure health care strategies, we create an opportunity to serve a much bigger segment of the population. Most people seeking health outcomes from exercise are likely to be deconditioned non-exercisers who need help and support from professionals to be able to train smart and safely toward personal health outcomes. This will require an in-person service. This is where the opportunity lies for our sector. Let the tech giants support the fit-natics and the health conscious who want to track and monitor health indicators; we will deliver the in-person exercise prescription. I honestly cant see our GP service ever moving online because people need and want a face-to-face consultation. Yes, digital services can enhance and support this, but I dont ever see the personal in-person consultation vanishing from our health care system. This should be the same in the prescription of physical activity plans for a healthy, fulfilling life.

The sector now needs to re-evaluate our market position and ambition for the future. We need to unite via our trade associationsIHRSA, Europeactive, UKactive. The case for change is well established. The positive impact of regular activity on health has been proven time and time again. We dont need any more evidence to support the case for change. What we do need is a joined-up strategy to drive the charge.

Digital will undoubtedly play a part in this, but the ability of brick-and-mortar clubs to deliver an outstanding in-person physical experience remains our biggest selling point. Tech giants from Silicon Valley cant compete with us on this. In fact, we should be collaborating with them rather than competing with them. Their health monitoring and tracking technology will be useful as we move into the health space. If we try to compete with them like for like, we will struggle. Instead, we need to create our own niche in the market.

We must focus on the delivery of an outstanding in-club experience, a unique selling point that Silicon Valley cannot yet match, supported by a quality digital provision. The two together will create a future-proof, closed ecosystem, enabling club operators to become an integral partner in a persons health and fitness journey.

If you would like to discuss the introduction or enhancement of your digital offer, visit http://www.fisikal.com or email: [emailprotected].

BIO

Rob Lander, CEO of Fisikal, has more than 20 years of experience in the health and fitness industry, as a former personal trainer who built a successful business of 50 sessions per week. Lander has also spent many years as an international presenter lecturing on technology in the fitness industry. He started with little knowledge of technology other than the vision that one day we would all be using it for many areas of our lives. Organizations all over the world now come to Fisikal seeking our advice on how systems and processes can be optimized. Landers experience working in all areas of the fitness industry gives him multiple perspectives to help advise on how solutions can be created. His advanced knowledge of technology also gives him insights into what the future holds and how we can adapt internal processes so they can leverage technology efficiently.

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Tech Giants of Silicon Valley: Friend or Foe to the Fitness Industry? - Club Industry

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Tech companies operating in the U.K. will face a new, specialized regulator that is expected to introduce rules around user data and consumer choice. It is set to curb the market power of companies including Google, owned by Alphabet (ticker: GOOGL), and Facebook (FB).

The move from the British government comes as tech giants face new challenges in the European Union within weeks, when draft proposals for legislation governing digital markets come on Dec. 9.

The back story. In July, Britains Competition and Markets Authority released the results of a year-long study into online platforms and the digital advertising market in the U.K. The study specifically investigated the market power of Google and Facebook, describing how the companies overwhelmingly dominate in online search, social media, and advertising, and enjoy incumbency advantages that protect them against rivals and reduce competition.

In March, the CMA was asked to lead a Digital Markets Taskforce to advise the government on the design of a new regulatory regime for digital markets. That task force is due to provide its proposals before the end of the year.

Whats new. The British government announced on Friday that it would set up a Digital Markets Unit within the CMA to oversee pro-competition reforms in the tech sector. The new unit will begin operating in April 2021.

Digital platforms like Google and Facebook make a significant contribution to our economy and play a massive role in our day-to-day lives, said Alok Sharma, Britains business secretary. But the dominance of just a few big tech companies is leading to less innovation, higher advertising prices and less choice and control for consumers.

Also read: Big Tech And Antitrust: Where Things Stand

The regulator will establish rules to govern platforms funded by digital advertising that have strategic market statusthe designation of which is another task of the new body. Its mandate includes introducing pro-competition interventions around user data, consumer choice, and could extend to breaking up businesses.

Andrea Coscelli, the CMAs chief executive, said that only through a new pro-competition regulatory regime can we tackle the market power of tech giants like Facebook and Google and ensure that businesses and consumers are protected.

Plus: Google Promises the EU It Wont Use Fitbit Health Data to Target Ads

Looking ahead. Make no mistake: the creation of a new tech regulator with a mandate to target companies like Google and Facebook is trouble for big tech. It comes as these same companies are already facing down the barrel of strict regulation across the English Channel making Europe stand out as a trouble spot.

Its difficult to tell how deep new intervention will run. The CMAs chief executive has been aggressive in calling out Google and Facebook, but the U.K.s business secretary was right to note the significant contribution these companies make to the British economy. Regulation like this could very well become a major political issue.

Email: editors@barrons.com

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Tech Giants Face a Tough New Regulator in the U.K. Heres Why it Matters. - Barron's

Islamabad, Pakistan Tech giants Google, Facebook and Twitter have threatened to withdraw from Pakistan after the government issued new rules that give it more authority to control online content.

The government on Nov. 20 officially issued the Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Online Content (Procedure, Oversight and Safeguards) Rules 2020, which grant the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) the power to remove or block access to unlawful online content through any information system.

The rules apply not only to social media platforms, but also to all internet service providers (ISPs). Social media companies and ISPs are now required to provide any information or data in decrypted, readable and comprehensible format if an investigation agency demands it.

The Asia Internet Coalition, an industry association whose members include Google, Facebook, Twitter and other global tech giants, released an extremely critical statement on Nov. 19 expressing its members alarm at the scope of the new law.

The draconian data localization requirements will damage the ability of people to access a free and open internet and shut Pakistans digital economy off from the rest of the world. Its chilling to see the PTAs powers expanded, allowing them to force social media companies to violate established human rights norms on privacy and freedom of expression, the statement reads.

Under the new rules, social media platforms with more than a half-million users in Pakistan must register with the PTA within nine months. A PTA spokesperson could not be reached for comment.

The rules state that ISPs and social media companies can be fined PKR 500 million ($3 million) for violating the new directives. ISPs and social media companies must also restrict hate speech, content inciting violence, pornography, terrorism and threats to national security.

The law states that the blocking of access to online content would be necessary in the interest of glory of Islam; integrity, security and defense of Pakistan; public order; and decency and morality.

The rules indicate that in the near future Pakistan may promulgate a Data Protection Law, making it obligatory for ISPs and social media companies to have their database servers in Pakistan.

The rules also state that once the government reports an issue, the ISPs and social media companies must block access to unlawful content within six hours in case of emergency, otherwise within 24 hours.

Farieha Aziz, co-founder of Bolo Bhi, an organization that promotes digital rights, said that if AIC members withdraw from Pakistan, it would have a severe effect on the countrys economy.

There are so many users earning their livelihoods from social platforms such as TikTok or YouTube, she said. If these companies decide to withdraw from Pakistan or are stopped from providing services what will happen to these users?

Pakistan banned the popular Chinese app TikTok on Oct. 9 for allegedly sharing indecent content. China is an ally of Pakistan, and the ban was lifted later in the month after Tik Tok agreed to remove vulgar content.

We suspect that these rules may create resistance and a conflict-type situation between the government and billion-dollar social media companies, said Asad Baig, founder ofMedia Matters for Democracy, a Pakistan-based nonprofit that promotes freedom of expression.

We are living in a global world, where if billion-dollar companies are doing business in your country, they also create an eco-system where local people also earn. What our policymakers are failing to understand is that we should be working with these companies to take advantage of their investments and services instead of making them accountable, she said. The companies would not be on the receiving end as Pakistan is a small fish and these companies have the whole world to do business with.

The AIC said the government had promised consultation on the new rules, but that never happened.

Prime Minister Imran Khans government faced severe criticism inside and outside of Pakistan after publishing the first draft of the rules in February.

The prime minister then initiated the consultative committee. There is a complete lack of transparency, Aziz told Zenger News. The power and the mandate of the committee were not to formulate rules but to give guidelines to the PTA to formulate rules. But here the committee itself has formulated rules.

What our policymakers are failing to understand is that we should be working with these companies to take advantage of their investments and services instead of making them accountable, she said. The companies would not be on the receiving end as Pakistan is a small fish and these companies have the whole world to do business with.

Pakistan was classified not free in the Freedom on the Net 2020 report of Freedom House, a U.S. government-funded nonprofit.

The online environment in Pakistan is tightly controlled by the government. Internet shutdowns, blocked websites, and arrests for activity online remain authorities preferred tactics in their effort to suppress unwanted speech, Freedom House said in its report.

(Edited by Siddharthya Roy and Judith Isacoff)

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Tech Giants Threaten to Pull Out of Pakistan Over New Rules on Blocking Content Free Press of Jacksonville - Jacksonville Free Press

Apple has reportedly declined to sign on to a new French initiative that asks big tech companies to commit to paying their fair share of tax.

French President Emmanuel Macron has set up a Tech for Good Call that will seek to implement these changes. However, while Google, Microsoft, Facebook and 72 other companies have joined, Apple and Amazon havent signed on yet.

According to Reuters:

Apple declined to comment, but French officials said talks with the group were ongoing and they could still join the initiative, details of which will be published officially by Tuesday. A representative for Amazon, which French officials said had declined to join the initiative, did not return a request for comment.

The French initiative is not legally binding. Nonetheless, Macron is taking it very seriously. He plans to use it to influence future negotiations when it comes to the regulation of big tech.

Tech for Good Call isnt only about taxes. In addition to asking for a commitment to contribute fairly to the taxes in countries where [tech giants] operate, it also covers other areas. These include stopping the spread of child sexual abuse material, terrorist or extreme violence online contents and supporting new sustainable initiatives.

At this point, it remains clear why Apple did not back the initiative. Apple CEO Tim Cook previously called for a global overhaul of corporate taxes. But he also consistently insists that Apple pays its fair share.

During a 2015 Inside Apple episode of60 Minutes, Cook dismissed reports that Apple doesnt pay its way as total political crap. In an interview this year, he said that Applesresponsibility is to pay what we owe. Beyond this, Cook notes how Apple contributes through donations and initiatives like its COVID-19 crisis response.

My own view is that you pay what you owe in taxes, and then you give back to society, he said.

However, there is some precedent for believing that Apple doesnt pay the full amount it should. In 2019,Apple agreed to pay French authorities around $571 million in back taxes. (With that said, a separate, much larger EU tax bill was overruled in Apples favor earlier this year.)

Source: Reuters

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Apple isn't joining French initiative to push tech giants to pay more tax - Cult of Mac

The Government has announced that it will establish a new regime designed to govern the behaviours of the tech giants. It plans to set up a Digital Markets Unit, operating within the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which will introduce and enforce a new statutory code of conduct. The Government has indicated that, among other things, the code will enable consumers to have more choice over how their data is used.

The aim of the regime is the promotion of competition within the digital market, but the Government has also indicated that the large tech platforms will soon need to be more transparent about how their services are provided and their use of customer data. In particular, the Government has emphasised that the Digital Markets Unit will be working with regulators, including the Information Commissioner's Office, to enforce the new code of conduct. From April 2021 the Digital Markets Unit could be given power over the decisions of tech giants, oblige them to take certain actions and impose financial penalties for non-compliance with the code.

The details of the code will become clearer next year. The Government intends to consult on the "form and function" of the Digital Markets Unit in early 2021.

It remains to be seen how the proposed code will interact with the UK's existing data protection regime. The Government says that "consumers will be given more choice and control over how their data is used". However the regime is driven by competition not data or consumer protection (noting that competition ultimately benefits consumers). As such, it might be too much to expect that this new regime will actually grant consumers new rights (which would not fit with the traditional nature of a code of conduct in any event). Rather, it may be that any infringement of the code, to the extent that it touched on data use, might prompt a sanction from the Digital Markets Unit that could be leveraged by consumers through existing data protection laws. If so, that would mean that tech businesses may soon face another front from which claims can brought and will be an interesting further piece of the UK's developing data litigation landscape.

New competition regime for tech giants to give consumers more choice and control over their data, and ensure businesses are fairly treated

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-competition-regime-for-tech-giants-to-give-consumers-more-choice-and-control-over-their-data-and-ensure-businesses-are-fairly-treated

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Tech giants to be subject to a new code of conduct - Lexology

Minister of Transport, Dr Wee Ka Siong, was recently criticised for his decision to revoke the cabotage exemption for foreign vessels to conduct undersea cable repairs in Malaysian waters. Last week, tech giants which include Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Malaysia Internet Exchange (MyIX) have expressed urgent concerns over the decision which will impact Malaysias internet speed and quality.

As highlighted by former Transport Minister, Anthony Loke and former Communications and Multimedia Minister, Gobind Singh in Parliament last week, the exemption was granted after requests were made from tech giants to shorten the time required to repair undersea cables. With the cabotage policy, it was reported that repairs can take up to 27 days and it has a negative impact in attracting telecommunications and internet investors.

Last Wednesday, Dr Wee had a dialogue session with Facebook, Google, Microsoft and MyIX to provide a clearer picture on the National Cabotage Policy at his office in Putrajaya. He explained that the cabotage exemption for cable repair works was revoked due to the following reasons:

The cabotage policy was introduced in Malaysia in the 1980s to protect the local shipping industry from foreign competition. With the policy in place, foreign vessels will require a Domestic Shipping License (DSL) which can be applied electronically via eDSL.

According to Dr. Wee, eDSL will reduce the time required for the process from 30 to 5 working days if there are no blockage in the application. However, the application will still require confirmation from the Malaysia Shipowners Association (MASA) that no local vessels are available to do the repair works.

The Transport Minister said it is his ministrys responsibility to ensure that vessels are allowed in areas where they are needed the most as soon as possible so that it wont impact Malaysias internet connectivity which is one of the countrys priorities.

According to a report (Tech companies say they may review cable investments in Malaysia) by The Edge Malaysia yesterday, some tech giants appear unconvinced with the new arrangements. According to the papers source who is close to the matter, one of the companies have told Dr Wee during the meeting that it would review its cable investments in Malaysia.

Another tech firm said the cabotage policy which was introduced 40 years ago was meant for passenger ships and vessels carrying goods, and are not meant for todays digital economy. It also said that the policies were implemented at a time when communications was analogue and not digital.

The Edge also sighted a position paper by Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) entitled Malaysia International Connectivity: Impact of Cabotage Policy on Submarine Cable Operations and Investment. The paper mentioned that Malaysias international connectivity is lagging behind regional players such as Singapore. This is due to the fact that Malaysia isnt a transit hub for transregional connectivity between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is also reported that one of the key factors of the situation has been highlighted by both Telekom Malaysia and Time DotCom, which operate domestic submarine cables.

The MDEC paper also mentions the lack of suitable domestic DP2 (Dynamic Positioning Class 2) cable repair vessels, which was highlighted in Parliament last week by Anthony Loke. It also added that disputes between MASA and cable operators over the issue of DSL exemption consent letter (DCL) has been the primary cause of delays.

The report also states that MASA members can block the issue of a DCL, resulting a delay in the issue of the DSL. MASA can choose not issue the DCL if its members want the cable repair job and this could lead to a mediation process if both MASA and the cable operator cannot reach a common understanding.

According to The Edge Malaysia, an industry player involved in undersea cable repairs have said that it is not viable for local companies to own vessels. Their source said After you spend millions on a submarine repair vessel, you have to pray for there to be problems and repair works with the submarine cable. It added that there are instances where submarine cables laid have not had issues for six years.

It is reported that several local companies are capable of performing submarine cable repair which include Dagang NeXchange Bhd, Optic Marine Services Sdn Bhd (OMS) and iFactors Sdn Bhd. However, the report states that only one Malaysian-flagged vessel is capable of doing repairs and it is actually a barge which requires to be towed by a tug boat. The vessel which is called Cable Orchestra is equipped with Dynamic Positioning Class 1 (DP1) capabilities but most tech giants require DP2 which is more advanced and is ideal in rougher waters.

Dynamic Positioning is a computer aided system that helps vessels to maintain a fixed position in the water by using its own set of propellers and thrusters. The industry player also said that tech companies require DP2 vessels as it is a requirement by insurance companies.

The MDEC report also states that permit delays accumulate to almost 100 days annually for submarine cable repairs in Malaysian territorial waters and exclusive Economic Zones. Cable systems under participation of TM and Time come under the South East Asia and Indian Ocean Cable Maintenance Agreement (SEAIOCMA) which include selecting the appropriate cable repair ship from contracted operators. It added that the cabotage policy restricts SEAIOCMA from choosing the best repair ship quickly and this will have a negative impact on the operations of SEAIOCMA and Malaysias aspiration to attract more submarine cable investments.

[ IMAGE SOURCE ]

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Report: Tech giants told Dr Wee they would review cable investments in Malaysia - SoyaCincau.com

Singles Day, a Black Friday-like shopping festival dreamed up by large retailers, is normally boom time for Chinas major online platforms. And indeed Alibaba, which this year started its 11.11 event back on Nov. 1, claims a record $56 billion (RMB372 billion) of business, and sales coming in at up to 583,000 orders per second.

But Chinas tech investors are doing anything but cheering. Thats because the mainland government Tuesday said that it is in the process of issuing regulations to rein in the power of tech giants such as Alibaba, Tencent, JD.Com and Meituan-Dianping.

The StateAdministration for Market Regulation released draft rules that, for the first time, clearly defines anti-competitive behavior. They appear to cover areas including pricing, payment methods, and use of data to target shoppers.

That appears to run directly contrary to the business models of Chinas consumer-facing tech giants, who have built huge and diverse empires spanning e-commerce, payment systems, delivery, and dematerialized services such as gaming and video entertainment. The ecosystems are often supported by so-called super apps that aim to keep users engaged and within the vast walled garden for as long as possible.

It has long been suggested that Chinese customers are used to being spied upon by their government and are therefore far less worried than Western consumers about data privacy issues. The convenience and range of services available through each of the major platforms has allowed everyday Chinese society to become more technologically advanced that many Western countries.

It has also allowed the Middle Kingdom tech companies to account for a far larger portion of the Chinese economy than their equivalents in North America and Europe. That may be the bigger worry for the Chinese government.

Even though they already largely cooperate with the central government on matters such as censorship, Chinas tech companies are now so large and multi-tentacled that they have the potential to represent another source of power and organization in Chinese society other than the Communist Party-led government.

The draft regulations, which are open for public comment until the end of November, were announced exactly a week after Chinas securities regulators effectively halted the IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong of Alibaba-affiliate Ant Group, two days before share trading was to have begun. The company is a new age finance industry giant that would have had an initial market capitalization of $310 billion.

Tuesdays draft regulations may also limit variable interest entities (VIEs), special purpose companies which allow Chinese companies to raise finance and list shares abroad. If these are indeed to be unwound there could be huge upheaval for corporations and in financial markets.

While some commentators have seen the Ant Group debacle in personal terms, a second slap-down for Alibaba founder Jack Ma, the broader message may be that politics always trumps economics: No company is too big to be punished. And no power, organization or personality can be bigger than the Party.

Those reminders bring multiple potential complications and contradictions. The firms now being targeted are the same fast-evolving digital companies that are driving Chinas post-COVID recovery. Reacting to U.S. pressure, the government has set out further plans to become more self-sufficient in technology, a challenge that has willingly been taken up by private sector. Are they now to be stopped? And PRC authorities dream of denting the U.S. dollars role as a reserve currency, and to make the Chinese currency more a medium of international trade than its current low level. Hurting its innovators hinders that.

Alibaba executives shrugged off the Ant Group shambles in their financial results presentation on Thursday last week. They have yet to react publicly to the draft regulations. Alibabas fiercest competitor Tencent will have its chance to form a response when it announced its third quarter figures on Thursday.

Investors have already demonstrated their fears by pulling the shares of the biggest tech firms off their recently-achieved all-time highs. Both Alibaba and Tencent fell by more than 7% on Wednesday. At HK$248.40 on Wednesday, Alibaba shares are 13% lower than their close on Friday Oct. 30. Tencent is 7% down on the month at HK$551 per share.

Originally posted here:

China to Stop its Tech Giants From Becoming Too Powerful - Variety

By chip pickering

Americas tech giants are not the problem and antitrust is not the solution. As we enter into a new age of competition and rivalry with China on strategic, on national security, on economic grounds, we have a lot of people in Washington who are wanting to now either break up or heavily regulate the internet companies just at the wrong time and in the wrong way. As you look at every measurement of consumer welfarelower prices, more innovation, greater investment across all parts of the economyAmerican tech companies are creating greater growth, lower prices, better servicesand thats a hallmark of a very competitive market and not a concentrated monopolistic market.

Ask yourself, is it not the American way to encourage innovation with our brightest minds? Do we want to stifle our ideas and productivity, which is what I would argue is the very thing that has put us on top. Fourteen of the worlds top twenty tech companies are American; we are in a new age of competition and rivalry with China. The U.S. tech industrys global market position is at risk and has huge ramifications for re-starting the American economy and our long-term prospects. Its clear the American technology and e-commerce sector drives U.S. growth. States are aggressively competing on a daily basis for good technology jobs. Our universities and colleges are investing in more and more technology and public-private partnerships. Lawsuits will definitely damage our fastest growing industry and threaten these American jobs.

With a global pandemic threatening the entire world, again ask yourself where would we have been over the last six months without technology to assist our businesses to continue to operate, to educate our children with distance learning, and to provide much needed health care by the use of telehealth? In a recent nationwide survey by the Connected Commerce Council, 93 percent of small businesses reported they were disrupted by COVID-19 and nearly 3 in 4 increased their use of digital tools with COVID-19. A majority of small businesses found digital tools more helpful during COVID-19 than before it. Most also plan to continue to use more digital tools after the pandemic.

By attacking U.S. companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, the Justice Department, members of Congress, and some state attorneys general have taken a step back in time and are forgetting the hard work that has been done on the issue of antitrust. Companies being too large or successful is not a violation of antitrust laws. Antitrust was established to focus on the consumer and there is a robust consumer welfare standard in our antitrust laws now. Plus, many of the technology companies that are currently being attacked provide free services to our families, services that we use every day in our lives. Comments have been made about political bias within our technology companies from both sides of the aisle. There are solutions to political bias, but mistakenly using antitrust is not the right way to encourage free speech.

Politicizing antitrust by attacking our technology companies and filing federal and state antitrust lawsuits are not the way to go for our countrys future. Lawsuits are a distraction from real issues that need to be addressed and a waste of taxpayers money. Solutions are out there; decision makers and our technology companies can find them together. Lawsuits will only cause delay, distraction and economic losses. Our technology jobs and our future are at stake. DBJ

Pickering represented Mississippis 3rd congressional district as a Republican in the United States House of Representatives. First elected in 1996, he chose not to run again in 2008. He is currently the CEO at Incompas.

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Tech Giants and Antitrust - Delta Business Journal