Monthly Archives: June 2021

Sundar Pichai, Alphabet CEO

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Google is moving parts of its popular YouTube video service from the advertising company's internal data center infrastructure to the company's cloud service, the head of Google's cloud said.

The effort indicates Google is looking inward as it seeks to expand its share of the growing cloud-computing market and become less reliant on advertisements appearing on its web search engine and other properties.

Historically, Google has leaned on its own systems to run its most widely used applications across computer servers in its data centers. The Google Cloud Platform offering has coexisted separately, and Google has not undertaken the effort to migrate its eponymous search engine, for example, to the Google public cloud.

But the company's perspective on the value of having its top products use the cloud just like third-party applications has shifted.

"Part of evolving the cloud is having our own services use it more and more, and they are," Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, told CNBC in an interview last month. "Parts of YouTube are moving to Google Cloud."

The change will bring Google more in line with its main U.S. competitors, Amazon and Microsoft.

In 2019 Amazon said its consumer business had turned off its final Oracle database in favor of databases from Amazon Web Services, after years of work. Microsoft has sought to make its LinkedIn social network and Minecraft video game more dependent on the company's own Azure public cloud.

The Google Workspace bundle of productivity apps formerly known as G Suite, the Waze navigation app and the DeepMind artificial intelligence research group all draw on Google cloud infrastructure, Kurian said.

YouTube is different. It's the second-largest website on the internet, according to Amazon's Alexa analytics tool, with more than 2 billion users each month. Google bought the property in 2006 for $1.65 billion.

Google's decision to consume public-cloud resources for YouTube and other consumer services might make life easier for the company's salespeople, who are constantly trying to persuade large companies to try building on the Google cloud or running existing applications on the Google Cloud Platform. Salespeople will be able to say the Google cloud is good enough for the company's business-critical workloads.

That, over time, could boost Google's cloud revenue. In the first quarter nearly 58% of Google parent Alphabet's revenue came from the Google Search and Other category, which includes advertising displayed on Google's web search engine, Gmail, Google Maps and other online destinations it operates. Google's cloud business, which includes the public cloud and Google Workspace, delivered 7% of revenue but grew faster.

The cloud unit has narrowed Alphabet's operating margin with billions in annual losses for at least three years, but the largest cloud infrastructure provider by revenue, Amazon Web Services, has become a key source of profit.

Google held 5% of the cloud infrastructure market in 2019, while Amazon had 45% and Microsoft had about 18%, according to technology industry research company Gartner. Gartner has not released more recent figures.

WATCH: Google Cloud's Thomas Kurian on the future of cloud and Google

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Google is moving parts of YouTube to its cloud service - CNBC

Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Apps for Google Inc., speaks during the Google I/O Annual Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Wednesday, June 25, 2014.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Google is tightening its privacy practices that could make it harder for companies to track users on Android phones and tablets.

Google already allows Android users to opt-out of personalized ads. But even if users do that, software developers may still access the user's Advertising ID, a unique string of characters that identifies the user's device. Firms can use this Advertising ID for purposes such as allowing developers to measure app usage or letting advertisers detect and prevent invalid traffic.

Following the change, if a user has opted out of personalized ads, the Advertising ID will not be available requests for it will return only a string of zeros.

The company said in a policy update that its rollout will affect apps running on Android 12 devices starting in late 2021 and will expand to apps running on devices that support Google Play in early 2022. It said it will "provide an alternate solution to support essential use cases such as analytics and fraud prevention" in July.

With regulators taking a closer look at user privacy, and consumers becoming more concerned about the use of their personal data, tech giants are trying to get ahead by making changes in the name of privacy. Google said in early 2020 that it would end support for third-party cookies on its Chrome browser within two years.

But with advertising making up about 80% Google's revenue, it also needs to keep advertisers happy by offering alternative ways to place ads in front of users they want to reach and track how effective they are. The company has been the market leader in online advertising for well over a decade, and is expected to command nearly a 29% share of digital ad spending globally in 2021, according to eMarketer.

Google's changes will follow other changes Apple recently made for iOS devices, but are not as dramatic. Apple's changes make it easy for iPhone and iPad users to opt out of the kind of tracking that helps advertisers target ads or measure whether ads worked, by placing a prompt in front of them whenever they open a new app. Facebook, among others, objected strongly to the changes, saying that users would see less relevant ads and that small businesses would be hurt as targeted advertising got harder.

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Google follows Apple's lead and makes it harder for advertisers to track users on Android - CNBC

Democratic senators, led by Cory Booker of New Jersey, say they worry about how Google's products and policies may perpetuate bias. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images hide caption

Democratic senators, led by Cory Booker of New Jersey, say they worry about how Google's products and policies may perpetuate bias.

A group of Democratic senators is urging Google parent company Alphabet to investigate how its products and policies may be harming Black people.

In a letter to the tech giant's CEO, Sundar Pichai, and other executives, Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Mark Warner of Virginia, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said they worried about bias and discrimination, both in the products Google makes and the way it's handled workplace diversity.

"We are concerned about repeated instances where Alphabet missed the mark and did not proactively ensure its products and workplaces were safe for Black people," the senators wrote.

They highlighted several examples of Google products that appeared to produce biased results or potential harms for Black people.

"Google Search, its ad algorithm, and YouTube have all been found to perpetuate racist stereotypes and white nationalist viewpoints," they wrote.

They cited recent reporting from Vice showing that a new app to identify skin conditions hadn't been trained using a "sufficiently diverse" dataset and therefore wasn't effective on people with dark skin.

They also pointed to the controversial firing of prominent artificial intelligence ethicist Timnit Gebru, who was the first Black woman to be a research scientist at Google as well as a vocal critic of the company's diversity efforts.

The senators suggested the company has not made good on racial justice pledges Pichai made in a letter to employees and congressional testimony following the murder of George Floyd a year ago.

The first step, the senators said, is a "racial equity audit." They want Google to work with outside civil rights and legal experts to identify the root causes of any discrimination within the company and its tools, and what it can do to address the problems.

Google and other tech giants have long come under criticism for making slow progress in diversifying their largely white workforces. At Google, for example, only 3.7% of U.S. staff is black, according to its 2020 diversity report, compared with 2% in 2013.

The companies have also been slammed for not paying enough attention to the impact of their technologies on people of color and the way their design and development may perpetuate bias.

In their letter to Google, the lawmakers pointed to Facebook and Airbnb, which have done similar audits examining racial bias and discrimination on their platforms and within their companies after outside pressure from activists and lawmakers.

Facebook's audit, completed last year, gave a damning assessment of what the outside auditors called the company's "vexing and heartbreaking decisions" to prioritize free speech over civil rights.

The senators said a similar investigation is long overdue at Google.

"As Congress and the federal government do more to protect communities of color from civil rights violations online, companies need to do their part by examining areas for improvement and ensuring their workplaces are safe for members of these communities," they wrote.

"We can no longer rely on promises and need Alphabet to take affirmative steps to protect Black people and other people of color."

Google did not respond to NPR's request for comment.

Editor's note: Google, Facebook and Airbnb are among NPR's financial supporters.

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Senate Democrats Urge Google To Investigate Racial Bias In Its Tools And The Company - NPR

A mobile phone shows Huawei app interface. Huawei unveiled HarmonyOS, its own operating system in 2019. In June 2021, the company launched the operating system on a smartphone for the first time.

Costfoto | Barcroft Media | Getty Images

GUANGZHOU, China Huawei on Wednesday launched its self-developed operating system across a slew of devices, including smartphones. The move comes as the Chinese tech giant looks to wean itself off its reliance on U.S. technology and could pit it against software from Apple and Google.

HarmonyOS launched in 2019 after the U.S. blacklisted Huawei, cutting it off from access to Google's Android operating system. That move, along with further sanctions restricting Huawei's access to critical semiconductors, crippled its smartphone business just months after it became the number one player in the world.

Huawei has been developing HarmonyOS since 2016 and bills it as an operating system that can work across many internet-connected devices from smartphones to wearables. The company claims it is easy for developers to create apps that can work across different products.

The focus on HarmonyOS working across devices is one way Huawei is trying to differentiate its operating system from Google's Android and Apple's iOS.

"HarmonyOS is designed to provide the glue between a growing array of connected devices that Huawei is targeting," Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, said.

"Huawei will be hoping that it can follow Apple's lead, by having a single software platform that extends in all directions, providing a seamless experience to customers that buy into its ecosystem of products."

In 2019, Huawei put HarmonyOS on a TV made by Honor, a brand it had used to own. On Wednesday, Huawei launched HarmonyOS on a new version of its flagship Mate 40 smartphone as well as its Mate X2 foldable phone. Huawei's new Watch Series 3 smartwatch and MatePad Protablet will also be equipped with HarmonyOS.

Sanctions in 2019 that cut Huawei off from Google meant users of the Chinese company's smartphones did not receive Android updates.

Huawei announced on Wednesday that many of the company's older phones will be able to upgrade to HarmonyOS. These upgrades will begin from Wednesday and be gradually rolled out through to next year.

U.S. sanctions caused a dramatic slowdown in Huawei's revenue growth in 2020, hitting the company's smartphone and its networking equipment business. Washington has maintained Huawei is a national security threat claiming data the company collects could be shared with the Chinese government. Huawei has repeatedly denied that it would do this.

Huawei has looked to pivot to software and focus on other consumer electronics like wearables and tablets to boost revenue. HarmonyOS is part of that effort along with an increasing focus on cloud computing.

The company has said that nearly 100 different Huawei products are set to support HarmonyOS in China this year. Huawei had previously said 300 million devices will run on HarmonyOS this year.

At an online event on Wednesday, Wang Chenglu, the president of software in Huawei's consumer business group, showed examples of how HarmonyOS works across devices. One example involved opening a "control panel" on a smartphone before choosing one of several music apps and what device to play songs on.

Two operating systems dominate the mobile market today Google's Android and Apple's iOS. In the past, companies from Microsoft to Samsung have tried and failed to create viable alternatives.

What let them down was the lack of scale which failed to attract developers to the platform to make apps. Without apps, users may not want to use the software.

But Huawei has put a big focus on apps and the company's scale and the number of devices HarmonyOS can work across could help draw developers to the platform.

HarmonyOS could "attract the developer ecosystem and increase the install base of devices really fast," Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC. "More developers will see the benefits. There is not a chicken and egg problem."

Huawei has a suite of apps such as mapping and a browser under a brand called Huawei Mobile Services. HMS is similar to Google Mobile Services and offers developers kits that can be used to integrate things like location services into apps.HMS has 2.7 million registered developers globally.

The Chinese firm also has its own app store called App Gallery with 540 million monthly active users worldwide.

"Huawei has been able to generate some scale," Shah said.

Meanwhile, Huawei has opened its operating system to third-party device makers, much like Google's Android. If major home appliance companies or device manufacturers decide to adopt HarmonyOS then that could help the software grow even further, Shah said.

While HarmonyOS could find success in Huawei's home market of China, it may face challenges in international markets.

Google's Android and Apple's iOS dominate the mobile operating system market. And on smartwatches, Apple has its WatchOS while Google last month launched a revamped version of its Wear operating system. The two U.S. technology giants have also been focusing on software for in-car entertainment too.

Both companies also have a huge base of app developers and the world's most popular apps on their platform. That is one area in which Huawei could struggle.

"The only thing (HarmonyOS) still lacks is the big marquee western developers," Shah said.

Huawei's app store is missing major names such Google apps, which are important to users abroad. Facebook meanwhile is available but not for direct download from AppGallery.

Shah said certain continents like Europe and Africa could provide an opportunity for Huawei. However, the Chinese firm will most likely have to deal with the reputational fallout from U.S. sanctions.

"Huawei faces huge challenges outside China," Wood of CCS Insight said. "There has been a palpable loss of consumer confidence in the brand as a result of the US sanctions that will be challenging to overcome as it pivots into new areas."

The rest is here:

Huawei launches its own operating system on smartphones in challenge to Google Android - CNBC

Google Photos has long offered one of the best deals in all of photo storage: itll back up your entire library for free, so long as it can compress the images a bit. But as of tomorrow, June 1st, that deal goes away, and youre now eating through Google storage (which you may have to pay for) whether your images are compressed or not.

With the change looming, Ive been wondering how bad Googles compression actually is. Does the compression leave my photos in High Quality, as Google has claimed for years? Or does the compression degrade my photos enough to make it worth using more storage by switching over to Original Quality backups?

I ran some quick tests this morning to find out. I took some photos and videos from my Pixel 5 (one of a few phones that will continue to get free compressed storage) and a photo from my Fuji X-T30 and uploaded them to two separate Google Photos accounts, one with compression turned on and one that maintained original quality.

The results were mixed. For photos, the compressed versions were often indistinguishable from their uncompressed counterparts. But once youre losing resolution, the compression really starts to show.

Heres what I found across a handful of tests. You can click the images to view them at a larger size.

Heres a photo I took recently of my cat, Pretzel. I zoomed in on his hair, his eyes, and the books in the background, and I cant find a difference. The photo, taken on a Pixel 5, was originally 3.4MB but was compressed down to 1.5MB.

I took this picture on Yales campus last weekend with the Pixel 5s ultrawide camera. Both versions look great while in full screen on my computer. You could probably make an argument about whether theres some more noises around the edges of the leaves in the compressed version, but Im generally of the mindset that if you have to search for image issues, they dont really matter.

The space saving isnt very substantial here: Googles compression takes the file size from 7.3MB to 5.7MB.

Heres a photo I took this morning of Pretzel on my Fuji X-T30. I zoomed in on his face, and couldnt find a difference even when both were blown up as large as Google Photos could make them.

At first, it seemed like this was a situation where Google Photos compression won out: the file size shrank from 12MB to just 662KB, and the images look practically identical.

But theres one very notable difference. Google caps photo resolution at 16 megapixels, which shrank the photo significantly from the original 26 megapixel file my camera saved. Heres a zoomed-in crop showing how the detail starts to disappear as blocky noise comes in:

Now look, I dont know that I need all 26 megapixels of this image at this point in time. But if I ever wanted to print this photo in a larger format, crop it down the road, or otherwise make changes to it, those extra pixels would be a huge advantage to have retained.

Theres nothing inherently wrong with 1080p video, but there is something wrong with the way Google processes it. And unfortunately, if you use Googles compression, all your videos will be compressed at 1080p.

When that happens, everything becomes smudgy, details just vanish, and some colors even lose their pop. Its a really significant downgrade in terms of quality. Im not able to embed a Google Photos video here, so I included a screenshot comparison above. I think you can see most of the differences, although its much clearer how blurry text becomes at larger sizes.

I originally recorded this video in 4K back on my Pixel 5 back in February. It looks nice enough on my not-4K computer screen. Street signs, faces, and the falling snow all look sharp. But the compressed version is kind of a mess it looks like I recorded it with a layer of grease on my camera lens.

The loss (or savings) of data is a big one here: it falls from 55MB for this 10 second clip to just 6MB. No wonder it looks so much worse.

I still came away mostly impressed by the quality maintained after Googles compression. For photos, the result can be nearly indistinguishable so long as the original file is under 16 megapixels. But for videos, theres no question that uncompressed is the way to go. Its too bad that Google doesnt let you set different options for photos and videos.

The real drawback is that compressing your photos doesnt always save a ton of space. That extra space definitely adds up as you push thousands of new photos into the cloud each year. But if youre going to have to pay anyway, it might be worth maintaining your photos and especially your videos at their full quality, especially if youre uploading them in higher resolutions.

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How bad is Google Photos compression anyway? - The Verge

Arun Krishnamurthy, Founder, Environmentalist Foundation of India

Amid exponentially growing urbanisation, lakeslike many other natural habitatshave been either vanishing or severely deteriorating. The reasons are plenty, but the fact remainslakes and ponds often bear the brunt of modern-day human negligence.

Lakes perform some of the most crucial ecosystem servicesfrom regulating the flow of a river to recharging groundwater. Therefore, there is a dire need to restore these valuable freshwater bodies, especially in urban centres across India. With World Environment Day 2021whose theme is Reimagine. Recreate. Restore.on June 5, the UN Decade of Ecosystems Restoration will be kick-started.

Over the past few decades, many people and organisations have been striving to revive and restore the lost ecosystems across India. Today, we highlight the incredible work of one such organisationthe Environmentalist Foundation of India (EFI). For years now, EFI has been at the forefront of restoring various lakes and ponds in more than 14 states, including Maharashtra, Karnataka, Delhi and Tamil Nadu.

Besides, this not for profit trust is also actively imparting awareness about the need for conserving natural habitats across the length and breadth of India.

Arun Krishnamurthy, the founder of EFI, left a lucrative corporate job to pursue his dream of environmental conservation. Recognising his incredible work in restoration, he has been bestowed with the prestigious Jane Goodall Institute Global Youth Leadership Award in 2010.

On the occasion of World Environment Day, we caught up with Arun Krishnamurthy, to know more about the restoration work undertaken by his foundation.

Before establishing the Environmentalist Foundation of India, you worked at Google in Hyderabad. What motivated you to take up environmental conservation?

I had quit my corporate career not because I didnt like what I was doing, but did so because I liked working for the environment even more. One of my managers once told me, Even without you, Google can function. But will the dream of your EFI function without you?"

I was fascinated by water bodies culture and a civilisation that has a different story to tell and I consider them as a magical element of the environment. For me, water is a habitat that hosts life for one frog, that one tree sapling, or that rainfall, which fills up that entire lakeit feeds lives with so many memories and further conserves several other water bodies in the way forward.

Once you decided to champion the environmental cause, what was the most daunting challenge that you faced?

One man or one organisation can not resolve the current environmental crisis. It has to be a collaborative, result-oriented effort amidst stakeholders panning across the administration, the industry and the civic society. Achieving this collaboration is easier said than done. A dynamic setup such as India requires a tad bit more effort in coagulating such a striking force. This has been an interesting yet achievable challenge for us at EFI.

What was your primary aim with establishing EFI?

No human would be a mute spectator to destruction. The scale of reaction varies based on external and internal factors. An appropriate catalyst can tilt the balance of this reaction in favour of preventing or repairing that destruction. This is what our history tells us!

On those lines, EFI is a humble efforta social platform for nature enthusiasts who wish to be that someone for Indias environment. We have always wanted to be that catalyst to trigger that favourable reaction towards our planet from fellow citizens.

You, along with EFI, have done significant work towards the restoration of lakes. Why lakes and how do you go about it?

Madambakkam Lake in Southern Chennai.

From dumping of solid-liquid waste, construction debris to encroaching lake water holding areas for construction is some of the major exploitations have led to the destruction of several such ecosystems across India. We would continue to face water shortage and also be victims of urban flooding. Loss of biodiversity is all part of declining lake systems.

It varies from lake to lakea few common pointers include cleaning the lake of all trash, clearing the invasive weeds, deepening the water body to increase storage capacity based on its soil condition, strengthening the embankments, and regulating the inflow-outflow regions are part of the restoration plan.

With time, do you feel the awareness about environmental issues is gaining momentum? How can we accelerate it?

In the recent past, talks about environmental issues have been gaining momentum. But it is not at a level where it needs to be. We need to start talking about our lakes and ponds more; we need to ensure our waste does not reach our neighbourhood lake. We should definitely participate in volunteering efforts in our neighbourhood lakes and ponds to maintain them. This should be definitely under the supervision of people with the know-how.

The world is in a situation where we are equipped with ample resources, scientific research, and technological interventions that can help us restore ecosystems. But on the other hand, there are still myriad factors that continue to degrade our ecosystems. How do you navigate this dichotomy and create positive change?

Every human finds a representation of the world in oneself. There cannot be a template model of lifestyle for the wider population. As an explorer in its quest and search, the human race understood the nuances of balance long ago, and thereby, did not exploit them further. A sustained behaviour of this pattern led to the evolution of cultures across the planet.

Culture is meant to be the disciplinary guiding force for sustainable living and harmonious coexistence. It delivered results until the power-hungry individuals started using cultural practices for their authoritative agenda.

This led to a collapse of belief, discipline and thus the chaos we are in today. Local solutions for global problems are the key to a greener tomorrow. All of humanity is one, indigenous cultures of the land is what makes us unique. A combination of knowledge from the past experiences from the present, and thought about the future would help us take on the present-day environmental challenges.

What has been the most standout moment in your journey towards environment conservation?

Volunteers take part in the restoration work.

The love and affection that volunteers share amongst each other are truly motivational. We come together as strangers but leave as a family. Those moments are truly magical!

On the occasion of World Environment Day, what is your message to our readers?

Community participation is critical to a sustainable future. The planet needs no saving, its the human race that needs to wake up to the real-time threat of climate change and volunteer towards combating the same. Overcoming the consumerist attitude is vital to ensure the survival of the human in every being.

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EcoGuardians: This Man Left a Job at Google for Environmental Conservation! Here's His Journey | The Weather Channel - Articles from The Weather...

SAN ANTONIO, June 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rackspace Technology (NASDAQ: RXT), a leading end-to-end multicloud technology solutions company, today announced that it has worked with Pure Storage to amplify the performance of its storage-as-a-service (STaaS) with Google Anthos to deliver on-premises performance in a cloud-like environment.

For more than 10 years, Pure Storage has served over 8,000 customers with its STaaS offering, delivering a modern data experience that empowers organizations to run their operations as a true, automated, STaaS model seamlessly across multiple clouds. Pure Storage helps customers put data to use while reducing the complexity and expense of managing the infrastructure behind it.

Pure Storage stores data for Fortune 500 companies across all industries including companies in the finance, healthcare, government, retail, media and education sectors. To better serve its high-profile customer base and make integrations seamless, Pure Storage identified Kubernetes containers as the perfect solution for their STaaS.

A few years ago, we saw that containers were going to be the next big thing, said Simon Dodsley, Technical Director at Pure Storage. After evaluating our STaaS, we found that the incredibly fast, API-driven, Kubernetes persistent storage containers were a no brainer for us.

Pure Storage leveraged Rackspace Technology to design and build a reference architecture for the new solution that integrates with the new Google Anthos platform. Anthos provides a consistent platform for all customer application deployments, both legacy as well as cloud native, while offering a service-centric view of customer environments.

When Pure Storage decided it wanted to build reference architecture on Anthos and leverage Kubernetes, Google Cloud looks to partners like Rackspace Technology to help successfully demonstrate their value on such a robust solution resulting in a boon for the customers business, said Kelsey Domme Google Cloud Client Director for Pure Storage. With Pure Storage, it was truly a collaborative effort of four teams Rackspace Technology, IGNW, Google and Pure that made it possible to bring this Anthos MVP vision to a successful outcome."

Together, our teams stood up a high-performing reference architecture that achieved unheard-of performance in only half the allotted time, says Jeff DeVerter, Chief Technology Evangelist of Rackspace Technology. In only 45 days, we were able to deliver a minimum viable product, allowing Pure Storage to take the time savings and repurpose it to enhance the overall project.

About Rackspace TechnologyRackspace Technology is a leading end-to-end multicloud technology services company. We can design, build and operate our customers cloud environments across all major technology platforms, irrespective of technology stack or deployment model. We partner with our customers at every stage of their cloud journey, enabling them to modernize applications, build new products and adopt innovative technologies.

Media ContactNatalie SilvaRackspace Corporate Communicationspublicrelations@rackspace.com

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Rackspace Technology and Pure Storage Amplify the Performance of STaaS with Google Anthos - GlobeNewswire