Category Archives: Big Tech

Big US technology companies are exploiting loopholes in global tax rules to avoid paying as much as $2.8bn (2.1bn) tax a year in developing countries, according to research by the anti-poverty charity ActionAid International.

Facebook, Google and Microsoft have been accused of failing to pay a fair amount of taxes in poor countries where governments are struggling to provide even basic healthcare or education to their citizens.

ActionAid International said its research showed the income lost from the tax gap could have been used to pay for more than 700,000 new teachers or 850,000 primary school teachers.

There is no suggestion that the tech firms are breaking the rules or actively evading tax. ActionAid said the potential taxes are being lost due to world leaders failure to implement global standards on tax that would force multinational companies to pay more tax in the countries where they generate their income.

Little is known about how much tax these companies are currently paying in developing countries, as they are still not required to publicly disclose this information, ActionAid said. This research shows, however, that billions could be at stake in the long overdue reform of international corporate taxation enough to transform underfunded health and education systems in some of the worlds poorest countries.

David Archer, global taxation spokesman for ActionAid International, said: Women and young people are paying the price for an outdated system that has allowed big tech companies, including giants like Facebook, [Google parent] Alphabet and Microsoft, to rack up huge profits during the pandemic, while contributing little or nothing towards public services in countries in the global south.

The $2.8bn tax gap is just the tip of the iceberg this research covers only three tech giants. But alone, the money that Facebook, Alphabet and Microsoft would be paying under fairer tax rules could transform public services for millions of people.

India, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria and Bangladesh are the countries with the highest tax gaps involving these three companies. The World Health Organization estimates that the 20 countries studied by ActionAid need to employ at least 1,790,000 more nurses by 2030 to achieve their benchmark of 40 nurses per 10,000 people. These shortages could be fully covered in just three years if global tax rules allowed fair taxing of these three big tech companies and the revenue was allocated for this purpose.

The technology companies have not responded to requests for comment.

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Big tech accused of avoiding $2.8bn in tax to poorest countries - The Guardian

Investors seem remarkably, almost impossibly, indifferent to the intensifying regulatory assault on the tech megacaps.

Consider this: On July 29, the House Judiciary Committee conducted an extraordinary virtual hearing, grilling the CEOs of Alphabet (ticker: GOOGL), Facebook (FB), Amazon.com (AMZN), and Apple (AAPL). It was a bipartisan assault, with testy questions from both sides of the aisle. In reaction, all four stocks rallied.

On Oct. 6, the House antitrust subcommittee published a scathing 449-page report on those same companies. The report, signed only by the panels Democratic members, attacked their conduct, declaring that both Google and Facebook are monopolies that engage in anticompetitive behavior. Once again, the stocks posted gains.

And last week, the Justice Department and 11 state attorneys general all Republicansfiled a long-expected antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet, alleging that Google has engaged in anticompetitive activity in the conduct of its search and advertising businesses and asking for unspecified remedies to force it to change its behavior. The stock rallied.

In fact, Alphabet shares have appreciated almost 10% since the release of the House report, adding nearly $100 billion in market capitalization. Facebook, Amazon, and Apple have all posted gains over the same period.

How to interpret this? The most obvious conclusion is that Wall Street thinks this is a bunch of hooey, a series of chest-thumping show trials unlikely to result in actual enforcement. The Google case is likely to take years to play out, by which time Google and its megatech pals will likely be bigger and more powerful than today, as online advertising, retail, and content businesses grow at the expense of their offline brethren. And, by the way, we could be a few weeks away from a changing of the guard at the DOJ.

An alternative explanation is that investors actually would welcome a forced breakup of the tech giantsthat it would create value by forcing spinoffs of, say, YouTube, Instagram, and Amazon Web Services. (Less obvious is what you would do in Apples casemaybe peel off the App Store?) Under this theory, even if the companies lose, investors could win.

Yet a third possibility is that the market is deluding itselfthat investors are in for a rude awakening as tech regulation muffles growth rates, forces business changes, and curtails relentless expansion into new business lines.

Or maybe the right answer is 3b; even if all that happens, these brilliantly run companies will innovate their way into new markets and fat revenue growth. Note that Microsoft (MSFT), the last big tech target of antitrust regulators, has surged this year to a record valuation.

RBC Capital internet analyst Mark Mahaney this past week wrote a thoughtful response to the House committee report, which he found a little perplexing. Mahaney has been covering internet stocks for more than 20 years, and knows the companies as well as anyone on the Street.

At the heart of Mahaneys problem with the report is a stark disagreement on whether these companies are a force for good or fundamentally evil. The legislators vote evil. They wrote: Companies that once were scrappy, underdog start-ups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons, referring to evil capitalists of yore.

Mahaney doesnt deny there are legitimate reasons to ask if the megatechs have periodically abused their power. But on balance he thinks they are a positive force, benefiting workers, consumers, shareholders, and the economy. To not provide a modest elaboration of those benefitsto at least be open to the idea that regulatory action, if not tailored well, could undermine what have been, and continue to be, enormous societal benefits in the United Statesseems to us to be risky, he writes.

Two, he contends that the antitech crowd fails to concede that the primary driver for these companies has been innovation and execution, not cheating and bullying rivals and partners. The reports consistent assertion that anticompetitive practices have been the primary source of growth and market poweris flat-out wrong, he writes.

Mahaney makes the obvious point that the hearing wasnt about, say, Yahoo, AOL, and eBay (EBAY), three companies that were dominant internet franchises during their heydays and could well have been the dominant franchises of todayAmazon and Google simply out-innovated, out-executed, and out-competed [them].

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And third, he denies that the tech giants have left no room for innovative rivals. In e-commerce, Shopify (SHOP), Etsy (ETSY), Chewy (CHWY), and Wayfair (W) are generating huge growth, despite ongoing growth at Amazon. In social media, TikTok has surged to more than 100 million users in the U.S. alone, luring young users from Facebooks Instagram. Search is a tougher case, but Mahaney wonders if Google remains dominant because no one has produced a better search engine. Microsoft is bigger than Google on almost every metric, and yet Bing is a distant No. 2.

In March, with the market in collapse, I wrote that investors should buy all five tech megacaps. (Adding Microsoft to the mix.) Hope you did. Despite the regulatory scrutiny, I still believe the five are going to exit the pandemic stronger than ever, with years of robust growth to come, no matter the noise coming from Congress, the White House and the courthouse.

Write to Eric Savitz at eric.savitz@dowjones.com

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The Government Is Coming for Google and Other Big Tech Companies. What to Do With the Stocks. - Barron's

Facebook launched an independent oversight board and recommitted to privacy reforms this week, but after years of promises made and broken, nobody seems convinced that real change is afoot. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is expected to decide shortly whether to sue Facebook, sources told the New York Times,following a $5 billion fine levied last year.

In other investigations, the Department of Justice filed suit against Google this week, accusing the Alphabet company of maintaining multiple monopoliesthrough exclusive agreements, collection of personal data, and artificial intelligence. News also broke this week that Googles AI will play a role in creating a virtual border wall.

What you see in each instance is a powerful company insisting it can regulate itself while government regulators appear to reach the opposite conclusion.

If Big Techs machinations werent enough, this week also brought news of a Telegram bot that undresses women and girls; AI used to alter the emotions on peoples faces in photos; and Clearview AI, which is being investigated in multiple countries, allegedly planning to introduce features to help police use its facial recognition services more responsibly. Oh, right, and theres a presidential election campaign happening.

Its enough to make people reach the conclusion that theyre helpless. But thats an illusion, one that Prince Harry, Duchess Meghan Markle, Algorithms of Oppression author Dr. Safiya Noble, and Center for Humane Technology director Tristan Harris attempted to dissect earlier this week in a talk hosted by Time. Noble began by acknowledging that AI systems in social media can pick up, amplify, and deepen existing systems of inequality, like racism and sexism.

Those things dont necessarily start in Silicon Valley. But I think theres really little regard for that when companies are looking at maximizing the bottom line through engagement at all costs it actually has a disproportionate harm and cost to vulnerable people. These are things weve been studying for more than 20 years, and I think theyre really important to bring out this kind of profit imperative that really thrives off of harm, Noble said.

As Markle pointed out during the conversation, the majority of extremists in Facebook groups got there because Facebooks recommendation algorithm suggested they join the groups.

To turn the tide, Noble said its important to pay attention to public policy and regulation, as both are crucial to conversations about how businesses operate.

I think one of the most important things people can do is to vote for policies and people that are aware of whats happening and who are able to truly intervene. Because were born into the systems that were born into, she said. If you ask my parents what it was like being born before the Civil Rights Act was passed, they had a qualitatively different life experience than I have. So I think part of what we have to do is understand the way that policy truly shapes the environment.

When it comes to misinformation, Noble said people would be wise to advocate for sufficient funding for counterweights like schools, libraries, universities, and public media, which she said have been negatively impacted by Big Tech companies.

When you have a sector like the tech sector that is so extractive it doesnt pay taxes, it offshores its profits, it defunds the democratic educational counterweights those are the places where we really need to intervene. Thats where we make systemic long-term change, to reintroduce funding and resources back into those spaces, she said.

Forms of accountability make up one of five values embedded in many AI ethics principles. During the talk, Harris emphasized the need for systemic accountability and transparency so the public can better understand the scope of problems created by Big Tech and seek redress. For example, Facebook could form a board people can report harms to and then produce quarterly reports on progress toward removing those harms.

For Google, one way to increase transparency would be to release more information about its employees AI ethics principle review requests. A Google spokesperson told VentureBeat that Google does not currently share this information publicly, beyond a few isolated examples. Getting that data on a quarterly basis might reveal more about the politics of Googlers than anything else, but Id sure like to know if Google employees have reservations about the company increasing surveillance along the U.S.-Mexico border or which controversial projects attract the most objections at one of the most powerful AI companies on Earth.

Since Harris and others released The Social Dilemma on Netflix, a number of people have criticized the documentary for failing to include enough voices of women, particularly Black women like Noble who have spent years assessing the issues it examines, such as how algorithms can automate harm. That said, it was a pleasure to see Harris and Noble speak together about how Big Tech can build more equitable algorithms and a more inclusive digital world.

For a breakdown of everything The Social Dilemma misses, you can read this recap of an interview with Meredith Whittaker that took place at a virtual conference this week. But she also contributes to the heartening conversation about solutions. One helpful piece of advice from Whittaker: Dismiss the idea that the algorithms are superhuman or superior technology. Technology isnt infallible, and Big Tech isnt magical. Rather, the grip large tech companies have on peoples lives is a reflection of the material power of large corporations.

I think that ignores the fact that a lot of this isnt actually the product of innovation. Its the product of a significant concentration of power and resources. Its not progress. Its the fact that we all are now, more or less, conscripted to carry phones as part of interacting in our daily work lives, our social lives, and being part of the world around us, Whittaker said. I think this ultimately perpetuates a myth that these companies themselves tell, that this technology is superhuman, that its capable of things like hacking into our lizard brains and completely taking over our subjectivities. I think it also paints a picture that this technology is somehow impossible to resist, that we cant push back against it, that we cant organize against it.

Whittaker, a former Google employee who helped organize a walkout at Google offices around the world in 2018, also finds workers organizing within companies to be an effective solution. She encouraged employees to recognize methods that have proven effective in recent years, like whistleblowing to inform the public and regulators of serious harms. Volunteerism and voting, she said, may not be enough.

We now have tools in our toolbox across tech, like the walkout, a number of Facebook workers who have whistleblown and written their stories as they leave, that are becoming common sense, she said.

In addition to recognizing how power shapes perceptions of AI, Whittaker encourages people to try to better understand how AI influences our lives today. It might have been easy to miss amid so many other things this week, but the group AIandYou.org, which wants to help people understand how AI impacts their daily lives, dropped its first introductory video with Spelman College computer science professor Dr. Brandeis Marshall and actress Eva Longoria.

The COVID-19 pandemic, a historic economic recession, calls for racial justice, and the consequences of climate change have made this year challenging, but one positive outcome is that these events have led a lot of people to question their priorities and consider how they can make a difference.

The idea that tech companies can regulate themselves appears to have largely dissolved. Institutions are now taking steps to reduce Big Techs power, but even with Congress, the FTC, and the Department of Justice the three main levers of antitrust trying to rein in the power of Big Tech, I dont know a lot of people who are confident they will be able to do so. Tech policy advocates and experts, for example, openly question whether Congress can muster the political will to bring lasting, effective change.

But whatever happens in the November 3 election or with antitrust enforcement, there are steps we can take to wrangle power away from Big Tech. People at the heart of the matter believe building a better world for ourselves and future generations will require, among other things, imagination, engagement with tech policy, and a better understanding of how algorithms impact our lives.

As Whittaker, Noble, and the leader of the antitrust investigation in Congress have said, the power Big Tech holds can seem insurmountable, but if people get engaged, there are real reasons to hope for change.

For AI coverage, send news tips to Khari Johnson and Kyle Wiggers and AI editor Seth Colaner and be sure to subscribe to the AI Weekly newsletter and bookmark our AI Channel.

Thanks for reading,

Khari Johnson

Senior AI Staff Writer

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AI Weekly: Constructive ways to take power back from Big Tech - VentureBeat

For decades, companies like Google have enjoyed exponential growth and an almost unobstructed rise to power. But the tide appears to be turning, as US lawmakers crack down on alleged monopolistic practices and public sentiment sours on the former wunderkinder of Silicon Valley.

Antitrust charges brought against Google on Tuesday by the US justice department mark the latest and most significant legal challenge yet for big tech.

Barry Lynn, the executive director of the Open Markets Institute, and a longtime critic of tech monopolies, calls the case an incredibly important statement of intent.

By the time this ends I think we will see a radically different company and industry, he said.

But the charges are also just a start, he said, and questions remain about exactly what laws will be created to regulate big tech, with partisan bias and a disorganized smattering of agencies investigating tech firms muddying the waters.

The charges filed against Google are not without controversy. The case was reportedly rushed through by Donald Trumps attorney general, William Barr, who pushed for it to be filed against the wishes of lawyers who wanted to take more time on the case. Doing so on the cusp of an election that may result in a change of administration could be detrimental to the long-term goal of reining in tech giants, said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor.

It is altogether messy, he said. It is not clear whether what comes out of it will be systematic and well-thought-through.

The Department of Justice is just one entity racing to take action against Google. In September 2019, attorneys general in 50 US states and territories announced an investigation into Google and Facebook over alleged monopolistic behavior. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission has been separately investigating Amazon and Facebook to determine if they abused their massive market power. And in October, a major report detailing an investigation by the House judiciary committee concluded that big tech wielded too much power and was censoring political speech, spreading fake news and killing the engines of the American economy.

The investigations are made more complicated by the fact that opposition to big tech has become largely politicized, with Democrats mostly targeting companies for their monopoly power and Republicans accusing them of censoring conservative speech.

The latter view is championed by one of the most vocal critics of big tech, Donald Trump. The president has repeatedly accused Twitter and Facebook of censoring him and threatened to take away their protections under Section 230, a statute providing protections for content hosts, which he inaccurately believes would give him more freedom online. The justice departments charges may represent Trumps final vendetta against tech companies for their perceived slights against him.

This may be the last gasp of an administration that we wont see again for awhile, Tobias said.

The charges against Google, which describe the company as a monopoly gatekeeper for the internet, also highlight a changing perception of the tech industry from benevolent innovators to menacing corporate superpowers.

Two decades ago, Google became the darling of Silicon Valley as a scrappy startup with an innovative way to search the emerging internet. That Google is long gone, the suit alleged.

And by taking aim at Googles search and advertising operations, the justice department has opened a path that could have a wide-ranging impact not just on Google but on the entire tech industry, Lynn said.

This could lead to investigations of other large parts of their business. Mapping is a search service, YouTube is a search service, he said. Other companies including Amazon and Facebook are reliant on search to dominate their sectors, he said.

The justice department is modeling its attack on Google as a parallel to the famous Microsoft lawsuit of 1998 the last time the US government accused a company of operating a monopoly under the Sherman Act, a law that dates back to 1890 and encourages competition between enterprises.

In many ways, Googles rise to power has become emblematic of the problems posed by big tech. In its infancy, the co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin reviled Microsoft as a technological bully that ruthlessly abused its dominance of the personal computer software market to choke off competition that could spawn better products.

Their disdain for Microsoft spurred Google to adopt Dont be evil as a corporate motto, one that remained its moral compass during its transition from a freewheeling startup to a publicly traded company suddenly accountable to shareholders. Google abandoned that motto in 2018, and now confronts an existential threat similar to what Microsoft once faced.

The onslaught of antitrust action against big tech comes years after the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed that the massive power of Facebook may have been used to sway US elections. Consumers have suffered through years of major data breaches. This year the world watched Amazons chief executive, Jeff Bezos, grow $24bn richer while the rest of the global economy suffered from the shocks of a pandemic. Consumers, Tobias said, are fed up.

People feel like they dont have control, that theyve lost all their privacy to companies that just dont give a damn about them, he said. You have to imagine members of Congress have to be responsive to that.

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Washington's crackdown on Google is the greatest threat yet to big tech - The Guardian

President Trump on Sunday told a rally crowd that he would defeat Democrat challenger Joseph R. Biden despite the left-wing news media and Big Tech stacking the deck against him.

The swamp is deep and it is vicious. These people are vicious. They dont report the truth, he said, pointing to TV news cameras and reporters at the rally in Manchester, New Hampshire.

The jab at the media was vintage Trump but it took on heightened urgency with major news outlets and social media giants Twitter and Facebook blacking out reports about Mr. Bidens links to his son Hunter Bidens shady business deals.

So Im not just running against Joe Biden. Im running against the left-wing media, Silicon Valley censors who want to manipulate and control the American people. Its unbelievable, he said. And if you say anything bad about Biden, they block you, they take you down.

Mr. Trump is trailing in most polls nationally and in battleground states with nine days until the election. Hes barnstorming across the county with multiple rallies each day, while Mr. Biden rarely ventures onto the campaign trail for in-person events.

Mr. Biden long denied any connection to his sons lucrative business deals struck in countries where his father wielded influence as vice president in the Obama administration. New revelations, including documents and first-hand accounts from Hunter Bidens former business partner, show Mr. Biden was not only involved but was a central figure in what looks like influence-peddling schemes.

Hunter Bidens business deals include:

He landed a $50,000 per month seat on the board of a Ukraine energy company in 2014 while his father was the point man for Obama White House policy in that graft-riddled country.

He made a $1 billion deal for his business with a Chinese bank in 2013 that later expanded to $1.5 billion, inking the agreement after a trip with his vice president father to China aboard Air Force Two in 2013.

He got a $3.5 million payment in 2014 from the oligarch widow of a former Moscow mayor, according to Treasure Department records uncovered by a Senate investigation.

What the hell is going on? Terrible. And then the media refuses to write it, Mr. Trump said at the rally. Weve got to win.

Mr. Biden and his son have denied any wrongdoing. But the elder Mr. Biden has not directly addressed new allegations of his involvement in the deals.

The president has increasingly accused Mr. Biden of being a corrupt politician.

In Manchester, he pushed back harder against the common perception that Mr. Biden is a nice guy an image the former vice president banks on to present himself as the candidate with superior character.

Mr. Bidens character has been put to the test during the campaign on the rare occasions that reporters or voters asked him about Hunter Bidens business deals. On those occasions, Mr. Biden has lashed out at the questioner.

No. Hes not a nice guy. People that knew him in prime time [know] he was never a nice guy, said Mr. Trump. Hes a phony guy. But now hes probably more agitated than ever before.

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Trump calls out media, Big Tech shielding Biden: 'Swamp is deep and it is vicious' - Washington Times

Albert Edwards, the stock strategist at French bank Socit Gnrale known for his bold and grim outlook on the U.S. economy, says the nations largest tech companies could soon face a massive crash like the dot-com bubble burst in 2001.

As Observer has reported many times this year, Big Tech stocksthe club of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Netflixhave enjoyed miraculous growth, gaining massive market value increases and adding tens of billions of dollars into their rich founders pockets, in a time when the rest of the world struggles to grapple with the economic tolls of the pandemic. But according to Edwards, thats because these mature, large companies have been mistaken by the market as growth companies, and their bull run wont last long.

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Edwards has predicted that the U.S. economy will inevitably follow the footsteps of Japan and sink into an era of deflation and ultra-low bond yields (like now), which he calls the Ice Age.

In the Ice Age, quality, growth and earnings certainty will be, and should be, rerated to extreme highs, he explained to MarketWatch recently. But woe betide any stock or sector, as in 2001, that profit-warns, making the market realize it has been fooled, having wrongly valued it as a growth stock.

Edwards noted that overall the U.S. Big Tech stock has seen share price rise faster relative to the global market in 2020 while their earnings per share expectations have started to deteriorate relative to the market average.

The analyst said his Ice Age thesis supports a K-style valuation polarization in the equity market, where different types of companies are valued at starkly different prices and the valuation gap widens over time, forming a K-shaped line graph along the time axis.

Any hint of cyclicality could lead to a 2001-style valuation collapse, Edwards warned.

Growth and quality stocks should be expensive relative to value and cyclicality, he added, drawing references to Ancient Roman aristocracies, But if you have donned the Caesar-like valuation laurels that a growth stock wears, and then reveal yourself as a cyclical impostor when you are sitting at these nosebleed valuations, expect a Brutus-like denouement.

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The Big Tech Stock Bubble Will Burst Soon in 2001-Style, Warns Top Strategist - Observer

I am among those favouring regulation of the internet giants Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft because of their humungous control of viewers data (raising issues of privacy and national security) and unintended role in spreading falsehoods and hate speech. But I am sceptical of the US governments move to prosecute and break up Google, claiming advertisers and viewers are harmed by its being the unchallenged gateway to the internet for billions of users worldwide.

Google gets only 29% of digital advertising, followed by Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and new internet stars like TikTok. Google is simply not an unchallenged gateway, though it is the dominant search engine. The historical argument against monopoly is price gouging. But the internet giants typically offer free news, entertainment, and knowledge. This can create problems of privacy and hate speech but is the opposite of price gouging.

A brilliant policy paper by Ryan Bourne of the Cato Institute, Is This Time Different, shows that anti-monopoly cases can end farcically, with the supposed monopoly being ousted by new innovations. Economist Joseph Schumpeter said the creative destruction of innovation constantly killed established giants, creating new ones. Innovation, rather than government controls on market share, was the key killer of monopolies.

IBM seemed a classic monopolist in mainframe computers in the 1970s. An anti-trust case against IBM lasted 13 years but then collapsed since the personal computer and laptop killed IBMs supposed mainframe monopoly. They are in turn threatened by the smartphone.

Is Amazon a retail monopoly? Please recall A&P, the US retail monopolist from the 1910s to 1960s. By creating the chain store, it beat traditional retailers hollow, and had greater market share than its four nearest rivals. Yet A&P was eventually trounced by big-box supermarkets like Walmart, which in turn are now threatened by e-commerce. Once-mighty A&P filed for bankruptcy in 2010.Facebook is often called a monopolist. But back in 2007, The Guardian had an article titled Will MySpace Ever Lose its Monopoly? MySpace had 74% of social network traffic in 2008, and network effects supposedly made it impregnable. Facebook disproved that. It too can be decimated by a newcomer with superior technology. When will the rival come? Nobody knows, but as in IBMs case, new rivals could come long before an anti-monopoly case ends, wasting government and corporate time and money.

In November 2007, Forbes magazines cover story on Nokia was One Billion Customers Can Anyone Catch the Cellphone King? This was, of course, written just as Apple and Samsung began their mighty ascent, and Nokia its long descent. Microsoft ultimately bought Nokia in 2013 when its market share was 3%.

Kodak dominated cameras and photo films for decades, and in 1978 was labelled a monopolist by a US jury. This happened just as it was losing market share to Nikon, Olympus, and Fujifilm. The digital camera then decimated all of them, and in turn was decimated by the smartphone.

Apple pioneered iTunes for music download sales and got a market share exceeding 80%. In 2010, the British music magazine NME asked, Who will Break iTunes Monopoly? The US government began an anti-monopoly inquiry. But iTunes was soon disrupted by streaming services like Spotify and Pandora. Later, consumers got free music from many sites such as YouTube.

In 1996, 90% of internet users had Netscape as their browser. It seemed unstoppable. Yet by 2001 its market share fell to 12%, decimated by Microsofts Internet Explorer. Through its Windows system, Microsoft made Internet Explorer the default browser for millions. Harvard Business School Professor Pai-Ling Yin called this unassailable. Yet by 2008 Mozilla began gaining market share, and then all were overtaken by Googles Chrome.

Xerox was once so dominant in photocopying that the very act was called Xeroxing. An anti-trust suit in 1973 led to a costly legal struggle. But then rivals like HP, Canon and Minolta emerged with better, cheaper copiers. Today Xerox is an also-ran.

Yahoo once dominated search engines. Google did not invent the search engine: it was 35th in line. In 1998, Fortune published a piece, How Yahoo won the Search Wars. As usual, this happened just as Yahoos fortunes were declining and Googles rising. Google today has 90% of the market. Should it be broken up as a monopolist?

History suggests this will be dicey, unnecessary, and maybe farcical.This column began by saying that some aspects of the internet giants (including Google) should be regulated. Their tax loopholes should be closed. But the reason is less their monopoly power than unanticipated side-effects such as privacy problems and proliferation of hate speech and falsehoods.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Big tech needs regulation but govt action no solution - The Times of India Blog

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Perfect (disastrous) timing: Several of Silicon Valleys biggest battles over antitrust, political interference and Section 230 are coming to a head just two weeks from Election Day.

Confronting anti-Semitism: A conference hosted this week by President Donald Trumps State Department will bring together U.S. and foreign leaders and experts to discuss the role of social media in spreading anti-Jewish hate. Will far-right conspiracy groups be included?

988: President Trump signed into law bipartisan legislation to make 988 the new dialing code for the United States suicide hotline, pushing to give that number the same prominence as the 911 code.

GREETINGS, TECHLINGS! ITS MONDAY; WELCOME BACK TO MORNING TECH. Im your host, Alexandra Levine.

Got a news tip? Write to Alexandra at [emailprotected], or follow along @Ali_Lev and @alexandra.levine. An event for our calendar? Send details to [emailprotected]. Anything else? Full team info below. And don't forget: Add @MorningTech and @PoliticoPro on Twitter.

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We support updated internet regulations.At Facebook, we continue to take steps to improve our platforms such as tripling our safety and security teams, building privacy tools, and more. Updated internet regulations will set standards for addressing today's toughest challenges.Read why we support updated internet regulations

2 WEEKS TO GO, AND TECHS IN BOILING-HOT WATER Some of the tech worlds biggest battles in Washington are coming to a head just two weeks out from one of the most consequential elections of our time. Case in point: It used to be a rare occurrence to see the CEOs of the most powerful tech companies on the planet testifying before Congress. Now, we could see that happen more than once before the end of the month. So grab a tall, tall cup of coffee (in an oversized orange mug, if you feel so inclined) and buckle up for a wild ride until Election Day heres whats on tap.

On Monday: Brace for DOJ to drop the hammer on Google. The first major monopolization case in decades is likely to drop early this week, as President Trumps Justice Department files its much-anticipated suit against Google over alleged antitrust abuses.

The action is certainly expected to shake the search giant, but its not without its own politics. The DOJ suit is happening without the participation of any Democratic attorneys general, despite the Trump administrations wishes (and months of negotiations) to make the Google fight bipartisan, POLITICOs antitrust guru, Leah Nylen, reports: The Trump DOJ had hoped to entice Democratic-led states to sign on to the complaint in the hopes of avoiding claims that politics played a part in the suit's filing, she writes.

On Tuesday: A subpoena vote. The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to subpoena Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify about alleged anti-GOP bias. The panels move to compel the duo to testify so urgently was prompted by the platforms handling last week of the New York Posts disputed Biden-Burisma story, which Republicans worry could sway the outcome of the election. If the committee votes to authorize a subpoena, the session could happen as early as Friday of this week.

On Wednesday: An examination of extremism. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is slated to host the first-ever U.S. Government conference focused on combatting online anti-Semitism, exploring the role of social media in its spread and how government and civil society organizations should respond. The virtual gathering will feature domestic and foreign leaders including U.S. Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as representatives from social media companies and others. The event comes about a week after Facebook announced it would ban Holocaust denial.

Rep. David Cicilline speaks during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on antitrust. | Mandel Ngan/Pool via AP

House Judiciary antitrust Chair David Cicilline (D-R.I.), who is Jewish, is pressing the State Department to look specifically at the role of the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon, far-right hate group The Proud Boys and conspiracy website InfoWars in the rise of anti-Semitic hate. In a letter last week to Pompeo, Cicilline urged discussion on the importance of national leaders fighting the intersection of anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, and anti-immigrant scapegoating which he suggested has become a norm in American politics and public discourse in recent years. Without naming names, he added that we must consider how all leaders including our own must do better to ensure that they are part of the solution.

On Thursday: A Section 230 deliberation. As tech platforms legal liability shield remains under fire from all sides, Senate Judiciary is scheduled to hold a markup Thursday morning on a Republican-led bill to scale back those protections the Online Content Policy Modernization Act, S. 4632 (116), from Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

Next week: 230 fireworks continue. The CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google are slated to testify before the Senate Commerce Committee on Section 230 (more on that here). And although 230 is not on the agenda for the FCCs monthly open commission meeting the day before, expect to hear chatter and criticism over Chairman Ajit Pais recent decision to move forward on Section 230 rulemaking. We broke down that decision, and why its dividing Washington, in Fridays Morning Tech.

Lawmakers from across the political spectrum are deeply misinformed about how Section 230 actually works, said Evan Greer, deputy director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future. She argues that repealing the statute wont address concerns raised by both Democratic and Republican members of Congress (around content moderation or alleged bias, for example) and advocates instead for putting actual policies in place to protect free speech and rein in Big Tech abuses, like enacting strong Federal data privacy legislation, restoring net neutrality, banning micro-targeting and harmful forms of algorithmic amplification, and breaking up monopolies." Were likely to hear more from human rights and free expression groups in the coming days.

And after that? Election Day and the chaos likely to follow.

INKED ON THE PRESIDENTS DESK: 988, A NUMBER TO KNOW President Trump over the weekend signed into law the bipartisan National Suicide Hotline Designation Act, S. 2661 (116), which will make 988 the dialing code for the countrys mental health crisis and suicide hotline (and shorten it from ten to three digits). The legislation comes from Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and its a companion bill to the House measure introduced by Reps. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) and Seth Moulton (D-Mass.).

The COVID-19 pandemic has only increased our states mental health needs, and during this unprecedented challenge suicide prevention is now more important than ever, said Gardner. The lawmaker and mental health advocates have stressed how the coronavirus era which has exacerbated depression and anxiety, isolation and substance abuse has made the need for a reliable, easy-to-remember suicide hotline even more urgent. The FCC must now get the 988 shortcode set up from a technical perspective.

ACROSS THE POND: EU LOCKED-AND-LOADED ON DIGITAL TAX The European Commission remains ready to propose an EU-wide tax on digital companies, absent an international agreement being negotiated at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said in an interview with POLITICOs Brussels Playbook author, Florian Eder, and Brussels-based trade reporter, Jakob Hanke Vela.

Besides a desire to make globe-trotting tech firms pay their fair share, Dombrovskis said the EU executive is mindful of member countries such as France going it alone. We stand ready to come forward with a digital taxation proposal at the EU level, because we would like to avoid the fragmentation of the single market if different member states now start introducing different digital taxes, he said.

U.S. has no right to interfere with Frances digital tax: Asked about France's digital tax, the new EU trade chief said Brussels would not accept U.S. retaliation. (The U.S., which has argued that the digital taxes disproportionately ding American tech giants, has threatened to fight back with tariffs). The EU's position on this has been clear: Taxation is a sovereign right of countries and so we are not accepting that third countries are interfering with taxation rights of the member states, especially if those are done in a horizontal way not addressed to any particular country," Dombrovskis said. Read more from the interview in Brussels Playbook.

ICYMI: THE SCOOP ON POLITICOS AI SUMMIT Our third annual AI summit took place last week, welcoming members of Congress, former Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt, and other experts to discuss the ways AI is shaping the pandemic, social justice issues, the 2020 election, competition with China and other policy areas. Read our top takeaways from the virtual gathering here.

Google became the first corporate member to join the European Advertising Standards Alliance. USTelecomThe Broadband Association welcomed new members: SpaceX, Neustar, DUO Broadband, Etex, First Orion, Hiya and Transaction Network Services.

ICYMI: How Mark Zuckerberg Learned Politics [transforming] himself into an active political operator in the Trump era, via WSJ. (The piece has caused a stir among some on the left who believe the CEO has tailored Facebook to be more accommodating to right-leaning, rather than progressive, news outlets.)

U.S. persuades others against Huawei, ZTE: The U.S. government is embarking on a push to persuade developing countries to shun Chinese telecommunications equipment, offering financial assistance to use alternatives, WSJ reports.

On that note: My colleague Eric Geller reports that the Cyberspace Solarium Commission is coming out with a plan today for lowering the risks to information and communications technology posed by China.

A message from Facebook:

We support updated internet regulations.

We support new regulations that hold companies, including Facebook, accountable on issues including: Combating foreign election interference Protecting people's privacy Enabling safe and easy data transfer between platforms

Read why we support updated internet regulations

On IP: World Trade Organization members on Friday rejected a proposal to temporarily waive intellectual property rights, patents and other protections for any medical technologies relating to Covid-19, POLITICO reports.

Techs world takeover: Technology companies are set to end the year with their greatest share of the stock market ever, WSJ reports, topping a dot-com era peak in the latest illustration of their growing influence on global consumers.

Tips, comments, suggestions? Send them along via email to our team: Bob King ([emailprotected], @bkingdc), Heidi Vogt ([emailprotected], @HeidiVogt), Nancy Scola ([emailprotected], @nancyscola), Steven Overly ([emailprotected], @stevenoverly), John Hendel ([emailprotected], @JohnHendel), Cristiano Lima ([emailprotected], @viaCristiano), Alexandra S. Levine ([emailprotected], @Ali_Lev), and Leah Nylen ([emailprotected], @leah_nylen).

TTYL.

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Big Tech in trouble, 2 weeks from Election Day - Politico

Land O'Lakes and Microsoft joined forces over the summer to address, among other issues, the rural broadband gap. The two organizations, along with other partners, just released a Wi-Fi access point map.

Agricultural cooperative Land OLakes has released a map that can help citizens find more than 2,300 free Wi-Fi spots in 49 states.

The map is part of the companys American Connection Project. The tool shows Wi-Fi locations from Land O Lakes as well as those from other organizations such as 4-H, Kentucky Farm Bureau and Tractor Supply Company.

The launch of the American Connection Project map marks an important milestone in our effort to bring critical services to disconnected communities across America and a resource for individuals to find broadband access when they truly need it, said Tina May, vice president of rural services at Land OLakes, in a statement. We are enormously grateful for the ongoing commitment of our partners in banding together to advocate on behalf of rural communities throughout a difficult time across our country.

The map is also part of the Microsoft Airband Initiative. In addition to testing potential rural broadband solutions like white space technology, Microsoft entered into a multiyear partnership with Land OLakes to pioneer new innovations in agriculture and enhance the supply chain, expand sustainability practices for farmers and the food system, and close the rural broadband gap, according to a Julypress release.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, weve worked with our partners to keep people connected by bringing free public Wi-Fi hot spots to communities around the country vital links to the Internet during a difficult time said Shelley McKinley, vice president of technology and corporate responsibility at Microsoft. This map is an excellent summation of that work, and we are grateful for the partnership of so many organizations who are working to bridge the broadband gap.

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Big Butter, Big Tech Partner to Build Wi-Fi Access Map - GovTech

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz wants to throw it out. Some Democrats agree, but for different reasons. Either way, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has generated a lot of buzz on Capitol Hill when it comes to its role in protecting internet platforms from liability in content moderation.

Virtually any platform that hosts content by users also moderates that content, whether its comments posted by readers on articles, blogs, photos, videos or other items shared on social media. Its not the first time there have been calls to change the law that gives platforms leeway on how much they can moderate that content.

Lawmakers across the political spectrum have criticized the law but for different reasons. Cruz argued to repeal the law in a 2018 debate with Beto ORourke because he believes it allows social media platforms to quash conservative voices. Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has called it a real gift to Big Tech, and she has called for social media companies to take more responsibility for content shared on their platforms.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden has called for the law to be revoked, specifically saying Facebook is not merely an internet company. It is propagating falsehoods they know to be false.

Section 230 took the spotlight again last week when Twitter limited sharing on a New York Post story that suggested Biden used his position to benefit his son Hunters business dealings in Ukraine. Conservatives, who have long argued their speech has been impeded on social media, used the opportunity as a battle cry to summon Big Tech CEOs before Congress and challenge Section 230.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to subpoena Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify about their handling of the New York Post story.

This poses the single greatest threat to free speech in America today, Cruz said in a press call with the Media Research Center Monday. It poses the single greatest threat to democracy in America, and it also poses the single greatest threat to a free press.

But what is Section 230? And what does it allow and not allow?

Dubbed the 26 words that created the internet, by Jeff Kosseff, a cybersecurity law professor at the United States Naval Academy, Section 230 was signed into law in 1996, in the nascence of the internet.

While the internet looked very different from the way it does now, platforms still existed and hosted content by third-party sources. And some of that content was libelous.

As libel cases kept coming to courts, lawmakers had to decide who to hold responsible for that content, said Victoria Ekstrand, associate professor of journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Should platforms be held to the same liability standards of publishers, like a newspaper? Or should they be considered an entity that doesnt have that secondary liability, like a bookstore?

At the time, lawmakers knew very little of what the future internet would look like, but they knew it was capable of doing things that were never possible before. Eric Goldman, professor of law at Santa Clara University School of Law, said thats why Section 230 was born.

In order to preserve the opportunity for the internet to reach its potential, Section 230 said: Were going to give the internet more favorable treatment than other media so that it can do the things its capable of, Goldman said.

In that spirit, Section 230s Good Samaritan clause says that internet platforms are not publishers, so they are broadly not responsible for what users post (with the exception of federal criminal liability, privacy violations and intellectual property-based claims), and they cannot be held liable for actions taken in good faith to restrict access to content they believe could be harmful to others.

While at first, it may seem the clause gives no incentive for businesses to moderate their platforms, its actually the opposite. Companies want to police their platforms because if they dont, the platforms become cesspools of spam and harassment, Goldman said.

But they dont want to risk legal trouble every time they moderate content.

Section 230 was passed to create a robust atmosphere for speech online, and for the growth of the internet, Ekstrand said. But the other part was to encourage what we think of now as content moderation, so the platform can go in there and content moderate, but theyre protected from that secondary liability.

If the only way to moderate content without liability is to do it perfectly, then there is very little incentive to do so. Goldman calls it the moderators dilemma.

Section 230 allows internet platforms to moderate content or not without that fear, but lawmakers on the right and the left argue that Big Tech now has too much power over public discourse.

Republican lawmakers, including Cruz, argue that the law allows Big Tech companies to use their power to silence conservative voices.

But whether platforms should host content they do not want to is not a Section 230 question, said Daxton Stewart, professor of journalism at Texas Christian University. It is a First Amendment question.

Thats really what web moderation is about in all these companies, Stewart said. They get to pick and choose who is welcome on their site and whos not. And because theyre not the government, theyre a private company, they get to do that. And thats the First Amendment. That has nothing to do with Section 230.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats argue that tech companies need to take more responsibility for content on their platforms, specifically misinformation. But that can be a slippery slope, said Goldman. If platforms are held liable for certain kinds of content, they might just restrict that content, so they dont have to worry about it at all.

The main question of Section 230 debate, Stewart said, is who should be in charge of making companies responsible for their moderation practices the government or their users?

The problem is, neither of those are great answers because the government gets involved, you get First Amendment concerns, Stewart said. And you do have to worry that the governments going to start picking winners and losers about what a good platform is, but with companies like Facebook, which are basically monopolies, walkouts from individual consumers are unlikely to make much of a difference.

Either way, in a market partly shaped by Section 230, it is likely that changes to the law could change the internet environment we are used to, which some experts view as a net loss.

We, as internet users, are the most likely to lose, Goldman said.

Whoever wins that battle is almost certainly going to create an internet that is less of what we think we enjoy today ... Think about so many things that have gone right with the internet, how many ways it makes our lives better on an hour-by-hour basis. And if those start folding, rolling up and exiting the market, then whats left for us?

More here:

Section 230: What is the law that's causing so much big tech buzz? - The Dallas Morning News