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• Shares of Zoom, the red-hot video chat app that made for one of 2019's hottest IPOs, soared over 15 percent on Monday.
• The spread of Coronavirus in China and abroad is leading to an uptick in remote work — which may have translated into more business for Zoom.
• CEO Eric Yuan said in an interview with CNBC that the app is seeing "peak usage" amid the coronavirus crisis, with more employees working from home to help stem the spread of the disease.
• However, that's not all: A Microsoft Teams outage may have made Zoom look better by comparison, while an analyst says that a competitive move from RingCentral might have attracted short sellers. The company also announced that it would share its quarterly earnings on March 4th.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Shares of video conferencing company Zoom soared on Monday, with the stock ending the trading day up almost 15 percent, making for the company's best trading day in almost 8 months. 

Experts attribute this to a confluence of factors.

The competing Microsoft Teams experienced an outage earlier in the day, making Zoom look better by comparison. RingCentral, which makes voice calling software for businesses, announced a partnership with Avaya to add video chat to its own product — which at least one analyst guesses may be sufficient cause for some on Wall Street to short shares Zoom and go long on RingCentral. Plus, Zoom is now set to share its quarterly earnings report on March 4th.

But, perhaps most surprising of all is that Zoom appears to be benefiting from fears around the novel coronavirus outbreak in China and abroad. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in an interview on CNBC on Monday that the company is seeing interest in its service spike, as companies look for ways to help workers do their jobs safely from home.

"I had to shut down my phone actually, because everyone is calling us, given the coronavirus and those who cannot travel, you need to have very reliable, secure tools like Zoom. Our usage is very, very high since last month, last week, almost everyday there's record usage," Yuan said on CNBC. 

Zoom did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Coronavirus concerns

Several analysts speculated that worries about the coronavirus was a big reason investors gravitated towards the stock.

Several American companies with operations or a presence in China have banned or limited employee travel to China amid the outbreak, including tech companies like Google, Apple and Amazon. Zoom's video conferencing tools make remote work a possibility and offer a viable alternative to an in-person business visit. 

"Remote video is attractive when you start to see countries closing travel, but business must go on," Dan Newman at Futurum Research told Business Insider. "Zoom has a real appeal because it is one of the simplest applications on the market for doing video conferencing." 

Indeed, Eric Jackson, founder at EMJ Capital, told Business Insider that he's seen data showing a massive increase in downloads of Zoom app yesterday in China, where the Coronavirus outbreak is at its most serious. It was about 25,000, compared to 3,000 to 5,000 on average over the last few months, he said. 

However, this could prove to be a double-edged sword for Zoom: Alex Zukin of RBC Capital Markets notes that Zoom itself does have a sizable workforce in China, which could make investors worry that the company's ability to do business may be impacted amid the coronavirus epidemic.

But that's not all

Competitive factors could also play a role: That Microsoft Teams outage on Monday, while short-lived, could have given customers and Wall Street alike a reason to look at Zoom.

Additionally, RingCentral and Avaya announced a new videoconferencing tool called Avaya Cloud Office on Monday that could be a competitor to Zoom.

Analyst James Fish of Piper Sandler & Co. writes in a research note: "we do view this as a competitive issue for Zoom...We have been getting an increasing amount of questions around the coming release of RingCentral video related to Zoom." 

Zukin said investors may be fearful of the competitive product from RingCentral and therefore shorting Zoom and going long RingCentral. 

In general, Zoom has been performing well. Its shares have soared over 144 percent after its initial public offering last April. Remote work is an increasingly necessary option for companies and will just continue to grow, Zukin said — whether or not it benefits from any global health crises in the future.

"The remote work trend is getting bigger, and Zoom continues to be the best in class vendor...it's one that in a time of elevated remote work sentiment, its not surprising that that's the one people talk about," Zukin said.

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at pzaveri@businessinsider.com or Signal at 925-364-4258. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

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NOW WATCH: A 45-year-long study discovered trends in successful hyper-intelligent children

Microsoft is no longer planning to release its special Surface Hub 2X processor upgrade cartridge this year. The software giant was planning to allow Surface Hub 2S owners to upgrade to this cartridge, improving the processor and GPU inside. It was also part of how Microsoft would enable tiling and rotation support on the Surface Hub 2, a big feature the company originally unveiled last year.

In a leaked webinar to Surface Hub 2 sellers, Microsoft says it’s still committed to developing tiling and rotation but it’s not clear when these features will arrive. “They might not require an upgrade for Surface Hub 2S customers, or they might not require a paid compute cartridge swap,” says a Microsoft spokesperson in the webinar. “We don’t have...

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• Google is testing a new service that automatically sends people hard copies of 10 photos from their camera roll, selected by its AI.
• The service costs $8 per month and is currently only available to users in the US.
• With the pilot, Google is testing whether there's a market for physical copies of images that may feel more permanent than photos stored in the cloud.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Google is rolling out a new service for those seeking the permanence of printed photos without the actual labor of printing them out.

For $7.99 per month, Google will mail users hard copies of 10 AI-selected images from their Google Photos albums every 30 days, 9to5Google first reported.

People who sign up for the service can direct Google's AI to choose photos from one of three categories: mostly people and pets, mostly landscapes, or "a little bit of everything." Subscribers will also have the option to edit the 4-by-6-inch photos before they go to print.

The service reflects an effort by Google to grow its Cloud Print service with a subscription model. Google's Cloud Print debuted in 2017, offering hardcover and softcover photo albums and canvas prints, as well as direct printing at outlets like CVS and Walmart.

The company is currently piloting the service for select users in the US, according to 9to5Google.

SEE ALSO: Presidential candidates are running a ton of Facebook ads about animal cruelty, and there's a strategic reason for that

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NOW WATCH: The bizarre history of the Yule Log Christmas special

Just after 9 a.m. EST, Microsoft confirmed in a Tweet its popular Teams app was experiencing outages. The collaboration giant said it was “investigating the issue that made some users unable to access” the collaboration tool.

“We’re investigating an issue where users may be unable to access Microsoft Teams. We’re reviewing systems data to determine the cause of the issue. More information can be found in the admin center under TM202919,” the official Microsoft Teams Twitter account read this morning.

The company said it forgot to renew a mission-critical security certificate, which as a result caused some users to receive an error message. Twitter, was, as usual, no disappointment, with reactions from Microsoft Teams users.

One user added, “Did you try turning it on and off again?” Quoting the popular British series The IT Crowd. I can assure you, for those who rely on Teams to work remotely and to collaborate with global teams – the outage was annoying.

Microsoft added in a separate Tweet it was working on a fix that established a connection between HTTPS and Microsoft’s servers, saying: “We’ve initiated the deployment of the updated certificate and are monitoring service health as the fix progresses. Additional information can be found under TM202916 in the admin center.”

The issue was fixed at noon EST, but the blunder does, however, come as a surprise, especially considering that Microsoft has proprietary software that tracks certificate expirations – leaving some in the UC industry scratching their heads.

Several Teams users took to Twitter to voice their frustrations, noting they’d been impacted for at least two hours. I was personally affected by Microsoft’s shortcomings this morning, although I was eventually able to log in with success.

Microsoft Teams, the collaboration platform that competes with Slack, has been down since about 8:30 am ET. Microsoft reports the outage was due to an expired certificate.

Microsoft first posted on its Office 365 Status Twitter feed about 9:00 am ET that an outage was in progress, stating the company was looking into the problem.

At approximately 10:00 am ET, the company posted the reason for the problem, an expired certificate, which frankly, has to be pretty embarrassing for the group responsible for keeping the Teams service running.

About an hour ago, the company updated the status again, indicating it had begun deploying the updated certificate.

Some customers have begun reporting on Twitter that service has been restored.

Microsoft has kept the status updates pretty business like, but has not apologized to its 20 million users as of publication. The company is in the midst of a battle with Slack for hearts and minds in the enterprise collaboration space, and a preventable outage has to be awkward for them.

The company will no doubt do a post-mortem to figure out how this mistake happened and how to prevent this kind of issue from taking down the site again. While every service is going to experience an outage from time to time, it’s up to the organization to understand why it happened and put systems in place to keep a preventable incident like this one from happening again in the future.

Late last week, legally and ethically-dubious facial recognition tech developer Clearview was sued for violating an Illinois law making certain collection and storage of biometric information illegal. I was very dismissive of the lawsuit, stating that scraping of publicly-posted photos couldn't possibly create an actionable violation of privacy.

My assessment may be wrong. A recent settlement by Facebook in a lawsuit alleging violations of this law suggests the proposed class action against Clearview might actually go somewhere, even if Clearview is an outside party scraping (possibly illegal) photo collections from other sites.

In what lawyers are calling the largest settlement ever reached in a privacy related lawsuit, Facebook will pay $550 million to settle claims it harvested users’ facial data without consent and in violation of a 2008 Illinois privacy law.

The announcement comes eight days after the Supreme Court denied Facebook’s petition to review the case and halt an impending trial that was put on hold in 2018 when Facebook appealed a lower court decision advancing the case.

This lawsuit dealt with yet another Facebook feature no one asked for: the nearly-automatic tagging of friends and acquaintances in uploaded photos. Facebook's AI scanned uploaded photos for matches and suggested names of people who resembled those in the photograph. Given the sheer amount of uploaded photos hosted by the site, it was speculated Facebook could have faced a $35 billion fine. If true, the $550 million settlement is a bargain.

But let's take another look at the Clearview lawsuit. Once you get past some of the more ridiculous assertions, you're looking at a few fairly plausible allegations that could survive a motion to dismiss and open Clearview up for what is certain to be some damaging discovery. The company is already cruising around on the outer edges of the law by scraping sites for photos in violation of their terms of service.

The law requires companies doing business in Illinois to obtain permission from users before harvesting biometric info. Since Clearview scrapes sites to build its biometric database, it is obviously not securing anyone's explicit permission.

And Clearview does business in Illinois. It claims it has "partnered" with 600-1,000 law enforcement agencies -- claims that should be taken with several doses of salt considering the number of law enforcement rebuttals that have greeted its marketing assertions.

But this is verifiable.

Interim Chicago Police Superintendent Charlie Beck on Thursday offered a vigorous defense of CPD’s use of a facial recognition tool that matches images of unknown suspects to three billion photos scraped from social media.

Clearview AI, the Manhattan-based firm that developed the software, has come under fire after a lawsuit was filed in federal court in Chicago earlier this month seeking to halt the company’s data collection and after a New York Times report detailed the privacy concerns its technology has brought to the fore.

But, Beck said Thursday the department needs the tool and doesn’t abuse it. Without it, Chicago Police would “solve fewer crimes than places” that do use it, he said.

Ok. Seems unlikely an unproven tool would be better at solving crimes than stuff the CPD already does, but who wouldn't prefer to use an app rather than shoe leather to track down perps?

That satisfies the "doing business in" prong. But if we're looking at unauthorized collection of biometric info, it gets a little cloudier. If Facebook's application of facial recognition AI is the key factor for its violation of the state law, Clearview's AI creates the same legal risk for the company. If the sites it's scraping from aren't applying facial recognition AI to the photos, Clearview's application of its AI creates a violation that didn't previously exist when it was simply collecting the photos for its database.

Photos scraped from Facebook don't immediately become contraband, despite Facebook's application of AI to uploaded photos. The photos are inert, so to speak, when they're scraped by Clearview. It's the application of additional software to convert them into biometric information that causes the violation and triggers the rapidly-escalating fines.

Even if its scraping ultimately proves to be legal, its application of AI makes deploying this in Illinois very risky. The bizarre twist is that it might be Clearview's decision to sell only to law enforcement agencies that might save it from being successfully sued. There's a carveout in the law for government agencies and contractors, which might mean the state law does not apply to Clearview.

Nothing in this Act shall be construed to apply to a contractor, subcontractor, or agent of a State agency or local unit of government when working for that State agency or local unit of government.

Whew. So, ask the government for some grievance redress and get told another part of the government already let the third branch of the government do whatever it wants with otherwise-illegal biometric collections.

I'm still shorting this lawsuit, but not nearly as aggressively as I did earlier. There's too much unknown about Clearview's data-gathering at the moment. But it appears Clearview can violate the law with impunity as long as it only sells its services to Illinois government agencies.

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US telecom giant AT&T's Q4 2019 earnings disclosed disappointing results while also outlining a strategy for future growth. The second-largest US wireless carrier by volume, AT&T collected $36.5 billion in revenue, 1.9% less than its Q4 2018 revenue.

During the quarter, the company also gained 3.6 million new wireless customers, down more than 5% year-over-year (YoY) from 3.8 million in Q4 2018. Additionally, the company experienced a higher rate of customer churn at 1.29%, up from 1.23% in Q4 2018. Amid these mediocre results, AT&T laid out its vision for the next few years, with both short- and long-term plans.

Here's what AT&T intends to accomplish in the next year:

In 2020, the company plans to turn its massive investments into sources of revenue. AT&T plans to establish nationwide 5G coverage by mid-2020, a costly endeavor — in July 2019, the company spent almost $1 billion on 5G spectrum alone at an FCC auction. Building a nationwide 5G network will expand the addressable audience for AT&T's service, which launched in December 2019 in just 10 US cities — by comparison, rival Verizon finished 2019 with 5G service in over 30 cities, after launching commercial 5G in April 2019.

On the entertainment front, AT&T has spent $1.2 billion, in addition to the $85 billion spent to acquire Time Warner, to develop its HBO Max streaming service, which it plans to launch in May 2020. The debut of HBO Max is expected to be bolstered by the company's nationwide 5G network; AT&T anticipates the subsequent 5G device upgrade cycle will present an opportunity to distribute HBO Max, likely by bundling the service with new 5G data plans. 

Here's what AT&T plans to do in the long term:

Over the next three years the telecom will focus on unburdening itself of debt. AT&T aims to pay off the massive debt it took on to fund its acquisition of Time Warner, and plans to avoid incurring additional debt by abstaining from major acquisitions during that three-year period.

The company's efforts to scale down its debt could also lead it to sell off additional assets, like non-core businesses or cell towers. In October 2019, amid pressure from investors, AT&T sold off its business in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands to pay down some of its debt; later that month the company sold over 1,000 cell towers to monetize non-strategic assets as part of its debt reduction effort. Focusing on debt reduction will limit AT&T's flexibility to make strategic purchases or investments, meaning the company could be receptive to partnerships that would split the cost of continuing to grow.

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• Huawei sold more smartphones than Apple in 2019, according to new market research.
• It's a triumph for Huawei, which is facing sanctions from the US that ban the company from accessing Google's Android apps.
• Such a sanction would typically cripple a smartphone company, but Chinese smartphone users rallied behind Huawei in 2019. 
• On top of that, regardless of the sanctions, Chinese smartphone users haven't had access to the Google Play Store since 2010. Smartphones without Google Android apps is business as usual for them. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Huawei sold more smartphones than Apple in 2019, according to market research from Counterpoint Research and Strategy Analytics.

Between figures from both reports, Huawei sold around 240 million smartphones in 2019 compared to Apple's 197 million. It also means that Huawei took Apple over as second-largest smartphone maker in the world. Huawei also sold about 35 million more smartphones than it did in 2018. Samsung is holding its first place lead with about 295 million smartphones sold in 2019. 

That's a triumph for Huawei when its new smartphones aren't allowed to host Android apps from Google's Play Store. Indeed, Huawei was banned from using Google's Mobile Services in May 2019, which includes the Google Play Store where users can download the apps they want. 

It doesn't usually turn out well for a smartphone maker when its smartphones can't run popular apps from a popular app store. But Huawei's comeback — success, even — amid the sanctions that would typically cripple a smartphone maker may not be so surprising.

Chinese smartphone users rallied behind Huawei in 2019, and the company's smartphone sales rose while it was being singled out during the Trump administration's trade war with China, according to The  New York Times. 

And for users in China, smartphones without Android apps from the Google Play Store is business as usual. The US sanctions against Huawei wouldn't have much of an effect on Chinese smartphone users. The Google Play Store hasn't been available in China since 2010, and Chinese app developers have made their own hugely popular apps like social media platform Weibo, ecommerce app TaoBao, and the "Netflix of China," IQIYI. 

Still, while the US sanctions against Huawei doesn't affect the Chinese market too much, it would surely have an impact across its boarders where Huawei phones are also available. And yet, it still sold more phones and Apple. 

Amid the smartphone sales results, Huawei seems to have strengthened its resolve, too. The company said it wouldn't return to using Google's Mobile Services and Google's Play Store even if the US' ban is lifted, according to Austrian newspaper Der Standard. 

The company plans on continuing the development of its own ecosystem and app store, in which it is investing $3 billion in 2020. 

SEE ALSO: Samsung is rumored to release a new foldable smartphone in 2020, and the leaks suggest it'll be better than the new Motorola Razr

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NOW WATCH: Watch Google reveal the new Nest Mini, which is an updated Home Mini

Comcast cut back on network investment in 2019 despite repeated claims that killing net neutrality (and neutering the FCC in general) would have the exact opposite impact. With the company's fourth quarter earnings now in the books, it's clear that the company's cable and broadband division overall CAPEX dropped in 2019 by roughly 10.5%. Comcast reports cable division CAPEX in four categories, and investment dropped in three out of four of them:

"Comcast reports cable-division capital expenditures in four categories, and its full-year spending dropped in three of them. Comcast spending on line extensions—defined as "costs associated with entering new service areas... includ[ing] fiber and coaxial extensions"—dropped from $1.5 billion in 2018 to $1.4 billion in 2019. Comcast spending on "scalable infrastructure," which provides additional bandwidth and other service improvements, dropped from $2.6 billion to $2 billion. Spending on customer-premises equipment dropped from $2.9 billion to $2.7 billion."

Granted that's the exact opposite of what Comcast lobbyists and Ajit Pai's FCC said would happen when it neutered the FCC at telecom lobbyist behest. The public was told more times that we could count that the FCC's fairly modest (by international standards) net neutrality rules had all but demolished network investment, despite absolutely no evidence that was actually true. The industry and its allies at the Trump FCC then insisted network investment would soar post net neutrality repeal, something that pretty clearly isn't happening:

"Comcast isn't the only major ISP cutting investment, as AT&T projects that it will reduce capital spending from $23 billion in 2019 to $20 billion in 2020. Charter Communications said in October that its capital expenditures excluding mobile services would total $7 billion in 2019, down from $8.9 billion in 2018. Verizon also reported a capital-expenditure decline in the first nine months of 2019."

AT&T also released its earnings this week (pdf), which showed that AT&T's CAPEX has been steadily dropping since 2006, and its fourth quarter CAPEX specifically dropped to $3.9 billion--the lowest total in nearly a decade:

Propped up by a chorus of telecom-linked think tankers and other "very serious policy voices," the Trump administration doled out billions in massive tax cuts and regulatory favors to the nation's biggest telecom companies, and all taxpayers got in return were some empty promises and a significant pile of bullshit. And so far, there's been absolutely no effort, on any front, to hold anybody accountable for any of it.

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Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Amazon’s Kindle products are some of the most popular e-readers around, but there’s a price to pay for the convenience of Amazon’s huge library and convenient syncing features: the company appears to be tracking, recording, and storing data on every single tap you make on the device. The extent of the tracking was brought to light in a tweet by Adrianne Jeffries, an investigative reporter for The Markup (and friend of The Verge) earlier this week.

That just left the question: why is Amazon tracking such granular data in the first place?

It turns out...

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• SoftBank has invested hundred of millions of dollars in technology-forward companies since 2008.
• The company's portfolio includes acquisitions of big names like Boston Dynamics and ARM. Its most recent reported acquisition is WeWork, the embattled coworking startup.
• In the wake of the WeWork debacle, several other SoftBank startups have also begun to bleed under closer scrutiny of their profit-losing business models. Oyo, Rappi, Getaround and Zume laid off a combined total of 2,600 employees in the first week of 2020. 
• Here's a list of SoftBank's technology investments over the years. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Japanese tech giant SoftBank has billions of dollars at its disposal to fund and acquire high-profile companies.

The massive corporation — led by Masayoshi Son, Japan's richest man — makes investments through the SoftBank Group and its $100 billion SoftBank Vision Fund.

SoftBank has backed or bought a long list of established tech firms such as Nvidia, Slack, Uber, and ARM. It's also backed less well-known startups, like satellite internet firm OneWeb, Indian ecommerce company Paytm, and farming startup Plenty. Most of the money has gone to companies in Europe, Asia, and North America. 

SoftBank is raising a follow-up Vision Fund II, and at one point said it had financing commitments of $108 billion. But the status of that fund is now unclear as many of the startups that the first Vision Fund invested in have fallen on hard times.

In a widely publicized scandal, SoftBank took control of WeWork, the embattled coworking business. SoftBank's Son and Adam Neumann — the company's recently ousted CEO — once had a close personal relationship, but the Japanese investor was reportedly one of the first to call for Neumann to step down when the company's IPO plans started falling apart. Layoffs of WeWork staffers began almost immediately after the takeover. 

SoftBank reported a steep $6.5 billion loss in November, spurred by its biggest tech bet flops like WeWork, and Uber and Lyft's disappointing debuts on the stock market. 

In the wake of the WeWork debacle, several other SoftBank startups have also begun to bleed. Zume, the SoftBank-backed robotic pizza startup valued at $1 billion, lost a third of its executive team and layoffs that affected 360 out of its 500 employees. The company isn't alone — in the first full week of 2020, SoftBank-backed Oyo, Rappi, Getaround and Zume laid off a combined total of 2,600 employees. More layoffs in Oyo's US offices have also been reported by Business Insider, though it isn't immediately clear how many jobs were cut. 

Here's a running list of SoftBank's investments, based on how much the firm has put into in each company:

SEE ALSO: The 23 most powerful LGBTQ+ people in tech

Globality — $100 million

What it does: B2B matching marketplace

Founded: 2015

Most recent valuation: $800 million

SoftBank's total investment: $100 million

• January 2019 — Invested $100 million

Total funding raised: $172.2 million (PitchBook)

Boston Dynamics — acquired for estimated $100 million

What it does: Robotics development

Founded: 1992

SoftBank's total investment: Estimated $100 million

• June 2017 — Undisclosed amount to acquire Boston Dynamics, though deal is estimated to be worth $100 million.

Gympass — estimated $100 to $150 million

What it does: Discounted gym access for employees

Founded: 2013

Most recent valuation: $1 billion

SoftBank's total investment: Estimated $100 to $150 million

• June 2019 — Participated in $300 million round

Total funding raised: $300 million (PitchBook)

Alibaba — $102 million

What it does: E-commerce platform in China

Founded: 1999

Market cap: $460 billion at time of writing

SoftBank's total investment: $102 million

• June 2016 — Sold back $7.9 billion worth of shares to reduce its stake to 26% (and made $11.1 billion from the sale)
• February 2004 — Led $82 million venture capital round
• January 2000 — Invested $20 million

•  

Brain Corp — $114 million

What it does: AI technology for autonomous robots and machines

Founded: 2009

Most recent valuation: $240 million

SoftBank's total investment: $114 million

• July 2017 — Led $114 million round

Total funding raised: $123 million (PitchBook)

Light — $121 million

What it does: Ultra-zoom digital photography cameras

Founded: 2013

Most recent valuation: $396 million

SoftBank's total investment: $121 million

• July 2018 — Led $121 million round

Total funding raised: $206 million (PitchBook)

Cybereason — $150 million

What it does: Israeli security software provider

Founded: 2012

Most recent valuation: $1 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $150 million

• June 2017 — Led $100 million round
• October 2015 — Invested $50 million

Total funding raised: $390 million (PitchBook)

Nauto — $159 million

What it does: Self-driving car technology

Founded: 2015

Most recent valuation: $1 billion (Reuters)

SoftBank's total investment: $159 million

• July 2017 — Led $159 million round

Total funding raised: $174.2 million (PitchBook)

Mapbox — $164 million

What it does: Customized maps on open-source platform

Founded: 2010

Most recent valuation: $385 million

SoftBank's total investment: $164 million

• October 2017 — Led $164 million round

Total funding raised: $229.4 million (PitchBook)

Fungible — $200 million

What it does: Hardware and software for data centers.

Founded: 2015

Most recent valuation: $260 million (PitchBook)

SoftBank's total investment: $200 million

• June 2019 — Led $200 million round

Total funding raised: $303 million (PitchBook)

Clutter — $200 million

What it does: On-demand storage services and platform

Founded: 2013

Most recent valuation: $600 million

SoftBank's total investment: $200 million

• March 2019 — Led $200 million round

Total funding raised: $310.2 million (PitchBook)

Plenty — $200 million

What it does: Indoor vertical farming

Founded: 2013

Most recent valuation: $1.05 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $200 million

• September 2017 — Led $200 million round

Total funding raised: $401 million (PitchBook)

Brandless — $240 million

What it does: E-commerce platform

Founded: 2014

Most recent valuation: $235.3 million

SoftBank's total investment: $240 million

• September 2018 — Led $240 million round

Total funding raised: $292.5 million (PitchBook)

Ola Electric — $250 million

What it does: Electric vehicles arm of Ola

Founded: 2017

Most recent valuation: $1.1 billion (PitchBook)

SoftBank's total investment: $250 million

• July 2019 — Led $250 million round

Total funding raised: $306.4 million (PitchBook)

Slack — $250 million

What it does: E-commerce platform

Founded: 2014

Market cap: $12.4 billion at time of writing

SoftBank's total investment: $240 million

• September 2018 — Led $240 million round

Total funding raised: $1.2 billion (PitchBook)

Automation Anywhere — $300 million

What it does: Software for robotic process automation (RPA)

Founded: 2003

Most recent valuation: $2.6 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $300 million

• November 2018 — Invested $300 million

Total funding raised: $550 million (PitchBook)

Getaround — $300 million

What it does: Peer-to-peer car sharing e-marketplace

Founded: 2011

Most recent valuation: $1.7 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $300 million

• August 2018 — Led $300 million round

Total funding raised: $611.6 million (PitchBook)

Kabbage — $300 million

What it does: Online loan lending platform

Founded: 2008

Most recent valuation: $1.2 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $300 million

• August 2017 — Invested $250 million
• May 2014 — Led $50 million round

Total funding raised: $989.5 million (PitchBook)

Wag — $300 million. SoftBank sold its stake back to Wag in December 2019.

What it does: Dog walking app

Founded: 2015

Most recent valuation: $650 million

SoftBank's total investment: $300 million

• January 2018 — Invested $300 million
• December 2019 — Sold its shares and board seats back to Wag for an undisclosed amount.  

Total funding raised: $361.5 million (PitchBook)

Zume — $375 million

What it does: Began with robot-powered pizza delivery but has shifted to compostable food packaging.

Founded: 2015

Most recent valuation: $2.25 billion (WSJ)

SoftBank's total investment: $375 million

• November 2018 — Led $375 million round
• January 2020— SoftBank was in talks to give Zume another round of funding in late 2019, according to a letter of intent reviewed by Business Insider, but the deal fell apart in December. The company has since abandoned the robotics business and is now focused on compostable food packaging.

Total funding raised: $445.7 million (PitchBook)

Grofers — $380 million

What it does: Online supermarket

Founded: 2013

Most recent valuation: $434.8 million

SoftBank's total investment: $380 million

• May 2019 — Led $200 million round
• March 2018 — Led $60 million round
• November 2015 — Led $120 million round

Total funding raised: $471 million

Fair — $385 billion

What it does: Car borrowing platform

Founded: 2016

Most recent valuation: $1.2 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $385 million

• December 2018 — Led $385 million round

Total funding raised: $2.2 billion (PitchBook)

Oaknorth — $390 million

What it does: Business lending

Founded: 2015

Most recent valuation: $2.3 billion (September 2018)

SoftBank's total investment: $390 million (CNBC)

• February 2019 — Participated in $440 million round

Total funding raised: $1 billion (Crunchbase)

Paytm Mall — $400 million

What it does: Online shopping platform in India

Founded: 2016

Most recent valuation: $2.9 billion (PitchBook)

 SoftBank's total investment: $400 million

• April 2018 — Invested $400 million

Total funding raised: $806 million (PitchBook)

Guardant Health — $401 million

What it does: 'Liquid biopsy' blood testing for cancer treatment

Founded: 2013

Market cap: $6.2 billion at time of writing

SoftBank's total investment: $401 million

• May 2018 — $41 million into joint venture Guardant Health AMEA
• May 2017 — Led $360 million round

Lemonade — $420 million

What it does: Insurance e-platform for renters and homeowners

Founded: 2015

Most recent valuation: $2.1 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $420 million

• April 2019 — Led $300 million round
• March 2018 — Led $120 million round

Total funding raised: $479.8 million (PitchBook)

Opendoor — Estimated $500 million

What it does: Online real estate marketplace

Founded: 2014

Most recent valuation: $3.8 billion

SoftBank's total investment: Estimated $500 million

• March 2019 — Participated in $300 million round
• September 2018 — Invested $400 million

Total funding raised: $4.4 billion (PitchBook)

Cambridge Mobile Telematics — $500 million

What it does: Mobile analytics provider

Founded: 2010

Most recent valuation: $24.5 million

SoftBank's total investment: $500 million

• December 2018— Invested $500 million

Improbable — $502 million

What it does: Virtual gaming developer

Founded: 2012

Most recent valuation: $2 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $502 million

• May 2017 — Led $502 million round

Total funding raised: $604.3 million (PitchBook)

Auto1 — $561 million

What it does: German-based platform for buying and selling used cars

Founded: 2012

Most recent valuation: $3.3 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $560 million

• January 2018 — Led $560 million round

Total funding raised: $1.2 billion (PitchBook)

ZhongAn — $600 million

What it does: Online-only insurance services

Founded: 2013

Market cap: $27.2 billion at time of writing

SoftBank's total investment: $600 million

• August 2018 — Invested $100 million toward joint venture
• September 2017 — Invested $500 million for 5% stake

DoorDash — estimated $600 million to $900 million

What it does: Food delivery platform

Founded: 2013

Most recent valuation: $12.6 billion

SoftBank's total investment: Estimated $600 million to $900 million

• May 2019 — Participated in $600 million round
• February 2019 — Participated in $400 million round
• August 2018 — Participated in $250 million round
• March 2018 — Led $535 million round

Total funding raised: $2 billion (PitchBook)

OSIsoft — estimated "high hundreds of millions"

What it does: Software for industrial companies

Founded: 1980

Most recent valuation: "Several billion dollars" (May 2017)

SoftBank's total investment: Undisclosed

• May 2017 — Not disclosed, but sources told Reuters that SoftBank bought its stake from other existing investors for "high hundreds of millions."

Total funding raised: $135 million (PitchBook)

Ola — estimated $800 million to $1 billion

What it does: Ride-hailing service in India

Founded: 2010

Most recent valuation: $5.3 billion (January 2019)

SoftBank's total investment: Estimated $800 million to $1 billion

• October 2017 — Led $1.1 billion round
• February 2017 — Invested $250 million
• November 2015 — Participated in $500 million round
• April 2015 — Participated in $400 million round
• October 2014 — Led $210 million round

Total funding raised: $3.4 billion (PitchBook)

Compass — estimated $850 million to $1 billion

What it does: Online real estate marketplace

Founded: 2012

Most recent valuation: $6.4 billion (PitchBook)

SoftBank's total investment: Estimated $850 million to $1 billion

• July 2019 — Participated in $370 million round
• September 2018 — Led $400 million round
• December 2017 — Invested $450 million

Total funding raised: $1.5 billion (PitchBook)

ParkJockey (aka REEF Technology) — $900 million

What it does: Smart parking app

Founded: 2013

Most recent valuation: $1 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $900 million

• December 2018 — Led $900 million round

Total funding raised: About $1 billion (PitchBook)

Nuro — $940 million

What it does: AI technology for self-driving cars

Founded: 2016

Most recent valuation: $2.7 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $940 million

• February 2019 — Invested $940 million

Total funding raised: $1 billion (PitchBook)

Katerra — $999 million

What it does: One-stop construction and building platform

Founded: 2015

Most recent valuation: $1 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $999 million

• January 2018 — Led $999 million round

Total funding raised: $1.2 billion (PitchBook)

Rappi — $1 billion

What it does: Colombian food delivery startup

Founded: 2015

Most recent valuation: $3.5 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $1 billion

• April 2019 — Invested $1 billion

Total funding raised: $1.46 billion (Pitchbook)

Flexport — $1 billion

What it does: Freight forwarding

Founded: 2013

Most recent valuation: $3.2 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $1 billion

• May 2019 — Led $1 billion round

Total funding raised: $1.4 billion (PitchBook)

Fanatics — estimated $1 billion to $1.2 billion

What it does: Online platform for sports merchandise

Founded: 1995

Most recent valuation: $4.5 billion

SoftBank's total investment: Estimated $1 billion to $1.2 billion

• September 2017 — Led $1 billion round
• August 2015 — Participated in $300 million round

Total funding raised: $1.6 billion (PitchBook)

SoFi — estimated $1.1 billion

What it does: US-based "alt-lender" for student refinancing loans

Founded: 2011

Most recent valuation: $4.8 billion

SoftBank's total investment: Estimated $1.1 billion

• February 2017 — Participated in $500 million round
• August 2015 — Led $1 billion round

Total funding raised: $2.4 billion (PitchBook)

Snapdeal — estimated $1.2 billion

What it does: Online shopping marketplace in India

Founded: 2010

Most recent valuation: $950 million (July 2017)

SoftBank's total investment: Estimated $1.2 billion

• August 2015 — Led $500 million round
• October 2014 — Led $627 million round
• February 2014 — Participated in $133.8 million round
• August 2013 — Invested $75 million

Total funding raised: $1.5 billion (PitchBook)

Tokopedia — $1.3 billion

What it does: Online shopping site in Indonesia

Founded: 2009

Most recent valuation: $7 billion (November 2018)

SoftBank's total investment: Estimated $1.3 billion

• November 2018 — Led $1.1 billion round
• October 2014 — Led $100 million round
• June 2013 — Led undisclosed round

Total funding raised: $2.5 billion (PitchBook)

Oyo — $1.4 billion

What it does: Franchised budget hotels

Founded: 2013

Most recent valuation: $5 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $1.4 billion

• September 2018 — Led $1 billion round
• September 2017 — Led $250 million round
• August 2016 — Led $50 million round
• August 2015 — Invested $100 million

Total funding raised: $1.6 billion (PitchBook)

Paytm — $1.4 billion

What it does: Digital payments wallet in India

Founded: 2010

Most recent valuation: $17 billion (PitchBook)

SoftBank's total investment: $1.4 billion

• May 2017 — Invested $1.4 billion

Total funding raised: $3.6 billion (PitchBook)

Chehaoduo — $1.5 billion

What it does: Used car trading platform

Founded: 2014

Most recent valuation: $8.5 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $1.5 billion

• February 2019 — Invested $1.5 billion

Total funding raised: $3.3 billion (PitchBook)

Brightstar — acquired for $2.2 billion

What it does: Cell phone distributor

Founded: 1997

SoftBank's total investment: $2.2 billion

• August 2014 — $2.2 billion to acquire Brightstar

YMobile (formerly eAccess) — acquired for $2.3 billion

What it does: Mobile telecommunications provider in Japan

Founded: 1999

SoftBank's total investment: $2.3 billion

• April 2015 — Undisclosed amount for merger of Ymobile to form SoftBank Corp., the company's mobile unit.
• January 2013 — $2.3 billion to acquire broadband provider eAccess

Flipkart — $2.5 billion, but has since sold off stake

What it does: E-commerce platform in India

Founded: 2007

Most recent valuation: $20 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $2.5 billion, but has since sold off stake

• August 2017 — Invested $2.5 billion

Total funding raised: $7.7 billion (PitchBook)

Cruise — estimated $2.5 billion to $3 billion

What it does: Self-driving car developer

Founded: 2013

Most recent valuation: $19 billion

SoftBank's total investment: Estimated $2.5 billion to $3 billion

• May 2019— Participated in $1.15 billion round
• May 2018— Invested $2.25 billion

Total funding raised: $7.3 billion (PitchBook)

 

OneWeb — $2.8 billion

What it does: Broadband internet access via satellites

Founded: 2012

Most recent valuation: $14 billion (February 2017 before failed merger)

SoftBank's total investment: $2.8 billion

• March 2019 — Led $1.25 billion round
• December 2017 — Invested $500 million
• December 2016 — Invested $1 billion

Total funding raised: $4.5 billion (PitchBook)

ByteDance — estimated $1.8 billion

What it does: Chinese internet company running apps like TikTok, Toutiao

Founded: 2012

Most recent valuation: $75 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $3 billion

• October 2018 — Led $3 billion round

Total funding raised: $7.5 billion (PitchBook)

Coupang — $3 billion

What it does: E-commerce platform in South Korea

Founded: 2010

Most recent valuation: $9 billion

SoftBank's total investment: $3 billion

• November 2018 — Invested $2 billion
• June 2015 — Led $1 billion round

Total funding raised: $3.5 billion (PitchBook)

Ele.me — $3 billion

What it does: Food delivery platform in China (bought by Alibaba in April 2018)

Founded: 2008

SoftBank's total investment: $3 billion

• August 2018 — Led estimated $3 billion

Nvidia — $4 billion, but has since sold stake

What it does: US-based graphics chip maker for gaming

Founded: 1993

Market cap: $93.1 billion at time of writing

SoftBank's total investment: $4 billion, but sold off stake for $3.6 billion in January 2019

• May 2017 — $4 billion

Grab — estimated $5.5 billion to 5.8 billion

What it does: Taxi-hailing company in southeast Asia

Founded: 2012

Most recent valuation: $15 billion

SoftBank's total investment: Estimated $5.5 billion to 5.8 billion

• June 2019 — Invested $2 billion
• January 2018 — Led $2.5 billion round
• September 2016 — Led $750 million round
• August 2015 — Participated in $350 million round
• December 2014 — Invested $250 million

Total funding raised: $9.4 billion (PitchBook)

Uber — $9.3 billion

What it does: Ride-hailing platform

Founded: 2009

Market cap: $53.9 billion at time of writing

SoftBank's total investment: $9.3 billion

• January 2018 — Led $1.3 billion round
• January 2018 — Invested $8 billion by buying shares from existing shareholders for a 15% stake

Uber made its disappointing debut on the public market amid intense pressure from investors to turn a profit. 

As a result, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has begun moves to focus on the company's core business - ride-hailing. The company has conducted mass rounds of layoffs since its IPO, cutting jobs from the Uber Eats, and advanced driving technology teams. This month, Uber sold its India division of Uber Eats to a local competitor, Zomato.  

Didi Chuxing — estimated $11 billion to $15 billion

What it does: Ride-hailing platform in China

Founded: 2012

Most recent valuation: $57.6 billion

SoftBank's total investment: Estimated $11 billion to $15 billion

• February 2018 — Led $4.6 billion round
• April 2017 — Invested $5 billion as lead in $5.5 billion round
• June 2016 — Participated in $4.5 billion equity in $7.3 billion round
• September 2015 — Participated in $3 billion round
• January 2015 — Participated in $600 million round for Kuaidi Dache (merged to become Didi)

Total funding raised: $22.7 billion (PitchBook)

•  

The We Company — $19.9 billion

What it does: Provides collaborative office space for companies

Founded: 2010

Most recent valuation: $8 billion (October 2019)

SoftBank's total investment: Estimated $19.9 billion

• October 2019 — Investing $6.5 billion in new financing, and buying up to $3 billion of shares from investors, including Neumann
• January 2019 — Invested $5 billion, and bought $1 billion worth of shares from investors
• August 2017 — Invested $3.1 billion, and bought $1.3 billion worth of shares from investors

WeWork had initially planned to go public this year, but the company has since delayed its IPO. Since its IPO paperwork was filed in August, WeWork's massive losses and CEO Adam Neumann's questionable business dealings, drug and alcohol use, and conflicts of interest were scrutinized. 

After the company's IPO was delayed, SoftBank was reportedly one of the first investors to quietly raise the possibility of Neumann stepping down. Neumann had a close personal relationship with SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, but those ties disintegrated after the Japanese investment firm reportedly "lost faith in Adam Neumann's ability to lead WeWork."

Neumann has since stepped down from his position as CEO and chairman of the board of directors. SoftBank took control of the company in a deal that brought WeWork's valuation to $8 billion — down significantly from the $47 billion it was valued at earlier this year.

SoftBank's COO Marcelo Claure was brought on as the company's new chairman. He announced 4 new executives at an all-hands meeting, including the company's new co-CEOs Sebastian Gunningham and Artie Minson. 

As a part of the company's plan to right the ship, WeWork started laying off thousands of its US employees.

Sprint — $21.7 billion

What it does: Phone and wireless services provider

Founded: 1899 (as Brown Telephone Company)

Market cap: $26 billion at time of writing

SoftBank's total investment: $21.7 billion

• April 2018 — Ownership decreased to 27% with T-Mobile-Sprint merger
• August 2015 — $87 million
• July 2013 — $21.6 billion to acquire majority ownership of Sprint

•  

ARM — acquired for $32 billion

What it does: UK-based chip designer for smartphones, including iPhones

Founded: 1990

SoftBank's total investment: $32 billion

• June 2018— sold 51% stake in Arm's Chinese operations for $775 million
• September 2016 — $32 billion to acquire ARM

goPuff- reportedly $750 million

What it does: Logistics and delivery. It is especially popular among college students for delivering junk food, alcohol, and convenience store items. 

Founded: 2013

Most recent valuation: $1 billion, as of November 2018. 

SoftBank's total investment: $750 million, the Information reported. 

• August 2019 - quietly invested $750 million

Total funding raised: $866.8 million (Crunchbase)

Berkshire Grey - $263 million

What it does: Robotics and AI company, offering automation services to retail and -ecommerce companies. 

Founded: 2013

SoftBank's total investment: $263 million

• January 2020 - led $263 million

Total funding raised: undisclosed. 

• January 2020 - $263 million
• December 2018 - disclosed investors like Khosla Ventures, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), and Canaan Partners. Amount of funding received left unspecified. 

 

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

FCC chairman Ajit Pai has sent a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, stating that the commission’s Enforcement Bureau has found that US carriers “apparently” broke the law by selling the location data of their unknowing customers. “I am committed to ensuring that all entities subject to our jurisdiction comply with the Communications Act and the FCC’s rules, including those that protect consumers’ sensitive information, such as real-time location data,” Pai wrote.

The controversy originated with a Motherboard report that made clear just how negligent carriers including T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T had gotten with selling the real-time location of their wireless subscribers. That information could trickle down to bounty...

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A robot made by Covariant installed in

Right now, in a warehouse not far from Berlin, a bright yellow robot is leaning over a conveyor, picking items out of crates with the assurance of a chicken pecking grain.

The robot itself doesn’t look that unusual, but what makes it special are its eyes and brain. With the help of a six-lens camera array and machine learning algorithms, it’s able to grab and pack items that would confound other bots. And thanks to a neural network it will one day share with its fellows in warehouses around the world, anything it learns, they’ll learn, too. Show this bot a product it’s never seen before and it’ll not only work out how to grasp it, but then feed that information back to its peers.

...

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Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verg

Code discovered in the latest version of the Google Phone app has revealed more details about its unannounced call recording feature, 9to5Google reports. Most intriguing is a snippet of code that suggests the upcoming feature addition could also support call transcription, which would be similar to the Recorder app that the company debuted on the Pixel 4. XDA Developers has since managed to get the call recording feature partially working on a Pixel 4, but not transcriptions.

The newly uncovered code also gives us an idea of how Google is attempting to overcome the “security and privacy implications” that prevented call recording from being included in Android 10. Code snippets suggest that the app will warn you to comply with local...

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Punxsutawney Phil being held up to the crowds in 2019. | Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

Since 1887, the residents of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania have maintained the belief that an immortal groundhog name Punxsutawney Phil can — and will — predict the end of winter.

As popularized in the film Groundhog Day, each year on February 2nd, Phil is coaxed from his home in a tree stump and displayed to a baying crowd. If Phil “sees his shadow” there’ll be six more weeks of winter, say the top-hatted elders; if not, then an early spring is due.

But it’s time for Punxsutawney to stop terrorizing an innocent rodent, says animal-rights group PETA. Instead, says the organization, Punxsutawney Phil should be replaced with an animatronic groundhog that uses AI to actually...

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Back in 2017, AT&T told anybody who’d listen that the then-looming Trump tax cuts would result in billions in new investment and thousands of new, high paying jobs.

“By immediately lowering the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, this bill will stimulate investment, job creation and economic growth in the United States,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said at the time. “Research tells us that every $1 billion in capital invested in telecom creates about 7,000 good jobs for the middle class,” the CEO proclaimed.

Yeah, about that.

AT&T’s earnings report released Wednesday makes it clear that AT&T’s promised tax-cut driven investment never occurred. Despite a steady parade of government favors, the company’s network investment has been steadily declining since 2016, dropping to $3.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2019—the lowest levels in roughly a decade.

AT&T has told investors that the company’s shrinking investment is slated to continue in 2020, with the telecom giant spending $3 billion less in capital expenditures this year.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) provided an incredible windfall to AT&T and other giant corporations. Estimates suggest AT&T will net upwards of $42 billion from the new law, which reduced the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Little if any of that savings appears to have found its way to employees, customers, or the company’s network.

The Communications Workers of America, the telecom sector’s biggest union, says AT&T’s promised jobs never arrived either. Union officials today complained that AT&T earnings show the company has laid off 37,818 employees worldwide since the tax cut was passed in 2018, with 4,040 pink slips sent out to employees worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2019 alone.

“The list of communities being destroyed all across America continues to grow with the elimination of jobs at AT&T, despite promises of job creation from company executives,” CWA President Chris Shelton said in a statement provided to Motherboard.

“Like any business, we must align our workforce with the needs of our customers and the business," An AT&T spokesperson said in a statement. "To the extent possible, we manage these staff adjustments through retirements and voluntary departures, and we help affected employees find other positions within the company. For those who can’t, we offer them severance pay and outplacement services.”

AT&T’s job and network investment promises weren’t just affixed to the Trump tax cuts. As it lobbied the FCC to kill net neutrality and most other broadband consumer protections in 2017, the company again repeatedly promised that doing so would result in new jobs and a massive boost in overall investment in the company’s networks.

The repeal of net neutrality “will foster innovation and investment in broadband infrastructure without creating any threat to internet freedoms,” the company promised.

It’s not just consumers, consumer groups and unions that have grown tired of AT&T’s empty promises. The telecom giant has also faced a growing backlash among investors who say AT&T’s parade of recent mergers haven’t delivered the results the company promised.

Since 2015, AT&T has spent $157 billion to acquire DirecTV and Time Warner in a bid to dominate the pay TV market. Here too, AT&T executives promised lawmakers billions in expanded U.S. investment in exchange for regulatory approval of the deals.

But both megamergers loaded AT&T with so much debt, the company began raising prices on consumers to recoup its losses. Those customers then headed for the exits; the company’s Q4 earnings show AT&T lost 4.1 million TV subscribers in 2019 alone.

In turn, investor activist organizations like Elliott Management Corp have pressured CEO Randall Stephenson—who made an estimated $25,600,312 in 2018—to lay off even more U.S. employees, shifting an even greater number of support positions overseas.

“AT&T is using its profits to enrich wealthy shareholders instead of investing in building the next generation networks that Americans, especially in rural and underserved areas, so desperately need,” Shelton said. “CWA members and our allies will keep fighting until the company stops eliminating jobs so that they can provide the high-quality service that customers deserve.”

America seems intent on playing an endless game of Charlie Brown and Lucy football with companies like AT&T, doling out untold billions in regulatory favors, tax breaks, and other perks in exchange for jobs and other benefits that routinely fail to materialize.

• One of the best things about Microsoft's new Edge browser is its intuitive and useful privacy settings.
• It's a contrast to my experience with Google Chrome, where privacy settings are comprehensive, but less intuitive, and less effective than Edge, it seems. 
• Edge's "Strict" privacy setting is so powerful that it triggers pop-ups asking me to disable my ad blocker on certain sites, even though I don't use an ad blocker. Essentially, Edge's privacy settings can act like an ad blocker. 
• Meanwhile, Google Chrome still showed me ads with the similar privacy settings found in Edge's "Strict" setting. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

I switched over from Google Chrome to Microsoft's new Edge browser to give it a shot over a week ago, and I haven't moved back to Chrome yet. 

I'm truly enjoying the new Edge, largely because it looks and works a lot like Chrome, and the switch was completely seamless. The new Edge feels as snappy as Chrome, if not snappier, and it's also using up less of my computer's resources.

I've also enjoyed something else about the new Edge compared to Google's Chrome — the privacy settings are easier to understand. I also know they're working because some websites have asked me to disable my ad blocker, even though I don't actually have one. 

Edge offers a one-click-to-fix experience that's easy for anyone to control the degree of privacy they want while browsing the web. That's to say, it's quick and easy if you don't really know what to look for, and you're simply looking to be left alone by trackers — a basic method to browse the web without being, well, tracked.

Unfortunately, that's not the case for Chrome. Check it out:

SEE ALSO: Everything you need to watch the Super Bowl in sharp 4K and beautiful HDR for the first time

If you want basic privacy while you're browsing the web, you'll want to prevent websites from tracking you with little invisible tools, aptly named "trackers," that are built into a website.

"Trackers" in websites come in a variety of forms, like cookies or fingerprinters. They all have a common goal — to learn more about you. And they can be used for a variety of different things. Some can be useful, like remembering your preferences on certain websites and services. 

Others aren't so useful, and are designed to track things like your behavior on the web to create a profile about you in order to serve ads based on what you've been searching and doing on the web. 

The new Edge makes it very easy to stop trackers from, well, tracking you.

The privacy menu is clearly visible on the left under "Profile," and I'm presented with three options: Basic, Balanced, and Strict.

The new Edge's "Strict" privacy setting is blocking ad trackers so well that it's acting like an ad blocker in some cases.

Despite the "Strict" setting on the new Edge, I haven't experienced any extra difficulties or obstacles in the websites and services I normally use. It seems to be doing a good job of keeping trackers and cookies that are useful and blocking those that aren't.

Chrome has similar settings against trackers, but it's not as intuitive as it is in Edge, and it involves more clicks.

Everything I need to prevent trackers is built into Chrome, too, but it's more complicated to get there than it is on Edge, and you don't get a sense of how strict you're being against trackers. Instead, you get individual settings like allowing sites to save and read cookie data, and blocking third-party cookies. 

You click Settings, Advanced, Privacy and security, Site settings, then, finally, Cookies and site data.

And Chrome's privacy and tracker settings don't seem to be as potent as Edge's. With all the relevant privacy settings enables in Chrome, an ad was still displayed on this website.

For once, it's Google that can learn from Microsoft, at least when it comes to privacy settings.

Mozilla's Firefox should also get a mention, as it has intuitive and simple privacy settings similar to the new Edge.

Zoom also continues to be one of the fastest-growing, most popular workplace apps overall

Today, Okta released its annual Businesses @ Work 2020 Report, which breaks down the latest trends across workforces and provides an in-depth look into how organizations and people work today. We’re proud to announce that Zoom continues to see unprecedented adoption in the workplace and is by far the most popular video conferencing solution among Okta users!

According to Okta user data, Zoom is a top app by number of customers and by active unique users, and it also continues to be one of the fastest-growing business applications out there. In fact, Zoom has appeared in the top-10 fastest-growing category for four straight years!

According to the 2020 Okta report, Zoom is:

• The No. 7 most popular app by number of customers
• The No. 10 fastest-growing app in the workplace
• A top-15 app by number of monthly active unique users 

“We give a special nod to Zoom, the only app we’ve seen in the top ten fastest growing for a remarkable four years in a row, originally premiering at #1 in 2016,” the report says. “Zoom also earns the rare distinction of being a top app by number of customers, a top app by active unique users, and a fastest-growing app, all at once. Folks, we’re seeing a world record first for both achievements!”

A preference for Zoom video

With Okta customers estimating an average of 88 apps in use as part of their 2019 tech stacks, Zoom continues to be one of the most popular workplace solutions. But Zoom’s unparalleled combination of popularity and growth also demonstrates the ever-increasing need for simple and reliable video communications in every organization. 

When it comes to enterprise video conferencing solutions, Zoom is hands-down the preferred app, according to the Okta report.

“Zoom was the #1 fastest growing video conferencing app in 2016, and it hasn’t slowed down since,” the report says. “Over the past three years, Zoom has enjoyed an astounding 876% growth in the number of customers in our network. For comparison, second-place Cisco Webex grew 91% over that same period.”

Zoom technology actually appears twice on this list. The No. 3 app, RingCentral, white-labels Zoom’s technology for video conferencing.

The report also forecasts Zoom’s continued dominance as the preferred video conferencing application in the workplace.

“The video conferencing segment has room to grow before reaching maturity. IDC forecasts a 7.1% compound annual growth rate for global unified communications and collaboration solutions between 2019-2023, increasing the market size to $48.3 billion by 2023. Of course, network effects have a powerful impact on the adoption of video conferencing apps, so it will truly be an uphill battle to dislodge Zoom from its perch.”

Zoom a top app in best-of-breed strategies

Also of note is Zoom’s increasing importance in best-of-breed technology approaches. The report evaluated whether companies that used Microsoft Office 365 suite get everything they need from it and “commit to an exclusively Microsoft environment.” The answer more and more is “no,” and the data demonstrates just how much these organizations prefer Zoom as their primary video communications provider.

Among Okta customers using Office 365, 32% also deploy Zoom. The report also notes Zoom’s gain of 24% in that category over four years as “especially noteworthy.”

Check out the full Businesses @ Work Report from Okta for a closer look at how modern organizations are getting their work done. Or schedule a personalized demo to learn how Zoom can unify and elevate your business communications today!

The post ‘It Hasn’t Slowed Down’: Zoom the Top Video Conferencing App in Okta’s Businesses @ Work 2020 Report appeared first on Zoom Blog.

Photo by Michele Doying / The Verge

Google is working on another communications application, this one for workplaces, that will combine several different platforms it already operates, according to a new report from The Information. This new product is designed to unify different Google services the company sells to businesses, including parts of its G Suite like corporate-grade Gmail and Google Drive.

It would also bundle together the various, somewhat confusing variants of Hangouts. Once a consumer-focused communications platform, Hangouts is now geared toward enterprise customers. It has since been split into Hangouts Meet, a video chat app, and Hangouts Chat, a real-time text-based successor to Gchat. But that means Google may be introducing yet another communications...

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Hundreds of Amazon employees have openly violated the company’s communications policy by publicly criticizing their employer, in what is arguably the largest act of collective disobedience yet by white collar workers at a major tech company.

On Monday, more than 30 Amazon employees, identified by their names, appeared in a video speaking out against the policy while holding signs that read: “We will not be silenced.”

“Amazon employees are hired for our ability to have backbone, to speak up when we hear something wrong,” the narrator of the video says. “Now...Amazon wants to silence us for speaking out to the press and on social media.”

The action began on Sunday when the Amazon worker-led environmental justice group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice published quotes from 357 Amazon workers, using their full names and job titles, in a post on Medium. The workers defended colleagues who have faced threats of termination from the company for criticizing the company’s climate footprint.

In early September—following an announcement of a mass walkout at Amazon in protest of the company’s carbon footprint —Amazon updated its external communications policy to prohibit employees from speaking publicly about the company without obtaining approval from higher-ups. The new policy requires employees who want to speak publicly about the company to provide a “business justification” and receive approval through a page on the company’s internal network—a process which can take up to two weeks. (Previously, Amazon’s communications policy, which required approval from senior vice presidents, had not been routinely enforced for activists.)

The letter and video are unprecedented protests for white collar tech workers. While workers at a handful of tech companies have publicly criticized their employers on their sexual harassment policies, military and immigration enforcement contracts, and ties to the oil and gas industries, this likely marks the first mass action at a major tech company in open defiance of company policy.

“As Amazon workers, we are responsible for not only the success of the company, but its impact as well,” Sarah Tracy, a software engineer at Amazon, wrote in one of the Medium posts. "It’s our moral responsibility to speak up, and the changes to the communications policy are censoring us from exercising that responsibility. Now is not the time to silence employees, especially when the climate crisis poses such an unprecedented threat to humanity.”

The action also illustrates the power of safety in numbers. Amazon workers are betting that the company won’t take action against them, even though it has threatened to do so against individual workers—because firing hundreds of engineers would be inconvenient and costly to the company.

“While all employees are welcome to engage constructively with any of the many teams inside Amazon that work on sustainability and other topics, we do enforce our external communications policy and will not allow employees to publicly disparage or misrepresent the company or the hard work of their colleagues who are developing solutions to these hard problems,” an Amazon spokesperson told Motherboard.

On Monday, Senator Bernie Sanders and climate activist and author Naomi Klein both tweeted out their support for Amazon workers speaking out.

It’s worth noting that in recent months, Google has hired an anti-union consulting firm and fired five engineers for violating internal policies. Those fired employees allege the company was retaliating against them for organizing, and have since filed federal complaints with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

If Amazon workers have learned anything in recent months, it’s that collective action works. Following the announcement of a mass climate walkout led by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice in September, Jeff Bezos pledged to eliminate the company’s carbon footprint by 2040. “The day before we walked out, Amazon announced the climate pledge. We were the farthest behind our peers and now we are finally taking real steps,” the narrator of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice’s new video says. “This is only because we spoke up as employees.”

• An Amazon software engineer named Max Eliaser said the home-security company Ring should be "shut down immediately."
• "The privacy issues are not fixable with regulation and there is no balance that can be struck," Eliaser said.
• Eliaser's comments were part of a post in which hundreds of Amazon employees shared their views on various company policies and products.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

An Amazon engineer criticized the home-security camera company Ring, saying it should be "shut down immediately."

"The deployment of connected home security cameras that allow footage to be queried centrally are simply not compatible with a free society," Max Eliaser, an Amazon software-development engineer, said in a post published on Medium on Sunday. "The privacy issues are not fixable with regulation and there is no balance that can be struck. Ring should be shut down immediately and not brought back."

Eliaser's comments are striking because Ring is owned by Amazon, whose corporate employees rarely speak out against the company. (Amazon bars employees from speaking about the company without prior approval.)

Amazon and Ring did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Amazon acquired Ring, which makes video doorbells and home security cameras, in 2018. The camera company has recently faced scrutiny over privacy issues, mostly around its agreements with law-enforcement agencies and problems with hackers accessing the devices.

Some of Ring's own employees have also abused access to customer feeds, the company told lawmakers recently.

The Medium post quoting Eliaser included critical comments from hundreds of Amazon employees about various Amazon policies and products. It was published Sunday by the advocacy group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice and meant to protest the company's external-communications policy.

SEE ALSO: 'Great for the bottom line but awful for society': More than 350 Amazon workers slammed its climate policies in defiance of a crackdown on dissent

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Microsoft launched its new Edge Chromium-powered browser earlier this month on both macOS and Windows. The launch marked just over a year after the company announce its plans to work more closely with the Chromium project and Google engineers. The Verge got an exclusive look at Microsoft’s surprise decision to work with Google last year, and now we’re starting to see just how closely Microsoft and Google are collaborating with the introduction of Edge’s multi-tab management feature in Chromium.

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At least seven state attorneys general are meeting with US Justice Department attorneys next week in what could be the first step toward the two groups working together to investigate Google, The Wall Street Journal is reporting. The move follows last year’s news that 50 state attorneys general are conducting an antitrust investigation to Google, while the Justice Department has its own broad antitrust review that it’s conducting of the country’s big tech companies. Google’s dominance in online advertising and search, as well as its behavior around Android, are thought to be under scrutiny.

The scheduled meeting could pave the way for state and federal authorities to share information they’ve gathered as parts of their investigations,...

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An antivirus program used by hundreds of millions of people around the world is selling highly sensitive web browsing data to many of the world's biggest companies, a joint investigation by Motherboard and PCMag has found. Our report relies on leaked user data, contracts, and other company documents that show the sale of this data is both highly sensitive and is in many cases supposed to remain confidential between the company selling the data and the clients purchasing it.

The documents, from a subsidiary of the antivirus giant Avast called Jumpshot, shine new light on the secretive sale and supply chain of peoples' internet browsing histories. They show that the Avast antivirus program installed on a person's computer collects data, and that Jumpshot repackages it into various different products that are then sold to many of the largest companies in the world. Some past, present, and potential clients include Google, Yelp, Microsoft, McKinsey, Pepsi, Sephora, Home Depot, Condé Nast, Intuit, and many others. Some clients paid millions of dollars for products that include a so-called "All Clicks Feed," which can track user behavior, clicks, and movement across websites in highly precise detail.

Avast claims to have more than 435 million active users per month, and Jumpshot says it has data from 100 million devices. Avast collects data from users that opt-in and then provides that to Jumpshot, but multiple Avast users told Motherboard they were not aware Avast sold browsing data, raising questions about how informed that consent is.

The data obtained by Motherboard and PCMag includes Google searches, lookups of locations and GPS coordinates on Google Maps, people visiting companies' LinkedIn pages, particular YouTube videos, and people visiting porn websites. It is possible to determine from the collected data what date and time the anonymized user visited YouPorn and PornHub, and in some cases what search term they entered into the porn site and which specific video they watched.

Do you know about any other companies selling data? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

Although the data does not include personal information such as users' names, it still contains a wealth of specific browsing data, and experts say it could be possible to deanonymize certain users.

In a press release from July, Jumpshot claims to be "the only company that unlocks walled garden data" and seeks to "provide marketers with deeper visibility into the entire online customer journey." Jumpshot has previously discussed some of its clients publicly. But other companies mentioned in Jumpshot documents include Expedia, IBM, Intuit, which makes TurboTax, Loreal, and Home Depot. Employees are instructed not to talk publicly about Jumpshot's relationships with these companies.

"It's very granular, and it's great data for these companies, because it's down to the device level with a timestamp," the source said, referring to the specificity and sensitivity of the data being sold. Motherboard granted the source anonymity to speak more candidly about Jumpshot's processes.

Until recently, Avast was collecting the browsing data of its customers who had installed the company's browser plugin, which is designed to warn users of suspicious websites. Security researcher and AdBlock Plus creator Wladimir Palant published a blog post in October showing that Avast harvest user data with that plugin. Shortly after, browser makers Mozilla, Opera, and Google removed Avast's and subsidiary AVG's extensions from their respective browser extension stores. Avast had previously explained this data collection and sharing in a blog and forum post in 2015. Avast has since stopped sending browsing data collected by these extensions to Jumpshot, Avast said in a statement to Motherboard and PCMag.

However, the data collection is ongoing, the source and documents indicate. Instead of harvesting information through software attached to the browser, Avast is doing it through the anti-virus software itself. Last week, months after it was spotted using its browser extensions to send data to Jumpshot, Avast began asking its existing free antivirus consumers to opt-in to data collection, according to an internal document.

"If they opt-in, that device becomes part of the Jumpshot Panel and all browser-based internet activity will be reported to Jumpshot," an internal product handbook reads. "What URLs did these devices visit, in what order and when?" it adds, summarising what questions the product may be able to answer.

Senator Ron Wyden, who in December asked Avast why it was selling users' browsing data, said in a statement, "It is encouraging that Avast has ended some of its most troubling practices after engaging constructively with my office. However I’m concerned that Avast has not yet committed to deleting user data that was collected and shared without the opt-in consent of its users, or to end the sale of sensitive internet browsing data. The only responsible course of action is to be fully transparent with customers going forward, and to purge data that was collected under suspect conditions in the past."

Despite Avast currently asking users to opt back into the data collection via a pop-up in the antivirus software, multiple Avast users said they did not know that Avast was selling browsing data.

"I was not aware of this," Keith, a user of the free Avast antivirus product who only provided their first name, told Motherboard. "That sounds scary. I usually say no to data tracking," they said, adding that they haven't yet seen the new opt-in pop-up from Avast.

"Did not know that they did that :(," another free Avast antivirus user said in a Twitter direct message.

Motherboard and PCMag contacted over two dozen companies mentioned in internal documents. Only a handful responded to questions asking what they do with data based on the browsing history of Avast users.

"We sometimes use information from third-party providers to help improve our business, products and services. We require these providers to have the appropriate rights to share this information with us. In this case, we receive anonymized audience data, which cannot be used to identify individual customers," a Home Depot spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.

Microsoft declined to comment on the specifics of why it purchased products from Jumpshot, but said that it doesn't have a current relationship with the company. A Yelp spokesperson wrote in an email, "In 2018, as part of a request for information by antitrust authorities, Yelp's policy team was asked to estimate the impact of Google’s anticompetitive behavior on the local search marketplace. Jumpshot was engaged on a one-time basis to generate a report of anonymized, high-level trend data which validated other estimates of Google’s siphoning of traffic from the web. No PII was requested or accessed."

"Every search. Every click. Every buy. On every site."

Southwest Airlines said it had discussions with Jumpshot but didn't reach an agreement with the company. IBM said it did not have a record of being a client, and Altria said it is not working with Jumpshot, although didn't specify if it did so previously. Google did not respond to a request for comment.

On its website and in press releases, Jumpshot names Pepsi, and consulting giants Bain & Company and McKinsey as clients.

As well as Expedia, Intuit, and Loreal, other companies which are not already mentioned in public Jumpshot announcements include coffee company Keurig, YouTube promotion service vidIQ, and consumer insights firm Hitwise. None of those companies responded to a request for comment.

On its website, Jumpshot lists some previous case studies for using its browsing data. Magazine and digital media giant Condé Nast, for example, used Jumpshot's products to see whether the media company's advertisements resulted in more purchases on Amazon and elsewhere. Condé Nast did not respond to a request for comment.

ALL THE CLICKS

Jumpshot sells a variety of different products based on data collected by Avast's antivirus software installed on users' computers. Clients in the institutional finance sector often buy a feed of the top 10,000 domains that Avast users are visiting to try and spot trends, the product handbook reads.

Another Jumpshot product is the company's so-called "All Click Feed." It allows a client to buy information on all of the clicks Jumpshot has seen on a particular domain, like Amazon.com, Walmart.com, Target.com, BestBuy.com, or Ebay.com.

In a tweet sent last month intended to entice new clients, Jumpshot noted that it collects "Every search. Every click. Every buy. On every site" [emphasis Jumpshot's.]

Jumpshot's data could show how someone with Avast antivirus installed on their computer searched for a product on Google, clicked on a link that went to Amazon, and then maybe added an item to their cart on a different website, before finally buying a product, the source who provided the documents explained.

One company that purchased the All Clicks Feed is New York-based marketing firm Omnicom Media Group, according to a copy of its contract with Jumpshot. Omnicom paid Jumpshot $2,075,000 for access to data in 2019, the contract shows. It also included another product called "Insight Feed" for 20 different domains. The fee for data in 2020 and then 2021 is listed as $2,225,000 and $2,275,000 respectively, the document adds.

Jumpshot gave Omnicom access to all click feeds from 14 different countries around the world, including the U.S., England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The product also includes the inferred gender of users "based on browsing behavior," their inferred age, and "the entire URL string" but with personally identifiable information (PII) removed, the contract adds.

Omnicom did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

According to the Omnicom contract, the "device ID" of each user is hashed, meaning the company buying the data should not be able to identify who exactly is behind each piece of browsing activity. Instead, Jumpshot's products are supposed to give insights to companies who may want to see what products are particularly popular, or how effective an ad campaign is working.

"What we don't do is report on the Jumpshot Device ID that executed the clicks to protect against the triangulation of PII," one internal Jumpshot document reads.

But Jumpshot's data may not be totally anonymous. The internal product handbook says that device IDs do not change for each user, "unless a user completely uninstalls and reinstalls the security software." Numerous articles and academic studies have shown how it is possible to unmask people using so-called anonymized data. In 2006, New York Times reporters were able to identify a specific person from a cache of supposedly anonymous search data that AOL publicly released. Although the tested data was more focused on social media links, which Jumpshot redacts somewhat, a 2017 study from Stanford University found it was possible to identify people from anonymous web browsing data.

"De-identification has shown to be a very failure-prone process. There are so many ways it can go wrong," Günes Acar, who studies large-scale internet tracking at the Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography research group at the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, said.

De-anonymization becomes a greater concern when considering how the eventual end-users of Jumpshot's data could combine it with their own data.

"Most of the threats posed by de-anonymization—where you are identifying people—comes from the ability to merge the information with other data," Acar said. A set of Jumpshot data obtained by Motherboard and PCMag shows how each visited URL comes with a precise timestamp down to the millisecond, which could allow a company with its own bank of customer data to see one user visiting their own site, and then follow them across other sites in the Jumpshot data.

"It's almost impossible to de-identify data," Eric Goldman, a professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, said. "When they promise to de-identify the data, I don't believe it."

Motherboard and PCMag asked Avast a series of detailed questions about how it protects user anonymity as well as details on some of the company's contracts. Avast did not answer most of the questions but wrote in a statement, "Because of our approach, we ensure that Jumpshot does not acquire personal identification information, including name, email address or contact details, from people using our popular free antivirus software."

"Users have always had the ability to opt out of sharing data with Jumpshot. As of July 2019, we had already begun implementing an explicit opt-in choice for all new downloads of our AV, and we are now also prompting our existing free users to make an explicit choice, a process which will be completed in February 2020," it said, adding that the company complies with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) across its entire global user base.

"We have a long track record of protecting users’ devices and data against malware, and we understand and take seriously the responsibility to balance user privacy with the necessary use of data," the statement added.

"It's almost impossible to de-identify data."

When PCMag installed Avast's antivirus product for the first time this month, the software did ask if they wanted to opt-in to data collection.

"If you allow it, we'll provide our subsidiary Jumpshot Inc. with a stripped and de-identified data set derived from your browsing history for the purpose of enabling Jumpshot to analyze markets and business trends and gather other valuable insights," the opt-in message read. The pop-up did not go into detail on how Jumpshot then uses this browsing data, however.

"The data is fully de-identified and aggregated and cannot be used to personally identify or target you. Jumpshot may share aggregated insights with its customers," the pop-up added.

Just a few days ago, the Twitter account for Avast subsidiary AVG tweeted, "Do you remember the last time you cleaned your #browser history? Storing your browsing history for a long time can take up memory on your device and can put your private info at risk."

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Last week, Microsoft made a splash when it announced its intention to become a “carbon negative” company—one that pulls more climate-warming carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than it puts in—by 2030. The news drew widespread attention and praise for the tech giant. Reuters declared Microsoft had “set a new ambition among Fortune 500 companies,” and the UN’s executive secretary of climate change called the move “remarkable.”

A day earlier, the 12th International Conference on Petroleum Technology drew to a close in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. This year, Microsoft received special billing as the event’s “Digital Transformation Partner,” meaning it hosted all of the online sessions according to the Saudi Gazette. The company also had a booth at the conference, and Omar Saleh, Microsoft’s regional director of energy and manufacturing for the Middle East and Africa, participated in a panel discussion titled “The Role of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in Developing the Oil and Gas Sector.”

The “fourth industrial revolution,” or Industry 4.0, refers to how cloud computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are allowing companies to process and analyze vast amounts of data more efficiently and in new ways. Tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are currently in a race to unleash Industry 4.0 on the fossil fuel industry—and in doing so, they are helping ensure that oil continues to flow profitably for years to come.

Which raises an obvious question: How can Microsoft hope to pull more carbon out of the air than it puts in if it’s actively accelerating the production of carbon-based fuels?

“To me it’s a complete disconnect,” said Liz Jardim, a senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace. “If they care about the problem of climate change, this work with the oil and gas industry is only making the problem bigger.”

The disconnect is striking because Microsoft’s new climate pledge is, otherwise, pretty impressive. The company’s timeline—which includes shifting to 100 percent renewable energy for its data centers, buildings, and campuses by 2025, and becoming carbon negative by 2030—is in line with what the science says needs to happen to prevent the worst consequences of climate change. To reach net zero and eventually become a carbon negative company, Microsoft has pledged to put $1 billion into so-called negative emissions technologies that pull carbon out of the air. This, too, is significant: Most climate models agree that we’ll need negative emissions tech to bring atmospheric carbon dioxide down to safe levels. The federal government isn’t investing nearly enough in these technologies; Microsoft’s commitment could spur others in the private sector to help fill the gap.

"Microsoft was one of a number of sponsors for the event," Microsoft said in a statement. "Microsoft attends and sponsors a number of events spanning many industries."

The company’s new climate commitment is detailed, too. Unlike Amazon’s recent climate pledge, which only mentioned top-line emission reduction goals, Microsoft gets into the weeds as to how it’ll drive down the direct emissions that come from the fuel its trucks burn and the energy its data centers use—known as scope 1 and 2 emissions—as well as the emissions associated with the use of its products, so-called scope 3 emissions.

“This really is taking the greenhouse gas protocol to heart,” said Shelie Miller, a sustainability researcher and expert on environmental accounting at the University of Michigan. Miller noted that scope 3 emissions are “the hardest piece to tackle and often the largest environmental impact of any company.” Microsoft says it’ll work to reduce its scope 3 emissions, which it estimates account for three quarters of its carbon footprint, with an internal carbon fee.

But Microsoft’s consideration of the knock-on effects of its products and services also brings us to the company’s oil contracts, which threaten to undo a lot of this positive action.

Microsoft’s recent partnership with ExxonMobil has the potential to expand oil production in the Permian basin by up to 50,000 barrels a day. Its recent three-way partnership with oilfield services provider Schlumberger and Chevron aims to “bring [fossil fuel] prospects to development more quickly and with more certainty.” Yet because these are indirect effects of the company’s actions, Microsoft can, if it so chooses, leave them out of its carbon reporting entirely.

“That would definitely be an area of debate,” Miller said when asked if Microsoft should be accounting for the climate impact of its work with Big Oil. “It comes to the question of what’s the environmental impact of an algorithm, and who’s responsible.”

Chris Preist, a professor of sustainability and computer systems at the University of Bristol, added that while companies are not required to consider indirect effects like this in standard emissions reporting, such effects are “likely to be significantly larger than the direct impacts.”

Similarly to Amazon, Microsoft prefers to play up the benefits of its oil and gas partnerships. In last week’s climate announcement, Microsoft president Brad Smith doubled down on continuing to work with “all our customers, including those in the oil and gas business,” in order to help them “achieve the business needs of a net zero carbon future.”

“Continued improvement in standards of living around the world will require more energy, not less,” Smith writes. “It’s imperative that we enable energy companies to transition, including to renewable energy and to the development and use of negative emission technologies like carbon capture and storage and direct air capture.”

But while Microsoft would like the world to believe its oil and gas contracts are about saving the planet, articles published last week in the International Conference on Petroleum Technology’s daily newsletter tell a different story about what the company is selling: Machine learning tools can be used to surveil oil fields; AI that can anticipate maintenance needs in advance to avoid shutdowns; cybersecurity systems can help oil clients keep their big datasets secure. These services make Microsoft “a reliable choice and an enabler for oil and gas companies,” concludes one article, which mentions transitioning off fossil fuels exactly nowhere.

“Supporting Oil and Gas companies to transition to a net-zero world in line with Microsoft’s pledge to 1.5 degrees would be a laudable thing,” Preist said. “Supporting Oil and Gas companies in head in the sand business-as-usual activities would be corporate hypocrisy.”

Update: This article has been updated with comment from Microsoft.

In a scarce AI talent market, vendors target startups to grow AI skills and solutions in their workforce.

It will be quite a year in 2020 for digital workplace and employee experience, as a number of important emerging trends shift the landscape. Some long-standing issues will also reach a tipping point for many organizations. In my discussions with CIOs, CHROs, heads of digital workplace, and IT solution owners over the last year, it's clear that it's currently a difficult time right now for those in charge of digitally enabling work in our organizations.

I recently laid out the reasons for this in considerable detail. These issues are now consistently a significant challenge for many organizations to deliver well on either digital workplace or employee experience, two closely related concepts. While these issues can't entirely be overcome this year for most organizations, it's safe to say that understanding them and tackling them proactively will produce the better result.

Underscoring the importance and urgency of progress is the significant gap today between delivery and expectation in employee experience. A recent in-depth study by Deloitte reported that while 80% of executives say employee experience is important, only 22% of employee report it's done well. What's more, 59% or organizations say they're not really ready to address it. This means there's a lot to do for those responsible for this area, not just in driving improvements on the ground, but managing stakeholder expectations overall.

That's not to say it isn't a very exciting time to be in the practice. It very much is. The technology options, transformation techniques, and design/delivery methods have never been richer or more mature. Techniques like design thinking, technologies such as talent analytics, new transformation techniques that scale well, and employment trends like gig economy for the enterprise are all offering new possibilities for breaking through the challenges that many are facing in closing the gap between what organizations are able to deliver and not only what their workers want, but would actually benefit from.

Related Research: Experience-Driven Organizations

Fourteen Trends in the Future of Work

Here are twelve leading trends that we see meaningful movement in when it comes to developing and improving the employee experience:

• Employee experience will see more concerted leadership attention and increased levels of investment in 2020. Although employee experience is best when it's delivered completely and effectively through joint partnership between IT and HR, efforts will nevertheless attempt improvement with or without the partnership. Those that do it together, however, will see the most significant committment of budget, as each purview can contribute investment. It will also be seen as more significant and credible by other executives and the board. As employee experience gains awareness, credibility, and urgency as a construct -- and more success stories emerge -- investments will grow in general in 2020 and beyond.
• An increase in committed attemps by IT and HR to come together in partnership to create a genuine and more effective employee experience vision, strategy, and operations. More CIOs will join with CHROs in 2020, largely because of the growing understanding of the infeasibility of changing just the technology or just the way that people are trained, managed, and work in isolation. It has to be done together. As a better understanding emerges of what it takes to embark on the digital transformation of work to reinvent the three aspects of employee experience together (physical, digital, and cultural), we'll see a steady increase in more teaming and collaboration within the C-Suite this year. I also expect to see more Centers of Excellence around employee experience, as a way of accelerating the efforts in high value areas to boost acquisition and retention of workers in particular.
• Automation of tactical work will substantially increase, as remaining roles will become steadily more strategic, while AI gains spotty traction that's far removed from creating large scale unemployment. AI isn't replacing humans yet, and good thing, because such capabilities will need to be overseen by workers with a high vantage point within the organization for the foreseeable future. What we'll see is easy-to-use automation tools like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) being used to augment or replace more and more rote jobs. Best-in-class employers will use new educational capabilities that have emerged to reskill and cross skill those workers, many of which, as I've predicted for a while, will have a harder time becoming the developers or managers of AI-based automation deployments. 
• Fragmented and disjointed digital workplaces will be recast by best-in-class employers into more integrated, organized, and streamlined experiences aimed at highest value use cases. The workplace as it is made up today requires ever more time spend in applications and digital channels. As apps continue to proliferate and there is a strong shift away from one-size fits all to more local choice in the systems used to get work done, we're seeing broad interest and demand for ways to develop a "center of gravity" for employee experience or what I sometimes call a digital workplace hub. One example of this is Citrix Workspace, with the addition of Sapho's capabilities. We see some of this showing up in the emerging the digital canvas category, as well as products that either aim at integrated employee experience to next-gen intranet products that integrate apps, data, and people into more seamless, end-to-end functionality. We'll see more trials and experimentation in a big way in 2020 to drive productivity improvements, improve onboarding speed, and reduce cognitive overload, among other benefits.
• Capabilities to constructively manage and shape Shadow IT, now a major and unpredictable factor in the workplace today, will see improved early adoption. It's clear that unsanctioned workforce applications are here to stay as part of the digital workplace. I've argued that they actually provide a practical form of free R&D and innovation to improve the digital workplace, but that we'd need capabilities to provide operational guardrails to make it sustainable. These types of capabilities are now available. Solutions from Expanse, Perforce, ClusterSeven, and Ntiva are not only designed to find and control Shadow IT but allow workers, whenever it makes sense, to continue using the best tools for their jobs in a more maneable and protected way. Shadow IT is a major force in organizations today, often making up more than half of IT being used (though usually not mission critical systems.) Employee experience leaders can now offer choice, flexibility, and the best tools for tasks at hand in their digital workplaces/employee experiences.
• Work will become even more flexible, dynamic, and unconnected to location, as workers become less attached to the companies they work for and more connected to their peers, careers, and communities. Expectations and desires around work itself have been steadily changing. Jobs are steadily becoming more transient, remote, and virtual. People want meaningful connection in their work, and they are getting it more from their colleagues, long term career narrative, and the groups of people they attach themselves to, such as professional assocations and online communities related to their work. Employee experiences will adapt to this by helping workers to better make these connections using everything from enterprise social networks and alumni communities to online employment platforms and corporate social responsibility networks (as examples.)
• New sourcing models for talent, such as gig economy for the enterprise, will continue to take marketshare, enabling better personalization of work/life while giving organizations powerful new options for hiring. Employment is shifting in a significant way to platforms that can provide long term opportunity for an entire career, as opposed to an individual job. The gig economy has matured and is making significant inroads into the enterprise, offering far more flexible employement on both sides of the equation. See my recent exploration of how on-demand digital hiring has become a leading source of innovation in employment in important new ways in my discussion with the CEO of Gigster.
• For the first time, strategic design and updates of the employee experience will tend to cater most to the needs of Generation Z, while most other changes won't be aimed at any particular generation. Now that Gen Z has become the largest percentage of the workforce, at about 40% this year, it will drive many of the largest policy and strategy decisions when it comes to key elements of employee experience. Gen Z's top driver, for the first time in employment history, is not salary but control over work/life balance. There are other factors too that are only now being understood. Employee experience in particular will be dramatically impacted in 2020 by companies that want to be preferred employers for this leading talent cohort. Offering customization, choice, flexibility, and adaptability to need is therefore key to the future of work. I'm having more hiring and IT managers come to me than ever saying they are getting unusual requests from new hire prospects, including requesting the ability to split time between two companies or only working three days a week, for example.
• Pressure to rethink and digitally transform HR will get the most serious consideration yet, but actual movement will be slow except in certain high value and/or easy-to-implement areas. HR has been one of the departments most resistent to digitially transforming itself and I don't expect that will change much this year, mostly due to the simple fact that the digital world is not typically a core competency of the HR function in general. However, where there is ready opportunity to improve employment screening, automate rote HR tasks, analyze in-house talent using digial tools (thereby rethinking performance reviews, for instance), or otherwise rethink portions of HR in a targeted fashion, I believe we'll see it happen more in 2020 than ever before. But important advances evident from the digital world that are obvious to everyone (i.e. online learning) will put the onus on HR to have a bigger rethink sooner rather than later, especially as automation and AI continues to make major inroads. Thus, the groundwork for this may be laid in many organizations this year, with insiders expecting more "flip the script" than ever within the function.
• Education and skillbuilding will continue to evolve, with informal learning, social learning, microlearning and other forms of on-demand, personalized, and co-created education to help workers stay abreast of and effective in a fast-changing world. The ways that technology has reimagined corporate education in the last five years has been dramatic. Everything from freely available and high quality online courses to internal employee crowdsourcing of learning has made it possible for workers to learn much more quickly and just-in-time. Enterprises now have the tools to upskill and crosskill workers being affected by automation, as well as offering a vital means of retention for those organizations will to assemble best-of-breed onboarding and retraining programs using today's digital art of the possible.
• The ongoing fierce competition between top digital workplace vendors in certain major categories will result in most offerings more clearly defining their corner and staying in it, as sharp differentiation continues to be required to stand out. This competition is perhaps best represented by the ongoing face-off with the great Slack and Microsoft Teams competition, with others like Dropbox and Box, and Office 365 and Google Suite rounding out the platforms I'm most asked about in pairs currently.
• The rise of design thinking and data-driven optimization of the workplace will simultaneously raise the quality and businss impact of the employee experience. We now have the capabilities to create personalized, end-to-end employee experiences for our workers using the latest digital workplace tools. We can also use powerful new analytics solutions -- well exemplified by Microsoft's impressive Workplace Analytics --  to help workers function better, with fewer errors, and less wasted time on all sides. Design thinking in particular offers a way to get the heart of what workers need today to be effective and engaged. Talent and workplace analytics is giving us a way to find out what's actually happening and then proactively improve or optimize it, uncovered new opportunities along the way. I expect a broad uptake of both practices, though the management processes to deliver on it well are still being figured out within most organizations.
• An exciting new set of categories for digital workplace applications and solutions will gain more interested new adherents. While there's no question that technology is advancing more quickly than most organizations can absorb it, that doesn't mean enterprises shouldn't increase their metabolism and explore what's truly possible today. Again, best-in-class employers will tend to do this more than others. Some of these new categories are exciting areas that have been in early adoption phase for several years, including work coordination platforms, augmented meeting services, and digital adoption platforms like WalkMe. All of these, and others, should be given serious consideration now to improve the employee experience and broader business impact and worker effectiveness.
• Recent industry regulations and an increased focus on corporate responsibility will complicate the employee experience and digital workplace, while providing some notable and worthwhile protections. Well beyond GDPR, which has had a dramatic global impact to how business systems operate, new digital regulations will continue to arrive including the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) as well as the new gig economy law, Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5). All of these will have a host of unintended consequences (see this example with AB 5 here) and will thus make creating employee experiences more complicated, although they will have clear and targeted benefits in some cases. Practitioners should be prepared to adapt to these and be steeped in the details of digital regulation in 2020.

A New Future of Work Is Upon Us

There are other trends too, but these are the key ones that will be either most interesting or most impactful for those responsible for digital workplace and employee experience in 2020. It's clear that creating an effective workplace takes both big picture thinking as well as the ability to harness and actually tap into digital complexity, which is one of the hallmarks of effective digital transformation today.

I do expect that the confluence of factors facing organizations today will take the next several years to sort through and find the most workable methods to capitalize on the above trends. This issue is that considerable control continues to be lost as both technology and the nature of employment itself shifts dramatically towards new models that offer greater value and therefore opportunity, both for workers and enterprises. The future of work continues to be a brave and exciting new world for sure, for those that choose to adopt and live in it, and are willing to acquire a new mindset.

Update: This post started with twelve predictions, but I subsequently added two more.

Additional Reading 

How to Achieve Minimum Viable Digital Experience for Employees

Creating the Modern Digital Workplace and Employee Experience