When entering a building, fumbling to find a security badge in your bag or wallet can feel like a hassle. MyPORT, a new automated security system created by the Schindler Elevator Corporation, aims to eliminate this fuss.
Once installed in a building, the technology allows those who work or live there to download a companion smartphone app that automatically opens doors and summons elevators.
"The idea is to be able to walk throughout a building seamlessly," Schindler's product manager Jeff Blain tells Tech Insider.
When a user approaches a lobby turnstile, a bluetooth sensor (installed by Schindler) recognizes their phone, even if it's inside a bag or pocket. The turnstile then unlocks, the system activates an elevator and the app tells the user which one to enter.
Using machine learning, myPORT can predict what times specific users usually arrive and what floors they go to. So when people enter a building, the system groups those with similar destinations and assigns them to the same elevator.
It can also learn your daily habits. For example, if you generally go downstairs for lunch at noon, the system can anticipate that and will automatically select the cafeteria or lobby floor when you get in the elevator.
Blain says the system is designed to make it simpler to enter your office or apartment, since it works with your phone (which, chances are, is already in your hand anyway), thereby eliminating the need for a key card.
"We want to make people's lives easier in any way we can," he says.
Since the system only grants entry to people holding verified phones, it could also eliminate the need for a human guard or doorman. The system keeps a log of who has access to certain doors at various times, and can also open the front entrance if it requires secure access. For package deliveries, users get a notification on their phone, can see a video of the mailperson, and let them in or tell them to come back later. (All of these preferences can be programmed in the app.)
The system and app (for iOs and Android) launched May 19 and is available for office and residential buildings anywhere in the world. So far, the New Jersey-based company has piloted the system in Switzerland and San Francisco.
Sure, pushing an elevator button isn't so hard that we need an app to do it for us. But for those who are blind or in wheelchairs, myPORT could be an incredibly helpful tool.
The company recently piloted the system at the headquarters of the Independent Living Resource Center of San Francisco, a disability rights advocacy organization. Blain says the system greatly improved accessibility for workers with physical disabilities—the Center's director is blind, and now doors open for her automatically when she's nearby.
However, there are obvious security concerns inherent in a system that grants building access. There's always the risk that, if a phone is stolen, someone would be able to enter and exit an office or apartment. Plus, there's a chance the app could be hacked.
Blain is confident that Schindler has adequately protected myPORT from the threat of hackers and thieves, but promises like that can be hard to keep.
Microsoft is building a Bing Concierge Bot — a new bot for messaging apps like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger which "does what a human assistant would do," according to a job posting for a software engineer.
Tell Bing Concierge to book you a table at your favorite restaurant, for example, and it will ask how many and then go out to the web and do it for you.
Under the hood, Bing Concierge will likely be powered by the same technology that lets Microsoft's existing Cortana assistant help you with your day-to-day tasks and answer questions.
But where Cortana "lives" inside Windows 10 and a pair of Android and iPhone apps, Bing Concierge can help you in the apps you already use, like Skype or WhatsApp or Messenger — just start a conversation. That's also an edge over Google Assistant and Facebook M, which are limited to the Google Allo and Facebook Messenger services, respectively.
Microsoft wants to infiltrate Facebook Messenger with a new ‘concierge’ bot
The existence of Bing Concierge doesn't come as a huge surprise. Earlier this year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced a series of new tools to help developers build their own chatbots, calling the concept "conversations as a platform."
So, given the company's existing investment into the technology, with Cortana and with its chatbot framework, it makes perfect sense to buy into its own hype and build a bot based on Bing. After all, Cortana is already pushing Bing to new heights, and perhaps Bing Concierge can take it even further.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
About one year ago, Nick Fox, the executive in charge of communications at Google, asked some of his engineers what their ideal messaging app would look like if they could build it from scratch.
The app aims to bring together all of Google's latest research in artificial intelligence, machine learning, voice recognition, and natural language processing.
But the arrival of Allo raises an important question:
What happens to Google's existing messaging app, Hangouts? And how does Allo fit in with the other group messaging app, Spaces, that Google launched earlier this week?
"We're continuing to invest in Hangouts and it will remain a standalone product," a Google spokesperson tells Business Insider.
Although the basics of Hangouts and Allo are the same — they let people communicate, funny stickers and photos included — Google won't kill Hangouts because it thinks the two serve different purposes.
For one, Hangouts is tied to Google's enterprise For Work products that's aimed at business customers, and which includes Gmail and Docs, and is available on desktop. Allo, by contrast, is mobile only, doesn't require a Gmail account, and is focused on the power of artificial intelligence.
Right now, Allo users can chat with Google's new virtual assistant in the app, but the company also showed off an integration with OpenTable, for booking restaurants. And hinted that it plans to be very open, while not rushing into anything.
Although Google says it will continue adding new features to Hangouts and improving the product, it won't necessarily be folding in chatbot capabilities any time soon.
Still it's tough not to interpret the advent of Allo as a signal that Hangouts' best days are behind it.
After all, unless you are already using Hangouts to talk to coworkers or because you need to communicate on a desktop PC, you're probably more likely to opt for the new amped up experience and technology that Allo offers.
Google maintains that studies have shown people don't use just one messaging app. And because Hangouts is tied to the enterprise and has loyal users, it would cause more of a hassle to get rid of it than to keep it going.
Both Hangouts and Allo fall under Fox's purview, though Spaces is run by Bradley Horowitz, who picked up the pieces of the pulled-about social network Google Plus.
And Google's trio of different chat apps might not be so crazy after all, when you consider that rival Facebook has both Messenger and WhatsApp.
During the keynote of its three-day developers' conference, Google CEO Sundar Pichai focused on Google's plans to bake artificial intelligence and machine learning more thoroughly into all of its services.
In that vein, the company also unveiled a bunch of new products, including two messaging apps and a smart speaker.
The coolest thing Google announced was Home, a smart speaker similar to Amazon's Echo.
You'll be able to ask Home general questions through search or get tailored info like local weather or what the traffic is like on your route to work. It can also play music and integrate with other smarthome devices, like Google's Nest thermostats.
The device won't start shipping until later this year and its price is still unknown.
Google thinks Home will be smarter than Echo though, thanks to another new product it announced: A conversational chatbot called Google Assistant that leverages all of the company's skills in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing.
Assistant will work across all of a user's devices to have an "ongoing two-way dialogue with Google."
It's like an amped-up version of the company's previous virtual assistant, Google Now, that will pull information seamlessly with other Google services like Search, Maps, and YouTube.
Assistant also powers Allo, a new smart messaging app that Google says will learn about you as you use it.
The app can tie to your phone number or Google account, and it looks like Facebook Messenger with the ability to share stickers and photos.
What sets Allo apart though is its ability to serve up "smart replies" and let you chat with Assistant — for example, if your friend sends you a picture of their pup, Allo could auto-suggest the response "cute dog!" and you could call up local restaurant suggestions just by chatting "@google."
Along with a whole mess of other neat new technologies, Wednesday's Google I/O presentation brought some news on the future of Android Auto integration in cars.
At the conference, new Android Auto features were being shown off on a Maserati Ghibli that was modified by Qualcomm. Basically, it had a very Tesla-like info screen setup. Both the gauge cluster and the center stack were taken over by two massive screens that were running a software called Android Auto N.
Cars that have the ability to run the Android Auto N software can have their screens, like the two in the Maserati, completely taken over by the Google software. AM/FM radio functions, air conditioning controls, and other basic features will also be able to be controlled through this software.
Additionally, Google is developing its own Android Auto application that can be installed on older infotainment systems. This would allow cars that aren't brand new and that don't come Android Auto tech from the factory to take advantage of the software's different features and helpful smartphone integration.
It's unclear what the procedure might be to install an application like that on older cars.
Google said at during its presentation that Android Auto N software likely won't be in cars until 2017. But cars that are already equipped with Android Auto tech are expected to get upgrades later in 2016. Those updates will include things like Waze integration (finally), voice control by saying "OK Google," and the ability to connect phones to Android Auto via Wi-Fi, instead of by just using a USB cable.
Amazon is going to start selling its own brands of snacks, diapers, detergent — a move lots of traditional retailers have already made.
But Amazon isn't a traditional retailer, so this move could be very meaningful for Amazon, and its competitors.
The e-commerce powerhouse will soon begin selling its own packaged goods, exclusively to Amazon Prime members under brands like Happy Belly and Mama Bear, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Amazon already sells things like electronic accessories, office supplies, and even clothing under a variety of its own brand names. Now it's going all in on groceries and household products.
While some people will point out that so-called "private-labeling" is nothing new — grocery stores and big-box retailers have been increasingly pushing their in-house brands — this is a much bigger deal.
That's because the growth in retail is all going to be online, and Amazon owns online. It already accounts for half of all sales growth in U.S. e-commerce.
So Amazon's move into consumer packaged goods gives it even more opportunity to flex its muscle with suppliers. That means giving its own products better placement on its site, and undercutting competitors on pricing.
The move also offers Amazon the chance to pad its bottom line — something Jeff Bezos hasn't traditionally been willing or able to do. Private-label brands typically carry higher profit margins, in part because the companies selling them don't put big marketing campaigns behind them.
Think of the damage Amazon already does its to competitors as a low-margin business. Now imagine what happens when if it starts generating real profits on stuff like cereal and soap.
The move is also a way to increase the power of Amazon Prime, the $99-a-year unlimited shipping program that fuels Amazon's retail growth.
Prime customers spend more on Amazon than non-members and are more loyal, too. By adding another perk, Amazon can make its best customers even even more loyal.
There's risk here, of course. Some Amazon-branded products have already flopped, including its Amazon Element diapers, which were pulled for design flaws shortly after launch.
Now Amazon is selling its own brand of products that people will eat and drink. So a bad experience with that stuff, let alone a safety issue, can do harm to Amazon's well-cultivated brand.
But Amazon sits on so much data that it has a good chance at getting at least some of these new bets right.
A case of insomnia led to the introduction of tape recording — and, by extension, the entire home media business.
It was 2 am on a spring night in 1944 — May 14, to be exact. And thanks to the good fortune of suffering from insomnia, a curious observation by John T. "Jack" Mullin led to the introduction of tape recording and, by extension, the entire home media business.
Mullin, a slight and surprisingly humble man, considering his future status in the recording business, graduated from the University of Santa Clara with a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1937, then worked for Pacific Telephone and Telegraph in San Francisco until the war started. By 1944, he had attained the rank of major in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and was attached to the RAF's radar research labs in Farnborough, England.
While working late that spring night, Mullin was happy to find something pleasing playing on the radio — the Berlin Philharmonic playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on Radio Berlin. But Mullin was mystified: The performance's fidelity was far too fine to be a 16-inch wax disc recording, the prevailing radio recording technology at the time. And since there were no breaks every 15 minutes to change discs, Mullin figured it had to be a live broadcast. But it couldn't be — if it was 2 am in London, it was 3 am in Berlin.
Mullin was right — the orchestra wasn’t up late, and it was a recording. Just not the usual kind, which is why Mullin was confused.
The unveiling of the Ampex video tape machine at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) confab in 1956.
Ampex
Up until the war, the west recorded using magnetic wire. Magnetic wire recording had been invented by the Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen in 1898, then perfected, patented and commercialized by Marvin Camras in the 1930s. It was used by the armed forces during World War II and considered secret.
As a result, magnetic tape recording had been discussed on and off in radio circles for years, but no one had managed the feat — at least as far as anyone west of the Rhine was concerned.
In 1934, Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG), the German division of General Electric, began manufacturing a tape recorder called the Magnetophon, which used plastic tape coated with magnetic particles and was manufactured by BASF. What individual German engineers managed this feat, we may never know. But over the next few years, AEG engineers expanded the Magnetophon's fidelity from low-fi using DC bias to hi-fi using AC bias. By 1941, several of these hi-fi Magnetophons were placed in radio stations all over Germany.
With the possible exception of GE, no one had any knowledge of the technology.
Magnetophon discovery
After the war, Mullin was assigned to the Technical Liaison Division of the Signal Corp in Paris. "Our task, amongst other things, was to discover what the Germans had been working on in communications stuff — radio, radar, wireless, telegraph, teletype," explained Mullin.
Mullin ended up in Frankfurt on one such expedition. There he encountered a British officer, who told him a rumor about a new type of recorder at a Radio Frankfurt station in Bad Nauheim. Mullin didn't exactly believe the report — he had encountered dozens of low-fi DC bias recorders all over Germany. He pondered his decision of pursuing the rumor, literally, at a fork in the road. To his right lay Paris, to the left, Radio Frankfurt.
Fortuitously for the future of the home media business, Mullin turned left.
He found four hi-fi Magnetophons and some 50 reels of red oxide BASF tape. He tinkered with them a bit back in Paris and made a report to the Army. "We now had a number of these lying around. I packed up two of them and sent them home (to San Francisco). Souvenirs of war. (You could take) almost anything you could find that was not of great value. (And) anything Germany had done was public domain — it was not patentable." He also sent himself the 50 reels of the red-oxide coated tape.
When Mullin returned home, he started tinkering to improve the Magnetophons. On May 16, 1946, exactly 70 years ago today, Mullin stunned attendees at the annual Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) conference in San Francisco by switching between a live jazz combo and a recording, literally asking the question "Is it live or...?" None of the golden ears in the audience could tell. It was the world's first public demonstration of audio tape recording.
Bing Crosby on the road to video
Bing Crosby hated doing live radio. And he hated recording his shows on wax records because the fidelity sounded terrible to the noted aural perfectionist performer. When Crosby's engineers heard about Mullin and his Magnetophons, they quickly hired him and his machine. In August 1947, Crosby became the first performer to record a radio program on tape; the show was broadcast on October 1.
The team at Bing Crosby Enterprises attempting to invent the first video tape recorder. Left to right: John T. "Jack" Mullin, who introduced audio tape recording to the U.S., BCE publicist Frank Healey, engineer Wayne Johnson and Bing Crosby. Mullin and BCE would lose the VTR race to Ampex.
Ampex
Crosby wasn't the only one interested in Mullin's Magnetophons. Up in Redwood City, Calif., a small company called Ampex was looking for something to replace the radar gear they'd been producing for the government. Ampex hooked up with Mullin and, in April 1948, perfected and started selling the first commercially available audio tape recorder, the Ampex Model 200.
Crosby, Mullin, Ampex and electronics titan RCA all sort of formulated the same follow-up thought at around the same time: If you could record audio on tape, why not video?
But Ampex had a leg up on its more well-heeled competition. It had a deal with a Chicago research consortium called Armour Research Institute, now the Illinois Institute of Technology. Working for Armour was none other than wire recording maven Marvin Camras, who solved the most vexing problem facing all the video tape inventor wannabees: Tape speed.
Audio recording is accomplished by pulling tape past a stationary recording head. Video, however, is a far fatter signal, which meant tape had to be pulled past the recording heads at ridiculous speeds. A two-foot wide reel of tape could hold, tops, 15 minutes of video — not exactly practical.
So instead of spinning the tape, Camras, who got the idea from watching vacuum cleaner brushes, figured he'd spin the recording heads instead. Once Ampex got ahold of this key, its engineers shot past Crosby/Mullin and RCA.
Even with the spinning head secret, it took five years for Ampex's sometimes part-time six-member team to get things right. On April 14, 1956 — 60 years ago last month — Ampex introduced the desk-sized Mark IV, the first commercial video tape recorder, to a stunned group of TV execs and engineers at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) confab in Chicago. To say that this machine changed the world is an obvious understatement.
The Ampex engineering team and the first commercial video tape recorder. Left to right: Fred Pfost, Shelby Henderson, Ray Dolby, Alex Maxey, Charlie Anderson and team leader Charlie Ginsburg.
Ampex
It would take almost another 10 years before Philips reduced audio tape to a cassette and ignited the home audio recording craze, and another nearly 10 years before Sony introduced the Betamax and won a Supreme Court case to allow us to legally record TV shows at home and create the home video business.
But it was the introduction of Jack Mullin's rebuilt Magnetophons that were the first shots fired in the home media revolution, 70 years ago today.
It doesn't take a lifetime to build a super-valuable company. As this list shows, it's possible to go from zero to $16 billion in valuation in under five years.
Business Insider analyzed Pitchbook data to find the startups based in the US who reached the $1 billion mark in that timeframe — in other words, the youngest crop of the "unicorn" companies.
Here are the 17 privately held startups that have created businesses worth more than a billion dollars in the past five years.
Founded in November 2011, Gusto is a cloud-based payroll system, formerly known as ZenPayroll.
Uptake Technologies: $1.10 billion
Former Groupon founder Brad Keywell started the secretive Chicago-based data-analytics startup in 2014.
Udacity: $1.10 billion
Udacity launched in February 2012 to provide free classes online. It has since teamed up with Georgia Tech to offer a master's program through the online education portal.
Most ideas and concepts have currency in a particular context and time. The use, or passing from use, of any such terms generally means that a specific big change has become routine, part of the background, and the new reality.
Convergence, for example, was a big idea in the 1990s. One almost never hears the term used, in the 2010s. Some 20 years ago, the big idea was that an era of application-specific networks was ending. All networks were “converging” on multi-purpose platforms that could deliver any media type.
The term also was used to describe the rise of multi-function devices able to display many media types, or to describe the the ability of applications to interact with each other.
At this point, we simply assume that is the case. On a more-granular level, it is hard to remember that “smartphone” and “Wi-Fi hotspots” once were “hyped” terms in the past.
At this point, all the “convergence” items are simply part of the existing fabric of networks, devices and apps. What was less well widely understood 20 years ago was the fundamental change in business models, however.
It now is clear that convergence was less important than another fundamental change, namely the separation of application creation, ownership and delivery from the actual “network” layer.
In the “non-converged” world, all networks were application specific, and that also meant that the network owner created, packaged and sold the apps the network supported.
That now is broken. While any network owner can create some managed apps and services (carrier voice, carrier messaging, linear TV and Internet access provide examples), most apps now are created and delivered independent of the access network.
In other words, no business relationship has to exist between any “Internet” app and any access network. That is why the term “over the top” has resonance with access provider executives, not “convergence.”
Customer support powerhouse Zendesk is broadening its ever-expanding number of support channels today, as the company announced a brand new native channel for customer service over the text messages. SMS may be 20-year-old technology, but there’s a lot to be said for short bursts of asynchronous exchange of information. Read More
The office collaboration startup joins a crowded field in identity management.
Slack, the fast-growing office productivity and communications app, today made a case to be the only thing you sign in to during your work day.
Hot on the heels of its latest fundraising and with its attention focused on selling to ever-larger companies, Slack today unveiled Sign in with Slack, a feature that will allow it to integrate easily with other apps in adjacent markets. By enabling a single sign-in for the customers it shares with upstart workplace apps like Quip, Figma, Kifi, OfficeVibe, Slackline and Smooz, Slack is making a play to control what's often referred to in enterprise-focused software as the identity layer.
It's a crowded area, as you can tell by the number of web services and workplace apps that allow you to sign in with a Google, Facebook or Twitter identity. In fact, there are numerous larger companies with names like Okta, Centrify and PingID that specifically focus on helping companies manage and secure the employee sign-in credentials for the hundreds or thousands of apps they're using.
The conceit of Slack's approach is that all companies need — or soon will — the sort of instant group-based and one-to-one chat and collaboration app it offers in order to cut back on email and conference calls. And Slack is the sort of sticky app that employees tend to sign into once and use throughout the day, making it a logical one-stop for signing in to the apps you use to get things done at work.
This will help set it apart from other messaging apps like Symphony, which tends to be focused on the financial industry, and Spark, a Slack-like product created by networking giant Cisco Systems, but which hasn't seen much traction. The more unique cross-application combinations Slack creates, the stronger the case it can make that it amounts to the most meaningful shift in how people communicate in the workplace since email itself. At the moment, Slack still has a long way to go.
Forget self-driving cars and drones. Five years later, where is Google's broadband business going?
It's a crisp spring Friday in Kansas City and Jim is upset with Google. He's not peeved about a search result or worried about the data Google collects on him. Jim, a slender music instructor in his early 40s, with salt-and-pepper hair and a polka-dot button-up, would like more attention from the company.
He gets internet from Google Fiber, the service that says it can deliver broadband at incredible speeds. But he has issues. It keeps going out.
So here he is at the "Fiber Space," a trendy-looking storefront on a street that straddles the states, splitting the city in two: Kansas on the west, Missouri to the east. The walls are papered with Google Maps printouts. One reads: "Super fast downloads. TV like no other. And endless possibilities."
Jim is calm but irked. He runs a business from home, he explains, and when the connection drops, he loses money.
"This is the same issue as with Time Warner [Cable]," he tells the young customer service rep. "I'm getting this mirror of interacting with this other huge company. And you've always said, 'Our stuff doesn't do that.'"
Google began digging up dirt and laying fiber optic pipes in Kansas City, Kan., five years ago in April. Its first customers were wired the following year.
For the years after, it was unclear — certainly outside of Google — just what Google wanted to accomplish with this first venture outside of its core business. Now it's evident: Google was using Kansas City as a testbed for an audacious project — one to take on broadband providers like Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon, which enjoy long-held duopolies and monopolies across the country, and build out a national service. To provide real competition.
Googlers won't say this out loud, but they despise the cable industry. They find it inert, predatory and, worst, anti-innovation. So Google wants to replace it.
Google has to figure out how to become a nationwide broadband company. Kansas City may offer a road map.
And unlike the other moonshots now housed under Google's umbrella company, Alphabet, Fiber is a project that could succeed in the near future. Google Fiber is now up and running in five markets (it added Nashville last month) and has plans under way for 17 more. Expect that pace to quicken.
Which means Google could end up hearing from many more Jims in the future. That's the downside of telling people you can do better than the monopoly provider they already hate — you have to deliver on your promise.
But Google can deal with that challenge down the road. First, it has to figure out how to become a nationwide broadband company. Kansas City may offer a road map.
I traveled to Kansas City last month and spoke to dozens of Fiber customers at their homes and offices. Nearly everyone I talked to is thrilled with their Fiber subscription — the cost and service are miles ahead, and, boy, is it fast.
In recent months, Google Fiber branched out from the central city to more outlying suburbs. City officials told me Fiber is available to 210,000 households in Kansas City, Mo. — or roughly 80 percent of its population. Former Fiber employees said its pipes easily cover one million households in the entire metro area.
"They pretty much built out an entire city," said Rick Usher, assistant city manager for small business and entrepreneurship in Kansas City, Mo.
Back when Fiber began, a high-ranking Google executive laid out the worst-case scenario for the search giant, former Fiber staffers recalled: Google pours billions into a few test markets, scares the incumbents into speeding up their service, but never gets traction. Worst case is still very good for Google, since the company relies on people going online and searching for things.
Google Fiber space in Nashville, Tenn.
Google Fiber
But the worst casenever happened. People familiar with Fiber say it has hit its initial customer targets in its first three markets — selling broadband to about 30 percent of the homes it has hooked up for service, the industry standard for feasibility. Fiber brought in roughly $100 million in revenue last year, according to sources.
Last month, the business embarked on the next wave of its strategy, starting in Kansas City again. It won approval to place special antennas on city light poles that could potentially beam broadband directly into homes, over the air. Fiber wants to start testing out the equipment in November and plans to have a network up and running by the end of 2017.
Wireless is a big deal for Alphabet. If it works, it means it can deliver broadband without having to build out or buy fiber networks. No dirt to dig up; no last mile to cross. That means its network can swell much more, much faster.
Pipes aren't cheap. It cost Google more than $1 billion to spread across the Kansas City region and will likely cost as much in each new Fiber city, according to sources.
But wireless could be far cheaper — a fifth of the cost of fiber, which is roughly $1,000 per home, according to industry insiders. Other executives, however, say the cost savings would be minimal. Since it's an unproven technology, costs are still being sorted out. Getting a wireless network to work and run cheaply is far from guaranteed.
Even if wireless works, its deployment is real money, even for Google, which made just north of $16 billion in profit last year.
One way to get that money is to tap the debt markets; Wall Street would be less likely to get spooked seeing money borrowed, since Fiber and the other moonshots are now isolated from Google's profitable core business.
In several of its newer markets, Fiber is also tweaking its approach, relying less on expensive digging. In San Francisco, it plans to use the city's dormant fiber pipes; in Huntsville, Ala., it is tapping the city's existing network as its own.
Mapping the Fiber cities
Google is building out its Fiber network city by city (green markers). But the biggest U.S. cable and phone companies are upgrading. Select a city to see its providers.
"We've learned a lot by building networks from scratch. We continue to invest in that model for expansion, but we're also finding new ways to bring our service to cities," said Chris Levendos, Fiber's head of network deployment.
And, maybe, with less cost. Kansas City was a good test of whether Google could set up a viable alternative to the cable giants, but now Fiber knows it has to find new models to really take them head-on.
How to boil a frog
Fiber was born at a nexus of tinkering and worry.
Go back a decade. Google had won search and was minting money. Its founders started tinkering with far-afield tech and began obsessing over wireless networks. Google was also deeply paranoid — it wanted the shortest distance between its services and users.
But Microsoft ran the operating system and the web browser while the big cable and telecom companies like Comcast and Verizon controlled the pipes.
Google was particularly worried about the pipes. Eric Schmidt, the CEO at the time, "pounded the table for many years" about the prospect of ISPs throttling Google's content, an early Googler recalled.
Google then formed Access, the business unit that now houses Fiber, in 2006, to tackle what they saw as a potentially serious threat. After a few half-baked possibilities (founder Sergey Brin once eyed blimps to deliver internet), by 2010 Google grew serious. It brought on Milo Medin, an internet and telecom expert, to run Fiber. Oversight went to then CFO Patrick Pichette, another telecom veteran.
Fiber was designed to operate as an autonomous business unit insulated from the remainder of Google. In theory. Some former employees described frustrations with debilitating ties to the mothership. They had trouble recruiting subscribers, for instance. Google required customers to sign up with Google email and payments accounts.
But Google kept giving Access and Fiber attention and money. It came from the top.
"As the ambition and scale of our projects accelerated, so did our budget and staffing," said Chris Sacca, a founding Access member at Google. "We were lucky because [Google co-founder] Larry Page has always been obsessed with access networks."
The team was motivated, in part, by the stasis of the broadband industry. The numbers back them up. Only a third of Americans have more than one choice for broadband providers, according to a January FCC report. A tenth have no choice.
For inspiration, the early Fiber team passed around a line from Time Warner Cable’s chief Glenn Britt: The CEO was bragging to analysts about the fat margins in his broadband business. To Fiber's team, Time Warner's broadband was a rip-off — slow and overpriced. They wanted to go after executives like Britt.
That may be one reason why Google chose Kansas City, Time Warner territory, from a field of 1,100 cities that applied. Britt was asked at an investor conference how his cable company viewed Google's Kansas City expansion. The late executive replied: "Even if Google builds, we’re not going to wake up and see Google instantly building out the whole country."
But that was always the plan, according to a former Fiber staffer — "to grow to be nationwide at some point."
If wireless works, Fiber can grow much faster and become a national threat.
Wireless was always part of the plan, too. "We talked about wireless deployment," said Joe Reardon, who served as mayor of Kansas City, Kan., when Fiber launched. "It was always a concept in conversations."
Craig Barratt, the CEO of Access, now a separate Alphabet company that runs Fiber, is enamored with wireless technology. Medin, who passed on Fiber's management to Dennis Kish, a Qualcomm veteran, last year, now serves as Google's envoy for wireless discussions in Washington, D.C.
The official line from Fiber is that its wireless tests are just "experiments" and may not necessarily become commercial products, and Barratt won't say that the company intends to compete nationally. Yet those two are very much linked: If wireless works, Fiber can grow much faster and become a national threat.
Why not say that out loud?
One former Fiber executive summed up the strategy, a longtime Google tactic to keep rivals unalert. "If you’re going to boil a frog," the exec said, "you don’t tell the frog."
The frog is finding out anyway.
Learning curves
A pattern has emerged whenever Fiber says it’s coming to town. Pretty soon thereafter, AT&T or Comcast — whichever the incumbent is — lowers prices or unfurls gigabit internet of its own. (Comcast, via its NBCUniversal unit, is a minority investor in Vox Media, which owns this site.)
In Kansas City, residents said Time Warner Cable initially met Fiber’s arrival with scorn. Who needs a gig? Eventually, Time Warner Cable reps started showing up to city meetings. Then the billboards arrived — 300 megabits per second, only $64.99! Followed by the mailers pleading with subscribers who left for Fiber to return.
Usher, the Kansas City, Mo., official, chuckled in recollection. "I call this the seven steps of acceptance of the gigabit revolution," he said.
We met for coffee at YJ’s Snack Bar, a tiny, three-tabled cafe in the city's arts district. Usher greeted the tattooed cashier and two men in flannel sitting at the tables. Then he shook the hand of everyone else who entered. He wore a suit, but wore his silver hair long. He seems to enjoy his job, and clearly likes that Fiber picked his city. Others credit him with carrying the municipal grunt work that made Fiber’s massive civic works project possible.
"He’s the quarterback," said Tim Cowden, president of the Kansas City Area Development Council.
Rick Usher, Assistant City Manager, Kansas City, Mo.
I asked Usher what Google had done well.
"Rather than building it over 30 years, like AT&T and Time Warner have done, they built it in three years," he said. To lay the network, Fiber went from dig to done in a neighborhood in three weeks. Usher compared it to the formation of the railroads. "It’s like hell on wheels. You had these little towns and construction activity that" — his hand shot up — "whoosh plowed across."
Speed has drawbacks.Fiber's quick deployment has sometimes rankled residents. Occasionally, the construction would plow across a sewer line. When residents figured it out — the sewage backed up into their houses — the Fiber crew had moved on.
A Fiber rep declined to comment.
When Google’s wireless plan reached the Missouri City Council, two members voted no. One was Dan Fowler, a lawyer. "From my own point of view, Google has done, in general, a very poor job of communication with people in Kansas City about what they’re doing," he told me on the phone. "And the prime example is me."
Fowler said he was promised a Fiber connection to his home a year and a half ago. It arrived last month. "They have also, through their contractors, a very bad history, from my perspective, of not cleaning up their messes," he added. He said his vote was primarily intended to send Fiber a message.
It was not the only message Kansas City sent.
When Fiber arrived, Google carved out the metro region into 202 "Fiberhoods." These areas could qualify for Fiber installation — but only if a certain percentage of residents agreed to sign up.
This was excellent marketing, guaranteeing demand and even prompting neighbors to go door-to-door on behalf of a then $250 billion company. Usher’s son, an avid gamer, campaigned with a pin reading "Do it for lower ping" — the latency for streaming. (Gaming teens are a frequent rationale cited for gigabit internet; when Reardon, the former mayor, told his family they were adding a Fiber connection, his son, also a gamer, leapt from the table to hug him.)
But the "Fiberhood" approach had a flaw.
Troost Avenue, on Kansas City's Missouri side, cuts the city along class and race. In 2012, Wired ran an article about Fiber's initial rollout that included a map of the neighborhoods registered for the service. It was sliced in half by Troost Avenue — on the west, the city's whiter and richer neighborhoods were registered; on the east, its poorer and black neighborhoods were not.
Kansas Congressman Emanuel Cleaver wrote that the service could be the start of "potential ‘digital redlining’."
Googlers argue they really care about closing the so-called "digital divide." But they were also not used to grappling with unplugged populations or wrestling with sensitivities of local civic life. When it started, for instance, Fiber was unable to sign up subscribers without bank accounts.
"Sometimes Silicon Valley can be a little bit tone deaf," said a former Fiber staffer.
After attention was drawn to Troost Avenue, the company dispatched several dozen Googlers from headquarters to blanket the street's east side for sign-ups. A Fiber rep wouldn't specify the neighborhood coverage breakdown, but said that "dozens" of the 181 Fiberhoods that qualified for the initial rollout came from that effort and that 94 percent of all central city neighborhoods qualified for Fiber.
Google was sensitive to the issue in other ways. Since arriving, Fiber has selected 100 nonprofits in the Kansas City area to wire free of charge. It recently added a $15-a-month broadband service. And the unit also unfurled a national program to service low-income housing for free.
Sly James, Mayor, Kansas City, Mo.; Julián Castro, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; Dennis Kish, VP, Google Fiber
Google Fiber
To Google’s newfound competitors, however, the internet giant was all too competent in its rollout. Comcast and AT&T were miffed at how Google was able to pick and choose its neighborhoods, avoiding "build out" regulations that had required cable companies to offer wider coverage. (The national rules were ditched in 2007 as a barrier to broadband competition.) AT&T has accused Fiber of buddying up to local officials to push ordinances favoring its expansion. In Louisville, AT&T is suing the city over this.
At Fiber's onset, Google saw a clear economic upside in smaller cities. Sources said Medin would demonstrate this with a simple chart: Population density on the X axis; cost on the Y. He then drew a smiley face. Fiber's sweet spot was the bottom of the lip, mid-sized cities where installation was not too expensive and national ISPs did not have major operational focuses.
At the onset, Fiber hoped it could sell TV "a la carte" — one channel here, another there — but quickly met resistance from programmers, who have long sold their channels in bundles. Securing pay TV rights was also pricier than Google expected. In its original deal in Kansas City, Google failed to score AMC in its video product. (I met one resident who passed on Fiber because he loved "Breaking Bad.")
The Time Warner Cable Sports Channel also has exclusive rights to several Kansas college basketball games, a big draw in the region.
Carlos Kirjner, managing director of Alliance Bernstein, has tracked Fiber more closely than anyone else on Wall Street. He’s a bull on the business and its plans for a broad, profitable national rollout, estimating that it could connect up to 25 million homes in the next five years. But it’s a bull case built around its internet service, not cable. "Their hope of creating value likely rests on the broadband offer," Kirjner wrote in an email.
That’s the direction consumers are heading. Broadband subscriptions are on the rise — the top cable and telecom providers added 3.1 million connections last year, according to the Leichtman Research Group. But video subscriptions are either flat or falling.
Meanwhile, the floodgates are cracking open on cord cutting or over-the-top cable services (see: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, YouTube), paired with broadband. This trend suits Fiber nicely.
Rick Usher has a favorite parlor trick. He recently showed it off over dinner with a friend’s family, who doesn’t have Google Fiber. Their teenage daughter was thumbing her iPhone, and Usher asked her to pull up her favorite YouTube clip. He told her to drag the cursor to the clip’s middle. "She literally jumped out of the chair, ‘Oh my God, it didn’t lag!’" he recalled.
Here was the reason for the gigabit revolution, he told me — your internet becomes as reliable as running water. "You’re not worrying about the technology functioning properly," he said.
This idea, that tech fades into the background, is a fixation of Larry Page. Whether his new tech conglomerate can replicate this magic in city after city is the big question for Fiber.
Usher and other Kansas City civic chiefs have another recent parlor trick: Fielding questions from around the country on what it’s like when Google comes through. They say it will probably change your city for the better, though they admit that much of the shine arrives from coming first.
"Charlotte is going to have really awesome internet and they’re going to have some of the same activity we do," Usher said. "But who remembers the twentieth guy who climbed Mount Everest?"
Messaging is the new battleground among powerful tech companies.
But Google is missing in action.
Facebook, Snapchat, and Microsoft are racing to build ever more powerful chat apps, based on artificial intelligence, virtual assistants, and bots.
Some industry insiders predict that messaging will become the next big computing platform, providing a new way for consumers to do everything from shopping online to reading the news.
As Google kicks off its annual developer conference near San Francisco next week, a growing number of users, software developers, and analysts think Google needs to get on the ball and make some messaging-based announcements.
The company's Hangouts chat app was an early success when it was introduced years ago, but it appears to have languished recently.
Huge tech companies like Facebook and Microsoft as well as startups like Slack and Viv believe we're hurtling toward a future where you will connect to a bunch of different services through a simple, conversational interface.
But it existentially threatens Google's search business. If you're getting your information and making your mobile purchases by chatting with artificial-intelligence-powered bots, you're not going to be seeing Google's search ads.
"Once this new world order is in place, you will quickly forget how Google worked — phrase-based search and 10 links will become the things of the past," entrepreneur Alex Iskold prophetically wrote early last year. "You will quickly get used to, and will love, the human way to search. Via a text message."
"If you wanted to build a bot, how could you do that with Google? I’m hoping to see that next week," analyst Patrick Moorehead of Moor Insights and Strategy says.
One natural way to integrate bots would be through a messaging app, such as Facebook Messenger or Kik. The Wall Street Journal reported last December that Google plans to release a smarter, bot-focused messenger app, but it's unclear whether it would build that functionality into Hangouts or a separate app.
"Google does have Hangouts, but the experience there is starting to feel a bit dated," Forrester analyst Michael Facemire tells Business Insider. "As messaging platforms (and the bots that run on them) become more and more important to the mobile experience, it would be strange for Google to continue to stay stagnant there."
It's not clear how big a role messaging will have at Google's IO conference, which takes place in California near the company's headquarters Wednesday through Friday. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has repeatedly hinted that Google is focused on moving to an "AI-first" world, which could potentially fit in well with a chat-based framework.
The annoyance was particularly tangible in a recent chat thread about a new, simplified desktop view for Hangouts.
"All other messaging apps (Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, even Telegram) have eaten Google's lunch, while Hangouts has lagged behind, both in terms of stability, as well as features," user Manish Sahai writes to a Googler — engineer Sage LaTorra — who's on the thread. "I remember every single time one of your team members comes back saying 'Just wait and see the features we are working on!' and nothing at all comes up."
While the change Sahai and other users are hoping could actually happen next week, LaTorra chimed in multiple times to hint that it's coming soon:
"I think we may yet be able to make Hangouts fit into your dreams a little more."
A Tesla Model S owner took to Reddit on Tuesday to share the story of how a giant moth knocked out Autopilot, the system that lets some Tesla's drive themselves, on his car.
The giant moth managed to fly right into the single forward-facing radar sensor on the Model S, which is located towards the bottom of the car's fake grille. (There are 12 other ultrasonic sensors around the car, but this was the only front-facing sensor.)
There I was, cruising along on [Autopilot] doing 85mph on a lonely stretch of 93 between Kingman and Las Vegas.
SUDDENLY, my driver console flashes red and commands me to take control of the vehicle. AP drops off. Cruise control drops off and I get the ominous warning, "Radar visibility has been reduced."
I see a lone gas station up the road and slow my roll into the fluorescent lighting of the canopy covering the gas pumps. I step out of the car while a car of German exchange students look quizzically at a [Model S] parked next to a pump. Fearing the worst, I peek around the front of the car and was confronted with this sight.
The Demon Spawn of Mothra had attacked me and rendered my autonomy useless. Never fear though, a quick scrape with the window squeegee over the radar opening and my technology was restored!
We reached out to Tesla about this story. The company tells Tech Insider that it's pretty uncommon for a bug of this size to fly into the radar sensor and cover a large majority of its area. Also, if this driver was driving the newly-redesigned Model S, this wouldn't have happened. The exposed sensor on the older model is now concealed behind the front bodywork of the car's new nose, which no longer has any kind of fake front grille.
And here's what the Model S owner's manual has to say about these kinds of obstructions affecting Autopilot:
Autosteer is unable to accurately determine lane markings due to poor visibility (heavy rain, snow, fog, etc.), or an obstructed, covered, or damaged camera or sensor. Many unforeseen circumstances can impair the operation of Autosteer. Always keep this in mind and remember that as a result, Autosteer may not steer Model S appropriately. Always drive attentively and be prepared to take immediate action.
A new report from PwC finds that drones could replace $127 billion worth of human labor and services across several industries.
Infrastructure and agriculture make up the largest chunks of the potential value — some $77.6 billion between them — including services like completing the last mile of delivery routes and spraying crops with laser-like precision.
Economists seem to agree that robot automation poses real threats to human labor within the next few decades. The best evidence suggests automated robots will replace 50% of all jobs by the 2030s. Some evidence even suggests that today's technology could feasibly replace 45% of jobs right now.
Drones are a cheap, versatile first step toward that future. According to the new PwC report, they're also a solid cost-cutting measure.
Along with infrastructure and agriculture, drones will help tech giants like Amazon deliver packages, allow security companies to better monitor their sites, help producers and advertisers to film projects, allow telecommunication firms to easily check on their towers, and give mining companies a new way to plan their digs.
And those are just the biggest effects.
People have already turned to drones as replacements for soldiers, pilots, and lifeguards. In fact, any job that relies on human vision and judgment, specifically from hard-to-reach vantage points, will likely have to confront the possibility of drones in the future.
Masergy Communications Inc. announced the addition of powerful service management capabilities to its UCaaS Analyst performance monitoring portal. UCaaS Analyst now includes a consolidated view of user profiles and service inventory reports. IT professionals have a detailed view of user types, the services and devices they are using and profile status.
Nectar Services Corp., a leader in the development and deployment of proactive network monitoring and management software for the Unified Communications (UC) industry, introduced a comprehensive solution that monitors the performance of Session Border Controllers (SBCs), while also providing signaling and media analysis for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) sessions.
Google just made its translation app a whole lot smarter.
Thanks to a new update, announced Wednesday, you can now use Google Translate within other apps on Android phones. When you copy text in a foreign language it will automatically bring a little pop-up that lets you translate it on the fly as well as translate responses, all without exiting the original app.
Previously, using translate on mobile was a bit of an arduous process. You would have to leave the app to translate each individual piece of text — which isn't particularly handy for real-time messaging.
The new feature is being called Tap to Translate. Here’s a GIF showing how it works — and scroll down for a longer video demonstration.
Alongside Tap to Translate, Google is also bringing its offline language packs to iOS — meaning if you download some files in advance, you can translate things on your iPhone even without an internet connection.
The search giant is also now supporting Chinese for Word Lens — a neat Google Translate feature that automatically translates real-world written text.
A study of satellite imagery confirms what Solomon Islanders have known all along: they are doomed.
Five Pacific islands have just disappeared, thanks to rising oceans. The islands are—or were—a part of the Solomon Islands, located around 1,000 miles off Australia, and were uninhabited by humans. However, the same rising sea levels have washed away huge chunks of other inhabited islands, forcing the residents to move and destroying an established village.
WHITEFIELD, Maine — Peter Froehlich lives at the end of a mile-long dirt road in a part of Maine where pickup trucks share the right of way with dairy cows.
"Any fool can make a point," says writer Jeff Goins. "The truly creative person makes a connection."
Most of us value creativity even if we do so for different reasons. Maybe you're an entrepreneur trying to hit on your next big idea. Or maybe you're somebody with a creative side hobby. So even while many of us are looking for our inner artist, only some think to ask themselves what's the actual value of creativity in the marketplace—a question that isn't always easy to answer.
Microsoft is hard at work on adding RTC to Edge – be it ORTC or WebRTC – or both.
The main UC and consumer messaging service of Microsoft are based on Skype, so it is only reasonable to assume that Skype would be utilizing Edge capabilities in this are AND that Edge would be accommodating for Skype’s needs.
This accommodation comes by way of the first video codec that Edge supports – H.264UC – Skype’s own proprietary video codec. Edge doesn’t interoperate with any other browser when it comes to video calling due to this decision. In a way, The Edge team sacrificed interoperability for Skype support.
Browser vendors tend to care for themselves first. And then for the rest of the industry:
Microsoft Edge does that by sacrificing video interoperability for Skype support
Apple Safari does that… by not doing WebRTC favoring its FaceTime?
Google Hangouts route to plugin-less world
Hangouts today is in the same predicament as Skype in a lot of ways.
Its support for the browser of the mothership is native (Chrome-Hangouts; Microsoft-Skype)
Both require plugins on browsers other than their own – and will stay that way for the forseable future
Both are no consumer/enterprise services, trying to cater both
Both aren’t as big or as active as their newer competitors (Facebook, WhatsApp and WeChat to be specific)
Where do they diverge?
No Plugin+SDK=Interesting
Skype has added the SDK bit before Hangouts.
Skype now offers its large user base and infrastructure to 3rd party developers to build their own services. The documentation is quite extensive (too much to go through to get things done if you ask me – especially compared to the WebRTC API platforms) and the intent is clear.
Skype doesn’t have a glorious record with developers. Maybe this time around it will be different.
Meanwhile, Hangouts is just the same as it were two or three years ago.
The backend probably changed. It now sometimes do P2P calling. And it has a new UI. And the old one. And you can never know which one will pop up for you. Or where to write (or read) that text message.
Something needs to change and improve with Hangouts.
Skype seems to be moving forward at a nice pace. Cisco Spark has its own forward motion.
But Hangouts has stalled – especially considering we’re talking about Google – a company that can move at breakneck speeds when needed.
I wonder what’s ahead of us from both these services.
Facebook has been pushing its video products hard over the last few months, and this chart has a good explanation of why.
In a note on Snapchat today, SunTrust analyst Robert Peck compared the two platforms' video ambitions.
Snapchat quadrupled its daily video views from 2 billion to 8 billion in just 9 months, from May 2015 to February 2016.
That means it's growing a lot faster than Facebook.
As seen below, in April 2015, Facebook reported 4 billion views per day. Snapchat at the time only had half of that.
Now, in less than a year, Snapchat has already caught up to Facebook.
This positions Facebook not in a fight for content, but for attention, argues Peck.
Many of the content creators, like brands or celebrities, will probably start producing content for both. After all, Facebook still has way more daily users than Snapchat — Facebook reported 1.04 billion daily average users (DAUs) in its Q1 2016 earnings report, and Peck estimates Snapchat is around 150 million, up from 100 million last May.
Instead, the fight will be to become the top destination for people to consume video, and Snapchat is clearly gaining ground quickly.
Tami Forman, the Executive Director of Path Forward (a new non-profit that I recently joined the board of) just did a powerful five minute presentation on making space for moms in the workforce. I knew that Tami was a great speaker because of my interactions with her at Return Path, but she just totally blew me away with this talk.
My favorite one liner in the talk is “In the S&P 1500, there are more CEO’s named John than women CEOs.” This is definitely worth five minutes of your life to watch right now.
In it, he's explained why the startup world is freaking out about a strange new idea they've never had to consider before: profits.
Gurley writes:
In Silicon Valley boardrooms, where "growth at all costs" had been the mantra for many years, people began to imagine a world where the cost of capital could rise dramatically, and profits could come back in vogue. Anxiety slowly crept into everyone’s world.
Gurley has been the rare VC who's been warning about the tech bubble for a couple of years.
No one was listening in 2015 when the money was flowing so freely that the number of startups valued at $1 billion or more mushroomed to over 160.
Other VCs publicly pooh-poohed his warnings.
VC Scott Nolan, a partner at Founders Fund — best known as Peter Thiel's venture firm — said a year ago that he wouldn't even invest in a company that wasn't burning through cash because it meant those companies "don’t have enough ideas about what valuable things to do with more money."
But the VC investing game goes something like this. Invest in a company. Tell the founder to grow to $100 million as fast as possible, operating at a loss to grab market share — $100 million in revenue used to be the magic number for an IPO or for a hefty acquisition by a bigger company, whereby the investor is profitably cashed out and able to invest again.
The sharks are here
But unicorns have a unique problem. They can't exit like that.
Often an IPO won't value them as highly as their last private round so investors risk losing money on an IPO.
In fact, there hasn't been a single tech startup that's gone public yet in 2016.
And, as Gurley points out, there's a limit to how much venture investors are willing (and able) to keep these cash-guzzling startups afloat.
The VCs, who can't cash out, are out there trying to raise more money for their funds, he says.
Unicorns risk running out of money with no place to turn.
And that's when "the sharks arrive with dirty term sheets," meaning investors with terms that range from dangerous to unscrupulous.
Once a CEO accepts a "shark's" term sheet, he's poisoned the company, Gurley warns. No other investors will want to invest in the company and get tangled up.
"Any investor asked to follow a dirty offering will look at the complexity of the previous offering and likely opt out," Gurley says.
The obvious solution terrifies startups
There's a solution, of course, Gurley points out: profits.
Gurley quotes Gavin Baker, a high-profile portfolio manager at Fidelity who tells startup CEOs: “Generate $1 of free cash flow, and then you can invest everything else in growth and stay at $1 in free cash flow for years.
Baker adds: "I get that you want to grow and I want you to grow, but let’s internally finance that growth."
Both Gurley and Baker say that profits are really the "only way to control your own destiny."
Still, startups are terrified of the thought. It takes very little management skill to hire like mad to flood the zone with sales and marketing efforts, losing money.
They've been taught to believe that this is the best way to run a young company, an "aggressive 'spend-to-win' mentality," as Gurley describes it.
Creating a desirable product that can be sold at a price that will sustain a company, that's something else.
In the meantime, there's a new term for what's happening: the unicorpse. Or as Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, a prolific angel investor who has also been warning about the dangers of unicorns, once put it: "there's going to be a lot of dead unicorns."
YouTube has introduced 360-degree live streaming and spatial audio. YouTube first introduced 360-degree video just over a year ago. Utilizing the technology in a live streaming environment elevates immersive video to a new level.
Although the basics of Hangouts and Allo are the same — they let people communicate, funny stickers and photos included — Google won't kill Hangouts because it thinks the two serve different purposes.
Customer support powerhouse Zendesk is broadening its ever-expanding number of support channels today, as the company announced a brand new native channel for customer service over the text messages. SMS may be 20-year-old technology, but there’s a lot to be said for short bursts of asynchronous exchange of information. 
Hangouts needs a revamp
Along with infrastructure and agriculture, drones will help tech giants like Amazon deliver packages, allow security companies to better monitor their sites, help producers and advertisers to film projects, allow telecommunication firms to easily check on their towers, and give mining companies a new way to plan their digs.
Often an IPO won't value them as highly as their last private round so investors risk losing money on an IPO. 
Gurley quotes Gavin Baker, a high-profile portfolio manager at Fidelity who tells startup CEOs: “Generate $1 of free cash flow, and then you can invest everything else in growth and stay at $1 in free cash flow for years.
