Davemichels

Probably not.

I wrote about Peer-to-Peer and WebRTC recently, and got this interesting question due to it from Fabian Bernhard on LinkedIn:

Without arguing about the quality of a specific Open Source media stack, would you say that WebRTC was as big a thing if it didn’t run in a web browser?

I guess the answer is no it wouldn’t be that big a thing.

Here’s where I am getting at it. There are two popular slides I usually use:

The one above explains that WebRTC sits at an intersection – it appeals both to VoIP people as well as to Web people.

The second slide above is about what makes WebRTC so transformative – it is about the fact that it is Free, but also because it is available for Web people.

Without the web browser part, we would have been left with only Free.

We’ve had open source media engines before. GStreamer is a popular one. Codecs were a bit harder to come by – especially those that don’t require patent payments (royalty free). It wasn’t the best thing out there, but it worked – people still use it today.

WebRTC made the open source version of a media engine as good as a commercial one – it came out of an acquisition of a commercial media engine vendor after all.

But that’s where it stops – it wouldn’t have made such a transformation in the market – it would be more of the same with a small evolutionary step. Nothing to write home about.

The browser bit, though… that made VoIP available and open to everyone with some HTML and JS experience – a lot larger pool of talent – and one dabbling a lot in experimentation. This is what got us so many use cases.

Mobile might be different

For mobile only use cases, WebRTC would have made all the difference – same as it does today. The idea behind it in mobile isn’t that it offers a browser experience or that it is available in the browser (it isn’t on iOS). The idea is that it would have been the cheapest route to a product than anything else out there. And with the trend of communications moving in-app, that would still make the impact it does there relevant.

Which brings us full circle.

Let’s assume mobile is eating up the world. Let’s assume it is only a matter of time until content creation and not only content consumption moves from the PC to mobile. Once that happens – who cares about what happens in the browser?

It will all be in-app anyway.

And there – WebRTC is making a difference.

Kranky Geek India takes place in Bangalore on 19 March 2016. Register to join us!

The post Would WebRTC be as Big a Thing if it Didn’t Run in a Web Browser? appeared first on BlogGeek.me.

During Amazon's most recent earnings call, Baird Equity Research analyst Colin Sebastian asked two questions to Amazon CFO Brian Olsavky: one about Amazon Web Services' margins, and another about the chances of Amazon expanding its own shipping logistics services to other companies.

The first one got answered promptly, though Olsavsky had to stop mid-sentence because the operator accidentally jumped in early. Still, Olsavsky made it a point to get back and finish his answer.

The second question never got answered.

"If he wanted to talk about it, he would have remembered to answer," Sebastian told Business Insider. "Either way, I think the answer is that Amazon doesn't talk about potential or future services."

Amazon's notoriously secretive about its future plans, so it's not too surprising that Olsavsky skipped Sebastian's question.

But when you're going after something as big as the logistics and shipping market, it's hard to keep your plans under wraps — and a growing amount of evidence suggests Amazon may indeed be going after the delivery and logistics market, which Sebastian pegs as a $400 billion market opportunity.

Next $400 billion opportunity

Over the past few months, we've seen a series of reports speculating Amazon's plan to establish a bigger in-house logistics service that will allow it to potentially bypass its current delivery partners, like UPS and FedEx.

That includes:

• Calling itself a "transportation service provider" for the first time in its annual report.
• Leasing at least 20 cargo planes.
• Registering Amazon China as an ocean freight forwarder, allowing it to potentially ship products from China to the US.
• Buying thousands of its own, Amazon-branded trailer trucks.
• Increasing the number of Amazon fulfillment center warehouses.
• Hiring "one of the world's leading recruiting firms" to find management-level executives with chops in the small-package industry.
• Secretly operating its own air freight service in Europe ahead of Christmas.
• Becoming increasingly unhappy with the rising shipment costs, and its relationship with UPS, its biggest delivery partner, is fraying.
• Buying the remaining 75% of French delivery company Colis Privé it already partially owned.

Serbastian believes this all points to Amazon building up its in-house logistics delivery network. He envisions Amazon first starting out with its own deliveries, but eventually opening up the service to other companies, putting it in direct competition with the likes of UPS and FedEx.

"Among other opportunities, Amazon has 'powerhouse potential' in the large transportation and logistics market, dominated by global enterprises such as DHL and UPS," Sebastian wrote in a recent note. 

"Amazon’s cloud technology expertise and increasingly complex fulfillment, logistics and delivery network seem to be obvious foundation to offer third-party services, with an incremental $400-450 billion market opportunity."

Project Dragon Boat

Perhaps the strongest indication of a bigger Amazon logistics ambition was disclosed last week in a report by Bloomberg's Spencer Soper.

The report, citing a 2013 Amazon document, revealed an internal project called Dragon Boat, which is intended to become a service that controls everything from picking up the product at the factory in China to delivering it to the end customer in the US.

It said the document described Project Dragon Boat as a "revolutionary system that will automate the entire international supply chain and eliminate much of the legacy waste associated with document handling and freight booking."

"Sellers will no longer book with DHL, UPS, or FedEx but will book directly with Amazon," the report said.

When Amazon's Olsavsky was asked about its logistics plan again by another analyst during earnings call, he simply shrugged it off as a complementary service, saying it's intended to supplement, not replace, existing delivery companies.

"What we found in order to properly serve our customers at peak, we’ve needed to add more of our own logistics to supplement our existing partners. That’s not meant to replace them," Olsavsky said.

Next AWS

But don't expect Amazon's logistics business to expand overnight.

If anything, it's going to take a few years to fully ramp up and establish itself to become a viable delivery option for other companies, according to Sebastian.

"They will start small, mostly to add capacity for their own business, but then, over time, as they gain more expertise, they will offer extra capacity to other companies," Sebastian told us.

In that sense, it could follow the path of Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing service that's now generating almost $8 billion in annual revenue.

Amazon built AWS out of the infrastructure it had created to support its own operations, but it's now become one of the most widely used cloud computing platforms, used by everything from small startups to big companies like Netflix and GE.

"I think it's like AWS," Sebastian said. "But it took 10 years for AWS to get as large as it is."

SEE ALSO: The life and awesomeness of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos

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A Hollywood hospital's computer systems has been crippled by hackers, who are demanding a $3.6 million (£2.4 million) ransom.

The Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Centre has been hit by "ransomware" — a kind of malware that encrypts the victims' data, making it useless unless they pay a fine.

Its computer systems have been useless for more than a week, NBC Los Angeles reports. Documents and medical records have to be written on paper, tests results have to be picked up in person, and some patients are being sent to other hospitals due to the hack.

It was reportedly a "random" — rather than targeted attack. According to CSO Online, the ransom is $3.6 million in bitcoin, a digital currency often favoured by criminals and hackers due to its anonymity.

The hospital's CEO, Allen Stefanek, told NBC Los Angeles that on February 5, staff noticed "significant IT issues and declared an internal emergency."

With ransomware, the victims' data is sometimes rendered permanently inaccessible if the ransom isn't paid before a certain deadline — though it's not clear if this is the case here.

The FBI is currently investigating.

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AT&T has announced its plans to begin field testing a new 5G network, which has the capability of being up to 100 times faster than our current 4G networks, according to Re/code's Ina Fried.

The news comes shortly after Verizon's announcement in December that it was field testing its own 5G network and was aiming to roll out 5G coverage as early as next year.

Unlike 4G, which launched and is primarily used on smartphones, 5G-enabled smartphones are still probably 3 or 4 years out, and it's more likely to be used for home broadband. Getting high-speed wireless internet has become a hot topic recently, but even so, 5G-enabled broadband devices won't roll out for another year or two; so why announce it now?

In this pre-rollout stage, the primary focus for Verizon, AT&T, and any other adopters of this upcoming standard is to build out their networks as quickly as possible. That way, when 5G-enabled products do start rolling out a few years from now, the mobile providers' 5G coverage won't be poor to non-existent. None of the big wireless carriers want to be left behind.

The next hurdle is standardization. Verizon had already announced it's working with Ericsson, Qualcomm, Cisco Systems, and others on 5G technology, which is an indicator that it could already focused on tackling the issue.

But while we wait for true 5G connectivity, LTE is set to get even faster through "LTE-Advanced-Plus," which will push our current networks to their maximum potential.

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Since Chuck Robbins took over as CEO of Cisco a mere six months ago, Cisco has bought eight companies, more than one a month.

That includes a big $1.4 billion purchase of internet-of-things company Jasper Technologies earlier this month.

Plus Cisco bought three more companies since May when Robbins' promotion to CEO was announced, making that a grand total of 11 companies in eight months under his watch.

And he has no plans to slow down his pace of buying  anytime soon, he told analysts on the quarterly conference call. Robbins is on a mission to move Cisco into its future as fast as he can.

"You should expect us to continue the pace," he told an analyst who asked about his acquisitions plans.

And there's one good reason. There's an upside to everyone's fears that the economy is heading for trouble. Companies are cheaper to buy than they were a few months ago, when VC money was flowing heavy and the Valley was gripped in billion-dollar-valuation mania.

"Valuations in today’s markets, that's one piece of good news [about the economy], they’re attractive," Robbins said.

Robbins is on a mission to move Cisco as quickly as he can into what he sees as the next generation markets for the world's largest maker of computer network equipment. He's adding more software and software-as-a-service offerings, moving into the Internet of Things (where everyday objects get sensors and join the internet) and doubling down in hot areas where Cisco already rules, like security.

And he's willing to buy his way there.

SEE ALSO: Everyone is talking about Cisco buying NetApp, but we hear Cisco has other plans up its sleeve

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Cisco just released its second quarter earnings and it's a good one. The stock is climbing in after-hours trading.

It reported:

• Revenue of $11.8 billion. Analysts were expecting a modest $11.7 billion. That's a beat.
• EPS of 57 cents. Analysts were expecting expecting 54 cents. That's a beat, too.

The stock leaped as much as 9% in the first few minutes after Cisco reported earnings. It's now up about 6%.

Here's the press release.

For Q3 guidance, Cisco says it expects revenue growth of 1% - 4% year over year (but it has normalized that to exclude the service provider video business that it sold.)

It expects non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.54 - $0.56, which is in-line with what analysts were expecting.

Cisco has also declared a quarterly dividend of $0.26 per common share, that's a five cent raise, or 24%, over the previous quarter's dividend, to be paid on April 27, 2016.

And it also approved a $15 billion increase to its stock buy-back program. Cisco's board had previously authorized up to $97 billion in stock repurchases and it has about $16.9 billion left to buy its own stock, including this increase.

Here's a breakdown of how each product segment did, again, noting that Service Provider Video only grew wildly because Cisco has removed the impact of its set-top business, which was previously dragging that division down.

One of the first things that new CEO Chuck Robbins did when he took office last summer was sell the Scientific-Atlanta business.

January 23, 2016
                               -------------------------------------------
                                Three Months Ended      Six Months Ended
                               --------------------   --------------------
                                 Amount     Y/Y %       Amount     Y/Y %
                               ---------- ---------   ---------- ---------
Revenue:
  Switching                    $    3,483        (4)% $    7,505         1%
  NGN Routing                       1,845         5%       3,638        (2)%
  Collaboration                     1,019         3%       2,134        10%
  Data Center                         822        (3)%      1,681         9%
  Wireless                            613        --%       1,258         3%
  Service Provider Video*             569        37%       1,008        25%
  Security                            462        11%         947         9%
  Other                                77        31%         152        21%
                               ----------             ----------
    Product -- excluding SP
     Video CPE Business             8,890         2%      18,323         4%
    Service                         2,944         3%       5,782         2%
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Total -- excluding SP
       Video CPE Business          11,834         2%      24,105         3%
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  SP Video CPE Business (1)            93                    504
                               ----------             ----------
      Total                    $   11,927        --%  $   24,609         2%
                               ==========             ==========

SEE ALSO: Everyone is talking about Cisco buying NetApp, but we hear Cisco has other plans up its sleeve

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Here's a new service from Amazon you probably didn't predict: The online retail giant has launched a free sommelier service to help customers buy the best wines for their meal.

As The Wall Street Journal reports, the service is — for now at least — only available in Japan. You can call up between midday and 5PM and get free recommendations on the various wines that Amazon offers.

Amazon's Japanese arm sells 9,000 different wines.

The Verge's Sam Byford got to try it himself, and is positive about the experience. "I found her advice to be helpful and easy to understand. She explained the process by which Japanese wine is made, and the palate that makers tend to go for, and that the results tend to be quite light by Western standards," he writes. "It was interesting to hear all of this, particularly as the information was framed by my specific question."

Business Insider has reached out to Amazon to see if and when it will launch out the sommelier service in other countries. It's likely testing it in Japan to see how it performs before investing in rolling it out more widely.

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Texas senator John McCain is again calling for the US to legislate against encryption technology, calling its use by terrorists "unacceptable."

Writing in Bloomberg View, the former Republican Presidential Candidate says that "the threat posed by the status quo is unacceptable ... But, just as Islamic State’s growth through the establishment of safe havens in Iraq and Syria was not inevitable, the group's ability to use technology to the same end does not need to be either."

Encryption is a hot button topic right now. The technology allows users to protect their messages in such a way the cannot be deciphered without the correct password or key — even by law enforcement, or the company that built the tech.

It has been around for decades — but has been increasingly incorporated into mainstream tech products (like the iPhone) after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations of government surveillance. This has made a lot of people very angry — principally law enforcement, who worry that vital evidence is "going dark."

McCain is calling for a legislative solution — but one that just won't work.

John McCain says that Congress "should consider legislation that would require U.S. telecommunications companies to adopt technological alternatives that allow them to comply with lawful requests for access to content, but that would not prescribe what those systems should look like."

Software backdoors that will give law enforcement access to data, in short.

There are two key problems with this: Security, and efficacy.

First, let's deal with security (and privacy). McCain writes that "our security is threatened, not encouraged, by technologies that place vital information outside the reach of law enforcement. Developing technologies that aid terrorists like Islamic State is not only harmful to our security, but it is ultimately an unwise business model."

There's a famous saying among cryptographers and privacy activists: "You can't have a backdoor that's only for the good guys."

If you introduce a backdoor, there's the risk of it being exploited by anyone. If US companies are being forced to weaken their encryption — encryption that stores often highly sensitive and valuable data — you can be sure that hackers, some state-sponsored, will do their utmost to find these backdoors and use them. We've seen something similar happen recently, with an apparent backdoor in Juniper firewall software exploited by an unknown third-party.

But even ignoring privacy/security, there's still the issue of efficacy. Legislative attempts to crack down on encryption just won't work.

McCain acknowledges that "encryption technology is easy to get hold of and doesn't require much sophistication to use." Even if Congress did manage to force American companies to weaken encryption (crippling them commercially abroad in the process), any would-be terrorist/paedophile/criminal will simply switch to an encryption product not made in America.

Stop freaking out guys: This is the new normal.

The use of encryption products by bad actors is well-documented. But this is inescapable. Because it's not just used by criminals: Strong encryption underpins modern finance, secures our data, supports government communications. We couldn't function without it. And it's impossible to tell which uses are "legitimate" and which uses facilitate illegal activity because it's all, well, encrypted.

Yes, this will be immensely frustrating to law enforcement unable to access certain communications. But there are still workarounds when investigators bump up against encryption.

Michael Hayden, the former director of the NSA, disagrees with the FBI's current push to undermine encryption. After early efforts in the 1990s to regulate encryption failed, "we were still able to do a whole bunch of other things [to get the info needed]," Hayden said at a panel in October 2015 attended by Motherboard. "Some of the other things were metadata, and bulk collection and so on."

It's an alluring idea that we should require government access to encrypted data. But it would be impossible to enforce, software developers outside of Western jurisdictions would totally disregard it, and it would put ordinary people's data at risk.

So yes, terrorists use encryption, and will continue to do so. But this is our new reality. As security researcher The Grugq puts it: "If your secure communications platform isn't being used by terrorists and pedophiles, you're probably doing it wrong."

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NOW WATCH: This math-based sculpture is hypnotizing when it spins

Every time you visit a web page or send an email, data is being sent and received through an intricate cable system that stretches around the globe. Since the 1850s, we've been laying cables across oceans to become better connected. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber optic cables constantly transmitting data between nations.

Produced by Alex Kuzoian

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Only the fall of civilization from a widespread zombie attack will release you from Amazon’s terms of service for one of its new products. 

The company just released a game engine called Lumberyard that gives developers a bunch of free tools, but one of the best parts of the announcement was hidden in the Amazon Web Services Service Terms.

In one of the new clauses related to Lumberyard, Amazon says that developers can't use its materials for "life-critical or safety-critical systems."

However, that rule will be voided if there is a "a widespread viral infection transmitted via bites or contact with bodily fluids that causes human corpses to reanimate and seek to consume living human flesh, blood, brain or nerve tissue and is likely to result in the fall of organized civilization."

So, if the zombies attack, feel free to use Lumberyard in any way you please.

Here's the full screenshot (first spotted thanks to Twitter user Diane Patterson):

SEE ALSO: How this Uber driver made $90,000 in six months while barely driving at all

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Amazon's ambition to build a global shipping and logistics business seems to be much bigger than what most people thought, according to leaked documents discovered by Bloomberg's Spencer Soper.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg unearthed internal documents from 2013 that laid out Amazon's plan to build up a global delivery network that would compete directly with companies like FedEx and UPS.

The project, internally called Dragon Boat, is intended to launch a new business called "Global Supply Chain by Amazon," as soon as this year, the report said. 

The document describes Dragon Boat as a “revolutionary system that will automate the entire international supply chain and eliminate much of the legacy waste associated with document handling and freight booking.”

“Sellers will no longer book with DHL, UPS or Fedex but will book directly with Amazon,” the report writes, according to Bloomberg.

There has been a series of reports recently that showed Amazon's ambition to expand its logistics business. It was reported to have bought a bunch of truck trailers, freight ships, and delivery flights, while in its latest 10-K, it described itself as a "transportation service provider" for the first time.

During its most recent earnings, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky seemed to play down rumors of a full fledged logistics business, saying the initiatives were intended to"supplement" its existing partners, not to "replace" them.

But some analysts didn't seem to buy into Olsavsky's comment. Colin Sebastian of Baird Capital believes Amazon is gearing up to create an in-house logistics department that would allow it to take full control of its fulfillment process, and bypass current shipping partners like UPS and FedEx.

"Amazon may be the only company with the fulfillment/distribution sophistication and scale to compete effectively with incumbent service providers (UPS, FedEx)," Sebastian wrote in a recent note.

Read the full Bloomberg report here>>

SEE ALSO: Amazon to delivery companies: Yes, we're building our own service but don't worry

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NOW WATCH: Hidden Facebook tricks you need to know

Telemarketers are a menace to society, but one man has found a genius way to fight back against them.

Roger Anderson was tired of dealing with telemarketers, especially after one of them swore at his son, he writes in a blog post. Since he works on telephone systems for a living, Anderson decided to see if he could beat robocallers at their own game.

First, he set up a system that sent humans through to his phone, while sending robots straight to the answering machine. He did so doing a system that asked if you were human and then made you click a button to get through. Human numbers would then be whitelisted so he didn’t continually annoy his friends and family.

This dealt with robocalls, but human telemarketers could still get through, so he also set up a system where he could manually blacklist them.

This two-part system worked like a charm, and he was able to cut telemarketers out of his life altogether.

The breakthrough

But, though he had blocked them, something didn’t sit right with Anderson. “I had successfully blocked them, but I wasn’t causing them any pain or discomfort,” he writes. And he had to strike back for all the unfortunate souls still getting harassment by telemarketers.

This is when Anderson had his stroke of genius. He created an algorithm that performed a “handshake” (saying "Hello?"), then “engaged” ("yes," "uh huh," "right"), then once it felt like the telemarketer was catching on, would launch into an inane mini-story. If there was ever a long silence, it went back to the handshake ("hello?"), and so on.

Here is perhaps the best line we heard from Anderson’s robot, giving an excuse as to why he wasn't fully paying attention to the telemarketer: “Oh, hang on, there’s a bee on me, there’s a bee on my arm, keep talking but I’m going to stay quiet cause this bee is freaking me out.” The telemarketer totally bought it.

You can hear that exchange in the sample call below, or check out Anderson’s website for more.

SEE ALSO: T-Mobile was crowned best in customer satisfaction — see where your carrier ranked

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The "no-drone-zone" extends for 32 miles, warns the agency in this amazing new video.

The Federal Aviation Administration isn't messing around when it comes to drones and the Super Bowl. The agency has put out a slick PSA declaring that Levi's Stadium is a "no-drone-zone" during Super Bowl 50.

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Cyberattacks on American targets are an emerging national-security threat and an issue for US foreign policy.

But for all the dangers of state-backed, politically motivated hacking, profit-motivated cybercriminals are a more frequent and perhaps much greater hazard for the majority of people.

North Korea may be able to hobble a major movie studio, and the Chinese government has frequently stolen information on US defense hardware.

But individuals are much softer targets than governments or major corporations. And every individual has access to information — ranging from medical data to bank-account numbers to online passwords to basic biographical information — off which enterprising hackers can profit.

Flashpoint, a private intelligence firm that researches online criminal networks, released Thursday its annual report on "highlights and trends in the deep and dark web." The report, which was provided to Business Insider, gives a sense of how online criminality evolved in 2015.

The firm, which provides proprietary intelligence on dark-web activity, gathered some jarring data about the ease and apparent banality of contemporary online criminal enterprises. For example, Flashpoint found one online marketplace on which cybercriminals were selling hacking victims' birth dates for as little as $3, for use in verifying fraudulent Google Wallet accounts.

The Flashpoint report portrays an online criminal community that's becoming increasingly transnational. And with the help of growing foreign connections, dark web users in a country that's been at the forefront of politically motivated hacking are starting to make a splash on the criminal scene as well.

Flashpoint's experts have "observed increasing signs indicating the maturing and internationalization of the Chinese cybercrime underground," the report said.

As the report explained, Chinese cyber criminals have typically transacted through on "one-on-one engagements negotiated via private messages or instant messenger applications." 

But over the past year, they've shown signs of moving on to web forums and established networks that don't depend on this degree of personal contact. And, according to Flashpoint, these forums are usually "within the Russian underground."

Russia is considered to be the global leader in for-profit hacking, with Russian cyber crime representing an estimated $2 billion industry in 2014, according to 

"Flashpoint has noted an uptick in Chinese-speaking actors operating on international, yet Russian-run, cybercrime forums such as Lampeduza, Crdclub, and Infraud," the report said. 

Chinese cybercriminals also appear to be learning from the example of Russian-based networks and establishing web forums within China, for specific use by Chinese cybercriminals.

"Taking a page from the Russian model, some Chinese cybercriminals have established native Chinese communities or shops of their own," the report noted. 

Though these networks' users are typically limited to China, they include two sizable online shops dedicated to trading in stolen personal information and facilitating illicit purchases.

The fact that Chinese for-profit hackers are becoming more like Russia's in their behavior and practices has some alarming implications. China has a population of over 1.3 billion, some 649 million of whom are web users — making for a sizable pool of current and future cybercriminals. As it is, China is already one of the world's most prolific and dangerous hacking nations. 

At the same time, Russian dark web networks are a partial reflection of the country's existing criminal culture, which exists in a context of widespread official corruption and close ties between organized crime and the state. The environment for enterprising cyber criminals isn't quite as friendly in China, a more thoroughly oppressive state with strict web controls and a leader in President Xi Jinping, who's made a far-reaching anti-corruption push one of his top priorities.

Xi also made a point of meeting with Silicon Valley tech-industry leaders during a September 2015 trip to the US, a sign of how highly Beijing values some of its business relationships in the US. Giving a free reign to cybercriminals — as Russia arguably has — would go against a number of Xi's apparent priorities.

As the Flashpoint report said: "So-called 'internet purification operations' conducted by the Chinese authorities ... will limit the growth of native sites."

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Microsoft has made Windows 10, the newest version of the operating system, a "recommended update," meaning that it will automatically download onto PCs, according to The Verge. 

PCs that are are running Windows 7 or 8.1, the two versions that preceded 10, will download the newest version of the operating system automatically, unless the user opts out of the update. 

Microsoft announced in October last year that Windows 10 would download automatically onto PCs, and has now started the process. 

Anyone who has a metered internet connection, with a data limit, will have to switch off the automatic update manually, as it will use up around six gigabytes of storage. 

A Microsoft spokesperson told The Verge that the company is "committed to making it easy for our Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 customers to upgrade to Windows 10." As of today, the company is "help[ing] our customers who previously reserved their upgrade [or] scheduled a time for their upgrade to take place." 

Microsoft has been pushing Windows 10 heavily, with multiple pop-ups per week for some users. The decision to push the new operating system so heavily could be because the company wants one billion Windows 10 users in the next few years.

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NOW WATCH: How to find Netflix’s secret categories

IBM researchers warn building automation networks could give hackers a way in to corporate networks or an opportunity for physical sabotage.

Increasingly Internet-connected office heating and lighting systems could be a target for hackers seeking a backdoor into corporate networks, warns IBM's X-Force security research group.

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Gmail now has more than 1 billion monthly active users, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on Alphabet's earnings call Monday afternoon. That's up from 900 million in May 2015.

Pichai noted that the milestone was crossed last quarter and that six other Google consumer products also have more than 1 billion monthly active users: Search, Android, Maps, Chrome, Youtube, and Google Play.

He hinted that "rapid" mobile growth contributed to the new Gmail figure.

A lot of tech companies have begun to break out active users among their various products. Facebook is famous for this and earlier today boasted that Whatsapp crossed the 1 billion monthly active user mark and that a number of its other products, including video, search, Instagram and Messenger, were on the same trajectory. Facebook's platform has 1.59 billion monthly active users as well.

Here are Google's full earnings results.

SEE ALSO: Google crushes Q4 earnings

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Microsoft's war with Google in the workplace escalates today with a new program designed to lure Google Apps users over to Office 365. 

The basic idea here, says Microsoft Senior Director Bryan Goode, is that Google Apps may be great for small companies — but at around 50 users, customers reach a "breaking point" and start wanting more security and management features. 

That's why Microsoft is lowering the requirement to get into Microsoft FastTrack, its program to help customers get started on Office 365, from 150 users down to 50 users, in an attempt to lure more Google-switchers.

Microsoft FastTrack is a bunch of tools that companies can use to get themselves started on Office 365, no matter what kind of service they're moving from, but especially if they're switching from Google for Work, the enterprise edition of Google Apps.

"We think we're making a very strong case for customers to switch over from Google Apps," Goode says. 

It helps with relatively easy stuff, like migrating over e-mail archives and settings. And a team of dedicated FastTrack engineers stands by to help with more complex stuff, like setting corporate data retention policies, Goode says.

Previously, it had been aimed at Microsoft's largest customers. Now, it's going to help smaller Office 365 customers have a smooth start, too.

This move isn't nearly as aggressive as those made by Google last year, where the search giant promised to give Google for Work for free to Microsoft customers, for the entire length of their contract.

But that's because Office 365 is good enough, and so much better suited to customer needs, that it doesn't need to resort to that kind of aggressive maneuvering, Goode says. Given that Microsoft has posted strong Office 365 growth, with 20.2 million subscribers as of the end of 2015, the company is definitely negotiating from a position of strength.

"This isn't about finding artificial ways to increase demand," Goode says. "That demand exists."

SEE ALSO: Satya Nadella's master plan for Microsoft is starting to work

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It is with great pride that I can announce NEC was chosen as one of the 50 Most Innovative Companies, according to a recent Boston Consulting Group innovation survey. With thousands of senior level executives participating in this study, our commitment to improving the way people live, work, and communicate is gaining recognition from accolades such as this, which is a testament to the dedication of our organization.

A key component of this award was tied to research and development, an area NEC has always prioritized, leading to technology and solutions that have a positive impact on both business and society. With more than 65,000+ patents, pioneering IT, communications and biometrics technologies, NEC technology innovation has provided a solid foundation for this prestigious recognition.

Some of NEC’s more recent innovations:

• NEC Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Smart City platforms
• Video analytics that can analyze millions of images in seconds
• Predictive analytics that calculates the landslide risk of hillsides
• Automated Urban Surveillance and Smart Transportation solutions
• Smart City disaster response solutions
• Biometric health screening technology
• Behavior analytics for crowd and event management

These important innovations improve the safety, security and operational efficiency required of today’s society, and when I look at our recent achievements, I know that we are making a difference.

Watch our 50th anniversary in North America video to learn more about our long history of innovation .

In some cities, at least.

Apple is fixing a flaw in its algorithm that had been directing people seeking information about abortions to fertility centers and adoption clinics.

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