Day: 5 April 2021

Yahoo Answers Is Going Away on May 4 ⇥ theregister.com

One of my college instructors pointed out that few products have been so aptly named by accident as Yahoo Answers. Now where will I go to find out if I am prengnan?

It is unclear how unceremoniously wiping history from the internet service-by-service plays into Verizon’s long-term goal of transforming Yahoo into a premium subscription brand. I guess if you are going to copy something from Google, might as well be how often products simply disappear with a few weeks’ notice. Makes people think you’re innovating.

Uber May Stop Letting Drivers See Destinations and Name Prices in California ⇥ sfchronicle.com

Carolyn Said, San Francisco Chronicle:

Too many drivers cherry-pick lucrative rides and decline other requests, making the service unreliable, the San Francisco company said on Monday. Uber no longer has to worry about proving that drivers are independent contractors, because Prop 22 — the November ballot measure that Uber and fellow gig companies spent $220 million to pass — enshrines their non-employee status.

[…]

Uber argued in court last summer that drivers’ ability to see destinations and set prices meant they were truly independent. California and three city attorneys are suing Uber and rival Lyft over driver classification under AB5, in a case that continues, but now will only look at conduct before Prop 22 took effect.

But on the streets, the move backfired. A third of California drivers declined more than 80% of their ride requests, making the service unreliable, Uber said this week. About a fifth of potential passengers in California now end up not finding a ride, a sevenfold increase from previously. The pandemic further constrained the number of drivers, who must now grapple with the risk of the virus.

In order to maintain the façade that Uber has always been a disruptive tech company where people could take “gigs” as drivers, instead of an illegal taxi operation that exploits contractor classification, it rushed into place just enough features to qualify drivers as independent workers. What it learned from this experiment is that Uber’s model falls apart when drivers are actually independent.

The Data Broker Industry Is Spending Big Bucks on Lobbying Efforts ⇥ themarkup.org

Alfred Ng and Maddy Varner, the Markup:

All in all, we found 25 companies whose combined spending on federal lobbying totaled $29 million in 2020. Many of the top spenders were not pure data brokers but companies that nonetheless have massive data operations. Oracle, which has spent the past decade acquiring companies that collect data, spent the most by far, with disclosure documents showing $9,570,000 spent on federal lobbying.

For comparison, of the Big Tech firms with heavy lobbying presences, Facebook spent $19,680,000, Amazon $18,725,000, and Google $8,850,000 in the same period, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, found that Big Tech spent $108 million collectively on lobbying in 2020.

Oracle has its own data collection arm but has also built its portfolio by buying up companies like DataRaker, Compendium, and Crosswise. The companies, which were acquired in 2012, 2013, and 2016, respectively, take data from a variety of sources. DataRaker gets data from millions of smart meters and sensors for utilities companies, while Compendium delivers targeted ads. Crosswise allows Oracle to track people across devices, claiming to process data from billions of devices every month.

The data broker industry is not new to frequent readers of this website, but it does not receive nearly as much public attention as Facebook and Google. That is probably because data brokers deliberately avoid a public presence, while Facebook and Google have many public-facing products.

Another feature of the data broker industry is its ubiquity. While it is extraordinarily difficult to opt out of Facebook and Google’s tracking mechanisms, it is effectively impossible to eliminate yourself from the data broker industry — especially in the United States. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada put together a great 2019 report on the data brokers in Canada:

The data brokerage industry occupies in a region of the economy that is opaque to consumers, its objects of commerce. It is difficult for consumers to appreciate the mechanisms by which data brokers collect, use and trade in consumers’ personal information, and so the usual mechanisms by which markets discipline businesses are not in place. The industry is complex, with multiple kinds of actors collecting, processing, and aggregating data to create and use consumer profiles. Reporting by [the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic] and others on the activities of the industry are insufficient to overcome this difficulty.

This report recommended more investigation and oversight, but it has limited effect. At the very least, Canadians’ personal information has some national and “substantially similar” provincial protections through legislation; in the United States, a 2014 report found, this is not the case, so far more private data is collected, traded, combined, and sold.

SCOTUS Says That Google’s Implementation of Oracle’s Java APIs Is Protected by Fair Use ⇥ bbc.com

BBC News:

Justice Stephen Breyer, in his written opinion, said that “to allow enforcement of Oracle’s copyright here would risk harm to the public”.

So many programmers used and had deep knowledge of Oracle’s building blocks that such a move would turn computer code into “a lock limiting the future creativity of new programs”.

“Oracle alone would hold the key,” he warned.

[…]

Oracle made clear that it firmly disagreed with the court’s judgement, saying that it had increased Google’s power further and damaged other companies’ ability to compete.

“They stole Java and spent a decade litigating as only a monopolist can,” said Dorian Daley, the company’s general counsel, in a statement.

The reason I am linking to the BBC’s reporting on this verdict is that, if you scroll to the bottom of its article, you’ll see previous coverage going back to 2010. For much of that battle, Oracle has tried to play the role of the little company burdened by Google’s thievery. In the last eleven years, though, Oracle has become six times as valuable and is now worth over $200 billion — it seems pretty clear that Oracle can also afford to litigate for a decade in the hopes that it can have a monopoly on Java’s APIs and set a worrisome precedent for all software.