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yesLevi SumagaysayNone
April 11, 2020
Here are 15 numbers that jumped out at us this week as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to rearrange the technology industry, causing extreme shocks and pains — and a few opportunities:
2 billion+
Single-day minute totals racked up recently by people using Microsoft Teams or Google Meet, both companies said this week. Other videoconferencing programs and apps have also seen a surge in usage, such as Google Duo (average daily traffic up 12.4%) and Houseparty (up 79.4%).
2,100
Employees at Yelp who will be laid off or furloughed as the San Francisco company reels from a crisis that has rocked the businesses whose ads it depends on: restaurants, small businesses and service providers. A thousand employees are getting laid off, 1,100 will be furloughed, and others will see their hours cut, CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said, calling the decision a "last resort."
500
Employees being laid off at Eventbrite, the San Francisco ticketing and events-management company. That's 45% of the workforce, which learned the news during a companywide Google Hangouts chat.
2,200
Job openings at Salesforce, which is prioritizing hiring employees' friends and relatives who've been laid off because of the pandemic. The well-meaning gesture raised concerns about the San Francisco-based company's much-touted commitment to diversity. Though it has made progress, Salesforce's employees largely remain white and male.
23%, 26%
Increase in messages in New York and San Francisco, respectively, on the dating platform Bumble in the last two weeks of March, leading Social Catfish to warn online daters to watch out for scams. Last year, 2,206 victims were catfished in California and 931 in New York, according to the online dating investigation service.
$267,000
Contributions by Uber and Lyft since late January to the war chest for a state ballot initiative to gut Assembly Bill 5, the California law aimed at forcing the companies to classify drivers as employees. The gig giants say COVID-19 lockdowns have strengthened their position — and worker advocates say the exact same thing.
$1 billion
Expected loss for Airbnb in the first half of the year, the same amount the San Francisco company is raising from private equity firms as it staggers from a steep drop in travel. The platform, which had planned to go public this year at a valuation of $50 billion or more, has seen its valuation plunge to $30 billion or less in the private secondary market for shares. It is reportedly looking to raise an additional $1 billion. Meanwhile, the company is pivoting to long-term rentals, which its critics view as a tacit admission it was "poaching" permanent rental housing all along.
64%
Occupancy rate of WeWork's 739 offices at the beginning of April — down from 79% at the end of September, per the Financial Times, which reports that thousands of tenants have either refused to pay rent or tried to wriggle out of their leases.
9
Tech moguls among the 20 wealthiest people in the world, according to Forbes' latest list, which incorporated the coronavirus' impact on stocks through mid-March. That's up from eight of 20 last year — thank you, Jack Ma (now No. 17). Tech could claim 10 of the top 20 slots next year; Mackenzie Bezos is in striking distance.
51%
Percentage of Americans who said they will or have already tapped money from savings accounts or emergency funds, according to LendEDU, which surveyed 1,000 adults on April 1.
$1 billion
Pledge by Jack Dorsey to fight coronavirus. The donation, 28% of his wealth, would come from his stock holdings in Square, he tweeted, along with a link to a Google doc he says will track spending. The money will be put into an LLC, giving him flexibility to control its dispersal. Dorsey, who has made seemingly unfulfilled philanthropic promises before, became the latest billionaire to open his wallet, raising broader questions about the power of the wealthy and our reliance on them and their companies.
32.5%, 23.9%
Founders of post-series A and pre-series A startups, respectively, who are laying off workers in response to the coronavirus crisis, according to a survey of 286 seed and series A founders and 114 VCs by NFX, a venture capital firm that has invested in Lyft, DoorDash, Trulia and more.
29%
Share of Americans who believe the coronavirus was made in a lab, either on purpose or by accident, according to a Pew survey conducted from March 10 to 16. The virus came about naturally, scientists say.
Levi Sumagaysay
Levi Sumagaysay (@levisu) is a former Silicon Valley reporter at Protocol. Previously, she was a tech reporter at The San Jose Mercury News, where she covered everything from artificial intelligence to IPOs, tech culture, news about big tech, and more. Levi has edited or written technology news since the first dot-com boom, and was for a time the writer of Good Morning Silicon Valley, one of the earliest tech blogs/newsletters.
People
Expensify CEO David Barrett: ‘Most CEOs are not bad people, they're just cowards’
"Remember that one time when we almost had civil war? What did you do about it?"
Expensify CEO David Barrett has thoughts on what it means for tech CEOs to claim they act apolitically.
Photo: Expensify
January 19, 2021
Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Signal at (510)731-8429.
January 19, 2021
The Trump presidency ends tomorrow. It's a political change in which Expensify founder and CEO David Barrett played a brief, but explosive role.
Barrett became famous last fall — or infamous, depending on whom you ask — for sending an email to the fintech startup's clients, urging them to reject Trump and support President-elect Joe Biden.
<p>"Anything less than a vote for Biden is a vote against democracy," Barrett said in the email.</p><p>It was an unprecedented political maneuver by a CEO-founder in Silicon Valley, and one that drew praise from a preeminent historian of the region.</p><p>"This was a moment that utterly transcended politics as usual, and his statement utterly transcended politics as usual," futurist and historian Paul Saffo told Protocol. "I'm sure investors got a little bit of a case of indigestion over this. It was a bold move and I would say it was made with considerable character."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>And it wasn't a one-off: Barrett sent another email to Expensify customers over the weekend, telling its users about its plans to spend $3 million on fighting inequality, while also railing against the "domestic terrorists" who invaded the Capitol earlier this month.</p><p>Barrett talked to Protocol last Friday, before the latest email, about the coming transition, which he reflected on in a celebratory mood even as he looked back on the controversial episode. "We just survived Trump. This is going to be an amazing year," he said. "The economy's coming back. The vaccines are rolling out. Travel is going to restart. We got a new administration that's going to make reasonable decisions. We avoided a civil war. Everything's on the up and up."</p><p><em>The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.</em></p><p><strong>You sent that email taking a position on the election. I've talked to a lot of CEOs in Silicon Valley who'd rather stay in the middle. They're not going to say what they think or even who they voted for because it's safer.</strong></p><p>My opinion is a little bit different. I think this idea of "Oh, we're apolitical," I think that's kind of bullshit. I think there's no such thing in a democracy as being apolitical. Every action you take is your position. I think that a large number of these tech companies, by saying, "Oh, we're apolitical," that's a very convenient way of saying, "No, I'm voting for the status quo. I support the current administration, and I'm not going to take actions to do anything about it because it's actually good for business." I think it's actually pretty cynical.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p><strong>There's going to be a change, and there will be new issues. It's probably not going to be as intense as Trump, but there will be issues. How do you navigate them? It can be a slippery slope when you start to take positions.</strong></p><p>I think the litmus test is: What is the real-world potential impact of this? I don't anticipate to weigh in on the normal issues. It sounded bombastic back then when I wrote the newsletter: "Hey, I am genuinely concerned that we're going to have a true civil war, and that's going to be really bad for business. My business is great. We're profitable. We're growing. We're surviving the pandemic. So long as we don't descend into civil war, we'll be fine. But Trump is saying he's not going to leave office, and is anyone reading this crazy shit? We should take it seriously." </p><p>This is not normal politics. This is not taxes or health care or whatever. This is like the destruction of our nation up for discussion. The only reason I felt it was important as a CEO to weigh in was that the stakes are too high to be neutral here. </p><p>Even right now. The guy's still not out of office, by the way. The FBI's warning that we're going to have attacks on every state Capitol. Never has that happened in the history of the nation before. This is so wild, what we're talking about. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>I feel that we need to keep reminding ourselves just how beyond the pale this is. As business leaders, it's just shameful to just sit out this entire thing. It's like, "Oh, remember that one time when we almost had civil war? What did you do about it? Oh, fucking nothing? Oh, good job."</p><p><strong>What was the reaction to the email like? Did any of it give you pause?</strong></p><p>Expensify is not a product you adopt overnight. You also don't leave it overnight. We just didn't know what the reaction was going to be. We saw this thing just go so much bigger than we expected. We were like, "Oh, fuck. OK. That's exciting."</p><p>Most people ignored it, or agreed with it, or vented about it or whatever. The vast majority of people, they're too busy. And in this Twitter news cycle, sustaining anger for more than like 10 seconds is hard. It's like, "Fuck Trump! Oh, such a cute puppy!" It's so hard to do anything.</p><p><strong>Where does that come from, that belief in taking a position? Can you talk a bit about your background?</strong></p><p>My background has always been in hard engineering. Never been in finance. Never been in politics or any of that stuff. I think what you're getting at [is]: Why are you so outspoken? I'm in a lucky position to do that. I run a very profitable business that has a very distributed customer base. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>I think most CEOs, it's not that they're bad people, they're just cowards. They're like, "Yeah, I would like to take a stand, but I can't because of investors, customers and things like this." It basically comes down to, "I care more about hitting the next quarter results than preventing a civil war," which is so fucked up. They're more afraid of their investors than they are of militants. I'm in a lucky position where I don't have to be afraid of my investors. I'm super profitable. I can't get fired. There's no majority on the board that can fire me. So I think that I am in a position [where] I can take these stands much more than others. </p><p>I've heard from a lot of other CEOs [about speaking up, and they say]: "I can't. I wish I could. I feel bad. I feel ashamed. But I kind of can't." I feel I can give an example of, like, "Guys, speak up. The water's fine." Defending democracy is not actually a bold choice because most people agree with it.</p><p>Sure, we got a lot of shit on Twitter, or whatever. Those people weren't our customers anyway. It had no negative impact on revenue. If anything, I think we're gonna look back and this is going to be an incredible brand building event. We didn't expect this to go as viral as it did. It's like, "Shocker! Getting massive coverage for defending democracy is good for business, actually."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>I think that CEOs need to have the courage to actually step up for things that matter, and be less sort of afraid of the impact on their businesses. Because most customers, especially the people who are actually buying the software, they care about stability, they care about democracy.</p><p><strong>Would you consider politics after your business career?</strong></p><p>No, that sounds like a huge pain in the ass. Plus that assumes that there is an "after my business career." I just made this giant profitable business, and it's fucking awesome. I want to work here forever. My goal is just to stay here forever.</p>
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Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Signal at (510)731-8429.
The current state-of-the-art quantum computers are a tangle of wires. And that can't be the case in the future.
Photo: IBM Research
January 15, 2021
Dan Garisto is a freelance science journalist who specializes in the physical sciences, with an emphasis on particle physics. He has an undergraduate degree in physics and is based in New York.
January 15, 2021
The iconic image of quantum computing is the "Google chandelier," with its hundreds of intricately arranged copper wires descending like the tendrils of a metallic jellyfish. It's a grand and impressive device, but in that tangle of wires lurks a big problem.
"If you're thinking about the long-term prospects of quantum computing, that image should be just terrifying," Jim Clarke, the director of quantum hardware at Intel, told Protocol.
<p>The problem is scale. When your quantum computer is <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/noisy-intermediate-scale-nisq" target="_self">based on just a few dozen qubits</a>, it's fine to designate one or more wires to each qubit in order to send and receive signals. But quantum computers are growing, and they will need to reach <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/next-steps-advances-in-quantum-computing" target="_self">thousands, if not millions, of qubits to truly be useful</a> for <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/machine-learning-ai-quantum-computing-move-beyond-hype" target="_blank">companies and organizations</a> — at which point, using wires is going to become a literal knotty problem. </p><p>"It's no longer sufficient to just be able to make a qubit device and talk about the properties of a qubit," said David Reilly, a quantum researcher at Microsoft. "It's all about scale. And it's all about the infrastructure that you need to get there."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>Multiple companies investing in quantum computers are now looking toward this future, and trying to develop better methods of controlling their qubits. These quantum control chips are similar to the silicon wafers produced using CMOS technology, with a few alterations to make them work at ultracold temperatures and with qubits. </p><p>In December, <a href="https://newsroom.intel.com/news/intel-debuts-2nd-gen-horse-ridge-cryogenic-quantum-control-chip/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Intel announced</a> its Horse Ridge 2 control chip, which builds off its predecessor to perform more specific applications, such as manipulating and reading qubits. Research <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.01299" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">soon to be published</a> in Nature Electronics looks at Microsoft's quantum control chip, which operates at the coldest temperatures yet: a tenth of a degree above absolute zero. But Microsoft and Intel aren't alone; other companies have also been developing quantum control chips. In 2019, Google debuted <a href="https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/02/on-path-to-cryogenic-control-of-quantum.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">its own</a>.</p><p>The goal is to help build the <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/next-steps-advances-in-quantum-computing" target="_self">infrastructure required for a future quantum computer</a> that has actual applications for corporations and research institutes, not just one that can <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/supremacy-google-debatable-milestone" target="_self">out-speed classical supercomputers in proof-of-principle tests</a>. </p><h3>Going wireless
</h3><p>Quantum computers rely on unsettling properties of the quantum world, such as superposition: the combination of states exemplified famously by Schrödinger's feline, which can be neither dead nor alive, but exists in some superposition of both states. Quantum effects like superposition are fragile, and tend to collapse out in our noisy, warm, macroscopic world. To preserve the qubits' delicate quantum states, they are kept extremely cold, usually below 1 Kelvin (about -457 degrees Fahrenheit)</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>To achieve those temperatures, qubits are kept in dilution fridges, which use liquid helium to keep their contents ultracold. Those devices have limited internal space and limited cooling power, both of which are hampered by a nest of wires. To explain the impetus for better quantum control, Clarke uses an analogy. </p><p>"Imagine that you are in charge of 100 dogs, and you have to take them for a walk," Clarke says. "Do you take them on 100 separate leashes? Or do you have one leash that fans out and do it more efficiently?" </p><p>In classical computers, control chips are small silicon wafers with some input and output pins that connect to billions of transistors. This CMOS technology is well-known, so it's tempting to slap a classical control chip onto a quantum computer, but it's not feasible. There are two main problems: First, quantum control chips have to operate at extremely low temperatures, so circuits must be designed to dissipate far less heat. Second, quantum control chips require alterations to interface with qubits, which are far more finicky than their classical counterparts. </p><p>Solving both problems entails reworking control chips: though hopefully not so much that they can't still be fabricated at scale, with traditional silicon manufacturing techniques.</p><p>Intel claims its Horse Ridge series (named for Horse Ridge, one of the coldest places in Oregon) operates at 4 K — above the temperature of the qubits it can control — and seeks to build on the company's preexisting expertise with semiconductor technology. While Horse Ridge 1 was designed for a wide variety of qubits, the recently unveiled Horse Ridge 2 focuses on expanded applications for spin qubits, Intel's preferred choice in <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/nobody-agrees-on-how-to-build-quantum-computer" target="_self">the qubit wars</a>. The goal, according to Clarke, is to "customize these low-temperature control chips for different applications." </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Google's control chip is similar, operating at 3 K, but is designed for yet another type of qubit, called a transmon. The chip has been tested on a few qubits, but not the 53-qubit Sycamore device that <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/quantum-computing/supremacy-google-debatable-milestone" target="_self">made headlines</a> in 2019. <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=8865458" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Research from Google</a> has focused on reducing heat dissipation from the quantum control chip. Where a classical control chip outputs about one watt of heat, Google's dissipates less than two thousandths of a watt. "Getting power down is going to be very important for any of these approaches," Joseph Bardin, an engineering professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a researcher at Google, wrote in an email to Protocol. </p><p>Microsoft's quantum control chip relies on similar semiconductor technology, but it is designed to work with topological qubits, though it can be adapted for other qubit architectures. (Worth noting: Topological qubits are theoretical, and have not actually been demonstrated.) </p><p>Where it really departs from Intel's and Google's designs is temperature. Microsoft's quantum control chip can dissipate less than a millionth of a watt, allowing it to stay at a chilly 0.1 K, about the same temperature as the qubits themselves.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><h3>Is it hot in here?</h3><p>The companies insist on the advantages of their own approaches.</p><p>"What is really unique is that our signals are generated at low temperature," Intel's Clarke said. By putting its classical CPU — which sends signals to the control chip — with the control chip at these temperatures, Intel hopes to avoid the noisiness inherent to signals generated by CPUs at high temperatures. Microsoft's Reilly disputes this claim of uniqueness, and notes that Microsoft has generated its signals at temperatures as low as 1 K. </p><p>For Reilly, running the control chip at 3 or 4 K — as Google and Intel do — is much too hot: Though the difference between 0.1 K and 4 K may sound small, it's also the difference between the quantum world and the classical world. By operating the quantum control chip at the same temperature as the qubits, Reilly hopes to avoid the bottleneck between shuffling information from quantum to classical or vice versa. </p><p>"If their control system is at 4 Kelvin, then you still have this I/O bottleneck," Reilly said. "You still have a bird's nest of cables that run from four Kelvin to the millikelvin stage where the qubits are." One possible solution to that would be to bring the qubits up to 4 K — and there is <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2170-7" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">some progress</a> in that direction.</p><p>All three companies will be presenting updates at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, which will be <a href="http://isscc.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">held virtually</a> Feb. 13 through Feb. 22.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>For now, though, no one has remotely enough qubits to necessitate these quantum control chips, let alone determine which of those compromises is preferable. Testing is still done on a few qubits, or devices that model qubit behaviors — not even the full ensemble of dozens of qubits that make up the current cutting-edge of quantum computers.</p><p>At any rate, quantum computing is still in its heady early days, where firsts are being made, and — despite some corporate jousting about progress — demonstrating the possibility of the technology often takes precedence over long-term plans to make it practical. And at this stage, we don't even know what all those roadblocks might be.</p><p>"Wouldn't it be ironic if it turned out that making the qubits turned out to be a little bit of a challenge?" Reilly asked. "And the real roadblocks were in the systems integration and the construction of cryogenic control at scale?"</p>
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Dan Garisto is a freelance science journalist who specializes in the physical sciences, with an emphasis on particle physics. He has an undergraduate degree in physics and is based in New York.
Election 2020
Google says it’s fighting election lies, but its ads fund them
A new report finds that more than 1,600 brands, from Disney to Procter & Gamble, have advertisements running on sites that push pro-Trump conspiracy theories. The majority of those ads are served by Google.
Google is the most dominant player in programmatic advertising, but it has a spotty record enforcing rules for publishers.
Photo: Alex Tai/Getty Images
January 14, 2021
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
January 14, 2021
Shortly after November's presidential election, a story appeared on the website of far-right personality Charlie Kirk, claiming that 10,000 dead people had returned mail-in ballots in Michigan. But after publishing, a correction appeared at the top of the story, completely debunking the misleading headline, which remains, months later, unchanged.
"We are not aware of a single confirmed case showing that a ballot was actually cast on behalf of a deceased individual," the correction, which quoted Michigan election officials, read.
<p>The note was a clear bait-and-switch on a story that boldly pushed a false conspiracy theory about the election. But just as striking as the editor's note is what sits at the top of this story, and every story on Kirk's site: a Google ad.</p><p>Since the 2016 election, endless attention has been paid to the way election misinformation can spread through targeted ads on social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube. But an equally insidious and less-discussed problem is how programmatic advertising, a field dominated by Google, has become the lifeblood of misinformation sites. With or without social platforms, these ads allow misinformation sites to exist and even thrive all on their own by providing a source of revenue, and companies like Google have a shoddy record of policing them. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>In a new <a href="https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-report-advertising-on-election-misinformation/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">report</a> released Thursday by the news rating company NewsGuard, researchers found ads for more than 1,600 mainstream brands, from Disney to Procter & Gamble, running on <a href="https://www.newsguardtech.com/election-misinformation-tracker/" target="_blank">160 sites</a> (including Kirk's) that have openly pushed election conspiracies. Google was responsible for ads on a whopping 80 percent of those sites. Another ad exchange, The Trade Desk, was running ads on roughly half.</p><p>Among the examples NewsGuard lists: ads for Harvard University appearing on One America News Network's website, ads for AARP appearing on sites like The Gateway Pundit and ZeroHedge, and Walmart ads appearing on NOQ Report, a site that recently argued Satan uses Democrats to do his bidding, including stealing the election.</p><p>In some cases, the ads create discordant messaging between publisher and advertiser. While reporting this story, Protocol found ads for Planned Parenthood on Kirk's site, despite Kirk's frequent <a href="https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1263209491581018114?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">calls</a> for Planned Parenthood to be defunded. Thanks to these ads, Planned Parenthood is effectively funding Kirk.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTQ1MDA1Mi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNTY4MDEwOH0.qplQOYcTtVCBgeOXCbDihtGMd6uAjeg-XL39oaEr8Bw/img.png?width=980" id="f1e64" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="42c21c19889922502d0fba8fec366b71" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="2226" data-height="712">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">A Planned Parenthood fundraising ad appears on a story containing election misinformation at the top of Charlie Kirk's website.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Screenshot: Protocol</small></p><p><br></p><p>Google has <a href="https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9335564?hl=en&visit_id=637461598271119369-2898334728&rd=1" target="_blank">policies</a> forbidding publishers who post demonstrably false election misinformation and other types of content from placing Google ads on their websites. "Claims that voter fraud was widespread or that the election was stolen are all prohibited by our policies. When we find content that violates our policies we remove its ability to monetize," a Google spokesperson said.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>The company demonetizes individual stories first, reserving site-wide demonetization for egregious, persistent offenders (The company recently demonetized a far-right militia site following the Capitol riot). In 2019, the company removed ads from 21 million individual pages, the Google spokesperson said. The problem: Google serves billions of ads every day. </p><p>It's not that the company is unaware it's serving ads on the sites NewsGuard noted in its report. In August, a group of philanthropists <a href="https://www.protocol.com/google-ads-charities-disinformation-sites" target="_self">wrote</a> to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai after reports showed that ads for groups like the Red Cross and Save the Children were appearing alongside COVID-19 misinformation on TheGatewayPundit and elsewhere. The philanthropists urged Google to institute a new model that "does not put [advertisers] into unwanted and damaging associations that undermine their good works and values." </p><p>Since then, the company has taken action on individual Gateway Pundit articles, but five months later, Google has yet to fully demonetize the site despite repeated violations, enabling it to continue growing and spreading misinformation. </p><p>The power programmatic advertising has in sustaining these sites is particularly relevant now as social media giants begin to more forcefully crack down on accounts, including the president's, that regularly post dangerous conspiracy theories or incitements to violence. For many of these companies, last week's riot in the U.S. Capitol was a wake-up call, showing them the disastrous real-world consequences of allowing people to believe lies about the election being stolen. But chasing the accounts that peddle those lies off of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is only part of the solution. As long as the people behind those accounts have a way to make money on their falsehoods, why would they ever stop?</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
Protocol | Enterprise
The GE Mafia: How an old-school firm birthed a generation of tech leaders
The conglomerate hot-housed graduates in the '90s and '00s to create an adaptable army of tech talent. Now those execs are everywhere.
January 11, 2021
Joe Williams is a senior reporter at Protocol covering enterprise software, including industry giants like Salesforce, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. He previously covered emerging technology for Business Insider. Joe can be reached at JWilliams@Protocol.com. To share information confidentially, he can also be contacted on a non-work device via Signal (+1-309-265-6120) or JPW53189@protonmail.com.
January 11, 2021
Look at the resumes of the top tech executives at the nation's largest companies and you're likely to find at least one theme: a stint at General Electric.
The once-quintessential American conglomerate has served as a launch pad for individuals now spearheading IT operations at companies such as Airbnb, United Airlines, Unilever, Morgan Stanley, AIG and dozens of others, according to analysis by Protocol.
<p>"You look across [top technologists in] the Fortune 100, it's pretty hard to find someone that doesn't have a background in GE," said Nationwide Chief Technology Officer Jim Fowler, who departed the company in 2018 after a 18-year tenure. "It was by design that it became something of a producer of talent," he added. </p><p>GE's ability to cultivate leaders is widely known. The company's famed former CEO Jack Welch, who stepped down in 2001 and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/business/jack-welch-died.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">passed away in 2020</a>, was laser-focused on pinpointing the most promising talent across the enterprise. But an early emphasis on IT — and the training of its executives to focus on it — put the company on the precipice of what is now one of the biggest trends in corporate America. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>In recent years, enterprises have been rushing to digitize their operations, transforming IT leaders from help desk aficionados reporting to chief operating officers into top executives overseeing billion-dollar tech transformation efforts with a direct line to the CEO and board of directors. </p><p>That phenomenon has put new pressure on a position that, until recently, could function largely within its own silo. Chief information officers and similar positions are tasked with figuring out how tech such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence can not only support existing operations, but give the firm a new competitive advantage. Or, more bluntly, turn IT from a cost center into a profit center. </p><p>"That's just the way this role has evolved," Silicon Valley Bank CIO and 17-year GE veteran Mark Rohrwasser said. "If you are just a pure technologist … I don't think you're going to be in the key roles going forward."</p><p>That's perhaps the key reason why so many tech leaders today have been on GE's payroll: The company made it a priority to give its most promising future IT executives a broad range of skills, and pushed them into positions in the conglomerate's many different verticals: everything from healthcare to investment banking. Nationwide's Fowler, for example, worked in seven business units throughout his tenure; Rohrwasser served in eight. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>"At that period of time, that was pretty unique. You were sitting at the same table as the business leaders, you were expected to engage," Rohrwasser said. "That's commonplace now."</p><h2>Taking tech in-house
</h2><p>GE also pinpointed those individuals early on in their careers and provided ample training and leadership development opportunities. It was a major investment in a relatively small selection of workers, one that former execs say is foreign in today's workforce. </p><p>"They figured out that they needed to pay attention to people throughout the continuum of their careers," said Lynn Boyd, a former talent development executive at GE who helped lead the IT leadership programs. "It's harder to do now, to invest that kind of money [only] to have people leave on." </p><p>While the company's troubles are well-publicized, including the way it <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dimming-of-ges-bold-digital-dreams-11595044802" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">navigated its own digitization efforts</a>, GE's leadership development programs, many of which <a href="https://apnews.com/article/8040b13eb8d980e9ecb4198ff0e314a2" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">bore the fingerprints of Welch</a>, became a de facto gold standard in corporate America: Outside of CIOs, it's <a href="https://www.investmentnews.com/former-ge-executives-successful-as-ceos-elsewhere-5070" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">not uncommon to find a GE alumni as a CEO</a>.</p><p>And in a display of just how strong the connection between alumni is as a result of these initiatives, as many as 25 former GE tech execs get together roughly every other month at events sponsored by an outside consulting company, according to Fowler. </p><p>But the foresight to focus on IT, specifically during the late 1990s and beyond, was particularly astute. At a time when a glob of internet startups careened from success to failure amid the dot-com crash, what set GE apart from other corporations, former employees say, was its willingness to spend money to bolster its internal workforce. Instead of relying on the increasingly big providers like SAP and Oracle to manage the tech stacks, it chose to fend for itself. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Working with software companies, "if you didn't know what you were doing, you just gave the farm away. There's a lot of companies that don't know what they are doing," said Boyd, who is now an executive coach. "It became evident to GE early on, maybe because they were so big and were spending a pot-load of money on this … that we just can't have somebody come in and mismanage it," she added. </p><h2>CIO boot camp
</h2><p>To cultivate that kind of talent, GE started early, recruiting IT employees straight out of college. Those individuals would immediately be placed into a two-to-three week bootcamp, setting them up for what would hopefully become a decades-long career complete with several more iterations of executive training. Once the introductory sessions were over, each person was rotated to four different positions across the enterprise over the following two years. The program also encouraged these next-generation leaders to specialize in a specific technology field, like application development or coding.</p><p>"We basically took the material that was coming out of colleges and we would 'GE-ize' it and teach it what we do, why we do it and how does technology play into it," Fowler said. </p><p>As they progressed from early to mid-level careers, the coursework would intensify. Each year, roughly 30 first-time IT managers would be tapped to attend the Experience Information Management Program at GE's <a href="https://www.ge.com/news/reports/inside-crotonville-ges-corporate-vault-unlocked" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">storied Crotonville campus</a>. At the two-week gatherings that occurred four times a year, they could schmooze with other emerging leaders, such as reps from the top business schools in the country and executives from other divisions. (A standout "rock star" at these events was former GE CIO Gary Reiner, who still serves as a mentor to Fowler and others). But it wasn't all social: Each was given a business problem to work on and, after six months, would report in with a division CIO at the company on their progress. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>"We called it a mini-MBA," Boyd said. "That put you on the map. If you weren't already on the map for other reasons, that put you on the map." </p><p>Ultimately, a segment of that group deemed executive material was then advanced to another gathering at Crotonville that focused more on developing long-term strategic vision. Of that group, as few as three would be ultimately tapped to serve as a group CIO, former staff said, leaving as many as 20 executives who were likely to jump ship in order to ultimately reach the coveted role. </p><p>That is one reason why there is such a large network of GE alumni at the nation's biggest businesses. But it also meant that, when those internal positions did become available, there was little delay in appointing new individuals. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>"There was never a time when one of those top jobs came open that we didn't have a list of five to six really strong candidates just ready to walk in," Fowler said. </p><p>While GE still runs its postgraduate program for IT staff, it no longer runs the later-stage development programs. Instead, it is planning a new, more accelerated training program that will be rolled out this year. Still, two decades after Welch left GE, the focus on pinpointing leaders early on and exposing them to the numerous facets of the business remains. </p><p>"With the speed of change across the industries in which we operate, developing technology leaders with the skills to take on complex, real-world problems is critical," current CIO Nancy Anderson. "We're proud of the tech leaders we've produced at GE." </p>
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Joe Williams is a senior reporter at Protocol covering enterprise software, including industry giants like Salesforce, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. He previously covered emerging technology for Business Insider. Joe can be reached at JWilliams@Protocol.com. To share information confidentially, he can also be contacted on a non-work device via Signal (+1-309-265-6120) or JPW53189@protonmail.com.
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Google’s productivity guru has some advice for you
Here's how Laura Mae Martin helps Google's top execs work smarter.
Laura Mae Martin, Google's executive productivity adviser, works one-on-one with the company's top brass.
Image: Google
January 9, 2021
Kevin McAllister ( @k__mcallister) is an associate editor at Protocol, leading the development of Braintrust. Prior to joining the team, he was a rankings data reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where he oversaw structured data projects for the Journal's strategy team.
January 8, 2021
If productivity were a product at Google, then Laura Mae Martin would be its product manager.
She's Google's executive productivity adviser, a job she created following a successful 20% project about managing inboxes that she debuted while working in keyword sales. As the company's top expert on productivity, her remit seems simple enough: Make Googlers more efficient in their day-to-day work lives. But in practice, that means working directly with the top executives of a trillion-dollar company to make some of tech's most sought-after talent better at what they do.
<p>For Martin, cooking up ways to phase out inefficiencies didn't begin at the tech giant, but in her childhood kitchen. While making cupcakes with her sister she realized that rather than frosting and adding sprinkles to each cupcake one-by-one, a frost-first, sprinkle-second method saved time. Martin now advocates for similar concepts at Google — even if the processes have more to do with Python than pastries these days.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>While Google's executive team has been taking advantage of some of Google's best tips and tricks internally for years, the company recently made a lot of them public. Just a couple of months ago, in October, Google transitioned G Suite into Google Workspace, and in the process rolled out many of the tried-and-true hacks to its over 2 billion users. </p><p>While the revamp may have caused you to mistake Calendar for Drive this fall, Google sees the criticism of its homogenous icons as a feature, not a bug. Each Workspace app is still distinct in its purpose, it argues, but a focus on integration means each one can now do a little bit of what the others do too.</p><p>We spoke to Martin to find out how she helps Google's execs boost their productivity and how to make best use of some of Workspace's feature integrations. Here are some of the highlights.</p><p><em><a href="http://protocol.com/nine-favorite-tricks-from-googles-productivity-guru" target="_blank">Read nine of Martin's favorite productivity tricks here.</a></em></p><h3>Know who you are</h3><p>Martin's approach starts with a diagnosis. There's a spectrum Martin sees among the people she works with: On one side are the executives who need to approach productivity with a different mindset altogether to reclaim large stretches of time, and on the other are the executives who need to fine-tune their use of products and repurpose shorter chunks of time. She likens it to finding ways to eat better.</p><p>"You pick up a book about healthy eating, and you want to hear all the things about why you should eat that way or what's healthy about fruits and vegetables," she said. "But you also want the recipes. You need both."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>In Google's case, that journey to a healthy work diet begins with a questionnaire Martin prepares for any of her one-on-one meetings with the company's C-suite. Martin says in her years of working with executives, she's developed archetypes of executives at the company that serve as frameworks for how she begins coaching. For global executives, for example, she needs to find time in the middle of the day, since international calls consume mornings and nights. When working with senior engineers, she often needs to look for tips that will keep them in a single product to limit the time spent switching back and forth and breaking their concentration.</p><p>"I have a couple of profiles of types of executives, and nobody fits perfectly, but it helps me guide through what my tips or thoughts would be," Martin said. "Some people prefer in-person communication, some people really need downtime or really need an agenda. I've seen enough of those profiles that I can now guide my advice instead of saying this is what works because it works for me."</p><h3>Learn how you work</h3><p>In a recent session with an executive who was overseeing product reviews that were eating up his days, with hour-long demos and subsequent time for feedback, she saw someone who needed more time back than product hacks alone could offer.</p><p>"We took the radical approach, saying, 'Let's just shave 30 minutes off those meetings,'" she said. "What if we cut that in half and challenged the teams to make the most of that time? It forced them to send a lot of material ahead of time, and we started blocking pre-read time so that he could review things that didn't need to be presented" </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Martin said the transition for the team, like most changes, made people uncomfortable at the start. But the payoff came when the meetings were more engaging and helpful to the employees presenting, since questions could be more specific following the pre-reads.</p><h3>Stop switching context<br></h3><p>Though Martin occasionally gets to use an axe to reshape an executive's schedule, her work is more often done with the precision of a scalpel. That's typically where she leans into product tips that can additively save a few minutes each day. One of Martin's favorite tricks: a calendar invite from an email.</p><p>"You have an email going, people are talking and you're like, 'let's just meet about this,'" she said. "You click a button and it makes a calendar invite with the description and all those people, instead of backing out, opening Google Calendar and copying all those people in. That one tip could save you minutes multiple times a day, and that really adds up."</p><p>Another small hack she advocates for is tab grouping in Chrome. Instead of wading through a sea of tiny tabs at the top of the browser, the grouping feature allows users to put multiple tabs under a heading for easy navigation. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>Both illustrate how Google is trying to cut down on the amount of time between thinking something in a business context and actually doing it.</p><h3>Become a super user</h3><p>Those instances of integrating one product with another just scratch the surface of what the company sees Workspace allowing users (and its own employees) to do.</p><p>Already, Google has rolled out new preview features in Docs that don't require users to go to a new tab to scroll through a document. In the "<a href="https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/workspace/introducing-google-workspace" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">coming months</a>," Google plans to introduce picture-in-picture video via Meet into Docs and Slides, which will allow users to create on-demand, instant meetings with the other people editing a document simultaneously.</p><p>So much of productivity is thought of as getting from point A to point B faster, but Google's approach is increasingly about getting people in and out of each point between the beginning and the end more quickly. For Martin, the minutes shaved off of switching from task to task and the resulting focus are what can actually help cut down the total time needed to complete a project.</p><p>"Those are the types of things that our products are developing more and more of as far as collaboration across teams," she said. "We're really at an exciting place right now with Workspace, seeing how those are now all coming together."</p><h3>Work how your brain works</h3><p>Perhaps unsurprisingly at the company that revolutionized the search engine, search can also play a key role in productivity as well. For Martin, that means advocating for executives to employ the infrastructure that makes a search effective in their own file management — whatever their file management style is. It's a strategy she says is particularly effective when someone is trying to work even at times when their setup is inconvenient. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>In a recent productivity session, she aimed to address that exact challenge with a marketing executive who most often found himself having ideas outside of the office. Trading extemporaneous notes for a platform that was searchable and organized allowed him to take notes the way he naturally wanted to. When he'd see an image, an ad or just a visual that he thought might be useful for future campaigns while he was out in the world, he would take a picture and hashtag it with a keyword that would populate a folder of ideas for quick reference later on.</p><p>"He then had a bulletin board in Google Keep that was just ideas, and he had an organization system that wasn't how I would organize, but it was how his brain worked," Martin said. "Because he could color-code all of these things, it was where he went for his ideas later."</p><h3>Think of email like laundry</h3><p>Introducing order where there is none is a big part of how Martin works. In fact, it was the thesis of one of her first initiatives around managing an inbox effectively, particularly through multiple inboxes. A standard feature on Gmail now, it was originally just an add-on that Martin began teaching in her internal course on productivity. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6">
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</div></p><p>"I think about email like laundry. Your inbox is your dryer, but then you need to take everything out and make tiles like you're folding and you're hanging clothes," she said. "It can't just be all in the dryer all the time."</p><p>Teaching employees at Google about how to properly organize emails between inboxes led Martin to conversations with the Gmail team directly, and her feedback about how people were using the product catalyzed the feature's implementation.</p><p>"That was one cool feature that I feel like I saw from like a little baby add-on to a full-blown adult product," she said. "That's probably my favorite part of my job: Not just teaching the products, but helping shape them in the long run."</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p>In launching Workspace late last year, Google laid out its products in such a way that each tool becomes slightly more reliant on the features that work well in its sister applications over time. Similarly, Martin's work has led her to try to get Google employees to do the same. </p><p>In a weekly email, she highlights to more than half the company the use cases for product features she's observed, and gives tips on how those same hacks could be replicated across different company processes and teams.</p><p>We can't all enjoy that kind of bespoke advice. But we can probably all find a cupcake trick or two somewhere in Martin's tips.</p>
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Kevin McAllister ( @k__mcallister) is an associate editor at Protocol, leading the development of Braintrust. Prior to joining the team, he was a rankings data reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where he oversaw structured data projects for the Journal's strategy team.
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