GOOG - Alphabet Inc.
1,138.00 +40.12 (3.65%)
Pre-market: 7:18AM EDT
| Previous close | 1,120.84 |
| Open | 1,119.02 |
| Bid | 1,136.00 x 800 |
| Ask | 1,145.55 x 1100 |
| Day's range | 1,079.81 - 1,123.54 |
| 52-week range | 1,013.54 - 1,532.11 |
| Volume | 2,313,400 |
| Avg. volume | 2,320,833 |
| Market cap | 752.764B |
| Beta (5Y monthly) | 1.05 |
| PE ratio (TTM) | 22.33 |
| EPS (TTM) | 49.16 |
| Earnings date | N/A |
| Forward dividend & yield | N/A (N/A) |
| Ex-dividend date | N/A |
| 1y target est | 1,546.75 |
- Yahoo Finance
Coronavirus: US teachers try to ‘bring normalcy’ amid ‘very unique time in their little lives’
Seventeen percent of teachers said they did not feel prepared at all for distance learning, which has become the new normal during this coronavirus crisis, according to a new survey.
- Bloomberg
Is the Popular Chase Sapphire Reserve Card Worth It Anymore?
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- “In the United States, credit cards, debit cards, people love these cards,” Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s chief executive officer, said during last year’s second-quarter earnings call. “They use their credit cards far more than they use their debit cards. I don’t remember the last time I used my debit card.”It’s not just American consumers drawn to credit cards, of course. They’ve become a bigger part of JPMorgan’s kingdom, too. Gordon Smith, who leads the consumer division, said at the Feb. 25 investor day that in the past several years it has increased market share to an industry-leading 23% from about 13.5%. A presentation showed digital card sales grew 13% year-over-year, which was 3 percentage points higher than the sector a whole.JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank, has been a pioneer in the space, with its Chase Sapphire Reserve reimagining what premium cardholders want and how much they’ll pay in annual fees to get it. The card exploded onto the scene in August 2016 with a sign-up bonus of 100,000 points, which was worth about $1,500 in rewards, easily making up for the steep $450 annual fee. JPMorgan featured late night host James Corden in a marketing campaign called “Reserve What’s Next.” In an interview with the New York Times about the series, Kristin Lemkau, JPMorgan’s chief marketing officer at the time, said this about the card, which also offered triple points for dining and travel anywhere in the world:“Millennials do travel differently,” she added. “What's different is they're the first generation that can find anything on Google, including travel. They clearly like experiences more than stuff. They clearly want to make their own decisions about everything, including travel. It's more fun to post a picture of a fish taco or of a sunset over a beach than of a new couch.”These days, though, Americans of all generations are spending a lot more time on their couches. The coronavirus pandemic has decimated the two industries most directly targeted by the Chase Sapphire card. With airplanes largely grounded and restaurants limited to delivery or takeout, is this card, which was once so popular that the manufacturer ran out of metal used to make it, now destined to be sent to the scrap heap? Earlier this year, my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Barry Ritholtz interviewed Brian Kelly, also known as the Points Guy. His website served as a launch partner for the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, which as of January was its pick for best personal card. Wirecutter had a different view, posting an article titled “The Slow Sudden Death of the Chase Sapphire Reserve” on Jan. 13.Regardless of the card’s rank among peers, Kelly’s life as described by Ritholtz probably seems positively alien to those starting their fourth consecutive week on lockdown:Kelly travels professionally, amassing millions of miles and holding the highest status levels at his favorite airlines. We discussed his preferred travel gear: He always has a laptop or similar device filed with movies, podcasts and TV shows because you cannot rely on the in-flight entertainment system, and if you get stuck somewhere for hours you could keep yourself entertained. He has a Dual Sim iPhone 11, which allows him to use the phone just about anywhere in the world. Google Fi is his carrier abroad. Also important for stressful travel these days: an InsightTimer meditation app. How long will it take for Sapphire Reserve-carrying millennials to return to their jet-setting ways? It’s really anyone’s guess, and it depends on how successfully governments around the world contain the coronavirus. But to think the travel industry will bounce back to what it once was in short order seems more dubious by the day. And I doubt people will immediately clamor to eat and drink in packed restaurants and bars after being hyperconscious about social distancing and wearing masks when interacting at grocery stores. The psychological toll can’t be dismissed so quickly.That will change the credit card calculus. Anecdotally, I surveyed a handful of friends from across the country who I knew had Chase Sapphire Reserve cards (from splitting the bill while dining out, of course). They said they were thinking about canceling, or at best re-evaluating whether it was worth it — the card now includes a Doordash “DashPass” and $60 worth of credits per year. That’s a nice perk in the coronavirus era but hardly comes close to the travel benefits. JPMorgan seems to understand cancellations are a risk: It had said it would boost the card’s annual fee to $550 as of April 1 but announced last week that it would give a $100 credit to those whose cards come up for renewal though July 1, effectively rolling back the increase. “We know Covid-19 has affected people in many different ways,” the bank said, calling the credit “a way to help.”Of course, for those who still find that cost too steep while staying home, JPMorgan has any number of options to keep customers with them. And it’s not as if it’s the only card issuer feeling the sting from the lack of travel: American Express Co., which once called the Sapphire Reserve a “full frontal assault” on its offerings, had told shareholders its fastest-growing expense this year would be spending on membership services. Bank CEOs had frequently marveled at the strength of the American consumer on earnings calls. When they report their first-quarter earnings starting next week, they’ll likely have a much different perspective. Bloomberg Intelligence’s David Ritter wrote last week that credit-card revenue could drop 5% to 10% in a recession similar to the last one, though banks with diverse revenue streams will be less exposed to the fallout than the likes of Synchrony Financial and Discover Financial Services. Capital One Financial Corp. could feel the pinch too, Ritter wrote, though the Points Guy considers it to have the best card for flat-rate rewards and the best one with no annual fee.Dimon, who returned to JPMorgan last week after emergency heart surgery on March 5, noted on that second-quarter 2019 earnings call that the Sapphire brand was introduced in 2009, just months after the recession ended. “Marketing money is usually better spent in a downturn, the returns on it usually double,” Dimon said.It seems inevitable that the U.S. is headed for another recession. And with the travel and hospitality industries facing a reckoning, it’ll be up to Dimon and his colleagues to innovate once more.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Brian Chappatta is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering debt markets. He previously covered bonds for Bloomberg News. He is also a CFA charterholder.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Pandemic Data-Sharing Puts New Pressure on Privacy Protections
(Bloomberg) -- Data sharing by technology companies is helping government officials fight the dizzying spread of the coronavirus by monitoring compliance with social distancing and stay-at-home orders.It’s also putting privacy experts on edge.Companies including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. were already collecting, for advertising purposes, huge volumes of data from websites and smart-phone apps like maps and weather services, which transmit signals about their owners’ location. Some of them are now stripping the data of personal identification markers, aggregating it, and providing it to researchers, public-health authorities and government agencies.The ability to pinpoint the movements of individuals is crucial at a time when controlling the pandemic’s spread depends on compliance with government orders to stay home if possible, and to practice social distancing if not.But consumer advocates fear that an emphasis on health over privacy could undermine the protection of civil liberties, similar to what happened after 9/11, when the U.S. secretly began collecting mass amounts of data on its own citizens in an effort to track down terrorists.Risk of Intrusion“There is an understandable desire to marshal all tools that are at our disposal to help confront the pandemic,” said Michael Kleinman, director of Amnesty International’s Silicon Valley Initiative. “Yet countries’ efforts to contain the virus must not be used as an excuse to create a greatly expanded and more intrusive digital surveillance system.”In the U.S. the new data-sharing practices are happening on many levels. One leading effort that began two weeks ago involves a partnership between a network of researchers and tech companies such as Facebook, which supplies anonymous and aggregated geo-location data.In assembly-line fashion, an analytics firm called Camber Systems takes mobile application data from digital ad companies and sends it multiple times a day to researchers who’ve joined the Covid-19 Mobility Data Network, according to network co-coordinator Andrew Schroeder.Those scientists study the now-anonymous data from multiple sources for insights about mobility rates, which are then shared with foreign governments like Italy and Spain and with U.S. states and cities, including New York, Seattle and California, Schroeder said.No ‘Surveillance’ The network says the analysis, which is meant to help measure enforcement of social-distancing rules, doesn’t contain personally identifiable information and that contracts governing the use of the information prohibit raw data from going directly to governments.Camber Systems declined to comment. Facebook said its data are aggregated in formats that prevent re-identification of individuals and that scientists and other users are subject to licensing agreements. Schroeder said the group is only using the data to address the public health crisis and not “for commercial purposes” or for “police surveillance.” Separately, Facebook, Google, Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and others have pledged to work together in coordination with government to combat the spread of the virus. An ad hoc tech industry task force has also spoken with White House officials and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to a person familiar with the matter. Members of that task force have discussed proposals to share analyses of social-distancing compliance and hospital usage, the person said.Google announced Friday it would release new data about how the pandemic has cut down on foot traffic to transit centers, retail stores and public parks in more than 130 countries. The company said it’s responding to requests from public-health officials who want to know how people are moving around cities as a way to better combat the spread of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Google reiterated in a blog post on Friday that, in its mobility reports, it’s using anonymized, aggregated data. Apple Inc. launched yet another initiative when it announced on March 27 that it was developing an app in partnership with the White House’s coronavirus task force, the CDC and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The goal is to give the CDC guidance on users who input symptoms, risk factors and other information. The company said that individual responses wouldn’t be sent to the government.Earlier: Apple Joins Others in Launching Covid-19 Screening ToolsBut on Friday, four Democratic senators sent a letter asking what Apple was doing about privacy compliance, data retention, cybersecurity, and the terms of agreements with governments.With so many initiatives popping up, privacy gurus worry that information collected will later be used in ways it wasn’t intended. They say they don’t want to obstruct efforts that could help turn the tide in the crisis. Still, they want assurances that the data are truly anonymous. They want the data to be clearly defined, with real potential to be helpful, and to include limits on its reuse -- especially by law enforcement. They also want the data discarded once the coronavirus crisis ends.The sources of anonymous data can sometimes be exposed by combining datasets. Even when made anonymous, location points that come from phone apps, for instance, can be linked to a person by checking who lives at the address where the phone rests at night.“Location data can clue you in to a lot of other sensitive points about you,” said Sara Collins, policy counsel at Public Knowledge. “This discussion about backing into sensitive data from one data point I think is going to stay relevant.”Some of the data-sharing initiatives have already exposed potential community-spread problems. Tectonix GEO, based in Maryland, specializes in visualizing geolocation data, including for the federal government. It teamed up with X-Mode Social, based in Virginia, which sells location data from mobile phones to marketers. In March, they used the phone coordinates found on a single Florida beach during spring break to show how people had congregated and then dispersed -- possibly spreading the virus far and wide.X-Mode hasn’t shared any data with governments or heath agencies and hasn’t been been asked to, a spokesman for the company said.Cuebiq Inc., which specializes in helping companies analyze the effectiveness of ad campaigns on travel, weather, and other location-based apps, is posting its own “Mobility Insights,” with county-level readings across the U.S. on the movements of people in areas under stay-at-home orders. Chief Executive Officer Antonio Tomarchio, said it chose to provide analysis from a wide geographic area to protect privacy while trying “to help as much as we can.”“This is not like surveillance,” said Tomarchio, who’s watched the “disaster” unfold in his native Italy. “It’s not that we’re seeing each device.”Privacy RulesBusiness groups have used the pandemic to seek a delay in privacy rules, including a March letter from dozens of trade groups that urged California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to delay enforcement of the state’s new privacy law for six months due to Covid-19. The groups represent advertisers, tech companies, financial services firms, telecom providers, retailers, toymakers and more. Becerra’s office said it wasn’t planning any delay in the July 1 enforcement date.“Industry wants to use its role addressing today’s threats to public health as a lobbying tool to weaken the resolve of lawmakers to protect privacy,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy and a longtime online privacy advocate.Use of consumers’ data is governed largely by individual services’ privacy policies, which are often contained in sprawling documents that most users click through without reading. Few, if any, of the data uses clearly run afoul of laws or regulations, privacy experts say.Hubei ProvinceMany of the proposed ways to use data to combat coronavirus in the U.S. also stop short of what several other countries have done.In China, authorities used phone-carrier data to trace everyone who’s been in or near Hubei province, home to Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak. Singapore’s TraceTogether app uses Bluetooth technology to map a person’s contacts in case an infected person fails to recall all social interactions. And Israel has approved the use of tracking technology developed to combat terrorism to trace the movements of coronavirus patients.The lack of a federal law in the U.S. and the potential for privacy erosions are prompting advocates to push for guardrails. “This pandemic is just another example of why we need a strong, comprehensive baseline federal privacy law and a U.S. data protection agency,” said Caitriona Fitzgerald, policy director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which has filed government records demands about the White House’s work with tech companies.“People may choose safety for the moment,” said Jessica Rich, a former director of the Federal Trade Commission’s consumer protection bureau and now a fellow at Georgetown Law’s Institute for Technology Law & Policy. “When this crisis is over, we will have eroded privacy norms and expectations and even regulations. And will we be able to get that back?”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Apple Acquires AI Startup to Better Understand Natural Language
(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. acquired Voysis, an artificial intelligence startup that developed a platform for digital voice assistants to better understand people’s natural language.Dublin, Ireland-based Voysis focused on improving digital assistants inside online shopping apps, so the software could respond more accurately to voice commands from users. A now-removed company webpage said the technology could narrow product search results by processing shopping phrases such as “I need a new LED TV” and “My budget is $1,000.” Voysis provided this AI to other companies to incorporate it into their own apps and voice assistants.Read more about the startup here: Synthesizing Realistic Human Speech Just Got a Lot EasierAn Apple spokesman said the company “buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”Voysis’s system taps into Wavenets, an AI-based method for creating more human-like computer speech that was first developed by Google’s DeepMind in 2016. Voysis co-founder Peter Cahill said in 2018 that his company managed to shrink its system to the point where, once the AI is trained, the software uses as little as 25 megabytes of memory -- about the same size as four Apple Music songs. That made it much easier to run on smartphones without an internet connection.Apple could use the acquired know-how improve Siri’s understanding of natural language or to offer the Voysis platform to thousands of developers that already integrate with the Apple digital assistant. Apple has been the top buyer of AI startups in recent years and has a portfolio that already includes former startups including Turi, Xnor.ai, and Laserlike.Read more: Big Tech Swallows Most of the Hot AI StartupsVoysis was founded in 2012 and sold its services to several companies. It also had offices in Edinburgh and Boston and got $8 million in venture funding from Polaris Partners in 2017.The acquisition is the second Apple deal disclosed this week. The Cupertino, California-based tech giant also bought Dark Sky, a popular weather app for iPhones and iPads.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Sky News
Coronavirus: Google data shows how people's movements have changed since outbreak
Visits to shops, museums and cafes in the UK have fallen by 85% since the coronavirus outbreak, according to data shared by Google. The technology firm's anonymised data of people's locations provides an insight into how the public are moving around during the pandemic. The information comes from products such as Google Maps, the company said.
- Bloomberg
Google Joins With U.K. Researchers to Track Coronavirus Cases
(Bloomberg) -- Google is working with researchers in Europe to track the spread of the coronavirus using troves of location data gathered from smartphones.The search engine giant is collaborating with academics from the University of Southampton in the U.K., who in turn are working with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, according to several people involved in the project.The location data, which Google collects from location-enabled apps such as Google Maps, has been shared with the researchers in an aggregated and anonymized format. It can’t be used to track an individual person; rather, it shows broad patterns of movement across entire countries over periods of time, according to the people.The data is helping researchers analyze the relationship between travel patterns and transmission rates of the virus within different countries, according to the people, while also providing insight into the effectiveness of lock downs in European countries.“We are looking at inner-city movement across the EU and what it means for controlling Covid-19,” said Nick Ruktanonchai, an infectious disease epidemiologist and lecturer at the University of Southampton. “With the location data, we are testing different scenarios and simulating what might happen if countries don’t end their lock downs in a coordinated way. It’s about buying time. We want to make sure a big second epidemic doesn’t happen months down the line.”Ruktanonchai’s description was confirmed by three others familiar with the project, who requested anonymity.A spokesman for Google pointed to a blog post the company published on Friday, which stated that it was “collaborating with select epidemiologists working on Covid-19 with updates to an existing aggregate, anonymized dataset that can be used to better understand and forecast the pandemic.”The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control didn’t respond to a request for comment.The researchers are also working with telecommunications giant Vodafone Group Plc, Ruktanonchai said, and have combined data from Vodafone’s mobile phone networks with the Google location data in an effort to create more accurate models of movement patterns in Europe.A spokesman for Vodafone Group confirmed that the company was working with Southampton researchers on a project to monitor how the coronavirus might develop in different scenarios.In recent weeks, more than a dozen countries -- including the U.S., U.K., Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain, South Korea, Iran and Taiwan -- have turned to mobile phone location data as a method of monitoring people’s movements during the coronavirus pandemic.Two of the U.K.’s largest telecommunications companies – British Telecom and Telefonica UK Ltd – have said that they have provided anonymized location data to the government to support policy planning during the coronavirus crisis. In Austria and Italy, authorities are using location data provided by Telekom Austria and Vodafone to keep tabs on whether people are following restrictions on movement.The data has proved useful in determining whether lock down measures have been successful. However, privacy experts have raised concerns about its use. On Thursday, a coalition of more than 100 human-rights groups issued a joint statement that called on governments not to “disregard rights such as privacy and freedom of expression in the name of tackling a public health crisis.”The work being done in the U.K. not only offers an insight into current movement patterns but also enables the researchers to try and predict future scenarios. “We’re looking at what happens if all countries coordinate lock downs” or end their lock downs at different times, said Andy Tatem, director of the University of Southampton’s WorldPop project, which is leading the research.If countries in Europe don’t coordinate, Tatem said, it could lead to a resurgence of the virus.Teams at Alphabet Inc.’s Google have been working for weeks to find ways to use the company’s large stores of data to assist governments and organizations to manage their response to the coronavirus outbreak, according to two people familiar with those efforts.On Friday, Google announced that it would begin publishing “mobility reports” that show movement trends in 131 countries during the coronavirus pandemic. Google said the reports would document trends across different categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces and residential.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- TechCrunch
Google rolls back SameSite cookie changes to keep essential online services from breaking
Google today announced that it will temporarily roll back the changes it recently made to how its Chrome browser handles cookies in order to ensure that sites that perform essential services like banking, online grocery, government services and healthcare won't become inaccessible to Chrome users during the current COVID-19 pandemic. The new SameSite rules, which the company started rolling out to a growing number of Chrome users in recent months, are meant to make it harder for sites to access cookies from third-party sites and hence track a user's online activity. Under Google's new guidance, developers must explicitly allow their cookies to be read by third-party sites, otherwise, the browser will prevent these third-party sites from accessing them.
- Zacks
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Alibaba
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Alibaba
- TechCrunch
Daily Crunch: Google publishes coronavirus mobility reports
Google uses its ad-tracking data to provide a glimpse at how the world is responding to coronavirus, the CDC changes its tune on face masks and Apple accidentally reveals that AirTags are coming. Google is giving the world a clearer look of exactly how much it knows about people everywhere — using the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to repackage its persistent tracking of where users go and what they do as a public good in the midst of a pandemic. In a blog post, the tech giant announced the publication of what it’s calling COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports, an in-house analysis of the much more granular location data it maps and tracks to fuel its ad-targeting, product development and wider commercial strategy, now used to showcase aggregated changes in population movements around the world.
- Zacks
Facebook (FB) Launches Messenger for Windows and Mac Desktop
Facebook (FB) releases Messenger App For Windows and MacOS as usage of desktop browser increases 100% amid coronavirus-induced lockdown.
- Zacks
Tech Players Fight Fake News as Coronavirus Fears Escalate
The move is aimed at countering manipulated content and getting a grip over misinformation being circulated related to the pandemic.
- Investing.com
Alphabet A Stock Falls 3%
Investing.com - Alphabet A (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Stock fell by 3.01% to trade at $1,084.23 by 13:40 (17:40 GMT) on Friday on the NASDAQ exchange.
- TechCrunch
Google is now publishing coronavirus mobility reports, feeding off users' location history
Google is giving the world a clearer glimpse of exactly how much it knows about people everywhere -- using the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to repackage its persistent tracking of where users go and what they do as a public good in the midst of a pandemic. In a blog post today, the tech giant announced the publication of what it's branding COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports, an in-house analysis of the much more granular location data it maps and tracks to fuel its ad-targeting, product development and wider commercial strategy to showcase aggregated changes in population movements around the world. In the EU, for example, the European Commission has been leaning on telcos to hand over anonymized and aggregated location data to model the spread of COVID-19.
- Reuters
Europe's north-south lockdown divide revealed by Google data
Italy and Spain, the two European countries hardest hit by the new coronavirus, have enforced the most drastic lockdowns to curb the pandemic but one country, Sweden, stands out for allowing life to go on much as before, Google data show. An analysis https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility of smartphone location data by the U.S. search engine giant showed that visits to shops, parks or railway stations fell steeply in most European countries between Feb. 16 and March 29 as governments sought to slow the explosive spread of the COVID-19 disease. In Italy and Spain, which have imposed near-total lockdowns on public life, retail and recreational trips were down by 94%.
- Reuters
Google data shines light on whether coronavirus lockdowns worldwide are working
Alphabet Inc's Google has published charts showing how the coronavirus has brought hard-hit Italy to a standstill, led to runs on grocery stores around the world and prompted a stark drop in going-out between Mardi Gras and St. Patrick's Day. The analysis of location data from billions of Google users' phones is the largest public dataset available to help health authorities assess if people are abiding with shelter-in-place and similar orders issued across the world to rein in the virus. The company released reports for 131 countries with charts that compare traffic from Feb. 16 to March 29 to retail and recreational venues, train and bus stations, grocery stores and workplaces with a five-week period earlier this year.
- Bloomberg
They Rented Their Cars Out Online. Then Things Fell Apart
(Bloomberg) -- Los Angeles resident Matt Hauer has been renting out his Toyota Corolla to strangers since last May using the popular car-sharing app Getaround Inc. Occasionally his renters got parking tickets or left messes, but he was always satisfied with how Getaround addressed the issues. Then last month, his front bumper partly fell off and began dragging—which he said his mechanic assessed as the result of a renter’s fender-bender. But this time, Hauer’s attempts to get Getaround pay the $1,200 bill degenerated into a string of unanswered emails and long stretches of waiting on hold. His last interaction with the company was a phone call last week. “They told me they’d call me back in 10 minutes,” he said. “I have yet to hear back.”The economic crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic is hitting startups hard. More than 7,000 employees at young tech companies have lost their jobs since March 11, according to the website Layoffs.fyi, which compiles public reporting. The so-called sharing economy in particular has been hobbled by the reaction to the pandemic. On March 20, Bloomberg reported that Getaround was actively looking to sell itself and could seek bankruptcy protection if it couldn’t secure a deal. It cut jobs in late March.“Like most startups, we are often in discussions with potential investors and strategic partners, some of whom may also be potential acquirers,” a Getaround representative said in a statement. “With the amount of uncertainty related to Covid-19—we are continuing to model scenarios for the business as we often do throughout the year. We are not actively seeking bankruptcy protection.”Getaround’s main competitor, Turo Inc., said this week it had also reduced its staff by 30%. A Turo spokesman said it was in a “great cash position to weather this storm.”In interviews with Bloomberg, six car owners said they’ve had increasing trouble in recent months getting Getaround to pay for costs related to rentals. In two cases, car owners said Getaround had agreed to pay repair shops directly, but that mechanics wouldn’t release their cars for days because the money didn’t come through even after Getaround assured them it had been taken care of. In another incident, a user said the company has yet to send her the money renters paid to drive her car.Getaround, most recently valued by investors at well over $1 billion, had been having trouble before the pandemic. Starting late last year, there were noticeable changes in the startup’s responsiveness and willingness to pay for rental-related costs, the car owners said. Like Hauer, they said the shift was particularly stark given Getaround’s reasonable track record before then. In January, the company announced a round of job cuts, which it attributed to being “pressure tested due to rapid growth.” “We acknowledge that there is still work to be done to achieve our goals and we are working directly with a small group of owners who have experienced delays in the recent past in having their claims resolved,” a Getaround spokeswoman said in an email. She said the company had brought on new employees and managers to its claims team. Getaround said it rarely pays mechanics directly for repairs, which may have led to delays in those cases where it did so, and that it is unaware of any cases of car owners not receiving rental income. But frustrated car owners began to worry that the issues they’ve been experiencing reflected deeper problems at the company. One Los Angeles resident who began renting out two cars on Getaround in early 2019 said she had been so worn down by the difficulties in recouping costs for parking tickets and cleaning costs related to renters smoking that she had just paid for some of them.This person, who asked not to be named because she works in entertainment and doesn’t want a dispute with a car-sharing company showing up when people search for her on Google, said she’s now concerned about paying her leases without the $900 in monthly car-sharing income she had been making. “Honestly I feel so bad for whoever the founder of the company is,” she said. "At the same time, if they do go out of business, I can’t afford to lose that money.” Andie Kantor, a librarian who lives in Hawthorne, California, is just the type of car-owner you might expect to see in a Getaround ad. A single mother, Kantor saw the platform as an appealing way to make extra income. She purchased a Prius last year specifically to rent on Getaround, using the money to cover both its monthly costs and those of her primary vehicle. “My finances are tied up with this car,” she said. In February, a Getaround renter got into an accident that left the Prius seriously damaged. It took Kantor more than a week to get Getaround to arrange for a tow truck to take the car to a service shop, she said. Then, when she went to pick it up, the mechanic refused to release it, saying that Getaround hadn’t yet paid him, and still owed him money for a previous job. It took another 10 days of haggling, Kantor said, to get the company to pay. In total, she lost a month of rental income and now can’t rent out the car at all because of the pandemic. Hauer, the man whose bumper became detatched, has temporarily removed his car from the platform because he doesn’t think it’s safe to drive. Both he and Kantor said they’re considering selling their vehicles. “It all depends on the virus and how this works out,” Kantor said. “I don’t even know how to sell it at this point, because no one’s open.” For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Google Shares Data on How Virus Has Changed Movement in Cities
(Bloomberg) -- Google is releasing new data about how the coronavirus pandemic has cut down on foot traffic to transit centers, retail stores and public parks in more than 130 countries.The “mobility reports” will be posted publicly online. They come in response to requests from public health officials who want more data on how people are moving around cities to better combat the spread of Covid-19, the Alphabet Inc. unit said in a blog post. Each report will show how traffic to certain categories of places, such as parks and transportation hubs, has declined in the last month. The information won’t show individual places or people.Google arguably has the most accurate and granular data about people’s location of any organization, public or private. More than a billion people worldwide use the company’s Maps app to navigate places they live and travel to, giving Google real-time insight into how people move around their environments. With Covid-19 infecting more than a million people and killing tens of thousands, governments are looking for location information to help them curb the disease and enforce lockdown orders.At the same time, privacy advocates argue the crisis will give authorities unprecedented access to personal information that could be used to surveil and oppress populations long after the virus is stopped. Google said the mobility reports don’t impinge on privacy because they only use data from people who have agreed to share their location with the company, and the information can’t be tied to individual accounts.“Knowing the general pattern of how a community moves can play a critical role in responding to the novel coronavirus and preventing future pandemics,” said Sara Cody, health officer and director for Santa Clara County’s public health department. “This information can help us understand how seriously people are taking the shelter at home order and what additional steps might be needed to slow the spread.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Humu, a Startup Run by Former Google HR Boss, Cuts Jobs
(Bloomberg) -- Humu Inc., a software firm run by Google’s former human resources chief, is the latest Silicon Valley startup to cut jobs due to the impact of the coronavirus.The startup made the reductions this week and is planning to lower its hiring goal for the year by 40%. Laszlo Bock, Humu’s co-founder and chief executive officer, confirmed the moves but declined to say how many people were involved. The company had about 80 workers recently.“Reductions are always tough, but against the backdrop of the greatest economic slowdown in a century, everyone is being forced to make painful decisions,” he wrote in an email. “We’ve focused on being as empathetic as possible, though of course there’s no way to make this a positive experience for people.”Startups have been hit particularly hard during the crisis. An estimated 8,000 employees were let go at roughly 100 U.S. startups since March 11, when the the coronavirus was declared a pandemic. That figure comes from Layoffs.fyi, a tracker that measures publicly announced job cuts. The actual total is likely far higher.Young firms that burn through cash quickly or haven’t raised outside funds recently are especially vulnerable. Humu, which sells data-analytics software for companies to improve workplace cultures, said last year that it had raised $40 million from two financing rounds.Some tech employees have reported traumatic downsizing experiences, such as having job cuts announced on group video calls. Bock said Humu founders delivered the news personally. “I and the other leaders in the company are 100% focused on helping people land in a good spot, opening our networks and relationships to every one of our people, and calling in every favor we can,” he said.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- Yahoo Finance
Journalism has 'never been more important than it is right now': Facebook COO
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg discusses Facebook's effort to boost local news as the industry struggles to cope with the coronavirus pandemic.
- Zacks
Zacks Market Edge Highlights: Facebook, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon and Netflix
Zacks Market Edge Highlights: Facebook, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon and Netflix
- Bloomberg
Google Will Start Allowing Political Ads That Mention Covid-19
(Bloomberg) -- Google will allow political ads that mention the coronavirus, reversing a policy that’s been in place since January, after some U.S. politicians complained it was stifling their campaigns during an election year.The company initially blocked all ads related to the virus under its policy of not letting marketers capitalize on major unexpected events like epidemics and natural disasters. As the virus spread, Google started allowing health authorities to buy ads for public service announcements. Soon, political advertisers will be able to jump in, too, according to a memo sent to advertisers by Google’s head of industry, elections, Mark Beatty. More information will be provided “in the next few days,” he added.In the U.S., politicians have criticized President Donald Trump’s response to the crisis, and some political groups complained that Google’s ad ban prevented them from telling potential voters about this. The virus has also added more fuel to the debate over whether the U.S. should adopt a single-payer health-care system, one of the central issues in the Democratic presidential primary. Google and its YouTube video service have become a big part of election strategies for many politicians. Axios previously reported on the memo.“COVID-19 is becoming an important part of everyday conversation, including a relevant topic in political discourse,” a Google spokesperson said. “We’re planning to allow more advertisers to run ads related to COVID-19.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- TechCrunch
Google Cloud launches a managed Memcached service
Google today announced the beta of Memorystore for Memcached, a new service that provides a fully managed in-memory datastore that is compatible with the open-source Memcached protocol. It will join Redis in the Memorystore family, which first launched in 2018. As Gopal Ashok, Google's product manager for Memorystore, notes in today's announcement, Redis remains a popular choice for use cases like session stores, gaming leaderboards, stream analytics, threat detection and API rate limiting, while Memcached is typically used as a caching layer for databases.
- Reuters
Google to allow some coronavirus ads, starting with hospitals, then political ads
The new policy was laid out in a memo to advertising clients seen on Thursday by Reuters, which said the company from this week was allowing ads from government entities, hospitals, medical providers and non-governmental organizations that want to get relevant information out to the public. It said the plan for ads from political organizations would be announced in coming days.
- Bloomberg
Cash and Credit Cards Are Dirty. Apple Pay Is Looking Better.
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Cash is dirty. Credit cards may be even dirtier. That’s a problem in this new germophobic world created by the coronavirus. There will likely be new winners and losers as consumers shift to products and services that help them keep their social distance even after this outbreak subsides. Is it finally time to embrace the digital wallet?Take Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay, a service that stores your credit-card information and lets you pay for purchases via your iPhone. The tech giant launched the product six years ago, but it didn’t bring about the revolution it hoped it would, where mobile payments lead the move toward a cashless society as it had in China. Here in the U.S., there just wasn’t a compelling enough reason for many consumers to change their entrenched routines. Now, though, Apple Pay’s ability to let customers shop inside physical stores and pay for things without having to make physical contact with a counter or card-reader may be the catalyst it needs to finally disrupt the payments industry.My own habits are noticeably changing on this front. Though I had my card information inside Apple Pay for years, I rarely ever used it. Old habits die hard, and I simply didn’t mind pulling out my credit card and paying for things the usual way. Nowadays? Not so much. Due to virus fears, I would rather not tap on a payment terminal’s numeric key pads or use my finger to sign for purchases when there is a much cleaner alternative. As a result, Apple Pay has now become the main way I pay for things whenever I venture outside.The way Apple Pay works is, you type in your credit card information into the Apple Wallet app. Once entered, you can pay for items at most physical store retailers by double-clicking the power button, authenticating using Face ID or Touch ID and then hovering your iPhone a few inches above the payment terminal. Google Pay and Samsung Pay work similarly on their respective smartphones. This type of proximity-based mobile payment enables consumers to pay for items without touching or handing over anything. Traditional paper bills and physical card payment alternatives are filthy in comparison. An academic study cited by Mastercard found the average cash note has 26,000 bacterial colonies. And according to LendEDU, a personal finance products comparison website, credit cards contain even more germs than cash or New York City subway poles. It makes sense as cards are often put on tables, inside restaurant bill folders and are rarely cleaned, while cash is constantly circulated by hand.Yes, the credit-card companies are rolling out their own version of contactless or “tap-to-pay” payments. Visa and Mastercard both said in their most recent reported quarters that about one-third of global transactions are now contactless. But the usage rate of the new cards is much lower in the U.S. as many Americans have yet to receive them. Further, it still requires touching the physical card and tapping the terminal (or at least getting the card within a couple of inches). This year, Apple Pay will command 47% of the U.S. proximity-based mobile payment market, with Google capturing 19% and Samsung Pay 17%, according to an eMarketer forecast.Admittedly, the U.S. market is still small, and expectations were relatively muted heading into this year before the pandemic struck. Only about 33 million Americans were expected to use Apple Pay’s proximity-based payment feature in 2020, or 14.5% of smartphone users, according to an eMarketer forecast made in September. But things are a lot different now.If Apple Pay and its brethren do take off, there will be deeper ramifications across the industry. Credit-card companies will do fine because their card networks are still being utilized by the smartphone maker’s service. But it could be a negative for PayPal Holdings Inc., the payments company that dominates the adjacent market of digital checkout buttons for online retailers.PayPal’s e-commerce checkout button enables its users to pay for online orders on retailer websites without having to re-type address or payment information, reducing friction to complete orders. It is a critical cash cow for the company and accounts for nearly 90% of its earnings, according to MoffettNathanson.But Apple Pay also offers a competing digital checkout feature. And if Apple Pay became increasingly used inside physical stores, it seems likely customers will be inclined to use the service for e-commerce transactions as well, eating into PayPal’s business.With new consumer habits being formed in a coronavirus world, Apple’s gain may be PayPal’s pain.This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Tae Kim is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. He previously covered technology for Barron's, following an earlier career as an equity analyst.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
