Supreme Court Refuses To Decide If APIs Are Copyrightable
The U.S. Supreme Court has denied an appeal from Google in its ongoing legal battle with Oracle over software copyright. The move means that the search giant, which argues that its reliance on Oracle's software development tools falls under fair use, must go back and try to sway the lower courts.
The outcome of this 5-year-old tussle may have enormous repercussions across the tech industry. Oracle sees itself as a champion of sorts, fighting to protect intellectual property rights. Google, on the other hand, believes it is defending innovation. If the courts rule that application programming interfaces (APIs) are subject to copyright, the decision could severely restrict the ability of coders to build on or modify the work of others.
See also: Chilling Effect: Oracle Wins Appeal to Copyright APIs
That's no small matter. Advances in software often come from app makers adapting or furthering someone else's code to solve problems or create something new. Whatever final rulings come from this case could shape the very nature of all future software development—and apparently, the Supreme Court wants nothing to do with making this decision.
With so much hanging in the balance, let's take a look at how we got here.
Is It Taking Cues Or Stealing?
The court case tells a similar story to others found in everything from music to novels: Everyone can agree that there's a fine line between being inspired by something and ripping it off. But the opinions vary on where it should lie.
In the feud between Oracle and Google, which dates back to August 2010, that line is drawn by Google's usage of Oracle's Java APIs as the foundation of Android. (See our API explainer.) Software makers use APIs to hook into applications and platforms, either to tie existing products or services to them or, as in this case, to build their own works on top of them.
See also: What APIs Are And Why They're Important
The primary conflict: While Google created its own modified version of Java for its mobile operating system, the company left several of its conventions and code structures in place to help developers build for the platform. Oracle thinks that's unfair.
In 2012, Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California ruled that APIs could not be subject to copyright. That decision was later overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals in May 2014, in a ruling deemed "disastrous" by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Google has the opportunity to present a fair-use defense—but now, that argument will head to the lower courts instead of the Supreme Court.
Protecting Innovation
The Journal quoted Oracle General Counsel Dorian Daley as saying that the high court's move “is a win for innovation and for the technology industry that relies on copyright protection to fuel innovation.”
Both sides believe they're fighting to foster software innovation, whether that's by protecting the work done by developers (Oracle) or allowing other developers the freedom to reuse the same basic frameworks (Google).
In 2012, Google said it believes that "open and interoperable computer languages form an essential basis for software development" and now it's going to have to argue that case all over again.
If the tech giant loses, its Android platform—which powers everything from phones and tablets to televisions, connected car technologies and smartwatches—could suddenly become prohibitively expensive for developers and partners to adopt. That may prompt the company to switch to one of its own homegrown languages (such as Go or Dart) to avoid that scenario.
It's hard to see how that could be a win for developers, and Oracle more or less stands alone in believing that this is a productive path for the software industry. Winning a $1 billion suit, however, would be rather productive for the company itself.
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Is Embracing Total Transparency Really a Good Idea?
Guest author Scott Gerber is the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council.
There's a lot of debate around whether or not businesses should be completely transparent about salaries, revenue and other traditionally confidential information. Companies like Buffer bare all, while other startups look for a middle ground.
There are pros and cons to each side. We polled a group of founders from YEC to see what they're thoughts were about whether total transparency is a good decision, or one that would ultimately hurt the business. Their best answers are below.
1. Pro: It Encourages Accountability and Ownership
If you expect people to act like owners of the business, you need to give them information about how the business is doing, whether good or bad. It's very difficult for people to feel a sense of ownership if they are siloed and kept in the dark about the fundamental operating metrics of the business, it's revenue and it's growth. By sharing those numbers—and treating people like adults who can maintain confidentiality—you will imbue a sense of ownership. Your team will get excited when they can see the impact of their day-to-day work and progress printed in black and white on your income statement. —Matt Mickiewicz, Hired
2. Con: Information Without Context Upsets Staff
In general, I try to keep a majority of our financial information under lock and key. It's important to remember that your staff are not business owners, and aren't going to view financial figures in the same light that you do. They don't understand the bigger picture about expenses, salaries, why a client pays a certain amount, etc. Therefore, they don't need to be privy to the information because it usually just makes them analyze and worry about things that are already under control. If they needed to view these types of financial figures, they would already be a business owner and not working for my company. —Cassie Petrey, Crowd Surf
3. Pro: It Filters Out Ill-Fitting Employees
Working for a startup means that the environment will be a little unorthodox. Some might find the environment a little too transparent. While this might seem like a downside, if they want to stay and challenge the status quo (and their salary), they know exactly what to do. Transparency will increase competition. It's not up to you to stop your employees from competing with one another, but it's your responsibility to make sure that no matter the outcome they feel motivated to work and try again. As an employer, you should reward improvement, and reward excellence—this is the perfect way to balance the pendulum. —Cody McLain, SupportNinja
4. Con: Salary Transparency Can Breed Resentment
It's great to keep customers, investors, and employees up to date about how much revenue your company is making and where the cash flow goes. However, sharing salary information is going too far. Not all disciplines are created equal, and competitive pay rates will vary across different departments. Salary transparency doesn't encourage innovation or teamwork—it encourages resentment and competition. If you make it clear what kind of work output is productive and valuable, new employees will naturally work harder to be recognized and receive raises. The only difference is that if you keep salary information private, they'll also work with their teammates, instead of against them. —Jared Brown, Hubstaff
5. Pro: Salary Transparency Favors Gender Equality
More people in tech are realizing that women in the sector are historically at a disadvantage in salary negotiations—often being unfairly discriminated against. However, if a tech startup makes all the employee salaries known, and it's clear that both men and women of the same rank, expertise, and education are being paid equally, both employees and consumers will trust that company more. On the flip side of the coin, there's no place for wage discrimination to hide, as it'll be perfectly clear if male employees are being paid more than female employees across the board. It's a small change, and there's more that needs to be done, but salary transparency can help promote equal pay. —Dave Nevogt, Hubstaff.com
6. Pro: It Supports a Level Playing Field
Being transparent allows employees to know the expectations. These are good to know up front and collectively. For example, in a sales environment, each employee's achievements and goals should be transparent in order to encourage competition. This is especially important in a startup, because transparency within a smaller company makes each employee feel more valued and kept out of the dark. —Jayna Cooke, Eventup
7. Con: It Can Lead to Data Overload
The founders and management team need to come to consensus on how you define total transparency. This way, there's consistency in information shared across the organization, and information withheld or overshared with only some individuals or departments. Total transparency can lead to data overload and relevancy issues, resulting in partial information uptake and therefore partial transparency. For example, we share high-level financial line items (revenue, COGS, expenses and net income) with employees, but we don't share every line item (including salaries) because it's often irrelevant and leads to some employees missing the important high level points. —Andrew Fayad, eLearning Mind
8. Con: It Can Be Distracting
Depending on your company, you might have some issues that will be stressful and distracting to a lot of people. Fundraising is probably the greatest example of this. It's hard to focus on selling $20,000 products when you're paying attention to a $2 million or $20 million funding round. Everyone's attention will be on it, and a lot of people will not have the proper understanding of how likely a degree of failure is. Maybe pre-money is worse than it looked like at one point. Maybe that big investor did not come through. All of these can depress employees, particularly people not used to sales, for very limited benefit. —Ville Lehtonen, LabMinds
9. Con: It Can Create Turbulence
Transparency in an environment without communication and trust can create a lot of turbulence in group dynamics. If you are a startup at the fundraising phase and you communicate that to your team, they will get excited. If you then drop that proposal for reasons not very obvious to them and they don't feel free to ask, then the climate is ruined. So it is good to share safely when you are at a progressed stage or when your audience and the environment created is mature. The same goes for all financial data. When there is uncertainty, it is better to keep some secrecy protecting the work atmosphere; if the data ia clear and you are there to answer all questions, then go ahead and share. —Yiannis Giokas, Crypteia Networks
10. Con: It Removes Room to Experiment
In a startup where you are trying to optimize costs, you might want to experiment with employees from different educational backgrounds to see where you can get the best ROI. For example, when you are hiring for sales, you might want to compare the performance of MBAs with non-MBAs. Of course, their salaries will be different and if you practice 100 percent transparency, it could lead to disgruntled employees. It's similar with revenue. You may not feel as comfortable while experimenting with revenue streams because of the fear of your employees losing confidence in the company if the experiment fails. —Pratham Mittal, VenturePact
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Google Play Developer Policy Updates In A Nutshell: Don't Be A Jerk
For a company that has played a key role in fashioning today's Web—in all its fun, creative and also sometimes depraved glory—Google seems to be oddly horrified lately by the proposition of negative behavior.
The company just updated its developer program policies Wednesday to include, among other things, a specific provision governing sensitivity to tragic events.
How does one govern sensitivity? Here's Google's take: "We don't allow content which may be deemed as capitalizing on or lacking reasonable sensitivity towards a natural disaster, atrocity, conflict, death, or other tragic event," the policy now reads.
The company also took the opportunity to frown on deceptive behavior with a few bullet points restricting things like mimicking other software, or including features and art that deliberately trick users. The text stops short of telling developers to play nice and say "please" and "thank you."
Consider it Google's official "anti-jerk" policy for developers.
Enforcing Niceness
Supporting decency in general is an admirable goal. But relying on technology companies as some sort of arbiters of decency can be a slippery slope.
Take this part from the "Impersonation or Deceptive Behavior" section, for instance: "Products or the ads they contain must not mimic functionality or warnings from the operating system or other apps." The statement essentially prohibits developers from ripping off Android functions or other apps. But the way it's worded, the policy would also prohibit apps containing parodies from poking fun at other software.
Then there's the other matter of what qualifies as "mimicking" other apps. If a developer has a new streaming app, technically, the company could use the policy as a weapon to ban it from Google Play, citing the fact that Netflix also streams, not to mention YouTube and Google Play itself.
Not that Google's policies are the only developer guidelines with unusual directives. Apple, for instance, singles out apps that contain Russian Roulette, banning them from its App Store.
It seems Google has been busy pondering morality in a variety of ways lately. The company—along with Amazon, eBay and Etsy—took a cue from brick-and-mortar retailers recently and pulled Confederate flag merchandise from its Web marketplace, in response to last week's deadly mass shooting at a South Carolina church.
Other Nuts-And-Bolts Issues
Other updates to Google's policy address more pragmatic issues.
These range from clarifying details concerning payments—primarily about the use of Google Play In-app Billing whenever possible—and a new section barring "content that harms, interferes with the operation of, or accesses in an unauthorized manner, networks, servers, application programming interfaces (APIs), or other infrastructure."
In other words, don't try to submit apps to the store that mess with Google's plumbing, including its software.
Failure to comply with these policies, and Google will be forced to stop playing nice. Consider yourself warned.
Lead photo by Anita Hart
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What WebAssembly Means: More Powerful Web Apps
Competing browser makers, led by Mozilla’s Firefox engineers, made a surprising revelation last week: They've been secretly working on a joint project that could vault the Web into its next stage of evolution.
"I'm happy to report that we at Mozilla have started working with Chromium, Edge and WebKit engineers on creating a new standard, WebAssembly,” Luke Wagner, one of the project's leaders, wrote in a blog post.
The immediate effect of WebAssembly (known as "wasm" for short) is that it should make online browsing faster. But that may be its least exciting benefit.
The standard could give developers the ability to take powerful, processor-hungry experiences—the type that has been primarily restricted to desktop software—and make them work well online. WebAssembly shouldn’t overcomplicate development, either. On the contrary, it streamlines the process, making Web-app creation easier.
See also: How Asm.js Could Transfigure PC Gaming
That has deep implications in today's app-obsessed world. All too often, developers and users are forced to pick hardware-oriented sides—Apple’s iOS and OS X, Google’s Android, Microsoft’s Windows, or another platform. If WebAssembly works to usher in powerful Web apps, developers tired of making (or remaking) apps to suit specific platforms could have a way off the porting merry-go-round.
The most promising aspect thus far: The standard won’t have to fight for support. Thanks to its origins as a collaboration between Web-standards rivals, the project will arrive with support from the major browsers already baked in.
Crossing The Wasm
When it comes to technical standards, adoption is no small matter. Some standards can age or even die on the shelf, waiting for widespread support. Take wireless charging, for instance.
Fighting between three major organizations, each championing a different approach, has kept the tech makers from rallying behind a particular one. Although two consortia have merged recently, the fight’s still not over.
See also: NPM Wants To Push JavaScript Developers To Make Lego-Like Web Apps
In contrast, WebAssembly has a dream team of Chromium, WebKit and Edge browser engineers behind it, making it destined for widespread support from the world’s leading browsers—namely Google’s Chrome; Apple’s Safari; and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer replacement, Edge—not to mention Mozilla’s Firefox.
Such collaboration among rivals seems remarkable, especially in the highly competitive world of technology. But it also reminds us what can be accomplished when smart people put their minds together. WebAssembly stands to offer Web applications with desktop-class performance across categories—from advanced gaming, video editing, even virtual-reality (VR) activities. And users would be able to access those apps from anywhere, without fussing with downloads or software installations.
That could give a big boost to technologies, like virtual reality. Developers would have numerous ways to bring their projects to the public, while users have more to enjoy. (That’s one reason for YouTube’s newfound support for 360-degree videos.)
One look at the technical underpinnings could give developers even more reason to cheer.
No JavaScript Killer—More Like A JavaScript Booster
On his blog, JavaScript expert and author Axel Rauschmayer describes WebAssembly as "a new feature of JavaScript engines that builds on their infrastructures.”
Let’s unpack that a little: Much of today’s Web was made with JavaScript, the Web development language created in 1995 by Brendan Eich, formerly of Netscape and Mozilla. Without it, static webpages would stretch out endlessly before our bored eyeballs. Instead, we now have dynamic features, from simple games and animations, to bookmark applets and full-blown Web apps.
JavaScript is not the only game in town, but it has been the most popular. Now WebAssembly aims to improve upon it, both in power and ease. In that regard, it's tempting to call the new standard a Javascript killer. But that’s not quite accurate. WebAssembly doesn’t replace, but adds to JavaScript, filling in some important gaps—oddly enough, by drilling down to some basics.
See also: Can We Please Stop Fighting The Native vs. Web App Wars?
Mozilla and its new pals have given developers a binary format for the Web. They get access to low-level building blocks, so they can essentially construct whatever they want.
The further you dig into the technical details, the better WebAssembly seems. For example, it offers developers a better way to compile code without wanting to pull their hair out. Compilers act as translators for source code, making it understandable for other languages and letting it be acted on, as in executable programs. It’s a critical part of development, and WebAssembly can step in as the compilation target, easing JavaScript’s load. Rauschmayer explains that WebAssembly may be most useful "for performance critical code and to compile other languages (especially C/C++) to the web platform.”
Eich weighed in on WebAssembly on his blog, where he also argued that JavaScript is far from dead, and will keep progressing alongside this new technology:
[W]ith co-evolution of JS and wasm, in a few years I believe all the top browsers will sport JS engines that have become truly polyglot virtual machines. I predict that JS over the same timespan will endure and evolve to absorb more APIs and hardware-based affordances — but not all, where wasm carries the weight.
WebAssembly may still be in its early stages, but its potential already seems big. Hopefully the reality will match the promise, because a faster, more efficient—and more powerful—Web just can’t here fast enough.
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What Makes Tesla, Apple, and Amazon Different
There's something about Tesla ...
In Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, Ashlee Vance's excellent, newly released biography of the Tesla Motors CEO, he writes that Musk's all-electric Model S Tesla sedan "slapped Detroit sober," despite the automobile industry tinkering with electric cars for years. Musk went further, and is winning big.
This same principle helps to explain Apple's and Amazon's successes, too. In each case, these companies have been willing to bet 100 percent on the future, rather than hedging or bridging to the past.
Let's start with Tesla.
Going Big On Batteries
I noted that the automobile industry had been working on electric vehicles for years, but that's not quite true. What the industry kept foisting on us were half-baked compromises—you know, hybrid cars that looked like hamsters (Toyota Prius) and felt like they were powered by them, too.
Tesla, however, is different. As Vance writes:
With Tesla Motors, Musk has tried to revamp the way cars are manufactured and sold, while building out a worldwide fuel distribution network at the same time. Instead of hybrids, which in Musk lingo are suboptimal compromises, Tesla strives to make all-electric cars that people lust after and that push the limits of technology.
I remember the first time I test drove a Model S. It didn't feel like a compromise. It felt like the coolest driving experience I've ever had, and I've wanted to buy one ever since.
Musk and his Tesla team could have come out with the world's greatest hybrid, but that would have also been the world's greatest compromise. He's inventing the future, not making a comfortable causeway to the past. That's why he's winning.
Apple Goes All In On Touch
Apple has followed a similar track with the iPhone, by far its biggest success. At the time of its release, though, success was far from certain.
After all, Apple turned its back on the industry's dominant mobile experience—Blackberry—and built a phone without a physical keyboard. At the time I thought this was insane, and said so. Nor was I alone in believing that a keyboard without tactile feedback would be a non-starter.
Apple was right, and I was wrong. Apple saw the possibilities inherent in a full touchscreen experience, while I and others were languishing in "Why isn't it like what I'm used to?" land. Microsoft, Research In Motion (as BlackBerry Inc. was then known), and other mobile manufacturers lost billions trying to appease their existing customer base while Apple's futuristic approach stole them away.
And it's not just in consumer tech where these lessons apply.
Amazon's "True Cloud" Wins Converts
Take enterprise infrastructure, for example. In theory, nothing should be more resistant to change, as enterprises are reluctant to fix things that don't appear to be broken.
In practice, however, Amazon Web Services is turning enterprise IT upside down.
Sure, it's only a $5 billion business today, while hundreds of billions more gets spent on datacenters and software licenses. But directionally, AWS is winning, and winning big. It's currently ten times this size of the next largest 14 cloud competitors combined, according to Gartner, and shows no sign of slowing.
Like Tesla and Apple, AWS wins because it offers an unalloyed vision of the future.
For years we've been told that enterprises won't move workloads to the cloud for performance or security reasons, and for years companies keep doing it, anyway. For almost as long, we've been told that cloud is great but private cloud or hybrid cloud are what the enterprise really wants.
Meanwhile, AWS has left all private and hybrid clouds for roadkill.
Inventing The Future
Compromise is great in human relationships. It's not so great in product decisions.
Tesla Motors, Apple, and Amazon Web Services keep winning because they've refused to compromise on an exceptional customer experience, one that pushes us into the future, rather than bridging us to the past. Other companies also do this, like Red Hat with its laser-sharp focus on delivering 100% open-source solutions.
But most companies compromise. Most companies are afraid to go all-in on the future. And that is why most companies will never inspire us the way Tesla, Apple, and Amazon do.
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Now That HTC’s Interesting, Asus Eyes Acquisition
Asustek Computer Inc, the Taiwan-based company known widely as Asus, appears to be doing some window shopping—and it's eyeing fellow Taiwanese tech maker HTC, a Reuters story reports.
The short article's careful wording stops short of declaring the former's intentions, stating that "[Asus] has not ruled out the possibility of acquiring struggling smartphone maker HTC Corp." Reuters attributes the comment to Asustek Chairman Johnny Shih, who fielded questions about the topic at his company's annual general meeting.
Interest in the matter would have barely registered this time last year. HTC has gained a reputation as a maker of very decent phones that somehow fail to garner sales. But a few months ago, the underdog just made its biggest and boldest play yet with its new virtual reality headset, the Vive.
See also: Oculus Will Let You Grab Virtual Reality With Both Hands
The Prospect Of A Re…Vive
By and large, the Vive virtual reality system (a joint project with gaming giant Valve) surprised the industry by offering what has been hailed as the best consumer VR experience yet.
The announcement pulled the rug out from underneath companies like Oculus and Sony, particularly since HTC promised to deliver a consumer version of the headset by the end of this year. Both the Oculus Rift and Sony’s Project Morpheus VR goggles won’t be available until 2016.
An Asus-made Vive could accelerate interest even further. After all, plenty of signs point to this potentially being a great match.
See also: Google Jump Will Revolutionize Making Virtual-Reality Experiences
Asus may be best known to consumers for its Eee series devices, Padfones, Zenbooks, and ZenWatch smartwatch, but it makes all sorts of hardware. Its product lines include computers, mobile devices, networking equipment, motherboards, optical storage, multimedia products and servers, among other products. Asus also makes LED/LCD panels, monitors, and sound and graphics cards, which could come in very handy for a modern VR initiative.
Asus’ Fascination With VR
It’s not entirely clear what Asus could bring to HTC’s mobile efforts; its smartphones and tablets don’t lead the market either. But virtual reality could be another matter entirely.
Asus dabbled in it early on, with the Asus VR 100 3D glasses. It didn’t really make a dent at the time, but to be fair, it was more than a decade too early. Plus, the technology seemed incomplete, even ancient, compared to advances these days. Really, it was more about 3D gaming than the immersive virtual reality environments we're seeing now from the likes of Samsung's Gear VR, Oculus Rift, Sony's Project Morpheus, a burgeoning crowd of startups, and eve Google's Cardboard.
Now, VR has become one of the hottest emerging technologies, particularly among the gaming ranks. Asus already has its hands in that pie, too. Its Republic of Gamers brand promotes a line of computer hardware, peripherals and accessories targeted toward PC gamers.
The company has the technical chops to make the most out of the requisite visuals and audio, and even feasibly develop a whole Vive-optimized system. HTC would surely benefit from that expertise, as well as Asus' deep pockets. According to Gartner, after Lenovo and HP, Asus is the third-largest PC vendor by unit sales last year.
Chief Financial Officer David Chang did try to throw a little cold water on the matter: “[T]he chances of an actual takeover are not big…,” he told Reuters. The simple statement seems noteworthy, if only because it’s not a denial. Tech companies are usually quick to nix rumors or, worse, go into silent mode over potential deals. Chang’s comment was neither—which almost certainly means it’s still very early days.
HTC may be lying in wait, crossing its fingers that Shih wasn’t blowing hot air. Because an acquisition deal could be the best-case scenario—for both HTC and Vive VR fans.
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Funding The Web With Ads: This Outdated Model Has To Go
I hate ads. I hate them so much that I've banished them from my life. It's always a shock to see ads when I borrow someone else's browser, as Adblock Plus long ago gifted me an ad-free online life.
Striking back, companies like Hulu are determined to force us to watch insipid, often irrelevant ads just to watch old Saturday Night Live skits ("I've gotta have more cowbell!"). Other sites blow incredible stores of time, talent and energy—resources that could go toward product or feature development—on trying to get more traffic and ad clicks.
For years, online advertising has been the primary way to finance the Web, and that remains true, even for newer Web companies. That's a shame, because they're jumping on a bandwagon that's old and broken.
A Waste Of Brain Power
Far too many of today's biggest, most richly funded Web entrepreneurs are obsessed with advertising. Pinterest? Advertising. Ditto everyone else you can think of, including Snapchat—no matter how it attempts to style itself differently.
A recent Businessweek cover story on Snapchat reported CEO Evan Spiegel's "incredibly secretive" business plan, declaring it a "major turning point" for his company. Two sentences later, readers feasted their eyes on the big reveal:
After starting to run select video ads earlier this year, Snapchat is about to begin soliciting other big advertisers with some new numbers that assert its audience is bigger, younger, and more obsessive than anything on television.
Who would have guessed? Advertising. But not just any advertising. Spiegel's approach is different (he believes). Instead of "creepy" ads that follow a user around the Web, or other targeted ads, Snapchat will lead with—wait for it!—full-screen video ads. "In its sales document to advertisers," the article reports, "Snapchat claims its users are nine times more likely to watch an entire ad because they don’t have to rotate their phone."
Ads may be good for Snapchat's bottom line, as well as those of Google, Facebook, and other online services that provide cool services for free, or the pretense of free. But just because advertising lines the tech industry's pockets, that doesn't mean it's actually good for business.
Former Facebook and current Cloudera executive Jeff Hammerbacher once declared, "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks." He was right, but perhaps even he didn't appreciate just how stuck we'd become in this model.
When Things Don't Click
Some (like 37signal's David Heinemeier Hansson) argue that ad-based business models, often focused more on generating eyeballs than cash, can't sustain a real business. Responding to an article that bemoaned social platform company Ning's inability to match sustainable business with traffic growth, DHH ridicules the notion:
Are you kidding me? The company has blown through $120MM of VC funding over six years, built up massive traffic, yet just had to slash and burn, and you’re saying that “traffic growth is no longer good enough”. How the hell was it ever good enough? Ning’s problem is not a lack of eyeballs but its inability to turn them into cash money to pay the bills. Getting more of something that’s a net-negative is not going to make up for it.
But the bigger issue may actually dovetail with financial success. While Google's intent-based search meshes well with advertising, most business models don't.
Consider Facebook. In theory, the social giant learns about us through our interactions with each other on its network, so it can display appropriate updates or ads. In practice, its algorithms were designed to serve us things that they think will keep us clicking.
In other words, we get the optimal experience—for Facebook, that is. But not necessarily for us. The company says it's all for our own good, as we'd be overwhelmed by information if we got a straight list of friends' posts dumped on our feeds. But I've missed my family's posts too often, frequently in favor of shared links from acquaintances, to believe that. As for Facebook's stabs at advertising, those can be pretty hit or miss.
Since Facebook doesn't charge me for its services, I am, in fact, the product. I know that. But fortunately, unlike most users, I'm not a "paying" product, thanks to Adblock Plus.
Maybe A Digital Trade War's Just What We Need
As it becomes easier to install ad-blocking software like Adblock Plus, we may see its global users grow significantly above the estimated 200 million users today. On the one hand, this could create short-term pain for users, as The Economist writes:
If lots of mobile subscribers did switch [ad-blocking] on, it would give European carriers what they have long sought: some way of charging giant American online firms for the strain those firms put on their mobile networks. Google and Facebook, say, might have to pay the likes of Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica to get on to their whitelists.
If that happened, the online firms would surely fight back. If an operator were, say, to block the ads on Google’s search service, Google could retaliate by trying to stop that operator’s subscribers from accessing their Gmail accounts. Such a tit-for-tat is not as far-fetched as it may seem: Google closed its news-aggregation service in Spain after a new law required it to pay for using excerpts of publishers’ content. If the mobile firms are not careful, they could start the world’s first digital trade war.
But that might not be a bad thing. Maybe, just maybe, if enough people start blocking intrusive ads, the Web would figure out new ways to fund itself.
Already Google is experimenting with a Contributor program, which lets users contribute cash in lieu of gaping at ads. Baked into the cost of Internet service, something like this could work. Those who don't want to pay $10 per month can continue to field advertisements. Meanwhile, I (and I suspect others) would gladly pay for an ad-free existence. Absolutely.
Or maybe we'd find other ways to earn our keep. The problem is that the old advertising model so consumes us, we don't even try to innovate and find alternatives. Given enough ad-blocking, however, we just might realize that there's life after advertising.
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Facebook Is Now Pushing For Stronger Encryption
Facebook has demonstrated as well as any company could that sometimes the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. Take the news that Facebook is now supporting strong encryption in the emails it sends.
Yes, this from the company that broadcasts user location data within a meter in Facebook Messenger and requires the use of real names.
Facebook now lets users to add OpenPGP public keys to their profile, and to sign up for encrypted Facebook notifications.
PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, is a program that lets people encrypt and decrypt emails, and allows users to authenticate messages with digital signatures. It was once banned by the US government as a "munition."
Though legal for decades now, intelligence agencies have warned that widespread use of strong encryption could endanger their data-gathering efforts. For Facebook, which has felt burned by revelations about government snooping on its users, that's kind of the point.
See also: Understanding Encryption—Here's The Key
Here's how it works: Facebook now allows users to upload their public keys onto their profile, where they can be made visible to friends or to the public, just like other contact information is. Facebook further offers the option of encrypting notifications it sends to your email account. This provides some added protection, and also prevents your email provider from learning what you’re doing on Facebook.
You can read more about the tool in the PGP section of Electronic Frontier Foundation's Surveillance Self-Defense Guide, along with installation instructions for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.
“If you use Gmail and have configured Facebook to send you all the notifications you can possibly configure in your Facebook settings to your Gmail account, obviously Facebook would be feeding Google ... lots of interesting information that Google could stuff into [its] database,” says security adviser Per Thorseim, founder of the Passwords hacker conference. Encrypted notifications prevent that.
Using this feature further means that if your email account is hacked, or messages intercepted in transit, your Facebook notifications will be safe from prying eyes. Thorseim believes that password reset requests are where this is most important.
“The inbox has for a long time been a weak spot in attacking someone’s digital life,” he points out.
PGP to the Masses?
Will Facebook enabling encrypted notifications lead to widespread adoption of PGP?
“I would love to say that the answer is yes, but we all know that PGP is really difficult to use compared to the other tools that are out there," says privacy and security researcher Runa Sandvik.
Critics are quick to point out that if a user is not paying for a product, they are the product, and of course encrypting notifications from Facebook won't stop the social media behemoth from accessing all the data itself. The only way to protect one's data from Facebook is to stop using Facebook.
But encrypting notifications, and perhaps accessing Facebook over its Tor onion service, provides safer alternatives for those who won't heed the rallying cry.
“It’s important to remember that we can’t tell people not to use Facebook because they’re going to use Facebook regardless," said Sandvik. "That’s just the way it is. What we can do and what Facebook can do and is doing is making it safer and easier for people to securely use the platform.”
Despite its addition of this feature, it's worth pointing out that Facebook in itself is far from being a secure platform. For example, Facebook Messenger does not offer end-to-end encryption, lagging behind companies like Open Whisper Systems and Silent Circle. Even Apple's iMessage offers encryption, as Apple CEO Tim Cook recently pointed out at EPIC's Champions of Freedom event.
In addition, just because Facebook notifications sent to you are encrypted in your inbox, your responses to them can leak into your friends' inboxes if they do not have the feature enabled. And even if your contacts have private key listed, this doesn't mean they've signed up for encrypted notifications.
Who's Next To Encrypt?
Google announced that it was working on a Chrome extension called End-to-End around a year ago. Twitter, in the past, was working on encrypting direct messages, and then halted the program for no apparent reason. But perhaps this development will encourage other companies to step up their game.
“I believe that companies are now slowly starting to realize how much privacy means to the public, and how privacy and security done right can actually be a selling point," Sandvik says. "I don’t know how many will actually follow suit and enable [encrypted] email notifications, but I do believe that more will actually start to consider privacy from the get-go as opposed to trying to sprinkle it on top when it suits them later on.”
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Pinterest Is Announcing Buyable Pins And A Partnership With Stripe
Observers—ReadWrite included—have long expected Pinterest to get into the e-commerce business directly, instead of just driving traffic to retailers' websites.
Today's the day when Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann and other executives will announce it. How do I know? Because I'm at a press event at Pinterest headquarters, and I happened to read a copy of a speaker's script left lying on the floor before an event staffer whisked it away.
Pinterest is announcing a product called Buyable Pins, which builds on Pinterest's existing Rich Pin features. Rich Pins allow websites to populate Web pages with details that Pinterest's crawlers can easily read. When an item is marked up correctly with Rich Pin data, Pinterest will add information like price and discounts to a page that a Pinterest user creates when he or she pins it to a board.
Shopify appears to be a partner. That e-commerce site builder has already purchased Google ads against the term "Buyable Pins" which takes people to a page explaining how to sell items on Pinterest.
According to the script ReadWrite reviewed, Stripe is Pinterest's payments processor.
The introduction of Buyable Pins isn't a huge surprise. Tim Kendall, Pinterest's head of partner products, revealed mockups of "buy buttons" at EmTech Digital, a conference in San Francisco produced by MIT Technology Review, on Monday. At the time, though, he said that the buttons were "coming soon."
We'll update with more details from the event.
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