Douglas MacMillan

Former AT&T lawyer says company systemically overcharged neediest schools, ignored E-Rate rules

Theodore Marcus once was an in-house lawyer for AT&T, tasked with reviewing whether the company was overcharging schools and libraries for Internet and telephone service. Marcus came to believe that AT&T did not charge low prices required by law, misled the government about its compliance with the rules of a federal program (E-Rate), and then rebuffed his concerns. A few months before he left AT&T, Marcus handed what he thought was damning information to a lawyer suing the company, with the expectation that he might share in the payout if the suit was victorious.

Vermont's new data broker law shows challenge of regulating companies compiling and selling your personal information

Lawmakers in VT are at the forefront of a national movement aiming to shine a light on data brokers that buy and sell the personal information of millions of Americans with whom they have no direct relationship. A state law passed in 2018 required all businesses that trade data on VT’s residents to register publicly and share some basic information about how they operate. The goal was to give residents one public database where they can find clear information about all companies that sell their data and steps they can take to delete it.

Google Privacy Upgrades Could Jolt Gmail App Developers

Google’s plan to lower the risk of another privacy gaffe is likely to disrupt business for scores of app developers that build services using the wealth of data generated by the world’s most popular email service. The Alphabet unit said it is reining in the data it makes available to outside developers of Gmail apps as part of a broader effort to secure the privacy of its users.

Google Exposed User Data, Feared Repercussions of Disclosing to Public

Apparently, Google exposed the private data of hundreds of thousands of users of the Google+ social network and then opted not to disclose the issue this past spring, in part because of fears that doing so would draw regulatory scrutiny and cause reputational damage.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai to Meet With Top GOP Lawmakers on Sept 28

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai plans to appear at a private meeting of top GOP lawmakers on Sept 28 and again at a public hearing later in 2018, responding to new scrutiny of the company’s work with China, its market power and alleged bias against conservatives in its search results.  “Google has a lot of questions to answer about reports of bias in its search results, violations of user privacy, anticompetitive behavior and business dealings with repressive regimes like China,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who is organizing Sept 28’s meeting.

Google Workers Discussed Tweaking Search Function to Counter Travel Ban

Days after the Trump administration instituted a controversial Muslim travel ban in January 2017, Google employees discussed ways they might be able to tweak the company’s search-related functions to show users how to contribute to pro-immigration organizations and contact lawmakers and government agencies, according to internal company emails.

Yahoo, Bucking Industry, Scans Emails for Data to Sell Advertisers

The tech industry has largely declared it is off limits to scan emails for information to sell to advertisers. Yahoo still sees the practice as a potential gold mine. Yahoo’s owner, the Oath unit of Verizon Communications has been pitching a service to advertisers that analyzes more than 200 million Yahoo Mail inboxes and the rich user data they contain, searching for clues about what products those users might buy, said people who have attended Oath’s presentations as well as current and former employees of the company. Oath said the practice extends to AOL Mail, which it also owns.

Tech’s ‘Dirty Secret’: The App Developers Sifting Through Your Gmail

Google said in 2017 it would stop its computers from scanning the inboxes of Gmail users for information to personalize advertisements, saying it wanted users to “remain confident that Google will keep privacy and security paramount.” But the internet giant continues to let hundreds of outside software developers scan the inboxes of millions of Gmail users who signed up for email-based services offering shopping price comparisons, automated travel-itinerary planners or other tools.

After Scrutinizing Facebook, Congress Turns to Google Deal With Huawei

Apparently, Members of Congress have begun scrutinizing Google’s relationship with China’s Huawei Technologies—roping another Silicon Valley giant into Washington’s escalating digital cold war with Beijing. The review—of a facet of Google’s Android operating system partnership with Huawei—comes after lawmakers questioned Facebook about its data partnerships with Huawei and three other Chinese electronics makers. Facebook said it would wind down the Huawei deal by the week’s end.

Google vs. Google: How Nonstop Political Arguments Rule Its Workplace

The tech giant, trying to navigate an age of heightened political disagreement, struggles to tame a workplace culture of nonstop debate

Google Parent Posts Surge in Profit, but Expenses Also Jump

Google parent Alphabet posted surging profits as advertisers kept swarming to the search giant amid a global debate about internet privacy that threatens to affect its main revenue generator. Alphabet’s earnings also got a multibillion-dollar boost from the company’s stakes in startups including Uber but were tempered by the costliest spending spree in its 14-year history as a public company. Net profit jumped 73% to $9.4 billion in the first quarter, up from $5.4 billion in the same period in 2017, a performance that highlights the firm’s huge lead in the global market for online ads.

The Man Playing Peacemaker Between Trump and Tech

As tensions mount between President Donald Trump and his fiercest critics in Silicon Valley, Michael Kratsios has the thorny task of playing peacemaker. Kratsios, one of the White House’s top technology advisers, is developing a high-tech policy agenda that he says will spur innovation in emerging technologies such as drones and artificial intelligence. “We are really working on issues that policy makers have never tackled before,” said Kratsios, the US deputy chief technology officer.

Amazon to Buy Video Site Twitch for More Than $1 Billion

Amazon has apparently agreed to acquire Twitch, a live-streaming service for videogame players, for more than $1 billion.

The acquisition would help Amazon bolster its position in the fast-growing business of online gaming and give it technology to compete with video-streaming rivals Netflix and Google's YouTube.

As Moguls Descend on Sun Valley, Let the Deal-Making Commence

It didn’t take long for the consolidation buzz to begin at the Allen & Co. conference, a get-together of honchos from the media and technology worlds known as a venue for deal-making. Speculation about mergers that could remake the media landscape was already flying at the entrance to the Sun Valley, Idaho resort.

Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav could be smack in the middle of a consolidation wave. He predicted that the two big pending marriages in pay-TV distribution -- AT&T’s proposed purchase of DirecTV and Comcast’s proposed merger with Time Warner Cable -- would hang over the discussions and might give content owners like Discovery more reason to consider mergers of their own.

“You’ll probably see some more consolidation on the content side in order to balance that scale,” Zaslav said. “There’s a lot of people asking the question, are they big enough?”

Foursquare to Begin Charging Fees

Foursquare Labs said it would begin charging some businesses for access to its database of restaurants, shops and other local venues, as it tries to make money from information it has gathered from user "check-ins" in the five years since its founding.

The New York startup is negotiating with the heaviest users of its data to pay fees or offer services in return, Chief Operating Officer Jeffrey Glueck said. Deals will be reached on an ad-hoc basis with each developer and will affect under 1% of the 63,000 companies that use Foursquare's database, said Glueck, a longtime Internet executive who recently joined Foursquare.

The change in policy could jeopardize Foursquare's relationship with outside developers that rely on the service to pull the names and coordinates of local places of interest into their own apps. Popular applications including Pinterest, Twitter's Vine, and Yahoo's Flickr use this service to help users match content they post online to their geographic location. But the data fees could also help Foursquare create a new revenue stream to support its free mobile apps.