Alexander Chalkidis

Category: Technology

  • Huawei ban is a joke and so is the cheap Pixel

    Huawei ban is a joke and so is the cheap Pixel

    You just don’t get it, do you?

    The tech world also has cliches. And if you have been around long enough they stand out. Apple as an opponent is a big one. When Microsoft ruled the world, they made it look as if a company with less than 7% market share was the opponent. That way they could pretend not to be a monopoly.

    Google is copying that strategy. Inundating us with ads comparing the new, affordable Pixel to an iPhone. Yeah, right, sure, anything you say. Android is running billions of phones all over the world while iPhones are relevant only in a few countries or even cities. Or maybe just the posh neighborhoods within those cities. Google owns the AI, the data and the tech. Apple is buying up 2 companies a month trying to catch up as always.
    Google does not even want to sell many Pixel phones, they never did. Pixel phones are just a way of kicking the rest of the Android ecosystem in the butt. The cheap Pixel is also a shot across the bow at Tim Cook for him talking crap about privacy.

    There is of course absolutely no justification for what Donald Trump did to Huawei. Not that the Chinese are not terrible at stealing intellectual property and ripping off stuff. They are also likely to be trying to spy on us through their tech. But hitting Huawei is no solution. Why not Xiaomi too? Or any number of other Chinese manufacturers for that matter. And why just tech? They copy, steal and might be up to nasty spying with all sorts of other things they produce. Maybe even toys. Apple and Google met with Trump. He made them both promise to spend gazillions on new offices so that he could talk about new jobs in America. That is how it works.

    Donald Trump does not understand what the late great master of propaganda Steve Jobs and his teacher Bill Gates knew well. His heavy-handed approach and erratic moves to please either his corporate friends or Russian blackmailers are ruining the facade so carefully built over many years.

    Running a monopoly is not the hard part. Pretending it is not a monopoly is the real game.

  • The incredible power of not seeing what you don’t like anymore

    The incredible power of not seeing what you don’t like anymore

    Sometimes as I tidy the house or while looking for something else, I find something the kids have made.  These days it is mainly my ever creative daughter. It is often touching. So I might stand there with a little “i love u dad” note in my hand crying.  It isn’t the joy of parenthood I think, it is the surprise reminder of how strong emotions run within us, a pent up bottle of fizzy information we keep forgetting.

    Like many other NBA fans, this year I stopped watching.  Somewhere between the Warriors’ dominance and LeBron not making the play offs I lost motivation to spend any more of my precious time following the NBA.  Bear in mind that this is the business I have help up as a shining example to follow. The best storytellers in the world, what marketers should emulate, God’s gift to all of us.  I have written articles, analysis and done podcasts telling everyone to follow the NBA and analyse its every move. I honestly believe it is not only the best sport to follow but also the best organization and media savvy institution to analyze and learn from.

    But I have had enough.  I need to move on. So I want to cut out the NBA in order to learn something else.  If I am watching live matches when I wake up at 4am (Greek time), I am not reading a new book.  And this is when I realised how much power these new tools give me.

    I just tuned the NBA out of my life.

    First of all I went to google settings and removed it from my interests.  That pretty much solved a lot of the ways scores popped up on my phone. Same with news, I just removed the topic from the (excellent) Google News app.  “Not interested”. It didn’t even feel like a major ceremony, two taps and it was gone. YouTube needed a little more help and guidance. I had to tell it I wasn’t interested in 7-8 videos and then click to remove the channels.  Sorted.

    For someone deeply immersed in everything NBA for the past 2 years it was surprisingly easy.  I feel like one of those people who quit smoking and then say “oh, it was just a decision”. Only it is even easier.  The NBA simply doesn’t exist around me anymore. Unless I walk into a sports bar and it is playing on the TVs, or some friend posts about it, I simply don’t see it anywhere.  The equivalent for my savana dwelling ancestors would be to tap twice on a baobab tree and make all baobab trees instantly disappear from their line of sight.

    We read enough complaints about our digital world, how we are inundated with information, much of it useless or confusing.  Here is my – very real – objection. Never in the history of homo sapiens have we been able to control our informational environment as much as now.  What many consider a disadvantage , the fact that I check my phone a million times a day, the fact that Google owns me, all this is simply fantastic when you are ever so slightly disciplined enough to tell it what you want to see around you.

    It is also very exciting.  Can’t wait to learn something new.  And as my kids grow up and stop surprising me with notes around the house, I am pretty sure the rest of this vibrant digital planet will do something similar for me.

  • Google and the Golden State Warriors: similar approach

    Google and the Golden State Warriors: similar approach

    As I watched the champions get annihilated by the Raptors this morning over breakfast I had yesterday’s Senate hearings in mind.  Steph Curry only got 3 out of 12 but didn’t look worried.  Much like Sundar Pichai yesterday.

    Here’s what happened NBA-side in summary:  The Warriors gathered not one, not two but five All Stars.  These people are basically statistical outliers, freaks that make a difference when it matters.  There have been maybe a hundred such homo sapiens since basketball started and the Warriors have five.  So they dominate.  They dominated so badly last year that a lot of us were put off the game.  So what did the NBA do about it?  For starters they tweaked the schedule to help the Lakers just to keep up the LeBron narrative.  A bit like the stock market pumps up Apple every so often even though Apple has hardly no technological advantage.  Just so it looks like Google has a competitor.  Then they tweaked the rules to help teams that play in the paint.  Then they gave refs instructions on how to execute the rules so as to give the Warriors a harder time.  Not to get too technical, but the NBA did everything it could to make this years championship more fun.  They even asked the Warriors to tone it down.

    It is pretty similar to the Google situation.  The company has created not just 5 but an almost infinite number of All Star technologies.  Worse still, they have tools that ensure they stay ahead of the pack.  They just need to choose when they will uncover what.  Not to look too good, that will increase calls for regulation and intervention.  The Golden State Warriors are following this example.  All year they bench key players with phony excuses to rest them, or simply play as if it is practice.  They don’t even use their best game plays all year unless they need them.  Maybe one or twice here and there, like…well, like a Google experiment.

    Is this bad?  I have written about the Google monopoly since Google started and my position is the same.  It is the kindest dictator we could ask for.  I would much rather Google decides on major issues than Donald Trump or most other politicians.  Is it fair?  Business was never fair.  Should we change it?  I don’t see how and to be honest I don’t see why.  Much like the NBA, maybe tweak the rules a bit so that it is more fun to watch at least…

  • Apple is not about tech so stop judging it as if it was

    “So, seriously Alex, do you think Apple has a problem?”

    Financial analysts call me up some times for “insights”.  It is usually when their job is on the line and/or they have to handle a really really big investor.  The guy was worried and wanted me to give him something new to say in the big meeting, something none of the others in the office had thought about.  And he came to the right place.  I hate Apple, I have hated Apple since 1981 when I realized how little the company cares about technology.  So the analyst got some dirt and we chatted away.

    “OK, so I will tell them to buy Apple then” he concluded.  I didn’t disagree.  Because this is not about technology.  Apple had the smallest research and development budget for many years.  Apple has fallen way behind in artificial intelligence and the smart home.  Apple’s new computers are a joke that took years coming and isn’t even funny if you are a professional that relies on them.  No, this is not about technology.  It is about the stock market.  Apple is to stock what the dollar is to global currency markets.  And all it needs to do every so often is produce a fairy tale.

    Take the recent iPad launch.  This is a a truly insignificant dying sector.  About 4% of devices sold globally are tablets.  Apple has a third of a market nobody wants.  Apple is losing ground in education, medical and pretty much any vertical you want to pick.  But what are the analysts saying?  Every so often someone flashes that graph about revenue being too dependent on the iPhone but then they forget it like the Apple fan boys and girls they rely on in the media for information.

    So don’t call me about Apple anymore.  You don’t need my decades of experience in tech to guess what Apple will do next and how successful it will be. Tim Cook could present a half eaten moldy apple and sell it for a thousand dollars tomorrow.   Nobody would care if he only sold five of them at a loss.  Nobody cares about it working or actually helping somebody in the real world work.  Antennagates, Batterygates and even Bill Gates knew what he was doing when he saved Apple.  It was never about tech.

    .

    (That’s not an apple in the photo by the way.  But who cares?)

  • Here is your first class action suite for GDPR (and why it is stupid)

    As an experiment, I decided to ask Google to remove all my contributions to the Google Maps Local Guides scheme.  For those of you not aware, Google Maps uses volunteers to improve maps.  And we do a lot.  They have gamified the process, which makes me a Level 9 guide (of 10 levels) thanks to thousands of reviews, ratings and photos seen by millions of users that I have uploaded.  So what happens if I want to leave?

    Joke No1.  Google itself, clearly says that you can delete your profile but your contributions will remain!  End of story, judge makes verdict, 4% of your global revenue please.

    Joke No2.  It is not easy to even find what to do if you are not OK with the above Joke No1.  Suppose you look hard, you will find somewhere under legal a procedure.  So you fill in a form.  Already we are way out of GDPR, this is not easy or intuitive.

    Joke No3.  Google doesn’t even have a human to respond.  Their first email is generic:

    “Thanks for reaching out to us!

    We have received your legal request. We receive many such complaints each
    day; your message is in our queue, and we’ll get to it as quickly as our
    workload permits.

    Due to the large volume of requests that we experience, please note that we
    will only be able to provide you with a response if we determine your
    request may be a valid and actionable legal complaint, and we may respond
    with questions or requests for clarification.  For more information on
    Google‘s Terms of Service, please visit http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS

    Regards,
    The Google Team”

    Whoops!  Under GDPR, referring to fine print just doesn’t cut it.  Even if the judge hadn’t slammed the hammer and demanded gazillions before, now he can.
    Joke No4.   Luckily for them, I too think GDPR is crap, so I respond honestly and fully.  Oh no, bot response again:

    “Thanks for reaching out to us.

    To request the blocking of URLs from Google Search results under European law, please use this form: https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_eudpa?product=websearch

    If you need to send additional information in relation to your request, please respond to the email confirmation you receive after you send in the form. If you have already filled out the above form, your request will be processed shortly.

    To request blocking of your personal information from specific Google products other than Web Search, please use the following form: https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_pir

    If you need to send additional information in relation to your request, please respond to the email confirmation you receive after you send in the form.

    If you have already filled out the above form, your request will be processed shortly.

    Regards,
    The Google Team”

    This is pretty bad.  The bot didn’t even get it right.  So I send “This request does NOT concern blocking information.  The form you are sending me to is irrelevant.  Please get a homo sapiens to respond.” And the bot insists: “After reviewing your submission, we weren’t able to fully understand your request. If you send us more details to clarify your concerns, we will investigate further.”

    Joke No5.
    Luckily for Google, I am on their side, so I explain with plenty links.

    “I am a Google maps local guide. Level 9 in fact. This means I have made thousands of contributions. However if I want to remove these contributions, there is no automatic way of doing it.Under GDPR this should be possible more easily. Manually deleting tens of thousands of comments, reviews and photos is not practical or even feasible.

    I refer you to the discussion going on here
    https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t5/General-Discussion/How-to-Exit-Local-Guides-Program-and-Delete-ALL-my-Contributions/m-p/934274#M264101

    And here
    https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t5/General-Discussion/Local-Guides-and-GDPR/m-p/926431#M259635″

    Bot screws up even worse up the same rabbit hole:

    “To request blocking of your personal information from specific Google products other than Web Search, please use the following form: https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_pir

    If you need to send additional information in relation to your request, please respond to the email confirmation you receive after you send in the form.

    If you have already filled out the above form, your request will be processed shortly.”

    Now, if you follow that last link, it is as unGDPR as humanly possible.  And it is off topic, it won’t even work if I request it like that.

    I really need no further proof than the above emails to sue Google under GDPR.  Will it work?  Hell yeah!  Class action?  Easily!  Google has been pushing users on to Local Guides for ages, millions of Android users are on it already.  Will I do it?  Of course not.  GDPR is ridiculous, useless and bureaucratic for no reason.  Google Maps is useful and Local Guides wonderful.

    This is a complicated world but useful trumps EuroBureaucracy every time.  Even well meaning European initiatives are counter productive when they are implemented like this.  A horse designed by a Euro Committee isn’t even a camel, it is a monster that can’t walk.  GDPR is not enforceable in any practical sense, it is simply the threat of a vindictive consumer.

  • Why do Pixel phones exist? (and how they just hurt Apple in revenge big time)

    Why do Pixel phones exist? (and how they just hurt Apple in revenge big time)

    I never cease to amaze how wrong tech writers get some things. For years now I read about how Google has failed with Pixel phones, “never quite got it right”, “hasn’t got market share” and other such comparisons with companies that are nothing like Google.

    Pixel phones were never meant to sell a lot. That would be suicidal. Google is not a hardware company. (Yet) And if it becomes one, it will not be from selling phones that the profits will come. Google sells ads. Everything else is an enticing freebie. To get you to buy ads.

    Case in point, Android. The dominant superpower of smartphones globally. Unless you live in a bubble in the West Coast, New York ….or the magazines and tech blogger world. They write about a company with less than 1/10th of the market share globally, as if it is an equally powerful opponent. It is a rerun of the PCs vs Mac “wars” of the past. Again, a completely insignificant market share of Macs was held up so antitrust authorities and whoever doesn’t like monopolies could pretend Microsoft had an opponent.

    But Google needed to find a way to control the ecosystem. They tried Nexus, they tried Google One (Google Go, whatever) and they tried Google Pixel. They don’t want to sell million of phones. They want to sell just enough to goad the rest of the market in the right direction. Everyone now talks about a “clean Android” experience as a major selling point. Bloatware on Samsung and other market leaders has gone down dramatically. You are either with Google or …well, with Google but they let you add a twist here and there in case you come up with something innovative.

    Enter the Pixel3a. Now that is something different and mysterious. So far they artificially kept Pixel prices high so as not to antagonize other Android manufacturers. Here we have a different story. This is revenge. The product launched just as Tim Cook had decided to make privacy a major selling point on iOS. And with the launch of one device, Google kicked him back in the groin. Just as millions of iPhone users are wondering if it is worth spending 1000 bucks on a new device, the Pixel3a offers premium everything at 400.

    Google will not pursue it further. You can be sure that there will be problems with availability and all the other excuses they have used in the past years to purposely stop Pixel and Nexus devices from eating up market share from Google’s Android partners. Tim Cook seems to be backing down on his privacy-based effort to differentiate Apple products. If he doesn’t, Google can easily wipe more value off his company by launching a Pixel 4a or shelling out Amazon Prime day offers for the 3a at 300 bucks or whatever it takes to demolish all that magic dust Apple took years to rub onto their overpriced devices. Google doesn’t even need to make another mid-priced phone. They have just officialized the category. Xiaomi and other manufacturers can now capitalize on it.

    It is a great example of how a company loses focus and fails. Apple is too big to fail of course, more an international currency than the dollar. But some of us, in times like this, get a glimpse at just how well a behemoth such as Google can play the monopoly game with style.

    Oh, and grab a Pixel 3a, it really is a stunning device for that sort of money.

  • This is a coup! How does Europe get the right to tell the internet what to do?

    As the world watches him flip flop over major topics like migrant families and trade war threats, I have to grant Donald Trump a point.  Take all the nasty stuff he said about China on the campaign trail (before he started sucking up to Asian dictators) and apply it to the European Union.  Obviously GDPR has not yet played on Fox news and he hasn’t figured out what the European Commission just pulled off.  It unilaterally forced a ridiculous and extremely vague legal requirement on the entire planet!

    “A Data protection officer (DPO)—a person with expert knowledge of data protection law and practices, must be appointed to assist the controller or processor to monitor internal compliance with this regulation.”  Wait a minute.  Just because a European citizen might click on my website, I have to hire some expert?  And worse still, I am not allowed to ban Europeans from visiting my website or to show them a different version?  Protectors of the internet should not be cheering GDPR, we should all be fighting it!  This is a coup, or #thisisacoup if you want to make it a trending hashtag.  You should want to if you care about the internet.

    We have done our best to keep the internet free.  We fight for net neutrality.  And we are going to let some Euro-bureaucrats force vague and already technologically irrelevant regulation on the entire planet?  GDPR is not about tech, your IT people can’t make you compatible.  Neither is it a marketing issue.  GDPR isn’t even a legal issue.  How many lawyers do you know that understand databases or UI?  GDPR is 100% political.  Our national governments weren’t even asked, it is regulation instead of a directive.   European citizens didn’t even get the chance to see it ratified in national assemblies.  And – sorry to see this in writing – I am rather hoping Donald Trump notices some report on Fox news and helps us out this time around.

    This is a coup.

  • Facebook killed 14 people in May

    That is what the headlines ought to be.  Not “A Facebook bug changed suggested sharing settings to ‘public’ for up to 14 million users“.  Think about it.  Assuming Facebook is telling the truth (and we have absolutely no way to know if it was 14 million, 140 million or all of Facebook affected) out of the 14 million there is an enormous probability that they affected users with serious legal, social or psychological problems.  Maybe a crazy ex wife, a stalker, a student or some other privacy problem which led a percentage of those affected to suicide.  In fact, based on the evidence accumulating scientifically, it is not entirely unfair to say that Facebook not only did it’s best to grab users with mental problems but also that it actively does its best to make those problems worse.

    It is pretty safe to assume that Facebook didn’t release this information because of their new drive to honesty.  Even if it was only 14 million users affected (which I highly doubt), that is a lot of time wasting Facebook psychopaths online with the potential to uncover it.  Many of those are constantly checking other people’s feeds, gossiping and trying to find out whether their boyfriend saw that post about that other girl or not.  (And other such human micro drama.)  Facebook had to reveal the bug because a lot of people would have noticed and proved it’s existence.  A lot of the users it managed to make addicted during one of the many hours they spend aimlessly scrolling up and down their timelines and checking other people’s timelines.

    Here’s one problem:  nobody can really check up on Facebook.  Here’s a worse problem: their infrastructure is terrible.  Here’s the real issue: Facebook remains the toy of an unbalanced teenage hacker at heart.

    In many ways it is a self repairable problem.  Unlike other online tools, Facebook is a complete waste of time.  The company has specialized in providing inconsequential services.  It’s not helping you get to work.  It’s not giving you free document processing tools.  And it’s running out of ways to entice users to spend time on it’s useless, buggy, platform.

  • Facebook made one little mistake in it’s GDPR response

    I wrote about the fuss on GDPR but Facebook’s response made it even worse.  Their UI department essentially made fun of both the EU and the entire planet by forcing us to waste time in a most amusing (to them) way.  They had two questions to ask us.  It could have been done with two clicks.  But no.  Let’s see what they actually chose to do instead:  (In Greek on purpose.  I want you to focus on the whole image, not the text.)

    It didn’t need a splash screen.  Under the pretense of explaining to us what it is all about however they want you to click on the bottom right because then you might…

    ..just click on the bottom right again without thinking in the next screen and accept without looking at it.  I would love to know what the percentage of people who fell for this were.  I am guessing around 60-70%.  Just click on it to get to your timeline and whatever you wanted to do.  But some might have clicked on it and then thought “oh no, maybe I should read this stuff”.  So the Facebook UI team pulls a second trick out of their hat.

    Another splash screen.  Supposedly explaining stuff, which nobody will read and they know it.  No, the real reason this is here is to get you clicking on the bottom right again as you anxiously worry that you’re late to like your wife’s latest post.

    And here again another sneaky bit of UI magic.  Put the choice under the visible part of the screen.  Who will bother scrolling down, eh?

    But hey, don’t worry.  You get nice extra screen telling you that your selection was saved.  Yippee, we were all worried that maybe it wasn’t saved.  So click, click, click that bottom right….click and all this will go away…

    …or maybe not so quickly.  Another pseudofriendly splash screen with another big blue bright button down there to click on.  By now you are biting at the chomp, raring to get to your feed.

    The UI masters however are not done.  They are running experiments on you even as the planet castigates them for running experiments on you.  Why is this option not a slider like the other one?  Because they want you to click on what seems more “obvious”.

     

    Sure, I want Facebook to recognize my face, whatever, get to that blue button and back to my feed!

    Well done, your selection is saved.  You are a hero.  But we are not done with you.  Click the button, click the button…

    Accept these terms if you want to continue using Facebook.  Oh, OK, right, that is like my girlfriend demanding I marry her before we ever have sex again.  And she tells me after we get naked and started.  That big blue button doesn’t say “next”, it now says “agree” but you are well taught by now to always click down there.  And now, only now, you can see the final mistake of the Facebook UI team.

    They should have put a middle finger instead of a thumbs up.

     

  • The real problem with Facebook is its lack of a business model

    “If Facebook disappeared tonight, it would take the planet maybe 2 days to get over it.”  It’s not the first time I have heard this being said. And even though it sounds like a terrible sweeping generalisation from someone trying to impress over dinner, I tend to agree.  Some say it is useless. It definately doesn’t offer real services like Maps, or YouTube or Google Docs.  It isn’t a globally accepted personal ID yet. They haven’t even merged the sign in process for all their different acquisitions yet.    Messenger is a terrible messaging platform, simply not designed for finding things or organising messages or getting anything done. Much like Facebook it is a sometimes pleasant time wasting area of our lives.  Instagram is an absolutely atrocious place to store your photographs or even to promote them. It is not as if you can easily export them all to take anywhere else or even other basic things any photographer would ask for.

    Facebook seems to impose stupid restrictions on WhatsApp and any other app it makes.  It takes ages to transfer even winning ideas from one of its properties to another. Because Facebook’s business model is non existent.   They are basically low level con artists, out to milk everybody a little at a time. In fact I think its mission statement should read:

    “To waste everyone’s time by dilly dallying with mediocre solutions to minor problems while taking advertising money from people with extremely imprecise targets in life or business.”  It is almost as if they do it on purpose.  First they tell everyone to make business pages, then they make sure that nobody sees those pages.  Unless you pay for ads. They tell everyone to focus on video, then downplay video. The introduce ridiculously infantile advertising tools at a pace so slow it makes you wonder what sort of idiot would put up with them.

    Turns out all of us so far.  Because every time they give out for free something awesome in terms of human manipulation.  For me it is the easy experiments. I have 1500 “friends”on Facebook and I try out things on them.  No protocol, no rigour, just throw it out and get a whiff of how they work it. Easiest playground ever for marketing people.  I will regularly visit and revisit topics to gauge at an instant how “public” opinion is shifting. I know its not perfect but it is fast and dirty and often all I need to help my thought process along or get ideas.  And this is exactly what Zuckerberg and his friends are doing to all of us.

    When Facebook ads started, it was so open you could make an ad to be seen only by one person.  I did it many times. Want to impress someone in a board meeting? Just find out his hobbies and basics  and you could have him or her on your microsite in less than a day. It is not just because they lack experience.  It is because they really don’t care. In a deep and meaningful way, they don’t give half a hoot. They have no ethics and it is apparent in their products which are essentially all designed as if to avoid any practical application whatsoever on purpose.

    You can’t blame an artist for whatever art is created.  He never sold that painting as an accurate map or that sculpture as a hammer.  Facebook’s mission statement can only be something vague like connecting people because they are too lazy and too unethical to ever dare hold up a measure with any more specificity.  They are not “connecting people” any more than a blood sucking leech is connecting you to it’s other victims.

    So what happens next?

    Facebook can only follow Google’s lead really.  Make, buy or think of something that people want in order to get them using your platform.  Knowing Facebook it will be silly stuff.  No matter, guess we need silly stuff too.  Games, time wasters, Flappy Birds and social games that become fashionable.  From “click here to find out what medieval king you were” to “we tell you what you will look like in sixty years”, that is Facebook.  That is all it is.  That’s as good as it gets.  Facebook has no business model because what it sells is about as useful as recreational drugs.  So let’s not ask if they did something illegal.  Let’s ask if their entire operation should have been legal in the first place.