Technology - Google News

Android Go is here to fix super cheap phones
Equifax finds more victims of 2017 breach
DoorDash is raising $535 million from SoftBank and others at a $1.4 billion valuation

Android Go is here to fix super cheap phones

Posted: 01 Mar 2018 06:30 AM PST

When a new version of Android comes out, it's usually a big deal. There are new features, a bunch of design changes, and sometimes new phones to go along with it. But when a new version of Android launched on six newphones this week, it didn't seem like a big deal at all, and it was quickly overshadowed by announcements like the Galaxy S9.

That's because those six phones are largely under $100, and it's because that version of Android isn't designed for the kind of flashy new phones that grab headlines.

Android Go — which Google would like us to refer to as "Android Oreo (Go Edition)," which is not going to happen — is a stripped-down version of Android meant to run on inexpensive, low-end devices: devices without much processing power, with limited amounts of RAM, and with a small amount of storage. It's also meant for people with limited internet connectivity and expensive data plans that need to be carefully conserved.

To address those problems, Google has done three things:

Make Android run better on phones with 1GB of RAM or less
Make Android (the OS itself) take up less space
Make Android's preinstalled apps take up less space and use less data

All of these have the potential to be a really big deal, but in practice, the difference is more tangible with some than with others.

The first item on that list — "make Android run better" — is the most exciting, but it's arguably the least noticeable. I've played with all six new Android phones over the past few days, and they run relatively well, without any meaningful hiccups or particularly choppy animations. But they also run as well as just about any cheap new phone that's come right out of the box. I'm not sure how much better off they'll be one year from now, and that's what's going to matter.

For the time being, there are two differences in Android Go that are both noticeable and meaningful. The first is Google's focus on taking up less space. By cutting down the amount of space that Android and its default apps take up, it's whittled down the install size to a little over 3GB — a savings of at least a couple gigabytes. That's a huge deal for phones that have only 8GB of storage to start with.

The other difference is how those apps help users manage their storage and data use. There's an app called File Go that gives suggestions on files to remove and offload to the cloud. And there's another app, found only on some phones, called Datally, that helps users manage how much data their apps are using. Lastly, there's YouTube Go, which presents three quality options when you go to stream a video (basic, standard, and high) and tells you how much data each will take up, which is hugely helpful.

Google has also added a special section of the Play Store that highlights apps that don't take up much room. The effort doesn't go all that far (it's really just limited to a single scrolling bar of apps), but it's something.

So much of the Go experience will come down to whether users take advantage of the tools Google provides them. If they replace the YouTube Go and Gmail Go apps with regular YouTube and Gmail, the data and space savings are gone. So it's critical that Google makes these experiences as good, if not better for these types of phones, than the standard apps.

The company largely seems to have done that. There's no material difference between Gmail Go and Gmail. YouTube Go is actively more helpful. And the Google Go app has a totally different design, which offers quick access to features like translations and image search for people who might not know to look for them. It also has a GIFs section, which provides quick access to the "good morning" GIFs that have grown popular in India.

Android Go is largely meant to improve the experience consumers have when they pick up their first smartphones in markets like India and parts of Africa — though Go phones will be found everywhere, including in the US. If Google wants to lure people away from feature phones and into the company's ecosystem, it needs to make sure Android is good enough at the $50 or so price point.

There's no guarantee Android Go is going to work, though. This isn't even Google's first shot at addressing low-end phone performance. A few years ago, Google introduced a program called Android One, which was meant to help manufacturers develop inexpensive phones that ran Android well. But manufacturers didn't seem to like it, and the initiative largely died out. It's since been reinvented as a stock Android program, which sounds great but is far from the initial goal.

Android One initially tried to tackle the low-end performance problem by helping manufacturers pick out good hardware to run Android. But Google seems to have realized that hardware manufacturers are fine at picking out hardware, and Google as a software company should tackle this problem from its own end. And that's Android Go: Google's attempt to solve this problem through software.

Go is launching on six phones, with prices ranging from around $50 with carrier subsidies to around $130 outright. They include the Nokia 1, Alcatel's 1X, ZTE's Tempo Go, Lava's Z50, Micromax's Bharat Go, and General Mobile's GM 8 Go. The GM 8 Go is by far the nicest, with a bigger and sharper screen than the rest and faster performance, but it's also supposed to be the most expensive. Nokia's is more representative, with a somewhat dull screen and a passable camera, and will sell for $85. It also has colorful interchangeable back plates, which is nice.

Even with Android Go, performance still differs between the phones. Some ran smoother than others, and some even had more free space than others — so much of this is up to manufacturers and how they build the phone. They can still customize the look of the OS, potentially slowing it down. And they can still preinstall extra apps, which can be useful but will also take up more space. Google doesn't prohibit any of that.

Android Go isn't a silver bullet for all of Android's low-end problems. It's clear that Go is just one part of Google's approach, which also relies on manufacturers not squandering the opportunity and users taking advantage of the new data- and storage-saving tools it's built. That's a lot to ask. But even if it doesn't solve the problem, it seems like the right direction for Google to start tackling the problem. The issues are coming from inside Android, and Go begins to acknowledge that.

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Equifax finds more victims of 2017 breach

Posted: 01 Mar 2018 07:13 AM PST

The massive data breach suffered by credit-rating company Equifax hit more people than previously thought, the company has reported.

In September last year Equifax said it had discovered that 145 million US customers may have had their information stolen.

Its investigation into the breach has revealed that the details of a further 2.4 million Americans went astray.

Continuing analysis of stolen data had helped identify new victims, it said.

Publicly apologised

"Equifax will notify these newly identified US consumers directly, and will offer identity-theft protection and credit-file monitoring services at no cost to them," it said in a statement.

In 2017, Equifax said an internal investigation had uncovered signs of unauthorised access to data including names, addresses and social security numbers.

And the company set up a website for people to learn if they were among those whose information had been accessed.

Equifax was widely criticised after the breach and its then chief executive publicly apologised for failing to protect information and for taking so long to let victims know their data had been compromised.

Several senior executives, including the chief executive, subsequently left the company because of the breach.

Equifax holds data on more than 820 million consumers and 91 million businesses worldwide.

It does credit checks, ID theft monitoring and offers job verification services.

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DoorDash is raising $535 million from SoftBank and others at a $1.4 billion valuation

Posted: 01 Mar 2018 06:00 AM PST

The food-delivery company DoorDash is receiving a massive injection of cash in the latest iteration of the deal spree staged by SoftBank's Vision Fund.

SoftBank, along with the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC and Sequoia Capital, are giving DoorDash $535 million in a deal that, including the new money, values the company at $1.4 billion, according to people close to the company.

The company initially only sought $200 million in financing, one person said, but the deal size grew and grew amid competition from investors — and now, DoorDash has an enormous amount of cash in its bank account.

The deal is another example of how SoftBank is equipping companies with warchests that they can use to bash, or maybe even acquire, their rivals.

DoorDash said it would use the money to increase its corporate headcount by another 250 employees this year to about 800 and that it planned to expand from the 600 cities in which it currently operates to 1,600. The company also plans to further invest in DoorDash Drive, a service that allows restaurants to use DoorDash to deliver orders to their own customers, not DoorDash's.

"We don't take money very lightly," DoorDash CEO Tony Xu told Recode in an interview, swatting away any concerns about how a company like his would manage the hundreds of millions. "DoorDash has always been a business that is very disciplined at execution."

Recode first reported the deal was in progress in December — though there were times since then when its completion looked uncertain.

SoftBank's Jeff Housenbold is joining the board and, in a somewhat unusual move, GIC is as well, despite not leading the round. GIC, represented by Jeremy Kranz, and SoftBank were at one point competing for the deal, a person said, and the check size likely reflects a desire to accommodate both of them. None of the $535 million is buying out existing investors — those "secondary" components are typically a part of SoftBank-led deals.

GIC, which had quietly been a prior DoorDash investor, is taking a larger-than-normal amount of ownership for a non-lead. Although a major tech investor, GIC has generally preferred to keep a low profile in Silicon Valley.

Despite the international focus of the Asia-based funds, the company does not have any imminent plans to focus overseas — instead continuing its expansion in North America. While SoftBank is not pushing right now for a more international presence, it has given the company the capital to do so.

SoftBank has made a series of recent investments in the on-demand economy, such as Uber, the dog-walking company Wag and now DoorDash, part of a fund thesis to invest in startups that improve convenience for consumers. Despite the fierce competition to DoorDash from companies like GrubHub and Postmates, SoftBank does not see the market as winner-take-all, according to a person with knowledge of their thinking.

One of those competitors is, in fact, SoftBank-funded. Uber's successful food-delivery business, UberEATS, is a rival to DoorDash, and some Uber investors were upset that SoftBank expressed interest in funding both at around the same time.

SoftBank does not see a conflict between the two businesses, the person with knowledge of their thinking said, because they see the market as large enough for two dominant players. SoftBank is also represented by other people, not Housenbold, on the Uber board.

And Xu said he was fine with it.

"This is nothing new. This is not new to DoorDash," he said of potential conflicts. "The biggest investors are placing their bets on the winners and I feel very good about it."

The number of competitors, in addition to the low margins, has led some venture capitalists to shy away from the food-delivery space in recent years. Each company has different cities where they are the strongest. DoorDash has tried to differentiate itself by stressing its relationships with nationwide chains like Wendy's and The Cheesecake Factory (whose president is coming to Code Commerce next month in Las Vegas and appearing alongside Xu for an onstage interview).

Some veterans urge more consolidation in the industry. An acquisition is not a priority for the company, but Xu said he would certainly look at opportunities now that he has the money.

SoftBank and DoorDash first got acquainted last summer after one of Housenbold's neighbors, early DoorDash investor Pejman Nozad, introduced him to Xu.

When the company prepared to raise money in the winter, both GIC and SoftBank expressed interest in investing lots of capital. That led to thorny, back-and-forth negotiations between the parties, some sources say.

Xu said he did not enter with a certain amount of money he wanted to raise — and so the amount bounced around quite a bit to try and make all sides happy.

DoorDash was last valued in March 2016 at about $720 million; its valuation has now doubled.

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