Technology - Google News |
- British Airways hacked: Scale of customer data breach is 'astounding', security experts say
- Verizon's Internet Boss Tim Armstrong in Talks to Leave
- A crazy conspiracy theory makes the Pixel 3 XL sound exciting for the first time
| Posted: 07 Sep 2018 04:29 AM PDT [unable to retrieve full-text content] | ||
| Verizon's Internet Boss Tim Armstrong in Talks to Leave Posted: 07 Sep 2018 05:16 AM PDT  Tim Armstrong, Verizon’s top media executive, is in talks to leave, people familiar with the matter say. Photo: Christopher Goodney/Bloomberg News Tim Armstrong, the leader of Verizon Communications Inc.’s media and advertising business, is in talks to depart, according to people familiar with the matter, leaving unfinished the task of building the unit into a digital content giant. Mr. Armstrong, who came to Verizon in 2015 when it acquired AOL and helped steer its purchase of Yahoo two years later, had tried to combine the two internet companies to challenge Google and Facebook Inc. in digital advertising. But those efforts so far have failed to generate much growth or make the unit, called Oath, more than a side note in the wireless giant’s earnings. There were recent discussions about whether to spin off the Oath business, the people said, but Verizon has decided instead to integrate some of its operations more closely with the rest of the company. Mr. Armstrong, 47 years old, is in discussions to depart as soon as next month, they said. Verizon’s struggle to transform its hodgepodge of advertising technology, video, email, virtual reality, sports and news brands into a business with a steadily growing stream of revenue highlights the strategic soul searching the carrier has done in recent years. Verizon shopped for, but didn’t buy, a large video content provider last year, and has so far eschewed the transformative mergers that its phone rivals have pursued. Earlier this year the company’s top executives declared they are more interested in building a better wireless network, rather than the content that flows through it.  Verizon spent roughly $9 billion to buy both AOL in 2015 and Yahoo AABA 1.95% in 2017. Owning two names synonymous with the early days of the internet provided a path for Verizon to become a player in media and advertising even though the companies represented less than 5% of U.S. digital ad revenue. The largest U.S. carrier by subscribers rolled the two brands into one unit under Mr. Armstrong’s leadership, saying it offered a chance to marry data on more than 100 million wireless customers with roughly 1 billion monthly online visitors to sites like HuffPost, TechCrunch and Yahoo Sports. Verizon and Oath executives, however, have disagreed over what some employees within the digital ad unit see as an overly conservative approach to using wireless subscriber data to boost Oath’s advertising revenue, people familiar with those discussions say. Senior executives within Verizon are wary of potentially alienating lucrative wireless customers in the name of adding incremental advertising revenue, these people said. Oath contributed less than $4 billion in revenue during the first half of the year, compared with the wireless business’s $44 billion. Verizon agreed to share with Oath anonymous information on subscribers’ age, gender, phone language, and data plan size, for example. But these people say the carrier refused to share information on the apps customers used and their web browsing activity unless users explicitly opted in. Only about 10 million subscribers have opted into the “Verizon Selects” program, which offers promotions in exchange for the ability to target ads based on a subscriber’s web and app usage, location, and other behavior. The pool of Verizon subscribers from which Oath could draw data was also smaller than some AOL and Yahoo employees anticipated, the people say. Of Verizon’s 116 million subscribers, only about a third were account holders whose identities had been verified. Others were members of family plans or government workers and corporate employees, those people said. Mr. Armstrong informed senior Oath leaders at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Calif., campus this summer that he was handing his day-to-day responsibilities to K. Guru Gowrappan, a former executive at Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. who joined the unit this spring, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Half of a roughly $60 million incentive award given to Mr. Armstrong as part of the AOL acquisition vested in May and the remainder is set to vest next spring, according to a regulatory filing. Discussions about Mr. Armstrong’s future are continuing, the people said. Lowell McAdam, Verizon’s longtime CEO who conceptualized the AOL deal with Mr. Armstrong at a Sun Valley, Idaho, conference in 2014, retired from the top job at the end of July. Although Mr. Armstrong was a former public company CEO and high-profile executive, he wasn’t among the final candidates considered by the board to succeed Mr. McAdam, according to people familiar with the process. Mr. McAdam’s successor, former Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg, has said he is focused primarily on building out a faster 5G network, rather than content. Two forays into streaming video in recent years have failed to make Verizon a go-to content provider. Earlier this year Verizon shut down a mobile video app called go90 and sold its stake in AwesomenessTV, which produces short shows. Mr. Armstrong has pressed in recent months for Verizon to better use its retail stores to promote Oath’s services such as the ability to watch NFL football games on Yahoo Sports, the people said. The unit is working to get more Oath apps preloaded in new smartphones, which could boost usage. Meanwhile, executives have tried to quell rumors in recent months that Verizon was contemplating unloading the Oath unit. “There is no intention of spinning out Oath in any particular format,” Mr. McAdam said on his final earnings call with analysts in July. “We see the synergies that we expected to see, and we see the future that we had hoped for.” Write to Sarah Krouse at sarah.krouse@wsj.com | ||
| A crazy conspiracy theory makes the Pixel 3 XL sound exciting for the first time Posted: 07 Sep 2018 03:52 AM PDT Google just confirmed what we already knew, that the Pixel 3 event will take place in New York on October 9th this year. That said, I’d usually tell you that we already know everything about the main star of Google’s show. The Pixel 3, and especially the Pixel 3 XL were featured in many leaks that included thorough hands-on previews and even full reviews of the phone. But the plot just thickened thanks to what appears to be a Google-fueled Pixel 3 XL conspiracy theory. The gist of it is that Google faked the Pixel 3 XL leaks just to throw people off. The Pixel 3 XL with a notch isn’t real, that theory says, and Google orchestrated the whole charade in the past few weeks. The evidence comes from a YouTuber who says that Google contacted him to ask for permission to use a Pixel 3 XL video, but also to announce the October 9th media event. He wasn’t forced to sign an NDA before discussing the matter, and he explained it all in a YouTube video — of course. What Jon Prosser, the owner of the front page tech channel says in the clip at the end of this post is that Google asked for a specific Pixel 3 XL video in which he’s blasting the Pixel 3 XL’s ugly notch. Apparently, Google has been in touch with other YouTubers, asking them for similar clips. Apparently, Google wants to make some sort of montage of people complaining about the Pixel 3 XL notch. The same Prosser talked in other clips about how the Pixel 3 XL leaks were faked for Google to hide the actual design of the handset, suggesting the phone might not have a notch like the iPhone X. It all seems far-fetched. Google would have had to create a working Pixel 3 XL with a notch and then fake the theft of a batch of units that would later be sold on the black market in Ukraine and Russia. But Google has already added notch support to Android Pie, which seems to be an indication the new Pixels are going to get notches. Not to mention that no Nexus or Pixel phone Google ever made was kept secret. If real, this Pixel 3 XL charade would require a massive effort for the company. Google would still have to test the real Pixel 3 XL while the world is looking at the fake one. Come October 9th, everything will be explained. In the meantime, check out Prosser’s video below (the Google bit starts at the 3:37 minute mark):
|
| You are subscribed to email updates from Technology - Google News. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |