Mahee Chandrasekhar, a 9th grader at Redmond High School in Redmond, Wash., is the Washington state winner in the 16th annual “Doodle for Google” contest.

Mahee, 15, is one of 55 state and territory winners announced by the tech giant on Wednesday. Her artwork was selected from tens of thousands of submissions.

In celebration of Google’s 25th anniversary, students were asked to answer the prompt: “My wish for the next 25 years.”

Mahee submitted an artwork titled “Small but Mighty” (above) and provided the following response to the prompt:

“My wish for the next 25 years is for us to honor the smallest, but mightiest of us all, the pollinators, who through their small size, truly help make the world brighter.”

“Mahee has been an artist ever since I have given her a pen and pencil,” said her father Chandrasekhar Goka. “She has loved to create art, and enjoys creating art from abstract to real, and expressing herself through many facets of science, and technology, and bringing thoughtfulness to real problems..”

Goka said when Mahee was young, she would go to a local organic farm to observe how bees collect nectar from one flower to the next and pollinate the flowers that grow into fruits, nuts and vegetables.

“Mahee loves nature, and as she started to learn science, she started to understand that their are many ecosystems that help us survive and thrive in this world,” Goka said. “She wanted to bring attention to the fact that protecting these ecosystems long term would not only help us, but help our growth and vitality of our society for the next 25 years.”

Goka also credited Mahee’s mother Dr. Sudha Gulkhandia and aunt Sangeeta Vinit with being instrumental in her art education.

Mahee received Google hardware and swag for her achievement.

Rebecca Wu, a sixth grader from Bellevue, Wash., won the entire contest last year and had her artwork in the featured spot on Google’s homepage. She also won a $30,000 college scholarship and a $50,000 technology grant for her school.

Google’s philanthropic arm is giving a $500,000 grant to expand access to robotics and artificial intelligence education programs across Washington state middle schools, the company announced Friday.

In partnership with the non-profits Robotics Education & Competition Foundation (RECF) and For InSpiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), Google.org said the grant would support 1,234 new or existing robotics clubs in Washington and reach more than 8,900 students over the course of three years.

The announcement came during an event Friday morning at Finn Hill Middle School in Kirkland, Wash., where students put together robots and were introduced to hands-on STEM tools by Google employee volunteers. The Alphabet-owned tech giant has a sizable workforce in Kirkland and the greater Seattle area.

U.S. Congresswoman Suzan DelBene (D-WA) attended the event and said the investment was key to educating future leaders in robotics and AI.

“Programs like these give young people the opportunity to innovate, build new skills, and open bright new pathways for their future,” DelBene said.

The funding is part of a $10 million initiative launched by Google.org to fund FIRST and RECF in communities where the company has a presence.

Google Play Store users in Washington state are eligible for a share of a multistate $700 million antitrust lawsuit settlement reached against the tech giant.

Filed in July 2021 by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, the lawsuit accused Google of using anticompetitive practices to insulate its app distribution service, Google Play Store, from competition. The practice forced Android app developers to raise app prices for users in order to pay Google’s exorbitant fees, according to the suit.

Eligible consumers in Washington will receive at least $2, with additional payments depending on how much they spent in the Play Store between August 2016 and September 2023.

An estimated 2.9 million Washingtonians have Android phones, though only those who paid for apps through the Play Store, or paid for in-app purchases, are eligible, the AG’s office said.

“This resolution stops Google from rigging the system and creates a more level playing field,” Ferguson said in a statement.

The lawsuit asserted that Google’s anticompetitive tactics included, among others, blocking non-Google Play Store apps from advertising on Google’s search platforms. Ferguson argued that those practices have helped Google dominate the Android app distribution market, with well over 90% of all Android apps downloaded from Google Play Store.

In addition to paying $700 million, Google is also required to make changes to how it operates Play Store. The Verge reported that, “If you add it all up, it does make for a slightly different Google app store landscape than we’ve experienced over the past decade and change.” But the concessions have expiration dates, and many are not real concessions, The Verge noted. Full details on the changes can also be read on the attorney general’s website.

Google’s payment to states will include $630 million for consumer reimbursements through the states’ case and private consumers who filed a separate lawsuit. The remaining $70 million will be split between the original group of 38 states and Washington, D.C., that filed the lawsuit, for civil penalties and to pay for costs and fees associated with the case.

The hottest television series and the biggest concert tour were among the top trending topics of the year when it came to Google searches in the Seattle area.

The tech giant released its annual “Year in Search” breakdown on Monday, and broke out four trending categories for the Seattle area, including:

• Top 5 trending “tour” searches: Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour,” which came through Seattle for two shows in July at Lumen Field. The singer called it one of her “favorite weekends ever” on Instagram.
• Top 5 trending “TV show” searches: The HBO series “The Last of Us” was so popular as a search topic in the Seattle area that the region also ranked first in the U.S. for queries about the post-apocalyptic drama.
• Top 5 trending “near me” searches: Pawn shops topped the list in Seattle, but searches for “smoke shop near me” helped the region lead the U.S. in that search.
• Top 5 trending “versus” searches: The Dillon Danis vs. Logan Paul boxing match in October was tops. Another fight (that has yet to happen) also drew interest: Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckerberg.

Google’s overall Year in Search highlighted such trending topics as news (War in Israel and Gaza); passings (“Friends” star Matthew Perry); people (Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin); movies (“Barbie”); and more.

Google started to roll out its long-awaited Gemini multimodal artificial intelligence model Wednesday morning, touting its ability to natively process and reason across different inputs like text, images, video, and code.

With the new AI model, the search giant is looking to jump ahead in the AI competition against OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon, and other industry rivals.

Google described Gemini as its largest and most capable model to date, and the first AI model to surpass human experts on the Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) benchmark.

Sundar Pichai, the Google and Alphabet CEO, said in a blog post that Gemini represents “one of the biggest science and engineering efforts we’ve undertaken as a company,” under the umbrella of the company’s DeepMind AI initiatives.

Google said Gemini has undergone extensive AI safety testing, using tools including a set of “Real Toxicity Prompts” developed by the Seattle-based Allen Institute for AI to evaluate its ability to identify, label, and filter out toxic content.

Gemini will roll out in phases in different products:

• Many Google users will experience Gemini first in the company’s Bard AI chatbot. A version called Gemini Pro will power Bard starting today, Google execs said in a media briefing. A more powerful model called Gemini Ultra will be available early next year in a new version called Bard Advanced.
• Google Cloud will make Gemini Ultra available in an early access program for developers, rolling out more broadly in early 2024. Gemini Pro will be available starting Dec. 13 in Google Cloud’s Vertex AI and AI Studio.
• A version called Gemini Nano for on-device applications will be available on Google Pixel phones, starting with Pixel 8 Pro. Google says it will power a new Summarize feature in the Recorder app and Smart Reply in Gboard.

The Information reported Dec. 2 that Google cancelled a series of in-person launch events that were planned for Gemini “after the company found the AI didn’t reliably handle some non-English queries.”

AI is starting to generate real money for the big cloud providers.

Global spending on cloud infrastructure services topped $68 billion in the third quarter, up 18% year-over-year. That’s the new estimate from Synergy Research Group, a market researcher that provides data and analysis on IT and cloud-related markets, after results last week from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

“The current economic and political climate has crimped some growth in cloud spending, but there is clear evidence that generative AI technology and services are starting to help overcome those barriers,” Synergy Research said.

However, it’s still early days in this new era, and the contributions from AI are modest in the scheme of things, as noted by this Business Insider story last week.

“Companies are still learning which models they want to use, which models they use for what purposes, which model sizes they should use to get the latency and cost characteristics they desire,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on the company’s earnings call. “In our opinion, the only certainty is that there will continue to be a high rate of change.”

Microsoft Azure’s market share rose 2 points to 23%, with Amazon at 32% and Google at 11%, followed by Alibaba (4%), IBM (3%), Salesforce (3%), Oracle (2%) and Tencent (2%), according to Synergy chief analyst John Dinsdale.

• On its quarterly conference call, Microsoft said 3 points of the 29% growth in its Azure cloud revenue came from AI, exceeding the 2% contribution from AI that the company had predicted going into the quarter.
• Microsoft is seeing customers start new projects driven entirely by AI, which leads to increased consumption of other Azure services (i.e., storage and computing). “AI projects are not just about AI meters; they have lots of other cloud meters as well,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the call.
• Analysts at Bernstein said Microsoft has “has taken the AI [mantle] from Google, and that Azure could become a bigger and more important hyperscale provider than AWS,” as reported by CNBC.

Not so fast, says Jassy. “It’s a little hard to measure them apples to apples, but in our best estimation, the amount of growth we’re seeing in the absolute amount of generative AI business we’re seeing compares very favorably with anything else I’ve seen externally,” the Amazon CEO said.

• Speaking on Amazon’s earnings call, Jassy said he foresees “a very substantial, gigantic new generative AI opportunity,” saying the field will generate “tens of billions of dollars in revenue for AWS over the next several years.”
• Overall, AWS revenue increased 12% to 23.1 billion, compared with the same quarter a year ago. Operating income was $7 billion in the segment, representing more than 62% of Amazon’s total operating income.
• Amazon Web Services offers chips for AI training and inference; its Bedrock service runs multiple AI foundation models; and its code-generating tool CodeWhisperer is a rival to Microsoft-owned Github’s Copilot.

Google Cloud revenue rose 22% to $8.4 billion, with operating income of $266 million, compared with a $440 million loss in the same quarter last year, fueled in part by demand for AI and data services.

• Investors, however, knocked Google Cloud for missing Wall Street estimates of $8.62 billion, its slowest quarterly growth since at least the first quarter of 2021, according to a Reuters report.
• On the company’s earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said more than half of all funded generative AI startups are Google Cloud customers.
• Google offers Nvidia GPUs for training and running AI models, in addition to its Vertex AI platform for building and deploying AI applications.

COMING UP: Microsoft’s Ignite conference for developers and IT pros is Nov. 15-17; and Amazon’s big cloud conference, AWS re:Invent, is Nov. 27-Dec. 1.

You may have read the juicy sound bites from Satya Nadella in Google’s antitrust trial this week, as the Microsoft CEO made the case that the search giant unfairly leverages its market power to stifle competition (a charge that Google vehemently disputes). But there was a lot more to digest from his comments.

On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we reenact portions of his testimony, explain the positions staked out by Microsoft and Google in the case, and discuss the irony of Microsoft siding with the DOJ two decades after its own antitrust battle.

Here are some additional highlights from his testimony:

Search defaults: “This entire notion that users have choice and they go from one website to one website or one search into one search … it’s [completely] bogus. There’s defaults. The only thing that [matters] in terms of changing search behavior. And at this point, in fact, it’s even more true. … You get up in the morning, you brush your teeth and you search on Google. And so therefore, with that such level of habit forming, the only way to change is by changing defaults.”

Google’s influence over distribution: “The one advantage Google has in defending their defaults … I think of as a game of carrots and sticks. We all try to defend by carrots, which is pay for OEM default distribution. Google has carrots and it has massive sticks. … ‘We’ll remove Google Play if you don’t have us as the primary browser.’ And without Google Play, an Android phone is a brick. And so that is the type of stuff that is impossible to overcome. No OEM is going to do that.”

Windows and Microsoft’s antitrust case: “Google exists because of two things. One is because of our consent decree, where we had to put a lot of limits on what we could distribute and not distribute by default. And, second, because [of] the fact that you could distribute anything you wanted on Windows, and it’s still the case, right, it’s not just Google. … The largest marketplace on Windows happens to be not from Microsoft, it’s Steam. And so it’s an open platform on which anybody can distribute anything.”

The future of AI: “I worry a lot, even in spite of my enthusiasm, that there is a new angle with AI. I worry a lot that, in fact, this vicious cycle that I’m trapped in can even become even more vicious because the defaults get reinforced. The publisher content can get locked in. And so if there are exclusive content deals which are happening right as we speak … all that content today, at least that’s crawlable by everyone and usable by large model training, could become exclusive.”

Google’s response: In court this week, lawyers for Google countered Microsoft’s argument by pointing to Google’s own success in getting users to switch defaults on Windows to Chrome and Google search as defaults. Microsoft’s problem isn’t Google, they argue, it’s the comparatively poor quality of its Bing search results.

Nadella said in response that Microsoft needs more data to be able to produce better results, which would come from more market share, which Microsoft contends Google is unfairly keeping it from achieving.

Apple and Bing: Microsoft’s negotiations with Apple to make Bing the default on iOS were the subject of much back-and-forth during Nadella’s testimony, including this entertaining exchange with John Schmidtlein, a lawyer for Google.

Nadella: So the point I was making to Apple — which, by the way, that is the only reason why they kept engaging, is with the Apple brand, it was not going to be called Bing. We had all kinds of strategic flexibility. It was going to be just like Apple Maps, that was the idea. This was not about trying to put Bing … front and center.

Schmidtlein: Oh, I see, you were going to hide the Bing brand?

Nadella: Yeah, of course. We were going to take whatever Apple felt was their chance as a success with the technology.

Schmidtlein: So you were going to try to hide the Bing brand behind the Apple brand and fool all the Google users into staying with Bing instead of switching back to Google, which is what they did on Windows in droves, right?

Nadella: That is not what I said.

Related links and coverage:

• Testifying in Google trial, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warns AI could extend search giant’s lead
• The Verge: Satya Nadella tells a court that Bing is worse than Google — and Apple could fix it
• New York Times: Microsoft C.E.O. Testifies That Google’s Power in Search Is Ubiquitous

In the final segment of the show: Generative AI and the “Ghost of Lesser Seattle.” We revisit our attempt to channel the late, great Seattle newspaper columnist Emmett Watson with the help of ChatGPT, and assess the reaction.

• Emmett Watson meets ChatGPT: What if the champion of ‘Lesser Seattle’ could see us now?
• Marketplace: There’s a corner of the internet where YouTubers read strangers’ obituaries. Why?

Subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.

Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI has looked at times like a glimmer of hope for its Bing search engine in its longstanding battle with Google, but Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella painted a different picture during the search giant’s antitrust trial.

Nadella testified Monday that he worries Google will use its profits from search to strike exclusive deals with publishers for training its AI models, further boosting its market share to the detriment of Microsoft and other rivals, according to The Verge and Bloomberg News, reporting from inside the courtroom in Washington, D.C.

• “I worry that this vicious cycle I’m trapped in … is only going to get more vicious,” Nadella testified, according to The Verge.
• “You get up in the morning, you brush your teeth and you search on Google,” he said at another point, Bloomberg reports.

The introduction of Bing AI Chat has had little to no impact on Bing’s market share, with Google above 90% and Bing at 3% as of September, according to StatCounter. Microsoft has disputed these numbers in the past, but not to the extent that it would make a material difference in Google’s market dominance.

Testifying on Monday, Nadella dismissed as “bogus” Google’s argument that it’s easy for users to change their search defaults, according to a Reuters report.

According to earlier testimony in the case, Microsoft was prepared to lose money in a deal with Apple to make Bing the default on iPhone and other devices. Nadella testified that he believes Apple was using its negotiations with Microsoft to “bid up the price” for the deal that it signed with Google, Bloomberg reports.

Amazon and Google are putting their rival voice assistants on the same devices for the first time, allowing users to alternate between Alexa and Google Assistant depending on their preference and the situation.

The combination will debut with the release of Harman’s new JBL Authentics 200, 300, and 500 smart speakers in September. After initial setup, users will be able to invoke either assistant by saying “Alexa” or “Hey Google.”

Examples cited by Amazon include the ability to ask Google Assistant about a product, and then ask Alexa to buy it from Amazon; or receive a delivery notification from Alexa, and ask Google Assistant to set a reminder about it.

The integration extends to basic operation of the smart speakers. It will be possible, for example, to start a timer with Alexa and end it with Google Assistant, if users forget which voice assistant they used at the outset. This capability is known as universal device commands.

Amazon says the companies have also taken steps to ensure that the assistants don’t talk over one another.

It’s part of Amazon’s longstanding push for interoperability among different voice assistants. The company founded the Voice Interoperability Initiative in 2019. Google is not listed among the more than 90 members of the initiative.

Harman says the JBL Authentics 200, 300, and 500 smart speakers are scheduled be released in September for $329.99, $429.99, and $699.99, respectively.

— James Phillips, a former corporate vice president and president at Microsoft, joined Google Cloud as a vice president.

Phillips left Microsoft last year after spending a decade at the Redmond, Wash., tech giant where his organization grew from 300 people to more than 15,000. He led teams working on various cloud-related services and platforms, including Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and the Azure AI Platform.

In a post on LinkedIn, Phillips said the depth of talent at Google Cloud is “staggering” and said the “energy and momentum is palpable and contagious.”

“I can’t imagine a more powerful foundation for enterprise digital transformation,” he wrote. “For the foreseeable future, transformation will be all about information and AI … and at its very core that’s what Google is all about.”

Google Cloud revenue rose 28% to more than $8 billion in the second quarter. The cloud arm of Google, which competes with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, boosted its operating profits to $395 million, a improvement of close to $1 billion from its loss of $590 million in the same quarter a year ago.

Last year, Phillips joined Stripe after leaving Microsoft but departed one month later.

Phillips previously co-founded Akimbi Systems, which was acquired by VMWare, and helped launch Couchbase. He is also a strategic director at Madrona Venture Group, which recently hosted Phillips on its podcast.

Phillips was a board member at Seattle-based F5 but the company announced this week that he was stepping down.

— TV advertising measurement company iSpot.tv appointed Leslie Wood as chief research officer. She will oversee the Seattle startup’s data science department for TV and video measurement products.

Wood previously worked as chief research officer at NCSolutions, a Nielsen-owned agency that helps consumer packaged goods companies target and measure advertising. She held the position for more than a decade.

Prior to NCSolutions, Wood owned and operated LWR, an industry research consulting firm. She won the 2023 American Marketing Association’s Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Award on Thursday.

“Leslie Wood has been recognized as one of the most respected names in the media industry,” iSpot CEO and founder Sean Muller said in a statement.

iSpot ranks No. 11 on the GeekWire 200, our list of the top privately held companies in the Pacific Northwest. The company raised $325 million last year from Goldman Sachs.

— Kalungi, a Seattle-area marketing agency for business-to-business software companies, appointed Brian Graf as its new CEO. A University of Washington graduate, Graf has led marketing efforts for more than 20 software companies and most recently worked as Kalungi’s chief marketing officer team lead. He replaces co-founder Fadi George, who will transition to CTO and remain as president of the board.

—Brian Bosché, who recently stepped down from his role as director of marketing at Smartsheet, joined London startup Move.ai as vice president of marketing and revenue. Bosché previously co-founded Slope, a startup that helped companies manage their creative project production processes and was acquired by Smartsheet in 2019.

We’re back this week on the GeekWire Podcast as humans, not bots, we promise, but we’ve still got a lot of AI to talk about.

This week’s show starts with highlights from my visit to Google I/O, including two generative AI tools that demonstrated the potential of technology to change the way we process and convey information. 

• Project Tailwind is an AI notebook that uses your notes and source materials to create a “personalized and private AI model” that answers questions and summarizes content.
• Help Me Write is an upcoming feature for Gmail in Google Workspace that drafts entire messages for users. It is an evolution of Gmail’s Smart Reply (quick suggested responses) and Smart Compose (suggested auto-complete for sentences).

John and I wrestle with the implications of these AI tools for human creativity, consider the long-term impact on society, balance these concerns against their natural sense of awe and wonder about innovation, and discuss ways that new tech realities are shielding companies from scrutiny.

Stories and topics referenced on this week’s show.

• We had our AI voice clones read an AI-generated GeekWire Podcast script — listen to the result
• Microsoft’s optimistic view of AI sees technology ending the drudgery of ‘digital debt’
• In search of AI’s killer app … and other notes from Google I/O
• Google Workspace Duet AI (Google)
• Google teases Project Tailwind — a prototype AI notebook that learns from your documents (The Verge)
• Dan Deacon’s pre-show Google I/O performance. (YouTube)
• How Gmail’s New AI Feature Will Write Your Emails for You  (CNET)
• As storm clouds clear for travel, Expedia Group looks to become a bigger tech provider to industry
• Trump’s Town Hall, Santos Charged, and STFU with Dan Lyons (Pivot)

Subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Has AI found its VisiCalc?

That’s what I’m wondering after spending Wednesday at Google I/O, the search giant’s annual developer conference at Shoreline Amphitheatre. Have we seen anything that will become to artificial intelligence what spreadsheets were to personal computers? Something so amazing and useful that it compels people to embrace a whole new form of technology?

It’s probably too early to tell. But my hunch is that we’ve seen at least one or two potential components of what could become AI’s killer app* in what’s been shown and released so far by companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google.

Along those lines, three projects stood out to me at Google I/O.

• Project Tailwind: This AI notebook uses your notes and source materials to create a “personalized and private AI model” that answers questions and summarizes content. It was pitched for students, but this approach could transform my job, and many others. Described as an experimental project by five Google engineers, it’s an example of the ideas bubbling up organically in AI right now. There’s a waitlist to try it.
• Google Search AI: For its flagship product, the company showed the potential for generative AI to supplement search results by summarizing key points related to a search. One example on stage was the search, “good bike for a 5-mile commute with hills,” which returned an AI-generated snapshot of tips to keep in mind, in addition to traditional search results and reviews.
• Help Me Write: This upcoming feature for Gmail in Google Workspace drafts entire messages for users. An example at I/O was a message seeking a refund for a canceled flight, with the option to generate a more elaborate version, under the theory that it would boost the chances of success.

Addressing the crowd during the I/O keynote, Google CEO Sundar Pichai pointed out that Help Me Write is an evolution of Gmail’s Smart Reply (quick suggested responses) and Smart Compose (suggested auto-complete for sentences).

This was his way of underscoring the fact that Google has been into generative AI for years, even if the pace has been accelerated in recent months by ChatGPT maker OpenAI, whose partnership with Microsoft has supercharged the Redmond company’s progress in these areas.

In other words, Google’s Bard chatbot is just part of the picture.

“We have been applying AI to make our products radically more helpful for a while,” Pichai said on stage at Google I/O. “With generative AI, we are taking the next step.”

There were plenty of other interesting AI projects at Google I/O. In fact, there was a full 80 minutes of AI before they even got around to showing the Pixel Tablet with smart dock (a new rival to Amazon’s Echo Show) and the ($1,799!) Pixel Fold smartphone (notable in part because of Google’s collaboration with Microsoft on the Android-powered Surface Duo dual-screen devices).

Back to the topic at hand, a couple other AI projects also stood out:

• Magic Editor: An example of generative AI’s potential in photo editing, this Google Photos feature will let users alter and add to pictures. One example shown at I/O was a photo of a young kid holding balloons on a bench, where the AI recentered the photo and synthetically added to the bench and balloons, to make that recentering possible.
• Watermarking and metadata: As part of the ongoing societal discussion about AI ethics and corporate responsibility, Pichai said Google will ensure that images generated by AI include indications on the images and in the underlying metadata identifying them as synthetic, and providing more information about how they were generated.

But for my purposes, the generative AI Google search summary, Project Tailwind, and Help Me Write seem to be headed in the direction of something game-changing.

Personally, my killer app would start with a true, AI personal assistant to read, summarize, and prioritize my email. I spoke at the event with Aparna Pappu, the Google Workspace vice president, who assured me that the engineering team is sympathetic to and interested in this challenge.

As a bonus, or Version 2, it would be great for this hypothetical app to also include an AI summary of my social media, text messages, etc., not just my email.

Other companies are also headed down this path:

• As part of its Slack GPT announcement, Slack recently showed a new AI feature for summarizing conversations and content inside the collaboration app.
• Microsoft offers AI-generated summaries based on a company’s internal content within Microsoft 365 Copilot, its enterprise AI tool now in private testing. Microsoft’s Build developer conference, its counterpart to Google I/O, is coming up in a couple weeks.
• Premium email app Superhuman seems to developing components of this killer app, as well, with its generative AI features, plus email prioritization.
• I’m also a user and fan of the premium service SaneBox for prioritizing emails.
• There are also existing capabilities for message detection and summarization in the intelligent features of Google Assistant, Apple Siri, and Amazon Alexa.

Lastly, I’d like this hypothetical app to prioritize these messages in a simple to-do list, with suggested replies and/or recommended actions based on its learned understanding of my preferences and communication style.

Does this all-encompassing AI personal assistant already exist? I haven’t found it yet. Does the idea resonate with you? What would be your AI killer app? Let me know.

* I asked Bard, ChatGPT, and Bing the same question: “What are some examples of killer apps in technology’s evolution?” See and assess the results for yourself.

More notes from Google I/O …

The new version of Google’s Project Starline high-fidelity telepresence system is jaw-dropping. I got a short demo at the event, and it was the closest I’ve ever experienced to being in the same room with someone who isn’t there. Cost remains the primary hurdle to getting this out into the real world. See Google’s video above.

Google Cloud showed a new capability called Duet AI that generates code recommendations and other forms of assistance for cloud developers. Duet AI joins a field that includes Microsoft’s GitHub CoPilot and Amazon’s Code Whisperer, and offers an indication of where Google’s cloud unit is headed in the realm of AI.

Composer and musician Dan Deacon set a new bar for pre-show musical entertainment and enlightenment with his AI-assisted songs, live vocals and comedic nerdery, leading a guided meditation culminating in a giant duck with lips appearing alongside him in real life. It was great. Watch the video here.

The teleprompter went out at one point during Pichai’s keynote address, according to the behind-the-scenes scuttlebutt afterward, but the Google CEO was apparently able to carry on from memory, using the slides as his cues.

A plane buzzed Shoreline Amphitheatre repeatedly during the first half of the keynote, pulling a banner calling on the company to protect abortion privacy.

Watching the demos, particularly those focused on content generation and photo manipulation, my mind kept going back to this question: What happens to the fulfillment, satisfaction, and joy that comes from human creativity when machines are better at creating than we are?

Now back to manually sifting through the 332 “important and unread” messages in my Gmail inbox after a few days of travel for in-person events. I’m not bragging; I’m complaining. That killer AI app can’t get here soon enough.

Gathered around a conference room table, with one person scribbling on the whiteboard, a group of industry veterans sizzles with energy. Participants build on each other’s thoughts and bounce from one concept to the next, coming up with ideas none of them could have generated individually.

Ah, the group brainstorm. There’s nothing quite like it.

Or is there?

GeekWire is relaunching its “Bot or Not” series today, exploring the line between human ingenuity and artificial intelligence, just as the new era of generative AI makes that line blurrier than ever. This editorial series is reported and written independently by GeekWire’s news team, with underwriting support from Google Cloud. (Read more about underwriting and sponsorship on GeekWire.)

We plan to interview artificial intelligence experts, talk with corporate and startup leaders, explore the ethical and practical implications of AI, and get a sense for how it’s impacting work and life everywhere, as viewed from our perspective on business and technology in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.

We also plan to continue using and experiencing this new wave of AI ourselves, examining the similarities and differences between neurons and circuits. A great example was this illuminating story by GeekWire managing editor Taylor Soper in March, comparing and contrasting human- and AI-generated poetry.

So it was only natural to apply this experiential and comparative approach to the very process of conceiving the content for this series, using both brains and bots to come up with story ideas.

At our regular news meeting last week, six members of the GeekWire team gathered around a conference room table in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. I led the brainstorm from the whiteboard, scribbling as fast as I could (after locating the rare markers that hadn’t dried up after three years of mostly remote work).

Separately, I gave similar prompts and follow-up questions to three generative AI engines: Microsoft’s OpenAI-powered Bing chatbot, Google’s experimental Bard chatbot, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, powered by GPT-4.

Lessons learned from the process

See below for the detailed output from this experiment in journalistic brains vs. AI bots. But here are some of my high-level takeaways.

• The breadth of story ideas was remarkably similar, spanning a variety of industries and subjects including art, law, music, healthcare, journalism, customer service, ethics, surveillance, and privacy.
• The human brainstorm was more nuanced, often including real-world examples of people and sources we could talk with. It reflected a sophisticated grasp of GeekWire’s journalistic focus, based on many years of experience.
• By comparison, the chatbots took subtle aspects of the prompts too far, seeing things as black-and-white. For example, when prompted to include some ideas for using AI tools, they tended to make every story an experience. I ended up tweaking the prompt language that I used (below) to avoid this.
• The experiment drove home how much more efficient and fast artificial intelligence is than humans in coming up with ideas. For example, ChatGPT took just a few seconds to generate a story list almost as long and detailed as what we created in about a half-hour.

Of course, conducting these processes separately made for a better experiment, to compare AI and humans. But my biggest takeaway, in the end, is that it would have been far more effective to include AI as a participant alongside the human group, querying the chatbots as we went along, to elevate and expand our brainstorm.

Here’s the end result of our whiteboard session.

For more detail, here’s a sample of 10 story ideas from this brainstorm, providing a sense for the breadth and depth of the story ideas we came up with.

Bot-based financial analysis: How well can AI read and summarize an earnings report? This was the source of a flub at Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot launch, with the AI misreading a Gap Inc. financial statement, but our initial experimentation with various AI tools to analyze breaking earnings reports suggests that there is still some promise here.

Diet, nutrition, and recipes: AI can generate recipes that adhere to specific types of diets and nutritional regimes, but how accurate are they in actually following the principles of these different programs? We would talk with experts in the different diets to find out. And more importantly, how do the resulting meals actually taste?

Fitness and wellness: Along the same lines, how well does AI generate workout routines and fitness regimens adhering to different schools of thought in exercise and wellness? What does the rise of AI mean for personal training?

Bots and music programming: How are radio stations adopting AI as part of their workflows, both nationally and locally? What will AI mean for musical taste and judgment? What do the DJs at Seattle’s KEXP and other independent radio stations think about the rise of artificial intelligence?

Musicians and artificial intelligence: In true brainstorm style, this led our GeekWire team to the natural question of how bands and musicians are thinking about AI as part of their work, building on recent national headlines involving artists such as Drake and Grimes to understand the realities for smaller bands and indie artists.

Can AI make a podcast? We plan to ask different AI engines to script a segment for our weekly GeekWire Podcast, based on specified news stories, and then use AI voices cloned from me and my colleague, GeekWire co-founder John Cook, to read those scripts. We’ve already started working on this, and it has been eye-opening. Stay tuned.

AI and agriculture/horticulture: What happens if we give AI a photo of a tree and ask for advice on pruning? How are farmers in Eastern Washington and elsewhere incorporating the latest in generative AI into their management of fields and operations? Lots of startup angles here, such as AI-powered weed zapping from Carbon Robotics.

Education and AI: Bill Gates, for one, believes that AI will have a big impact on learning, ultimately giving everyone a personalized tutor, customized to individual educational needs. What will this mean for human tutors? And what about the larger issues raised by students using generative AI for assignments? How will the definition of cheating change?

AI in sports: Of course, data analysis is already widely used in sports, but what does the advent of generative AI mean for human judgment in creating day-to-day lineups and preparing players for games? What does it mean for fans and sportsbooks? Our resident sports fans are intrigued and enthusiastic about pursuing these and other angles.

Travel and AI chatbots: This is already a growing phenomenon, raising questions about the future of human travel agents. But how do AI chatbots really stack up against human experts in recommending itineraries and providing guidance to travelers? No surprise, nearly everyone in the room was ready to take on this assignment.

What do the bots say?

Here’s the prompt I gave to the AI chatbots.

The business and technology news site GeekWire is launching a new series called Bot or Not. This special series explores the evolving relationship between humans and machines, and the emerging world of generative and creative AI, examining the ways that robots, artificial intelligence and automation are impacting and fitting into our work and lives. Please brainstorm a list of story ideas, including headlines and descriptions, for GeekWire’s reporters to explore and pursue for this series. Some but not all of the stories should involve reporters using AI tools to understand their capabilities and compare the results to those produced from human creativity, judgment, knowledge and experience. (A recent example was a GeekWire story that compared poetry created by a human with poetry generated by different AI engines from the same prompt.) Also include big-picture stories that explore the implications of AI, not necessarily including hands-on experimentation with AI.

OpenAI ChatGPT: Here is the list generated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, using GPT-4:

Bot or Not: Can AI Art Rival the Masters? This story investigates the world of AI-generated art and compares it to human-created masterpieces. Reporters will collaborate with AI tools to generate original pieces of art and compare their work to that of renowned human artists, exploring the nuances of creativity, aesthetics, and the ever-evolving relationship between humans and AI.

The AI Lawyer: Weighing the Pros and Cons of Automated Legal Assistance: In this piece, reporters will explore the growing presence of AI in the legal sector. They will use AI-based legal tools to provide advice on a hypothetical case and compare it to the expertise of a human attorney, examining the potential benefits and risks of such technologies in the legal field.

When AI Writes the News: The Future of Journalism in an Automated World: This story will delve into the potential impact of AI-generated news articles on journalism. Reporters will use AI to generate articles on various topics and compare the quality, accuracy, and style to human-written articles, assessing the future role of AI in the newsroom.

Teaching AI Ethics: The Role of Human Values in Machine Learning. In this big-picture piece, the focus will be on the importance of integrating ethics and human values into AI systems. Reporters will explore how developers and researchers are working to ensure that AI technology is developed responsibly and ethically, and the potential consequences if these efforts fall short.

AI in Healthcare: A Deep Dive into the Promises and Pitfalls: This story will explore the use of AI in healthcare, from diagnostics to treatment planning. Reporters will test AI-driven diagnostic tools and compare their accuracy and effectiveness to human medical professionals, examining the potential benefits and drawbacks of incorporating AI in patient care.

AI-powered Customer Service: Efficiency vs. Empathy: Description: In this piece, reporters will interact with various AI-powered customer service tools, comparing their efficiency and accuracy to human customer service representatives. The story will also address the balance between automation and empathy, and whether AI can truly replace human interaction in this area.

The AI Music Revolution: Composer or Collaborator? This story will investigate the role of AI in the world of music composition and production. Reporters will collaborate with AI tools to create original music and compare the results to human compositions, exploring the potential for AI to become a valuable creative partner in the music industry.

Safeguarding Privacy in the Age of AI Surveillance: This big-picture piece will examine the implications of AI-driven surveillance technologies on individual privacy and civil liberties. Reporters will delve into the current state of AI surveillance, its potential impact on society, and the measures needed to protect privacy in an increasingly monitored world.

AI and the Future of Work: Job Creation or Destruction? Description: In this story, reporters will explore the implications of AI and automation on the job market. They will examine the potential for AI to create new job opportunities while also displacing existing roles, and discuss the need for reskilling and workforce adaptation in the face of rapid technological change.

The AI Dating Game: Can Machines Help Us Find True Love? This piece will delve into the world of AI-driven dating apps and services. Reporters will use AI tools to help them find potential matches and compare the results to traditional human-based matchmaking, exploring the role of AI in modern dating and relationships.

Google Bard: This was the best (in my opinion) of three drafts from Google’s Bard.

Can AI Write Code? As AI technology continues to develop, it is becoming increasingly capable of performing tasks that were once thought to be the exclusive domain of humans. One such task is writing code. In recent years, there have been a number of AI-powered code generators that have been developed, and some of these tools have already been used to create successful software products. In this story, GeekWire reporters could explore the capabilities of AI code generators, and they could also interview developers who have used these tools to create their own software.

AI-Powered Chatbots Are Changing the Way We Communicate: AI-powered chatbots are becoming increasingly common, and they are already having a significant impact on the way we communicate. Chatbots are being used in a variety of settings, including customer service, sales, and education. In this story, GeekWire reporters could explore the different ways that chatbots are being used, and they could also interview people who have interacted with chatbots.

AI Is Changing the Future of Work: AI is already having a significant impact on the workforce, and this impact is only going to grow in the years to come. As AI-powered machines become more capable, they will be able to automate more and more tasks that are currently performed by humans. This could lead to significant job losses in some industries, but it could also create new jobs in other industries. In this story, GeekWire reporters could explore the potential impact of AI on the workforce, and they could also interview people who are already being affected by AI-driven automation.

The Ethics of AI: As AI technology continues to develop, it is important to consider the ethical implications of this technology. Some experts have raised concerns about the potential for AI to be used for malicious purposes, such as creating autonomous weapons systems. In this story, GeekWire reporters could explore the ethical implications of AI, and they could also interview experts who have thoughts on this topic.

Microsoft Bing: And here is the list from the Bing AI chatbot:

“How AI is changing the way we work and live” – This story could explore how AI is changing the way we work and live, including how it is impacting our jobs, our homes, and our daily lives.

“The ethics of AI” – This story could explore the ethical implications of AI, including how it is being used in different industries and how it is affecting our society as a whole.

“The future of AI” – This story could explore what the future holds for AI, including how it will continue to evolve and what new applications we can expect to see in the coming years.

“AI and creativity” – This story could explore how AI is being used to create art, music, and other forms of creative content.

“AI and healthcare” – This story could explore how AI is being used in healthcare, including how it is being used to diagnose diseases and develop new treatments.

“AI and education” – This story could explore how AI is being used in education, including how it is being used to personalize learning and improve student outcomes.

“AI and the environment” – This story could explore how AI is being used to address environmental challenges, including climate change and pollution.

“AI and cybersecurity” – This story could explore how AI is being used to improve cybersecurity, including how it is being used to detect and prevent cyber attacks.

“AI and transportation” – This story could explore how AI is being used in transportation, including how it is being used to improve traffic flow and reduce accidents.

“AI and customer service” – This story could explore how AI is being used in customer service, including how it is being used to improve customer experiences and reduce wait times.

So many ideas! Now we just need to get these bots to report and write the stories.

Just kidding … or maybe not.

Which list do you prefer? What would you add? Email tips@geekwire.com with your thoughts and feedback. Thanks for reading, and look for more “Bot or Not” soon.

Google parent Alphabet is laying off 12,000 workers, or about 6% of its global workforce, as it becomes the latest tech company to make cuts amid a fears of a slowing economy.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced the news in an email to employees on Friday (in full at bottom).

“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” Pichai wrote. “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”

Pichai said the tech giant undertook a “rigorous review across product areas and functions” and that roles being eliminated “cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions.”

Alphabet’s workforce grew during the pandemic to nearly 187,000 people by September of last year, up from 119,000 at the end of 2019.

Silicon Valley-based Google first set up shop in the Seattle region more than 15 years ago. The company now operates sprawling campuses in Seattle’s South Lake Union and Fremont neighborhoods and in Kirkland, Wash. Last spring during a GeekWire tour of new Google offices in Kirkland, the company said it employed more than 7,200 workers in the region.

Alphabet declined to comment to GeekWire on how the layoffs will affect Seattle-area workers. Posts on LinkedIn indicated that some had been let go.

The move to slash jobs comes during a particularly heavy week week for layoffs in the tech sector.

Microsoft announced Wednesday that it was cutting 10,000 jobs between now and the end of March, representing about 5% of the company’s workforce of more than 220,000 employees. At least 878 of those layoffs are at Microsoft’s offices in Redmond, Bellevue, and Issaquah, Wash.

Amazon is laying off 18,000 corporate and tech workers, including at least 2,300 in the Seattle region.

Full email to Google employees from Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai:

Googlers,

I have some difficult news to share. We’ve decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. We’ve already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected. In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices.

This will mean saying goodbye to some incredibly talented people we worked hard to hire and have loved working with. I’m deeply sorry for that. The fact that these changes will impact the lives of Googlers weighs heavily on me, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.

Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.

I am confident about the huge opportunity in front of us thanks to the strength of our mission, the value of our products and services, and our early investments in AI. To fully capture it, we’ll need to make tough choices. So, we’ve undertaken a rigorous review across product areas and functions to ensure that our people and roles are aligned with our highest priorities as a company. The roles we’re eliminating reflect the outcome of that review. They cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions.

To the Googlers who are leaving us: Thank you for working so hard to help people and businesses everywhere. Your contributions have been invaluable and we are grateful for them.

While this transition won’t be easy, we’re going to support employees as they look for their next opportunity.

In the US:

• We’ll pay employees during the full notification period (minimum 60 days).
• We’ll also offer a severance package starting at 16 weeks salary plus two weeks for every additional year at Google, and accelerate at least 16 weeks of GSU vesting.
• We’ll pay 2022 bonuses and remaining vacation time.
• We’ll be offering 6 months of healthcare, job placement services, and immigration support for those affected.
• Outside the US, we’ll support employees in line with local practices.

As an almost 25-year-old company, we’re bound to go through difficult economic cycles. These are important moments to sharpen our focus, reengineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities.

Being constrained in some areas allows us to bet big on others. Pivoting the company to be AI-first years ago led to groundbreaking advances across our businesses and the whole industry.

Thanks to those early investments, Google’s products are better than ever. And we’re getting ready to share some entirely new experiences for users, developers and businesses, too. We have a substantial opportunity in front of us with AI across our products and are prepared to approach it boldly and responsibly.

All this work is a continuation of the “healthy disregard for the impossible” that’s been core to our culture from the beginning. When I look around Google today, I see that same spirit and energy driving our efforts. That’s why I remain optimistic about our ability to deliver on our mission, even on our toughest days. Today is certainly one of them.

I’m sure you have many questions about how we’ll move forward. We’ll be organizing a town hall on Monday. Check your calendar for details. Until then, please take good care of yourselves as you absorb this difficult news. As part of that, if you are just starting your work day, please feel free to work from home today.

-Sundar

Google is going gangbusters in the suburbs east of Seattle.

The tech giant gave an inside look Thursday at the sprawling campus it has partially moved into and continues to build out in Kirkland, Wash., as it announced plans to invest another $100 million this year in the region where it first set up shop 15 years ago.

Google officially opened phase one of its Kirkland Urban campus with two 8-story glass office buildings it refers to as North and Central. Upon completion, four buildings will total 760,000 square feet of space.

As the company hosted dignitaries including Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene and Kirkland Mayor Penny Sweet, a crane and construction workers were busy on the adjacent South building, which is expected to open in 2023. An East building is planned for 2025.

The growth is part of Google’s ongoing commitment to Kirkland and Seattle where it employs more than 7,200 workers. In South Lake Union, Google is working on Block 38, a 330,000-square-foot building that will give Google five total buildings and 900,000 square feet of space in Amazon’s backyard.

And it’s a commitment to getting workers back in the physical office, at least part of the time, after more than two years of remote work brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Companywide, Google says it is investing $9.5 billion in offices and data centers and creating at least 12,000 jobs in the U.S. this year. The Puget Sound region is the company’s second largest U.S. engineering center outside the Bay Area.

“As the country continues to come back from the devastating pandemic, we are doubling down in the states that we call home,” said Paco Galanes, Kirkland site lead and engineering director. He confirmed that the company is proceeding with the design phase of another Kirkland site, a former Lee Johnson Chevrolet car dealership, which Google purchased in 2020.

In his own remarks Thursday, Inslee praised Google for being a “growth engine” in Washington and putting more people in the state into “incredible jobs.”

“The thing I really want to emphasize is your commitment to clean energy, your company’s commitment and your personal commitment to build a new economy, based on clean energy,” Inslee said, calling out Google’s efforts to operate on carbon-free energy on its campuses and data centers by 2030.

The Kirkland Urban mixed use development features may of the trappings used to lure tech workers in a competitive market where Google competes for talent with Microsoft, Amazon and many others. Both of those tech giants are in fact equally bullish on the region east of Seattle — Amazon is growing rapidly in downtown Bellevue and Microsoft is building out a massive update of its longtime Redmond campus.

Kirkland Urban is already home to a Shake Shack burger restaurant; a Topgolf driving range; a QFC grocery store; and more retail and dining. On a sunny afternoon, workers moved between buildings to explore lunch options or cruised past on rainbow-colored Google bikes.

Inside the Central building, Galanes and other Google reps touted the amenities that would make Googlers eager to return to the office.

Connected by a spiraling central staircase, each floor in the building is designed around a specific Washington state economic or cultural theme such as technology, aerospace, music, the outdoors and more. There are micro-kitchens, dining spaces, lounges, and meeting rooms galore. There’s a recording studio and band practice area; a dog lounge with a rooftop exercise area; a small movie theater; and a massive production studio for presenting Google events from the campus.

Around the perimeter of these common and mixed-use areas are the actual workspaces, newly realized to be more flexible for shrinking or growing teams in a work environment where maybe not everyone is coming to the office every day.

Google has moved to a hybrid work model in which it expects employees in the office at least three days a week. The model was expected to be fully functional at the start of April and was “designed to maximize flexibility while still facilitating innovation, collaboration and camaraderie of in-office experiences,” the company previously said.

Google would not say Thursday how many employees are currently working in the two finished buildings at Kirkland Urban or how many employees the campus may ultimately hold. Commercial real estate figures for tech companies typically amount to one employee per 150 to 200 square feet, which would put employee count on the finished campus at roughly 3,800.

Google also does not share the breakdown between how many employees work in Kirkland and how many work at offices in South Lake Union or Fremont.

After just a month of the new hybrid work model, Google says it does not yet have all the data on the number of people coming into its offices, but the company says it has seen an influx of people coming in regularly to work at the office and it’s seeing more each week.

If it was up to Kirkland Mayor Penny Sweet, she might be there every day. She called her city the best place in America to live, work and play and said partners like Google make it that way. She commended the company for stepping up to help small businesses impacted by the loss of tech workers in the community during the past two years.

“As we celebrate the opening of these gorgeous new facilities and Google’s return to the office … we get a glimpse of what the future can be,” Sweet said. “World class workspaces, housing choices, convenient amenities, and opportunities to live, work and play within walking distance.

“We look forward to welcoming more Googlers to our community,” she added.

Keep scrolling for more photos from GeekWire’s tour of Google’s Kirkland Urban campus:

Google’s agreement to buy cybersecurity company Mandiant for $5.4 billion, announced Tuesday morning, reflects a broader effort by the major cloud providers to give businesses better defenses against a growing array of threats.

The deal comes as the Russian invasion of Ukraine further illustrates the need for companies to invest in cybersecurity protections.

It also reflects a growth area for the cloud giants. Mandiant’s revenue from continuing operations in 2021 rose 21% to $483 million, and it was projecting more than $550 million in revenue for the current year as a standalone company.

Microsoft had reportedly been in the running to acquire Mandiant, before bowing out. The Redmond company last year hired former Amazon executive Charlie Bell to lead its newly formed cybersecurity engineering organization. Microsoft said in January that its security revenue in the prior 12 months topped $15 billion, up 45% year over year.

“The cloud security space is highly competitive, and this deal really only even further enhances that competition,” said Phil Venables, Google’s chief information security officer, addressing a reporter’s question about potential regulatory hurdles to closing the deal during a virtual press conference Tuesday morning.

Technology news service The Information, which first reported Google’s talks with Mandiant, reported that some Google employees “privately discussed the need for more security firepower to compete with Microsoft, which offers more security products for its Azure cloud customers, as well as with Amazon Web Services.”

In an internal FAQ filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mandiant acknowledges that there were additional suitors. “Once we received Google’s offer, we had an obligation to consider that offer, along with alternative opportunities,” the filing reads. “After careful consideration, we concluded that Google’s offer is in the best interest of our company, our shareholders and our customers.”

Given its larger security footprint, Microsoft might have been subject to greater government scrutiny than Google in an acquisition of Mandiant. Although it’s in another technology sector, Microsoft already has its hands full with the regulatory review of its $68.7 billion agreement to acquire Activision Blizzard.

Google Cloud trails Microsoft and Amazon with about 10% of the cloud infrastructure services market as of the fourth quarter of 2021, according to data compiled by Synergy Research Group.

Mandiant, based in Reston, Va., is known for its squadrons of security consultants and researchers who respond to cybersecurity incidents and provide the basis for the company’s security technology platform.

“This is an opportunity to deliver an end-to-end security operations suite and extend one of the best consulting organizations in the world,” said Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian in a press release announcing the deal.

Mandiant was founded by former U.S. Air Force computer security officer Kevin Mandia, Mandiant’s CEO, who will join Google through the deal. Previously known as FireEye, the company drew attention in 2020 for discovering the SolarWinds attacks. It sold the FireEye business last year to Symphony Technology Group.

Analysts are divided over whether Google’s move signals more deals ahead.

“We believe this deal will have a major ripple impact across the cyber security space as cloud stalwarts Amazon and Microsoft will now be pressured into M&A and further bulk up its cloud platforms,” wrote Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives in a note to clients after the deal was announced Tuesday morning.

Matthew Hedberg of RBC Capital Markets was more cautious.

Hedberg wrote in a note to clients, “While we don’t believe this necessarily forces other large technology vendors to follow suit with a large cyber-security acquisition in the short-term, we believe it further illustrates the importance of cyber-security in a cloud-first world and expect both large and small technology vendors to continue to invest (both organically and inorganically) to take advantage of strong market tailwinds.”

Google is getting ready to transition from a voluntary work-from-home period to a hybrid work model that will see most employees report to its Seattle and Kirkland, Wash., offices three days a week.

As more companies announce plans for how and where employees will work after two years of COVID-19-induced office closures, Google said Wednesday it plans to use the month of March to help employees transition to new routines.

Workers should “aim to be fully functional in our hybrid working approach by April 4,” a spokesperson said.

Google said employees can work more from the office if they desire, and some roles may need to be onsite more than three days a week due to the nature of their work.

Google was the first Silicon Valley tech company to establish an engineering outpost in the Seattle area in 2004. More than 100 out-of-town companies now have satellite offices in the region.

Google now has more than 7,000 employees across Seattle and on the other side of Lake Washington in Kirkland. It’s hardly an outpost anymore and is the company’s largest engineering operation, in the U.S., away from its Mountain View, Calif., home.

The hybrid work week approach was inspired by employee feedback and is “designed to maximize flexibility while still facilitating innovation, collaboration and camaraderie of in-office experiences.”

Google said that since launching a new work location tool last June, nearly 14,000 employees around the world have transferred to new locations or moved to fully remote work — with about 85% of total applications approved.

The company is requiring anyone who works on its campuses to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Vulcan Real Estate sold the two-block, four building Google campus overlooking Seattle’s Lake Union for $802 million, a price of $1,260 per square foot that’s believed to set a new record for the city’s office market.

The sale to German investment firm Deka Immobilien reflects the unique nature of the property and the tenant, and confidence in the tech office market as the COVID-19 Omicron variant wanes. Google said this week that it’s relaxing its COVID restrictions, reinstituting perks, and preparing to bring workers back to the office at least three days a week.

Vulcan, the holding company for late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, announced the sale Wednesday afternoon with Newmark Group Inc., which marketed the property, known as Lakefront Blocks, and brokered the sale. The two blocks were marketed separately, they said, and Deka Immobilien was the winning bidder for each.

“The strong interest we received in the property is testament to the enduring quality of this institutional-grade investment,” said Ada Healey, Vulcan’s chief real estate officer, in a statement, calling the property “truly one of South Lake Union’s trophy assets.”

The complex spans two city blocks, each of which has two six-story office buildings. The total square footage is 635,000 square feet. The campus is on the northern edge of the South Lake Union neighborhood, between the water and Amazon’s campus, which was also developed by Vulcan.

The sale did not include the two apartment towers above the office buildings.

Lori Mason Curran, Vulcan real estate investment strategy director, said via phone Thursday morning that the prior Seattle office record was Vulcan’s 2019 sale of the nearby Arbor Blocks property, occupied by the company now known as Meta, for $1,069 per square foot. The Puget Sound Business Journal first reported on the new record.

Vulcan is developing a fifth building for Google, a 12-story high-rise at 520 Westlake Ave. N., southwest of the Lakefront Blocks, but completion of that project has been delayed by the concrete truckers strike.

Updated to correct spelling of Ada Healey’s last name.

A group of 30 newspaper publishers, including Seattle-based Robinson Newspapers, have sued Google and Facebook over the way the social and search giants profit from news content at the expense of the publications that produce it.

The lawsuits, outlined in a story by Axios, involve more than 200 individual publications and are based on a central antitrust premise: that the two tech companies are so pervasive in online advertising that they illegally siphon up revenue that would otherwise go to local news. 

The litigation’s goal, according to the Axios report, is “to recover past damages to newspapers” caused by Big Tech companies, according to a lawyer representing the newspapers.

Robinson newspapers include Ballard News-Tribune, Des Moines News, Highline Times, White Center News and the West Seattle Herald. Representatives with the Robinson could not immediate be reached for comment.

Filed in September, the Robinson lawsuit blames the two tech companies for a sharp decline is revenue. “Defendants’ anticompetitive and monopolistic practices have had a profound effect upon our country’s free and diverse press, particularly the newspaper industry,” the lawsuit states.

“Since 2006, newspaper advertising revenue, which is critical for funding high-quality journalism, fell by over 50%.”

The multiple lawsuits were consolidated in New York and remain pending.

A Google spokesperson said lawsuits’ assertions don’t reflect reality.

“These claims are just wrong” the spokesperson said. “The online advertising space is crowded and competitive, our ad tech fees are lower than reported industry averages, and publishers keep the vast majority of revenue earned when using our products.

“We are one of the world’s leading financial supporters of journalism and have provided billions of dollars to support quality journalism in the digital age.”

The litigation is partly based on a 2020 congressional committee investigation and report on Big Tech and antitrust. Lina Khan, the current head of the Federal Trade Commission, was a lead counsel to the investigative committee and helped assemble the 450-page report. As head of the FTC, the former Columbia Law school professor and researcher has made antitrust disputes a primary focus.

The report outlined how dominant the two companies are when it comes to online advertising linked to news stories.

“Google and Facebook are the gateways to online news media for many consumers,” the report stated. “As a result, news publishers are reliant on these platforms for reaching people online, which affects publishers’ ability to monetize journalism, particularly on formats such as Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages.”

The Robinson Communications lawsuit (see below) specifically cites the congressional report as basis for the litigation: “If proven to be true, and as alleged herein, Google and Facebook have monopolized the digital advertising market thereby strangling a primary source of revenue for newspapers across the country.”

Here’s a list of the publications that have joined in the litigation.

Cracking open the Surface Duo 2 for first time this week, I had a litmus test for whether Microsoft and Google had made progress on the unlikely partnership that produced the first version of this Android device last year: has Gmail finally been optimized for the Duo’s dual screens?

The answer is no, as I discovered when I spanned Google’s email app across them. Just as with Gmail on the original Surface Duo, the message body stretches awkwardly into the left-hand screen, making the Duo’s dual-screen functionality awkward if not impossible to use with one of Google’s most popular apps.

This is despite the fact that Gmail and other Google apps are pre-installed on the device alongside Microsoft’s own apps, and users are prompted to sign into their Google accounts (in addition to their Microsoft account) upon the initial bootup of the Surface Duo 2.

Microsoft’s Outlook app, in contrast, puts the inbox on one side and the message body on the other, as it has since the first Duo was released last year.

It might be a minor complaint, but it reflects my initial experience trying a Surface Duo 2 review unit, on loan from Microsoft this week. The company has made some nice hardware upgrades, including an upgraded camera, slightly larger screens, 5G connectivity, a faster processor, and a handy glance bar for notifications in the exterior hinge.

There are also a few more non-Microsoft apps and games that have been optimized for the dual screens. Notably, the Google Play Books app works well for reading across the Duo’s two screens, with one page on each side, matching Amazon’s Kindle app in that regard.

However, the user experience overall still feels like a work in progress.

Some of the issues that led me to return the original Surface Duo that I purchased last year haven’t been addressed. Chief among them is the way the taskbar jumps from a tight configuration on one screen to loosely span the bottom of two screens when an app is closed, making the simple task of pressing an icon akin to playing Whac-a-mole. There must be a better way to do this.

Coupled with this week’s initial preview of Android apps for Windows 11, my initial experience of using the Surface Duo 2 leaves me wondering, again, whether the ultimate solution will be for Microsoft to give up on Android and develop a dual-screen Windows device, returning to familiar ground.

The company was pursuing this previously with the larger dual-screen Surface Neo device and Windows 10X, which was paused indefinitely last year. Here’s hoping they give it another try.

I’m still in the early stages of using the Surface Duo 2, and keeping an open mind, but those are my initial impressions and takeaways.

Microsoft’s Surface Duo 2 is available now at a starting price of $1,500.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s Amazon-busting legislation, the “Ending Platform Monopolies Act” that would potentially force the company’s dismantling, has earned Biden administration support, the 7th District Democrat said in an interview with GeekWire.

“They are supportive, actually,” Jayapal said in a recorded interview. “And you might have seen that they appointed some of our best people that we were pushing, (Federal Trade Commission chair) Lina Khan, (National Economic Council deputy director) Bharat Ramamurti, (special assistant to the President) Tim Wu, many others.

“And even the Attorney General for antitrust (Jonathan Kanter), great choice. We’re excited about him. So it’s looking very good.”

The legislation, which appears to target Amazon by limiting its antitrust restrictions to retail sales companies that are “larger than $600 billion” in market capitalization, is part of a five-bill antitrust package to limit the power and reach of the big four technology companies: Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple.

The Ending Platform Monopolies Act, as one component of the overall legislative package, seeks to stop dominant platforms’ abilities to leverage power across multiple business lines in a way that puts competitors using the same platform at a disadvantage. For example, the bill could eliminate the Amazon Basics line because Amazon owns the platform and with those Basics products competes directly with other users who sell similar items.

An Amazon spokesman declined to comment on the recent Jayapal interview and instead referenced a June statement from the company’s vice president of public policy Brian Huseman.

“We are still analyzing the bills, but from what we can tell so far, we believe they would have significant negative effects on the hundreds of thousands of American small- and medium-sized businesses that sell in our store, and tens of millions of consumers who buy products from Amazon,” Huseman wrote.

“More than a half-million American small- and medium-sized businesses make a living via Amazon’s marketplace, and without access to Amazon’s customers, it will be much harder for these third-party sellers to create awareness for their business and earn a comparable income.”

Doug Ross, a law professor and antitrust expert at the University of Washington, said he has little doubt that the administration is at least warm to the legislation. He agreed with Jayapal that the appointments of Khan, Wu, and Kanter indicate a rethinking of antitrust law at the highest levels of government.

But, he added, he doesn’t believe that the way Amazon runs its business is a violation of current antitrust standards — at least as courts have interpreted them for the past 40 years.

“The legislation is saying, ‘you can be a marketplace or a seller or goods — you can’t be both'” Ross said. “But you go into Safeway and you see national brands of peanut butter. And you see Safeway’s house brand. But no one sees that as an antitrust violation.”

This is true, antitrust experts agree. But it’s also true that supermarkets seldom, if ever, place their own house brands in a preferred shelf placement over more popular national brands — something Amazon often is accused of doing in its own online marketplace.

Plus, Jayapal said, Amazon has access to substantial amounts of its supplier’s data and takes unfair advantage of that in a way a supermarket can’t.

“They then collect all of the data on every seller that sells on the marketplace,” Jayapal said. “And then they produce their own private label goods to compete with those that are on the marketplace. All of that means that a small business has really an extremely unfair situation where they’re not playing by the same rules, all of their data is being taken.”

Taken as a whole, the five bills would create a framework to dismantle large tech companies into smaller ones (Amazon and Amazon Web Services, for example); to make mergers more expensive and difficult; to break up businesses that use their dominance in one area to get a stronghold in another; and to stop companies that create purportedly open marketplaces and only to game it to favor their own products.

The sweeping package from House Democrats and Republicans comes after months of study and congressional inquiries about the enormous power and financial reach of Big Tech and the existing regulations to curtail it.

Spokespeople from Facebook, Google, and Apple all declined to comment on Jayapal’s disclosure that her legislation has administration backing. And all pointed to earlier comments that opposed the package of legislation as harmful to businesses and consumers.

The tech companies’ focus on consumer harm is no accident, Ross said. Modern antitrust law since the late 1970s has been shaped by the view that consumer welfare should be the overriding concern — not mandating competition. The view, championed by the late U.S. Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, and subsequent court decisions have essentially kept antitrust statutes at largely bay when it comes to Big Tech.

After all, the thinking goes, what is the antitrust consumer harm when a product is offered largely for free such as Google and Facebook?

But that consumer-focused thinking about antitrust wasn’t always the case, Ross said.

Originally, antitrust law was developed from the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The act, which forced the breakup of the Standard Oil monopoly (also called a trust), specifically targeted anti-competitive business practices such as buying up or forcing out competitors to control a given market.

“But we’re redefined what’s lawful and what’s unlawful since then,” Ross said.

Jayapal’s legislative push, along with the bipartisan group of lawmakers who are backing the entire antitrust package, amounts to an attempted partial return to the original concept of antitrust, that business competition and innovation should be the paramount concern — an idea publicly backed by Wu and Khan.

In fact, it was Khan’s seminal paper on this exact issue as it relates to Amazon that likely helped her appointment as the FTC chairperson.

Jayapal said she hopes the house can get all five bills to the Senate, “within the next three to six months.”

Ross doesn’t see the need. He thinks the consumer focus of the antitrust theory was a logical evolution of the law from the monopolies of the late 1800s and early 1900s to the modern, efficient, consumer-oriented economy. “I think the antitrust laws we have now are sufficient to address any antitrust issues we have,” he said.

Rep. Adam Schiff, in separate letters to bosses of tech giants Amazon and Facebook, criticized the efforts of both companies to curb the spread COVID-19 and related vaccination information.

The pair of letters, dated a day after Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s missive also sharply rebuked Amazon for vaccine misinformation, accused both companies of “directly profiting” on the spread of false vaccine and virus information on their respective sites.

To Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Schiff wrote, “As long as these materials remain on your site, Facebook is directly profiting from the sensationalism of antivaccine misinformation, while these conspiracy theories continue to directly contribute to COVID-19 deaths.”

And to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Schiff pointed out that Amazon’s own algorithms can be gamed to push people toward false information. “Further, Amazon algorithms and lists have been easily manipulated by bad actors through false reviews, targeted purchasing, miscategorization, or even intentional misspellings,”  he wrote.

“As long as these materials remain on the site, Amazon is directly profiting from the sensationalism of antivaccine misinformation.”

An Amazon spokesperson said when it comes to vaccines, the company leads by example. “As a company, we continue to encourage our employees to get vaccinated, and we believe it is an important step for communities to stay healthy and recover from the pandemic.”

A company spokesperson also confirmed the company will respond to Warren’s questions.

The pointed criticism from the two powerful Democrats comes at a fraught time for the four tech giants — Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple — as Congress probes both the power and reach of a handful of the most valuable companies in the world.

Seattle Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s Amazon-busting legislation, the “Ending Platform Monopolies Act” would potentially force the company’s dismantling, has both bipartisan and Biden administration support, the 7th District Democrat said in a recent interview with GeekWire.

Her legislation is part of a five-bill package that seek to create a framework to dismantle large tech companies into smaller ones (Amazon and Amazon Web Services, for example); to make mergers more expensive and difficult; to break up businesses that use their dominance in one area to get a stronghold in another; and to stop companies that create purportedly open marketplaces and only to game it to favor their own products.

Schiff’s and Warren’s comments don’t appear to indicate any softening of the tone toward at least two of the companies. Schiff had contacted both companies about similar issues in 2019, at the pandemic’s outset.

And while he conceded that the pair were trying to curb COVID-19 misinformation, neither had gone far enough.

“It is, of course, inevitable that malicious users will attempt to propagate harmful content, and I appreciate Facebook’s efforts to provide accurate information on COVID-19 when possible,” Schiff wrote in his letter to Zuckerberg.

“Research has shown, however, that combatting anti-vaccine conspiracies by posing factual and counter-factual information as opposing, but equal viewpoints is ineffective at combatting misinformation and disinformation.

In a statement issued after he sent the letters, Schiff said the social media companies are helping to perpetuate the pandemic.

“Vaccine hesitancy fueled by misinformation stands between us and truly ending the COVID-19 pandemic. And nowhere is that misinformation more apparent, potent, and transmissible than on social media and e-commerce sites,” Schiff said. “As the administration of vaccines around the country continues, misinformation is on the rise on major online platforms.”

Schiff asked the companies to respond to a series questions including:

• What is the size of your content moderation operation, including numbers of staff and resources devoted, and what are your goals for depth and breadth of moderation? What is the status of progress toward meeting these goals?
• What steps are you currently taking to ensure that algorithms are not used to promote misleading or false health information?

A spokesperson for Facebook said the company is working aggressively to remove false information.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have removed over 20 million pieces of COVID misinformation, labeled more than 190 million pieces of COVID content rated by our fact-checking partners, and connected over 2 billion people with reliable information through tools like our COVID information center,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“The data shows that for people in the US on Facebook, vaccine hesitancy has declined by 50% since January, and acceptance is high. We have removed over 3,000 accounts, pages, and groups for repeatedly violating our COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation policies and will continue to enforce our policies and offer tools and reminders for people who use our platform to get vaccinated.”

Read both letters below.

Few lawmakers have gotten Amazon’s attention like the one who hails from the company’s hometown, Rep. Pramila Jayapal. The 7th Congressional District Democrat has made the powerful tech industry a primary focus and in particular what she sees as potentially monopolistic practices of the Big Four: Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple.

Recently, Rep. Jayapal sat down with GeekWire to talk about her “Ending Platform Monopolies Act” (H.R. 3825) — legislation she says has the support of the Biden administration — as well as her passion for the U.S. to be a leader in vaccine distribution worldwide and why paid child leave should be a part of infrastructure plans. 

The Q&A below has been edited for brevity and clarity. Watch or listen to the full interview in the podcast or video below.

GeekWire: You find yourself in a bit of a dustup with the state’s largest employer and one of the country’s largest employers in Amazon. Before we get into the specifics of your legislation, the Ending Platform Monopolies Act, how do you see Amazon as both a company and as an employer?

Rep. Jayapal: Look, I am really grateful for the innovation that exists in our district and the fact that Amazon was born here and provides many, many good-paying jobs to people across the state and across the country. But none of that changes the fact that monopoly power as a whole actually prevents creativity and innovation, the kind of which led to Amazon’s creation, and led to Seattle and the 7th district being as successful as it is in those areas.

The reality is that when you have this kind of concentrated monopoly power, and you do not have antitrust regulation of the kind that we are proposing, then what happens is you concentrate all of the power with just a couple of Big Tech companies, and you disadvantage small businesses, you disadvantage consumers, and equally important you disadvantage innovation and competition.

I understand that probably a significant portion of my constituents work for Amazon. This is not at all about the people that work for Amazon, but it is about concentrated power and the government’s role in regulating and reining back that concentration so other small businesses can thrive and survive.

GW: Let’s talk a little bit about your legislation. Can you explain what you mean about “conflict of interest” and antitrust, specifically, as it relates to Amazon and what your legislation would do?

Rep. Jayapal: It’s sort of like when you have two teams on a field. And the person that is the referee, the (same) person that sets the rules for the game, the person that calls all of the plays, and the person that happens to play on one of the teams, everybody would say, ‘well, that’s not fair, that doesn’t make any sense.’ Well, that’s what conflict of interest in the antitrust world means with these tech companies.

We’ll take the example of Amazon. Amazon is a marketplace, they control the marketplace, they set the rules of the game for the marketplace. If you want to sell on Amazon’s marketplace, you have to follow those rules. They then collect all of the data on every seller that sells on the marketplace. And then they produce their own private label goods to compete with those that are on the marketplace.

All of that means is that a small business has an extremely unfair situation where they’re not playing by the same rules, all of their data is being taken. 

Amazon knows exactly what’s selling and to whom and how much it costs, and how much consumers are willing to pay. So they can undercut and push a seller out of business or they will acquire the company which you know, for some companies, that’s great that you acquire it, but it takes away all of the competition.

GW: So what is the practical application? Is essentially the idea is to break Amazon into at least two — if not more — companies?

Rep. Jayapal: Well, if Amazon or any other tech company didn’t comply and had a conflict of interest, then yes, you would have to separate them. Now there are other things that could happen in the process — they could essentially spin off a company, the ownership would have to be different. You couldn’t just spin it off and call it something else. But there are lots of things that could happen along the way. But if they still refuse to comply, then yes, the solution would be to break up the company and to make sure that there is a structural separation between the buy and the sell side, if you will.

GW: Andy Jassy is now in charge of the company. This legislation is sitting out there and other bills are sitting out there that I’m sure he is taking a keen interest in. Have you met with Andy Jassy? And do you see any possibility of new leadership there opening the door to some form of dialogue?

Rep. Jayapal: I have not met with him, yet. But I would be happy to meet with him. I was happy to meet with Amazon before. That was not something they sought out. I think we had an early meeting that didn’t go particularly well. But I think that the reality is that the tech companies that understand that this regulation is coming. And by the way, it’s not just in Washington, D.C. This is happening around the world, in the European Union and other parts of the world, the same kinds of regulations are coming into play.

GW: Where do you what do you expect the trajectory particularly to the monopoly platform act? And is the White House supportive?

Rep. Jayapal: They are supportive, actually. And you might have seen that they appointed some of our best people that we were pushing, (FTC Chair) Lina Khan, (National Economic Council deputy director) Bharat Ramamurti, (special assistant to the president) Tim Wu, many others. And even the Attorney General for antitrust, (Jonathan Kanter) great choice. We’re excited about him. So it’s looking very good. The trajectory will be that the Senate will introduce the same House bills, ideally with bipartisan co-sponsorship again, and then we will try to move the bills through the house as quickly as we can. Obviously, we’re focused on reconciliation now. But my hope is that within the next three to six months, we could move those bills through the House.

[Editor’s Note: When we asked Amazon for comment, the company referred us to a June statement by Brian Huseman, its vice president of public policy, on Jayapal’s bill and others in the House seeking to regulate tech marketplace competition.

In essence, Amazon contends that the bills would have “significant negative effects,” making it tougher for businesses to reach and market to Amazon customers and make a living via its marketplace, while reducing price competition and probably increasing prices for consumers. Amazon called on Congress to slow down and “thoroughly vet the language in the bills for unintended negative consequences.”]

GW: Let’s focus on Washington state. Are you supportive of the idea of mandatory vaccine mandates?

Rep. Jayapal: I am supportive of that. We have done everything that we possibly can to incentivize people to get vaccines. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of misinformation out there. I’m not talking about the people who can’t get vaccines because of their compromised immune status. I’m not talking about people who just haven’t gotten a day off of work and so can’t get to a place to get a vaccine. I’m talking about people that are willfully spreading misinformation about vaccines.

There are many vaccines that you get to protect yourself, but they don’t really have an effect on anybody else. That is not the case with the COVID vaccine. The COVID vaccine is about protecting yourself, but it’s actually about protecting everybody around you. Because the more people that are unvaccinated, the more the virus has the ability to transmute into more and more dangerous, you know, variants, and to kill more and more people. So unless we achieve vaccination status at a certain threshold, we are going to continue to deal with this and see more and more deaths of people who are vaccinated and unvaccinated because the virus will continue to change and transmute.

GW: What should be at the top of Washington’s wish list when it comes to infrastructure, from the federal government infrastructure funding?

Rep. Jayapal: Well, it depends on how you define infrastructure. I just have to start with that because infrastructure as being not only roads and bridges but everything that you need to get on the road. That means childcare, that means community college so that people can get training. So to me, it’s all one big picture. But in terms of physical hard infrastructure, what I believe is that we have to address all of the pieces of infrastructure that have crumbled underneath us. That is not just roads and bridges. It is also our lead water pipes. We need to get drinking water clean. We need to make sure that we are investing in green energy solutions, including electric vehicles, transit, all of the things that allow us to take on climate change at the same time.

Google’s growth in the Seattle region is part of what lured Eric Young, a 15-year Amazon veteran, to jump from one tech giant to another back in 2016. Five years later, Young is helping to spark even more growth as the site lead for Washington state and vice president of engineering at Google.

Google was the first Silicon Valley tech company to establish an engineering outpost in the Seattle area in 2004. More than 100 out-of-town companies now have satellite offices in the region, tapping into the bevy of tech talent.

Seventeen years later after setting the trend, Google has more than 7,000 employees across Seattle and other side of Lake Washington in Kirkland. It’s hardly an outpost anymore and is the company’s largest engineering operation, in the U.S., away from its Mountain View, Calif., home.

Google has ongoing construction work at its new Kirkland Urban campus east of Seattle. It also last year signed an agreement to buy nearly 10 acres of land at a car dealership site just down the street in Kirkland.

“This is a full engineering-focused site and most of our product areas actually have a significant presence up here,” Young said during a recent interview with GeekWire.

Google continues to grow across the country, announcing in March that it would invest $7 billion in offices and data centers across 19 U.S. states this year. It also said it will create 10,000 full-time jobs in the U.S. this year.

A native of San Diego, Young made a brief stop in the Bay Area before moving to Seattle in 2000 to work for Amazon, where he spent the entirety of his time working on consumer-focused products and services. When he got the itch to try something new, he made the shift to enterprise at Google. And he got a front-row seat to the growth that has seen Google expand its presence in Kirkland and on Amazon’s home turf of South Lake Union.

We caught up with Young to talk about Google’s plans in the region, remote work options coming out of the pandemic, the competition for talent, what he’s Googling and more. Keep reading for our Q&A, edited for length and clarity.

GW. Thanks for chatting with us, Eric. What did you do primarily at Amazon and what were you doing when you left?

Young: At Amazon my initial role was leading a small engineering team focused on targeted messaging. It was a group within personalization, but largely focused in their consumer division. Throughout my time at Amazon, I actually was focused entirely on the consumer segment of their business. So I started in personalization doing targeted messaging products, then went to support their merchants business, like Seller Central, that created the ability for people to manage their storefronts on Amazon. From there I moved into the fulfillment center, so, picking, packing, shipping, sorting systems. And then ultimately to vendor management, like retail systems and retail pricing. So a variety of functions that were focused entirely on the consumer segment.

GW: What was the attraction to Google? What got you to leave Amazon after 15 years?

Young: With Google I had the opportunity to shift into an enterprise-focused role that was largely focused on our infrastructure and our cloud business, in addition to the site lead role. Honestly I had a great time at Amazon. I spent 15 years there, so obviously I enjoyed it. But I was ready to try something new and different. Google was a company that I always respected; they also had a great proven history of thinking big and taking these “moonshots” as we call them within Google. The idea to be a site lead for a growing area of engineering investment for Google was quite attractive. This is our second largest engineering site outside of the Bay Area, and it was really exciting to be part of that growth and the diversity of products that Google was going to build up here.

GW: Can you pinpoint anything culture wise that immediately struck you after jumping from one tech giant to another? 

Young: Both companies are obviously quite innovative companies and I’ve enjoyed both for that. For me, once you’re 15 years at a place, you get an itch to try something new and something different. That was a real honest motivator of my switch. I also had great interest and admiration for what Google did, but I perhaps erroneously saw it only as a Bay Area company and I was not ready to move to the Bay Area. I was obviously thrilled to see the growth plans here locally and for me it felt like an opportunity I didn’t want to miss.

GW: What are the latest numbers for Googlers in the Seattle area?

Young: We have about 7,000 people up here split evenly on both sides of the lake. So 50-50, almost down the middle exactly throughout our history on Seattle versus Kirkland. It’s just amazing how many people naturally choose that preference.

GW: That number matches what Facebook told me for their size here as well. We used to call them engineering outposts, but they’re like full-on little companies.

Young: Yeah, it’s certainly not an outpost. This is a full engineering-focused site and most of our product areas actually have a significant presence up here. So it is an active area of investment across all the products that we work on, not just a subset. So it is an area of growth for sure.

GW: Can you speak about that growth? You’ve grabbed significantly more space in Kirkland. In Seattle and South Lake Union, the cloud presence is new. Are their plans to continue going gangbusters?

Young: We don’t see the growth slowing down at all. We definitely have enjoyed the opportunity to be up here. You can see the growth in South Lake Union, just moving from Fremont into the South Lake Union campus. There’s four buildings now, the fifth building, the former Guitar Center building, will open up next year. On Kirkland I think we’ve been public with the fact that we’re building a fifth building on Sixth Street campus, which is our fifth building on the campus we’re currently at. Plus we’re in the process of opening up Kirkland Urban, where we’ll ultimately occupy four buildings there and are in the process of moving into the first one now. We definitely don’t plan to decelerate any of our growth here, and many portions of our business, like cloud in general, are largely getting built up in the Pacific Northwest. So this is a huge area of growth.

GW: Are you still holding onto Fremont or will you transition out of there to South Lake Union?

Young: Our Fremont office is still part of our campus plans, and South Lake Union was an expansion on top of that, not a replacement of it.

GW: Anything new on return-to-office plans coming out of COVID?

Young: We’re trying to take a deliberate approach, a phased approach for employees to come back into the office. Right now, they’ve been able to come back in since April on a voluntary basis; we’re probably less than 20% occupied on any given day right now. But people will be transitioning back to the office by September and they’ll be given a choice of three operating modes. They could be an office-based employee where they’re expected to be in the office three days a week. The other two days a week they can work from home or they can choose to come into the office if they want. Plus they’ll have a month of flex time where they can just work from anywhere they’re authorized to work from. So if it’s another country they still have to be authorized to work out of that country. We offer that as the primary default mode.

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There’s two other modes. You can choose to relocate to another Google office location — stay on your current team, but go work in another location where Google has an office [and] be an office-based employee there, with all the perks and amenities of being in the office, but still work on your current team virtually, through remote technology. The third one is just go entirely remote and work somewhere that we don’t have an office, but engage like we have through the pandemic via video conferencing as your primary means of interaction.

GW: That would be a [real] option for folks, or that would be sort of the less preferred of the three?

Young: Actually all three are operating modes we want to support. We will actually post positions that will support people to be hired into fully remote positions as well. We really are embracing it. It’s true that the early days of Google culture still remain and the office is like a cherished part of our work environment, but we really do want to invent the future of work. Whether it be through fully remote experiences and hybrid teams, we’re looking to try to figure out how to make that be some of the perks and flexibility that you get if you come to Google.

GW: That’s interesting on the heels of your answers related to new buildings that you guys are occupying. Obviously companies are still heavily invested in that physical space. How do you feel about running an engineering center as we embark on this new reality, coming out of remote work?

Young: I think there’s a lot of excitement and enthusiasm. For some people it’s about coming back to the office and seeing your colleagues again and having the newfound flexibility of some hybrid time at home, plus the ability to work from anywhere. Obviously there’s a lot of invention that has to happen, which is about how to bring teams together and support collaboration with hybrid teams. We’ve been successful the past year in the pandemic, but everyone was working remote. When you get back to a model where some teams are in the office and some teams are remote, we’ve got to debug the interactions to ensure that there’s equity for everyone. Meaning, if you’re on a video conference and you don’t benefit from the casual encounters in the hall and such, how do we ensure that we build inclusive, hybrid, high-functioning teams? We don’t have all the answers, but we’ll be doing a lot of experiments to try to figure out how to make it work. And that’s kind of exciting for us, but obviously a lot of unknowns to work through for sure.

I just went in yesterday. It was exciting. I’m really excited to see people. I know we’ve seen them virtually regularly, but there’s something about 3D that beats 2D.

GW: Your growth on the eastside of Seattle is being matched by Facebook, and Amazon is going big in Bellevue with plans to put 25,000 employees there. How do you guys compete? What makes a Googler not a Facebooker or an Amazonian?

Young: Certainly the local tech scene is competitive — it’s not just the big companies, the startup scene is also very active. We obviously do compete for talent, but I think it’s also important to step back and also recognize that it’s because of each other and not necessarily always in spite of each other that all of us are able to attract and retain some of the best talent that exists in the industry.

The local tech scene is actually what caused us to move up here in 2004. And it’s really what keeps us here today. It’s absolutely true that we do compete with each other, but we compete across a variety of industries and disciplines. And I think for us, we’re really thrilled to be part of the tech scene and we try to be relevant and helpful and flexible to employees who want to look at the whole set of options that Google can provide. Whether it’s the definition of the future of work or whether it’s how we target and try to attract candidates, we do try to make this a compelling offer across the board.

GW: Anything you can talk about related to products and services that you have your hand in that maybe we haven’t shed some light on previously? I know you’ve been away from people for a year, but what are you all working on?

Young: We do have pretty much most Google product areas represented up here. So it’d be hard for me to do an exhaustive list of everything. But obviously it should come as no surprise one of the biggest areas of investment is Google Cloud, and Google Workspace, including the Google Meet video conferencing product that’s largely built up here. Also a huge portion of our Google Maps product; Android Chrome operating system; the work we’re doing in research for AI has teams up here. It’s a mix of both consumer-facing products and enterprise products.

Related to the pandemic, the exposure notification collaborations that we did with Apple were largely integrated by teams up here in the Seattle area.

GW: What’s your take on Google’s place among other big tech companies when it comes to increased government scrutiny or the focus around misinformation? How do you stay focused? What do you say to people who wonder about your future direction?

Young: We obviously are focused on helping users. That’s our primary focus and we want to promote authoritative, trustworthy, competent sources. And we also want to make certain that people have the ability to discover what is out there. For the most part, our Googlers locally who are asking us, ‘What are we doing to help?’ They’re usually focused on how are we actually helping consumers get authoritative, accurate information, or where they push us is where could we do more to help support local businesses. The antitrust element has not been a primary concern, but obviously providing trusted information and combating misinformation is something that resonates deeply with all of us and our mission. That is something that we absolutely focus on as the company, across businesses — across YouTube, across search results — and making certain that we promote authoritative data.

GW: How do you view Google in the Seattle area 10 years from now? Do people start to forget about the Bay Area?

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Young: I don’t think they’d forget about the Bay Area, but I do think that obviously the future of work is something that’s really relevant to all businesses here. There’s a lot more focus on flexibility and providing people the opportunity to contribute to areas of the business, not just what their team is working on locally. We continue to see a lot of growth, including in-office growth here in Seattle. Some will want the flexibility of being remote, but we continue to plan to offer a great in-office experience for those people choosing that. So we expect to see growth in terms of our office footprint locally.

GW: What’s the last thing you Googled?

Young: Oh my goodness! I have to double check, I don’t know. Can I just pull up and look at my last search result? … You know what, literally my last search result is ‘U.S. Canada border reopening.’ I am an avid skier. I really want to go skiing up in Whistler this winter. If your readers have any pull and can put in a plug for a reopening of the border in a safe way … I can’t make it on behalf of the company, but I would really appreciate if they would do it. The news article I read in response to that said ‘maybe mid August for vaccinated U.S. travelers.’ I’m holding out hope for that.

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Wednesday joined a multistate, antitrust lawsuit targeting Google’s Play store as unfair to app developers who have little choice but to do business there.

The suit, filed in federal court and joined by 36 states and the District of Columbia, claims that Google created an unlawful monopoly with the structure of the Play store and the management of in-app payment services.

Similar to the federal antitrust claims about Apple and its control over the iOS App Store, the attorneys general assert that Google tightly controls one of two mobile app markets worldwide, takes an unfair cut of transactions within the market, and pays Android mobile phone companies to refrain from creating or using any app market that competes on the Android platform.

“When companies illegally act like monopolies, everyone loses out on the benefits of healthy competition,” Ferguson said. “People face higher prices and fewer choices. Smaller businesses are forced out of the market — or have no way into it in the first place. We will hold Google accountable and fight to stop these unfair and illegal practices.”

We’ve reached out to Google and will update this story when we hear back.

According to Ferguson’s office, an estimated 2.9 million Washington residents use Android phones. And the state has an estimated 40,000 app developers.

Specifically, the lawsuit claims Google:

• imposes restrictions that deter customers from directly downloading apps or installing other app stores that would compete with the Google Play store;
• pays device manufacturers and mobile network operators not to make independent app stores and to make the Play Store impossible to delete;
• shares profits with large app developers as an incentive against making their own app stores or moving apps to competing app stores;
• requires that all Play store apps use “Play billing” which forces customers to unknowingly pay Google’s 30% commission instead of a cheaper rate through another payment service.

This isn’t the only antitrust lawsuit Google faces. The federal Department of Justice and several states allege the company uses exclusionary contracts to ensure that apps on Android devices only use the Play store. Google also faces a lawsuit from a group of Republican attorneys general who targeted its advertising business, asserting that it price-fixed rates in conjunction with Facebook.

It also isn’t the only lawsuit targeting the company by Ferguson’s office. In December, Ferguson joined 38 attorneys general in a federal antitrust lawsuit over the company’s dominance in online search and search advertising. That lawsuit is pending.

The state also has fined Google hundreds of thousands of dollars for violating the its political advertising laws.

Ferguson, a three-term attorney general, has made antitrust enforcement a primary focus of his office with price-fixing claims against the tuna industry including Starkist Tuna, and against large drug companies over generic drug pricing schemes.

Without conceding it broke state law, Google paid the Washington attorney general’s office $423,659 to settle a lawsuit over the company’s paid political advertising in the state. 

The settlement came after the state accused the tech giant of violating its 50-year-old campaign disclosure law which requires companies that publish political ads to retain financial records of those advertisements and make them available for public inspection. 

Called Fair Campaign Practices Act and approved by voters in 1972, the law was an effort to force disclosure of who was paying for political advertising in the state.  The settlement marks the second time Google has paid the state after being accused of stepping outside the law’s boundaries.

“Google is one of the largest corporations in the world, and should be able to figure out how to follow our campaign finance laws,” Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement. “Today’s judgment is twice as high as the one Google paid in 2018. Repeat violators of Washington’s voter-approved campaign transparency laws will be held accountable.”

But Google remained defiant about the late even after paying the fine. A spokesperson for the company said the law is the problem, not Google.

“While we continue to take issue with the applicability and enforceability of the State’s political advertising and disclosure laws,” a Google spokesperson said, “we’re settling this case because we believe the best way to resolve this matter is to work collaboratively with Washington State regulators to reform those laws, rather than litigate our position in court.”

Most of the fine will go into the Washington Public Disclosure Transparency Account a smaller portion paying for state attorneys’ fees. 

Google also settled a similar case in 2018 which resulted in Google paying a $200,000 judgment. That same year, Facebook paid the state $400,000 to settle a case for parallel violations of the law. And last year, the state filed another case against Facebook for what it said were continued violations of the same law. 

Facebook, the state said, for the past four years has collected more than $500,000 in political ads for which it didn’t keep legally mandated disclosure records. That case is pending.

Federal lawmakers introduced a wave of legislation Friday that collectively seeks to change the way large tech companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook do business and dominate their respective marketplaces.

The five bills would create a framework to dismantle large tech companies into smaller ones (Amazon and Amazon Web Services, for example); to make mergers more expensive and difficult; to break up businesses that use their dominance in one area to get a stronghold in another; and to stop companies that create purportedly open marketplaces and only to game it to favor their own products.

The sweeping package from House Democrats and Republicans comes after months of study and congressional inquiries about the enormous power and financial reach of Big Tech and the existing regulation to curtail it. As the New York Times noted, “Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have a combined market capitalization of $6.3 trillion, four times more than the value of the country’s 10 largest banks.”

One bill regarding data portability — perhaps the least contentious of the group — would require companies to allow users to switch platforms more easily by allowing data to migrate from one platform to another. All of the measures have varying amounts of bipartisan support.

Margaret O’Mara, a University of Washington history professor who has written extensively about the history of the tech industry, said regulation of these companies is one of the few areas of mutual political interest.

“At a time when Washington D.C is so divided — the Republicans and the Democrats are so far apart — the power of the tech companies is one of the things where both parties find common ground,” she said.

That common interest, she said, isn’t always bad for the tech industry.

The Senate recently approved the bipartisan Endless Frontier Act which, if passed by the House, would put nearly $250 billion into promoting specific emerging technologies in the U.S. that China seeks to dominate, including quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and robotics among other things.

Friday’s legislative package is based on the House’s antitrust hearings over the past 16 months. If approved by Congress and signed by the president, the bills would be the most significant overhaul of competition laws dating back to what was known as the “gilded age” of railroad, oil, and steel magnates and their monopolies in the early 20th Century.

O’Mara said the country has traded the gilded age for the tech age. And like the former, people should expect some change in the most powerful companies. The bipartisan nature of the tech regulation package, she said, means that “something will come out of this. We just don’t know what yet.”

[Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in journalist Eli Sanders’ “Wild West” newsletter, which covers internet-related legal issues. Subscribe here.]

Think about how fast Google search results arrive. “Practically instant” has long been a company goal, and in that same instant Google often pairs results with targeted ads. Sometimes, those ads are political.

Now consider how long Tallman Trask, a second-year law student at the University of Washington, has been waiting to receive information from Google about all the political ads the company sold targeting Washington state’s elections in 2019.

Under Washington state law, the information Trask is seeking should have been easily available to him within 24 hours of each Google ad’s original distribution. But Trask has now been waiting 16 months and, according to a lawsuit filed last week by Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson, Trask still hasn’t received a complete response.

Why can’t Google answer basic questions about political ads as quickly as its search engine can answer other queries? That’s what Attorney General Ferguson wants to know.

“Google is one of the largest corporations in the world,” the AG recently told The Seattle Times, “and should be able to figure out how to follow our campaign finance laws.”

This is Ferguson’s second lawsuit against Google over this issue. It comes, as Wild West predicted it would, on top of Ferguson’s second lawsuit against Facebook over political ads. That case is currently winding its way through the discovery phase in King County Superior Court, with Facebook facing some pretty intriguing questions from lawyers for the AG’s office.

Google and Facebook both settled similar political ad lawsuits filed by Ferguson back in 2018, paying $200,000 each but avoiding any admissions of guilt. Now that Ferguson is prosecuting Google and Facebook for repeat violations (which the AG says he takes “very seriously”), the possibility of comparable settlements seems remote. Ferguson is presently asking for injunctions that would require each of the two tech giants to comply with Washington state campaign finance law going forward, plus potential financial penalties.

These twin cases will now proceed against a backdrop of rising concern about Google and Facebook becoming more powerful and populous (at least in terms of global users) than the state and national governments that are straining to regulate them. “The sovereign state of Facebook vs. the world,” is how Axios recently put it.

But for Trask, the legal issue is straightforward: Washington law requires Google to hand over financing and reach records for political ads, but Google isn’t complying. “Washington law gives folks a right to inspect records of ad sales,” Trask said, “and exercising that right shouldn’t require a year-plus delay, a bunch of hoops, and involvement of both the Public Disclosure Commission”—which investigated Trask’s case for seven months—“and the AG’s office.”

I've said it before and I'll say it again: y'all, please don't violate Washington's campaign finance disclosure laws. They've been around for decades and really aren't all that complicated (though they're a bit unique). https://t.co/MtqW20tUkc

— Tallman Trask (@TallmanIV) February 25, 2021

Google, in a statement to Wild West, continued to lean on a prohibition against Washington state political ads that it announced in June 2018 (right after Google was hit with Ferguson’s first lawsuit).

“We don’t accept Washington state election ads,” Google said in the statement. “Advertisers that submit these ads are violating our policies and we take measures to block such ads and remove violating ads when we find them. We have been working cooperatively with the Washington Public Disclosure Commission on these issues and look forward to defending this litigation.”

In the lawsuit filed last week, Attorney General Ferguson points out that while Google says it doesn’t accept Washington state election ads, it’s sold a lot of them since its ban went into effect. By the AG’s count, 57 local candidates and committees have made 188 payments to Google for political ads since June 2018—the month Google’s ban started—bringing the company a total of $461,334. That may be an insignificant revenue stream for Google, which lately has a market capitalization of around $1.3 trillion, but it’s a clear indication Google’s ad ban isn’t working.

Ferguson only knows about the existence of all these Google ads because campaigns and candidates themselves were required to report them to the Public Disclosure Commission. To deal with the problem of ads that go unreported by their purchasers, Washington state law also requires “commercial advertisers” like Google to make comprehensive political ad disclosures. When companies like Google don’t, the audit function provided by that part of the law breaks down and opportunities for dark money increase, as the AG explains in his suit:

Trask said that after 16 months and two state investigations, he’s been left with the distinct impression that “even Google isn’t quite sure how many Washington political ads they sold in 2019.”

A request for Google ad information that I made two years ago also comes up in the AG’s lawsuit. In March 2019, in the course of my reporting, I asked for “all of the information that Google is legally required to disclose” about one small, off-season initiative campaign in Spokane.

The measure on the Spokane ballot involved a pretty common idea: raise property taxes to fund increased police and fire services. The victorious side, which called itself “Yes for Public Safety,” had reported spending a few thousand dollars on supposedly banned Google ads. I noticed, and was curious what their money had gotten them.

To this day, Google has not given me any of the political ad information I requested. But when investigators with the Public Disclosure Commission inquired, Google told them a Spokane union was behind the campaign and had spent $4,665 for ads that resulted in 6.2 million “Yes for Public Safety” ad impressions in the Spokane area.

There are only about 210,000 people living in Spokane. Only about 40,000 people ended up voting in that particular February election. To me, this example of one small rural city’s election being quietly swamped by a tsunami of digital ads shows why the public should be able to learn, from the digital platforms themselves, the true extent of targeted political advertising efforts.

In court filings, Facebook has said Washington State is asking for too much information from online ad-sellers, leading to a disclosure system that is “onerous” and “violates the First Amendment.” Facebook also claims that Section 230, the much-discussed grant of specific legal immunity to digital platforms, prevents Facebook from being held accountable to Washington state campaign finance law in the same way a radio station, television station, or newspaper would be.

When Google files its response to the AG’s new lawsuit in the coming weeks, will its arguments look similar to Facebook’s? Or will these two tech behemoths, accused by antitrust investigators of colluding on advertising issues in the past, end up going their separate ways as they battle with the AG over the validity of Washington state’s disclosure law? We’re about to find out.

Final outcomes in these cases are not likely to arrive soon, however. As with other standoffs over tech regulation in Australia, North Dakota, and DC, a recurring lesson of this particular standoff has been that digital titans with essentially infinite resources for lawyers and lobbyists can find plenty of ways to delay and divert while the world spins on.

Already, Trask has waited 16 months for election-related records that Washington state law says he should’ve been given almost immediately. I’ve waited more than 23 months. The wait is likely to continue, but the eventual legal outcomes could have consequences far beyond two local political ad record requests.

The resolutions of these new Google and Facebook cases stand to tell us a lot about who the First Amendment really protects, what Section 230 really prohibits, and how far a state government is really allowed to go when it comes to regulating its own elections in the digital age.

New numbers show 2020 was the first year that Chromebooks outsold Macs, posting impressive market share gains at the expense of Windows. Computers powered by Google’s Chrome OS have outsold Apple’s computers in individual quarters before, but 2020 was the first full year that Chrome OS took second place. Microsoft’s Windows still retained majority market share, but also took a big hit as both Chrome OS and macOS gained share.

The milestone is based on numbers provided by IDC, which doesn’t typically break out sales based on device operating system. But when we went looking to see how the pandemic may have impacted the PC market, IDC analyst Mike Shirer confirmed the findings to GeekWire. (We also contacted Gartner but that firm does not include Chromebooks in its traditional PC market results.)

This is a big win for Google and a warning for both Apple and Microsoft. It also signals to app and game developers that Chrome OS can no longer be ignored. Frankly, any business that provides a product or service over the internet should be setting aside resources to ensure the Chrome OS experience is comparable to Windows and macOS.

Breaking down the numbers

In Q1 2020, Apple and Google were neck-and-neck: Windows grabbed 87.5% market share, macOS took 5.8%, and Chrome OS captured 5.3%. But in Q2 2020, Windows fell to 81.7%, macOS grew to 7.6%, and Chrome OS jumped to 10.0%.

Q3 2020 and Q4 2020 confirmed the trend: Windows dropped further to 78.9% for Q3 and then 76.7% for Q4; macOS grew to 8.4% for Q3 and then fell back to 7.7% for Q4, while Chrome OS had 11.5% for Q3 and then 14.4% share for Q4. The Q4 results are particularly notable as the fourth quarter tends to be the biggest for PC shipments. While macOS widened its lead over Chrome OS in Q4 2019, Chrome OS came roaring back in Q4 2020.

Here is the year-over-year breakdown (IDC’s numbers include desktops, laptops, and workstations):

• Windows: Down 4.9 points, from 85.4% in 2019 to 80.5% in 2020
• Chrome OS: Up 4.4 points, from 6.4% in 2019 to 10.8% in 2020
• macOS: Up 0.8 points, from 6.7% in 2019 to 7.5% in 2020

Three quarters in a row of Chrome OS above macOS makes a trend. It’s safe to say that Chromebooks from PC makers like Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo now outsell Apple’s range of desktop Macs and laptop MacBooks. That said, 2020 was not a typical year.

The pandemic’s impact

After years of bad news, PC shipments saw growth in 2019, only to have the coronavirus pandemic cut the celebration short in Q1 2020. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in China (the world’s largest supplier of PCs), PC supply took a hit, leading to the sharpest decline in years. Then in Q2 2020 and the rest of the year, supply constraints were addressed and the rise in work from home and distance learning drove PC demand from businesses and consumers alike.

The pandemic is an accelerant of tech trends. Chrome OS has been growing over the past few years so it’s not shocking that it is growing even faster in 2020. The question is: Will that growth continue, and will it come at Windows’ expense? While PC shipments are up across the board, it’s telling that macOS has also been gaining share while Windows fell below the 80% threshold for the first time in decades (in the past two quarters, though it was still above 80% for the year).

Chrome OS challenging Windows’ dominance of the low-cost laptop market is part of the bigger rebound of traditional PC sales, and part of the reason why Microsoft shifted Windows 10X to debut initially on single-screen devices.

Until the pandemic, Chrome OS’ success was largely limited to U.S. schools. Demand in 2020 appears to have expanded beyond that small but critical part of the U.S. PC market. Over the coming months, we’ll find out whether Chrome OS’ gains are limited to U.S. schools, the U.S. at large, schools worldwide, or whether Google’s low-cost laptops are making inroads everywhere. Expect Apple and Microsoft to adjust their respective strategies accordingly.

The past year has brought a pandemic, a national reckoning over race, plus antitrust investigations and charges against major tech companies, with massive swaths of the tech workforce working from their bedrooms. But also record profits, a booming IPO market, and trillion-dollar valuations at the same time. Does this suggest a disconnect, or point to a “correction” in the future? 

That’s the first question we posed this week on our GeekWire Summit panel, “View from the Press Box: Tech in 2020 and Beyond,” with Ina Fried, chief technology correspondent for Axios and editor of its daily tech newsletter, Login; and Karen Weise, Seattle tech correspondent for The New York Times.

This week’s episode of the GeekWire Podcast features highlights from the discussion, including thoughts on the direction of the tech economy, the future of Amazon and Microsoft, the antitrust cases against US tech giants and the potential implications of the upcoming election.

Listen below or subscribe to GeekWire wherever you listen to podcasts. Watch a video highlight above, and continue reading for edited excerpts.

Disconnect between tech and the economy

Todd Bishop, GeekWire: Ina, do you have a sense for what the situation is with these seemingly disparate trends and phenomena in the economy and tech industry?

Ina Fried, Axios: A lot of things are happening at once, more than I think we’re even capable of processing as humans. And I think that is some of the challenge we’re seeing on the information side. You have a significant portion of the country just giving up on facts. You’re seeing a bad overall economy but tech grabbing an even larger share of it and accelerating some of the transformations that would have happened anyway. So things like curbside pickup, probably would have become a major force in retail.

But now it’s obviously become essential and a bunch of the digital laggards basically faced with their survival to quickly get online, have done so. And then some of the industries that have been slow to move online, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes just red tape, like telehealth, for example, really just taking off. So I think it’s been a lot, and I didn’t even get into antitrust and all that. But I do think what you’re seeing on the economic front is a very challenging economy for a lot of people, a lot of job loss. And yet for the tech sector, software’s eating more of the world, faster.

Karen Weise, New York Times: I think that’s exactly right. The companies were doing well because they were ahead of the curve on some of these trends are able to capitalize on these trends that have just accelerated because of the pandemic. So you think about e-commerce or cloud computing. Microsoft has seen crazy growth in Teams, their collaboration software.

It is a very strange thing to be reporting on the broad economy all the calamity that’s happening and then when earnings roll around, it’s just like, wow, they made a lot of money. And it is a “big, getting bigger” moment in general we’re seeing. Which ties in, of course, to the antitrust focus and stuff that’s happening right now. The pandemic is obviously aberrational, but we’ve seen that everything reinforces existing patterns in many ways.

Bishop: Is there a moment, though, when this comes back and comes home to roost, either through the economy and everyday consumers and businesses not being there to boost IT spending or consumer spending on tech. And through antitrust, where some of the biggest tech companies in the world, Microsoft not included, are being scrutinized on a level that they’re just not accustomed to, at least in terms of the extent of the action. Does it reach a point, perhaps in 2021, where some of this starts to match up more — where the tech industry is actually more in line with the struggles of the broader economy?

Weise: You think about a company like Amazon or the e-commerce providers, they need people to be spending money to buy things. So there is a connection to the broader economy. What has happened, though, is that the switch to online commerce, in the case of Amazon, has outpaced any pullback we may have seen in consumer spending.

So it is a good question, if the duration of the pullback extends long enough, if that multi-year compression of growth doesn’t make up for that anymore. With Microsoft, for example, they’ve talked about spending in high impact sectors like hospitality or the aviation industry pulling back, but it was made up for with accelerated spending on other fronts. So a lot of this gets down the duration (of the downturn).

[Related story from Weise and her New York Times colleagues: Big Tech Continues Its Surge Ahead of the Rest of the Economy]

Fried: The duration, and the intensity. … If the tech companies are getting hurt, it means the broader economy is getting hurt even worse. So tech will still outperform the broader economy. And then on antitrust, it’s interesting, because there’s a lot of criticism, but it’s not the same criticisms.

So you have the right and the left criticizing big tech broadly, and then specifically Section 230. They’re saying the same headline, but they mean totally different things. Other than these lawsuits from the DOJ, like we just saw against Google, I don’t think the broader measures will really move forward until there’s some agreement on what it is people are actually wanting, and what it is people are upset about.

Antitrust, competition and the election

John Cook, GeekWire: Antitrust is really interesting to watch right now. We had Bill Gates make some news here at the GeekWire Summit a couple weeks ago, when he mentioned kind of what you’re saying, Ina, that these companies shouldn’t all be grouped together. They all face very, very different aspects to what they do. Obviously, with the suit against Google, certainly a claim can be made that they have a monopoly in search.

But when you look at a company like Amazon, it’s a completely different industry and business they’re operating in, and it seems very strange to me why they marched all these CEOs in front of Congress, with such different business concepts and ideas and antitrust questions in front of them.

Weise: Conceptually, the idea was that they all ran dual-sided marketplaces, essentially. So for Amazon, it’s both the merchants that they’re pairing with us, the consumers, and their retail business. So that’s one dynamic that they focused on a lot. For Apple, the App Store was a big focus, where they’re matching developers with us consumers, but also have their own apps in it. Google’s matching consumers with advertisers essentially. But they all manifest themselves in such different ways.

Fried: We know how they compete with each other at the edges, but a fascinating dynamic that hadn’t gotten as much attention is how they help each other stay in their entrench monopolies more than they actually compete. So the Apple-Google deal, for example, and we’ve kind of pushed on this for a while. I finally got Tim Cook to talk about it a couple of years ago in an HBO interview I did.

Google writes a giant check to Apple for the right to be the default search provider, and that deal actually entrenches both of their dominant market positions. It gives Apple a ton of profits that it can use to invest in all of its businesses. And it makes sure that it’s very hard to compete with Google in search when. When all those searches [from Apple and Android] are going to Google, there’s just not that much of the market left to compete over.

Bishop: This is one issue – antitrust – where the two political parties seem to be aligned, even though they’re going after this for different reasons, and for different ideological purposes and from different ideological backgrounds. I think Amazon’s worst nightmare could be Elizabeth Warren being named the next Attorney General in a Biden administration, for example, but you could also look at this and say that they could actually be having even more issues if the Trump administration continues.

Weise: In the hearings in the House there was actually much less Republican opposition to Amazon, in part because they don’t really play in the social media or information space. There’s little bits here or there. The Section 230 debate has been the dominant argument against other large tech companies.

For someone who was there to be listening to the Amazon component of things, there was much more on the Democratic side. Bezos-Trump feuds and the Post Office mess aside, a Democratic administration is probably more complicated for them, or an Elizabeth Warren-led Department of Justice, for sure.

Amazon’s alternative realities

Bishop: One thing that strikes me about society in 2020 is the alternative realities in which we’re all living. With Amazon in particular, you saw this manifest itself with internal strife at the company, in terms of employees coming out, speaking out against the company in a variety of ways, and also  investigations from journalistic organizations going in and finding things that were off base inside the company. Particularly in terms of injuries, a report just recently from the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Karen, you pay really close attention to Amazon here as the Seattle tech correspondent for the New York Times. How do you square these alternative realities of Amazon, the company’s positions and statements about itself versus what we actually see when somebody takes a close look at what they’re doing?

Weise: It’s very challenging to square it all, because it is such a large company in so many different lines of businesses, and because of the way it operates. It’s hard to get a comprehensive view of the company, because different teams don’t even know what’s happening in different parts of the company. And it operates in a way that really pushes responsibility down into teams. And so often what you’re seeing are things that are dismissed as being against policy, but they’re still happening.

As a journalist, how do I bridge this? I have this person saying they’re not doing enough to protect workers from COVID. And I have this person saying, I stayed up all weekend trying to protect workers from COVID. And they’re probably both telling me the truth of their experience. And so that’s a huge challenge I find in reporting. I’m always trying to bridge those two sides.

It’s the second largest direct employer in the country right now. That doesn’t include its growing contract workforce. And so I think the fact that you see a lot more scrutiny is not necessarily surprising. With the pandemic compounding that, and the George Floyd-Black Lives Matter movement compounding a look at how companies are treating their workforce, it’s not surprising that they’ve become a focus of attention.

And the reality is, it’s always balanced with the fact that people buy a lot of stuff from them, because they generally deliver on time. There’s an expectation, and they generally meet it. They will no doubt point to all the surveys that show how much people trust them. So it’s this dichotomy that they hold in the balance, pretty much all the time.

Fried: As journalists, and I know Karen does this in her work, really embracing the complexity there [is important]. It’s not so simple. The story that perfectly illustrates that, to me, is the headline a few weeks ago about how many thousands of Amazon workers had gotten COVID. And the first stories I saw had this very large total number of employees. And I was like, wow, that’s shocking.

But then when you looked at how large their workforce was, it was actually a fairly small percent, and a case could be made that it was lower than the general population. So are workers getting it? Yes. Is Amazon doing more to protect them? Probably. And it might be the case, and this is more complicated than I think we have the capacity to do, but look at all the companies they’re competing against: Amazon’s workplace might be safer for COVID. I’m not getting into the workplace accidents. So these things are really complicated.

Cook: I agree, it’s super complicated. Amazon, especially, is so interesting in how decentralized it is, as you were saying, Karen. They’ve surprised me for years in terms of how entrepreneurial the organization has stayed, even as they’ve grown to over a million employees. I’m curious what you think is the biggest risk to Amazon, when you think about this.

They are investing in so many different areas. They are able to maintain their entrepreneurial energy. They’re generating massive, massive profits through AWS that they’re funneling into fuel all this other startup activity under the umbrella. What do you both see as the biggest risk in front of them as they go forward?

Weise: It’s hard for me to think of like the biggest. I think they would say a “Day Two” mentality seeping through. And not to parrot back things, but it’s something that people who work there, people who have left there, talk about as a constant struggle. So purely from a business perspective, I think that’s what Amazon would say. And I think that makes sense over a long haul. The flip side of that is, there are opportunities for change if you break some of the status quo.

There was almost no diversity on the S team (Amazon’s senior leadership team) until up last month or something like that. And you could argue that that could actually help customers and help a business to have more diversity among your senior leaders, who haven’t been there forever.

There’s multiple different market forces, of course that could hit it. Or what would happen if there were a forced breakup or something like that? Retail actually makes more money than people realize. And if AWS were to be forced or spun off in some way, I don’t think people quite have really grasped how profitable the marketplace model is, and how that is actually fueling a lot of the investments on the consumer side of the business.

Cook: My own thought, and it gets back to this decentralized nature of the company, is that they just kind of implode. I’s just that in my mind, you can’t operate at the scale that they are with as many different pieces, parts moving around the organization, where, as you said, people aren’t really talking to one another. I’m just baffled that they’re able to operate in the way that they do. And folks I talk to inside the company, they confirm exactly what you’re saying, that it is totally decentralized. It’s very entrepreneurial.

Fried: Just watching Amazon from a little bit more afar than both of you do, because I don’t spend as much of my time watching them as closely, but I obviously pay a lot of attention to the broader dynamics. I would have to think antitrust (is the biggest threat), because they are so good at thinking four and five steps ahead. And they are constantly expanding the market that they’re eyeing.

Everyone has always underestimated Amazon, particularly rivals, but I think all of us. I remember when people thought of them as a bookstore. And they were really a broader online retailer. People thought of them as a broad online retailer, and they were moving into physical retail. They are always just grabbing and expanding and growing and doing it in a way that customers appreciate. And that’s going to make it very hard, I think, for rivals to compete.

One of the things that’s really interesting about the broad big tech, antitrust stuff, but particularly with Amazon is, people love these companies. There are workers that are criticizing Amazon, there are critiques of Amazon, but their customers love the service they’re getting. And that’s only increased during the pandemic. Things like Amazon Go, people really like it. Again, there’s labor critiques, there’s equity critiques initially. Some people only have access to cash and it was cashless.

But by and large, they’re very appreciated by the customer base for what they do. So yes, I would say probably number two would be an internal implosion. But I really think only antitrust scrutiny is going to slow down what’s been the most impressive land expansion I’ve ever seen from a company.

The full discussion and other content from the GeekWire Summit, including exclusive interviews with Bill Gates and other leaders in tech and science, is available exclusively to registered attendees. You can still sign up at geekwire.com/summit to access the content on-demand.

Podcast produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.

Expedia Group CEO Peter Kern says he hopes the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust complaint against Google ultimately changes the search giant’s behavior, and creates a fair marketplace for the online travel company and others that both compete with Google and rely on its dominant search engine for traffic and customers.

“I’m very pleased to see the government finally taking some action,” Kern said at the GeekWire Summit on Tuesday, marking the company’s first public statement on the case since it was filed Tuesday morning. “Hopefully, it will create a fair marketplace for us, which is all we want. We have no axe to grind against Google, except that we don’t think the marketplace is equitable.”

Expedia Group, based in Seattle, includes major travel brands such as vrbo, Orbitz, Hotwire, Trivago, Hotels.com, and Egencia in addition to the flagship Expedia.com. Kern, a longtime Expedia Group board member, has been CEO since April, leading the company through the travel downturn, caused by the pandemic, and an internal restructuring of its technology and operations.

Company leaders including Kern and Chairman Barry Diller have been outspoken about the challenges created by Google’s dual role as search platform and competitor. Expedia pointed out in a regulatory filing earlier this year that Google has been building out its online travel offerings while “further prioritizing its own products in search results.”

The company has traditionally spent heavily on Google search ads to boost traffic to Expedia Group brands.

In a post responding to the suit, Google called the government’s case “deeply flawed” and “dubious.”

“We understand that with our success comes scrutiny, but we stand by our position,” said Kent Walker, Google senior vice president of global affairs, in the post. “American antitrust law is designed to promote innovation and help consumers, not tilt the playing field in favor of particular competitors or make it harder for people to get the services they want.”

A recent House Judiciary Committee antitrust report quoted an anonymous market participant saying that Google “deceptively siphons internet traffic away from its vertical competitors in online travel and forces them to pay more for [search engine monetization] and Ads in order to get meaningful placement on Google’s [search engine results page].” It said Google also “requires its vertical competitors to provide their inventory feed to populate the ads, allowing Google to appropriate vertical service providers’ valuable inventory data.”

“I think there’s definitely truth in all of those statements,” Kern said when asked about that section of the House antitrust report during his GeekWire Summit appearance. “Google would say they’re doing what the consumer wants. That’s what they always tell us. It makes a better auction, or it makes for better information.”

“We take a different view,” Kern said. “They’re inevitably, through their practices, making it harder for the people who have paid to give them the right to keep making it harder for us,” he said. “It’s a prisoner’s dilemma, always, of how much you participate or don’t, and what that does to your own business as you try to change the dynamics of heir auctions and other things.”

He added, “Our goal is only a fair fight. We have no axe to grind against anyone we’re in business with, or any of our competitors. We just want a fair fight.”

[The full interview with Kern, and other GeekWire Summit sessions, are available on-demand exclusively to attendees of the virtual event. Learn more and register here.]

The antitrust complaint filed by the U.S. Justice Department against Google on Tuesday morning spotlights the difficult position in which Yelp, Expedia and many other companies find themselves, competing with the search giant while simultaneously relying on and paying the company to direct customers to their services.

In essence, the Justice Department alleges that Google uses its dominant position to its unfair advantage as a “monopoly gatekeeper for the internet.” It seeks “structural relief,” aka a breakup of the company, among other remedies to prevent Google from engaging in what the government deems is anticompetitive behavior.

Google called the lawsuit “deeply flawed” and “dubious” in a post responding to the suit.

“People use Google because they choose to, not because they’re forced to, or because they can’t find alternatives,” it says. “This lawsuit would do nothing to help consumers. To the contrary, it would artificially prop up lower-quality search alternatives, raise phone prices, and make it harder for people to get the search services they want to use.”

Compared to the antitrust complaint against @Microsoft 2+ decades ago, the introduction to @TheJusticeDept's @Google complaint today reads more like a magazine piece. pic.twitter.com/CfKDBnTg4B

— toddbishop (@toddbishop) October 20, 2020

The parallels to the landmark antitrust case against Microsoft, more than two decades ago, are so striking that they’re referenced explicitly in the complaint. Here’s a passage from the introduction to the suit against Google:

Back then, Google claimed Microsoft’s practices were anticompetitive, and yet, now, Google deploys the same playbook to sustain its own monopolies. But Google did learn one thing from Microsoft—to choose its words carefully to avoid antitrust scrutiny. Referring to a notorious line from the Microsoft case, Google’s Chief Economist wrote: “We should be careful about what we say in both public and private. ‘Cutting off the air supply’ and similar phrases should be avoided.” Moreover, as has been publicly reported, Google’s employees received specific instructions on what language to use (and not use) in emails because “Words matter. Especially in antitrust law.” In particular, Google employees were instructed to avoid using terms such as “bundle,” “tie,” “crush,” “kill,” “hurt,” or “block” competition, and to avoid observing that Google has “market power” in any market.

In an interesting twist, Google cites modern-day Microsoft as one of its defenses in its post, with the graphic below.

“Google doesn’t come preloaded on Windows devices,” Google says in its post. “Microsoft preloads its Edge browser on Windows devices, where Bing is the default search engine.”

Columbia University law professor Timothy Wu told CNBC that the lawsuit against Google “is almost an exact copy of the Microsoft case.”

At the GeekWire Summit last week, Bill Gates commented on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee inquiry into Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, saying the government would be smarter to take on the companies individually and focus on the specific issues related to them, rather than grouping them together.

“It should be about, how can consumers benefit through competition that furthers innovation, and a little less about demonizing the specific people involved.” Clearly thinking back to his own antitrust battles, Gates added with a laugh, “But maybe that’s my personal view that others don’t share.”

Expedia Group CEO Peter Kern will speak at the GeekWire Summit today, and this is one of the topics we’ll bring up. Kern has been outspoken about Google in the past, saying earlier this year, “I think Google’s a problem — it’s a problem for everyone who sells something online, and we all have to struggle with that.” Expedia has yet to issue a statement on the case today.

Yelp said in a post that “self-serving bias by Google happens literally billions of times per week in the United States. By systematically reducing the quality of its search results in order to entrench and extend its search and search advertising monopolies, Google is directly harming consumers.”

Here’s what we’re talking about on the GeekWire Podcast this week:

The new Microsoft dual-screen Surface Duo device has arrived and we have our first impressions. We’re intrigued, but it’s pricey (starting at $1,399) and it needs more work. And do we really need yet another device?

Microsoft is becoming the de-facto virtual fan experience enabler for sports leagues. First they deployed Teams to the NBA and now they’re sending it to help the NFL. But the experience between the two sports isn’t the same, and we tell you which one is best.

The West Coast is being choked in a blanket of wildfire smoke and Seattle is getting hit hard. Why are wildfires becoming so bad, and how can you stay safe from the smoke?

Listen above, and subscribe in any podcast app.

With GeekWire’s Todd Bishop and Taylor Soper. Produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.

Google Cloud revenue increased 52% to $2.78 billion in the first quarter, helping Google parent Alphabet beat Wall Street’s revenue expectations even as the company’s broader advertising business struggled amid the economic downturn.

The cloud division includes Google Cloud Platform as well as its G Suite productivity and collaboration tools and other cloud services for businesses, some of which have seen a surge in usage as people around the world work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The company plans to slow down the pace of hiring for the remainder of 2020, maintaining momentum in “a small number of strategic areas,” said Sundar Pichai, the Alphabet and Google CEO, on a conference call with analysts and investors. The company is also “recalibrating the focus and pace” of investments in areas including data centers and non-essential marketing and travel, he said.

In the first quarter, the company’s total headcount rose by more than 4,100, to 123,048 employees. Google Cloud posted the largest employee increase among the company’s product groups, in both technical and sales roles, said Ruth Porat, the company’s chief financial officer, on the conference call.

In a memo to employees on Monday, reported by Business Insider and CNBC, Pichai said that “everyone who is in a recommended or mandatory work-from-home status should assume that will continue until at least June 1, 2020.” He added, “Not everyone at a site will go back all at once – expect the return to be staggered and incremental.”

Google Cloud operates a large engineering center in Seattle, in a new campus that it opened last year. It’s the first of three tech giants with major cloud platforms that will report earnings this week. Microsoft reports earnings on Wednesday, and Amazon on Thursday.

The revenue increase in Google Cloud was driven by “significant growth” in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and “ongoing strong growth” in G Suite, Porat said. She added that the growth rate in GCP was “meaningfully higher than that of Cloud overall,” led by infrastructure offerings and Google’s data and analytics platform, adding that Google Cloud saw new traction in areas including health care, media and communications, and supply chain optimization.

RELATED: Google is getting a bigger grid: G Suite chief on Microsoft, Zoom and the new world of collaboration

Google Meet, video-conferencing technology for businesses, is now adding about 3 million users daily, Pichai said on the conference call. That’s up from a rate of 2 million new daily users announced by the company each month. Google Meet is part of G Suite, and it has been adding new features to better compete with rivals including Zoom, Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Alphabet’s overall revenue rose 13% to more than $41 billion for the quarter, ahead of Wall Street estimates of $40.3 billion. Profits were $6.84 billion, up 27%, or $9.87/share, short of estimates $10.36/share.

“Performance was strong during the first two months of the quarter, but then in March we experienced a significant slowdown in ad revenues,” Porat said in Alphabet’s earnings news release. We are sharpening our focus on executing more efficiently, while continuing to invest in our long-term opportunities.”

Alphabet shares rose more than 4% in after-hours trading.

The coronavirus crisis quickly became an unexpected life raft for the technology industry’s image as even its biggest critics enlist Big Tech’s help. The scale of large technology companies — seen as a liability just a few months ago — offers unique advantages in a global health crisis and they are buoying the industry’s reputation.

In a new Harris Poll of more than 2,000 Americans, 38% said their view of the technology industry has become more positive since the start of the outbreak. What’s more, 40% believe the tech industry should provide solutions during the pandemic.

Those solutions are already underway. The nation’s biggest tech companies are using their considerable might to solve various challenges posed by COVID-19.

Apple and Google are working on software updates for iOS and Android that will trace the mobile phones that come into close contact with COVID-19 patients. Contact tracing is viewed as a critical tool for mitigating disease outbreaks and tech companies are stepping in to automate parts of a traditionally laborious process.

Coronavirus Live Updates: The latest COVID-19 developments in Seattle and the world of tech

Amazon is adding 175,000 workers to continue delivering items and groceries to thousands of consumers around the world who are sheltering at home.

Microsoft is leveraging its global supply chain to get personal protective gear to frontline healthcare workers. Microsoft also partnered with the University of Washington to develop a concept app that seeks to balance the need for contact tracing with privacy concerns.

The initiatives appear to be currying favor with the American public. Harris polling found 71% of Americans said they are willing to share their own location data and receive alerts about possible exposure to the virus. A public registry of COVID-19 cases is also popular; 65% of respondents said they favored some kind of database that would show if their neighbors tested positive for the virus.

GeekWire readers appear to be more circumspect, according to a small informal Twitter poll. About 57 percent disagreed with Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s assertion that Big Tech deserves more gratitude for its response to the pandemic.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said we should be more “grateful” for Big Tech companies after the coronavirus pandemic: https://t.co/2pk1TW47Ah

Do you agree?

— GeekWire (@geekwire) April 16, 2020

The tech industry is poised to gain more than a reputational boost from the pandemic. Shares of Amazon hit record highs last week and other large technology companies are seeing boosts from the shift to remote work and education.

Steven Davidoff Solomon, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley, wrote in The New York Times that large tech companies can also take advantage of a “failing firm exemption” for M&A deals due to the pandemic.

“If past crises are any guide, the big technology companies are about to sidestep antitrust laws and get even bigger,” he said.

The shift shows how abruptly the coronavirus has reshaped our reality. Just a few months ago politicians on both sides of the aisle were calling for more regulation of the technology industry, citing antitrust, free speech, and data privacy concerns.

“This is the natural endpoint of an online privacy debate that has always been more about culture war and competition policy than actual, empirical evidence of harm,” said Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and former Facebook security chief, in a tweet.

On the brink of this sea change, it’s worth remembering that it wasn’t theoretical fear about data mining that led to a global appetite for more regulation. The Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed personal data to be a powerful political tool in the hands of those who know how to wield it.

Privacy is often one of the first social moors to be loosened in a crisis. Congress significantly expanded government surveillance powers through the Patriot Act just 45 days after the 9/11 attacks. That paved the way for the National Security Administration’s secret PRISM program in which the government collected private data on Americans from companies like Microsoft and Google.

Despite the privacy concerns, the unprecedented nature of the coronavirus crisis presents an opportunity for the technology industry to rebuild trust. Apple and Google say the contact tracing tools they are building will be voluntary and will not outlive the crisis, assuaging some concerns from civil rights groups.

“To their credit, Apple and Google have announced an approach that appears to mitigate the worst privacy and centralization risks, but there is still room for improvement,” said the ACLU’s Jennifer Granick in a statement. “We will remain vigilant moving forward to make sure any contact tracing app remains voluntary and decentralized, and used only for public health purposes and only for the duration of this pandemic.”