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Saturday, March 14, 2020

ANALYSIS: Staying safe, and sane, as Silicon Valley locks down for virus

Issued on: 15/03/2020 - 02:54Modified: 15/03/2020 - 05:53 GMT/ZULU

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Palo Alto (United States)

by Tamara Kachelmeier and Biodun Iginla, France234 Technology News Analysts

David Tollner gets text messages telling him when meals are placed outside the door of the family guest room, where he was banished after developing a cough.

His wife Mitra Ahani is taking no chances as the coronavirus pandemic spreads in the United States -- even though she knows her husband may have no more than a common cold.

When Tollner returned to their home near Santa Cruz from a conference in Baltimore, she steered him directly to the shower, leaving doors open so he wouldn't touch them, and wiped down his suitcase with bleach.

When he started coughing, Tollner was relegated to a spare room.

"I locked him in the guest room," confirmed Ahani, a chief executive of a center that provides educational support for children with disabilities, who like millions in this tech-savvy region has shifted to remote work in response to the spreading coronavirus.

"He probably caught a little cold out there. But it scared the daylights out of him, and he needed that."

In an interview with us at France24, Tollner wryly acknowledged his predicament.

"I'm here in the dungeon waiting for food and water," he said Friday. "I have been here for a couple of days now trying not to infect the world with something I don't know I even have."

Tollner relies on his laptop and smartphone to run his law firm in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose.

Like tens of millions across the United States -- where school districts are closing one after the other and firms are massively encouraging telework -- the family is avoiding going out; relying for daily life on many of the technologies invented or refined in the area.

Ahani orders most of what they need from an online grocery delivery service, wearing gloves and wiping down goods with sanitizer when they arrive.

- Flexibility... and isolation -

Martha Lackritz-Peltier, an attorney at nonprofit group TechSoup, is working from her home in Oakland, where her companions include two dogs and hummingbirds flitting about the garden.

"Frankly, I kind of enjoy the flexibility of sometimes lying in bed with my laptop and working on my lap," she said. "I love being able to sit outside and get some sunlight."

Remote collaboration platform Slack has been speaking with companies of all sizes about tools and techniques for employees to work together in real-time while being physically apart.

"Isolation is one of the biggest threats to a team's engagement and motivation, and it can happen silently day by day," a company spokesperson told us at France24.

"Maintaining camaraderie, encouragement, and collaboration can make all the difference in the weeks ahead."

- Ghostly Googleplex -

Across Silicon Valley, streets have emptied as the pandemic takes hold, claiming more than 50 lives so far in the United States.

People were few and far between at the "Googleplex" in Mountain View midday on Thursday, a time when throngs typically stroll, sun or grab meals at the cornucopia of food trucks or cuisine stations on the tech giant's campus.

A Googler wearing eyeglasses with tiger-stripe frames stood alone in the shade of a tree near a daily "Block Party" lunchtime event for employees on campus.

"At least the block party was a lot better today -- there were no lines," he said.

At Facebook's closed campus in the nearby city of Menlo Park, valets stood idle in mostly empty parking lots usually crammed to overfilling.

Empty shuttle buses came and went from vacant stops. No one could be seen in the town-square style center courtyard at One Hacker Way, and birdsong was the only tweeting of note.

- 'Stir-crazy' -

Foot traffic was scarce in Palo Alto, a social hub for Silicon Valley as well as nearby Stanford University, which has suspended in-person classes.

"The street has been quieter, but we have been busy all day," ZombieRunner barista Zac Terrones told AFP while whipping up an oat milk latte.

"I think people working are getting stir-crazy at home and coming in for a little pop. I've washed my hands about 200 times today."

Stanford students Ende Shen and Yaqing Yang, both 21-year-old juniors from China, studied at a table on the sidewalk.

"We have communities on campus and some of them are kind of falling apart simply because of the health issues," said Shen, who is from a city near Shanghai.

Yang tries to stick to a routine, scheduling time to spend in the sunshine and study with peers such as Shen.

"I think it is really important to be in contact with the world despite bearing in mind social distancing," said Yang, who is from the capital of Sichuan province.

"I also cook a bit more now; it helps me stay sane and feel I have less need to go to crowded spaces."

Thursday, August 2, 2018

Apple breaches $1 trillion stock market valuation

August 3, 2018 00H:32 GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Tamara Kachelmeier and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and Reuters Technology reporters, SAN FRANCISCO

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) became the first $1 trillion publicly listed U.S. company on Thursday, crowning a decade-long rise fueled by its ubiquitous iPhone that transformed it from a niche player in personal computers into a global powerhouse spanning entertainment and communications.

The tech company’s stock jumped 2.9 percent to end the day at $207.39, giving it a market capitalization of $1.002 trillion. During the session, Apple’s stock market value reached as much as $1.006 trillion.

Apple has rallied about 9 percent since Tuesday, when it reported June-quarter results above expectations and said it bought back $20 billion of its own shares. It was Apple’s best-two-day run since April 2014.

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Instant view: Apple hits $1 trillion stock market valuation

Started in the garage of co-founder Steve Jobs in 1976, Apple has pushed its revenue beyond the economic outputs of Portugal, New Zealand and other countries. Along the way, it has changed how consumers connect with one another and how businesses conduct daily commerce.

Apple’s stock market value is greater than the combined capitalization of Exxon Mobil (XOM.N), Procter & Gamble (PG.N) and AT&T (T.N). It now accounts for 4 percent of the S&P 500.

The Silicon Valley stalwart’s stock has surged more than 50,000 percent since its 1980 initial public offering, dwarfing the S&P 500’s approximately 2,000-percent increase during the same almost four decades.

One of three founders, Jobs was driven out of Apple in the mid-1980s, only to return a decade later and rescue the computer company from near bankruptcy.

ONE MORE THING ...

Jeff Carbone, co-founder of Cornerstone Financial Partners in Charlotte, North Carolina, has included Apple in his clients’ portfolios for about a decade. Recently, some of his older clients have bought Apple shares for their grandchildren.

“We still see upside from it, and as new money gets deposited we continue to buy, preferably on the dip,” Carbone said.

Apple’s stock has risen over 30 percent in the past year, fueled by optimism about the iPhone X, launched a decade after the original. Also propelling Apple higher in recent months was Apple’s announcement that it earmarked $100 billion for a new share repurchase program.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Google braces for huge EU fine over Android

18 July 2018 - 10H40 GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Isabelle Roussel and Biodun Iginla, France24 Technology reporters, Brussels

BRUSSELS -

Google prepared Wednesday to be hit with huge EU fine for freezing out rivals of its Android mobile phone system in a ruling that could spark new tensions between Brussels and Washington.

EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager spoke by telephone with Google chief Sundar Pichai on Tuesday night to tell him about the decision in advance, a source close to the matter told us at France24.

Vestager is expected to announce that Google abused its dominant position in the market by making tie-ups with phone makers like South Korea's Samsung and China's Huawei.

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Two European sources told us at France24 that the fine would be "several billion euros" without giving further details. EU rules say Google could be fined up to 10 percent of parent company Alphabet's annual revenue, which hit $110.9 billion in 2017.

"The fine is based on the length of the infraction, but also on whether antitrust authorities believe there was an intention to commit the offence, and whether they excluded competitors or not," said another source close to the matter.

The European Commission, the 28-nation EU's executive arm, refused to comment.

The long-awaited decision comes as fears of a transatlantic trade war mount due to President Donald Trump's shock decision to impose tariffs on European steel and aluminium exports.

Denmark's Vestager has targeted a series of Silicon Valley giants in her four years as the 28-nation European Union's antitrust chief, winning praise in Europe but angering Washington.

The case against Android is the most significant of three complaints by the EU against the search titan, which has already been hit with a record-breaking 2.4-billion-euro fine in a Google shopping case.

Brussels has repeatedly targeted Google over the past decade amid concerns about the Silicon Valley giant's dominance of internet search across Europe, where it commands about 90 percent of the market.

- 'Financial incentives' -

In the Android file, the European Commission has accused Google of requiring mobile manufacturers such as Samsung and Huawei to pre-install its search engine and Google Chrome browser on phones, and to set Google Search as the default, as a condition of licensing some Google apps.

Google Search and Chrome are as a result pre-installed on the "significant majority" of devices sold in the EU, the commission says.

The complaint formally lodged in April also accuses Google of preventing manufacturers from selling smartphones that run on rival operating systems based on the Android open source code.

Google also gave "financial incentives" to manufacturers and mobile network operators if they pre-installed Google Search on their devices, the commission said.

Vestager's other scalps include Amazon and Apple.

The EU's biggest ever punishment targeted Apple in 2016 when it ordered the iconic maker of iPhones and iPads to pay Ireland 13 billion euros ($16 billion) in back taxes that it had avoided by a tax deal with Dublin.

The EU has also taken on Facebook over privacy issues after it admitted that millions of users may have had their data hijacked by British consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica, which was working for Trump's 2016 election campaign.

The Google decision comes just one week before European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker is due to travel to the United States for crucial talks with Trump on the tariffs dispute and other issues.

Transatlantic tensions are also high after Trump berated NATO allies over defence spending at a summit last week, over his summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and over the US president's pull-out from the Iran nuclear agreement and Paris climate deal.