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  • Facebook, Google okay with Vietnam’s cybersecurity law

    Facebook, Google okay with Vietnam’s cybersecurity law

    Representatives of tech giants raised no objections and said they would modify their strategies according to the new law, claims senior official.

    Facebook and Google found Vietnam’s cybersecurity law “appropriate” and did not object to it, a senior Public Security Ministry official said Friday.

    Vietnam’s cybersecurity law, which was approved by a majority vote in the National Assembly on Tuesday, requires foreign businesses like Facebook and Google to store Vietnamese users’ data within the nation’s territory and provide it authorities upon receipt of written requests.

    As the law was being drafted, lawmakers had reached out to Google and Facebook to discuss its provisions, said Lieutenant-general Hoang Phuoc Thuan, director of the ministry’s Cybersecurity Department.

    “They said that this law was appropriate and that they will research to modify their companies’ strategies accordingly,” Thuan told.

    Authorities will only ask businesses to provide users’ data when there are signs of violations of the law, Thuan said.

    “Providing customers’ data to security authorities is not a violation of privacy,” he added.

    Facebook Vietnam and Google were not immediately available for comment.

    The cybersecurity law, which has been discussed by Vietnamese legislators since October last year, had raised concerns of MPs and experts that the country would end up violating its international commitments.

    Thuan dismissed these concerns. “I have met with and listened to diplomats and they all affirmed that there are exceptions in every country.”

    He affirmed that the law doesn’t affect freedom of speech; it actually protects the rightful benefits of individuals and organizations on networks.

    The new cybersecurity law, which will take effect in 2019, bans internet users from organizing, encouraging or training other people for anti-state purposes.

    They are not allowed to distort history, negate the nation’s revolutionary achievements, undermine national solidarity, offend religions and discriminate on the basis of gender and race.

    The law also prohibits the spreading of incorrect information which causes confusion among people, hurts socio-economic activity, creates difficulties for authorities and those performing their duty, and violates the legal rights and benefits of other organizations and individuals.

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  • Carrefour and Google to partner in online shopping initiative

    Carrefour and Google to partner in online shopping initiative

    Carrefour and Google have formed a strategic partnership to develop innovative online shopping solutions.

    The two companies say Google will contribute its technology and skills in AI, cloud computing and new consumer shopping interfaces like the Google Assistant, while Carrefour will bring its product expertise and know-how in logistics and sales.

    The partnership will focus on three initiatives: the availability of Carrefour on a new Google shopping website and Google Assistant in France, the creation of a Carrefour-Google innovation lab and the acceleration of Carrefour Group’s digitalisation.

    “The common objective of this partnership is to bring together the expertise of both companies to offer consumers new and innovative commerce experiences in France, whether that’s in a store, online, on smartphones, or with voice,” the two companies said in a statement.

    New buying experience

    The cooperation will see “a new buying experience from Carrefour across Google platforms” including Google Assistant, Google Home and a new Google Shopping website in France, expanding Carrefour’s footprint in the digital realm.

    “The common goal of both companies is to provide users with simplified and intuitive buying experiences. By early next year, users in France will be able to shop for groceries through a variety of channels including on Google Home, via the Google Assistant on their mobile phone, or on the web through the new Google shopping destination in France. Items can be delivered to their homes or made available for pick up in-store.”

    At the new innovation lab in Paris, Carrefour engineers will work side-by-side with Google Cloud AI experts to co-create new consumer experiences.

    Meanwhile, Carrefour will deploy Google Cloud’s G Suite productivity and collaboration solutions (including Gmail, calendar, drive, Hangouts, Docs) to more than 160,000 Carrefour employees.

    “This alliance makes Carrefour the first partner of Google on grocery e-commerce in Europe, creating a strong bond between the two companies,” said Alexandre Bompard, CEO of Carrefour.

    “It also marks an important step in the new story written by Carrefour since the announcement of the Carrefour 2022 plan. It allows us to accelerate our digital evolution and get a head start in deploying the omni-channel approach we want to offer our customers.”

    Sébastien Missoffe, VP and MD of Google France, said shoppers today are saddled with disconnected experiences through the online shopping journey, which often lead to abandoned shopping carts and low customer satisfaction and loyalty.

    “Customers want assistive, simple and personalised experiences that help them make decisions on what to buy, assist with easily building baskets across surfaces, and provide a seamless checkout. With Alexandre Bompard and his team, we wanted to explore new distribution models and e-commerce technologies to deliver simple, frictionless and deeply relevant experiences for shoppers in France.”

    Carrefour has a network of 12,300 stores across more than 30 countries.

  • These Chinese giants make Facebook and Google look tame

    These Chinese giants make Facebook and Google look tame

    The technology world’s most bruising battle for supremacy is taking place in China. And it could point to Big Tech’s future everywhere else, too.

    Tencent Holdings and the Alibaba Group are ratcheting up their no-holds-barred contest to dominate the ways 770 million internet users communicate, shop, get around, entertain themselves and even invest their savings and visit the doctor.

    The two titans long ago branched out from their core businesses — games and social media for Tencent, e-commerce for Alibaba — to duke it out in ever more realms of Chinese life. They have competed in messaging, microblogging and delivering takeaway food. They go head-to-head in video streaming and cloud computing.

    Today, their fiercest fight is over digital money kept on smartphones. Mobile payments have transformed the Chinese economy. Both giants, plus Ant Financial, an Alibaba sister firm, are spending big to gobble up pieces of the action.

    China’s internet powerhouses stand at the forefront of the nation’s galloping high-tech progress — a surge that has been brought into sharp focus by the Trump administration’s efforts to counter it. On one hand, the standoff over the Chinese telecom equipment-maker ZTE has exposed, to many in China, the degree to which the country still lags in core technologies such as microchips.

    But in the internet realm, China still offers a spooky potential vision of the future, one in which online behemoths like Tencent and Alibaba become the gatekeepers to the entire economy, wielding immense power over traditional industries and becoming very, very rich in the process.

    At a conference in December in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, Tencent’s chief executive Pony Ma said he felt the two companies were competing in “too many” areas.

    “Sometimes I think, ‘Ah, we’re competing in this now, too? All right then,’” Ma said, chuckling. “It’s a little frustrating.”

    A duopoly this broad could not be easily replicated in other countries,  for example the United States. Entrenched competitors and the threat of government intervention generally keep the likes of Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook from expanding pell-mell into adjacent businesses. All of them have sprawled and overlapped mightily, but Amazon, with its forays into groceries, pharmacies, health care and more, might be the furthest along towards creating an inescapable commercial universe.

    Still, with the European Union enacting tough new privacy laws, and some in the United States eager to follow, Google and Facebook could soon be forced to find ways to make money beyond selling users’ personal information to advertisers, said Raj Rajgopal, president of digital business strategy at Virtusa Corp, a consulting firm.

    “As profitability reduces, they’ll say, ‘Now I need to monetise my customer base,’” Rajgopal said. “The innovation we’re seeing in China could be seen in the US in the next three to five years,” he added. “Customers are demanding that.”

    China’s internet titans have a powerful ally found nowhere else, though: the Chinese government. Tencent and Alibaba have avoided anti-monopoly clampdowns by staying in Beijing’s good graces, said Hu Wenyou, a partner at the Beijing law firm Yingke. Their sheer size also makes them easier for authorities to control. They simply have too much to lose.

    “If you can become so big, and so successful in so many areas, this in itself shows that you must have maintained very good, very friendly relations with the government,” Hu said.

    Neither giant is done getting bigger.

    Each has a market capitalisation of close to $US500 billion ($663 billion), making them among the most highly valued technology firms on the planet. Google and Facebook still claim more users, but the Chinese heavyweights arguably do more — and more, and more — for theirs.

    The latest battleground? Brick-and-mortar stores. Alibaba has spent great sums — $US2.9 billion on a supermarket chain, $US2.6 billion on a department store and mall operator — to conquer the real world. Tencent has followed suit with its own retail partnerships and investments.

    Once the companies have locked people into their payment systems, they can become the enablers of commerce and financial services of even more kinds. In a sign of investors’ excitement about the possibilities, Ant Financial is making plans to go public, in a blockbuster stock offering that could give the company a market value larger than Goldman Sachs.

    China has become a model for tech’s world-swallowing tendencies partly out of circumstance.

    With the country’s high-speed churn of well-funded startups, planting flags on new turf is often the only way for large players not to be constantly losing ground.

    Also, both Alibaba and Tencent have struggled to make much money outside their home market. That means their surest way to keep growing is to get more deeply involved in more areas of their Chinese users’ lives.

    Those lives are riper for tech disruption than lives in the West. In China, small stores dominate retail. Hospitals are crowded and doctors overworked. Most people do not have credit cards. These are easier business opportunities for Alibaba and Tencent than they would be for Amazon or Facebook.

    In a report this week, Morgan Stanley predicted that by 2027, the total market in China in which Alibaba could be making money will be worth $US19 trillion — more than Amazon’s potential market worldwide.

  • Smartphone Sales Will Drop for Second Straight Year, IDC Predicts

    Smartphone Sales Will Drop for Second Straight Year, IDC Predicts

    Global smartphone sales are expected to fall for the second year running this year, before  returning to growth next year, according to analysis by the International Data Corporation (IDC).

    In the research house’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, smartphone shipments are forecast to drop 0.2 per cent this year to 1.462 billion units, after a 0.3 per cent decline last year. Looking further out, IDC expects the market is to grow roughly 3 per cent annually from next year onwards, with worldwide shipments reaching 1.654 billion in 2022 and a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.5 per cent.

    The biggest driver of last year’s decline was China, where smartphone sales declined 4.9 per cent year-on-year. And the IDC expects sales in China to decline a further 7.1 per cent this year before flattening out next year.

    The biggest growth market in Asia Pacific continues to be India, with volumes expected to grow 14 per cent and 16 per cent this year and next.

    “Chinese OEMs will continue their strategy of selling large volumes of low-end devices by shifting their focus from China to India,” says IDC. “So far, most have been able to get around the recently introduced Indian import tariffs by doing final device assembly at local India manufacturing plants. As for components, almost everything is still being sourced from China.”

    “With 2017 now behind us a lot of interesting market dynamics are unfolding,” says Ryan Reith, program VP with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Device Trackers. “Even though it declined 5 per cent last year, China remains the focal point for many given that it consumes roughly 30 per cent of the world’s smartphones.

    “But plenty of pockets of growth can be found beyond China. India is now grabbing headlines and the market itself is going through some rapid transformation. Local Indian manufacturing continues to ramp up, despite still having a heavy dependence on China for components. The boom in India is likely to continue in the years to come, but the move toward building up local production has certainly caught the eye of many in the industry.”

    Outside of Asia Pacific, the biggest regions for growth will be the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. All three regions have relatively low penetration rates and plenty of upsides, says IDC. Economic challenges have been the main inhibitor over the past two years, but IDC expects consumer spending to rise throughout the forecast and smartphones to be a big benefactor.

    5G opportunity

    The other catalyst to watch will be the introduction of 5G smartphones. IDC predicts the first commercially ready 5G smartphones will appear in the second half of next year with a ramp up across most regions happening in 2020. IDC projects 5G smartphone volumes to account for roughly 7 per cent of all global smartphone sales in 2020 or 212 million in total. The share of 5G devices should grow to 18 per cent of total volumes by 2022.

    “Although overall smartphone shipments will decline slightly this year, the average selling price (ASP) of a smartphone will reach US$345, up 10.3 per cent from the $313 of last year,” said Anthony Scarsella, research manager with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.

    “This year will continue to focus on the ultra-high-end segment of the market as we expect a surge of premium flagship devices to launch in developed markets. Devices featuring large Amoled bezel-less displays, advanced camera functions, and an overall increase in speed and performance will be the driving factor in the increase of ASPs. Moving forward, we can expect this trend to continue as the ASP for a smartphone will continue to grow throughout the forecast period. In 2022, the final year of our forecast period, the average selling price for a smartphone will be $362, resulting in a five-year CAGR of 2.9 per cent.”

    Android vs Apple

    Android’s share of t sales is expected to remain relatively stable at 85 per cent of total global smartphone sales. Volumes are expected to grow at a five-year CAGR of 2.5 per cent, with shipments totaling 1.41 billion by 2022.

    “There is no question that Android is the OS of choice for the mass market and nothing leads us to believe this will change,” says IDC. “Given the large number of Chinese OEMs dependent on Google’s OS, as well as components from other US companies like Qualcomm, it will be interesting to see how things develop with all the discussion about a US-China trade war. Android OEMs continue to drive down the cost of new technology features at a rapid pace. IDC estimates that 98 per cent of Android phones will ship with screens larger than five inches by 2022, with 36 per cent being six inches or larger. While some of these will remain premium flagship models, the aggregate ASP of Android phones with a six-inch screen or greater by 2022 is projected to be $414.

    Meanwhile, iPhone volumes are expected to grow 2.6 per cent this year to 221 million. IDC is forecasting iPhones to grow at a five-year CAGR of 2.4 per cent, reaching volumes of 242 million by 2022. With rumors of some upcoming larger screen iOS smartphones, IDC has changed its screen size forecast for Apple by introducing volumes greater than six inches. Products are likely to begin shipping in the fourth quarter of 2018, with volumes ramping up and accounting for 36 per cent of all iPhones shipped by 2022.

  • Google explains Hong Kong’s E-commerce Challenges

    Google explains Hong Kong’s E-commerce Challenges

    Mindset and talent are the two factors holding back the Hong Kong e-commerce sector, according to a senior Google executive.

    Speaking at the sell-out HKRMA 2018 Hong Kong Retail Summit this morning, Leonie Valentine, MD sales and operations at Google Hong Kong, said that compared with other major cities around the world, Hong Kong remains in the early stages of digital transformation.

    Here, where retail is a key driver of the economy, e-commerce accounts for just 4.68 per cent of sales.

    Yet across Asia-Pacific, 17.6 per cent of retail sales will be online this year.

    Of the small percentage of retail sales conducted online in Hong Kong, just 37 per cent is on mobile (m-commerce). In the mainland, that figure is 66 per cent and China now accounts for two-thirds of global m-commerce sales, driven by its mobile-first audience. Sales by m-commerce in China are expected to triple by 2021.

    Valentine dismissed the ubiquitous argument that the city’s dense urban layout is the reason Hong Kong e-commerce penetration is so low.

    “It’s the same argument I heard in 2011 when I arrived in Hong Kong, when I questioned why I couldn’t buy a mobile phone or groceries online here. ‘Oh, there’s no need,’ was the reply. ‘There’s a shop on every corner in Hong Kong. No one shops online.’

    “Should I tell that to the millennials in my team? They were  already buying dresses from Korea, shoes from Taobao and books from Amazon in 2011. Yet we really didn’t have as much of a digital industry here then,” said Valentine.

    “So while digital investments by some retailers have lagged behind, most consumers have actually embraced online shopping.”

    Last year, 58 per cent of non grocery sales were influenced by a digital touchpoint, compared with just 13 per cent in 2004.

    “Today’s consumer wants to compare products, features, price, benefits, etc, before they start their purchase process. Eighty-one per cent of the population is connected to the internet. Ninety-eight per cent of smartphone users go online at least once a day. So Hong Kong should rank really highly in digital integration.”

    But it doesn’t.

    “There are two things that hold back Hong Kong. Mindset – in terms of the willingness to embrace new things – and talent. One of the things we really need in Hong Kong is to have a mindset that change is good, that embracing digital is not about distrusting what you have today; it is about complementing that for the benefit of your customers.”

    Those customers are already online, said Valentine. “Everybody here is online: 98 per cent of smart phone users – and that’s everybody – are online at least once a day, from an eight-year old to an 80-year old. And yet where are we? Where are our government services today… on mobile? Where is the ability for you to be able to easily find what you are looking for online?

    “I want to buy a new couch. I can’t find one. I’m searching and I have money to spend and I cannot find a retailer in Hong Kong easily on mobile or on my desktop that has the product that I want. I find that really interesting in a city that is as modern and connected as Hong Kong.”

    Those are her two reasons for Hong Kong e-commerce lagging the rest of the region, she said. “It is very much about the mindset and it’s about having the right talent to drive a lot of the adoption of these ideas.”

    “Take a risk”

    Another speaker, Yann Bozec, president and CEO of Coach China, echoed Valentine’s comments on the mindset.

    “I love to be surrounded by millennials and listen to what they do and how they do it. Even further I am learning a lot from my eight year old daughter about digital [technology]. I think it is about listening and looking at how people, especially younger people, are engaging digitally.

    “[It’s about] being inspired by them and not being shy to take risks and try new things, including new applications.”

    Bozec said besides established giants like Google, a lot of smaller, upcoming applications are making their way onto the market.

    “Businesses who are early adopters and taking some risks can really take a lot of benefits.”

    Retail “a pillar” of Hong Kong

    The 2018 Hong Kong Retail Summit was opened by the SAR’s chief executive Carrie Lam, who congratulated the HKRMA on its 35th anniversary.

    “The retail industry is an important pillar of the Hong Kong economy, contributing about 4 per cent of our GDP and employing some 270,000 people. I am pleased to note that retail sales last year enjoyed moderate growth in both value and volume… with the forecast of a sales increase this year in the 3 to 4 per cent range.”

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  • Google Singapore goes online

    Google Singapore goes online

    After launching its online store, Google Singapore has introduced its smart speaker Google Home.

    It has taken the technology 16 months to reach SouthEast Asia, and alongside the Google Home Mini the speaker will be sold through retail stores such as Challenger, Courts and StarHub, as well as online from tomorrow.

    There is no word on when the newer Google Home Max will be made available, reports CNet, nor if Google Home will be rolled out elsewhere in Southeast Asia. However, it was launched in India last week and in Japan late last year.

    Singapore’s version of the speaker will support Singlish, and have access to local services such as public transportation chatbot Bus Uncle.

    Google has also enabled multi-user support for Singapore, and will be able to deliver personalised schedules or music based on who is asking.

    “We’re seeing a transition from a mobile-first world to an AI-first world,” says Google VP of product management Rishi Chandra. “We’re looking to reinvent all of our products to make it more natural to use them, and we think voice is going to be a big part of that. Voice can fundamentally change how you interact with computers.”

    He says Home has been designed around Google’s privacy framework. “We want to be transparent and give user control.”

    User data across all Google platforms, including Search and Home, can be managed on a single backend, enabling users to easily view and delete their information.

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  • Accelerate, a Digital growth initiative by Capillary, is now a Google Premier Partner

    Accelerate, a Digital growth initiative by Capillary, is now a Google Premier Partner

    Capillary Technologies, whose solutions help businesses get ahead of the digital evolution and stay consumer ready, has announced that their Accelerate initiative is now a Google Channel Partner and Google Premier Badge holder. Amidst the increasing inclination of businesses to unify their multiple sales channels to derive greater ROI out of their digital marketing efforts, this recognition will help brands to drive increased conversions and better spend optimisation through intelligently targeting the right consumer at the right time.

    The Accelerate team envisions this as a means to drive more relevant and targeted results for online as well as offline businesses by driving the right customers through the right channel. Being a Premier Badge holding Channel Partner, Accelerate benefits with dedicated account management for efficient turn-around timings, exclusive industry vertical insights, competitor data and Beta access to new products for associated clients to implement in their digital strategies. This will help brands better orchestrate their customer’s journeys and drive better conversations.

    Soumajit Bhowmik, Director at Accelerate stated – “The increase in digital media consumption has made it an important channel for brands to engage their consumers. Around 10% of brand marketing spends are invested in the digital medium. In the current scheme of things, data sits in silos across the channels – both online and offline. We’re solving just this!”

    In relation to the partnership with Google, Soumajit added, “This recognition is a testimony to our uncompromising commitment towards client success through a sustainable and profitable e-commerce ROI. In a short span of time, we are working with more than 40 premium brands globally like HUL, W, Fair & Lovely, LuLu Webstore, Bata, amongst others and delivering cost-effective and ROI driven cutting edge performance marketing. We look forward to a greater market share of digital marketing spends of online/offline retailers and helping them make e-commerce profitable.”

    Capillary Technologies is looking at this as a means to help accelerate partner businesses while working together to create a more targeted, strategic, and revenue driven approach for marketers across the world.

    Abhijeet Vijayvergiya, VP and Business Head Asia Pacific, Capillary Technologies, commented on what this means to Capillary’s business in Southeast Asia, “This recognition from Google is a testimony to our steadfastness on developing revolutionary products and reinforces our goal to make brands always consumer ready. Southeast Asia is undergoing an incredible transformation thanks to digital technologies. And with Capillary Accelerate, we will push this transformation in the direction that delights both the retailers and the customers.”

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  • Amazon posts largest profit in its history on sales

    Amazon posts largest profit in its history on sales

    Amazon’s quarterly profit reached a record US$1.86 billion in the three months to December 31, fuelled by millions of new customers to its Prime fast-shipping club.

    There was also a provisional $789 million boost to its bottom line from the US government’s tax bill which was passed in December.

    “This was another blow-out quarter for Amazon,” said GBH Insights analyst Daniel Ives. “The retail strength was eye-popping as the company had a banner holiday season and looked to capture roughly 50 per cent of all e-commerce holiday season sales.”

    “Our 2017 projections for Alexa were very optimistic, and we far exceeded them,” said founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

    Neil Saunders, MD of GlobalData Retail, said that with 38.2 per cent sales growth in the final quarter, Amazon was one of the clear winners over the holiday season.

    “Admittedly this number is flattered by the inclusion of Whole Foods revenue, but even when this is stripped out, Amazon still increased sales by an impressive 27.9 per cent. Given this is above the trajectory of recent growth, it is safe to say that Amazon shows no signs of slowing down.”

    Saunders said the figures clearly show Amazon’s primary growth opportunities now lie in services.

    “Prime and subscription revenue, for example, increased by 46 per cent over the prior year. This is an impressive uplift and demonstrates Amazon is pulling more and more consumers into its ecosystem of content and services.”

    Allied with the increase in Prime membership is the rise in sales of Echo devices.

    “Our data show these were popular gifting and self-purchase items over the holiday period. Amazon now has a clear edge over other smart device manufacturers. This, and the fact Prime offers far more benefits and services than rivals, means Amazon should be able to withstand increasing competition from Apple, Google, and others as they launch and upgrade their smart speakers and connected home products

    Growth from services, as well as the addition of Whole Foods, is helping to strengthen Amazon’s bottom line. This quarter, net income increased by a stellar 147.8 per cent while operating profit rose by a very respectable 69.5 per cent.

    “This is in spite of increased investment and higher losses from the international operation. Notably, the better profit outcome also masks the pressure on margins from increased delivery and fulfillment costs: these rose by 56.9 per cent over the prior year and as a proportion of product sales rose to 21.7 per cent from 18.7 per cent in the same period last year.

    “Although Prime revenue offsets some of the fulfillment costs, this income is also used to fund content production, and various other benefits members enjoy. As such, we believe Prime makes only a small contribution to covering Amazon’s fulfillment costs. However, over the longer term, we believe this contribution may increase as Amazon starts to raise the price of membership.”

    Saunders said that while Amazon has grown sharply, it is still nowhere near its potential. “There are categories, like home and apparel, where it is underpenetrated and with tweaks to its proposition should be able to make further gains. There are markets around the world, like Australia, where Amazon is just getting started and has significant scope to boost sales. There are areas, like healthcare, that it is seeking to disrupt in the future. And there is Whole Foods, where some progress has been made – but which has yet to feel the full force of Amazon’s innovative approach.

    “In other words, Amazon has a lot more runway to grow.”

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  • Google, Temasek Coming in as New Investors in Indonesia’s Go-Jek

    Google, Temasek Coming in as New Investors in Indonesia’s Go-Jek

    Google, Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings and Chinese online platform Meituan-Dianping are investing in a fundraising round of Indonesian ride-hailing startup Go-Jek, sources familiar with the matter said.

    Go-Jek’s existing investors, such as global private equity firms KKR & Co and Warburg Pincus, are also participating in the funding round, which is raising about $1.2 billion in total, the sources said.

    They said the funding round opened last year and is expected to close in a few weeks.

    The funding by prominent investors including Google gives Go-Jek greater firepower to tackle competition at home from Grab and Uber Technologies, which are viewing Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s most populous country, as a large potential market.

    “As a strategic investor, Google can add a lot to Go-Jek’s business,” said one source.

    It was not immediately clear how much the investors are pumping in individually.

    Google, KKR, Warburg and Temasek declined to comment. Meituan-Dianping and Go-Jek did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The people declined to be identified as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

    Go-Jek, which began as a ride-hailing app for motorcycle taxis, operates mainly in Indonesia but is developing a food delivery business. Its mobile payment business, Go-Pay, is also growing rapidly.

    Reuters reported last year that JD.com was investing about $100 million in Go-Jek. This followed an investment by Chinese social media and online entertainment firm Tencent Holdings, which is also an investor in JD.com.

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  • Google to open e-suite office in Shenzhen

    Google to open e-suite office in Shenzhen

    A month after announcing plans to open its first AI lab in China, Google is expanding again through a move into Shenzhen.

    The U.S. tech giant has opened an office in the Chinese city, which borders Hong Kong and known for being a global hardware hub. This is not a fully-blown Google campus, instead the company has taken up space within a serviced office starting this week.

    “We have many important clients and partners in Shenzhen. We are setting up this e-suite office to be able to communicate and work with them better,” a spokesperson said in a statement confirming the news.

    Shenzhen is home to Tencent, the $500 billion firm behind WeChat, and mobile giants Huawei and ZTE, while the likes of Alibaba and Baidu are also present. The city has a thriving maker community, which includes global hardware accelerator program HAX.

    Google currently has offices in Shanghai and Beijing.

    There’s much to dig into around the search giant’s upcoming China-based AI lab, which taps into China’s growing AI talent pool and could signal a move to developing China-focused products. That, plus the re-launch of Google Translate app in China last year, gave fuel to the idea that the firm is ‘back’ in China. The Shenzhen presence is a more subtle development, a nod to the importance of the city for Google’s business.

    The Shenzhen office is likely to be used by a number of teams that already spend a lot of time in the city. Google decided that something more permanent was preferable to working out of hotels or public spaces. The firm’s China-based sales team, its hardware team and those in logistics, sourcing, supply are most likely to make use of it.

    Further down the line it seems possible that Google might opt for an office space that is more permanent — and more Googly — but for now we understand that there’s no timeline for that.

    The Shenzhen base also reflects Google’s position following its $1.1 billion deal to acquire a large chunk of HTC’s smartphone business. As a report from The Information recently noted, Google has also ramped up its hardware efforts in China. Its headcount for its Shanghai-based hardware engineering jumped to more than 100 from just 20 one year ago, the publication said.

    “I expect Google to make its Home products and more in Shenzhen. No doubt they have staff visiting frequently,” Benjamin Joffe, General Partner at HAX said.

    “Considering the push they had at CES and the fact that they are expanding the product line there will probably be more Googlers to join the ranks of Apple, Amazon and other companies’ staff in the watering holes and eateries of Shenzhen, in Nanshan or Futian,” he added.

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  • Ex-Google engineer fired over gender memo sues for discrimination

    Ex-Google engineer fired over gender memo sues for discrimination

    A former Google engineer fired after he asserted in a memo that biological causes were behind tech industry gender inequality sued his former employer on Monday, saying he was discriminated against as a white man with conservative political views.

    James Damore last year caused an uproar in Silicon Valley and beyond when he wrote the internal memo, which later became public. Google said he had perpetuated gender stereotypes and fired him in August.

    In the months since, his firing has become a popular cause among right-leaning U.S. bloggers, and Damore hired a Republican Party official as his attorney.

    Damore and another white male former Google engineer, David Gudeman, filed the lawsuit as a proposed class action in Santa Clara County Superior Court in California. The lawsuit alleges workplace discrimination and retaliation.

    Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc based in Mountain View, California, said in a statement: “We look forward to defending against Mr. Damore’s lawsuit in court.”

    According to the lawsuit, the company has failed to protect employees, especially white men, from workplace harassment related to their support of U.S. President Donald Trump or conservative political views.

    “Damore, Gudeman, and other class members were ostracized, belittled, and punished for their heterodox political views, and for the added sin of their birth circumstances of being Caucasians and/or males,” the lawsuit said.

    The lawsuit also accused Google of maintaining a secret blacklist of conservative media personalities who are not allowed inside the company’s offices.

    The lawsuit requested an injunction barring Google from discriminating against individuals with conservative political views, as well as for unspecified compensation.

    Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said when Damore was fired that portions of his memo “violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”

    Gudeman was fired in December 2016 after a confrontation with a Muslim coworker on an internal Google forum, according to the lawsuit.

    The coworker said on the forum that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had targeted him for being a Muslim, and he expressed worry about his personal safety, the lawsuit said. Gudeman responded with skepticism, saying the coworker had provided “zero evidence” for the claim and suggesting the FBI may have had justification.

    A human resources employee later told Gudeman he had accused his coworker of terrorism based on religion, and that he was being fired as a result, the lawsuit said.

  • Facebook defends itself against critics of social media

    Facebook defends itself against critics of social media

    Facebook Inc on Friday struck back against scientific researchers and tech industry insiders who have criticized the world’s biggest social media network and its competitors for transforming how people behave and express emotion.

    Facebook, in a corporate blog post, said that social media can be good for people’s well-being if they use the technology in a way that is active, such as messaging with friends, rather than passive, such as scrolling through a feed of other people’s posts.

    It was the second time this week that Facebook had published such a rebuttal, signaling a new willingness to defend a business model that translates users’ attention into advertising revenue.

    On Tuesday, the company released a statement saying that former executive Chamath Palihapitiya, who at a conference publicly blamed Facebook for “destroying how society works,” had been gone for six years and was unfamiliar with the company’s recent efforts to improve.

    Palihapitiya on Thursday revised his view, writing in a Facebook post that the service “is a force for good in the world.”

    Online services such as Facebook and its Instagram unit, Twitter Inc, Snap Inc’s Snapchat and Alphabet Inc’s YouTube are under attack for their seemingly addictive nature and perceived promotion of anti-social behaviors.

    A study in March by U.S. researchers found that using such services at least two hours daily was correlated with reporting feelings of social isolation.

    A nonprofit organization called Time Well Spent, led by a former Google design ethicist, is pressuring tech companies to move away from products that try to hook people’s attention.

    In its blog post, Facebook acknowledged what it called “compelling research” on the negative effects of social media and cited two such academic studies.

    The company said, though, that those studies are “not the whole story.” It went on to cite other studies suggesting that the dangers of social media may be exaggerated, and that it has potential benefits if used correctly.

    “We employ social psychologists, social scientists and sociologists, and we collaborate with top scholars to better understand well-being and work to make Facebook a place that contributes in a positive way,” said the blog post, written by Facebook Research Director David Ginsberg and Research Scientist Moira Burke.

    Fundamental change would require turning away from “where the money is,” said Roger McNamee, a venture capitalist and early Facebook investor who recently has criticized the social network.

    “Facebook’s business model depends on monopolizing consumer attention, and content that appeals to fear and anger is the most profitable way to do that,” McNamee said in an email on Friday.

    A Facebook representative declined to comment beyond the blog post.

    Facebook is spending $1 million on research into the relationship among technology, youth development and well-being, the blog post said.

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  • Net giants ‘must pay for news’ from which they make billions

    Net giants ‘must pay for news’ from which they make billions

    Nine European press agencies, including AFP, called Wednesday on internet giants to be forced to pay copyright for using news content on which they make vast profits.

    The call comes as the EU is debating a directive to make Facebook, Google, Twitter and other major players pay for the millions of news articles they use or link to.

    “Facebook has become the biggest media in the world,” the agencies said in a plea published in the French daily Le Monde.

    “Yet neither Facebook nor Google have a newsroom… They do not have journalists in Syria risking their lives, nor a bureau in Zimbabwe investigating Mugabe’s departure, nor editors to check and verify information sent in by reporters on the ground.”

    “Access to free information is supposedly one of the great victories of the internet. But it is a myth,” the agencies argued.

    “At the end of the chain, informing the public costs a lot of money.”

    News, the declaration added, is the second reason after catching up on family and friends for people to log onto Facebook, which tripled its profits to $10 billion (8.5 billion) last year.

    Yet it is the giants of the net who are reaping vast profits “from other people’s work” by soaking up between 60 and 70 percent of advertising revenue, with Google’s jumping by a fifth in a year.

    Meanwhile, ad revenue for news media fell nine percent in France alone last year, “a disaster for the industry”.

    ‘Pillar of democracy at risk’ 

    “Years have passed (without anything being done) and free and reliable newsgathering is now threatened because the media will simply no longer be able to pay for it,” the news agencies added.

    “Diverse and reliable news sources, a pillar of democracy, risk being undermined.”

    Attempts by news outlets in France, Germany and Spain to force internet giants to pay have only resulted in them coughing up a “few symbolic crumbs”, they added.

    The press agencies insisted that some of the vast imbalance could be rectified if the EU gives them and other media “related rights” copyright to their work.

    However, some European Parliament members were worried that the proposed directive would threaten free access to news for internet users.

    But that would not be the case, the agencies insisted.

    “Internet users would not be touched… simply those who now pocket a disproportionate part of advertising revenue would have to share a significant part of it with those who actually produce the information” on which the money is made.

    The appeal was signed by AFP; the German agency DPA; Britain’s Press Association; the Spanish agency EFE; Italy’s Ansa; the Swedish agency TT; Belga of Belgium, Austria’s APA, and the Dutch agency ANP.

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  • Google opens AI center in China as competition heats up

    Google opens AI center in China as competition heats up

    Google announced Wednesday that it will open a new artificial intelligence research centre in Beijing, tapping China’s talent pool in the promising technology despite the US search giant’s exclusion from the country’s internet.

    Artificial intelligence, especially machine learning, has been an area of intense focus for American tech stalwarts Google, Microsoft and Facebook, and their Chinese competitors Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu as they bid to master what many consider is the future of computing.

    AI research has the potential to boost developments in self-driving cars and automated factories, translation products and facial recognition software, among others.

    Google’s move to open a Beijing office focused on fundamental research is an indication of China’s AI talent, widely seen as being neck-and-neck with the United States in research capability.

    “Chinese authors contributed 43 percent of all content in the top 100 AI journals in 2015,” Li Feifei, a researcher leading the new center, wrote in a blog post on Google’s website.

    “We’ve already hired some top experts, and will be working to build the team in the months ahead.”

    Li noted that Chinese engineers formed the backbones of the winning teams in the past three ImageNet Challenges, an international AI competition to test which computing technology is better at recognizing and categorizing pictures.

    Chinese search engine Baidu’s team was banned for a year for breaking the rules during the 2015 competition.

    The country’s large population and strong mathematics and sciences education has nurtured a slew of engineering talent.

    Google operates two offices in China, with roughly half of its 600 employees working on global products, said company spokesman Taj Meadows.

    Its job board in China shows about a dozen openings in the AI field. The China center will join Google’s other research facilities outside of its Silicon Valley hub, including in New York, Toronto, London and Zurich.

    Google’s search engine and many of its services are blocked by China’s Great Firewall, but internet regulators have recently allowed access to its translation product, one that has made leaps and bounds in accuracy by incorporating the company’s AI research.

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  • More online super sales for Asia online market

    More online super sales for Asia online market

    While the US formulated online super sales, such as this week’s Black Friday, Asia has adopted the concept with a vengeance.

    In fact, China has increasingly been exporting Alibaba’s Singles Day (11.11) event, which this month racked up a massive US$35 billion in sales. November is the favoured month for this new consumer mania, offering the Singles Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.

    Both Black Friday and Cyber Monday themselves have been catching on in the Asia Pacific, growing by 29 per cent last year, according to global payments company WorldPay.

    It says that despite forking out $17.8 billion on Singles Day last year, Chinese consumers still went hunting Black Friday bargains, with overall spending on the day up by 37 per cent from the previous year. In Hong Kong, the rate of growth was 32 per cent, and in Singapore 21 per cent.

    While retailers are among the biggest Black Friday winners, new WorldPay data suggests this year could also be a great opportunity for savvy APAC businesses in the travel and digital sectors. In Hong Kong, spending with travel and airlines saw a 30 per cent surge last year, with Singapore figures up 20 per cent as travellers jumped online to search for flight and hotel deals.

    Not just retailers

    Shoppers are also increasingly seeking out bargains for digital content such as subscriptions, e-books and on-demand box sets. Black Friday spending in this sector last year grew 62 per cent in Hong Kong and 14 per cent in Singapore.

    Not just retailers can benefit from Black Friday, but also a range of e-commerce businesses, says WorldPay Asia Pacific GM Phil Pomford.

    “While Black Friday and Cyber Monday have typically been the realm of retailers, a more diverse range of businesses are now recognising they can also take can take advantage of this special online opportunity.

    Shoppers during this time are highly engaged, proactive and looking for a wide range of online deals, so the potential to reach new customers and strengthen brand loyalty is huge, regardless of sector.

    “E-commerce businesses should set themselves up for success by ensuring their websites are prepared for heavy traffic, and offer simple payment options to drive shopping-cart conversions. They might also consider following the example of Amazon and kickstart Black Friday deals a week early.”

    Black Friday online sales surpassed $3 billion last year and are expected to rise this week, says Adobe Digital Insights, as buyers seek to avoid long queues and lost hours in retail stores.

    In Southeast Asia, Google searches for “Black Friday” have surged over the past five years, and 12 months ago major offline/online retailers like Robinsons, Sephora and Zalora offered generous discounts for the event.

    “Many industries rely on this event to make up a large portion of their fourth-quarter sales, in particular toys and games,” says Euromonitor International senior toys and games analyst Matthew Hudak.

    ‘Sure to jump on’

    Digital campaign company RTB House says Black Friday last year attracted 106 per cent more people to online stores, with 204 per cent more transactions.

    “We anticipate conversion rates surging this time,” says RTB House Southeast Asia country director Chandra Kuncara. “Customers who missed out on Singles Day will be sure to jump on this event.”

    He says personalised retargeting is an important selling tool during Black Friday. With AI technology and deep-learning algorithms, marketers can highlight most-desired products for each individual customer.

    More purchases mean more packages being shipped, and international courier service FedEx is again expecting to handle a record number of packages over the peak holiday shopping period, which starts on Monday and runs to December 24. This year it is expecting 380 to 400 million packages.

    The growth of cross-border e-commerce is turning the peak shipping season into a global phenomenon, says FedEx. For instance, 37 per cent of Singles Day purchases in China last year were from international brands or merchants. Cross-border shopping is expected to make up 20 per cent of e-commerce sales by 2022, led by Asia Pacific.

    “While an online purchase takes just a few clicks, logistics providers are working hard behind the scenes powering every moment,” says FedEx Express AsiaPacific president Karen Reddington. “Our business is the backbone of the e-commerce market.”

    Meanwhile, while shoppers scramble for Black Friday bargains this week, outdoor retailer REI is closing its 154 US stores for the third consecutive year, offering its nearly 12,000 employees a paid holiday. It is truly going against the tide by also putting a hold on online orders.

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