You’ve probably seen some of our Company Forensics episodes before,
but here’s the thing with them it takes us 2-3 weeks to get an episode out. If you want
nice production value, and polaroids, and typewriter quotes, that stuff takes time.
And sometimes, the news is fresh and we want to talk about them right away. So
welcome to this new experiment, a summary of the tech and startup news of the week.
Let’s start with Alibaba’s CEO Jack Ma, who is missing.
Business Insider reported that Alibaba’s CEO, billionaire Jack Ma, has been absent from
public appearances for more than two months now, which of course creates speculation.
His last appearance was in late October 2020, on a public forum in Shanghai where he blasted
China’s business regulations. That put him on a collision course with government officials
and ended up with the suspension of the $37 billion IPO of Alibaba’s fintech arm, Ant Group.
Despite there are no charges against him yet, the truth is that other
Chinese businessmen and critics of the government, like lawyers and professors
have been arrested or gone missing, after speaking against government policies.
A chairman of a Beijing tech consultancy said that he thinks Ma has been advised to lay low.
Now, China is a new super power, super economy. But is it a place for entrepreneurs to launch
their businesses? The reason why Silicon Valley has thrived is because people long to move
to San Francisco, or the US in general. The American Dream is real for many tech
entrepreneurs… but with this censorship of the press, with a regulated Internet,
and even with the strong cultural difference, can China create a China Dream this century?
Let’s get back to this hemisphere to talk about Facebook now.
The Facebook empire saw a bump in engagement numbers thanks to the
pandemic, and they recently shared a short summary of usage stats for New Year’s Eve.
The most impressive numbers were from Whatsapp. On New Year’s Eve, more than 1.4 billion voice
and video calls were made on the platform. That’s an increase of more than 50% compared
to the same day last year, and it’s the most calls in a single day on the app, ever.
That’s all very nice, but Facebook also has pressing issues going on.
The company may have to break up Whatsapp and Instagram to
deconstruct its social media monopoly, if federal regulations come to fruition.
The FTC and several states have sued the company yet again, for allegedly absorbing the
competition and incurring in ilegal monopolistic practices. In a nutshell, these lawsuits pretend
to stop mega-corporations from acquiring emerging competitors and forming monopolies.
Is Facebook too big? I think yes. They know too much and have access to too much of our
data. But that is kind of our own fault. As Facebook themselves put
it (in their defense against the lawsuit) it’s people’s own choice to use Facebook.
We’re making a full video on this, so stay tuned.
Now, Mark Zuckerberg being- let’s call him, not the best people-person, certainly doesn’t
help. Maybe this would be different if a more charismatic CEO was at the helm.
By the way, I truly hate Whatsapp. Yes it’s helped keep people in touch,
yes, you use it to speak to your family… but in many countries around the world,
people use Slack for work. If you want to see me ranting, send me a work related whatsapp message.
Fucking hell.
Let’s move to Google, who’s been on fire too,
dealing with antitrust lawsuits of its own. But now the company
is seeing employees getting organized and fighting for justice within the company.
Tech giants like Google or Amazon are no new to employee outcry, and they have
historically managed to extinguish all efforts of worker organization. High executives seem to
believe that tech companies are more innovative without bureaucratic institutions like unions.
But the Alphabet Workers Union hopes to change that for good. That is the recently formed union
of Google employees, and they are formalizing years of struggles with issues like racism,
sexual misconduct, payment inequality, and other unfair practices. Workers claim
that the company dismisses their interests and retaliates against those who speak up.
On January 4, official members of the union, published an article in the New York Times,
stating that they already count 226 signed members with the CW
(Communications Workers of America). That’s not much,
but it’s the first step in getting legal validation. In the article, they state:
“We are the workers who built Alphabet (...) a powerful company,
responsible for vast swaths of the internet. It is used by billions of people across the
world (...) It has a responsibility to its thousands of workers and billions of users to
make the world a better place. As Alphabet workers, we can help build that world”.
Look, I have some friends that work at Google. I’ve been to their offices. And for most of
the world, working at Google is a dream. Good salaries, free food, free cafeteria, baristas,
work from home all you want, free transportation, free gym, free yoga,
soccer, whatever club you can think of. Free movie theater.
I mean, I have a hard time lining up with your cause to Unionize. I would be surprised if there’s
truly racism, sexual misconduct, payment inequality, and other unfair
practices that go unchecked. Truly surprised.
Quit whining, Googlers.
Last but not least, Slack was down this week.
Here I was, coming to work on Monday after my holidays, ready to assign new tasks to everyone,
we’re launching the beta for a new product this month… and then Slack was down.
Just bought for a whopping $27B by Salesforece (we made a video about it),
it forced us to turn to more unorthodox messaging alternatives like LinkedIn or just good old email.
Companies like the project management platform, Click-up, didn’t miss the chance to promote
their in-app chatting feature, which is probably not very useful whenever Slack
is working. By the way, I feel ClickUp is crushing Monday.com- would you agree?
Anyway, the memes did not wait to immortalize the moment and make us laugh about the first
bump of 2021 if you want to call it that. Slack apologized and life went on.
That’s my cut of the news for this week. Company Forensics videos on Tuesdays and
Thursdays. See you then! We want a million subscribers this year,
I’m a greedy bastard and the silver plaque is not enough!