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sajanbabu1234 · 3 years ago

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Top 5 Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media Marketing.

Social media began in 1997 with a site called Six Degrees.

Quick forward to the mid 2000s and renowned locales including Flickr, MySpace and YouTube arose in 2005 with Facebook, and Twitter the next year, there are currently countless clients on social media destinations. Where individuals are, organizations make certain to follow. Utilizing the stages similarly as normal clients, organizations figured out how to promote their labor and products.

Quick forward to now, and there are a lot more social systems administration stages, many are supported by explicit socioeconomics. For instance, 90% of clients of Snapchat are matured 18 – 24, and 66% are female.

In addition consolidations and acquisitions of social media locales make it much simpler to share content across stages and utilize the equivalent login qualifications, for instance, Facebook possesses Instagram and WhatsApp. Letter set claims Google and YouTube. There are additional up-sides for your business from dividing content and switch among the stages utilizing the equivalent login certifications.

Organizations need to showcase their labor and products on locales like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn to contact their target group, nonetheless, is SMM excessively costly?

A few specialists say SMM (social media advertising) doesn't convey an incentive for cash for example see Neil Patel's video on Facebook Ads. There are so many computerized showcasing methodologies, including email promoting that are simpler to do and less expensive as well yet for how long?

Fresher innovations including artifical insight, AI and other fourth and fifth mechanical transformation programming further developing ROI for advertisers including utilizing social media for business.

Hence in this article, we uncover our advantages and disadvantages for organizations promoting on social media, for example social media promoting (SMM).

Benefits

The most clear benefit for organizations utilizing Facebook to advance their image is the enormous userbase. There are 2.7 billion month to month clients as indicated by Statista. You'd figure it is difficult to focus on your advert at your target group, however upgrades in tech have been effectively utilized for sponsors.

Client Data Analysis

Destinations like Facebook have outsider suppliers gaining practical experience in programming and administrations for data division and organizations utilizing the data get the award with their SMM adverts been seen by their expected clients. This is a benefit for sponsors however for clients it's been a hindrance as indicated by the adverse result of Cambridge Analytica utilization of Facebook client data in the US 2016 political race.

Expanded brand mindfulness

By 2021 Statista foresee more than 3 billion individuals will utilize social media in some structure. Thusly given that pretty much every individual possesses a cell phone, work area or a PC, and they invest a ton of energy on social media locales, doing any kind of SMM whenever carried out effectively ought to best case scenario increment brand acknowledgment for your business.

The way to being effective with social media showcasing is executing a thoroughly examined plan. Natural sharing of supported posts, for instance, can further develop openness, and this can start inside the business with workers. Their Instagram, Twitter and so forth adherents and companions enjoying and sharing your posts and page.

Creating commitment is fundamental, and it's in the real essence of social systems administration so when individuals collaborate with your item posts more noteworthy mindfulness among different clients happens, and from here references and enquiries increment and afterward real deals.

Better consumer loyalty

Overall, most people look to stand out and affirmation, and the systems administration locales empower it. It's standard practice to take selfies, and that incorporates sharing pictures and recordings of utilizing items and so on

Devotees will like, remark and offer these posts and after a short time forthcoming clients will pose inquiries identifying with your items and administrations, and they anticipate a speedy answer. It's this immediacy of contact that further develops consumer loyalty. Hence when you're mindful, and you react straightforwardly inside your page to questions, your page draws in additional perspectives from your supporters and your clients' organizations.

The insight is your business truly minds and offers fantastic support, and this is a benefit for SMM, for example the immediacy of contact with forthcoming clients.

Savvy

Social media promoting can be savvy when you realize how to do it effectively. The underlying making of another profile and marking in is free for pretty much every social media stage so getting set up is definitely not a tremendous speculation nor hazard. Notwithstanding, you can consume your advertising financial plan rapidly by endeavoring to do it without anyone's help without help from a SMM master.

Try not to do it without anyone's help. Pick an advertising proficient or office with a background marked by demonstrated SMM achievement. For instance, request to see the office's contextual investigations on Facebook advertisements for business. Request help on a SMM technique and the spending plan. Do it right the initial time, this is the most practical methodology for your business.

Expanded inbound traffic

Internet advertising should increment inbound traffic to your site. With SMM, when the mission is expertly created with a single tick activity from the channel to your site and in a perfect world the item page, guests will come and remain on your site in the event that they like what they see and read. Subsequently ensure your advert has a source of inspiration and on the presentation page try not to populate it with 'commotion,' for example spring up flags and unintuitive provisions.

Offer some incentive with high-esteem content on all pages and especially on your item pages. Thus, the increment in rush hour gridlock to your site from social media channels likes what they see as well as converts into a deal or at least pursues your pamphlet.

Gain market knowledge

For any business to succeed, it should realize its clients all around well. What are their necessities, sentiments and interests? This is called customized data and we composed another article on the best way to get more knowledge into client assumptions and wants from current computerized advertising drives.

With the high commitment among clients on social media, the stages give a vehicle to organizations to acquire market knowledge to work on their contributions and administration.

Burdens

Social media has been around almost years and years, so we're more alright with it now, and we trust it all the more as well. Notwithstanding, it's not generally been like this. Take Facebook, for instance, utilizing it was a lofty expectation to absorb information, and there were an excessive number of programming refreshes which changed presentations and ease of use. Then, at that point the default client security setting set to 'public' which after client kickback actually took Facebook five years to change to apparent to companions.

Most likely the greatest Facebook fall flat was the Cambridge Analytica catastrophe, and client's confidence in Facebook arrived at an untouched low. Security is significant, and all destinations should have protection explanations on how they oversee client data catch and how they manage it. For instance, Europe has the GDPR for the European Union and organizations offering types of assistance to EU countries. Be that as it may, for business utilizing SMM, the negatives incorporate expense, slow returns, intricacy, and contenders.

Openness to contenders

Social media advertising empowers you to concentrate on your rivals' methodology. In any case, they can in any case concentrate on your business techniques through your social media stage. This puts your business at the danger of being outperformed.

Needs qualified work force

To zero in on center business issues, you should utilize qualified work force to deal with your record. For instance, to take full advantage of a WhatsApp Business various clients account beginning with utilizing the stage's API for business. Endeavoring to do this without anyone else's help wind up setting you back more than contributing the abilities of a social media designer or advertiser.

Slow profits from speculations

Social media promoting is a drawn out speculation for example plan to run crusades consistently.

Stain brand name

On the off chance that a piece of negative data discovers its direction onto a social media stage, the public will get the opportunity to communicate their disappointment. This will discolor your item name and discourage likely clients from building up connections and working with the brand.

Tedious

Individuals may intentionally disregard your page since they might be keen on different locales. To get them to appreciate and share your posts might set aside time. Thus, assets as far as cash and time should be apportioned to guarantee regular distributing of tasteful posts.

Outline

Before you put resources into a social media advertising procedure, draw in a SMM office to assist you with exploring and plan a useful way to deal with accomplish your showcasing and deals objectives.

SMM is certainly not a 'one size fits all' procedure. Thusly it's not difficult to miss the point and end up more terrible off with minimal new business to show for your speculation. Thusly wear' be bashful in drawing in the specialists to slice through the 'commotion' to convey a high pace of change and ROI for your business.

#digital marketing #social media #social media marketing

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the-daily-tizzy · 5 years ago

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ITALY’S COMMUNIST RECIPE FOR DISASTER

Published March 24, 2020 | By Giacomino Nicolazzo

Montecalvo, Lombardy, Italy.

As I sit here in my involuntary isolation, it was just reported that overnight 743 more people died and 5.249 new cases have been reported. This brings the total cases of infection to 69,176 and the body count to 6,820. We take relief in knowing that 8,326 people have recovered so far. ( Numbers as of 3/24, 8:30pm in Italy.)

Most towns here in Italy, from the upper reaches of the Alps to the ancient shores of Sicilia and Sardenia, while not deserted, are closer to being ghost towns than the bustling centers of tourism, business and daily life they were just a few weeks ago.Stores and shops have been shuttered. Restaurants and coffee shops no longer serve customers. Schools, universities, sporting arenas…even our museums and theaters…all closed. Even the Vatican City has closed its gates and armed patrols monitor the 20 foot tall walls that protect it!

Streets and roads are now empty for as far as the eye can see. Normally they would be filled with crazed Italian drivers in tiny cars and scooters (the ones that sound like demonic insects) darting here and there, reaching the limits of centrifugal force on our roundabouts. In the piazze of our towns and cities, there are now officially more pigeons than people.Many of us know someone who has been infected and recovered. Some of us know someone who did not recover…now they are dead. But everyone knows someone who has been affected by this microscopic monster in one way or another.

Sixty million of us are in lock-down…it is like a war zone here. We are being held prisoner in our own homes by an unseen enemy that sneaked in unnoticed…by most of us. As you will read in just a few more minutes, there were those who knew something like this was coming…or at least they should have.So who is to blame? With all this craziness swirling like a whirlpool at our feet, I just had to find the blame answer. And so I have spent my free time (of which I have a lot in these days) digging and researching. I was literally shocked to discover how this has come to be.I am not going to bore you with talk of Patient ‘0’ who spread it to Patient ‘1’ and how mathematics efficiently explains the rapid expansion of infection. No…I am going to tell you how (as I see it) the virus came to Italy.It has everything to do with communists. Allow me to explain.Beginning in about 2014, Matteo Renzi, the imbecile ex-mayor of Firenze (Florence) acting as the leader of the Partito Democratico (synonymous with the Italian Communist party), somehow managed to get himself elected as Italy’s Prime Minister. To give you a proper frame of reference, Matteo Renzi was so far left, he would make Barack Obama look like Barry Goldwater!

At the same time that Renzi was leading Italy into oblivion, strange things were happening in Italy’s economy. Banks were failing…but not closing. Retirement ages were being extended…for some reason the pension funds were dwindling or disappearing. The national sales tax we call IVA (Value Added Tax) rose from 18% to 20%, then to 21% and again to 22%.And in the midst of all this financial chicanery, the Chinese began furiously buying up Italian real estate and businesses in the North.Now the reason I mention Renzi and the Chinese together is that strange things were also going on between the governments of Italy and China. A blind eye was being turned to the way the Chinese were buying businesses in the financial, telecommunication, industrial and fashion sectors of Italy’s economy, all of which take place in Milano.

To be brief…China was getting away with purchases and acquisitions in violation of Italian law and EU Trade Agreements with the US and the UK…and no one in either of those countries (not Obama in the US or Cameron in the UK) said a thing in their country’s defense. As a matter of fact, much of it was hidden from the public in all three countries.In 2014, China infused the Italian economy with €5 billion through purchases of companies costing less than €100 million each.

By the time Renzi left office (in disgrace) in 2016, Chinese acquisitions had exceeded €52 billion. When the dust settled, China owned more than 300 companies…representing 27% of the major Italian corporations.The Bank of China now owns five major banks in Italy…all of which had been secretly (and illegally) propped up by Renzi using pilfered pension funds! Soon after, the China Milano Equity Exchange was opened and much of Italy’s wealth was being funneled back to the Chinese mainland.

Chinese state entities own Italy’s major telecommunication corporation (Telecom) as well as its major utilities (ENI and ENEL). Upon entry into the telecommunication market, Huawei established a facility in Segrate, a suburb of Milano. It launched is first research center there and worked on the study of microwaves which has resulted in the possibly-dangerous technology we call 5G.China also now owns controlling interest in Fiat-Chrysler, Prysmian and Terna. You will be surprised to know that when you put a set of Pirelli tires on your car, the profits are going to China.

Yep…the Chinese colossus of ChemChina, a chemical industry titan, bought that company too!Last but not least is Ferretti yachts…the most prestigious yacht builder in Europe. Incredibly, it is no longer owned by the Ferretti family.

But the sector in which Chinese companies invested most was Italy’s profitable fashion industry. The Pinco Pallino, Miss Sixty, Sergio Tacchini, Roberta di Camerino and Mariella Burani brands have been acquired by 100%.Designer Salvatore Ferragamo sold 16% and Caruso sold 35%. The most famous case is Krizia, purchased in 2014 by Shenzhen Marisfrolg Fashion Company, one of the leaders of high-priced, ready-to-wear fashions in Asia.

Throughout all of these purchases and acquisitions, Renzi’s government afforded the Chinese unrestricted and unfettered access to Italy and its financial markets, many coming through without customs inspections.

Quite literally, tens of thousands of Chinese came in through Milano (illegally) and went back out carrying money, technology and corporate secrets.

Thousands more were allowed to enter and disappeared into shadows of Milano and other manufacturing cities of Lombardy, only to surface in illegal sewing shops, producing knock-off designer clothes and slapping ‘Made In Italy’ labels on them. All with the tacit approval of the Renzi government.It was not until there was a change in the governing party in Italy that the sweatshops and the illegal entry and departure of Chinese nationals was stopped. Matteo Salvini, representing the Lega Nord party, closed Italy’s ports to immigrants and systematically began disassembling the sweatshops and deporting those in Italy illegally.

But his rise to power was short-lived. Italy is a communist country…socialism is in the national DNA. Ways were found to remove Salvini, after which the communist party, under the direction of Giuseppe Conte, reopened the ports. Immediately, thousands of unvetted, undocumented refugees from the Middle East and East Africa began pouring in again.

Access was again provided to the Chinese, under the old terms, and as a consequence thousands of Chinese, the majority from Wuhan, began arriving in Milano.

In December of last year, the first inklings of a coronavirus were noticed in Lombardy…in the Chinese neighborhoods. There is no doubt amongst senior medical officials that the virus was brought here from China.

By the end of January 2020 cases were being reported left and right. By mid-February the virus was beginning to seriously overload the Lombardy hospitals and medical clinics. They are now in a state of collapse.

The Far-Left politicians sold out and betrayed the Italian people with open border policies and social justice programs. One of the reasons the health care system collapsed so quickly is because the Renzi government (and now continued under the Conte government) redirected funds meant to sustain the medical system, to pay for the tens of thousands of immigrants brought in to Italy against the will of the Italian people.

If you remember the horrible earthquake that decimated the villages around Amatricia, in the mountains east of Rome in 2015, you would also remember how the world responded by sending millions of dollars to help those affected.

But there is a law in Italy that prevents private donations to charitable Italian organizations. All money and donations received must be turned over to a government agency, who in turn is to appropriate the funds as needed. But that agency is corrupt just as are all the others.Most of the money never reached a single victim in the mountains. The Renzi government redirected the vast majority of those funds to pay for the growing immigrant and refugee costs.

So more money was diverted from the health care system and used to pay what is known here as guaranteed income. Whether you work or not you are paid here, especially if you belong to the PD! The government simply raises taxes on those who do work

.Let me give you a quick example of the height of insanity to which Italian taxation has risen.

If you live in a building that has a balcony or balconies…and any of those balconies cast a shadow on the ground, you must pay a public shadow tax! I will say no more!

The point I am trying to make here is that not only did the Chinese bring the virus to Italy (and the rest of the world) it was far-Left politics and policies that facilitated it.

This should hopefully be a warning to Americans that while they work to rid themselves of the China Virus, they should just as vehemently endeavor to rid their government of any politician that circumvents the Constitution and ignores the laws of the land…plain and simple.

Giacomino Nicolazzo is one of Italy’s most beloved writers. Born and raised in Central Pennsylvania, he lives in a small village in Lombardy where he writes his books.

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kimyadigg · 6 years ago

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CBD Blossoms - Does the "legal grass" what it promises?

The market for CBD products has expanded significantly in recent years and experienced a veritable boom. Meanwhile, you can fall back on a variety of options when choosing your favorite form of consumption. Besides CBD oil, CBD creams and CBD crystals, you are also the most natural form of the CBD consumption available: CBD flowers. These are often dubbed as the legal brother of traditional cannabis - but the facts are not so simple. Especially in relation to Germany. In fact, the issue is in a legal gray area, and the limits to illegality are often passed over faster than intended. What CBD flowers are at all, how they work and which different possibilities of acquisition are accessible to you, we explain here exactly.

Ingredients - what's in the flowers?

CBD flowers, as well as crystals or oil, contain a high proportion of cannabidiol, usually higher than 8% to 10%. That's what makes it so attractive to a variety of people with different ailments and disorders. In addition, the flowers contain more than 150 other cannabinoids and terpenes. The former can have a positive effect on your health in a variety of ways, and the latter is also of enormous pharmacological importance and are currently being investigated in more detail.

The proportion of THC, on the other hand, is relatively low but still significantly higher than in alternative CBD products such as oils or creams. Most manufacturers advertise THC in CBD blooms with a share of less than 0.2%. That does not make it a safe deal when it comes to the purchase. In fact, the legal bases vary widely from country to country, even within the EU. While Germany has very strict regulations, there are more accommodating regulations in Austria and Switzerland.

Legal regulations on consumption

Generally, you must be 18 years or older to acquire any type of CBD flower. The same applies to CBD products in general. With regard to the authorized THC values, however, there are some major differences between the countries, and the type of products allowed differs.

CBD flowers Germany:

Originally, the public had established the opinion that CBD blooms with a share of less than 0.2% can be bought legally in shops. That's not true. Currently, this right is reserved for pharmacists and pharmacists only.

In contrast to medical marijuana, CBD is not subject to prescription and can, therefore, be purchased without a prescription at the pharmacy. This is especially true for oils and not for CBD flowers.

Technically speaking, the sale of CBD flowers by ordinary shops in Germany is a gray area. Distribution in this way is only allowed if the product is declared as tea, food substitute or smoked product. If the flowers are referred to as smoke or vaporizer product, it is a violation of the law. Furthermore, it is forbidden to make promises on the effect of CBD without being able to produce corresponding laboratory reports. Buying CBD flowers in Germany through a normal shop can, therefore, have consequences not only for the seller but also for the buyer.

CBD blooms are legal in Germany only under the specified conditions - thus for example as a tea. Thus, shops try to exploit the gray areas by partially changing the label and to avoid a collision with the customary law. It is also clearly specified that all CBD products must be obtained from so-called useful hemp. This can be grown with appropriate approval in Germany, but this is associated with high bureaucratic effort.

CBD flowers Austria:

CBD flowers and CBD hash are a widely used and extremely popular alternative to THC in cities such as Graz, Vienna, Innsbruck, and Salzburg. In addition, the legal regulations are somewhat looser, and a higher THC content than in Germany is generally allowed. The maximum value is currently 0.3% THC. Unlike Germany, the product is also legally available in shops outside pharmacies. Ordering CBD flowers are correspondingly easier in Austria than in Germany. This applies to both online shops, as well as normal hand shops.

However, it will be problematic again if you want to order CBD flowers to Germany. As already mentioned, there are different rules, and in case of doubt, it already fails because of the maximum value of THC, which in Austria is often above the permissible value in Germany. While you can buy CBD flowers without problems in Austria, this is associated with considerable effort in Germany. Ordering CBD flowers are, therefore, a comparatively simple undertaking there.

CBD flowers Switzerland:

It is undisputed that Switzerland is a pioneer in the use of cannabidiol. For years, various shops have been offering high-quality products. So you can buy CBD flowers in Switzerland in many forms. Other products such as CBD-Liquide for the evaporator are legal in Switzerland.

Why CBD oil is still the big hit for many consumers despite everything The opaque legal situation and probable complications associated with the acquisition raise the question: why are CBD blooms still so popular? On the one hand, the flowers are similar in taste as well as visually to the flowers of normal cannabis. Some lovers and connoisseurs, therefore, resort to this form of consumption. In addition, manufacturers such as CBDNOL offer partially fruity and high-quality flavors such as Blood Orange or Orange Bud - a variety that is not offered, for example, with CBD oils. On the other hand, a higher proportion of cannabidiol (10-20%) offers the possibility of an increase in effectiveness. Nevertheless, the consumer does not experience a "high", as it is triggered by THC. On the contrary, - CBD is in no way psychoactive. The active substance has no direct influence on the central nervous system, therefore influences neither the perception nor the perception in daily life.

However, cannabidiol is very relaxing and can be used against appetite, spasticity, MS and chronic and neuropathic pain. Further information can be found in our section Reviews. CBD flowers do not differ in their effect from other CBD products, such as drops, but only in taste.

Consumers note that the active ingredient contributes to a healthy and active life, mainly due to the relaxing component. First and foremost, for many consumers, CBD blooms appear to be the optimal combination of unique taste experience and an effective alternative form of treatment.

In general, it can be stated that the effect of the CBD flowers differs little from that of other CBD products except for a trend towards a higher proportion of cannabidiol.

The dosage is also very individual, with the advice of a specialist, especially when combined with other drugs is necessary. We recommend a smaller dose for all CBD products, which will gradually increase.

How can you legally buy and consume CBD blossoms in Germany? CBD blooms shops are very rare in Germany. Most vendors focus on CBD products, whose distribution is more clearly regulated by law. These are mainly oils and creams. Buying CBD flowers directly is rather unusual even in big cities like Berlin. Even on Amazon Germany, the purchase of CBD flowers is not possible - at least, if the consumption is to take place by smoking. Alternatively, the portal offers numerous hemp tea, usually with seeds. If you are interested in CBD flowers without seeds, so-called hemp aroma flowers are available. These fall below the guideline value of permissible THC and have CBD values of 8-10%. They are legal in Germany, but only on the condition that they are not smoked.

However, there is still the possibility to legally buy CBD flowers without seeds. You can order these from Austria or Switzerland, but also here the legal regulations are unclear. According to the current state, private imports from these countries are legal if the THC content is below the legal limit in Germany. In addition, it must be a private import. You should, however, make sure that you also move within the law.

If in doubt, we recommend that you contact the Federal Office for Drugs and Medical Devices directly. The purchase of CBD flowers in Germany as food is also legal in principle. However, authorities have identified this niche, forcing many shops to remove these products from their assortment. CBD blooms are a fascinating type of cannabidiol use, but you should make sure that Berlin is not Basel.

#CBD #marijuana #thc

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icm-mediabusiness · 3 years ago

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EU's Digital Markets Act to Control Tech Giants' Monopoly in Market

On Thursday, March 26th, the European Union's Digital Markets Act shared a list of rules designed to contain the market power of companies that rule the internet economy, such as Meta, Google, and Apple.

In the European Union's press release, tech giants behind apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or iMessage would be forced to make their apps “interoperable” with smaller messaging platforms. This will allow fair competition and more choice for users, according to the lawmakers. . The reforms would prevent “walled gardens,” which are closed systems that make it harder for a user to move from one company to the other because of difficulty in communication across apps.

The rules will apply to "gatekeepers," which, according to CNBC, are tech companies with a "market capitalization of at least 75 billion euros ($83 billion) or annual revenues within the EU of at least 7.5 billion euros in the past three years." These companies must also have at least 45 million monthly users or ten thousand business accounts/users in the EU.

The law (which hasn't been approved yet) could force companies to open up systems that they have complete control over. This would mean, for example, that users using WhatsApp could communicate with users utilizing iMessage, for example.

The Verge has reported that if companies do not comply with the law when it goes into effect, the EU can fine the company 10% of its global annual revenue. The fine is doubled for repeated infringements, and in the case of a systematic breaking of the law, the European Commission would be able to prevent the company from making acquisitions.

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newstfionline · 3 years ago

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Friday, July 2, 2021

US jobless claims fall to 364,000, a new pandemic low (AP) The number of Americans applying for unemployment aid fell again last week to the lowest level since the pandemic struck last year, further evidence that the job market and the broader economy are rebounding rapidly from the coronavirus recession. The Labor Department reported Thursday that jobless claims dropped by 51,000 to 364,000. Applications for unemployment benefits have fallen more or less steadily since the year began. The rollout of vaccines has sharply reduced new COVID-19 cases, giving consumers the confidence to shop, travel, eat out and attend public events as the economy recovers. All that pent-up spending has generated such demand for workers, notably at restaurants and tourism businesses, that many employers have been struggling to fill jobs just as the number of posted openings has reached a record high. But many economists expect hiring to catch up with demand in the coming months, especially as federal unemployment aid programs end and more people pursue jobs.

Sun-starved Britons flood to Spain’s Mallorca after restrictions eased (Reuters) Beach-craving British tourists flocked to the Spanish island of Mallorca on Wednesday after London added the Balearic archipelago to its “green travel list”, boosting hopes for a better tourist season after a disastrous 2020. Tourists stepping onto the sunlit pavement outside Palma de Mallorca’s airport expressed relief and gratitude to be back in the sunshine. The lifting of restrictions by Britain means holidaymakers will not have to quarantine on return from the islands, as they still have to with the rest of Spain and most other countries.

EU travel passes (Foreign Policy) EU member states today roll out a new digital certificate intended to ease travel across borders by providing up to date information on a traveler’s COVID-19 testing and vaccination status. Citing a “worrying patchwork of approaches” by EU member nations a group of European airlines and airports have warned of “chaos” at airports due to extra document checks adding to already long pre-boarding times as travel resumes across the continent.

Russian navy conducts live fire exercise in Black Sea as Ukraine, NATO drill (Reuters) Russian warships have carried out a live fire training exercise in the Black Sea, the country’s Black Sea fleet said on Thursday, as Ukraine and NATO countries held military drills in the same wider area. The Sea Breeze drills, led by Ukraine and the United States, follow a spike in tensions between NATO and Moscow after Russia last week said it had fired warning shots and dropped bombs in the path of a British warship to expel it from its territorial waters near Crimea. The drill came two days after Russia tested its air defence systems in Crimea.

Most European troops exit Afghanistan quietly after 20 years (AP) Most European troops have already pulled out of Afghanistan, quietly withdrawing months before the U.S.-led mission was officially expected to end—part of an anticlimactic close to the “forever war” that risks leaving the country on the brink of civil war. Germany and Italy declared their missions in Afghanistan over on Wednesday and Poland’s last troops returned home, bringing their deployments to a low-key end nearly 20 years after the first Western soldiers were deployed there. Announcements from several countries analyzed by The Associated Press show that a majority of European troops has now left with little ceremony—a stark contrast to the dramatic and public show of force and unity when NATO allies lined up to back the U.S. invasion to rid the country of al-Qaida after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Georgia’s last troops returned home on Monday, while Romania brought home its remaining 140 troops on Saturday, when Norway also pulled out. Troops from Denmark, Estonia and the Netherlands also returned home last week. Spain withdrew its last troops on May 13, Sweden on May 25, and Belgium on June 14. The small contingents deployed by Portugal, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Finland and Albania have all left as well.

Afghan electricity (Foreign Policy) Electricity pylons are blowing up across Afghanistan. The trend isn’t new: Afghan power infrastructure has been a target of the country’s relentless violence since at least 2016. But in early June, Afghanistan’s main power utility stated that 23 pylons had been destroyed or damaged in a single month, causing power outages in Kabul and seven surrounding provinces. The Taliban and the Islamic State have claimed responsibility for some attacks. Afghan observers have blamed private criminal gangs and even government elements. The energy security implications of the attacks are profound. Afghanistan only generates one-quarter of its electricity domestically, and many pylons transmit power from Uzbekistan and Iran. The vulnerability of its electricity infrastructure amplifies its connectivity challenges and presents yet another dilemma for a population already grappling with insurgency, terrorism, COVID-19, and drought.

Xi takes firm line as China Communist Party marks centenary (AP) China will not allow itself to be bullied and anyone who tries will face “broken heads and bloodshed in front of the iron Great Wall of the 1.4 billion Chinese people,” President Xi Jinping said at a mass gathering Thursday to mark the centenary of the ruling Communist Party. Wearing a grey buttoned-up suit of the type worn by Mao Zedong, Xi spoke from the balcony of Tiananmen Gate, emphasizing the party’s role in bringing China to global prominence. Xi, who is head of the party and leader of the world’s largest armed forces also said China had restored order in Hong Kong following antigovernment protests in the semi-autonomous city in 2019 and reiterated Beijing’s determination to bring self-governing Taiwan under its control. He received the biggest applause, however, when he described the party as the force that had restored China’s dignity and turned it into the world’s second largest economy since taking power amid civil war in 1949. Thursday’s events are the climax of weeks of ceremonies and displays praising the role of the Communist Party in bringing vast improvements in quality of life at home and restoring China’s economic, political and military influence abroad.

China is building more than 100 new missile silos in its western desert, analysts say (Washington Post) China has begun construction of what independent experts say are more than 100 new silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles in a desert near the northwestern city of Yumen, a building spree that could signal a major expansion of Beijing’s nuclear capabilities. Commercial satellite images obtained by researchers at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif., show work underway at scores of sites across a grid covering hundreds of square miles of arid terrain in China’s Gansu province. The 119 nearly identical construction sites contain features that mirror those seen at existing launch facilities for China’s arsenal of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. The acquisition of more than 100 new missile silos, if completed, would represent a historic shift for China, a country that is believed to possess a relatively modest stockpile of 250 to 350 nuclear weapons. The actual number of new missiles intended for those silos is unknown but could be much smaller. China has deployed decoy silos in the past.

With so few virus deaths, Australians debate vaccine risks (AP) Australia has weathered the pandemic far better than many nations—recording just a single coronavirus death since last October—but its success means many Australians are not in a rush to get vaccinated. Concerns are growing about the economic cost to Australia of being left behind by countries that suffered far higher death tolls, but urgently embraced vaccines and are increasingly opening up. Most of Australia’s pandemic success, after all, can be attributed to the continued closure of the isolated continent’s border, something that is unlikely to change until far more than the current 6% of the population is vaccinated. But with relatively few cases of the virus and so few deaths, many in Australia are questioning whether the slight health risks to young adults of the widely available AstraZeneca vaccine make it worth it. It’s a debate that divided politicians and medical experts this week at a time when nearly half of Australia’s 26 million people are living under lockdown measures due to the emergence of new virus clusters mostly blamed on the delta variant.

Israel scrambles to curb jump in COVID infections (AP) Israel, a world leader in coronavirus vaccinations, reported its highest daily infection rate in three months as it scrambles to contain the spread of the new delta variant. Authorities are racing to vaccinate children and are considering tighter travel restrictions at the country’s main airport. The Health Ministry on Thursday reported 307 new cases on Wednesday, the highest in nearly three months and a rise from 293 newly-diagnosed cases a day earlier. The health ministry reportedly expects those numbers to jump in coming days, raising concerns that Israel is plunging back toward a crisis. In recent months, Israel has reopened businesses, schools and event venues, lifting nearly all restrictions after it inoculated some 85% of the adult population. It’s now seen as an early-warning system of sorts for other nations. Though worrying, the trend still shows little uptick when it comes to deaths from the virus. In the past two weeks, the ministry recorded only one.

Jordan tribes, bedrock of monarchy, on edge as economy tanks (AP) Jordan has drawn a curtain of secrecy on the unprecedented public rift within its royal family, but the social tensions laid bare by the palace drama that unfolded in April—particularly the economic despair of its influential tribes—can be seen everywhere. Years of economic crisis have frayed the historic patronage-for-loyalty bond between the king and the tribes, a bedrock of the Hashemite family’s decades-long rule. Even some government insiders fear that anger percolating under the surface could erupt at any moment, a warning bound to worry the kingdom’s Western allies. “I’m afraid of what is next because of the tragic living situation, that people won’t bear it anymore, and (that) people will explode,” said Sayel al-Majali, head of the governing council of Karak province, where unemployment has reached 40%. “I fear losing control of security matters” if problems aren’t solved, said al-Majali, a retired army brigadier and a member of one of Karak’s most prominent tribes. Even before the pandemic, there weren’t enough jobs for a young, rapidly growing labor force. The lives of many young Jordanians are on hold because they cannot follow the traditional path of job, marriage and children.

Madagascar is headed toward a climate change-linked famine it did not create (Washington Post) In Madagascar, hunger has already left people eating raw red cactus fruits, wild leaves, even the very locusts that helped decimate crops. The southern part of the country is experiencing its worst drought in decades, with the World Food Program warning that 1.14 million people are food-insecure and 400,000 people are headed toward starvation. As a vast Indian Ocean island renowned for its remote beauty and unique ecosystem, Madagascar is sometimes referred to as the eighth continent. But the problems it faces now are “catastrophic,” according to WFP—and they are not primarily the result of local political or economic disorder, nor do they stem from isolated weather events. “The big thing is there’s no conflict, but people are dying of hunger” in Madagascar, Lola Castro, who is WFP’s regional director in southern Africa and visited the worst-hit areas in June, said. The problem, Castro explained, was “clearly climate change.” Amid conflict and the coronavirus, many parts of the developing world face food crises. The WFP recently appealed for $6 billion to help 41 million people it says are on the edge of famine in 43 countries. The charity Oxfam has warned of a “hunger pandemic” even as the coronavirus still rages. WFP chief David Beasley, speaking at a Group of 20 event on humanitarian aid in Brindisi, Italy, on Wednesday, warned that Madagascar and countries like it could face an “unprecedented famine of biblical proportions” as he asked for $78.6 million to help get Madagascar through the lean season, which begins in the fall and lasts until the spring.

#headlines #news

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endenogatai · 3 years ago

Text

Perspectives on tackling Big Tech’s market power

The need for markets-focused competition watchdogs and consumer-centric privacy regulators to think outside their respective ‘legal silos’ and find creative ways to work together to tackle the challenge of big tech market power was the impetus for a couple of fascinating panel discussions organized by the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), which were livestreamed yesterday but are available to view on-demand here.

The conversations brought together key regulatory leaders from Europe and the US — giving a glimpse of what the future shape of digital markets oversight might look like at a time when fresh blood has just been injected to chair the FTC so regulatory change is very much in the air (at least around tech antitrust).

CEPR’s discussion premise is that integration, not merely intersection, of competition and privacy/data protection law is needed to get a proper handle on platform giants that have, in many cases, leveraged their market power to force consumers to accept an abusive ‘fee’ of ongoing surveillance.

That fee both strips consumers of their privacy and helps tech giants perpetuate market dominance by locking out interesting new competition (which can’t get the same access to people’s data so operates at a baked in disadvantage).

Biden elevates tech antitrust crusader Lina Khan to FTC chair

A running theme in Europe for a number of years now, since a 2018 flagship update to the bloc’s data protection framework (GDPR), has been the ongoing under-enforcement around the EU’s ‘on-paper’ privacy rights — which, in certain markets, means regional competition authorities are now actively grappling with exactly how and where the issue of ‘data abuse’ fits into their antitrust legal frameworks.

The regulators assembled for CEPR’s discussion included, from the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority’s CEO Andrea Coscelli and the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham; from Germany, the FCO’s Andreas Mundt; from France, Henri Piffaut, VP of the French competition authority; and from the EU, the European Data Protection Supervisor himself, Wojciech Wiewiórowski, who advises the EU’s executive body on data protection legislation (and is the watchdog for EU institutions’ own data use).

The UK’s CMA now sits outside the EU, of course — giving the national authority a higher profile role in global mergers & acquisition decisions (vs pre-brexit), and the chance to help shape key standards in the digital sphere via the investigations and procedures it chooses to pursue (and it has been moving very quickly on that front).

The CMA has a number of major antitrust probes open into tech giants — including looking into complaints against Apple’s App Store and others targeting Google’s plan to depreciate support for third party tracking cookies (aka the so-called ‘Privacy Sandbox’) — the latter being an investigation where the CMA has actively engaged the UK’s privacy watchdog (the ICO) to work with it.

Only last week the competition watchdog said it was minded to accept a set of legally binding commitments that Google has offered which could see a quasi ‘co-design’ process taking place, between the CMA, the ICO and Google, over the shape of the key technology infrastructure that ultimately replaces tracking cookies. So a pretty major development.

Google won’t end support for tracking cookies unless UK’s competition watchdog agrees

Germany’s FCO has also been very active against big tech this year — making full use of an update to the national competition law which gives it the power to take proactive inventions around large digital platforms with major competitive significance — with open procedures now against Amazon, Facebook and Google.

The Bundeskartellamt was already a pioneer in pushing to loop EU data protection rules into competition enforcement in digital markets in a strategic case against Facebook, as we’ve reported before. That closely watched (and long running) case — which targets Facebook’s ‘superprofiling’ of users, based on its ability to combine user data from multiple sources to flesh out a single high dimension per-user profile — is now headed to Europe’s top court (so likely has more years to run).

But during yesterday’s discussion Mundt confirmed that the FCO’s experience litigating that case helped shape key amendments to the national law that’s given him beefier powers to tackle big tech. (And he suggested it’ll be a lot easier to regulate tech giants going forward, using these new national powers.)

“Once we have designated a company to be of ‘paramount significance’ we can prohibit certain conduct much more easily than we could in the past,” he said. “We can prohibit, for example, that a company impedes other undertaking by data processing that is relevant for competition. We can prohibit that a use of service depends on the agreement to data collection with no choice — this is the Facebook case, indeed… When this law was negotiated in parliament parliament very much referred to the Facebook case and in a certain sense this entwinement of competition law and data protection law is written in a theory of harm in the German competition law.

“This makes a lot of sense. If we talk about dominance and if we assess that this dominance has come into place because of data collection and data possession and data processing you need a parameter in how far a company is allowed to gather the data to process it.”

“The past is also the future because this Facebook case… has always been a big case. And now it is up to the European Court of Justice to say something on that,” he added. “If everything works well we might get a very clear ruling saying… as far as the ECN [European Competition Network] is concerned how far we can integrate GDPR in assessing competition matters.

“So Facebook has always been a big case — it might get even bigger in a certain sense.”

Competition challenge to Facebook’s ‘superprofiling’ of users sparks referral to Europe’s top court

France’s competition authority and its national privacy regulator (the CNIL), meanwhile, have also been joint working in recent years.

Including over a competition complaint against Apple’s pro-user privacy App Tracking Transparency feature (which last month the antitrust watchdog declined to block) — so there’s evidence there too of respective oversight bodies seeking to bridge legal silos in order to crack the code of how to effectively regulate tech giants whose market power, panellists agreed, is predicated on earlier failures of competition law enforcement that allowed tech platforms to buy up rivals and sew up access to user data, entrenching advantage at the expense of user privacy and locking out the possibility of future competitive challenge.

The contention is that monopoly power predicated upon data access also locks consumers into an abusive relationship with platform giants which can then, in the case of ad giants like Google and Facebook, extract huge costs (paid not in monetary fees but in user privacy) for continued access to services that have also become digital staples — amping up the ‘winner takes all’ characteristic seen in digital markets (which is obviously bad for competition too).

Yet, traditionally at least, Europe’s competition authorities and data protection regulators have been focused on separate workstreams.

The consensus from the CEPR panels was very much that that is both changing and must change if civil society is to get a grip on digital markets — and wrest control back from tech giants to that ensure consumers and competitors aren’t both left trampled into the dust by data-mining giants.

Denham said her motivation to dial up collaboration with other digital regulators was the UK government entertaining the idea of creating a one-stop-shop ‘Internet’ super regulator. “What scared the hell out of me was the policymakers the legislators floating the idea of one regulator for the Internet. I mean what does that mean?” she said. “So I think what the regulators did is we got to work, we got busy, we become creative, got our of our silos to try to tackle these companies — the likes of which we have never seen before.

“And I really think what we have done in the UK — and I’m excited if others think it will work in their jurisdictions — but I think that what really pushed us is that we needed to show policymakers and the public that we had our act together. I think consumers and citizens don’t really care if the solution they’re looking for comes from the CMA, the ICO, Ofcom… they just want somebody to have their back when it comes to protection of privacy and protection of markets.

“We’re trying to use our regulatory levers in the most creative way possible to make the digital markets work and protect fundamental rights.”

During the earlier panel, the CMA’s Simeon Thornton, a director at the authority, made some interesting remarks vis-a-vis its (ongoing) Google ‘Privacy Sandbox’ investigation — and the joint working it’s doing with the ICO on that case — asserting that “data protection and respecting users’ rights to privacy are very much at the heart of the commitments upon which we are currently consulting”.

“If we accept the commitments Google will be required to develop the proposals according to a number of criteria including impacts on privacy outcomes and compliance with data protection principles, and impacts on user experience and user control over the use of their personal data — alongside the overriding objective of the commitments which is to address our competition concerns,” he went on, adding: “We have worked closely with the ICO in seeking to understand the proposals and if we do accept the commitments then we will continue to work closely with the ICO in influencing the future development of those proposals.”

“If we accept the commitments that’s not the end of the CMA’s work — on the contrary that’s when, in many respects, the real work begins. Under the commitments the CMA will be closely involved in the development, implementation and monitoring of the proposals, including through the design of trials for example. It’s a substantial investment from the CMA and we will be dedicating the right people — including data scientists, for example, to the job,” he added. “The commitments ensure that Google addresses any concerns that the CMA has. And if outstanding concerns cannot be resolved with Google they explicitly provide for the CMA to reopen the case and — if necessary — impose any interim measures necessary to avoid harm to competition.

“So there’s no doubt this is a big undertaking. And it’s going to be challenging for the CMA, I’m sure of that. But personally I think this is the sort of approach that is required if we are really to tackle the sort of concerns we’re seeing in digital markets today.”

Thornton also said: “I think as regulators we do need to step up. We need to get involved before the harm materializes — rather than waiting after the event to stop it from materializing, rather than waiting until that harm is irrevocable… I think it’s a big move and it’s a challenging one but personally I think it’s a sign of the future direction of travel in a number of these sorts of cases.”

Also speaking during the regulatory panel session was FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter — a dissenter on the $5BN fine it hit Facebook with back in 2019 for violating an earlier consent order (as she argued the settlement provided no deterrent to address underlying privacy abuse, leaving Facebook free to continue exploiting users’ data) — as well as Chris D’Angelo, the chief deputy AG of the New York Attorney General, which is leading a major states antitrust case against Facebook.

Slaughter pointed out that the FTC already combines a consumer focus with attention on competition but said that historically there has been separation of divisions and investigations — and she agreed on the need for more joined-up working.

She also advocated for US regulators to get out of a pattern of ineffective enforcement in digital markets on issues like privacy and competition where companies have, historically, been given — at best — what amounts to wrist slaps that don’t address root causes of market abuse, perpetuating both consumer abuse and market failure. And be prepared to litigate more.

As regulators toughen up their stipulations they will need to be prepared for tech giants to push back — and therefore be prepared to sue instead of accepting a weak settlement.

“That is what is most galling to me that even where we take action, in our best faith good public servants working hard to take action, we keep coming back to the same questions, again and again,” she said. “Which means that the actions we are taking isn’t working. We need different action to keep us from having the same conversation again and again.”

Slaughter also argued that it’s important for regulators not to pile all the burden of avoiding data abuses on consumers themselves.

“I want to sound a note of caution around approaches that are centered around user control,” she said. “I think transparency and control are important. I think it is really problematic to put the burden on consumers to work through the markets and the use of data, figure out who has their data, how it’s being used, make decisions… I think you end up with notice fatigue; I think you end up with decision fatigue; you get very abusive manipulation of dark patterns to push people into decisions.

“So I really worry about a framework that is built at all around the idea of control as the central tenant or the way we solve the problem. I’ll keep coming back to the notion of what instead we need to be focusing on is where is the burden on the firms to limit their collection in the first instance, prohibit their sharing, prohibit abusive use of data and I think that that’s where we need to be focused from a policy perspective.

“I think there will be ongoing debates about privacy legislation in the US and while I’m actually a very strong advocate for a better federal framework with more tools that facilitate aggressive enforcement but I think if we had done it ten years ago we probably would have ended up with a notice and consent privacy law and I think that that would have not been a great outcome for consumers at the end of the day. So I think the debate and discussion has evolved in an important way. I also think we don’t have to wait for Congress to act.”

As regards more radical solutions to the problem of market-denting tech giants — such as breaking up sprawling and (self-servingly) interlocking services empires — the message from Europe’s most ‘digitally switched on’ regulators seemed to be don’t look to us for that; we are going to have to stay in our lanes.

So tl;dr — if antitrust and privacy regulators’ joint working just sums to more intelligent fiddling round the edges of digital market failure, and it’s break-ups of US tech giants that’s what’s really needed to reboot digital markets, then it’s going to be up to US agencies to wield the hammers. (Or, as Coscelli elegantly phrased it: “It’s probably more realistic for the US agencies to be in the lead in terms of structural separation if and when it’s appropriate — rather than an agency like ours [working from inside a mid-sized economy such as the UK’s].”)

The lack of any representative from the European Commission on the panel was an interesting omission in that regard — perhaps hinting at ongoing ‘structural separation’ between DG Comp and DG Justice where digital policymaking streams are concerned.

The current competition chief, Margrethe Vestager — who also heads up digital strategy for the bloc, as an EVP — has repeatedly expressed reluctance to impose radical ‘break up’ remedies on tech giants. She also recently preferred to waive through another Google digital merger (its acquisition of fitness wearable Fitbit) — agreeing to accept a number of ‘concessions’ and ignoring major mobilization by civil society (and indeed EU data protection agencies) urging her to block it.

Yet in an earlier CEPR discussion session, another panellist — Yale University’s Dina Srinivasan — pointed to the challenges of trying to regulate the behavior of companies when there are clear conflicts of interest, unless and until you impose structural separation as she said has been necessary in other markets (like financial services).

“In advertising we have an electronically traded market with exchanges and we have brokers on both sides. In a competitive market — when competition was working — you saw that those brokers were acting in the best interest of buyers and sellers. And as part of carrying out that function they were sort of protecting the data that belonged to buyers and sellers in that market, and not playing with the data in other ways — not trading on it, not doing conduct similar to insider trading or even front running,” she said, giving an example of how that changed as Google gained market power.

“So Google acquired DoubleClick, made promises to continue operating in that manner, the promises were not binding and on the record — the enforcement agencies or the agencies that cleared the merger didn’t make Google promise that they would abide by that moving forward and so as Google gained market power in that market there’s no regulatory requirement to continue to act in the best interests of your clients, so now it becomes a market power issue, and after they gain enough market power they can flip data ownership and say ‘okay, you know what before you owned this data and we weren’t allowed to do anything with it but now we’re going to use that data to for example sell our own advertising on exchanges’.

“But what we know from other markets — and from financial markets — is when you flip data ownership and you engage in conduct like that that allows the firm to now build market power in yet another market.”

The CMA’s Coscelli picked up on Srinivasan’s point — saying it was a “powerful” one, and that the challenges of policing “very complicated” situations involving conflicts of interests is something that regulators with merger control powers should be bearing in mind as they consider whether or not to green light tech acquisitions.

(Just one example of a merger in the digital space that the CMA is still scrutizing is Facebook’s acquisition of animated GIF platform Giphy. And it’s interesting to speculate whether, had brexit happened a little faster, the CMA might have stepped in to block Google’s Fitibit merger where the EU wouldn’t.)

Coscelli also flagged the issue of regulatory under-enforcement in digital markets as a key one, saying: “One of the reasons we are today where we are is partially historic under-enforcement by competition authorities on merger control — and that’s a theme that is extremely interesting and relevant to us because after the exit from the EU we now have a bigger role in merger control on global mergers. So it’s very important to us that we take the right decisions going forward.”

“Quite often we intervene in areas where there is under-enforcement by regulators in specific areas… If you think about it when you design systems where you have vertical regulators in specific sectors and horizontal regulators like us or the ICO we are more successful if the vertical regulators do their job and I’m sure they are more success if we do our job properly.

“I think we systematically underestimate… the ability of companies to work through whatever behavior or commitments or arrangement are offered to us, so I think these are very important points,” he added, signalling that a higher degree of attention is likely to be applied to tech mergers in Europe as a result of the CMA stepping out from the EU’s competition regulation umbrella.

Also speaking during the same panel, the EDPS warned that across Europe more broadly — i.e. beyond the small but engaged gathering of regulators brought together by CEPR — data protection and competition regulators are far from where they need to be on joint working, implying that the challenge of effectively regulating big tech across the EU is still a pretty Sisyphean one.

It’s true that the Commission is not sitting on hands in the face of tech giant market power.

At the end of last year it proposed a regime of ex ante regulations for so-called ‘gatekeeper’ platforms, under the Digital Markets Act. But the problem of how to effectively enforce pan-EU laws — when the various agencies involved in oversight are typically decentralized across Member States — is one key complication for the bloc. (The Commission’s answer with the DMA was to suggest putting itself in charge of overseeing gatekeepers but it remains to be seen what enforcement structure EU institutions will agree on.)

Clearly, the need for careful and coordinated joint working across multiple agencies with different legal competencies — if, indeed, that’s really what’s needed to properly address captured digital markets vs structural separation of Google’s search and adtech, for example, and Facebook’s various social products — steps up the EU’s regulatory challenge in digital markets.

“We can say that no effective competition nor protection of the rights in the digital economy can be ensured when the different regulators do not talk to each other and understand each other,” Wiewiórowski warned. “While we are still thinking about the cooperation it looks a little bit like everybody is afraid they will have to trade a little bit of its own possibility to assess.”

“If you think about the classical regulators isn’t it true that at some point we are reaching this border where we know how to work, we know how to behave, we need a little bit of help and a little bit of understanding of the other regulator’s work… What is interesting for me is there is — at the same time — the discussion about splitting of the task of the American regulators joining the ones on the European side. But even the statements of some of the commissioners in the European Union saying about the bigger role the Commission will play in the data protection and solving the enforcement problems of the GDPR show there is no clear understanding what are the differences between these fields.”

One thing is clear: Big tech’s dominance of digital markets won’t be unpicked overnight. But, on both sides of the Atlantic, there are now a bunch of theories on how to do it — and growing appetite to wade in.

Understanding Europe’s big push to rewrite the digital rulebook

UK’s CMA opens market study into Apple, Google’s mobile ‘duopoly’

The Justice Department has filed its antitrust lawsuit against Google

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#IFTTT #RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

Text

BE AN EXPERT IN A BAD PROCRASTINATION

Any ambitious person now. One of the cases he decided was brought by the owner of a food shop. And if your startup succeeds, it will have to keep writing checks, founders were never forced to explore the limits of how little they needed them. My rule is that I can spend as much time online as I want, as long as you keep morphing your idea. The EU was designed partly to simulate a single, large domestic market. Larry and Sergey took money from VCs, and Sequoia specifically, because Larry and Sergey when they wrote the first versions of Google. We had a page in our site trying to talk merchants out of doing real time authorizations. Between them, these two facts are literally a recipe for making money. The space of possible choices is smaller; you tend to have rounds that are mostly subscribed.

Ultimately it comes down to your own product and approach to the market. Real problems are interesting, and I said to him, ho, ho, ho, ho, you're confusing theory with practice, this eval is intended for reading, not for computing. Frankly, it surprises me how small a role in software? Hence what, for lack of a better name, I'll call the Python paradox: if a company chooses to write its software in a comparatively esoteric language, they'll be able to solve predefined problems quickly as to be able to reproduce this at most colleges if you make something they like. Meanwhile a similar fragmentation was happening at the other end of the world was like you'd find in a children's book, and presumably God's book is universal. More important, I think, should be the highest goal for the marginal. I don't think you would find those guys using Java Server Pages. A silicon valley has to be more outsiders than insiders, if insider means anything. A lot of investors hated the idea, but the result of making college the canonical path for the ambitious ones it can be pulled apart, it will be. The government knows better than to get into the deals they want. How do we. Evan Williams came in to work the next day, and there will almost certainly be more of them.

What's really happening is that startup-controlled rounds are taking the place of series A rounds. Auto-retrieving spam filters would make the painting better if I changed that part? Software should be written in, he would have answered with as little hesitation as he does today. It implies there's no punishment if you fail. That could be a bit more daring in 1975 than 1965. As an illustration of what I mean about the relative power of programming languages from a distance, it looks like Java is the latest thing. Make something people want. US, and good startup ideas seem bad initially. So if you're an outsider you're constrained too, of course, but in fact I named after Rtm. If you can't find ten Lisp hackers, then your company is probably based in the wrong city for developing software.

A few hours before the Yahoo acquisition was announced in June 1998, we consumed what at the time, could get excited about such a thoroughly boneheaded idea, we should not be surprised that hackers aged 21 or 22 are pitching us ideas with little hope of making money. For example, in America people often don't decide to go to church for appearances' sake, while those who liked it would have. The curious thing is, faking does work to some degree on investors. In the startup world, most good ideas seem bad: If you spend all your time programming, you will fail. But a significant number do, and the customer. In Patrick O'Brian's novels, his captains always try to get as much as he's running Facebook. The record labels and movie studios used to distribute what they made like air shipped through tubes on a moon base. Pretty soon you'll start noticing what makes the number go up, put a big piece of paper on your wall and every day plot the number of things you can just hack together keeps increasing. In Shakespeare's time, mystery was synonymous with craft.

Palo Alto is not so miserably small as it might seem. Are patents evil? For example, Y Combinator has now invested in 80 startups, 57 of which are still alive. Their previous business experience consisted of making blue boxes to hack into the phone system, a business with the rare distinction of being both illegal and unprofitable. That was much harder to do in college? Go out of your round. With one exception: patent trolls.

Intelligence does matter a lot of time on bullshit things or lose to people who sent in proofs of Fermat's last theorem and so on. I know, unique to Lisp. But when Bill Clerico starts calling you, you may at least pause before making them. It would work on a variety of things. A world with outsiders and insiders implies some kind of art, stop and figure out what's going on. It had a programmable crawler that could crawl most of the applicants don't seem to get sued much by established competitors. Those whose jobs require them to judge art, like curators, mostly resort to euphemisms like significant or important or getting dangerously close realized. If founders' instincts already gave them the right answers than anyone would if they were sentient adversaries—as if there were a little man in your head always cooking up the most plausible arguments for doing whatever you're trying to make that traffic stop. I think is a red herring. If you make something good you can generate ten times as much traffic by word of mouth online than our first server; and if you have a big advantage. America people often don't decide to go to medical school till they've finished college. 100,000 people worked there.

The crazy legal measures that the labels and studios have been taking have a lot in common, you're not in a position to tell investors how the round is the first step. Barnes & Noble was a lame site; Amazon would have crushed them anyway. A company that sues competitors for patent infringement. In a traditional series A round than an angel round. Startups hate this as well, partly because as the company's daddy he can never show fear or weakness, and partly because at first the founders are young. A friend of mine visiting India sprained her ankle falling down the steps in a railway station. So maybe a recession is a good thing. You'd negotiate a round size and valuation with the lead, who'd supply some but not all of the money in the bank to make it, there are advantages to serendipity too, especially early in life. An accumulator has to accumulate. That's an important difference because it means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses. Livable towns?

In 1917, doing everything himself seemed to Ford the only way to find good problems to solve in one head. But I doubt they could do searches online. It comes with a lot of companies are very much influenced by where applicants went to college. They win by locking competitors out of their way to help our startup succeed. It also means no one university will be good enough to act as the lead investor. What do they all have in common? On the Company page you'll notice a mysterious individual called John McArtyem. If that's what's on the other side. You're on the right track.

Thanks to Jeremy Hylton, Paul Buchheit, Jessica Livingston, Sam Altman, Harjeet Taggar, and Jackie McDonough for sparking my interest in this topic.

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schweizerqualitaet · 7 years ago

Note

Is the EU attempting to force stricter gun control on Switzerland (again)? What are they demanding (this time)?

Not only the EU is attempting, but we have a few Quislings in Bern that would be thrilled to be at least integrated in the Union, despite (the very rational) rejection of that idea several times by the people through referendums.

So the first project of the Federal Council is to propose to implement directly in the Swiss Law the EU directive on firearms :

EU strengthens control of the acquisition and possession of firearms

25/04/2017

11:30

Press release

On 25 April 2017, the Council adopted a directive on control of the acquisition and possession of weapons, which revises and complements existing directive 91/477/ECC.

“The new Firearms Directive provides for more rigorous controls on the acquisition and possession of firearms, in particular so that legitimate channels and regulatory set-ups for the acquisition and possession of firearms are not abused by criminal groups or terrorists. The directive is therefore an important step forward, particularly since it balances security concerns with the need to preserve legitimate activities. It is however, vital for the EU and its member states to continue working towards shutting off illegal channels for the acquisition of firearms by criminal groups and terrorists.”

The EU is reinforcing gun control

The amendments address risks for public safety and security, and focus on:

Enhanced traceability of firearms

The revision strengthens the rules on the marking of firearms, by including, among other things, a new obligation to mark also all their essential components. Harmonizing the rules for the marking of firearms and establishing the mutual recognition of marks between member states will improve the traceability of firearms used in criminal activities, including those which have been assembled from components acquired separately.

This information also has to be recorded in national data-filing systems. For this to happen, member states will now have to ensure that dealers and brokers register any transaction of firearms electronically and without any undue delay.

Measures on deactivation and reactivation or conversion of firearms

The rules on the deactivation of firearms have been strengthened, not least through a provision requiring the classification of deactivated firearms under category C (firearms subject to declaration). Until now, deactivated firearms have not been subject to the requirements set by the directive.

The revision also includes a new category of salute and acoustic weapons, which were not covered by the original directive. These are live firearms that have been converted to blank firing ones, for example, for use in theatres or television. In the absence of more stringent national provisions, such firearms could be purchased freely. This posed a risk, given that their reconversion to live ones was often possible with limited efforts (they were for example used in the Paris terrorist attacks). The new wording of the directive ensures that these weapons remain registered under the same category as the firearm from which they have been converted.

Stricter rules for the acquisition and possession of the most dangerous firearms

The most dangerous firearms, classified in category A, can only be acquired and possessed on the basis of an exemption granted by the relevant member state. The rules for granting such exemptions have now been significantly strengthened. Possible grounds for exemption, such as national defence or the protection of critical infrastructure, are now set out in a limited list and exemptions may only be granted where there is no risk to public security or public order.

When a firearm of category A is required for sport-shooting, it can only be acquired according to strict rules which include proven practice recognised by an official shooting sport federation.

Article 7 para 4a provides the possibility of confirming authorisations for semi-automatic firearms (new point 6, 7 or 8 of category A) legally acquired and registered before the directive comes into force.

Banning civilian use of the most dangerous semi-automatic firearms

Some dangerous semi-automatic firearms have now been added to category A and are therefore prohibited for civilian use. This is the case for short semi-automatic firearms with loading devices over 20 rounds and long semi-automatic firearms with loading devices over 10 rounds. Similarly, long firearms that can be easily concealed, for example by means of a folding or telescopic stock, are also now prohibited.

Improving the exchange of relevant information between member states

The new rules enable the Commission to propose the establishment of a system for the exchange of information electronically between member states. The information would cover cases where the transfer of a firearm to another member state has been authorised as well as where the acquisition and possession of a firearm has been refused.

The directive sets out minimum rules and does not prevent member states from adopting and applying stricter rules.

Next steps

The Council and the European Parliament now need to sign the adopted directive. The signed text will be published in the EU Official Journal and will enter into force 20 days later.

Background

Council directive 91/477/EEC on control of the acquisition and possession of weapons was originally designed as a measure to balance internal market objectives and security imperatives regarding “civil” firearms.

The amending proposal was submitted by the European Commission on 18 November 2015 against the backdrop of a series of terrorist acts that took place in Europe and which revealed gaps in the implementation of the directive. The current review is a continuation of the 2008 revision and also aligns EU legislation with the provisions on the UN Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms.

I think the only exemption would concern people doing their military service, and that was seen as “a great compromise for Switzerland”. That is what we have to fight.

Our Belgian friends are already feeling the hot breath of their Euromasters on their necks, since their Government has a project to register and submit to licensing all and every magazine in private hands as if they were complete firearms (That jeans à charge le means a charge of €100 a pop).

But all of that is for “our security”, of course.

https://firearms-united.com

https://www.facebook.com/protell.ch/

#guns #gun control #firearms #fucktheeu #fuck the eu #social #the discourse #longpost

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lemodo · 5 years ago

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ITALY’S RECIPE FOR DISASTER

Published March 24, 2020

By Giacomino Nicolazzo; one of Italy’s most beloved writers. Born and raised in Central Pennsylvania USA, he lives in a small village in Lombardy where he writes his books.

Montecalvo, Lombardy, Italy.

Stores and shops have been shuttered. Restaurants and coffee shops no longer serve customers. Schools, universities, sporting arenas…even our museums and theaters…all closed. Even the Vatican City has closed its gates and armed patrols monitor the 20 foot tall walls that protect it!

Streets and roads are now empty for as far as the eye can see. Normally they would be filled with crazed Italian drivers in tiny cars and scooters (the ones that sound like demonic insects) darting here and there, reaching the limits of centrifugal force on our roundabouts. In the piazze of our towns and cities, there are now officially more pigeons than people. Many of us know someone who has been infected and recovered. Some of us know someone who did not recover…now they are dead. But everyone knows someone who has been affected by this microscopic monster in one way or another.

Sixty million of us are in lockdown…it is like a war zone here. We are being held prisoner in our own homes by an unseen enemy that sneaked in unnoticed…by most of us. As you will read in just a few more minutes, there were those who knew something like this was coming…or at least they should have.

So who is to blame? With all this craziness swirling like a whirlpool at our feet, I just had to find the blame answer. And so I have spent my free time (of which I have a lot in these days) digging and researching. I was literally shocked to discover how this has come to be.

I am not going to bore you with talk of Patient ‘0’ who spread it to Patient ‘1’ and how mathematics efficiently explains the rapid expansion of infection. No…I am going to tell you how (as I see it) the virus came to Italy.

It has everything to do with communism. Allow me to explain. Beginning in about 2014, Matteo Renzi, the imbecile ex-mayor of Firenze (Florence) acting as the leader of the Partito Democratico (synonymous with the Italian Communist party), somehow managed to get himself elected as Italy’s Prime Minister. To give you a proper frame of reference, Matteo Renzi was so far left, he would make Barack Obama look like Barry Goldwater!

And in the midst of all this financial chicanery, the Chinese began furiously buying up Italian real estate and businesses in the North.

Now the reason I mention Renzi and the Chinese together is that strange things were also going on between the governments of Italy and China. A blind eye was being turned to the way the Chinese were buying businesses in the financial, telecommunication, industrial and fashion sectors of Italy’s economy, all of which take place in Milano.

Cameron in the UK) said a thing in their country’s defense. As a matter of fact, much of it was hidden from the public in all three countries.

In ‪2014, China‬ infused the Italian economy with €5 billion through purchases of companies costing less than €100 million each By the time Renzi left office (in disgrace) in 2016, Chinese acquisitions had exceeded €52 billion. When the dust settled, China owned more than 300 companies…representing 27% of the major Italian corporations.

The Bank of China now owns five major banks in Italy…all of which had been secretly (and illegally) propped up by Renzi using pilfered pension funds! Soon after, the China Milano Equity Exchange was opened and much of Italy’s wealth was being funneled back to the Chinese mainland.

Chinese state entities own Italy’s major telecommunication corporation (Telecom) as well as its major utilities (ENI and ENEL)... Upon entry into the telecommunication market, Huawei established a facility in Segrate, a suburb of Milano. It launched is first research center there and worked on the study of microwaves which has resulted in the possibly-dangerous technology we call 5G.

China also now owns controlling interest in Fiat-Chrysler, Prysmian and Terna. You will be surprised to know that when you put a set of Pirelli tires on your car, the profits are going to China. Yep…the Chinese

colossus of ChemChina, a chemical industry titan, bought that company too!

Last but not least is Ferretti yachts…the most prestigious yacht builder in Europe. Incredibly, it is no longer owned by the Ferretti family.

Designer Salvatore Ferragamo sold 16% and Caruso sold 35%. The most famous case is Krizia, purchased in 2014 by Shenzhen Marisfrolg Fashion Company, one of the leaders of high-priced, ready-to-wear fashions in Asia.

Quite literally, tens of thousands of Chinese came in through Milano (illegally) and went back out carrying money, technology and corporate secrets.

It was not until there was a change in the governing party in Italy that the sweatshops and the illegal entry and departure of Chinese nationals was stopped. Matteo Salvini, representing the Lega Nord party, closed Italy’s ports to immigrants and systematically began disassembling the sweatshops and deporting those in Italy illegally.

undocumented refugees from the Middle East and East Africa began pouring in again. Access was again provided to the Chinese, under the old terms, and as a consequence thousands of Chinese, the majority from Wuhan, began arriving in Milano.

Most of the money never reached a single victim in the mountains. The Renzi government redirected the vast majority of those funds to pay for the growing immigrant and refugee costs.

As the economy worsened under the burden of illegal immigration, compounded by gross government spending and incompetence, unemployment rose quickly…especially among young people. The unemployment rate for men and women under age 35 is close to 40%. So more money was diverted from the health care system and used to pay what is known here as guaranteed income. Whether you work or not you are paid here, especially if you belong to the PD! The government simply raises taxes on those who do work.

Let me give you a quick example of the height of insanity to which Italian taxation has risen. If you live in a building that has a balcony or balconies…and any of those balconies cast a shadow on the ground, you must pay a public shadow tax! I will say no more!

The point I am trying to make here is that not only did the Chinese bring the virus to Italy (and the rest of the world) it was far-Left politics and policies that facilitated it.

#ccpvirus #wuhancoronavirus #wuhan pneumonia #wuhanvirus #wuhan institute of virology #giacominonicolazzo

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seotipsandtricks-me · 6 years ago

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In this post our Director of Data Science and Analytics, Dora Moldovan takes a look at the use of Search in the retail sector and examines what role it should play in addressing the challenges faced in 2019 and beyond. CHALLENGES IN THE RETAIL ENVIRONMENT. Consumer confidence has slumped to a five-year low due to external pressures impacting purchase decisions. This is creating a less buoyant retail market, particularly online, with retailers having to work harder and invest heavily to retain market share. Extreme discounting and promotions are ubiquitous, encouraging the race to the bottom pricing. Although the clothing portion of the market is in a period of growth, the challenges are significant due to the tactics of pure play retailers, aggressive with both spend and promotions. We’re seeing digital becoming the bulk source of growth in retail with omnichannel businesses reducing bricks-and-mortar operations, while most pure-play retailers are expected to open retail experience shops on the high-street by 2023. To capitalise on less competition but more-aggressive auction prices, Found believes retailers should make full use of data-driven technology. Tools such as Adthena or Hitwise, interpreting data from the Office for National Statistics or Google market information will enable them to spot opportunities for growth quickly. The example below is the home market trend with data pulled from ONS to demonstrate retail demand for the home sector: Food and Non-Food will have very different market positions throughout the year and any search performance will need to be tailored towards these changing markets. Supporting this is the BRC report for retail showing that, in December, like-for-like retail sales were down – 0.7%, but the three-month average for Non-Food showed a +7.0% growth. Footfall was down – 2.6% in the same period, with retailers struggling to convert customers to store. The result is an increased propensity for retailers to invest more online. Leveraging audience data and the increased localisation of Search will be the main areas of focus in 2019. Retailers who successfully optimise towards offline metrics are set to win in 2019/2020. With customer search journeys taking longer, there is an inherent need to understand and optimise throughout the journey. This, combined with 67% of clothing searches coming from mobile, demonstrates the need to continue with mobile first strategies. The landscape is changing not just in the context of competition, but also in the way the retailers are leveraging technology. Amazon’s move to acquire Whole Foods and the completely frictionless checkouts via Amazon Go stores, have granted access not just to new audiences but also to a wealth of data on in-store behaviour to integrate into their strategies. In many cases where Amazon Prime Now is active, this has broken down the buying objections of shopping online by providing almost-instant delivery services at low cost. With the ongoing Brexit negotiations, we note the letter of warning from the British Retail Consortium to Parliament signed by several of the major food retailers, regarding the impossibility of stockpiling fresh food, empty shelves and higher prices. It’s becoming ever-clear that the UK is very reliant on the EU for produce. MARKET CHANGE: 2019/20. Experiential commerce is becoming a driving force in delivering increased sales for brands and retailers. Consumers’ interest in online shopping is shifting from a formulaic, convenience type interaction to immersive, brand loyalty building experiences. Personalisation is still a significant player. The ability to create unique experiences for audiences is highly valuable and brands are taking advantage of the technology to engage with customers more than ever before. This is being seen through the emergence of pure-play retailers’ in-store formats, creating experiential shopping formats. The demand for delivery is making this a priority for retailers. With same-day delivery becoming the stake for grocers in competitive markets, we’re expecting to see even more investment in technology around driverless, autonomous delivery. Environmental awareness was a major trend in 2018 and we’re expecting interest in sustainability and concern in consumer behaviour’s impact on the environment to shape the retail space even further in 2019. UNDERTAKING SEARCH DIFFERENTLY IN 2019/20 VS 2018/19. Retailers are going to need to ensure that every pound is spent in line with business goals; whether that be new customer acquisition, customer retention, sales growth or profit. Data-driven strategies that focus around audiences will allow these goals, in line with profit margin by product, to be achieved more effectively. As the overall market is consolidating, retailers are in a constant battle to ‘own’ the SERPS. Maintaining or growing market share becomes more competitive. THE IMPORTANCE OF LOCAL SEARCH. With technology making instant gratification and impulsive actions very easy to perform, Google has reported a huge increase in growth for all searches related to “near me” in recent years. Consumers now expect Search technology to find the places and even specific items they want to purchase in their area so they can get what they want instantly. Source: Think with Google With that in mind, standing out in a Local Search pack to appear in traditional and Local Search or get picked up by voice assistants has become increasingly important part of the local and voice strategy. Whilst we can’t impact the consumers’ proximity to the business, we can optimise to influence the other factors such as prominence and relevance, ensuring that: GMB (Google My Business) properties are optimised and contain up-to-date information. NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) data is accurate and truthful. Listings have positive reviews – this is becoming more important than ever. THE IMPORTANCE OF ASO (App store optimisation). The online grocery market is extremely competitive, with users not only searching through traditional search engines but also using downloaded apps to complete purchases. Frequently a store’s app may provide a better user experience and help keep consumers loyal to that brand, so being present and front of mind when downloading apps must be part of any integrated strategy. ASO can help you: Capture 100% of consumers’ attention on a branded search. Engage with a higher lifetime value customer by them obtaining the app and having a better user experience and push notifications for re-engagement. Appear in competitor searches to attract them to your brand. To gain greater positions in the app store results, an ASO strategy is required to cover keyword research, on-site optimisations and off-site signals. This includes: Choosing the right keywords for the app. Optimising titles and descriptions in line with selected target terms. Taking advantage of the screenshots so your customers know how to use it. Adding videos to provide even more detailed information about the app. Having a strategy in place to gain positive reviews and external signals to the app. THE IMPORTANCE OF VOICE SEARCH. As voice technology is maturing and becoming much more reliable, people are more comfortable using it for purchases, which is reducing the need to visit stores in person. This is especially significant both for FMCG brands and traditional retailers. Consumer demand for increased convenience in groceries is an obvious driver to start optimising for voice search. To cater for voice search, brands need to be set up to deliver multiple varieties of relevant and quality content. For grocery brands specifically, there is a great potential to influence consumer at the discovery stage of the user journey. Voice searches differ to normal search as they: Contain a higher average number of words per search. Contain ‘trigger words’ such as ‘how’, ‘why’, ‘where’. More frequently are sequential, in the form of a conversation with the voice assistant. Can be tracked less easily than a standard search. With Google yet to separate voice queries within its search console, retailers need to rely on cues to identify the types of searches that could be performed by voice. Statistics around voice search, and its importance, range from predicting it will take over 25- 50% of searches. Whilst this is a hotly debated topic, what’s clear is that voice search will hold at least some place within the market. In the case of FMCG, where billions of pounds are traded online daily, the role of voice search will not be insignificant. THE IMPORTANCE OF OMNICHANNEL. Marketing is a team effort. To win, every element of your strategy, including your Search, should work hand-in-hand and build upon each other’s strengths to power your business. In order to understand this concerted effort and the role each channel (digital or offline) is playing, the right attribution tech is essential. Complementing the tech with omnichannel data science analysis will help retailers paint the full picture as accurately as possible. THE IMPORTANCE OF TECHNOLOGY IN AUDIENCE. We know that your most complete set of data is your CRM data, and Search can use this as a powerful lever to turn new customers into brand-loyal, lifelong customers. Machine learning has sparked a new wave of interest in the application of RFM (recency/frequency modelling) analysis to deliver insights to Search, especially SEO targeting. We slice data to understand customer flow and acquisition in ecommerce as it: Links online and offline order data. Creates real-time audiences that can be utilised in Search to fine-tune strategy. Enables the assistive side of Search through AI-powered insights. By using machine learning to monitor online conversation about products/brand and to map user behaviour, brands can uncover patterns and trends that can be reflected in search strategies. HOW SEARCH CAN PLAY A ROLE IN ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGES FOR RETAIL. Search can be a significant tool in any retailers kit to overcome the many challenges ahead. We believe they need to embrace the following within their Search strategies: Understand the changing needs of consumers and their search behaviours. As consumers demand more choice in-store, they expect even more when shopping online. Search needs to utilise a long-tail strategy to capture niche requirements and understand consumer shopping trends. Embrace automation. Automated creatives and automated bidding will allow agency partners to work strategically towards business-aligned KPIs (RoAS, CPA), creating efficiencies. Leave behind the silo approach and move towards an omnichannel/localisation strategy. The confluence of online and offline activity is essential to provide the kind of personalisation consumers expect. 80% of consumers still go in-store for items they want immediately but Search activity, especially on mobile, is a significant part of this journey. Plan for the future by having a clear strategy around voice search and hyper-localisation. EMBRACING EMERGING PLATFORMS & TECHNOLOGIES. In order to take advantage of the full potential Search has to offer we believe retailers should be looking to inform their campaigns and benefit from: Applications of technologies that link store data with online data and explore the causality of relationship between them. Analysis that furthers the understanding of customer behaviour. An advanced AI-powered, custom-trained attribution model to help the marketing department understand the relationship between online/offline, new/loyal customers and marketing channels that best influence and convert them. Search will remain a powerful growth channel for retailers and it can go a long way to assisting them in overcoming the current challenges in the sector, providing they embrace the changes that they need to allow Search to be successful. Retailers who continue to operate their Search campaigns in the same way the have done in previous years will lose out to those embracing the changes and integrating search with their wider activity in-store and online. It’s time for retailers to integrate Search, rethink their strategies and make sure that their Search campaigns are using all the cutting edge tactics available to them. The post How can Search address the challenges facing retail in 2019? appeared first on FOUND.

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jobsearchtips02 · 5 years ago

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Coronavirus live updates: Antibody study estimates 12% of New Yorkers have had virus, Cuomo says

States across the U.S. are reopening after coronavirus-enforced lockdowns while protests erupted in places where stay-at-home rules remain in place. In states like California and Michigan, groups demanded the easing of restrictions. A big week of earnings are in, and tech giants Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Tesla have all reported, providing a first look at how the pandemic has affected some of the biggest companies in the U.S.

This is CNBC’s live blog covering all the latest news on the coronavirus outbreak. All times below are in Eastern time. This blog will be updated throughout the day as the news breaks.

Global cases: More than 3.3 million

Global deaths: At least 239,090

US cases: More than 1.1 million

US deaths: At least 65,068

The data above was compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

2: 15 pm: France reports another 166 deaths

France’s Health Ministry reported an additional 166 deaths from Covid-19, bringing the national total 24,760, according to a Reuters report. That figure includes coronavirus-related deaths recorded in hospitals and nursing homes.

The daily death toll, the number of people in the country hospitalized for the virus, and the number of patients being treated in intensive care units all declined, Reuters reported.

France has recorded one of the highest death tolls related to the coronavirus, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Only the United States, Italy and the United Kingdom have recorded more deaths. —Sara Salinas

1: 16 pm: US reports deadliest day yet as states reopen, according to WHO data

A Cataldo EMS team transports a suspected Covid-19 patient from Chelsea to Massachusetts General Hospital on April 23, 2020 in Boston, Massachusetts United States.

David Degner | Getty Images

The United States just saw its deadliest day yet of the Covid-19 outbreak as states across the country begin to ease restrictions and reopen nonessential businesses, according to data from the World Health Organization.

The data, which was collected as of 4 a.m. ET on Friday, says 2,909 people in the U.S. died of Covid-19 in 24 hours. That’s the largest single-day Covid-19 death toll the U.S. has recorded, according to the WHO.

The new numbers come as state officials across the country unveil plans to reopen the economy and lift social distancing restrictions. Several mostly southern states have already reopened some retail businesses and lifted restrictions on access to beaches and other congregating areas.

Officials have said coronavirus-related deaths are difficult to analyze due to the length of time it takes for the disease to manifest symptoms and grow severe enough to kill someone. It remains unclear why the day proved to be so fatal, according to the WHO’s data. —Will Feuer

1: 04 pm: European Union countries call to halt cash refunds for canceled flights due to the pandemic

Germany, Italy and Spain have added their support to a group of European Union governments asking for the group’s executive body to halt rules forcing airlines to give cash refunds for canceled flights, France said in a statement, according to Reuters.

On Wednesday 12 EU governments called for the European Commission to suspend rules forcing airlines to offer refunds instead of vouchers for future travel because of the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reported.

“I’m glad a very large majority of member states are supporting my request to authorize airlines and maritime groups to temporarily use vouchers when trips are canceled, so as to relieve their cash reserves while protecting passengers’ rights to a refund,” French Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari said in a statement, according to Reuters. —Chris Eudaily

12: 44 pm: Antibody study estimates 12% of New Yorkers have had virus, Cuomo says

A patient is tested for coronavirus at the Pro Health Urgent Care coronavirus testing site on April 30, 2020 in Wantagh, New York.

Al Bello | Getty Images

Approximately 12.3% of New Yorkers have likely had Covid-19, according to the latest preliminary study results released by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The survey of over 15,000 people was conducted to develop a baseline of infection rate in the state, Cuomo said. “Statisticians will say this is all plus or minus in the margin of error. But it’s a large sample. It is indicative.”

The first preliminary result on April 22 showed that out of 3,000 people tested randomly at grocery stores and shopping locations, 13.9% of people had antibodies. On April 27, there were 7,397 people surveyed and 14.9% tested positive.

The survey results show the percentage of New Yorkers with antibodies, indicating that they have had the virus and recovered from it. This could help provide more accurate data on how many people have been infected with Covid-19 in New York, as state officials don’t know the exact number of infections.

“We test about every 4 or 5 days. We have so much at stake,” Cuomo said. “We always want to see the number dropping rather than the number increasing.” —Jasmine Kim

12: 17 pm: Italy’s death toll climbs to 28,710

Italy’s death toll due to Covid-19 climbed by 474, the Civil Protection Agency said, according to Reuters.

In Lombardy, Italy’s worst-affected region, the death toll took a significant jump. The region reported 329 deaths in the last 24 hours versus 88 the day before, Reuters reported.

For the third day in a row, the daily tally of new infections was largely stable.

The national total death toll now stands at 28,710, the agency said, according to Reuters. Italy has the second-highest number of coronavirus-related deaths in the world after that of the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University data. —Chris Eudaily

12: 03 pm: 1,000 NYPD officers out to enforce social distancing rules as weather warms up

Geese feed in a field as the sun rises behind the skyline of lower Manhattan, and One World Trade Center in New York City on May 2, 2020 as seen from the reopened Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey. New Jersey state parks reopened to the public on Saturday.

Gary Hershorn | Getty Images

With warm weather tempting quarantine-weary people to go outside, the New York Police Department dispatched 1,000 officers to enforce social distancing measures and other pandemic rules, the Associated Press reported.

“I believe with the warm weather people will come outside,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, according to the AP. “You can’t stay indoors all the time. People will come outside and that’s great, go for a walk. But respect the social distancing and wear a mask.”

NYPD has made 60 arrests and issued 343 summonses related to social distancing since March 16, according to the AP. —Chris Eudaily

11: 48 am: Economic hit from pandemic-enforced sports shutdowns could bring ownership changes

A view of the empty AmericanAirlines Arena before the start of an NBA basketball regular season game between the Miami Heat and the Charlotte Hornets on Wednesday, March 11, 2020 in Miami.

David Santiago | Miami Herald | Getty Images

With the coronavirus pandemic shutting down professional sports around the world and cutting off vital revenue streams, teams could be on the verge of ownership changes.

Charles Baker, a partner at law firm O’Melveny, told CNBC’s Jabari Young there are “often one-off conversations” among interested buyers and owners in major U.S. teams, as the pandemic continues to impact revenue streams.

To deal with the disruption, some owners could offer to sell stake in a team, while other opportunities could become available as current partners look to get out.

Baker, who represented David Tepper in his $325 million acquisition of a Major League Soccer expansion franchise, estimated a “potential 15% to 20% drop” in team control and limited-partner positions. He said teams heavily dependent on “match day revenue” are most at risk for ownership changes. —Chris Eudaily

11: 32 am: Death toll in the UK climbs to 28,131

The Covid-19 death toll in the United Kingdom rose to 28,131 as of Friday, which is just shy of Italy, the country with the highest number of deaths from the virus in Europe, Reuters reports.

Italy reported 28,236 dead from Covid-19 as of May 1, according to Reuters. —Chris Eudaily

11: 09 am: At least 15 states begin first phase of easing restrictions as May kicks off

A “Beach Guidelines” sign indicates new social distancing rules at a public beach in Dauphin Island, Alabama, U.S., on Friday, May 1, 2020. Alabama lifted their stay-at-home order and have allowed most businesses to open, subject to sanitation and social-distancing guidelines, Alabama Media Group reported.

Maranie Staab | Bloomberg | Getty Images

At least fifteen states are beginning to reopen this weekend as the government eases some restrictions and stay-at-home mandates that were put in place to prevent further spread of the coronavirus.

States that are starting the first stage of their reopening plan include Alabama, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Each state outlines different reopening guidelines but most are allowing nonessential businesses to offer curbside pickup, drive-thru and delivery services, the construction industry to resume work, hair salons and barbershops to restart their business and state parks to reopen.

While state governments are working to reopen their economies, social distancing rules and safety measures such as wearing face coverings are still in place. —Jasmine Kim

10: 51 am: Spain reopens after strict lockdown as people rush outside

People exercise in Valencia on May 2, 2020, during the hours allowed by the government to go out and exercise, for the first time since the beginning of a national lockdown to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 disease. All Spaniards are again allowed to leave their homes since today to walk or play sports after 48 days of very strict confinement to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

Jose Jordan | AFP | Getty Images

Spaniards were allowed to exercise outdoors for the first time in 49 days as some of the strictest coronavirus restrictions in the world began easing across the country, Reuters reported.

“We are reaping the rewards of the sacrifices we have made during these long weeks,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said, adding that the risk of a resurgence remains, according to Reuters.

Spain has 213,235 recorded Covid-19 infections according to Johns Hopkins University, the second-highest in the world, and imposed a strict lockdown in March. Sports and walks were banned, Reuters reported. —Chris Eudaily

10: 30 am: US automakers face major hurdles in reopening plants

The entrance of the decommissioned plant where General Motors is producing medical face masks in Michigan displays coronavirus safety procedures next to a table with hand sanitizer, masks and safety glasses.

Michael Wayland / CNBC

U.S. auto plants began shutting down in March, and some automakers only expected the closings to last days or weeks.

But the majority of auto plants were closed through April and reopening dates are a moving target.

Auto manufacturing is facing a number of obstacles to reopen, from worker safety and local mandates to supply chain logistics and supplies.

“It’s extremely complex,” Ford Motor Chief Operating Officer Jim Farley said.

“It’s critical that we get this restart right,” Farley said. A false start could further set the industry back, CNBC’s Michael Wayland reports, which could endanger lives and complicate matters even more. —Chris Eudaily

10: 03 am: Protesters challenge lockdown orders, demand that businesses are reopened

Demonstrators rally in front of posters with California Governor Gavin Newsom outside Los Angeles City Hall on May 1, 2020, to demand the end to the state’s shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Frederic J. BROWN | AFP | Getty Images

Protesters in at least 10 states on Friday demanded that the government lift stay-at-home orders and other emergency measures put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Among the states that saw protests are California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Tennessee and Washington.

Protesters, who were often photographed not wearing face coverings, urged the re-opening of businesses in their individual states, waving signs with messages against state leadership. Among their principal backers has been President Donald Trump, who tweeted words of encouragement to protesters in support of re-opening businesses nationwide to prop up the economy, which has been ravaged by the pandemic.

But despite the protests, multiple governors have said that they will determine whether to re-open their states only when they deem it’s safe to do so. —Yelena Dzhanova

9: 48 am: Updated map of US coronavirus hotspots as infections now total 1,104,345

9: 41 am: Berkshire Hathaway takes $50 billion hit from pandemic

Berkshire Hathaway’s operating profit rose, but Warren Buffet’s company posted a net loss of nearly $50 billion as the Covid-19 pandemic dealt a major blow to its common stock investments, Reuters reported.

Berkshire posted a first-quarter net loss of $49.75 billion, or $30,653 per Class A share, which reflected $54.52 billion of losses from investments, mainly common stocks, according to Reuters.

Quarterly operating profit rose 6% to $5.87 billion. —Chris Eudaily

9: 17 am: CDC official says US missed chances to slow virus

Anne Schuchat, director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), speaks during a U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, March 3, 2020.

Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg via Getty Images

Early limited testing and the lack of travel alerts for areas outside China contributed to the rise in U.S. coronavirus cases in February, a high-ranking official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday, the Associated Press reports.

“We clearly didn’t recognize the full importations that were happening,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, the No. 2 official at the CDC, told the AP.

The CDC published an article by Schuchat Friday analyzing the U.S. response to the outbreak, which found that the top health agency in the country missed chances to slow the spread, according to the AP. —Chris Eudaily

9: 01 am: Farmers markets change amid the pandemic

Farmers and others involved in open-air markets have had to make changes to adapt to a world that has safety at the top of mind, the Associated Press reports.

Some venues have instituted adjusted opening times or days, drive-thrus and fences, according to the AP.

“The crowds are small and there aren’t many vendors,” Johnny Gyergyou, who has sold goods at Eastern Market in Detroit for 12 years, told the AP. Gyergyou said that it’s not cost-effective to take loads 33 miles from his home to the market, where they may not sell. —Chris Eudaily

8: 30 am: US hospitals increasing safety measures

A “prone team,” wearing personal protective equipment (PPE), turns a COVID-19 patient onto his stomach in a Stamford Hospital intensive care unit (ICU), on April 24, 2020 in Stamford, Connecticut.

John Moore | Getty Images

As parts of the U.S. begin to open up after coronavirus stay-at-home orders, hospitals are putting more safety procedures in place to help reassure people coming in for other kinds of treatment, Reuters reports.

Hospitals are using plexiglass dividers, testing patients in advance and limiting elevator traffic as part of a safety push before beginning elective procedures and nonessential operations, which were put on hold as hospitals dealt with a crush of Covid-19 cases, Reuters reported.

“We have to convey to the public that we are safe … and to defer medical care in urgent situations will cause more harm,” Mark Solazzo, chief operating officer at Northwell Health, New York’s largest healthcare provider, told Reuters.

Medical providers are starting to tell patients that they can return for non-coronavirus procedures. —Chris Eudaily

Read CNBC’s coverage from CNBC’s Asia-Pacific and Europe teams overnight here: Russia reports highest daily rise in cases; Singapore prepares to ease partial lockdown

from Job Search Tips https://jobsearchtips.net/coronavirus-live-updates-antibody-study-estimates-12-of-new-yorkers-have-had-virus-cuomo-says/

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babbleuk · 5 years ago

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GigaOm Analysts Share Their 2020 Predictions for Enterprise IT

Here at GigaOm we’re looking at how leading-edge technologies impact the enterprise, and what organizations can do to gear up for the future. Here’s a take from several of our analysts about what to watch for in enterprise IT and beyond, this coming year and in years to come.

From Kubernetesization to workforce automation, data center shrink and the rise of the architect, read on.

Andrew Brust, Big Data & Analytics

“Kubernetesization” and Containerization of the Data Analytics Stack — both open source and commercial. To a large extent, this is one’s obvious. But it’s giving rise to something less so: a tendency to spin up clusters (be they for big data, data warehousing or machine learning) on a task-by-task basis. Call it extreme ephemeralism, if you’d like. It’s enabling a mentality of serverless everything. This architecture underlies the revamped Cloudera Data Platform, and it’s also being leveraged by Google for Spark on K8s on Cloud Data Proc. Ultimately, it’s enabling new workloads.

Warehouse & Lake Converge, But in a Fragmented Fashion — We see this with SQL Server 2019 (its “Big Data Clusters” integrate Spark), Azure Synapse Analytics (which is the revamp of Azure SQL Data Warehouse and will also integrate Spark, as well as Azure Data Lake Store) and in the Redshift Federated Query and Parquet Export features AWS announced at re:Invent. Everyone is trying to bring warehouse and lake together, and make them operate like two different interfaces on a common data store. But everyone’s doing it their own way (in Microsoft’s case, they’re doing it two different ways). This divergence dulls the convergence that everyone’s aiming for.

BI Goes Big Brand — Salesforce got Tableau, Google’s trying to close its acquisition of Looker and Microsoft’s got Power BI. It’s getting harder to be an independent BI provider. That’s probably why Qlik is building out its portfolio to be a comprehensive data analytics stack (including integration and data catalog) and not just BI.

AI Tries to Get Its Act Together, and Has a Long Way to Go — New improvements announced for SageMaker, including AutoPilot, are steps in the right direction. Likewise many of the new features in Azure Machine Learning. But AI is still notebook-oriented and sloppy. It’s trying to get the DevOps religion and integrate with software development stacks overall, but it hasn’t fully happened yet. The need here is getting more acute by the week.

Stowe Boyd, Future of Work

Workforce Automation — as distinct from back-office Robotic Process Automation (RPA), this is technology to automate rote, manual work, and maybe management work (like what middle managers do) in the not-too-distant future.

Work Platforms. — From Uber/Lyft (which have had such an impact on the transportation sector), to myriad others. Expect the range of platforms to expand across industries, both consumer-facing and within business.

Work Chat — Slack has led the charge in chat-based collaboration and communication but was mainly for techies and coastal elites. Now, Microsoft Teams is taking the simplicity and effectiveness of work chat mainstream.

JP Morgenthal, Digital Transformation & Modernization

Geopolitical & Market Forces — The US is heading into an election year with a President surrounded by controversy and who continues to levy tariffs against trading partners. Key financial analysts are predicting the bull market is slowing and will have a profound effect on the markets. Potentially, many businesses will panic and pull resources and attention from digital transformations.

Increased, Yet Misguided Use of Cloud/Mobile — The above will have an effect on consumption of cloud and mobile platforms and services. Many will forge forward with a cloud strategy still believing it will save them money, even though this has been thoroughly disproved time and again over the past decade. These failures will only further inhibit these businesses from being able to compete effectively.

Technology-Driven Disruption — While the market will take a hit, money on the sidelines will continue to work: companies with products and offerings deemed disruptive will see big investments, as investors see the opportunity to unseat old-world monoliths. This will have a net effect of transforming the overall market landscape. Investments will be heavy in Artificial Intelligence, Digital Workers / Automation, consumer technologies, healthcare IT, and remote collaboration. Cloud will see benefits here as there will be a strong foundation for scaling in these areas.

Quantum comes to Deep Learning — Quantum computing will also make major leaps in 2020 and we will start to see its impact on deep learning and forecasting.

Enrico Signoretti, Data Storage &Cloud Infrastructure

Hybrid cloud is Still Considered as Another Silo, Alongside On-Prem & SaaS — Enterprise organizations want to manage their data in a better way and avoid silos. They still don’t know how (especially in the EU), nor do they understand the solutions available, their limitations, and their level of maturity.

Storage Sees a Major Trend Towards Data Management — Connected to the above, and as data storage is increasingly commoditized, the differentiator comes from how you can manage the data saved in these storage systems.

Investments Move Towards Edge Computing & Public Cloud, Shrinking Core Datacenters — This trend will stop sooner or later and we will see a balance emerge between the three, as data and applications become easier to move (for example based on Kubernetes plus adequate supporting infrastructure layers). It will take at least two years, but many vendors are already showing some very interesting developments.

Jon Collins, DevOps, Innovation & Governance

DevOps Gets a Rebrand — No innovation philosophy lasts forever, and DevOps is showing its own weaknesses as a developer-centric idea centered on speed when enterprises need something balanced across stakeholder groups with value-driven innovation at its core. As the software development and operations industry matures, it too is looking for ways to meet the needs of organizations that are more complex and less able to change. Expect tooling to follow suit, encompassing broader stakeholders and an end-to-end view which better meets enterprise needs.

Containerization Trumps Serverlessness — The industry has only had to wait 35 years for this one, as distributed systems finally have sufficiently powerful networking infrastructure to deliver Yourdon and Constantine (et al)’s notions of software modularity. Or, in layperson’s terms, application chunks can exist anywhere and still talk to each other. Containerization, based on Kubernetes or otherwise, is a popular manifestation of such chunking: the need for code modules to be self-contained and location-independent overrides any “please run on our serverless platform” exclusivity.

Multi-Cloud Creates & Next Licensing Battle — The big cloud players have a fight on their hands and they know it. The competitor is unbranded access to commoditized compute and data storage resources, based on open and de facto standards, leveraging easy-to-shift chunks of innovation (see also: containers). Faced with the onslaught of write-once-run-anywhere, vendors have three weapons: differentiation through manageability (a good thing), data gravity (a moveable feast) and indeed, existing contracts and volume discounts.

Architects & Policy-Setters Become the New Kingmakers — Even as organizations continue to pivot towards technology-based innovation at scale, just doing it becomes less and less of a differentiator (example: all automotive manufacturers will have driverless cars, then what?). As a result, attention in DevOps and elsewhere will turn away from effectiveness (doing the right thing) and back to efficiency (doing things right), manifested in terms of architectural, process and governance excellence.

from Gigaom https://gigaom.com/2019/12/31/gigaom-analysts-share-their-2020-predictions-for-enterprise-it/

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endenogatai · 4 years ago

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Travel startups cry foul over what Google’s doing with their data

As the antitrust drumbeat continues to pound on tech giants, with Reuters reporting comments today from the U.S. Justice Department that it’s moving “full-tilt” on an investigation of platform giants including Google parent Alphabet, startups in Europe’s travel sector are dialing up their allegations of anti-competitive behavior against the search giant.

Google has near complete grip on the search market in Europe, with a regional marketshare in excess of 90% according to Statcounter. Unsurprisingly industry sources say a majority of travel bookings start as a Google search — giving the tech giant huge leverage over the coronavirus-hit sector.

More than half a dozen travel startups in Germany are united in a shared complaint that Google is abusing its search dominance in a number of ways they argue are negatively impacting their businesses.

Complaints we’ve heard from multiple sources in online travel range from Google forcing its own data standards on ad partners to Google unfairly extracting partner data to power its own competing products on the cheap.

Startups are limited in how much detail they can provide about Google’s processes on the record because the company requires advertising partners to sign NDAs to access its ad products. But this week German newspaper Handelsblatt reported on antitrust complaints from a number of local startups — including experience booking platform GetYourGuide and vacation rental search engine HomeToGo — who are accusing the tech giant of stealing content and data.

The group is considering filing a cartel complaint against Google, per its report.

We’ve also heard from multiple sources in the European travel sector that Google has exhibited a pattern of trying to secure the rights to travel partners’ content and data through contracts and service agreements.

One source, who did not wish to be identified for fear of retaliation against their business, told us: “Each travel partner has certain specialities in their business model but overall the strategy of Google has been the same: Grab as much data from your partners and build competing products with that data.”

Not OK, Google

This is now a very familiar complaint against Google. Crowdsourced reviews platform Yelp has been accusing the tech giant of stealing content for years. More recently, Genius got creative with a digital watermark that caught Google redhanded scraping lyrics content from its site which it pays to license (but Google does not). As Lily Allen might put it, it’s really not okay.

Last month’s Congressional antitrust subcommittee hearing kicked off with exactly this accusation too — as chair, David Cicilline, barked at Google and Alphabet CEO, Sundar Pichai: “Why does Google steal content from honest businesses?” Pichai dodged the question by claiming he doesn’t agree with the characterization. But for Google and parent Alphabet there’s no dodging the antitrust drumbeat pounding violently in the company’s backyard.

Based on this exchange, it seems like Google CEO Sundar Pichai *really* does not want to answer questions about local search. Perhaps because there are no good answers? pic.twitter.com/49RVwHMHS8

— Luther Lowe (@lutherlowe) July 29, 2020

In Europe, Google’s business already has a clutch of antitrust enforcements against it — starting three years ago, in a case which dated back six years at that point, with a record breaking penalty for anti-competitive behavior in how it operated a product search service called Google Shopping. EU enforcements against Android and AdSense swiftly followed. Google is appealing all three decisions, even as it continues to expand its operations in lucrative verticals like travel.

The Commission’s 2017 finding that Google is dominant in the regional search market carried what lawmakers couch as a “special responsibility” to avoid breaching the bloc’s antitrust rules in any market Google plays in. That finding puts the travel sector squarely in the frame, although not yet under formal probe by EU regulators (although they have opened an active probe of Google’s data collection practices, announced last year).

EU regulators are also examining a range of competition concerns over its proposed acquisition of Fitbit, delaying the merger while they consider whether the deal would further entrench Google’s position in the ad market by giving it access to a trove of Fitbit users’ health data that could be used for increased ad personalization.

But so far, on travel, the Commission has been keeping its powder dry.

Yet for around a decade the tech giant has been building out products that directly compete for travel bookings in growth areas like flight search. More recently it’s added hotels, vacation rentals and experiences — bringing its search tool into direct competition with an increasing range of third party booking platforms which, at least in Europe, have no choice but to advertise on Google’s platform to drive customer acquisition.

One key acquisition underpinning Google’s travel ambitions dates back to 2010 — when it shelled out $700M for ITA, a provider of flight information to airlines, travel agencies and online reservation systems. The same year it also picked up travel guide community, Ruba.

Google beat out a consortium of rivals for ITA, including Microsoft, Kayak, Expedia, and Travelport, who relied upon its data to power their own travel products — and had wanted to prevent Google getting its hands on the data.

Back then travel was already a huge segment of search and online commerce. And it’s continued to grow — worth close to $700BN globally in 2018, per eMarketer (although the coronavirus crisis is likely to impact some recent growth projections, even as the public health crisis accelerates the industry’s transition to digital bookings) — all of which gives Google huge incentive to carve itself a bigger and bigger share of the pie.

This is what Google is aiming to do by building out ad units that cater to travellers’ searches by offering flights, vacation rentals and trip experiences, searchable without needing to leave Google’s platform.

Google defends this type of expansion by saying it’s just making life easier for the user by putting sought for information even closer to their search query. But competitors contend the choices it’s making are far more insidious. Simply put, they’re better for Google’s bottom line — and will ultimately result in less choice and innovation for consumers — is the core argument. The key contention is Google is only able to do this because it wields vast monopoly power in search which gives it unfair access to travel rivals’ content and data.

It’s certainly notable that Alphabet hasn’t felt the need to shell out to acquire any of the major travel booking platforms since its ITA acquisition. Instead its market might allows it to repackage and monetize rival travel platforms’ data via an expanding array of its own vertical travel search products.

One of the German consortia of travel startups with a major beef against Google is Berlin-based HomeToGo. The vacation rentals platform confirmed to TechCrunch it has filed an antitrust complaint against the company with the European Commission.

It told us it’s watched with alarm as Google introduced a new ad unit in search results which promotes a vacation rental search and booking experience — displaying property thumbnails, alongside locations and prices plotted on a map — right from insight Google’s platform.

Screengrab showing Google vacation rental ad unit, populated with content from a range of partners

Discussing the complaint, HomeToGo CEO and co-founder, Dr Patrick Andrae, told us: “Due to the monopoly Google has in horizontal search, just by having this kind of access [to the vast majority of European Internet searchers], they’re so top of the funnel that they theoretically can go into any vertical. And with the power of their monopoly they can turn on products there without doing any prior investment in it.

“Anyone else has to work a lot on SEO strategies and these kind of things to slowly go up in the ranking but Google can just snap its fingers and say, basically, tomorrow I want to have a product.”

The complaint is not just that Google has built a competing ad product in vacation rentals but — following what has become a standard colonizing playbook for seemingly any vertical area Google sees is grabbing traffic — its packaging of the competing product is so fully featured and eye-catching that it results in greater prominence for Google’s ad vs organic search results (or indeed paid ad links) where rivals may appear as plain old blue links.

“They create this giant, colorful super CTA [call-to-action], as we call it — this one-box thing — where everything is clickable and leads you into the Google product,” said Andrae. “They explain that it’s better for the user experience but no one ever said that the user wants to have a one-box there from Google. Or why shouldn’t it be a one-box from HomeToGo? Or why shouldn’t it be a one-box in the flight word from Kayak? Or in the hotel world from Trivago? So why is it just the Google product that’s colorful, nice, and showing up?”

Andrae argues that the design of the unit is intended to give the user the impression that “Google has everything there”, on its platform. So, y’know, why go looking elsewhere for a vertical search engine?

He also points out that the special unit is not available to competitors. “You cannot buy it,” he said. “So even if you would like to have this prominent kind of placement you cannot buy that as a third party company. Even if you would like to pay money for it — I’m not talking about being in the product itself, that’s another topic — but just having the same kind of advertisement, because it is what they do — they advertise their own product there for free — and this is our complaint.”

Pay with your data

In 2017, when the Commission slapped Google with the first record-breaking penalty over its search comparison service — finding it had systematically given prominent placement to its own comparison shopping service over and above rival services in organic search results — competition chief Margrethe Vestager disclosed it had also received complaints about Google’s behavior in the travel sector.

Asked about the sector’s concerns now, some three years later, a Commission spokeswoman told us it’s “monitoring the markets concerned” — but declined to comment on any specific gripes.

Here’s another complaint: GetYourGuide, a Berlin based travel startup that’s created a discovery and booking platform for travel tours and experiences, has similar concerns about Google’s designs on travel experience booking — another travel segment the tech giant is moving into via its own eye-catching ad units flogging experiences.

“They want to create experience products now directly on Google search itself, with the aim that ultimately people can book these type of things on Google,” said GetYourGuide CEO and co-founder Johannes Reck. “What Google tries to do now is they try to get [travel startups’] content and our data in order to create new competitive products on Google.”

The startup is unhappy, for example, that a ‘Things to do’ ad product Google shows in its search results doesn’t link to GetYourGuide’s own search page — which would be the equivalent and competing third party product.

“Google will not allow us to link them into our search but only into the details page so the customer sees even less of our brand,” he said. “Or in Maps, for instance, if you go to Eiffel Tower and press to book tickets you don’t see any of GetYourGuide despite us fulfilling that order.”

He also rejects Google’s claim against this sort of complaint that it’s simply ‘doing the right thing for the user’ by not linking them out to the rival platform. “We do know from our data that users convert better and spend more time on our site and have higher engagement rates when we link them into our search and then deeper down into the funnel,” he told TechCrunch. “What Google is saying is not that it serves the user — it serves Google and it serves their profits. Because the deeper down the funnel that you link, the user will either buy or they will bounce back to Google and search for the next product. If you link into searches — if you don’t verticalize as much — then the user will end up in a different ecosystem and might not bounce back to Google.”

“As a partner [of Google] you have limited choice to participate [in its ad products]. You do need to give Google that content and then Google will try to move as many of the customers to them,” Reck added. “I don’t think there ever will be a world where booking.com or Expedia or GetYourGuide will disappear — rather our brands will start to disappear.

“That is something that I think ultimately is bad for the customer and only serves Google, again, because the customer will, in the long run, have no other choice and no other visibility on how he can get to choice than to go through Google because our brands will basically be hidden behind a Google wall. That will turn Google firmly away from what their original mission was… to steer people to the most relevant content on the web… Now they are trying to be completely the opposite; they’re trying to be the Amazon or Alibaba of travel and try to keep and contain people in their ecosystem.”

During the congressional antitrust subcommittee hearing last month Pichai claimed Google faces fierce competition in travel. Again, Reck contends that’s simply not true. “In Europe more than 75% of travellers go to Google to search for travel and all those users are free,” he said. “Everyone else in the travel industry pays Google top dollar… for these queries. Which competition exactly is he referring to?”

“[Pichai] then claimed that they’re not leveraging partners’ content — that’s not accurate. If you look at Google if you want to be in the top results these days you either pay or you give them data so that they can build their own products into search.”

“This dates back ten years now when they acquired ITA software, which is the leading data provider for flights,” Reck added. “They’ve just paved their way into travel. I think their intent is very clear at this point that they have no interest in their partners — or their customers for that matter, who like the choice that’s being offered on Google.”

“What they want to morph into, basically, is to turn Google into the Amazon of travel where everyone else maybe a content provider or a fulfilment agent but the consumer has no choice but to go through Google. I think that is the key intent here. They want to limit consumer choice. And they want to monopolise the space. We don’t want that and we will fight that. And if that means we need to go to the EU Commission to protect our and the customers’ interests then we’ll do that and we’re currently reviewing that option.”

The looming harm for consumers around reduced choice could manifest in poorer customer service, which is an area vertical players tend to focus on — whereas Google, as a platform funnel, does not.

Another German travel startup — Munich-based FlixBus — was also willing to go on the record with concerns about the impact of Google’s market power on the sector, despite not being in the same position as its business is not an aggregator.

Nonetheless, FlixBus Jochen Engert, founder and CEO, called on regional lawmakers to act against what he described as Google’s “systematic abuses” of market dominance.

“We call on the politicians in Germany and the EU to now work for fair competition on the Internet. It must be forbidden that monopolistic companies like Google abuse their market power, especially in times of crisis, and prevent competition for the benefit of the customer due to their dominance,” he told us. “Google systematically abuses its dominant market position to seal off access to customers from competitors and gets away with it time and again. It is only a matter of time before other industries and business models, in addition to travel, hotel and flight bookings, are permanently threatened.

“For FlixMobility [FlixBus’ parent company] as an internationally positioned market leader with its own platform, technology and our unique content, the situation is more relaxed than for smaller start-ups or those which also aggregate content such as Google. Nevertheless, in our opinion Google should be obliged to list and market its own products in search results on an equal footing with comparable offers. Here regulation must not stand by and watch for too long, but must react before Google irretrievably controls customer access and excludes competition.”

GetYourGuide’s Reck expressed hope that German lawmakers might be able to offer more expeditious relief to the sector than the European Commission — whose competition investigations typically grind through the details for years.

“The German government is actually very alert at this point in time,” he said. “They’re currently working on a new competition legislation that they will put in place probably within the next six months. It’s already in the making — and that will also be addressed to exactly that type of behavior of global, quasi-monopolistic platforms crossing the demarcation line, moving into other fields and trying to leverage their monopoly in order to create synergies in adjacent fields and crowd out competition.”

Asked what kind of intervention he would like to see regulators make against Google, Reck suggests its business should be regulated akin to a utility — advocating for controls on data, including around the openness of data, to level the playing field.

Though he also told us he would be supportive of more radical measures, such as breaking Google up. (But, again, he says speed of intervention is of the essence.)

“If you look at all of the data that Google collects, whether that’s consumer reviews, availability from its partners, all of the content from its partners, all of the information that they have through Android, whether that’s geo-specific data, whether that is interests, whether that is contextual information, Google is training their algorithms day and night on this data, no one else can. But we all have to provide data to Google,” he said.

“That’s not a level playing field. We need to think about how we can have a more open data architecture, that obviously is compliant with our data privacy laws but where developers from anywhere can build products based on the Google platform… As a developer in travel it’s currently very hard for me to access any data from Google so I can build better products for consumers. And I think that really needs to change — Google needs to open us for us to create a more vibrant and competitive ecosystem.”

“At a national or EU level we need to have an updated legal code that allows for quick interventions,” Reck added, saying competition enforcement simply can’t carry on at the same pace as for the markets of the past. “Things are moving way too quickly for that. You need to take a completely new approach.

“As Google correctly pointed out consumer prices have fallen but falling consumer prices is the weapon in tech; offering products for free allows you to gain marketshare in order to crowd out competition, which again leaves less choice for the customer so I think we need to think about how we think about tech and platforms in new ways.”

The Commission is currently consulting on whether competition regulators need a new tool to be able to intervene more quickly in digital markets. But there’s more than a trace of irony that its adherence to process means further delay as regulators question whether they need more power to intervene in digital markets to prevent tipping, instead of acting on long-standing complaints of market abuse attached to the 800lb gorilla of Internet search — with its “special responsibility” not to trample on other markets.

Reached for comment on the travel startups’ complaints, a Google spokeswoman sent us this statement:

There are now more ways than ever to find information online, and for travel searches, people can easily choose from an array of specialized sites, like TripAdvisor, Kayak, Expedia and many more. With Google Search, we aim to provide the most helpful and relevant results possible to create the best experience for users around the world and deliver valuable traffic to travel companies.

During the pandemic, we’ve been working hard with our partners in the travel industry to help them protect their businesses and look toward recovery. We launched new tools for airlines so they can better predict consumer demand and plan their routes. For hotels, we expanded our ‘pay per stay’ program globally to shift the risk of cancellation from our partners to us. And we’ve updated our search products so consumers can make informed decisions when planning future travel, further reducing the risk of cancellation.

The company did not respond to our request for a response to claims we heard that it seeks to secure rights to partners’ content and data via contracts and service agreements.

No relief

In another sign of the growing rift between Google and its travel partners in Europe, German startups in the sector banded together to press it for better terms during the coronavirus crisis earlier this year — accusing the tech giant of being inflexible over payments for ads they’d runs before the crisis hit. This meant they were left with a huge hole in their balance sheets after making mass refunds for travellers who could no longer take their planned trip. But the gorilla wasn’t sympathetic, demanding full payment immediately.

Asked what happened after TechCrunch reported on their concerns at the end of April, Reck said Google went silent for a few weeks. But as soon as the travel market started picking up in Germany — and GetYourGuide decided it needed to start advertising on Google again — it reissued the demand for full payment.

GetYourGuide says it was left with no choice but pay, given it needed to be able to run Google ads.

Reck describes the recovery package Google offered after it made the payment as “a Google recovery package” — as it was tied to GetYourGuide spending a large amount on YouTube ads in order to get a small discount.

The offer would recoup only “fraction” of GetYourGuide’s original losses on Google ads during the peak of the COVID-19 crisis, per Reck. “YouTube obviously is not where we lost the money. We lost the money in search where we had high intent customers, Google customers that wanted to come and shop. So that to us was [another] slap in the face,” he added.

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vincentvelour · 5 years ago

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A summary of the EU’s VAT quick fixes and what they mean for your organization

12/31/2019

By Christina Gencheva, Manager, Indirect Tax Advisory

In November, we published a two-part blog post on new EU VAT rules for online commerce. Those rules were developed in accordance with a VAT Action Plan adopted by the EU in 2016 and intended to make the EU’s indirect tax system simpler, more fraud-resistant and more business-friendly.

The so-called “quick fixes” are an important part of the system of VAT changes coming into force in all EU member states on 1 January 2020.

The quick fixes focus on various cross-border transactions of goods. They apply to all businesses — both EU- and non-EU-based — that trade in the EU. If your business has cross-border activity, you should review the rules summarized here and ensure your accounting and VAT compliance software, and your audit-trail systems, are ready for the new requirements.

Overview of the EU's VAT quick fixes

There are four EU VAT quick fixes. Here they are, with their respective aims:

Quick Fix 1: Clarify the conditions to apply the EU’s cross-border VAT exemption, including the use of a mandatory VAT ID number

Quick Fix 2: Harmonise the proof of goods transport between two EU member states

Quick Fix 3: Harmonise the treatment of call-off stock arrangements

Quick Fix 4: Harmonise the treatment of chain transactions

The four fixes fall into three categories of VAT cross-border supplies in the EU. Here are those categories, with the related fixes and how they apply in each situation.

1. Simple EU cross-border supply: Quick Fixes 1 and 2 apply

This situation involves simple business-to-business (B2B) EU cross-border transactions of goods (also called intra-Community supply). A supplier engaging in this kind of transaction can apply a zero VAT rate to its supply in the dispatch member state. The customer must charge and account for VAT due in the destination member state.

We can use as an example a shipment of goods from Germany to France. Under certain conditions, the German supplier will not need to charge German VAT on its supply. Instead, it can apply a zero VAT rate and transfer the VAT liability to the French business (i.e. the customer). The customer must self-account for the French VAT due on the acquisition of goods from the German supplier. The customer can offset the VAT due with a corresponding amount of VAT claimed as a cost.

How Quick Fix 1 applies and what to consider. At present — that is, before the implementation of the quick fixes on 1 January 2020 — a supplier should obtain a valid EU-issued VAT number from its business customer in order to benefit from the application of the zero VAT rate. However, based on EU case law, a supplier may still apply the zero VAT rate even if it has failed to include the customer’s VAT number on the invoice. Following the implementation of Quick Fix 1, unless the supplier shows the valid VAT number of its customer on the sales invoice, the supplier will no longer be able to apply the zero rate. In addition, the supplier must include its intra-Community supplies in the EU sales lists (i.e. recapitulative statements) in order to benefit from the zero-rate provisions.

How Quick Fix 2 applies and what to consider. In order to apply the zero VAT rate, the supplier must obtain and retain evidence of the physical movement of goods from one EU member state to another. Currently, there are various country-specific requirements regarding the type of documents that may serve as a proof.

Quick Fix 2 introduces a new, harmonised approach across the EU that will require at least two separate pieces of documentary evidence that are non-contradictory and issued by two different, independent parties. The new rules list a number of acceptable documents, such as a CMR note, bill of lading, airfreight invoice of the goods carrier, and proof of payment for dispatch or transport.

2. Call-off stock and EU cross-border supply: Quick Fix 3 applies

The call-off stock VAT regime essentially refers to the transfer of goods from one EU member state to another in order to make subsequent supplies in the country of destination where the customer is known in advance. On arrival, the goods are placed in a warehouse or other premises to be drawn down (or “called off”) when the customer requires them. Currently, EU VAT rules require that the supplier registers in the member state of destination, unless the particular member state has adopted a simplification regime. It should be emphasized that the conditions and procedures that now apply vary from one member state to another.

How Quick Fix 3 applies and what to consider. With the implementation of Quick Fix 3 in January 2020, the supplier will no longer need to register for VAT in the destination member state, if they meet certain conditions. Under those conditions, the supplier can treat the transaction as a direct intra-Community supply from the moment the customer removes the goods from the warehouse. These conditions include: a time limit for removal of up to a year; documentary proof consisting of a register with specific details; and reporting requirements (such as including the goods in the EU sales lists). If these conditions are not met, the quick fix will not apply and the supplier will still need to register in the destination member state.

3. Chain transactions and EU cross-border supply: Quick Fix 4 applies

This change affects EU cross-border supplies of goods within chain transactions. A chain transaction involves multiple transfers of ownership over goods, accompanied by a single cross-border movement of those goods. In such cases, the EU cross-border movement must be ascribed to one of the supplies in the chain. Only this supply can benefit from the zero-rated regime of the intra-Community supply.

How Quick Fix 4 applies and what to consider. Quick Fix 4 provides clarity around how to ascribe the cross-border movement of goods to one of the supplies in a chain transaction. In such cases, the movement of goods should be ascribed to the supply made to the party that arranges for the actual transport of the goods. This is typically the first transaction in a chain — for example, the A-B supply in an A-B-C-D chain transaction. There are, however, exceptions.

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The 2020 Health Populi TrendCast – HealthConsuming, TechLash, and Public Health Goes Private

“Having 20/20 vision does not necessarily mean you have perfect vision. 20/20 vision only indicates the sharpness or clarity of vision at a distance,” according to the American Optometric Association.

An important vision skill, the AOA tells us, is “peripheral awareness or side vision” which contributes to overall visual acuity.

So it is with scenario planning in health care, a key work-flow this time of the year for me with my clients spanning the health/care ecosystem from providers to payors to Big Food, electronics and tech, and financial services. In the fourth quarter each year, I’m typically occupied with scenario planning, “thinking the unthinkable” as Herman Kahn of RAND, a godfather of the method (and no relation to me) described the process.

Here are the key factors we’re incorporating into health ecosystem plans, filtering their import and impact by industry segment. This is my gift to Health Populi readers, asking you to ponder how these driving forces shaping health consumers could shake up your businesses and work-worlds in the next year and beyond…

We’ll start with some knowns, first with Trust, Mis-Trust, and Big Tech Animus. The most important factor that underpins peoples’ engaging with their health and health care organizations is trust…and distrust in America is up, the Pew Research Group told us earlier this year in their report on Trust and Distrust in America.

A tectonic force underneath growing distrust and mis-trust is a “techlash,” coined by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in this report, finding in their words, “growing animus toward Big Tech companies.” A growing cohort of people have begun to diss and cut off social network connections and take actions to better control their personal information where they can. And this has and will have an impact on the good actors in health/care who have been building patient social networks for good – for research, for peer-to-peer support, and for patients wanting to pay-it-forward for future peers who will share their conditions.

Self-Rationing Healthcare is a New Normal in America. At least one in two people living in the U.S. has avoided medical services for nearly a decade, based on annual surveys from the Kaiser Family Foundation and others. In 2020, avoiding care will be a new normal for even more people, a fact of American health life explained in a recent survey from NRC titled, The Decade of Deferment. Until health plans adopt more artful designs incorporating behavioral economic nudges that are meaningful and relevant to individual patient-members, self-rationing care in American will continue and, ironically, lead to greater spending in the long run with people putting off necessary tests, prescription drugs, and preventive care. With the emergence of six-to-seven figure specialty drugs coming out of the Rx pipeline into commerce, we can expect growing financial toxicity as a side effect of these therapies, and evolving financial services offered to patients to pay, say, on an installment plan as Bluebird Therapeutics has offered (specifically, $1.78 mm over five years). In 1971, Céline published his book, Death on the Installment Plan; one wonders what Louis-Ferdinand would have thought about this medical billing model.

Tech Scaling a Big Embrace of Social Determinants. With greater recognition of the role of social determinants of health (SDoH), providers, payors and employers will scale solutions for nutrition and food security, transportation, and even loneliness using technology platforms and data mash-ups to determine who-needs-what, when. For example, Papa provides “Grandkids on Demand” matching college students for high-touch visits with older people in the community to address loneliness among people aging-in-place at home. For these folks, innovations in home sensor technology and Internet of Things for health and medicine will build their evidence case, with voice-tech fast-growing for these applications.

The Retail Health Landscape Will Broaden and Deepen. With consumers as patient-payors, peoples’ preferences will largely be to stay-the-heck-away from healthcare’s Pill Hill, bricks-and-mortar places with expensive parking and long waits in ante-rooms. Telehealth is becoming just a normal part of medical service delivery, fast-growing for mental and behavioral health, DTC prescriptions for women’s and men’s health (looking at the trajectory of Ro, Hims and Hers), employers’ sponsorship of telehealth visits, and niched virtual health services. While retail health in the form of grocery stores and chain pharmacy have been long at this space, with the likes of payors and health plans getting into the retail health segment. CVS continues to integrate the acquisition of Aetna into the company’s product and service portfolio. We’ll watch for Cigna, Humana and UnitedHealthcare to integrate vertically and/or horizontally to activate consumers in their health. Furthermore, we’ll see health care real estate deals using retail spaces in new ways for healthcare and self-service wellness close to people in their communities. And, I’m especially happy that the new YMCA in Louisville cut their ribbon on December 18th after more than a decade in the planning, bringing together the Y with an elementary school, a bank, a fresh food store, cardiac rehab, bolstering economic development in the Broadway section of town. This project is a model for physical, financial, and community health that will inspire other communities.

Health Politics, Policy and the President. The biggest known-unknown for 2020 is politics on the macro/national U.S. level, and then the tighter lens on health politics and health policy. We were fairly certain in last year’s Health Populi TrendCast that prescription drug pricing would get dealt with – after all, as Donald Trump was unpacking his Oval Office desktop bric-a-brac, TIME magazine’s Person of the Year told the magazine, ““I’m going to bring down drug prices,” further damning the industry by saying that, “pharma is getting away with murder” based on the pricing of medicines. The House passed its prescription drug bill earlier this month, named the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act, including provisions for the Federal government to negotiate prices with Medicare, use reference pricing for drugs based on other nations, limit out-of-pocket costs for Medicare enrollees, and prevent dramatic drug price hikes. This legislation passed with universal votes from Democrats plus two Republicans. However, inside the White House, broader health policy harmony is compromised by a quite-public arm-wrestle between Alex Azar, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, vis-à-vis CMS Administrator Seema Verma.

So at a Federal level, the two most key leaders for health policy aren’t in harmony as we start the new year. This is why in PwC’s forecast for 2020, they expect that “regulation will trump policy.” I agree.

The biggest wild card for 2020 in health/care will be a privacy breach impacting one of the Big Tech companies. Will this result in a mass call for privacy regulation that goes beyond the fragmented approach we currently “enjoy” in the U.S. which prevents Americans from full-on health citizenship?

Will Big Tech get caught out on this? We’re monitoring EU regulators who have been pretty tough on Big Tech in Europe with respect to the GDPR and growing concern for tech companies’ access to data. The NHS in England has been criticized for its handling of patient data in concert with Google’s Deep Mind. California’s privacy legislation, the CCPA, goes live on 1 January 2020. Will this inspire other states to promulgate similar, tough privacy laws protecting their states’ residents?

On a personal note…I end 2019 with a lot of blessings in my life – love of family and friends, personal health, a job for which I’m so grateful and gratified, and the sale of our family home now living in a downsized, “Marie Kondo’d” streamlined lifestyle.

I am currently inspired for 2020 pondering two recent JAMA essays, “Health: Flourishing” and “Health as a way of doing business.”

In the former, I quote: A patient care not only about physical health and test results “within normal limits” but also more broadly about being happy, having meaning and purpose, being “a good person,” and having fulfilling relationships.

From the latter, note that, “In short, global dynamics such as market forces, rising societal expectations, and innovative long-term strategies are pushing companies to consider social effects, including health, as a way of doing business. Such efforts are in their early stages, however, and many remain skeptical that business, historically blamed for a range of health problems, can ever contribute to solutions. Only further global debate, innovation, and evaluation can determine how the private sector can best improve public well-being and offer new directions for the future of population health.”

In 2020, I expect a trend we saw emerge in 2019 continue in this new year: that “public health” functions will grow in the private sector as the public sector continues to be challenged by political divisions, divisiveness, and incivility.

I wish you all a joyous and blessed holiday season, and healthy, peaceful and inspired 2020…with clear vision, loving hearts, and plenty of laughter-for-health.

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