GOOG - Alphabet Inc.
| Previous Close | 1,303.05 |
| Open | 1,301.48 |
| Bid | 1,301.36 x 1100 |
| Ask | 1,305.45 x 1000 |
| Day's Range | 1,296.29 - 1,302.64 |
| 52 Week Range | 970.11 - 1,335.53 |
| Volume | 47,008 |
| Avg. Volume | 1,280,155 |
| Market Cap | 894.114B |
| Beta (3Y Monthly) | 1.01 |
| PE Ratio (TTM) | 27.83 |
| EPS (TTM) | 46.60 |
| Earnings Date | N/A |
| Forward Dividend & Yield | N/A (N/A) |
| Ex-Dividend Date | N/A |
| 1y Target Est | 1,487.52 |
- Quartz
Loon’s autonomous balloons are bringing the internet to rural Peru
Solar-powered balloons doubling as cell towers could soon address the digital divide in rural Peru. Loon, the Alphabet subsidiary that uses stratospheric balloons to provide mobile internet to remote regions, announced today (Nov. 20) that it has signed a commercial deal to provide service to parts of the Amazon rainforest in Peru. It won’t be the first time Loon’s balloons make their ascent above Peru.
- Bloomberg
Inside Apple’s iPhone Software Shakeup After Buggy iOS 13 Debut
(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. is overhauling how it tests software after a swarm of bugs marred the latest iPhone and iPad operating systems, according to people familiar with the shift.Software chief Craig Federighi and lieutenants including Stacey Lysik announced the changes at a recent internal “kickoff” meeting with the company’s software developers. The new approach calls for Apple's development teams to ensure that test versions, known as “daily builds,” of future software updates disable unfinished or buggy features by default. Testers will then have the option to selectively enable those features, via a new internal process and settings menu dubbed Flags, allowing them to isolate the impact of each individual addition on the system.When the company’s iOS 13 was released alongside the iPhone 11 in September, iPhone owners and app developers were confronted with a litany of software glitches. Apps crashed or launched slowly. Cellular signal was inconsistent. There were user interface errors in apps like Messages, system-wide search issues and problems loading emails. Some new features, such as sharing file folders over iCloud and streaming music to multiple sets of AirPods, were either delayed or are still missing. This amounted to one of the most troubled and unpolished operating system updates in Apple’s history.“iOS 13 continues to destroy my morale,” Marco Arment, a well known developer, wrote on Twitter. “Same,” replied Jason Marr, co-creator of grocery list app AnyList. “Apple's really shown a lack of respect for both its developers and its customers with iOS 13.” The issues show how complex iPhones have become and how easily users can be disappointed by a company known for the smooth integration of hardware and software. Annual software updates timed for release with the latest iPhones are a critical way for Apple to add new capabilities and keep users from defecting to archrival Android. Refreshed operating systems also give developers more tools for app creation, catalyzing more revenue for Apple from its App Store. Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller declined to comment.The new development process will help early internal iOS versions to be more usable, or “livable,” in Apple parlance. Prior to iOS 14’s development, some teams would add features every day that weren’t fully tested, while other teams would contribute changes weekly. “Daily builds were like a recipe with lots of cooks adding ingredients,” a person with knowledge of the process said. Test software got so crammed with changes at different stages of development that the devices often became difficult to use. Because of this, some “testers would go days without a livable build, so they wouldn’t really have a handle on what’s working and not working,” the person said. This defeated the main goal of the testing process as Apple engineers struggled to check how the operating system was reacting to many of the new features, leading to some of iOS 13’s problems.Apple measures and ranks the quality of its software using a scale of 1 to 100 that’s based on what’s known internally as a “white glove” test. Buggy releases might get a score in the low 60s whereas more stable software would be above 80. iOS 13 scored lower on that scale than the more polished iOS 12 that preceded it. Apple teams also assign green, yellow and red color codes to features to indicate their quality during development. A priority scale of 0 through 5, with 0 being a critical issue and 5 being minor, is used to determine the gravity of individual bugs.The new strategy is already being applied to the development of iOS 14, codenamed “Azul” internally, ahead of its debut next year. Apple has also considered delaying some iOS 14 features until 2021 — in an update called “Azul +1” internally that will likely become known as iOS 15 externally — to give the company more time to focus on performance. Still, iOS 14 is expected to rival iOS 13 in the breadth of its new capabilities, the people familiar with Apple’s plans said.The testing shift will apply to all of Apple’s operating systems, including iPadOS, watchOS, macOS and tvOS. The latest Mac computer operating system, macOS Catalina, has also manifested bugs such as incompatibility with many apps and missing messages in Mail. Some HomePod speakers, which run an iOS-based operating system, stopped working after a recent iOS 13 update, leading Apple to temporarily pull the upgrade. The latest Apple Watch and Apple TV updates, on the other hand, have gone more smoothly. Apple executives hope that the overhauled testing approach will improve the quality of the company’s software over the long term. But this isn’t the first time that Apple engineers have heard this from management.Last year, Apple delayed several iOS 12 features — including redesigns for CarPlay and the iPad home screen — specifically so it could focus on reliability and performance. At an all-hands meeting in January 2018, Federighi said the company had prioritized new features too much and should return to giving consumers the quality and stability that they wanted first.Apple then established so-called Tiger Teams to address performance issues in specific parts of iOS. The company reassigned engineers from across the software division to focus on tasks such as speeding up app launch times, improving network connectivity and boosting battery life. When iOS 12 came out in the fall of 2018, it was a stable release that required just two updates in the first two months.That success didn’t carry over to this year. The initial version of iOS 13 was so buggy that Apple has had to rush out several patches. In the first two months of iOS 13, there have been eight updates, the most since 2012 when Federighi took over Apple’s iOS software engineering group. The company is currently testing another new version, iOS 13.3, and there’s already a follow-up in the works for the spring.About a month before Apple’s 2019 Worldwide Developers Conference in June, the company’s software engineers started to realize that iOS 13, then known internally as “Yukon,” wasn’t performing as well as previous versions. Some people who worked on the project said development was a “mess.”By August, realizing that the initial iOS 13.0 set to ship with new iPhones a few weeks later wouldn’t hit quality standards, Apple engineers decided to mostly abandon that work and focus on improving iOS 13.1, the first update. Apple privately considered iOS 13.1 the “actual public release” with a quality level matching iOS 12. The company expected only die-hard Apple fans to load iOS 13.0 onto their phones.The timing of the iOS 13.1 update was moved up by a week to Sept. 24, compressing the time that iOS 13.0 was Apple’s flagship OS release. New iPhones are so tightly integrated with Apple software that it would have been technically impossible to launch the iPhone 11 with iOS 12, and since 13.1 wasn’t ready in time, Apple’s only choice was to ship with 13.0 and update everyone to 13.1 as quickly as it could.While the iOS 13 issues did upset iPhone owners, they still updated fairly quickly. As of mid-October, half of all Apple device users were running a version of iOS 13, according to Apple. That upgrade pace is still far ahead of Google’s Android.Once iOS 13.1 was released, Apple’s software engineering division pivoted to iOS 13.2 with a quality goal of being better than iOS 12. This update has had fewer complaints than its predecessors in the iOS 13 family but did introduce a short-lived bug around apps closing in the background when they shouldn’t.“iOS 13 has felt like a super-messy release, something we haven't seen this bad since iOS 8 or so,” Steve Troughton-Smith, a veteran developer of Apple apps, wrote on Twitter.To contact the author of this story: Mark Gurman in Los Angeles at mgurman1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Alistair Barr at abarr18@bloomberg.net, Vlad SavovFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Investopedia
Tech Stocks Racing Toward Best Gains in Decade Despite Red Flags
Tech stocks are leading the market by a wide margin in 2019, but Q3 2019 profit declines and high valuations are causes for concern.
- Bloomberg
Sony in Talks to Buy Stake in Ambani’s TV Network
(Bloomberg) -- Sony Corp. is in talks to acquire a stake in the Indian television network controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, as the Japanese giant seeks to tap booming demand for content in the South Asian nation, according to people familiar with the matter.The Tokyo-based company is currently conducting due diligence on Ambani’s Network18 Media & Investments Ltd. before any possible offer, the people said, asking not to be named as the information is not public. Sony is considering several potential deal structures, including a bid for the company or a merger of its own Indian business with Network18’s entertainment channels, one of the people said.Talks are at a preliminary stage and may not result in a transaction, the people said. Shares of Network18 surged as much as 19% in Mumbai on Thursday, while unit TV18 Broadcast Ltd. jumped 9.7%.While a successful deal may help Sony bolster its local offerings and take on upstart rivals such as Netflix Inc., it will give Ambani access to international content. The Indian tycoon’s wireless carrier, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., has spent almost $50 billion in the past few years on its network to disrupt India’s telecommunications industry and has been luring users by offering local and overseas programming.“Our company evaluates various opportunities on an ongoing basis,” a spokesman for Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd., said in an email, declining to comment further. Representatives for Sony in India and Japan didn’t immediately respond to requests for comments.The talks come at a time when competition is heating up for paying viewers in a potentially lucrative market with more than half a billion smartphone users. Streaming companies such as Netflix to Amazon.com Inc. Prime are increasingly offering programs created locally to lure subscribers. Ambani’s Jio, while having the technology platform, is limited by the paucity of content it can stream, making such a deal with Sony crucial.“India is a massive OTT market, and any international OTT play will need to bolster its local strategy,” said Utkarsh Sinha, managing director at Bexley Advisors, a boutique firm in Mumbai, referring to over-the-top or streaming media services. “More partnerships or strategic alliances like this are likely in the next year or so.”Inside the Most Watched YouTube Channel in the WorldReliance Industries, the oil-to-petrochemicals conglomerate, unveiled plans last month to set up a digital-services holding company to fulfill the mogul’s ambitions for an e-commerce platform aimed at taking on the likes of Amazon.com and Walmart Inc.’s Flipkart Online Services Pvt.Sony operates in the South Asian country through Sony Pictures Networks India, which has a bouquet of channels including Sony Entertainment Television, reaching over 700 million viewers in India.TV18 Broadcast owns and operates 56 channels in India spanning news and entertainment. It also caters to the global Indian diaspora through 16 international channels.(Updates with analyst’s comment in seventh paragraph)To contact the reporters on this story: Baiju Kalesh in Mumbai at bkalesh@bloomberg.net;Anto Antony in Mumbai at aantony1@bloomberg.net;P R Sanjai in Mumbai at psanjai@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Fion Li at fli59@bloomberg.net, ;Sam Nagarajan at samnagarajan@bloomberg.net, Arijit GhoshFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Benzinga
Google Restricts Political Advertising On Its Platform
The Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL)(NASDAQ: GOOG) subsidiary will limit the audience targeting for election ads to age, gender, and zip code, and not to political preference or previous public voting data Scott Spencer, the Vice President for Product Management at Google Ads said in a blog post on Wednesday. The advertisers can still do “contextual targeting” on the platform, Spencer said.
- Reuters
Factbox: How social media services handle political ads
Online platforms including Facebook and Alphabet Inc's Google face growing pressure to stop carrying political ads that contain false or misleading claims ahead of the U.S. presidential election. Facebook exempts politicians from its third-party fact-checking program, allowing them to run ads with false claims.
- MarketWatch
Amnesty International blasts Facebook, Google as human rights abusers
It says the two most dominant internet corporations should be compelled to abandon what it calls their surveillance-based business model, saying it is “predicated on human rights abuse.”
- MarketWatch
Google to limit targeting of political ads
Google is making it harder for political advertisers to target specific types of people. The company said that as of January, advertisers will only be able to target U.S. political ads based on broad categories such as gender, age and postal code. Currently, ads can be tailored for more specific groups — for instance, using information gleaned from public voter logs, such as political affiliation.
- Financial Times
Google curbs targeted political advertising in run-up to UK poll
Google has said that political advertisers will no longer be able to narrowly target users through their characteristics such as interests or email addresses, in a shake-up to its policies just weeks before the UK’s general election. Alphabet’s search platform said in a blog post on Wednesday that political advertisers will now only be able to target audiences by age, gender and general location at the postcode level. Google said it would introduce the rules in the UK within a week, ahead of the country’s general election on December 12.
- Bloomberg
Google, Facebook at Center of Rising Political-Ad Tensions
(Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc. and Google were drawn into an escalating battle of wills Wednesday over the use of political advertising on social media.Trump campaign officials pressured Facebook to maintain its permissive political advertising rules, while Alphabet Inc.’s Google announced an overhaul of how campaigns may target their messages across the world’s largest search engine.The ability of candidates to show different messages to people based on their physical location, age, or other characteristic, referred to as micro-targeting, has become an increasing focus of the broader debate about political advertising online. Last month, Twitter Inc. said it will ban political ads on its platform altogether, and is restricting targeting for other ads related to some politically charged issues, like climate change.Google on Wednesday said it will ban candidates from targeting election ads based on people’s political affiliation, though the messages can be tailored based on gender, age and geography. The company also is eliminating a feature called Customer Match for political advertisers. The tool lets marketers upload their own lists of email addresses or phone numbers, and target ads specifically at those people.Facebook, the largest platform for online political advertising, has been under pressure to follow suit. Several prominent Democrats have attacked the company for refusing to fact-check political ads. Facebook has rebuffed those calls, saying it doesn’t want to police political speech. In October, hundreds of Facebook employees sent a letter to the company’s executives calling for new limits on ad targeting for political campaigns. The letter became public after it was obtained by the New York Times.Carolyn Everson, a Facebook vice president, said Monday at a Recode conference that the social-media company wasn’t considering changes to its targeted advertising options for political ads. Later that day, however, she told Axios, the news website, that Facebook hadn’t ruled out any specific changes, raising the prospect the company may change course and limit targeting in some way.The Trump campaign reacted directly to Everson’s comments. It sees Facebook as an essential tool for speaking directly to voters, instead of relying on critical media outlets that the president says treat him unfairly.Gary Coby, the Trump campaign’s digital director, argued on Twitter Wednesday that stopping campaigns from pairing in-house data with Facebook’s advertising tools would suppress voter engagement. “This would unevenly hurt the little guy, smaller voices, & issues the public is not aware of OR news is NOT covering,” Coby tweeted, saying it was very “dangerous” and a “huge blow to speech.”Tim Cameron, chief executive officer at FlexPoint Media, a Republican media strategy firm, said the Trump campaign is likely concerned that new restrictions could result in Facebook deciding to begin fact-checking political ads. “I think the Trump campaign is looking down the road beyond this decision and are actually more afraid of subsequent decisions that Facebook may make,” he said.Facebook hasn’t announced any changes to its policies. “For over a year, we’ve provided unprecedented transparency into all U.S. federal and state campaigns -- and we prohibit voter suppression in all ads,” a company spokesman said. “As we’ve said, we are looking at different ways we might refine our approach to political ads.”During the 2016 election, the Trump campaign ran 5.9 million different versions of ads, constantly testing them against different groups to increase engagement, according to internal Facebook documents reviewed by Bloomberg in 2018. It spent $44 million on Facebook in the six months before the 2016 election. So far in 2019, the Trump campaign has spent more than $15 million in ads, and is the largest political spender on the platform, according to Facebook’s political ad library.Before Google announced its changes, the company touted its ability to target voters based on political affiliations, like “right-leaning,” as a major selling point. “They were all heartily selling us this for years as the coolest thing since sliced bread,” said Will Ritter, the founder of Poolhouse, a political advertising firm.Google’s new restrictions mean campaigns may have to spend more after losing the ability to hit key voters, Ritter added. For instance, a candidate could identify frequent Republican voters in Democratic-heavy areas of the country, and reach them with ads on search and YouTube. Now they can’t.“It’s just going to increase costs because there’s going to be so much waste,” Ritter said.Irene Knapp, a former Google employee who now works for Tech Inquiry, a political advocacy group focused on ethical issues related to technology, said the ability to target makes online advertising particularly susceptible to abuse. Campaigns can test messages on certain audiences, find which ones resonate, then use tools provided by Facebook or Google to target those people with new ads while also reaching people with similar characteristics. Misleading messaging can be directed at specific audiences without drawing widespread attention.“You can be seeing one message that seems fine, and your next-door neighbor can be seeing some misinformation that is cleverly targeted to produce a very different response or action,” Knapp said.Knapp said Google’s Customer Match tool could be used to target racial groups, or engage in other behavior that violates the policies of the platforms. The equivalent tool on Facebook, “Custom Audiences,” still exists.(Updates with details on Google rules in the fourth paragraph.)\--With assistance from Alistair Barr.To contact the reporters on this story: Eric Newcomer in San Francisco at enewcomer@bloomberg.net;Kurt Wagner in San Francisco at kwagner71@bloomberg.net;Mark Bergen in San Francisco at mbergen10@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Andrew PollackFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Reuters
Google to let sites block personalized ads under California privacy law
Websites and apps using Google's advertising tools will be able to block personalized ads to internet users in California and elsewhere as part of the Alphabet Inc unit's effort to help them comply with the state's new privacy law, it told clients this week. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which goes into effect on Jan. 1, requires large businesses to let consumers opt out of the sale of their personal data. Lobbying by internet companies earlier this year failed to have the law exclude personalized ads, leaving the most popular and lucrative online ads in jeopardy.
- Reuters
UPDATE 4-Google bars elections ads from using political leanings, voter data
Alphabet Inc's Google will stop giving advertisers the ability to target election ads using data such as public voter records and general political affiliations, the company said in a blog post on Wednesday. The move coincides with pressure on social media platforms over their handling of political advertising ahead of the U.S. presidential election in 2020. Google said it would limit audience targeting for election ads to age, gender and general location at a postal code level.
- Reuters
Google bars elections ads from using political leanings, voter data
The move coincides with pressure on social media platforms over their handling of political advertising ahead of the U.S. presidential election in 2020. Google said it would limit audience targeting for election ads to age, gender and general location at a postal code level. Google will enforce the new approach in the United Kingdom within a week, ahead of the Dec. 12 general election.
- Skift
Booking Holdings and Expedia in Arms Race to Deliver the Connected Trip
High-stake online travel agency competition used to merely revolve around how many tens of thousands of hotels, or homes and apartments each company added to its ranks during the previous quarter, and those milestones are still very much in play. But lately a new and somewhat more esoteric flashpoint has emerged, namely the connected trip. […]
- Reuters
U.S. lawmakers question Google about collection of health records
U.S. Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren along with fellow Senators Richard Blumenthal and Bill Cassidy wrote a letter to Alphabet's Google on Wednesday to raise questions about its access to the health records of tens of millions of Americans. Warren and Blumenthal, who are Democrats, along with Cassidy, a Republican, were focussed on a business partnership that Google formed with Ascension Health.
- Zacks
Streaming Cools Off and Gaming Warms Up
Let's review. Disney+ is killing it and the video game field is about to get more muddy. We've made some smart moves, let's predict the future.
- TheStreet.com
[video]Alphabet's Google to Impose Some Limits on Political Ads
Alphabet's Google unit said Wednesday it will impose some limits on political advertising by the beginning of 2020. The move follows Twitter's outright ban on political ads, going into effect this month.
- GuruFocus.com
Glenn Greenberg Exits Facebook, Trims Alphabet
Guru's largest sales of the 3rd quarter Continue reading...
- Quartz
Google Stadia is not the cloud gaming future we were promised
Google Stadia, the subscription-based streaming game service, launched Nov. 19, and it’s already off to a rough start. Video quality, which Stadia automatically adjusts based on your connection speed, would regularly drop down for some players to 720p, well below the 4K resolution the service is supposed to be able to handle. Stadia’s response has been to point users to its website.
- American City Business Journals
Gaming startup Bunch scores funds from Supercell, Tencent and others
Venture capital firms are typically the main contributors of funding for startups. The app company, which specializes in integrating social networking and video into smartphone games, confirmed Wednesday that it raised $3.85 million from Supercell, Tencent, Riot Games, Miniclip and Colopl Next — all key players in the mobile gaming space. The effort brings Bunch's total funding to more than $8.5 million.
- Investor's Business Daily
50 Best ESG Companies: A List Of Today's Top Stocks For Environmental, Social And Governance Values
Finding strong stocks with solid growth needn't be a tradeoff with your environmental, social and governance values. Check out these 50 Best ESG Companies.
- Business Wire
NetApp and Google Cloud Advance Strategic Partnership to Drive Innovation in the Cloud
NetApp (NTAP), the data authority for hybrid cloud, and Google Cloud (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) today announced the general availability of NetApp® Cloud Volumes Service, NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP® for Google Cloud, and support for Anthos on NetApp HCI to help organizations focus on innovation across any hybrid environments.
