Google to invest Rs 33,737 crore for 7.73% stake in Jio Platforms

The two companies will collaborate for the development of entry-level affordable 4G and 5G smartphones as well as Android-based operating systems, Ambani announced during the virtual AGM.

Reliance Industries (RIL) Chairman Mukesh Ambani on Wednesday announced a strategic partnership with Google and development of in-house 5G solutions, in a bid to win over new customers and create a platform for future growth.

Google will invest Rs 33,737 crore for 7.73 per cent stake in Jio Platforms. The two companies will collaborate for the development of entry-level affordable 4G and 5G smartphones as well as Android-based operating systems, Ambani announced during the virtual annual general meeting (AGM).

“Our investment of $4.5 billion in Jio is the first — and biggest — that we will make through this ($10 billion) fund. I am excited that our collaboration will focus on increasing access for hundreds of millions of Indians who don’t own a smartphone, while improving the mobile experience for all at the same time,” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a video message.

With the latest investment, Jio has raised Rs 1.52 trillion, selling 32.97 per cent stake to 14 investors including Facebook, private equity (PE) firms and sovereign wealth funds in the process.

While the investments from PE firms and wealth funds were made at a valuation of Rs 4.91 trillion, Google’s stake purchase values Jio at Rs 4.36 trillion.

Jio disrupted the telecom market with its ultra-cheap data plans after its launch in 2016, and is now preparing for the next level of growth. Its strategy includes acquiring 300 million 2G network users by offering them affordable phones and launching new products for connectivity and entertainment. At the AGM, RIL announced Jio Glass, a mixed reality application for office meetings and education.

Google offers not to use health data of Fitbit users in bid to win EU nod

Reuters reported last week that such a data pledge may likely help Google secure EU approval for its proposed $2.1 billion acquisition deal.

Alphabet Inc's Google has offered not to use health data of fitness tracker company Fitbit to help it target ads in an attempt to address EU antitrust concerns about its proposed $2.1 billion acquisition, the US tech company said late on Monday.

The bid, announced in November last year, would help Google take on market leader Apple and Samsung in the fitness-tracking and smart-watch market, alongside others including Huawei and Xiaomi.

"This deal is about devices, not data. We appreciate the opportunity to work with the European Commission on an approach that safeguards consumers' expectations that Fitbit device data won't be used for advertising," Google said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

Reuters reported last week that such a data pledge may likely help Google secure EU approval for the deal.

With just 3% of the global wearables market as of the first quarter of 2020, Fitbit is far behind Apple's 29.3% share and also trails Xiaomi, Samsung and Huawei, according to data from market research firm International Data Corp.

While the deal has drawn heavy criticism from privacy advocates on both sides of the Atlantic, on concerns that Google may use Fitbit's trove of health data to boost its dominance in online advertising and search, privacy issues do not fall under competition rules.

The European Commission is expected to seek feedback from rivals and users before deciding whether to approve the deal, demand more concessions or open a four-month-long investigation if it has serious concerns.

Google says HR chief stepping down as company faces worker activism

Google added more than 70,000 employees during Eileen Naughton's time as head of human resources.

Google has confirmed that head of human resources Eileen Naughton was stepping away from her job as "vice president of people operations" at the internet company.

"We're grateful to Eileen for all she's done and look forward to her next chapter at Google," Sundar Pichai, the head of Google and its parent company Alphabet, said in a statement on Monday. Google added more than 70,000 employees during Naughton's time as head of human resources, according to Pichai.

Naughton said that she would work with Pichai and chief financial officer Ruth Porat to find a successor.

"My husband and I have decided—after six years on the road, first in London and now San Francisco—to return home to New York to be closer to our family," Naughton said. In recent years, the Google workplace has been disrupted by employee opposition to top-level decisions ranging from forging contracts with the US military to tailoring a version of the search engine for China.

Google in November fired four employees on the grounds they had violated data security policies, but the tech titan was accused of persecuting them for trying to unionise staff.

The dismissals of the quartet—dubbed the "Thanksgiving Four" on social media—deepened staff-management tensions at a company once seen as a paradigm of Silicon Valley freedoms but now embroiled in numerous controversies. One of the workers fired was connected to a petition condemning Google for working with the US customs and border patrol agency, which has been involved in President Donald Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration.

Google employees have also openly opposed the company pursuing contracts to put its technology to work for the US military. In 2018, Google employees poured out of premises at its Mountain View campus and around the world to protest the company's handling of sexual misconduct allegations.

As Sundar Pichai becomes Alphabet chief, founders get $2-bn retirement gift

The Google co-founders added more than $1 billion each to their net worth as the firm's shares rose 1.9 per cent in New York.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin just got a $2.3 billion retirement gift from investors.
The Google co-founders, who announced Tuesday they were stepping down from day-to-day management of parent Alphabet Inc, added more than $1 billion each to their net worth as the firm’s shares rose 1.9 per cent in New York.

They each own about 6 per cent of the internet giant and still control Alphabet through special voting shares.

The gains come as investors welcome Sundar Pichai’s elevation to chief executive officer of Alphabet, replacing Page in the role. It means the three most valuable US tech firms no longer have a founder at the helm.

Like Apple Inc’s Tim Cook and Microsoft Corp.’s Satya Nadella, Pichai is a long-time lieutenant who steadily worked his way up the corporate ladder. More than 15 years after he joined the Mountain View-based company he’s replacing Page in the top job. Brin is stepping down as president, leaving Pichai as undisputed leader.

The shift reflects Google’s accession into corporate middle age. Started in a California garage by Brin and Page in 1998, the firm had revenue of $137 billion in 2018 and today boasts a market value of $893 billion. That’s behind only Apple and Microsoft on the S&P 500 Index.

Founder free

Other Silicon Valley giants are also founder free. Larry Ellison’s Oracle Corp. is headed by Safra Catz, though Ellison is still involved as the company’s chairman. Some younger companies -- such as Uber Technologies Inc. and We Co. -- have turned to outsiders amid turmoil

There are some notable exceptions. Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are still at the helm of Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook Inc. respectively, which are the fourth- and fifth-largest US companies by market value.

Such a transition has proved to be a boon for Apple and Microsoft. The iPhone maker’s shares have risen by more than 400 per cent since Cook took the helm in August 2011 and Microsoft has quadrupled on Nadella’s watch.

Business Standard

How Google's rocking ad revenue is keeping its troubles under wraps

The two best business models the internet has ever seen are still humming

In case you were worried, the advertising titans of the internet are doing just fine.
Facebook Inc. showed that last week by reporting a 30 percent jump in fourth-quarter revenue from a year earlier. It was the lowest growth rate in the company’s short history, and the company has many challenges to keep growing, but it turns out that Facebook keeps making bank because its ads work and the company is willing to plaster them all over its internet hangouts.

The same appears true for Google parent company Alphabet Inc. For the sixth consecutive quarter, the company’s advertising sales rose at least 20 percent, the company said Monday. It barely brushed that mark in the fourth quarter, but that’s a hard pace to keep up for a company with more than $100 billion in sales. Amazon does it, too, albeit with a fraction of Alphabet’s profits.

The list of worries for Google and Facebook is long. Growth is slowing and costs are climbing. The global market for advertising appears to be finite, and Google and Facebook already grab a large share of spending. Competition is fierce for web surfers at home and abroad.

But shut all that out, and the two best business models the internet has ever seen are still humming.
We're Good

One stunning number is telling about Google’s effectiveness as a business. The company said that in the fourth quarter, the number of clicks on advertisements on Google’s websites increased 66 percent from a year earlier. That means Google places many more commercial messages in more places, people are surfing Google hangouts more, and the ads are generating results for the companies that buy them.

The downside is average ad prices are shrinking as Google serves more commercial messages through computerized placements and on YouTube — both of which tend to have lower prices than Google’s traditional desktop PC web search messages. Ad prices dipped 29 percent on Google websites in the quarter.

And Google is spending a fortune. Operating costs climbed a bit faster than revenue, and Alphabet devoted an eye-popping $25 billion to capital expenditures in the last year. 1 The number of new employees — excluding contractors and the like — jumped 23 percent in a year to nearly 100,000. (The company said its growth in capital spending and hiring will moderate this year.) Stock watchers appeared to focus on the negative for Google. Shares dipped about 3 percent in after-market trading on Monday.

Business Standard

Sexual harassment row: Google India employees join protest in solidarity

Some of the demands include commitment to end pay and opportunity inequality.

Around 150 employees of Google India walked out of their offices in solidarity with the protest over the company's treatment of women. The protest saw participation from three Indian offices — Mumbai, Hyderabad and Gurugram.

According to senior executives at Google, the protesting employees had discussions about pay parity, sexual harassment at workplace, and the #MeToo movement. Google confirmed that a walkout happened at offices in India.

ALSO READ: Google workers stage global walk out on its handling of sexual harassment

“Yesterday (on Wednesday), we let Googlers know that we are aware of the activities planned for Thursday and that employees will have the support they need if they wish to participate. Employees have raised constructive ideas for how we can improve our policies and our processes.

We are taking in all their feedback so we can turn these ideas into action,” Sundar Pichai, CEO Google said in a statement.

Some of the demands include commitment to end pay and opportunity inequality, publicly disclosed sexual harassment transparency report as well as a clear, uniform, globally inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct safely and anonymously.

Business Standard

Facebook and Google chase a new trillion-dollar payments market in India

India saw a brief spurt in digital payments two years ago when Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government banned most of the nation's existing bank notes.

Surendrasingh Sucharia always has a few thousand rupees in his pocket, but can’t recall the last time he used cash. The 29-year-old product manager in Bangalore uses a string of smartphone apps including ones from Google and India’s Paytm to pay for everything from $40 bags of groceries to street food that costs pennies.

A bewildering array of digital payment businesses from global names like Facebook Inc.’s WhatsApp to Google are in a slugfest to win Indian users. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is acquiring a stake in the company behind payments leader Paytm.

Meanwhile, a string of other big-name players are also expanding in the country’s digital payments market including its banks, its postal service, and its richest man, Mukesh Ambani.

India saw a brief spurt in digital payments two years ago when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned most of the nation’s existing bank notes, although the spike petered out as new bills were printed. But over the past year, a string of new apps have made payments increasingly easy, and the discounts and cash bonuses they offer are proving irresistible to young, urban users like Sucharia.

Credit Suisse Group AG now estimates that the Indian digital payments market will touch $1 trillion by 2023 from about $200 billion currently. Cash still accounts for 70 per cent of all Indian transactions by value, according to Credit Suisse, and neighboring China is far more advanced with a mobile payments market worth more than $5 trillion.

But local players have a stranglehold on China’s digital payments space. Modi’s administration, meanwhile, has welcomed foreign firms in order to expand financial services across India.

“This kind of a promising market exists nowhere else,” said Vivek Belgavi, a Mumbai-based partner at consultancy PwC India with an expertise in financial technology.'

Still, the Indian payments market remains a chaotic field where the rules are hazy on what players can offer. And users often switch between apps. Rahul Matthan, a Bangalore-based lawyer, says he’s used every one of the leading payment apps, although he now confines most of his transactions to BHIM, Paytm and WhatsApp payments.

Experts like Vinayak HV, Singapore-based senior partner at McKinsey & Co., say profitability isn’t close on the horizon for the industry. While it’s too early to call the game, here are a few players with a shot at winning:...Read More

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai: Google not close to launch search engine in China

However, Pichai did hint at doing more in the country which is infamous for its restrictive internet policies.

Putting to rest the rumours of Google rolling out a customised version of its popular search engine service in China, CEO Sundar Pichai clarified that the company is not close to launching a search product.

However, Pichai did hint at doing more in the country which is infamous for its restrictive internet policies.

Pichai's comments follow reports about Google building a custom-version of its search engine to abide by the Chinese rules and deliver censored search results, Cnet reported.

According to the report, the secretive project, codenamed Dragonfly, led to a protest by 1,000 Google employees who objected to the company's efforts at supporting the restrictive, state-sponsored censorship.

Although Pichai has dismissed reports about not being 'close to' launching the search engine, there have been confirmed reports about Google actually working on a censored version.

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