Category Archives: Alphabet

AI, Alphabet, Artificial Intelligence, Assistants, Episodes, Google, Google Assistant, Google Home, Hardware, Pixel

Episode 65 – Google Assistant, Pixel, and Home

This week’s episode dispenses with our usual format and focuses exclusively on Google’s event. We kick off the episode with a discussion about Google’s AI message and the Google Assistant, and the role of AI in differentiation, both for Google services and the new hardware. We then discuss the Pixel phones, the positioning, the strategy, and the devices themselves. Lastly, we talk about Google Home and its entry into a market currently dominated by Amazon, and its prospects there.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Apple Watch, Episodes, Google, Instagram, iOS 10, iPhone, iPhone 7, Samsung, Verily, WatchOS

Episode 62 – Verily Overview, iPhone Reviews Review

Our News Roundup this week covers the ongoing fallout from the Samsung Galaxy Note7 battery problems; the story that Amazon is going to be experimenting with a 30-hour work week for some of its employees; and the expansion of comment filtering functionality to all users by Instagram. We discuss each of these topics for a few minutes and talk about the context and implications. We’ll likely do a Question of the Week next week on consumer product recalls using the Note7 recall as a jumping-off point.

Our Question of the Week this week is “What is Verily and what does it do?” This question builds on a piece Jan wrote for Techpinions Insiders contrasting Alphabet and Apple’s approaches to the healthcare space, with Verily being Alphabet’s Life Sciences subsidiary (formerly Google Life Sciences). We talk through what Verily is, who runs it, what it’s intended to accomplish, its internal projects and its partnerships with other organizations, and lastly how it’s perceived within the broader life sciences community. It’s a fascinating business and we both learned a lot from doing this segment.

Our third segment is a discussion of the reviews for the iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 2, which will be available for sale on Friday, as well as a brief discussion of iOS and watchOS 3, which were released to the general public this week.

Our Weekly Pick is a TV show recommendation from Aaron.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Earnings, Episodes, Facebook, Microsoft, Samsung, Twitter

Episode 56 – Q2 2016 Tech Company Earnings Review

We’re back after a two-week break, and this episode is exclusively devoted to a review of major tech companies earnings for Q2 2016, which were reported over the last several weeks. We take a thematic approach to the topic, focusing first on hardware companies, principally Apple and Samsung; then on the big ad-focused companies: Google, Facebook, and Twitter; and then two companies that stand somewhat apart: Microsoft and Amazon. We discuss the themes that emerged from earnings this quarter, and also some of the surprising elements in each company’s results.

Next week, we’ll be back to our usual structure, with a News Roundup, Question of the Week, and Weekly Pick.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

  • The only external link we discussed on the show was a piece in the Atlantic by Ian Bogost entitled “Facebook is not a technology company”. We discussed this right at the end of the episode.

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Alphabet, Android, Antitrust, Apple, Earnings, Episodes, EU, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Uber

Episode 43 – EU Android Antitrust Action, Tech Earnings Roundup

Our three News Roundup topics this week were:

  • China’s blocking of two Apple content services
  • Apple’s MacBook update
  • Uber’s settlement with drivers.

Our Question of the Week is “What should we make of the European Union’s antitrust action against Google?” We discuss the EU’s process for investigation these allegations, the specifics of the allegations against Google, and whether they hold water. We also talk about the parallels and differences with regard to the EU’s case against Microsoft roughly 15 years ago. And we talk about the likely outcomes of this case.

Our third topic is a review of tech earnings over the past week, focusing particularly on Alphabet, Intel, Microsoft, and Netflix. We discuss the common thread of mobile disruption overhanging several of the results, as well as Netflix’s coming price increase and its international expansion.

As ever, we wrapped up with a Weekly Pick, this week a gardening tool recommendation from Aaron.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

  • News Roundup topics:
  • Jan’s blog post about the EU’s Android Mistake, which also has links to the three relevant documents from the EU itself
  • Jan’s follow-up post focused on the relevant market definition
  • Aaron’s Weekly Pick this week was a weeding tool made by Fiskars – you can buy it on Amazon here.

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Alphabet, Earnings, Episodes, Facebook, Google, Yahoo

Episode 32 – Alphabet, Facebook, Yahoo Earnings

As usual, we kick off this episode with our News Roundup. This week, we discuss Microsoft and Amazon’s earnings briefly, including the rather counterintuitive investor reaction to each of them. Then we have a quick conversation about the positive video subscriber additions both Time Warner Cable and Comcast have reported recently, and why they shouldn’t lead us to question the cord cutting trend.

Our main topic today is Alphabet (formerly Google) and Facebook’s earnings. We discuss Alphabet’s new reporting structure and the performance of its “Other Bets” (something Jan wrote about this week on the Beyond Devices blog). We also talk about the fact that both these ad-centric businesses are investing heavily in non-ad businesses that have yet to deliver meaningful revenue, at significant cost, and why that might be. We also talk about the meaning of monthly and daily active user numbers, and the significance of each. To wrap up, we discuss Yahoo’s earnings and the state of Yahoo, as well as the challenges facing the company and its failure to reinvent itself under Marissa Mayer over the last few years.

As ever, you can find some links to related content and other information beneath the SoundCloud player embedded below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also now have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.