These marketing statistics have been divided across seven key trends, both in the infographic below and in the list that follows it, helping you zero in on your primary marketing channel of interest. On the other hand, like most modern marketers, if your campaign strategy involves multiple channels, this division should help you update your notes more clearly.

Source: 7 Trends You Must Know For a Successful Digital Marketing Campaign – Serpwatch.io

March 11, a Vice President at Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud computing behemoth, published a blog post announcing the release of its own version of Elasticsearch, a powerful open-source software search engine tool.

Elastic is a public company founded in 2012 that is currently worth over $5 billion; the vast majority of its revenue is generated by selling subscription access to Elastic’s search capabilities via the cloud. It’s based in Amsterdam and employs more than 1,200 people.

In the blog post, Adrian Cockcroft, VP of cloud architecture strategy at Amazon Web Services (AWS), explained that the company felt forced to take action because Elastic was “changing the rules” on how its software code could be shared. Those changes, made in the run-up to Elastic’s 2018 IPO, started mixing intellectual property into Elastic’s overall line of software products.

Open-source software is defined as code that can be freely shared and modified by anyone. But now Elastic was telling customers that certain elements in its product mix could not be accessed without payment and that the code could not be freely shared.

Elastic did not explain its strategic shift at the time. But industry observers interpreted the changes as a response to increasing competition from AWS, which had incorporated Elasticsearch’s code and search functionality into its own suite of computing services.

Elastic isn’t the only open source cloud tool company currently looking over its shoulder at AWS. In 2018 alone, at least eight firms have made similar “rule changes” designed to ward off what they see as unfair competition from a company intent on cannibalizing their services.

[…]

Open source software has been one of the biggest success stories of the software industry. In 2018 alone, Microsoft’s purchase of the open source software development platform GitHub for $7.5 billion, Salesforce’s purchase of the open source company Mulesoft for $6.5 billion, and IBM’s blockbuster $34 billion purchase of the Linux vendor Red Hat proved that open source is a crucial part of the larger software industry. And there is growing acceptance that the collaborative model of developing open source software is a winning strategy to meet the tech industry’s need for constant innovation. So, when the likes of Amazon start accusing companies of not playing fair, people notice.

Sharone Zitzman, a respected commentator on open source software and the head of developer relations at AppsFlyer, an app development company, called Amazon’s move a “hostile takeover” of Elastic’s business. Steven O’Grady, co-founder of the software industry analyst firm RedMonk, cited it as an example of the “existential threat” that open source companies like Elastic believe a handful of cloud computing giants could pose. Shay Banon, founder and CEO of Elastic, carefully defended Elastic’s new licensing practices, while at the same time making his unhappiness with Amazon crystal clear.

[…]

The reaction to Amazon’s move wasn’t all negative. Some veterans of the open source community praised Amazon’s defense of open source values, while pointing out the fundamentally messy contradictions of Elastic mixing commercial priorities with open source principles. And fundamentally, adopting open source code is entirely legal.

But the notion that Amazon was presenting itself as an altruistic defender of the digital public commons rankled community veterans like Zitzman, who says that Amazon has a poor reputation for working with the community. (GitHub data shows that Amazon has far fewer employees than Microsoft, Google, or IBM contributing code to open source projects.)

These critics see Amazon’s decision to recreate Elasticsearch as opportunistic . behavior. Amazon, they say, is leveraging its dominant power in cloud computing in order to unfairly reap intellectual property. In doing so, AWS is striking at the Achilles’ heel of open source: lifting the work of others, and renting access to it.

Source: Amazon Has Gone From Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Competitor, Say Open Source Developers

March 11, a Vice President at Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud computing behemoth, published a blog post announcing the release of its own version of Elasticsearch, a powerful open-source software search engine tool.

Elastic is a public company founded in 2012 that is currently worth over $5 billion; the vast majority of its revenue is generated by selling subscription access to Elastic’s search capabilities via the cloud. It’s based in Amsterdam and employs more than 1,200 people.

In the blog post, Adrian Cockcroft, VP of cloud architecture strategy at Amazon Web Services (AWS), explained that the company felt forced to take action because Elastic was “changing the rules” on how its software code could be shared. Those changes, made in the run-up to Elastic’s 2018 IPO, started mixing intellectual property into Elastic’s overall line of software products.

[…]

Elastic did not explain its strategic shift at the time. But industry observers interpreted the changes as a response to increasing competition from AWS, which had incorporated Elasticsearch’s code and search functionality into its own suite of computing services.

Elastic isn’t the only open source cloud tool company currently looking over its shoulder at AWS. In 2018 alone, at least eight firms have made similar “rule changes” designed to ward off what they see as unfair competition from a company intent on cannibalizing their services.

[…]

Open source software has been one of the biggest success stories of the software industry. In 2018 alone, Microsoft’s purchase of the open source software development platform GitHub for $7.5 billion, Salesforce’s purchase of the open source company Mulesoft for $6.5 billion, and IBM’s blockbuster $34 billion purchase of the Linux vendor Red Hat proved that open source is a crucial part of the larger software industry. And there is growing acceptance that the collaborative model of developing open source software is a winning strategy to meet the tech industry’s need for constant innovation. So, when the likes of Amazon start accusing companies of not playing fair, people notice.

Sharone Zitzman, a respected commentator on open source software and the head of developer relations at AppsFlyer, an app development company, called Amazon’s move a “hostile takeover” of Elastic’s business. Steven O’Grady, co-founder of the software industry analyst firm RedMonk, cited it as an example of the “existential threat” that open source companies like Elastic believe a handful of cloud computing giants could pose

[…]

The reaction to Amazon’s move wasn’t all negative. Some veterans of the open source community praised Amazon’s defense of open source values, while pointing out the fundamentally messy contradictions of Elastic mixing commercial priorities with open source principles. And fundamentally, adopting open source code is entirely legal.

[…]

These critics see Amazon’s decision to recreate Elasticsearch as opportunistic . behavior. Amazon, they say, is leveraging its dominant power in cloud computing in order to unfairly reap intellectual property. In doing so, AWS is striking at the Achilles’ heel of open source: lifting the work of others, and renting access to it.

What happened to Elastic, Zitzman says, fits into a “long-standing trend of AWS rolling out managed services of popular open source technology, or replicating such technologies… This move is a text-book commoditization move — providing Elastic’s premium services for free.” Or as Salil Deshpande, a managing director at Bain Capital Ventures and an investor in multiple open source companies, puts it: “It is clear that AWS is using its market power to be anti-competitive.”

Source: Amazon Has Gone From Neutral Platform to Cutthroat Competitor, Say Open Source Developers

Some notes – most people who defend open source viciously as it is, formed by some idealists years ago actually have full employment at either universities or at closed source companies. It’s easy to be idealistic with a full belly.

This fits in well with a talk I gave in Zagreb in 2017: Open Source XOR Money about the problems facing the Open Source community, especially the financials.

In 2019 I gave another talk called “Break it up!” about the growing anti-competitive monopolistic powers of the big 5 tech companies.

It’s interesting to see how these subjects are suddenly flaring up in conjunction with each other.

Last night, Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney tweeted that his company would end its controversial exclusivity agreements if Steam raised its revenue cut for developers. It’s a strong statement, even if there are reasons to be skeptical of Sweeney’s position.

“If Steam committed to a permanent 88% revenue share for all developers and publishers without major strings attached,” Sweeney wrote, “Epic would hastily organize a retreat from exclusives (while honoring our partner commitments) and consider putting our own games on Steam.”

Since the Epic Game Store launched in December, the company behind Fortnite and the Unreal Engine has struck several exclusivity deals with high-profile games like Borderlands 3 and The Division 2, preventing those games from appearing on Steam. The practice has been contentious, drawing a lot of ire from PC gamers, especially considering the Epic Game Store lacks many of the features that make Steam so enticing for players. For developers, however, being on the Epic Store is a boon, as it gives 88% of revenue earned from games to the people who make them. PC megalith Steam, on the other hand, gives developers between 70-80% depending on sales.

Source: Epic Games Boss Says They’ll Stop Doing Exclusives If Steam Gives Developers More Money

Yup, exclusivity deals are a great way to differentiate yourself from the competition. No one is forcing anyone to go with the Epic store, if they don’t like it. But there is a clear victor in monopoly breaking: the developers. And happier developers should lead to better products, so eventually the customer will win too. And with any luck, the Steam game player will be a different kind of player than the Epic game player, which means that the stores will have different popularity scores,  leading to more diversity and recognition of different products in the gaming ecosphere. Again, the customer wins.

Police from around the world shut down the biggest active black market on the dark web this month, according to announcements from law enforcement agencies in the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands released on Friday.

Wall Street Market, as the black market site was known, was the target of a 1.5-year-long multinational investigation. Three Germans were arrested on April 23 and 24 inside Germany for their alleged role in creating and administering the site that sold illegal drugs, documents, weapons, and data.

“WSM was one of the largest and most voluminous darknet marketplaces of all time,” FBI Special Agent Leroy Shelton wrote in the criminal complaint released on Friday.

[…]

Wall Street Market had 1.15 million customer accounts and 5,400 registered sellers, according to the U.S. Justice Department. However, don’t take those numbers to be accurate census accounts—users are anonymous, sellers and buyers both often create multiple accounts, and there’s no way to get a realistic count on the number of individuals active on a market like this.

A better way to understand the scale of a black market like this is to look at the actual money involved. Last month, Wall Street Market administrators stole around $11 million from user accounts, authorities say.

“An ‘exit scam’ was allegedly conducted last month when the WSM administrators took all of the virtual currency held in marketplace escrow and user accounts—believed by investigators to be approximately $11 million—and then diverted the money to their own accounts.

Source: Dark Net’s Wall Street Market Falls to Police

The CheapAir.com 2019 Annual Airfare Study is based on an analysis of 917 million airfares in more than 8,000 markets. Following the recommendations could save you hundreds of dollars on your travel this year.

This report will break down:

• The average “best day” to buy your airline ticket
• The airfare booking “zones” – what you can expect to pay for an airfare depending on when you buy
• How to identify the Prime Booking Window™ – the range of dates you’ll be most likely to find a low price
• The best and worst days of the week to fly based on price
• How seasonality affects the price of your airline ticket

As you can see, this is a ton of information. But don’t worry. We’re going to break it down in digestible and easy-to-understand bites.

We’ve already done the research and we’re serving it up free. Before you know it, you’ll be buying those flights with understanding and confidence!

For 2018, the “best day to buy a flight” domestically (within the continental U.S.) was 76 days out from your travel date. That’s slightly higher than it was in last year’s report (70 days). Let’s take a bit of a deep dive into the different “booking zones” as airfares fall and rise. Each zone has benefits and risks.

The 6 Airfare Booking Zones

We came up with booking zones to easily chart what an airfare looks like from the approximate time it is published about 11 months out, all the way up to the very last minute you can buy your ticket. Over the years we refined these zones to reflect the subtle differences between each. And we think this system is solid for showing you what you pay (depending on when you buy). Let’s dig in.

First Dibs
315 to 203 Days in Advance
(about 10 months to 6.5 months)
We like to recommend First Dibs for buyers with an agenda. You know who you are. You’re less motivated by price and more motivated by your flight preferences (such as a certain flight time or seat) and you want to lock in plans well in advance. Flights in the First Dibs zone do cost about $50 more per ticket than flights in the Prime Booking Window (the most affordable zone), on average. If you like to have many options, however, there’s no better time to buy.

Peace of Mind
202 to 116 Days in Advance
(about 6.5 to 4 months)
Peace of Mind is where you might want to land if you’ve got anxiety surrounding big airfare purchases coupled with FOMO for a good deal. When you’re in the Peace of Mind zone, you’ll likely pay just about $20 more than flights in the Prime Booking Window and you’re still buying early enough to have a decent amount of choice.

Prime Booking Window
115 to 21 Days in Advance
(about 4 months to 3 weeks)
This is where the magic happens, travelers. And while some of the other zones have shifted slightly from one year to the next, the Prime Booking Window stays pretty solid. What does this mean? Well, the data shows that the lowest airfares tend to pop up about 4 months to 3 weeks in advance of your travel dates. Fares in this zone are within 5% of their lowest point. Bargain shopping? Stay in the sweet spot – the Prime Booking Window.

Push Your Luck
20 to 14 Days in Advance
(3 – 2 weeks)
We’re heading into gambling territory once you get within 2-3 weeks of your travel dates. The odds of getting a “cheap ticket” start to decrease heading into the Push Your Luck zone, though if you do like to roll the dice you may still find cheap tickets. One important factor to consider – though there could be lower priced fares in Push Your Luck, the quantity and quality of seats is more limited the closer we get to the travel date. You may find yourself paying slightly more for a subpar seat.

Playing with Fire
13 to 7 Days in Advance
(2 – 1 weeks)
No matter how long we’re in the airfare prediction game, we find that some people just like to play with fire. Hence, we carved out the Playing with Fire zone. You’ll almost always pay more than Prime Booking Window buyers, but pay less (close to $135, on average) than people who wait until the very last minute to buy. In this zone, choice is even more limited.

Hail Mary
6 to 0 Days in Advance
(less than a week)
How did we get here? Usually, people who are buying in the Hail Mary zone are doing so because of an unexpected trip, not because waiting until less than a week from your travel date was a conscious choice. You’re going to have to cope with the least amount of choice in the Hail Mary zone, and you’re apt to pay almost $220 more than you would have if this ticket was purchased in the Prime Booking Window.

Hawaii as Outlier
Our 50th state is a bit of a standalone. We do not include Hawaii in our main airfare data for a couple of reasons. Hawaii’s distance from the mainland in conjunction with its unique characteristic as a leisure destination means that is has a different dynamic. Check out our separate post on Buying Flights to Hawaii for the best tips and strategies for snagging a low fare to the islands.

There are other factors to consider aside from when you buy that will affect your travel budget. Let’s look at days of the week, for example.

Do Days of the Week Have an Effect on Price?

We can start by dispelling one myth. What day of week you purchase a flight has a negligible effect on flight cost. The average low fare only varies by $1 based on the purchase day of week. Whether you buy that ticket on Tuesday or Sunday it’s going to cost about the same.

On the other hand, there are definitely less expensive days and more expensive days to fly. Tuesday is the cheapest day of the week to fly, nearly $85 cheaper on average than the most expensive day of the week to travel, Sunday. Wednesdays are also great days for air travel. Friday is the second most expensive day of the week to fly. A good rule of thumb – weekends are more expensive and midweek flights save travelers cash.

Don’t Underestimate Seasonality

What time of year you travel can also have an impact on your flight cost. We broke down the seasons and included the most popular time frames in each, to offer travelers an easy reference for finding the best fares. This simple chart tells the story:

When to Buy Winter Flights
If you can avoid Christmas week and ski destinations, most winter destinations offer good value for the money.

• The average best time to buy is 94 days from travel (just over 3 months)
• The prime booking window is 74 to 116 days (about 2.5 months to nearly 4 months)
• The average domestic fare for winter travel is $433, by far the most expensive time of the year for air travel
• The difference between the best and worst priced days is $168, which is quite a bit lower than in other seasons. There is much less volatility in airfare pricing all season.

When to Buy Spring Flights
Plan ahead for spring flights. There are no major travel holidays in the spring, but both families and college students enjoy spring break for much of March and April. Take advantage of lower mid-week prices to help keep costs down.

• The average best time to buy is 84 days from travel, or nearly 3 months
• The prime booking window is 47 to 119 days (about 1.5 months to just under 4 months)
• The average domestic fare for spring travel is $354
• The difference between the best and worst priced days is $285

When to Buy Summer Flights
Americans travel a ton in the summer, and the peak summer dates of June 15 – August 15 are when the bulk of travel happens. You can find the best deals the closer you get to the end of the season (late August and September will give you the best odds to score low airfare.

• The average best time to buy is 99 days out from travel
• The prime booking window is 21 to 150 days (about 3 weeks to 5 months)
• The average domestic fare for peak summer travel is $365
• The difference between the best and worst priced days is $260
• Late summer and early fall is shoulder season, and as such, offers great deals (Labor Day weekend notwithstanding). Flying the second half of August on into September is the sweet spot for these deals.

When to Buy Fall Flights
Overall, fall offers great value for budget travelers. Fall is shoulder season for a lot of destinations, and people simply do not travel as much. Of course, the one exception to this rule is Thanksgiving week. Traveling during Thanksgiving? Better buy on the early side.

• The average best time to buy is 69 days from travel
• The prime booking window is 20 to 109 days (about 3 weeks to 3.5 months)
• The average domestic fare for fall travel is $342, which makes it the best season to find travel bargains
• The difference between the best and worst priced days is $280

Takeaways

Airfares change all the time. Don’t get bogged down in watching the tiny, incremental fluctuations. We recommend buying an airline ticket when you see a good fare and not hesitating or waffling. Since fares change a lot, when shoppers go away to think about it “for a while,” they’re often disappointed when they come back to find that the good fare has disappeared. Be prepared to buy.

Bookmark this page or commit the Prime Booking Window to memory. It’s where you should focus the bulk of your shopping efforts. Keep in mind that there is still volatility within the prime booking window. Though you can expect peaks and valleys in price, the best fares on average will be found here.

Also, keep in mind that CheapAir.com will “protect” your purchase with Price Drop Payback. Should your fare drop after you buy, we’ll reimburse you up to $100 per ticket.

Need advice for your next vacation abroad? Check back soon for our International When to Buy study results.

Happy Travels!

Source: CheapAir.com’s 5th Annual Airfare Study Reveals the Best Time to Buy Airline Tickets | CheapAir

“Google has cemented its dominance in online search adverts and shielded itself from competitive pressure by imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites,” EU antitrust commissioner Margrethe Vestager said on Wednesday. “This is illegal under EU antitrust rules. The misconduct lasted over 10 years and denied other companies the possibility to compete on the merits and to innovate – and consumers the benefits of competition.”

[…]

Vestager noted that in response to the Android fine, Google has done a better job offering users choices for browsers and search engines.

“We’ve seen in the past that a choice screen can be an effective way to promote user choice,” Vestager said. “It is welcome that Google is stepping up its effort and we will watch closely to see how the choice-screen mechanism evolves.”

In a statement and press conference from Brussels, Vestager described Google’s transgressions that led to the latest fine.

Google’s AdSense, which Vestager called “by far the strongest player in online search advertising” in Europe, works when websites embed search functions and the results are displayed alongside advertisements where the revenue is split with publishers.

In contracts with customers reviewed by investigators, Google at various times prohibited any search advertisements from competitors like Microsoft or Yahoo, prohibited any competitors ads from displaying above their own and also required publishers to get written approval from Google before changing the way they handle advertisements from tech rivals.

“Google’s rivals were not able to compete on the merits, either because there was an outright prohibition for them to appear on publisher websites or because Google reserved for itself by far the most valuable commercial space on those websites, while at the same time controlling how rival search adverts could appear,” Vestager said. “Google’s practices amount to an abuse of Google’s dominant position in the online search advertising intermediation market by preventing competition on the merits.”

Source: Google Hit With $1.7 Billion Fine in Europe for Abusing Advertising Dominance

A Japanese court sentenced the former high-flying creator of the MtGox bitcoin exchange to a suspended jail sentence of two and a half years Friday after finding him guilty of data manipulation.

The Tokyo District Court convicted Mark Karpeles, a 33-year-old computer whizz from France, for tampering with computer data but acquitted him over charges of embezzling millions from client accounts.

The sentence was suspended for four years.

In a summary of the ruling, the court said Karpeles had “harmed the users’ trust greatly” by manipulating data and “abused his expertise as an IT engineer and his position and authority”.

Prosecutors had claimed that Karpeles had pocketed some 341 million yen ($3 million) of client’s money and splashed it on a lavish lifestyle. They called for him to serve 10 years behind bars.

However, in throwing out the embezzlement charges, the judge said there was no financial damage done to MtGox and ruled that Karpeles did not intend to cause any damage.

The judge cited an expert opinion that said owners of small and medium enterprises often borrow funds without proper accounting and ruled that the court assumed Karpeles intended to return the money.

Karpeles entered the courtroom wearing a dark suit and black shoes and he bowed politely to the judge. He was motionless after the verdict was read out.

After the sentencing, the judge asked if Karpeles understood the sentence. Karpeles responded simply: “Yes, I did.”

‘Cold wallet’

MtGox was shut down in 2014 after 850,000 bitcoins (worth half a billion dollars at that time) disappeared from its virtual vaults.

The scandal left a trail of angry investors, rocked the virtual currency community, and dented confidence in the security of bitcoin.

At one point, MtGox claimed to be handling around 80 percent of all global bitcoin transactions.

During his trial, Karpeles apologised to customers for the company’s bankruptcy but denied both data falsification and embezzlement.

“I swear to God that I am innocent,” Karpeles, speaking in Japanese, told the three-judge panel hearing when his trial opened in 2017.Karpeles always claimed the bitcoins were lost due to an external “hacking attack” and later claimed to have found some 200,000 coins in a “cold wallet”—a storage device not connected to other computers.

“Most people will not believe what I say. The only solution I have is to actually find the real culprits,” he told reporters his trial hearing in July 2017.

Doubts about bitcoin

The acquittal on embezzlement came as a surprise as the vast majority of cases that come to trial in Japan end in a conviction.

Karpeles himself said in an interview with French business daily Les Echos on Wednesday that he had little chance of acquittal.

“All I can hope for is a light sentence which will mean I do not have to go back into detention and do forced work,” he said.

The Frenchman was first arrested in August 2015 and, in an echo of another high-profile case against former Nissan chief and compatriot Carlos Ghosn, was re-arrested several times on different charges.

Karpeles eventually won bail in July 2016—nearly a year after his arrest—paying 10 million yen to secure his freedom pending a trial, which began in July 2017.

During his time on bail, Karpeles has been active on social media—notably voicing doubts about bitcoin and replying to some media questions about conditions in Japanese detention centres.

However, he has largely avoided commenting on his case in detail.

In many ways, the rollercoaster ride of Karpeles has mirrored that of the bitcoin cryptocurrency that made him rich.

At its height in December 2017, the value of a single bitcoin was around $20,000.

It has since slumped and is now worth just under $4,000.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-03-mtgox-bitcoin-founder-sentence-tampering.html#jCp

Source: MtGox bitcoin founder gets suspended sentence for data tampering

American consumers spend, on average, 13 hours per year in calling queue. According to a 2010 study by Mike Desmarais in the journal Cost Management, a third of complaining customers must make two or more calls to resolve their complaint. And that ignores the portion who simply give up out of exasperation after the first call. In fact, according to a 2017 survey by Customer Care Measurement and Consulting the Carey School of Business at the Arizona State University, over three quarters of complaining consumers were less than satisfied with their experience with the given company’s customer service department.

These accounts seem at odds with the pledges by many companies that they are committed to great customer service. Consider United Airlines, among the lowest ranked of major airlines on customer service, which claims to offer a “level of service to our customers that makes [United] a leader in the airline industry”. This is in line with surveys over time that indicate that consumers consistently perceive that customer service is generally bad and even possibly becoming worse. Despite promises companies make to treat people well, customers don’t seem to be buying it.

There’s some evidence that customer queues may be unavoidable at times. Caller complaints tend to arrive randomly, making it impossible to staff agents to handle unpredictable fluctuations in call volume. But our research suggests that some companies may actually find it profitable to create hassles for complaining customers, even if it were operationally costless not to.

Source: Why Is Customer Service So Bad? Because It’s Profitable.

As more retailers—including Drybar and Sweetgreen—ban paper money, it’s making things awkward for customers without plastic. [paywalled]

Source: Your Cash Is No Good Here. Literally. – WSJ

Oh dear, not accepting money – when the pain signals in your brain are not set off by clicking a bank pass, but are when you have to pay cash. Don’t be fooled people: cash is central to what money is – for the whole economy, but also for you as a person. See what happens when people with trillions start chucking it about (because what does that amount really mean, anyway!?) or the personal debt people spending on credit build up.

The Indian government sent a strong screw you to Amazon and the Walmart-owned Flipkart on Wednesday, banning e-commerce companies from selling products from companies that they have an equity interest in or “entering into exclusive agreements with sellers,” CNBC reported.

India already bans e-commerce sites from selling products directly, per the New York Times, which has led to them acquiring stakes in affiliate companies that serve much the same purpose at arm’s length. At issue is the power of e-commerce companies to make bulk purchases of goods that they then sell to “select sellers, such as their affiliates or other companies with which they have agreements,” CNBC wrote. The strategy allows giants like Amazon to offer products at low prices that smaller competitors often find hard to match.

In a statement to CNBC, India’s commerce ministry said the new rules would go into effect on Feb. 1, 2019, adding the new rules specify that: “An entity having equity participation by e-commerce marketplace entity or its group companies, or having control on its inventory by e-commerce marketplace entity or its group companies, will not be permitted to sell its products on the platform run by such marketplace entity.”

The move could mean Amazon would be forced “to stop competing with independent sellers and end its offerings of proprietary products like its Echo smart speakers in India, its top emerging market,” the Times wrote. It’s also a blow to Walmart, which bought a 77 percent stake in Flipkart for $16 billion this year, and may be forced to stop selling products produced by companies it owns. As the paper noted, both companies’ competitive strategies rely on highly efficient supply chains and pressuring retailers to comply with their requirements, so this is not a good sign for their Indian ambitions.

The Times wrote that the decision appears to have been motivated by concerns from India’s prime minister, right-wing populist culture warrior Narendra Modi, that his party is losing ground ahead of upcoming elections:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India initially courted foreign companies to invest more in the country after his 2014 election victory, but his administration has turned protectionist as his party’s re-election prospects have dimmed in recent months. Mr. Modi has increasingly sought to bolster Indian firms and curb foreign ones through new policies, including one that requires foreign companies like Visa, Mastercard and American Express to store all data about Indians on computers inside the country. The government has also declared its intention to impose tough new rules on the technology industry.

According to CNBC, beneficiaries of the move will likely include owners of small businesses like farms and corner stores, the latter of which “dominate Indian retailing,” who believe that U.S.-based tech giants are trying to undermine their economic position. The site added that the Confederation of All India Traders issued a statement saying that tech giants will no longer to be able to commit “malpractices, predatory pricing policies and deep discounting.”

However, the law was vaguely written and contains some sections that appear to contradict each other, lawyer Salman Waris of New Delhi’s TechLegis told the Times, which means that its ultimate impact remains unclear. The paper also noted that Amazon is well-known for navigating Indian law to remain in compliance without losing its ability to steer markets, though Walmart’s decision to acquire Flipkart has already been questioned by analysts as a potentially unwise financial move.

Source: In Blow to Amazon and Walmart, India Bans a Key Part of Their Business Strategy

It is way beyond time to start breaking up the monopolies and 0.00000001%ers. Way to go, India!

Over 12,000 Uber drivers found a way to weaponize the ridesharing platform’s restrictive contract in what’s possibly the funniest labor strategy of the year.

But first: a bit of background. One of the more onerous aspects of the gig economy is its propensity to include arbitration agreements in the terms of service—you know, the very long document no one really reads—governing the rights of its workers. These agreements prohibit workers from suing gig platforms in open court, generally giving the company greater leverage and saving it from public embarrassment. Sometimes arbitration is binding; in Uber’s case, driver’s can opt out—but only within 30 days of signing, and very few seem to realize they have the option.

Until an unfavorable U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year, independent contractors often joined class-action lawsuits anyway, arguing (sometimes successfully) that they ought to have been classified as employees from the get-go. With that avenue of remuneration cut off, a group of 12,501 Uber drivers found a new option that hinges on the company’s own terms of service. While arbitrating parties are responsible for paying for their own attorneys, the terms state that “in all cases where required by law, the Company [Uber] will pay the Arbitrator’s and arbitration fees.”

If today’s petition in California’s Northern District Court is accurate, those arbitration fees add up rather quickly.

A group of 12,501 drivers opted to take Uber at its word, individually bringing their cases up for arbitration, overwhelming the infrastructure that’s meant to divide and conquer. “As of November 13, 2018, 12,501 demands have been filed with JAMS,” the notice states. (JAMS refers to the arbitration service Uber uses for this purpose.) Continuing on, emphasis ours: “Of those 12,501 demands, in only 296 has Uber paid the initiating filing fees necessary for an arbitration to commence […] only 47 have appointed arbitrators, and […] in only six instances has Uber paid the retainer fee of the arbitrator to allow the arbitration to move forward.” (Emphasis ours.)

While a JAMS representative was not immediately available for comment, the cause of the holdup is Uber itself, according to the notice:

Uber knows that its failure to pay the filing fees has prevented the arbitrations from commencing. Throughout this process, JAMS has repeatedly advised Uber that JAMS is “missing the NON-REFUNDABLE filing fee of $1,500 for each demand, made payable to JAMS.” JAMS has also informed Uber that “[u]ntil the Filing Fee is received we will be unable to proceed with the administration of these matters.

We have no reason to assume this fee would be different based on the nature of each case, so some back-of-the-envelope math indicates the filings alone would cost Uber—a company that already loses sickening amounts of money—over $18.7 million. We’ve reached out to Uber for comment and to learn if they have an estimate of what that number would be after attorney fees and other expenses.

Source: Uber’s Arbitration Policy Comes Back to Bite It in the Ass

By tracking the sales of 19,978 deals on Groupon.com and conducting a battery of identification and falsification tests, we find that deep discounts reduce sales. A 1% increase in a deal’s discount decreases sales by 0.035%–0.256%. If a merchant offers an additional 10% discount from the sample mean of 55.6%, sales could decrease by 0.63%–4.60%, or 0.80–5.24 units and $42–$275 in revenue. This negative effect of discount is more prominent among credence goods and deals with low sales, and when the deals are offered in cities with higher income and better education. Our findings suggest that consumers are concerned about product quality, and excessive discounts may reduce sales immediately. A follow-up lab experiment provides further support to this quality-concern explanation. Furthermore, it suggests the existence of a “threshold” effect: the negative effect on sales is present only when the discount is sufficiently high. Additional empirical analysis shows that deals displaying favorable third-party support, such as Facebook fans and online reviews, are more susceptible to this adverse discount effect.

Source: When Discounts Hurt Sales: The Case of Daily-Deal Markets | Information Systems Research

Under the new rules, traders will not be able to discriminate between customers with regard to the general terms and conditions – including prices – in three cases: for goods that are either delivered in a member state to which the trader offers delivery or are collected at a location agreed with the customer for electronically supplied services such as cloud, data warehousing and website hosting for services such as hotel accommodation and car rental which are received by the customer in the country where the trader operates

Under the new rules, traders will not be able to discriminate between customers with regard to the general terms and conditions – including prices – in three cases:

• for goods that are either delivered in a member state to which the trader offers delivery or are collected at a location agreed with the customer
• for electronically supplied services such as cloud, data warehousing and website hosting
• for services such as hotel accommodation and car rental which are received by the customer in the country where the trader operates

Source: Geo-blocking: unlocking e-commerce in the EU – Consilium

Geo-blocking refers to practices used by online sellers that result in the denial of access to websites from other Member States. It also includes situations where access to a website is granted, but the customer from abroad is prevented from finalising the purchase or being asked to pay with a debit or credit card from a certain country. “Geo-discrimination” also takes place when buying goods and services off-line, e.g. when a consumer is physically present at the trader’s location but is either prevented from accessing a product or service or being offered different conditions.

The Geo-blocking Regulation aims to provide for more opportunities to consumers and businesses within the EU’s internal market. In particular, it addresses the problem of (potential) customers not being able to buy goods and services from traders located in a different Member State for reasons related to their nationality, place of residence or place of establishment, hence discriminating them when they try to access the best offers, prices or sales conditions compared to nationals or residents of the traders’ Member State.u

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/faq/geo-blocking

Above FAQ link has  more answers to questions

Telecomaanbieders moeten stoppen met het laten vervallen van ongebruikte data en belminuten. Dat schrijft de Consumentenbond in een brief aan de tien grootste aanbieders.

Consumenten met een mobiel abonnement verliezen nu aan het einde van iedere maand hun ongebruikte belminuten en data binnen hun bundel. Tegelijkertijd betalen ze extra voor iedere minuut of MB die ze búiten hun bundel verbruiken. Soms tot wel 0,31 euro per minuut of 0,15 euro per MB.

Source: ‘Providers pak ongebruikte data en belminuten niet af’ – Emerce

In August, Tesla CEO Elon Musk set off an entirely preventable and catastrophic chain of events by tweeting that he was “considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.” Musk provided no financing details, and the Securities and Exchange Commission later determined that he never finalized any kind of deal with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund behind the ostensible buyout. Last week, it slapped him with fraud charges for making “false and misleading” statements and not complying with regulatory requirements.

Musk and the company’s board initially appeared to be digging in for a battle, but per the Washington Post, on Saturday he caved. Musk has agreed to a settlement in which both he and Tesla will pay out separate $20 million fines, and Musk will step down as Tesla’s chairman for at least three years. The only silver lining is that Musk will be allowed to remain the company’s CEO, the Post wrote:

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk agreed on Saturday to pay a $20 million fine and step down as board chairman as part of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Tesla will separately pay another $20 million and agreed to add two new independent directors to its board and monitor the billionaire’s public communications more closely… Under the settlement, Musk will resign as chairman of the automaker within 45 days and be barred from that position for three years. But he will remain Tesla’s CEO and does not have to admit wrongdoing as part of the deal.

Source: Elon Musk to Resign as Tesla Chairman, Pay $20 Million Fine in SEC Settlement Over Catastrophic ‘420’ Tweet

A huge amount of information on plastic, with great visualisations

This post draws on data and research discussed in our entry on Plastic Pollution.

Source: FAQs on Plastics – Our World in Data

The FBI has arrested the alleged three leaders of an international crime syndicate that stole huge numbers of credit card numbers – which were subsequently sold on and used to rack up tens of millions of dollars in spending sprees.

Speaking in Seattle, USA, where the Feds’ cybersecurity taskforce is based, agents said the “Fin7” group was responsible for stealing more than 15 million credit card numbers at over 3,000 locations, impacting at least 100 businesses.

The group is alleged to have used phishing attacks, sending emails with attachments that launched a customized form of the Carbanak malware on victims’ computers. The group targeted people in charge of catering in three main industries – restaurants, hotels and casinos – and followed up the emails with phonecalls to those individuals, encouraging them to open the attachment, Uncle Sam’s agents said.

Once the software nasty was opened and installed, it would seek out credit card details and customers’ personal information from payment systems, and siphon them off to the Fin7 gang – which then sold the sensitive data on online marketplaces to crooks to exploit. Infosec biz FireEye has a summary of the malware, here.

The first suspected Fin7 kingpin was arrested back in January in Germany, the authorities said, but that indictment was kept under seal while the FBI continued its investigations. The unnamed individual has since been extradited to the US and will appear in court in Seattle in May.

The subsequent investigation then led to two further arrests: one in Poland and another in Spain. Both are currently in the middle of extradition hearings. The group operated through a front company based in Israel and Russia and operating throughout Eastern Europe.

[…]

Even though the estimated cost of the crime group is a drop in the bucket of what a senior director of credit card company Visa, Dan Schott, said is a $600 billion a year global business, he said that this case’s importance was that it showed the authorities were capable of fighting back “through cooperation across the private sector.”

FBI Special Agent Jay Tabb noted that the case is “the largest, certainly among the top three, criminal computer intrusion cases that the FBI is working right now in terms of loss, number of victims, the global reach, and the size of the organization, the organized crime syndicate doing this.”

Source: The End for Fin7: Feds cuff suspected super-crooks after $$$m stolen from 15m+ credit cards • The Register

All over the western world banks are shutting down cash machines and branches. They are trying to push you into using their digital payments and digital banking infrastructure. Just like Google wants everyone to access and navigate the broader internet via its privately controlled search portal, so financial institutions want everyone to access and navigate the broader economy through their systems.

Another aim is to cut costs in order to boost profits. Branches require staff. Replacing them with standardised self-service apps allows the senior managers of financial institutions to directly control and monitor interactions with customers.

Banks, of course, tell us a different story about why they do this. I recently got a letter from my bank telling me that they are shutting down local branches because “customers are turning to digital”, and they are thus “responding to changing customer preferences”. I am one of the customers they are referring to, but I never asked them to shut down the branches.

There is a feedback loop going on here. In closing down their branches, or withdrawing their cash machines, they make it harder for me to use those services. I am much more likely to “choose” a digital option if the banks deliberately make it harder for me to choose a non-digital option.

In behavioural economics this is referred to as “nudging”. If a powerful institution wants to make people choose a certain thing, the best strategy is to make it difficult to choose the alternative.

[…]

Financial institutions, likewise, are trying to nudge us towards a cashless society and digital banking. The true motive is corporate profit. Payments companies such as Visa and Mastercard want to increase the volume of digital payments services they sell, while banks want to cut costs. The nudge requires two parts. First, they must increase the inconvenience of cash, ATMs and branches. Second, they must vigorously promote the alternative. They seek to make people “learn” that they want digital, and then “choose” it.

We can learn from the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci in this regard. His concept of hegemony referred to the way in which powerful parties condition the cultural and economic environment in such a way that their interests begin to be perceived as natural and inevitable by the general public. Nobody was on the streets shouting for digital payment 20 years ago, but increasingly it seems obvious and “natural” that it should take over. That belief does not come from nowhere. It is the direct result of a hegemonic project on the part of financial institutions.

We can also learn from Louis Althusser’s concept of interpellation. The basic idea is that you can get people to internalise beliefs by addressing them as if they already had those beliefs. Twenty years ago nobody believed that cash was “inconvenient”, but every time I walk into London Underground I see adverts that address me as if I was a person who finds cash inconvenient. The objective is to reverse-engineer a belief within me that it is inconvenient, and that cashlessness is in my interests. But a cashless society is not in your interest. It is in the interest of banks and payments companies. Their job is to make you believe that it is in your interest too, and they are succeeding in doing that.

The recent Visa chaos, during which millions of people who have become dependent on digital payment suddenly found themselves stranded when the monopolistic payment network crashed, was a temporary setback. Digital systems may be “convenient”, but they often come with central points of failure. Cash, on the other hand, does not crash. It does not rely on external data centres, and is not subject to remote control or remote monitoring. The cash system allows for an unmonitored “off the grid” space. This is also the reason why financial institutions and financial technology companies want to get rid of it. Cash transactions are outside the net that such institutions cast to harvest fees and data.

A cashless society brings dangers. People without bank accounts will find themselves further marginalised, disenfranchised from the cash infrastructure that previously supported them. There are also poorly understood psychological implications about cash encouraging self-control while paying by card or a mobile phone can encourage spending. And a cashless society has major surveillance implications.

Source: The cashless society is a con – and big finance is behind it | Brett Scott | Opinion | The Guardian

Two former investment bankers, one of whom is also a priest, have been found guilty of an elaborate scam – hacking newswires to read press releases prior to publication, and trade millions using this insider information.

Vitaly Korchevsky, formerly a veep at Morgan Stanley and a pastor at the Slavic Evangelical Baptist Church in Philadelphia, USA, and ex-broker Vladislav Khalupsky were this month found guilty of securities fraud by a jury in New York, and are facing 20 years in the slammer.

According to court documents, the two colluded with a Ukrainian hacking gang and investors in the US, Russia, France, and Cyprus to realized more than $100m in illicit profits. America’s financial watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission, said it has since recovered $53m of the haul.

The scam, carried out between 2010 and 2015 involved Ukrainian hackers getting into the servers of two unnamed newswire services, one in New York and the other in Canada. The miscreants searched for embargoed press releases on companies’ quarterly financial figures, which are typically privately submitted to a newswire a couple of days before they are published, and accessed more than 100,000 of them before being caught.

Source: A curious tale of the priest, the broker, the hacked newswires, and $100m of insider trades • The Register