Clever Geek Handbook

How IT giants are losing their gloss and getting more boring

Big tech companies have always tried to broadcast all sorts of ideologies to the outside world, often positive ones. Until recently, it was something in the style of "we are making the world a better place", the promise of a new wonderful future, etc. But every year the nature of these messages changes and is less and less different from the PR-statements of traditional companies. Three clear trends can be recorded that clearly show that the leading IT giants are becoming “old and boring” companies. (Or maybe they always were.)







Active hunting "for the good of the fatherland"



Google recently issued a press release talking about expanding offices, increasing the number of data centers and hiring a large number of employees. She called these plans "Investing in America in 2021". The company clearly wants this fact to be noticed, and it sounds like a political statement. At the same time, the text does not say anything about the traditional goals for any investment - like plans to earn more. Amazon makes the



same claim , reporting that it has opened 30,000 jobs. The company says bluntly that it helps the Americans and invests in the country's economy. There is even a dedicated website that explains everything in detail.



Other tech giants are also reporting a large number of vacancies. For example, Apple issues press releases with headlines like "The iOS economy created over 300,000 new jobs in the US during the pandemic."



This is a traditional phenomenon for corporations: their PR strategy is often built on how to fit into the current socio-political agenda. For example, here's a press release from Walmart in which she talks about her purchases from US suppliers. It's still strange to watch "independent" IT companies do the same thing. After all, it is more logical for corporations of the old format - to draw attention to their growth and active hiring in order to awaken something like gratitude to themselves.



It is worth saying that similar statements - adjusted for scale, of course - can be seen in Russian technology companies as well. Among the notable and non-standard initiatives is the Sberbank recruitment program , which is designed to improve the working conditions of convicts and help the bank save money.



Control and accounting



Modern tech companies not only monitor their employees, but everyone who uses (and sometimes does not even use) their products.



Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff wrote a book about the phenomenon, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The main idea: IT corporations like Apple, Facebook and Google uncontrollably monitor all areas of users' lives and will never limit themselves in this without government regulation. IT giants are interested in any user activity. After all, it can be turned into data, and the data can then be sold. At the same time, companies sell this information to anyone who wants to, from politicians to manufacturers of goods. The goal of data buyers is clear - to nudge the user towards the right decision.



Until recently, it seemed that giving your personal data in exchange for free and convenient services was a good deal and nothing bad would happen. Today, such a view of things looks already naive. Many countries are adopting regulations for the responsible handling of data.



Massive advertising without limits



One of the most influential global investors in the technology sector, Yuri Milner, in one of his recent interviews, called targeted advertising one of the main inventions of the Internet. IT companies have always tried to call it "new oil", digital gold and stuff like that. The question is, do we - ordinary users - perceive Internet advertising in a positive way, as something high-tech? Or for us, in terms of its effectiveness, it has long been as effective as street billboards?



According to researchgroups from the University of Minnesota and Carnegie Mellon University, the income of large Internet resources from targeted advertising is on average 4% higher than from traditional advertising. For the study, scientists took 60 large sites with traffic ranging from 7 to 37 million unique visitors per month, which hosted over 3,800 advertisers. Perhaps this is why Google, Apple and other IT giants are abandoning and investing in user tracking technology. Moreover, Google separately states that it will not develop alternative tools and use them in its services.



However, tech giants are not abandoning the idea of ​​creating more effective advertising technologies. Google plans to replace traditional cookies with Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) technology. A machine learning system analyzes user data and then aggregates it into large groups based on preferences and interests. Advertisers will be able to use the data for targeted advertising, but information about specific people will not be available to them.



Also, Google will continue to use so-called primary data in advertising - obtained directly from users of the company's services. The new policy does not apply to mobile apps. Thus, it is likely that Google's true goal is a trivial business gain. Now Google will no longer rely on data from other companies and will be able to raise prices for offered data.



Outcome



For a long time, IT has been a sphere, the leading representatives of which have stated that they can do without the unpleasant attributes of the “old formation” companies - political lobbying, corporate gray schemes, total control, aggressive advertising, etc. old-fashioned tricks are indispensable, and any dream company is gradually turning into a cosmodemonic company.





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