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COVID is bigger than anything I write about here, and tech itself is mostly shutting down. But, there are still interesting things happening. Stay at home and catch up on your reading.
🗞 News
Ecommerce forced adoption: Amazon is hiring 100k more people to handle demand and Instacart is adding 300k (!). I keep wondering how much of this forced adoption will stick once we get back to normal - some things that were inevitable will be accelerated, but there is also now a mass experiment for lots of other fields. Where physical retail is acting as a logistics endpoint, converting it to delivery is mostly a unit economics question (and that will vary by product), but a lot of retail is about more than that - service, discovery, curation, or just leisure. So, how much of that gets converted to Instagram? Does the D2C bubble re-inflate? Links: Amazon, Instacart
Mobile virus tracking: UK telecom operators are looking at sharing location data with the government, to help manage quarantine and understand population flows. Privacy versus safety. Link
Healthcare forced adoption: the UK has picked 11 suppliers for video primary care consultations during COVID, after a 48 hour (!) tender. A lot of conventional process being short-circuited in the emergency; again, how much will stick? Link
Facebook in India: apparently FB is looking at taking a multibillion-dollar stake in Reliance Jio. Jio turned Indian mobile upside-down with startlingly low prices, especially for data, which triggered a price war and hugely expanded the market (and bankrupted the founder's brother). Link ($)
Microsoft moves into mobile network systems: it bought Affirmed networks, apparently for ~$1.3bn. Affirmed makes tech to help mobile operators manage their networks, and that sector is slowly but inevitably moving away from 'big iron' to commodity hardware plus software (as happened to data centres a decade ago). See also Rakuten in last week's issue. So, this is an Azure/cloud play, but if you squint you can also see Huawei. Link
Digital competition law: the UK announced it plans to implement at least some of the recommendations in the Furman Review report from 12 months ago. On the agenda: greater mobility of personal data, and a radically different view of merger policy. Link (PDF)
The Cookie Apocalypse continues: Apple will now block all third-party cookies in Safari, which is a sizeable chunk of web browsing and a much bigger share of browsing by the people that advertisers really want to reach (80%+ of US teenagers have an iPhone, for example). This still seems somewhat invisible in tech (even before current events), but totally changes how targeting and attribution work. It's also a win for privacy but at the expense of competition to FB and Google (which don't need cookies in the same way) and also makes it significantly harder for online publishers to make money from advertising. Link
🔮 Reading
The UK NHS's moves to capture and analyse virus data, in partnership with Microsoft, Google, AWS, Palantir, and Faculty. Link
With ad budgets way way down (and advertisers themselves shutting down), the Coronavirus is a media extinction event. Link
Shortages at retail are mostly the result of everyone buying a little more, not hoarders buying vast quantities. Link
Remember when Microsoft made a web browser? It's trying again. Link
Reminder: if you could be a target for phishing, use Google's advanced protection. Link
Using phones to track Florida spring-breakers as they go back home, with or without infection. Link
😮 Interesting things
250 things an Architect Should Know - RIP Michael Sorkin. Link
Six ways to experience design and art without leaving your home. Link
10 of the world’s best virtual museum and art gallery tours. Link
The Cooper Hewitt's tech collection. Link
📊 Stats
REKKI on declines in restaurant supplier business. Link
Virus usage stats from Microsoft, AT&T, CTIA (US networks), Cloudflare, Virgin Media, Foursquare, SimilarWeb, Social trends, the Citizens Advice dashboard, global aviation traffic
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