Google’s Face Match Employs Facial Recognition

Google has introduced Face Match, a new facial recognition technology that is a part of Google Nest Hub Max.

The technology uses a front-facing camera for video calls and access to your personal data. So for instance, you can access your photos, texts and your calendar when it scans and recognizes your face.

The company said it was not a security feature and may accidentally open if a family member that looks like you scans their face or even a photo of you might work.

The company did not say how it would store the data or if it would use the information for marketing or customer profiling.

GDPR Violation: France Fines Google $57 Million

Google is the first company faced with a hefty fines for allegedly violating Europe’s new GDPR data privacy rules, which went into effect last May.

French regulators have fined Google $57 million for data privacy violations. According to the complaint filed by France’s government watchdog CNIL, the tech giant violated two provisions of the law.

The first issue is that Google failed to make its data-collection policies easily accessible, according to CNIL. The second issue is that Google failed to get user consent for ad personalization across all of its services, including YouTube and Google Maps, among others.

Google has not commented on the violations, except to say they are committed to meeting the GDPR consent requirements.

Google Employees Walk Out to Protest Sexual Harassment Policies

Google workers around the globe staged a walkout yesterday in protest of how the company has handled sexual harassment accusations among some senior executives.

Employees from Singapore to Dublin left their offices to participate in this peaceful event that was organized via Twitter.

The walkout comes after a damning report in The New York Times last week revealing that two senior Google executives were paid tens of millions of dollars in severance pay even though they had been accused of sexual misconduct.

Protestors are calling on Google to create structural changes to avoid this kind of thing from happening again. Demands were shared via a Twitter account @GoogleWalkout.

“I don’t care about anything if I won’t be free to speak truth to power. I don’t want any golden platter if I will have to be complicit. I’d prefer to lose it all rather than losing decency,” wrote JBD, an engineer at Google Cloud on Twitter, sharing the above photo from the march in San Francisco.

 

G is For Google, My QuickTake on Alphabet

Google is reorganizing under a new umbrella structure called Alphabet, lead by Google co-founders Larry Page as CEO and Sergey Brin as President.

I first met Larry and Sergey when they came into Jupiter to pitch their new search engine.   There is a bit of a funny story to that meeting, but that is a blog or chapter for another day.

Alphabet makes perfect sense.  Google err Alphabet has transformed to deliver something far beyond their original charter. It is much like when a former employer of mine, Apple Computer renamed and re-branded as a broader but yet simpler Apple, Inc.

The genius of GOOG, err Alphabet is that there are so many opportunities for their brilliant minds to contribute to our culture, economy and wellness. Is S for Stem Cell? Read the promise and potential of what Larry wrote in his blog “Good examples  [of Alphabet] are our health efforts: Life Sciences (that works on the glucose-sensing contact lens), and Calico (focused on longevity). Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related. Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence. In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed. We will rigorously handle capital allocation and work to make sure each business is executing well. We’ll also make sure we have a great CEO for each business, and we’ll determine their compensation.”

Larry and Sergey have long innovated and it is fantastic to see a business as successful as what we once knew as Google not rest, but rather continue to change and innovate.  That is the new American Business Dream … keep on adding and innovating.

As a CEO of two much smaller businesses The Relevancy Group and The Marketer Quarterly, my companies work together and share synergies, but even alone the deliver their own value.  I am lower case version of Alphabet, but I am so inspired by this change at Google as any entrepreneur should be.

Bravo Larry and Sergey!  Well done, until we meet again.