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<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="11897862" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="elon-musk" source="Orion">Elon Musk</keyword> had an affair with <keyword id="11892740" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="google" source="Orion">Google</keyword> co-founder Sergey Brin's wife, according to the Wall Street Journal.</li><li>Brin and Nicole Shanahan divorced in January of this year, shortly after Brin learned of the affair, the report states. </li></ul>Elon Musk was reportedly involved in a romantic affair last fall with the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, a long-time friend of Musk and a <keyword id="11900744" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="tesla" source="Orion">Tesla</keyword> investor,<a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Felon-musk-affair-sergey-brin-wife-divorce-11658674840"> the Wall Street Journal reported</a>. The affair allegedly prompted Brin's divorce from Nicole Shanahan in January, WSJ reported. According to court filings, the two cited "irreconcilable differences" as the reason for the split and the filings were submitted just weeks after Brin learned of the affair, according to the Journal. A source close to the matter told the Journal that the relationship between Musk and Brin has been strained in recent months, and Brin instructed his financial advisers to sell his investments in the Tesla CEO's various businesses. Brin formerly invested $500,000 in Tesla in 2008. <div type="image" title="Nicole Shanahan (left) and Sergey Brin." height="4528" width="6037" msid="93095403" hostid="261"></div>Sources told the Journal that at the time of the affair — which reportedly began in December 2021 in Art Basel in Miami — Brin and Shanahan were separated, but still living together.The sources said Brin and Shanahan were encountering difficulties in their marriage at the time, largely tied to stressors connected to COVID-19 and caring for their 3-year-old daughter. The affair also allegedly started when Musk and his girlfriend, Grimes, were broken up. Grimes and Musk have two children, including most recently a daughter who was born via surrogate the same month of the affair. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-denies-affair-with-google-founder-sergey-brin-wife-2022-7">Musk denied the allegations in a tweet</a>, calling the Wall Street Journal's story "total bs."The <keyword id="11893589" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="news" source="Orion">news</keyword> comes after a particularly tumultuous few months for Musk in both his personal and professional life. Earlier this month, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-shivon-zilis-secret-twins-neuralink-tesla">Insider's Julia Black reported</a> that the billionaire quietly had twins last November with Shivon Zilis, director of operations and special projects for Neuralink, one of Musk's companies. His father, 76-year-old Errol Musk, also reportedly had a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-dad-errol-has-second-child-with-stepdaughter-report-2022-7">second child with his stepdaughter recently</a>, and told The Sun that he's been asked to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-dad-errol-asked-donate-sperms-create-more-elons-2022-7">donate his sperm</a> in order to reproduce more people like his son. Meanwhile, Musk is currently embroiled in a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-forced-to-buy-twitter-unlikely-despite-company-lawsuit-2022-7">contentious legal battle with Twitter,</a> after the Tesla CEO pulled out of his $44 billion deal to purchase the social media platform. In a letter filed by his lawyers, Musk claimed Twitter had not "met its contractual obligations," a claim the company has disputed and is now taking Musk to court. This is a developing story, please check back for updates.

Elon Musk reportedly had an affair with the wife of Google co-founder and longtime friend Sergey Brin, prompting his divorce earlier this year

When 43-year-old Indian origin <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Everything-you-need-to-know-about-Googles-new-CEO-Sundar-Pichai/articleshow/48430267.cms">Sundar Pichai</a> was named <keyword id="2996011" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="Chief-Executive-Officer-of-internet-giant">Chief Executive Officer of internet giant</keyword> <keyword id="6355629" type="CITY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Google">Google</keyword> by co-founders <keyword id="100155" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Larry-Page">Larry Page</keyword> and <keyword id="360878" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Sergei-Brin">Sergei Brin</keyword> today, Indians across the world commemorated the occasion as if each one of them had a personal stake in the development. 
 
Though, to be fair they did have reason to rejoice. With Pichai’s elevation from Senior Vice President of Chrome, Android and Apps to CEO, he joins the growing club of corporations run by Indian-born business leaders and the elite club of Indians heading a technology giant, right in the footsteps of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. 
 
His promotion as CEO came after Google’s Larry Page announced<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Heres-what-analysts-are-saying-about-Googles-huge-re-organization-announcement/articleshow/48435862.cms"> changes to the company’s executive structure</a> in a bid to present a ‘slimmed down Google,’ which will be included under a new parent company, Alphabet. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/In-choosing-Alphabet-Inc-Google-joins-a-branded-crowd/articleshow/48437236.cms">Alphabet</a>, headed by Larry Page is essentially a collection of companies, the largest of which will inevitably be Google. 
 
Joining Google as a ‘low-key manager’ in 2004, Pichai quickly worked his way up the ladder and became part of the team that successfully launched Chrome browser in 2008. Then in 2012, he undertook the responsibility of heading Apps after the former head departed. And, finally in 2013, he was put in charge of Android. 
 
Pichai’s advancement as Product Chief in 2014 quite literally sealed the deal as he became second-in-command to none other than Page. In a press release announcing Pichai’s new post, Page mentions how Pichai ‘stepped up since October last year, when he took on product and engineering responsibility for our Internet businesses.’ 
 
However, the responsibility of heading the $66 billion-revenue, $16-billion profit, company didn’t come easy to Pichai. He undoubtedly worked for it. Really hard. 
 
Responding to a recent Quora thread which questioned Pichai’s surprising promotion to the highest ranks, Chris Beckmann, former Product Manager at Google was all praise for Pichai, crediting him for recruiting, mentoring and retaining the best team of product managers who helped him spearhead ‘successful efforts for difficult projects that were core to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Heres-an-interesting-theory-making-the-rounds-about-Googles-big-shakeup/articleshow/48430574.cms">Google’s</a> continued financial success, namely Toolbar and Chrome.’ He also added that Pichai ‘avoided making enemies’ and instead navigated office politics to build a team that’s talented and one that delivers. 
 
In comparison, it took <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Microsofts-Windows-10-to-change-the-tech-world-says-Nadella/articleshow/48070350.cms">Satya Nadella</a> 20 years to rise up to the coveted rank of CEO of technology giant Microsoft. However, that is where the differences between the two Indian-origin CEOs end. 
 
Both Nadella and Pichai now command an influential position in the US tech world and they’re not alone. The list also includes Shantanu Narayen, President and CEO of Adobe, Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Amit Singhal, Senior Vice President at Google, Rajeev Suri, CEO of Nokia and Rashmi Sinha, co-founder of SlideShare. 
 Moreover, according to a 2014 report by Dr Vishwas Wadhwa, the founders of 15% of the startups in the <keyword id="6357722" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="silicon-valley">Silicon Valley</keyword> are Indians. 
 
So, what is it exactly that’s making Indians stand tall in the Silicon Valley? 
 
It’s certainly a stark contrast from the scenario in 1992, when Indians in the Silicon Valley were deemed incapable of becoming managers- leave aside CEOs, despite being excellent engineers. 
 
The metamorphosis from 1992 to today can be largely attributed to banishing negative stereotypes that limited the entry of Indians to enviable positions. 
 
To attain this, the first generation of Indian-Americans who successfully started shattering the glass-ceiling acted as mentors for the future generations, providing them seed-funding, sharing their experiences and opening quite a few doors. 
 
This also unraveled in the management culture wherein it was noticed by a 2004 research from St. Gallen University in Switzerland that Indian executives prioritised participative administration and building meaningful relationships with subordinates which fostered an emotional bond. 
 
As Indra Nooyi, the CEO of Pepisco, once famously divulged, there's no executives in the ‘Indian club’ who possess a dictatorial style of management. “They value their employees as a person.” 
 
Additionally, they are also known to be future-oriented, patient, humble and persistent- traits which are sacrosanct for any leader. 
 
Thus, it comes as no surprise that the unique process of mentoring and uplifting within the community, immense hard work and dedication by Indian-Americans themselves, have worked out in a way which promptly put the Indian club of executives onto the global platform. 
 
Image credit: Indiatimes

I'm CEO: Indian-born business leaders are the future of Silicon Valley

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Eric Risberg/Associated PressSergei Brin</div></div></div><ul><li>Google cofounder Sergei Brin wrote Alphabet's 2017 annual Founders Letter.</li><li>Brin said artificial intelligence advances represent the most significant computing development in his lifetime.</li><li>But he warned that tech companies have a responsbility to consider the impact of their advances on society, a chage in tone. </li></ul> Sergei Brin, the cof0under of <a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/googl-stock">Google</a>, stressed the need for caution, accountability and humility within the tech industry as its innovations become "deeply and irrevocably" ingrained in society, a striking shift in tone among a leader of the Silicon Valley business cohort famous for its certitude of its own righteousness.In the<a href="https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/2017/index.html"> annual founders letter</a> released by Google-parent company Alphabet, Brin touted the far-reaching innovations in artificial intelligence, computing power and speech recognition in recent years. "Every month, there are stunning new applications and transformative new techniques. In this sense, we are truly in a technology renaissance, " Brin wrote in the letter published on Alphabet's investor relations site on Friday. Advances in artificial intelligence, he said, represent the "most significant development in computing in my lifetime."But Brin said the tech industry could no longer maintain its "wide-eyed and idealistic" attitude about the impact of its creations. "There are very legitimate and pertinent issues being raised, across the globe, about the implications and impacts of these advances," Brin said. Among these issues: "How will they affect employment across different sectors? How can we understand what they are doing under the hood? What about measures of fairness? How might they manipulate people? Are they safe?"<h2>Brin has seemed dismissive of "hypothetical situations" in the past</h2>The comments come as the tech industry, which represent the most valuable companies in the American economy, has come under fire for a variety of issues, including the collection and misuse of people's personal information (as highlighted by <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-87-million-cambridge-analytica-data-2018-4">Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal</a>), the spread of<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-suggested-conspiracy-videos-to-children-using-its-kids-app-2018-3"> misinformation, propaganda and hate speech on services like YouTube</a>, Google and Facebook, and a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/category/your-brain-on-apps">growing anxiety about our dependence on smartphones.</a>Brin has been an important figure in the development of technologies once considered the stuff of <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> fiction, helping to shape the Google X labs where products like self-driving cars, face-worn computers and airborne delivery drones were born. The 44-year old Russian-born executive has at times shown himself to be dismissive of the public's concerns regarding potential impacts of technological advances, labeling some as "hypothetical situations.""We can debate as philosophers, but the fact is that we can make cars that are far safer than human drivers," <a href="https://www.recode.net/2014/6/11/11627898/self-driving-into-the-future-full-code-conference-video-of-googles">Brin said at a tech conference in 2014,</a> when asked about the ethics involved in creating self-driving cars that must choose between hitting a pedestrian or a truck. In March, the first self-driving car fatality oc cured in Arizona <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-first-footage-fatal-self-driving-car-crash-2018-3">when an Atmos Uber vehicle struck a pedestrian </a>at night (human-driven cars are involved in more than 35,000 traffic fatalities per year in the US). "There is serious thought and research going into all of these issues," Brin wrote in the founder's letter on Friday. "Most notably, safety spans a wide range of concerns from the fears of sci-fi style sentience to the more near-term questions such as validating the performance of self-driving cars."<h3>Here's Sergei Brin's full 2017 letter: </h3>It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair ..."So begins Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities," and what a great articulation it is of the transformative time we live in. We're in an era of great inspiration and possibility, but with this opportunity comes the need for tremendous thoughtfulness and responsibility as technology is deeply and irrevocably interwoven into our societies.<h3>Computation Explosion</h3>The power and potential of computation to tackle important problems has never been greater. In the last few years, the cost of computation has continued to plummet. The Pentium IIs we used in the first year of Google performed about 100 million floating point operations per second. The GPUs we use today perform about 20 trillion such operations - a factor of about 200,000 difference - and our very own TPUs are now capable of 180 trillion (180,000,000,000,000) floating point operations per second.Even these startling gains may look small if the promise of quantum computing comes to fruition. For a specialized class of problems, quantum computers can solve them exponentially faster. For instance, if we are successful with our 72 qubit prototype, it would take millions of conventional computers to be able to emulate it. A 333 qubit error-corrected quantum computer would live up to our name, offering a 10,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000x speedup.There are several factors at play in this boom of computing. First, of course, is the steady hum of Moore's Law, although some of the traditional measures such as transistor counts, density, and clock frequencies have slowed. The second factor is greater demand, stemming from advanced graphics in gaming and, surprisingly, from the GPU-friendly proof-of-work algorithms found in some of today's leading cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum. However, the third and most important factor is the profound revolution in machine learning that has been building over the past decade. It is both made possible by these increasingly powerful processors and is also the major impetus for developing them further.<h3>The Spring of Hope</h3>The new spring in artificial intelligence is the most significant development in computing in my lifetime. When we started the company, neural networks were a forgotten footnote in computer science; a remnant of the AI winter of the 1980's. Yet today, this broad brush of technology has found an astounding number of applications. We now use it to:<ul><li>understand images in Google Photos;</li><li>enable Waymo cars to recognize and distinguish objects safely;</li><li>significantly improve sound and camera quality in our hardware;</li><li>understand and produce speech for Google Home;</li><li>translate over 100 languages in Google Translate;</li><li>caption over a billion videos in 10 languages on YouTube;</li><li>improve the efficiency of our data centers;</li><li>suggest short replies to emails;</li><li>help doctors diagnose diseases, such as diabetic retinopathy;</li><li>discover new planetary systems;</li><li>create better neural networks (AutoML); ... and much more.</li></ul>Every month, there are stunning new applications and transformative new techniques. In this sense, we are truly in a technology renaissance, an exciting time where we can see applications across nearly every segment of modern society.However, such powerful tools also bring with them new questions and responsibilities. How will they affect employment across different sectors? How can we understand what they are doing under the hood? What about measures of fairness? How might they manipulate people? Are they safe?There is serious thought and research going into all of these issues. Most notably, safety spans a wide range of concerns from the fears of sci-fi style sentience to the more near-term questions such as validating the performance of self-driving cars. A few of our noteworthy initiatives on AI safety are as follows:<ul><li><a href="https://research.googleblog.com/2016/06/bringing-precision-to-ai-safety.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bringing Precision to the AI Safety Discussion</a></li><li><a href="https://deepmind.com/applied/deepmind-ethics-society/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DeepMind Ethics &amp; Society</a></li><li><a href="https://ai.google/pair" target="_blank" rel="noopener">PAIR: People+AI Research Initiative</a></li><li><a href="https://www.partnershiponai.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Partnership on AI</a></li></ul>I expect machine learning technology to continue to evolve rapidly and for Alphabet to continue to be a leader - in both the technological and ethical evolution of the field.<h3>G is for Google</h3>Roughly three years ago, we restructured the company as Alphabet, with Google as a subsidiary (albeit far larger than the rest). As I write this, Google is in its 20th year of existence and continues to serve ever more people with information and technology products and services. Over one billion people now use Search, YouTube, Maps, Play, Gmail, Android, and Chrome every month.This widespread adoption of technology creates new opportunities, but also new responsibilities as the social fabric of the world is increasingly intertwined.Expectations about technology can differ significantly based on nationality, cultural background, and political affiliation. Therefore, Google must evolve its products with ever more care and thoughtfulness.The purpose of Alphabet has been to allow new applications of technology to thrive with greater independence. While it is too early to declare the strategy a success, I am cautiously optimistic. Just a few months ago, the Onduo joint venture between Verily and Sanofi launched their first offering to help people with diabetes manage the disease. Waymo has begun operating fully self-driving cars on public roads and has crossed 5 million miles of testing. Sidewalk Labs has begun a large development project in Toronto. And Project Wing has performed some of the earliest drone deliveries in Australia.There remains a high level of collaboration. Most notably, our two machine learning centers of excellence - Google Brain (an X graduate) and DeepMind - continue to bring their expertise to projects throughout Alphabet and the world. And the Nest subsidiary has now officially rejoined Google to form a more robust hardware group.<h3>The Epoch of Belief and the Epoch of Incredulity</h3>Technology companies have historically been wide- eyed and idealistic about the opportunities that their innovations create. And for the overwhelming part, the arc of history shows that these advances, including the Internet and mobile devices, have created opportunities and dramatically improved the quality of life for billions of people. However, there are very legitimate and pertinent issues being raised, across the globe, about the implications and impacts of these advances. This is an important discussion to have. While I am optimistic about the potential to bring technology to bear on the greatest problems in the world, we are on a path that we must tread with deep responsibility, care, and humility. That is Alphabet's goal.<a href="http://read.bi/ai-101-free"></a> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-not-paying-taxes-trump-bezos-2018-4">How Amazon gets away with not paying taxes</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

Sergei Brin: Silicon Valley has outgrown the time of being 'wide-eyed and idealistic' about tech and needs to show 'responsibility, care and humility'

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"></div></div>
We're learning more about why Google Glass failed, thanks to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/style/why-google-glass-broke.html?_r=0">a report by The New York Times' Nick Bilton</a>.
Google <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-ends-sales-of-google-glass-2015-1">stopped selling Google Glass in January</a>.
Glass was still an early prototype when Google made it available to fans and journalists in 2013.
"The team within Google X knew the product wasn't even close to ready for prime time," a former Google employee told Bilton.
But company cofounder and Google X leader Sergey Brin wanted Glass to be released to the public so that Google could improve it with their feedback.
That strategy backfired when journalists reviewed Glass like a fully-developed consumer product.
One YouTube review called it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr6hOVbgBEU">"the worst product of all time."</a> 
Some people were also putt off by Glass invading their privacy and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-glass-thieves-find-passcodes-2014-6">worried it could be used to steal their personal information</a>.
Sergei Brin's romance with Glass marketing manager <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/amanda-rosenberg-of-google-2013-8">Amanda Rosenberg</a> also reportedly contributed to Glass' downfall. Early team members left after news of the affair became public.
Google Glass isn't technically dead forever - the company is simply no longer selling the original prototype unit. Google took it out of the X Lab and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nest-tony-fadell-google-glass-2015-1">handed responsibility to Tony Fadell</a>, a former Apple exec who now runs Google's Nest unit. He's working <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ivy-ross-google-glass-2014-5">with Ivy Ross</a>, a veteran of the retail and art worlds.

Google knew Glass 'wasn't even close to ready,' but Sergey Brin pushed it out

<ul class="summary-list"><li>India's Ambani family is hosting a three-day pre-wedding party, attracting the world's elite.</li><li>Guests like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Ivanka Trump, led to a surge in private jets at the local airport.</li></ul>The <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-meta-ambani-wedding-party-big-tech-india-market-2024-3">party of the month (year?) is underway in India</a>, and the local airport is pulling out all the stops to cope.The Ambani family <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ambani-wedding-guests-celebrities-performance-dress-code-party-billionaire-2024-3">is hosting a bash for one of its scions, Anant, to get married to Radhika Merchant</a>.The Ambanis are Asia's richest family, with its patriarch Mukesh Ambani worth $111 billion.Bloomberg has him 11th <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/">on its Billionaire Index,</a> thanks to the vast wealth of his company Reliance Industries.<div type="image" title="Ivanka Trump arrives for the Ambani wedding pre-party in Jamnagar, India." height="1354" width="2033" msid="108145315" hostid="261"></div>He's a touch behind Google founder Sergei Brin and ahead of Mexico's Carlos Slim, once the richest man on earth.This isn't the actual wedding, which is in July. It's a pre-wedding party, and is due to go on for three days in Reliance Township in the Indian state of Gujarat.Joining the fun are Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Fink, Ivanka Trump, and an array of the richest and most famous people in India. Rihanna is performing.That kind of guestlist brings a long trail of private jets and the local airport in Jamnagar isn't built for it.<div type="image" title="Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan wearing floral garlands" height="832" width="1040" msid="108145317" hostid="261"></div>An article <a target="_blank" href="https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/variety/jamnagars-skies-jam-packed-with-sleek-jets-ferrying-ambani-guests/article67895288.ece">posted by India's The Hindu newspaper</a> marveled at the 150 planes descending at roughly the same time.It said around 50 of them were private jets coming from other countries, meaning passport control for their occupants.If you think that might mean billionaires irately standing in line, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wealthy-davos-attendees-annoyed-waiting-long-lines-report-2024-1">like they had to at Davos</a>, you would be wrong.An airport official told The Hindu that he'd spoken to the Indian government and laid on some extra capacity for the powerful guests."With the permission of the Government of India, we have set up a Customs, Immigration, and Quarantine (CIQ) centre at the airport. This is meant to facilitate the international visitors landing directly at Jamnagar," DK Singh, the airport's director, said.Everyone, it seems, is determined to make the party an impressive one.

An Indian mega-party is attracting so many private jets that officials set up extra passport control for all the VIPs

<h1>Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva via AP2018 Nobel Prize winner Frances Armond is joining Alphabet's board.</h1><ul class="summary-list"><li style="font-weight: 400;">Google parent company Alphabet announced on<a href="https://abc.xyz/investor/news/releases/2019/1209/"> Monday</a> that Frances Arnold, a scientist at the California Institute of Technology, will join the company's board of directors.</li><li style="font-weight: 400;">Arnold, who won the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/r-arnold-smith-winter-win-2018-nobel-chemistry-prize-2018-10">Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018</a>, will be one of three women on Alphabet's 11-person board.</li><li style="font-weight: 400;">Pichai's announcement marks his first official move since <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/alphabet-larry-page-sergey-brin-stepping-down-sundar-pichai-2019-12">taking over</a> for founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin last week.</li><li style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.</a></li></ul>Google parent company Alphabet announced in a <a href="https://abc.xyz/investor/news/releases/2019/1209/">press release Monday</a> that scientist Frances Arnold would join the company's board of directors effective immediately. In <a href="https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1204155296286855169">a tweet</a>, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said that "Frances brings incredible academic and industry expertise" and that he looks forward to looking with her.In the press release, Arnold said: "I've long admired Alphabet's commitment to technology and research, and to improving the lives of people around the world, and I'm excited to be a part of that."Arnold currently works at the California Institute of Technology and received the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/r-arnold-smith-winter-win-2018-nobel-chemistry-prize-2018-10">Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018</a> for her work developing a novel method of bioengineering that is "used in hundreds of laboratories and companies that make everything from laundry detergents to biofuels to medicines," according to a <a href="https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/frances-arnold-wins-2018-nobel-prize-chemistry-83926">press release</a> from the school.The move marks Pichai's first official move as Alphabet CEO, a role he <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/alphabet-larry-page-sergey-brin-stepping-down-sundar-pichai-2019-12">recently stepped into</a> when Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced their resignation as Alphabet CEO and president, respectively. Page and Brin both remain on Alphabet's board and maintain controlling shares of the company.Get the latest Google stock price<a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stock/GOOG-Quote"> here.</a> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/worst-tech-decade-hoverboard-google-glass-snapchat-spectacles-galaxy-note">Worst tech of the decade</a></h3>

Google's parent company is adding Nobel-winning scientist Frances Arnold to its board, in Sundar Pichai's first big move as chief exec

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image">Antonio Villas-Boas/Tech Insider/Google</div></div></div>Google started out as a research project in 1996, and founder Sergei Brin and Larry Page nearly sold it for $1 million because it was interfering with their academics.Now, Google is everywhere. Unless you're actively trying to avoid Google's products or services, it's likely that you're using at least one of them.The competition is tougher than ever, but some of Google's services are consistently better than anything else out there. Check them out:

12 things Google does better than any other tech company

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image">Hollis Johnson/Business InsiderThe Pixel 3.</div></div></div>Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Wednesday.<ol><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-pixel-3-event-live-blog-all-announcements-2018-10">Google launched a slew of new hardware products on Tuesday, including its latest flagship smartphones, the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL</a>. There was also a new tablet, the Pixel Slate, and a new Google Home speaker.</li><li><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-09/new-evidence-of-hacked-supermicro-hardware-found-in-u-s-telecom">Bloomberg has doubled down on its reporting that China compromised server firm Supermicro in a major supply chain hack</a>. Bloomberg reported that an unnamed US telecoms firm found and removed compromised hardware, citing security expert Yossi Appleboum.</li><li><a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/10/09/google-china-censored-search-engine/">Google's plan to launch a censored search engine in China is further along than the company is admitting, according to a leaked transcript obtained by The Intercept</a>. Publicly, the company has said the plans are not very developed, but executive Ben Gomes said in a private meeting the firm wanted to be able to quickly deploy the search engine.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/softbank-talks-invest-15-billion-to-20-billion-wework-2018-10">SoftBank is in talks to invest $15 billion to $20 billion in WeWork for a majority stake</a>. The potential deal would effectively give Japan's SoftBank control of the fast-growing office sharing company.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-execs-named-saudi-board-controversy-jamal-khashoggi-disappearance-2018-10">More than a dozen high profile tech executives, including famous venture capital investor Marc Andreessen and former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick are part of a newly announced advisory panel for a $500 billion Saudi mega-city project</a>. The panel was announced as much of the focus on Saudi Arabia turns towards the fate of a Saudi dissident who disappeared after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-drivers-multiple-protests-users-log-off-app-2018-10">Uber drivers staged their first multi-city strike in the UK in a sign that their anger over 'exploitation' is getting harder for Uber to ignore</a>. Around 1,000 drivers were expected to strike, and they requested users not to cross the "digital picket line" by ordering a cab from the app.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/rubio-blumenthal-letter-supermicro-bloomberg-china-microchip-2018-10">A bipartisan pair of senators want more answers from Supermicro, the company accused of selling Apple and Amazon data servers compromised by Chinese spies</a>. Sens. Marco Rubio and Richard Blumenthal sent a letter to Supermicro, the motherboard supplier named in recent bombshell Bloomberg reports on Chinese infiltration.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-windows-10-deleted-files-fix-2018-10">Microsoft thinks it has a fix for the glitch in a huge new Windows 10 update that was deleting people's personal files</a>. Microsoft says that the issue only affected one one-hundredth of one percent of people who had installed the update.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/some-us-attorneys-general-are-investigating-google-data-breach-2018-10">At least two US attorneys general are investigating the Google glitch that exposed hundreds of thousands of users' personal data</a>. The investigation follows Google's announcement on Monday that it would shut down the consumer version of its social network Google+ and tighten its data-sharing policies after a "bug" potentially exposed user data.<section><div data-e2e-name="byline"></div></section><section><div data-e2e-name="byline"></div></section></li><li><a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/googles-top-executives-stopped-posting-on-google-at-least-a-year-ago-2018-10">There was already a big clue that Google+ was dead before Google announced its shutdown this week: its executives stopped using it at least a year ago</a>. Cofounder Larry Page last posted in 2015, CEO Sundar Pichai in 2016, and cofounder Sergei Brin as recently as September 2017.</li></ol>Have an Amazon Alexa device? Now you can hear 10 Things in Tech each morning. Just search for "Business Insider" in your Alexa's flash briefing settings. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sony-playstation-dualshock-perfect-controller-2018-9">How Sony created the perfect video game controller</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

10 things in tech you need to know today

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:480px"><div class="image">Getty Images/Adam Berry</div></div>The effective death of <keyword id="6355629" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Google">Google</keyword>'s famous "<a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/googles-20-percent-time-in-action.html">20% time</a>," where employees were spending one day a week working on personal projects, has been confirmed by a new report.
The policy is a victim of Google's growing focus on efficiency and data, and the sheer size of the company. 
It was withering years ago. In <a href="http://www.quora.com/Engineering-in-Silicon-Valley/How-does-Google%E2%80%99s-Innovation-Time-Off-policy-work-in-practice/answer/Ben-Maurer">a 2010 Quora thread</a>, former Google engineer Ben Maurer wrote that you could take the time, but it wasn't effective due to the layers of approval required to launch things and that you would do poorly on performance reviews compared to a colleague who spends 100% of their time on their main project. 
Now, a former employee <a href="http://qz.com/115831/googles-20-time-which-brought-you-gmail-and-adsense-is-now-as-good-as-dead/">tells Quartz's Christopher Mims</a> that the company started requiring managerial approval for taking the time at all — and that those managers are judged based on the <keyword id="23080" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="productivity">productivity</keyword> of their teams — and their productivity goals are set with the expectation that employees are working full time at their core jobs. Thus, clearly, managers are discouraged from granting 20% requests.
Some engineers disputed the claim that managerial approval is required, <a href="http://qz.com/116196/google-engineers-insist-20-time-is-not-dead-its-just-turned-into-120-time/">Mims adds in an update</a>, but others acknowledged that the pressure to perform keeps people from taking 20% time. It is jokingly called "120% time," because side projects occur only in free time.
Constant measurement of everything and the data-based pursuit of productivity has become something of a religion at Google, led by their People Operations department (known as "POPS")
In a piece on Google's HR practices, Slate's <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/01/google_people_operations_the_secrets_of_the_world_s_most_scientific_human.single.htmlhttp://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/01/google_people_operations_the_secrets_of_the_world_s_most_scientific_human.single.html">Farhad Manjoo writes</a> that "At the heart of POPS is a sophisticated employee-data tracking program, an effort to gain empirical certainty about every aspect of Google’s workers’ lives."
Frequently, it's used to justify things that employees like, such as lavish maternity leave, and the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/top-25-tech-companies-to-work-at-in-2013-2013-7#5-google-is-still-an-awesome-place-to-work-21">many other remaining perks.</a>
Now it means you can work on side projects, just as long as you get as much measurable work done as someone who doesn't. Just don't expect much in the way of reward or thanks unless you happen to strike gold. 
Maximum productivity wasn't the aim of the original policy. In fact, the language of Sergei Brin and Larry Page's <a href="http://investor.google.com/corporate/2004/ipo-founders-letter.html">2004 IPO letter</a> suggests that they were willing to take some losses in order to create big wins like AdSense, which was created as a side project and accounting for 25% of the company's business, as well as Google News and Gmail. 
On 20% time, they argued that the policy empowered employees to be creative and innovative, and conceded that "most risky projects fizzle, often teaching us something. Others succeed and become attractive businesses." 
It's another thing that's been updated with the use of data, like the retirement of the company's infamous brainteaser interview questions, which were <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-google-hires-2013-6">found to be useless</a> in determining success. 
The company has clearly judged that having the majority of workers focused exclusively on their jobs is more efficient, tasking a few engineers with coming up a few well-funded and approved "moonshots" at Google X rather than having everyone participate.
Google's simply gotten too big to be as unconventional or democratic as it used to be.

Google's Obsession With Efficiency Has Killed Its Most Famous Perk

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image">Mario Tama/Getty Images</div></div></div>Further fueling the ongoing debate over the future of the <keyword id="6355005" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="News">news</keyword> media and independent journalism, eBay founder and billionaire Pierre Omidyar last month committed $250 million to a news site co-founded by journalist and author Glenn Greenwald. Omidyar's investment followed the announcement over the summer that Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos had purchased The Washington Post, also a $250 million investment. The late Steve Jobs's wife, Lauren Powell, and 29-year-old Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes are also pouring money into old and new media ventures.
Could this new band of news media owners shape a technology-led business model that will be profitable and protect the integrity of impartial, ideology-free journalism? Ultimately, according to Wharton experts, the ball will rest with the consumer.
Any new business model that those in the <keyword id="6355118" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="technology">technology</keyword> world would bring to the media realm would have to address the major pain points currently facing the industry. News organizations have "suffered a lot financially in the past couple of years," says Wharton marketing professor Pinar Yildirim. Circulation numbers and advertising revenue have shrunk as both readers and companies turned their focus to the Internet. The industry has tried to adjust to the new normal - some newspapers and magazines have cut back on issues or the number of days they produce a print product. Other news organizations have started charging for online access. Still more have tried to add content that mimics what tends to be most popular on the web, especially entertainment-related coverage, Yildirim notes.
Omidyar has indicated that he was motivated more by a desire to protect independent journalism than the prospect of getting a return on his investment, at least for now. In a blog post published on his website last month, Omidyar wrote that his investment in Greenwald's venture (tentatively called "NewCo.") stems from his "interest in journalism for some time now." In 2010, Omidyar founded Honolulu Civil Beat, a news website with a stated focus on "investigative and watchdog journalism." Earlier this summer, he explored buying The Washington Post newspaper before Bezos became the winning bidder. Around that time, Omidyar said he began thinking about the social impact he could help create with an investment in "something entirely new, built from the ground up."
<blockquote>
<h3>"You cannot charge for news. With the American mindset, largely created by Google, you cannot charge for content."-Eric Clemons</h3>
</blockquote>
He then reached out to Greenwald, who with colleagues Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill was already planning to launch an online venture to support independent journalists. "We had a lot of overlap in terms of our ideas, and decided to join forces," Omidyar wrote. His plan is still a work in progress. "Right now, I'm in the very early stages of creating a new mass media organization. I don't yet know how or when it will be rolled out, or what it will look like. For now, the plan is for the site to cover general interest news, "with a core mission around supporting and empowering independent journalists across many sectors and beats." Omidyar added that he wants to build a media platform that helps journalists "pursue the truth in their fields."
Behind the Headlines: Four Scenarios
According to Wharton operations and information management professorEric K. Clemons, there are four possible motivations for technology investors to pursue ventures related to traditional media businesses. He immediately dismisses the first premise, that "traditional media companies represent a great investment opportunity," pointing out that, given the current fortunes of many media properties, "this is clearly absurd, and we do not need to consider this further."
Clemons briefly rejects the second possible premise as well: "Traditional media is so important that high tech investors invest because of an altruistic desire to preserve free speech, which the Founding Fathers thought was the cornerstone of democracy." He notes: "I might have believed this of Warren Buffett or [Hewlett-Packard co-founder] Dave Packard. I can't make this work for any of the individuals currently investing in media companies."
The third potential motivator, that traditional media represents "an undervalued asset," and that "if The New York Times and The Washington Post were just jazzed up they would be marvelous online revenue producers," is also not a sound theory, Clemons says. "You cannot charge for news," he states. "With the American mindset, largely created by Google, you cannot charge for content." The problem with publications like The New York Times or BusinessWeek is not that they are "boring" or "ignored," Clemons notes. "The problem is that online ads are not a large revenue producer for media companies. The problem also is that most content is not read on the media owners' websites. Most content is now read for free, elsewhere."
However, Clemons says that traditional media companies do have "enormous synergistic opportunities when added to the right portfolio." One example of that synergy is Bloomberg's purchase of BusinessWeek magazine in July 2009, he notes. Bloomberg wanted the magazine's content, writers and editors for its existing news operation, Clemons says, recalling a meeting he had with Michael Bloomberg in 1981, right after he had founded his company. "[Bloomberg] knew even then that he would need a radio station, a TV station and a newspaper," he points out. "He thought he would buy The New York Times, but for now, has BusinessWeek," subsequently renamed Bloomberg Businessweek.
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<h4>SPONSORED CONTENT</h4>
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Clemons suggests that The Washington Post could be "a great online revenue producer" for Bezos if it could score on two fronts: One, its advertisements must be "carefully targeted, the way Amazon targets recommendations." Second, those recommendations should be constructed in such a way as to immediately produce sales for advertisers, "the way Amazon sales and fulfillment do." According to Clemons, another major player in the tech sector, Google, should also invest in a media venture. Google doesn't need content, because the company "just copies it [from other sources] and relocates it onto one of their own pages," Clemons says, but it would allow the firm to advance its own online marketplace, similar to what Bezos may do with the Post.
Another potential reason for all of the interest in media from the tech sector, Clemons notes, is that "traditional media companies are important [for] advancing an ideology that is important to the investor, whether liberal or conservative, green, or even aimed at protecting the investor's other assets." He finds that theory both "plausible and scary," noting that "… The idea of [Google founders] Larry [Page] and Sergei [Brin] having not only the ability to have direct access to what they want us to read - but to produce what they want us to read - is scary."
The Search for a New Business Model
It is no longer realistic to expect good journalism to be a profitable enterprise for investors, according to Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor Kevin Werbach. "It is not clear if there is a for-profit business model anymore for high-quality journalism at scale," he notes, adding that even in the past, "there was never a large-scale news operation that was able to fund itself directly on a stand-alone basis."
Werbach says news organizations have traditionally succeeded through bundling. In the print media, the reporting was bundled with classified and display ads. In TV broadcasting, news was bundled with entertainment programming, "because part of the deal in getting 'the public airwaves' for free was informing the public. Both of those bundles have broken down."
<blockquote>
<h3>"Public funding for news and journalism isn't going to be significant in the U.S. because … it creates a danger of biasing the product. The alternative is to support journalism the way Michelangelo and Mozart were funded: through the kindness of the wealthy."-Kevin Werbach</h3>
</blockquote>
What does that breakdown of a business model mean for the news media now? "We are exploring the other means of funding things that are socially and economically beneficial, but that the market won't actually [support]," says Werbach.
According to Werbach, there two main issues that news media organizations have to weigh today: subsidies and patronage. "Public funding for news and journalism isn't going to be significant in the U.S. because we've become so skeptical of government, and because it creates a danger of biasing the product," he says. "The alternative is to support journalism the way Michelangelo and Mozart were funded: through the kindness of the wealthy. Jeff Bezos, Pierre Omidyar and Chris Hughes are spending their money to support journalism because they believe it's important, and that they can make a difference."
Yildirim says one could argue that the real value of the news business today is exclusive information that people are willing to pay for. "It is a challenge for journalists and reporters to search and find exclusive information, and create an environment so that people with that exclusive information can turn to [the press] without having to seek asylum in Russia," she says, referring to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who took refuge in Russia because he is facing federal espionage charges for leaking classified information about U.S. surveillance programs to the press.
Reader's Choice
Creating a protective environment for journalists in pursuit of investigative reporting appears to be the prime objective of the new band of technology investors in news media, according to Yildirim. However, today's consumers of news may behave in ways that actually fly in the face of independent journalism, she suggests.
Two factors are changing the fundamentals of the news media business, according to Yildirim. First, news stories are potentially able to garner a larger audience today because of the decreasing cost of dissemination. "Second, because consumers have [access to more] news sources, they may be self-selecting into news outlets and getting somewhat segregated," she adds. According to market research theory, a self-selection bias arises whenever people select themselves into a group, thereby distorting findings.
"A completely independent journalism model may not be hugely successful," says Yildirim. Citing research on media bias, she notes that readers of news tend to want two things: "First, they want to hear news that is slant-free - i.e., reports that are free of strategic omissions and representations of data, choice of words and choice of issues." She acknowledges that this desire is consistent with the concept of independent journalism.
However, Yildirim sees a problem arising from readers' second requirement. "People also read news because they would like to hear opinions confirming their beliefs and values. If a news report is against one's beliefs, one can easily say that the story is incorrect, biased and partisan, and quit consuming news from the same source." She points out that the annual Pew Research Center report on the state of the media confirms this view and shows that people with left-wing views tend to get their news from outlets like MSNBC, and people with right-wing opinions watch Fox News, adding that the same is true for newspapers as well. "There is a clear preference for sources based on ideology."
<blockquote>
<h3>"People also read news because they would like to hear opinions confirming their beliefs and values. If a news report is against one's beliefs, one can easily say that the story is incorrect, biased and partisan, and quit consuming news from the same source."-Pinar Yildirim</h3>
</blockquote>
To be sure, one could argue that the bias in the news outlets shapes audience preferences, and that is partially true, says Yildirim. Even so, she notes that the opposite is also true, citing academic research showing that "it is the demand for slant that generates the existence of these ideological outlets." Further, she does not expect the news outlets to erase their ideological positions any time soon.
Advertising to the Rescue
There does seem to be a way out of ideologically biased news: Advertising as a revenue source can help to fix some of the partisan media bias in the marketplace, says Yildirim. "Media bias can be mitigated when advertising is the source revenue as opposed to circulation," she notes, citing a 2012 research article in the Journal of Marketing Research she co-authored with Esther Gal-Or and Tansev Geylani. "We have shown that consumers want ideology, but advertisers want eyeballs, and they do not, in most cases at least, care what ideology these eyeballs are linked to. As a result, news organizations that are aimed at maximizing advertising revenue can be more independent." She adds that most of the new innovators or technology investors in the news media business will likely have to rely on advertising revenue.
The bottom line, of course, is that economics lies at the root of all the positions that news media outlets take, notes Yildirim. "Even with strong, independent journalism, these news outlets are essentially products in the marketplace, and they need to be positioned." Audiences do not typically read news directly from the Associated Press or other news wires because they need help interpreting the events those stories describe, she adds. They need guidance on what position to take on issues, and that is where commentaries and opinion pieces come in.
All the same, "the need for impartial journalism is greater than it has ever been, because we live now in a world of affinity-based media where citizens can and do construct echo chambers of their own beliefs," New York Times columnist Bill Keller wrote in a recent op-ed exchange with Greenwald after Omidyar's investment commitment. "It is altogether too easy to feel 'informed' without ever encountering information that challenges our prejudices."
Technology investors like Omidyar bring "entrepreneurial and technological insights to the problem that may certainly help," says Werbach. He hears in their statements "a sense of mission more than the usual Silicon Valley triumphalism. That gives me hope that they will fight against the online echo chamber, rather than reinforcing it. Technology can bring us perspectives other than our own, if the ones designing it build that into the architecture, and the ones consuming the news are open to it."
Yildirim agrees that technology with its pervasive powers can demolish echo chambers and create a more informed public. "Our means for communication have expanded so much - and in many ways, this expansion has seemingly improved the volume of information we have," she says. "It is nice to believe that the chambers will be broken, but again, it is important to remember that consumers select what information they will consume and how they will consume it - what news to read, what sources to follow, credit or discredit. And unless they are open to changing their behavior, technology by itself may not be enough."Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company <keyword id="1814386" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Bezos-Expeditions">Bezos Expeditions</keyword>.

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