Being a CEO used to mean something very clear: You were the top dog, answerable only to the collective will of a board of directors. Today's CEOs, by contrast, are often deep down in the org chart, fireable by a boss who in turn is fireable by an even higher-up boss.
The big picture: Regional heads, heads of subsidiaries, heads of business lines — all of them now lay claim to the CEO title. Mark O’Donovan, for instance, is the CEO of Chase Auto, a subsidiary of Chase Manhattan Bank that is itself a subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase.
The Department of Homeland Security has backtracked on a plan to require every person, including U.S. citizens and green-card holders, to submit to a facial recognition screening before entering or leaving the country.
Why it matters: Facial recognition has emerged as a privacy flashpoint. As some cities pass bans on the technology, the federal government has pushed forward — but this reversal shows the limits of public appetite for its use.
Chinese tech companies have ramped up efforts to set technical standards for facial recognition, raising concerns among business competitors, political observers and humanitarian advocates.
Why it matters: China has long made a systematic effort to set international standards on data and hardware compatibility across brands so that the standards reflect how Chinese products already work — giving its domestic industries a leg up in engineering races.
Google has created a new tool to help newsrooms make coverage decisions based on real-time data of what’s being searched on Google and talked about on Twitter.
Why it matters: It’s the latest effort by a tech giant to help give newsrooms access to data that could help their businesses. Google argues newsrooms can boost user loyalty by using the tool to cover the topics they are most interested in.
"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing to strip out sweeping legal protections for online content in the new trade pact with Mexico and Canada, in what would be a blow for big technology companies," the Wall Street Journal reports.
The big picture: There is ongoing debate over exporting the all-important Section 230 provision of the 1996 Communications Decency Act — which protects Facebook, Google and other platforms from legal responsibility for harmful content that its users post — across North America in a trade agreement.
On the big shopping days of the year — Black Friday, Cyber Monday and, of course, Prime Day — Amazon once shined with its hyper-efficient apparatus for commerce on full display.
No more. Heightened scrutiny of the consequences of its bigness is beginning to supplant the glowing coverage of its success.
Venture capital investments in Ohio more than doubled in five years, and the increased availability of funding is helping attract a new crop of startup founders.
Zooming in: Columbus in particular is experiencing a mini-renaissance as technology is disrupting legacy industries such as manufacturing, insurance, financial services, retail and health care.
Twenty women have joined a California lawsuit accusing Lyft of failing to take action on a "sexual predator crisis" that the company has allegedly known about for four years, the Washington Post reports.
The big picture: Lyft and Uber have both come under fire over allegations of drivers harming their passengers. CNN found in 2018 that 31 drivers for Uber had been "convicted for crimes ranging from forcible touching and false imprisonment to rape."
A handful of cities in Asia are ahead when it comes to preparing for and implementing the next-generation of mobility — ranging from autonomous vehicles, electrification, shared car fleets and multimodal platforms.
Why it matters: People are cramming into cities around the globe, leading to congestion and denser development. That means personal vehicles are getting pushed aside for more efficient and sustainable modes of transportation.
First, dating apps moved the experience of bumping into a good-looking stranger online. Now, the apps are coming for first dates.
Driving the news: The League, an exclusive dating platform that requires users to link to their LinkedIn accounts and wait for approval to join, is out with a new service called League Live. Those who sign up can go on three speed video chat dates within the app every week — it's yet another iconic step in courtship being relegated to smartphones.
The Federal Communications Commission intends to launch a new $9 billion 5G Fund to spur deployment of wireless service in hard-to-serve rural areas, scrapping an existing program meant to spur 4G LTE service.
Why it matters: Each new wave of wireless technology has rolled out quickly in urban centers but faced technical and financial hurdles in reaching rural customers. The FCC struggled to get the previous $4.53 billion 4G program off the ground over the last two years amid widespread criticism that coverage data submitted by the carriers did not accurately reflect where there already is 4G service.
The market responded positively in after-hours trading to the announcement that Sundar Pichai will take over as CEO of Alphabet in addition to his current role as head of the core Google unit.
The state of play: Pichai will replace Larry Page, who, along with Google co-founder Sergey Brin, will remain "actively involved as shareholders and co-founders."
Yesterday's announcement that Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were leaving their executive posts at Google's parent company Alphabet was a surprise only in timing.
What's happening: Page had stepped back from Google itself in 2015. From their perches at Alphabet — Page as CEO, Brin as president — the two founders oversaw the company's "other bets" on advanced technologies like self-driving cars and drones. Googlers have said that they became less and less a presence inside the company.
Amid an administration-wide push to develop 5G networks, the Defense Department is exploring ways to share spectrum with wireless carriers and other businesses.
Why it matters: Airwaves are limited, and government and industry either have to divvy up the scarce resource or find better ways to share. In the past, the Defense Department has had to relocate communications systems to new airwaves to make room for commercial services, and sharing would help avoid that.
The Department of Homeland Security recently updated its proposal to include U.S. citizens in facial recognition databases when entering or leaving the country.
The big picture: This move is part of the agency's long-term plan to upgrade the TSA's biometrics and identification technology, which has included facial recognition testing at over a dozen major airports.
