TECH POLICY

Order up!

On Friday, President Biden used his go-to pen—sleek, gold-engraved, and felt-tipped—to sign an executive order focused on promoting competition in the US economy. 

The sweeping order contained 72 initiatives by 12+ federal agencies, and a number of provisions focused on Big Tech and internet service providers (ISPs). 

Spoiler alert: If FAMGA CEOs woke up with “TGIF” on the brain, by 11am last Friday, they probably knew their weekend would be full of strategy calls and damage control. 

“Up your game” 

The executive order’s central thesis? “Open and fair competition,” President Biden said Friday. “That means that if your companies want to win your business, they have to go out and they have to up their game." 

For ISPs, that means: More transparency...in the form of bringing back broadband “nutrition labels,” which detail information on pricing, speed, data caps, latency, and more for customers. Before the FCC initially introduced the labels, in 2016, customers typically had to call ISPs and ask for that information. The labels were done away with during the Trump Administration. 

• The order also discourages early termination fees and exclusivity deals for entire buildings—meaning if you’re a renter signing up for internet service, you might soon have a decision to make instead of a default choice to accept. 
• It also called for the FCC to restore net neutrality rules. (More on that later.) 

Big Tech breakdown

M&A crackdown: The Biden administration said it will “vigorously” enforce antitrust laws and probe Big Tech mergers—including “killer acquisitions” of early stage competitors, like Facebook’s purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp. 

New data privacy rules: The order calls on the FTC to establish new rules on data collection and surveillance, since Big Tech’s biz models “have depended on the accumulation of extraordinarily [sic] amounts of sensitive personal information and related data.” 

• It also asks the FTC to bar unfair competition on internet marketplaces—for instance, if Amazon were to use sales data for a smaller business’s product to create its own version to sell under “Amazon Essentials.” 

Right-to-repair: The order calls for the FTC to issue rules stopping manufacturers from restricting customers’ ability to repair items they’ve purchased. With the right tools, you may be able to DIY an iPhone repair (or just take it to a local, independent repair shop) without penalty. 

+ One more thing: Under President Biden’s order, you may eventually be refunded fees if your in-flight wi-fi or entertainment system didn't work. Keep that in mind when making PTO requests.—HF

AR/VR

A mixed reality

Augmented and virtual reality could open portals to new worlds, providing us with exciting, immersive experiences right in our living rooms. 

Or...it could help people do their jobs. Although adoption of mixed reality is still relatively low—eMarketer clocks US penetration rates at 28.1% for AR and 17.7% for VR—organizations from the Pentagon to Hilton have experimented with the tech for their employees. 

So, how do workers feel about this? 

Overall, US adults are mixed about using AR/VR in a work setting, per a June Morning Brew-Harris Poll survey. 27% said they’re very or somewhat excited, 29% said they’re not very or not at all excited, and 31% said they’re neutral.

Dan McCarthy

• That tracks with what respondents felt about AR/VR in general: 28% said they’re excited, 34% aren’t, and 28% were neutral.
• Younger, higher-earning, and male respondents are all more excited about AR/VR in the workplace than older, lower-earning, and female respondents. 

Training and development is by far the most desired use case across all demographics. 39% of respondents said they are most excited for AR/VR training, compared to 18% for real-time feedback, 16% for remote collaboration, and 13% for managing workflows. 

Bottom line: Big Tech expects mixed reality to be the platform of the future. If that’s right, it’s only natural that AR/VR will have both lucrative enterprise and consumer applications, just like the personal computer, mobile phone, cloud, and other tech advancements before it.—DM 

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This Is An Ad for Freedom

Well...actually it’s an ad for Bakkt, the digital wallet of the future. But that’s what Bakkt gives you: freedom. 

No, we’re not about to break into a patriotic anthem or make references to an alien invasion movie about independence. We’re here to talk about the freedom to use your digital assets how you want—by managing, sending, or spending them. 

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The folks at Bakkt believe trading crypto should be easy, secure, and cost-effective, so there are no transaction or trading fees when you buy and sell bitcoin on the app. 

The Fourth may have passed, but you can keep celebrating freedom with Bakkt here.

CONNECTIVITY

Guess who’s back, back again

Earlier we gave you the high level on Biden's EO, now let's zoom in. Among the other 70-something initiatives included, Biden nestled a plan to restore the FCC’s net neutrality rules established under former President Obama in 2015. 

• The rules, which required ISPs to provide equal access to all internet sites and services, were the subject of intense pushback from major telcos like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast. 
• In 2017, former FCC chairman Ajit Pai repealed net neutrality during the Trump admin, calling the rules “heavy-handed micromanagement.”

So what? ISPs will no longer be able to selectively throttle or outright block access to online services and websites, like Comcast was discovered to be doing in 2007. They also can’t play favorites with those who pay them the most for access, so they have to keep speeds uniform for streaming giants and personal websites alike. 

Looking ahead...before any of this happens, President Biden has to nominate someone to fill the FCC’s last open seat—and that person also has to be approved by Congress. The spot's been vacant since Pai departed on January 20. Until it's filled, the FCC is gridlocked. 

BITS & BYTES

Stat: SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 invested $13 billion in 50+ companies in Q2, up from less than $2 billion in the prior quarter. 

Quote: “On its own, garbage collection information probably doesn't tell you much, but...the more data you centralize, the more there is a risk.”—William Webb, CEO of Webb Search Limited, a smart cities consultancy, to Emerging Tech Brew

Read: How Remote ID, the rule that paves the way for commercial drone delivery, came together.  

Together at last: The revenue event of the summer, Gong #celebrate, is comin’ in hot on July 21. Some of the biggest names in business will be spilling the tea on trends and tactics shaping the revenue industry. Save your seat here.*

SPONSORED BY HPE

Listen up or be left behind. The future is the Edge, those billions of places across the planet where devices and people continuously create data. In stores. In cars. In manufacturing plants. Put simply, computing at the Edge is transforming the way we all live and work. That’s why HPE created a special issue of The Doppler devoted to all things Edge. Dig in, enjoy, and stay one step ahead. 

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Microsoft reportedly dropped over $500 million to buy RiskIQ, a cybersecurity provider. 
• The European Union has paused its digital tax efforts in order to work through US criticisms of its plan. 
• Foxconn and TSMC are buying vaccines for Taiwan.
• Virgin Galactic successfully launched its first crewed spaceflight—and the passengers included Richard Branson.

THREE THINGS WE’RE WATCHING

Monday: The Google for Games Developer Summit runs through tomorrow. 

Thursday: TSMC earnings. Amidst the global chip shortage, all eyes are on the world’s leading chipmaker. Last month, its sales increased ~23% year over year—a 32% jump from May, thanks in part to Apple’s chip orders for the iPhone 13. 

All week: Financial giants are reporting earnings—JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Charles Schwab, and more, plus big-ticket investment firms. Expect AI to rear its head significantly, especially in terms of high-tech fraud detection. 

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• From Sin City to Smart City: Inside Las Vegas's plan to digitize
• Nearly one quarter of Americans have used a VR or AR headset
• How the rule that will enable US drone delivery came together

FROM THE CREW

Thinking about buying bitcoin?

Our Cofounder and Executive Chairman Alex Lieberman was, too—and he recently went deep on his thought process for his podcast, Founder’s Journal. Check out the episode to hear the key considerations he made before buying $35,800 worth of bitcoin. Listen to Founder’s Journal here.