Also in this letter:
■ Spurt in misinformation feared as ChatGPT, Bard make waves
■ Sap Labs lays off 300 executives
■ Infographic Insight: Fresher-CXO pay gap in IT firms is glaring
Google permits alternative billing system, but developers cry foul
Claiming to follow the mandate laid down by the Competition Commission of India (CCI), tech giant Google has told developers that they have time till April 26 to comply with the new Google Play payments policy which will permit alternative billing.
Google said this was being done in response to the recent regulatory developments in the country.
More options: “This change means that developers can now offer an alternative billing system, alongside Google Play’s billing system. to users in India making in-app purchases within Play-distributed apps on mobile phones and tablets,” the search giant said in an email reviewed by ET.
South Korea way: Developers, however, said this was a direct violation of CCI guidelines and alleged that Google was ‘finding loopholes’ in the CCI’s verdict and ‘going the South Korea way’ wherein they introduced user choice billing after coming under fire from regulatory authorities in South Korea.
Violation of mandate: “The CCI mandated that they should permit third-party payments but in doing this Google is ensuring that the payments are routed through them. It is exactly what they did in South Korea by launching user-choice billing after the South Korean authorities mandated that they should allow users multiple payment options,” Snehil Khanor, cofounder and chief executive of TrulyMadly.com, told us.
Catch-up quick: The CCI in its two rulings — one on October 20 and the second on October 25 — had directed the American company to make close to 20 changes in the operation of its services in India which included providing alternative payment options to developers.
Uber likely to partner with traditional taxi operators in India
As part of the global initiative to increase the number of cabs on its app, ride-hailing company Uber is looking to partner with private and traditional taxi operators in India through its third-party taxi integration service.
Third-party integration: Uber started third-party taxi integration two years ago and plans to scale it up from 50 to 500 cities globally. It is already present in cities across the US, Europe, and markets like Hong Kong.
The company has set a target of onboarding all taxis in the world through its third-party integration onto the Uber platform by 2025.
Possible integration: “We have a list of companies where they are interested in integrating. We have a priority, we are going through that priority and India is at the top list of priorities that are part of the action plan for this year. This year you should see some integrations happening,” Manikandan Thangarathnam, senior director of mobility and platforms at Uber told us.
India to benefit? In India, ride-hailing companies have been facing an acute shortage of cabs on their app and have been finding it difficult to meet the demand, especially post-pandemic.
ET reported on May 22 last year that rising fuel combined with the lesser incentives from ride-hailing companies pushed drivers out of the platforms. Over the last two years, there has been a sharp drop in new registrations of commercial taxis.
Spurt in misinformation feared as ChatGPT, Bard make waves
The outsize investments into generative pre-trained bots like Microsoft-backed ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are stoking fears of a spurt in misinformation, according to industry experts. Social media intermediaries will also be hard-pressed to identify “fake” content and arrest its spread on time, they added.
Details: India, which is among the world’s largest data markets, is already battling a flood of misinformation that is worsened by the multiplicity of languages. Generative AI technologies can further accentuate the problem according to technologists tracking the rise of these applications.
Quote unquote: “The potential for misinformation is huge because these AI large language models are not designed for factual accuracy, they are designed for eloquent conversations,” Simon Greenman, cofounder, partner, and CTO of Best Practice AI, told us. “The fear that we have, from a societal perspective, is that it can amplify toxic content, racism, violence, misogyny, hate speech and political theories that are incorrect and biased.”
Global concerns: Spanish fact-checkers are gearing up to deal with the potential onslaught of misinformation as the country inches closer to two elections – a national and a regional one.
ET Ecommerce Index
We’ve launched three indices – ET Ecommerce, ET Ecommerce Profitable, and ET Ecommerce Non-Profitable – to track the performance of recently listed tech firms. Here’s how they’ve fared so far.
SAP Labs lays off 300 executives; Punit Renjen is chairman designate
SAP Labs, the German technology giant’s research and development business unit, last week, laid off around 300 executives across the company, sources aware of the matter told us. The layoff – majorly across Bengaluru and Gurgaon – was a result of shuttering a global delivery centre that houses custom development roles that undertake SAP implementation projects.
What happened? Late last month, SAP announced layoffs to focus on its “core business,” globally, impacting around 3,000 roles expected to be fired. There was no India break-up that the company had shared then. The layoffs were announced right after SAP reported a 30% revenue increase in its cloud business in the fourth quarter that ended in December 2022.
Sacked, but hopeful: Some of the affected staff are latching on to the hope of getting absorbed back into SAP via available roles. “We have two months in terms of a notice period and have till then to find jobs,” an affected employee said.
Also read | Layoffs in 2023: Twitter, LinkedIn among latest firms to cut jobs amid economic downturn
Indian-origin Punit Renjen is chairman designate: Indian-American businessman and former Deloitte Global CEO Punit Renjen is being considered for chairmanship at SAP SE, a Germany-based European multinational software company. The Supervisory Board of SAP SE has nominated Renjen to stand for election as a new member of the Supervisory Board.
Tweet of the day
Infographic Insight: Fresher-CXO pay gap in IT firms is glaring
As the fresher salary issue has again kicked up a storm, with Wipro telling freshers to join at a lower salary as compared to what they were promised earlier, we look at how fresher salaries compare with CXO salaries. Specialist human resource firm Xpheno helped us with the details.
IT freshers comprise 20-30% of the five million workforce of the industry. Their annual salaries have remained in the sub- $5,000 levels for a decade till 2020 barring minor upticks since the pandemic. This is despite billing rates and revenues multiplying manifold.
Expert take: “While this may pass off as a one-time employer-specific event, there’s an outside chance of it setting a precedent in the IT services cohort. The IT Service bellwethers typically align their TA strategies and talent costs at the fresher layers, and they take a leaf or two from each other on such moves. One hence has to wait and watch if this snowballs any further,” said Xpheno’s cofounder Kamal Karanth on Wipro salary cut.
Other Top Stories By Our Reporters
Sonata Software to acquire Quant Systems for $65 mn: Bengaluru-based IT services midcap company Sonata Software announced the 100% acquisition of Texas-based Quant Systems Inc for $65 million making it Sonata’s largest acquisition to date.
Bumble banks on India as a major growing market: Bumble said it has a two-pronged approach to the expansion of the Bumble dating app in India – expanding in new markets where it sees an opportunity and going deeper into markets that are already established.
Infosys expands Microsoft partnership to drive cloud transformation: Infosys has announced that it will expand its collaboration with Microsoft to help accelerate enterprise cloud transformation. The tenure or the revenue benefits from the partnership were not disclosed.
Global Picks We Are Reading
■ A new kind of bug spells trouble for iOS and macOS security (Wired)
■ Microsoft is already undoing some of the limits it placed on Bing AI (The Verge)
■ Why You Should Listen to Twitter on Two-Factor Authentication (NYT)
Illustration and graphics by Rahul Awasthi
