IT-worlds against coronavirus, a new curator for Yandex and digital taxes

The topic of release is how an IT market copes and helps to fight coronavirus

Total collapse

The largest IT companies have been experiencing a collapse with all markets since mid-February. Last Monday, when the NASDAQ index collapsed at once by 7%, the large five IT giants-Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon-at once in Tesla, the records of the records in early February, and the company has already collapsed every day-the company has almost doubled-the company Again, less than $ 100 billion costs.

Following the technology companies, cryptocurrencies collapsed. Back in the middle of the week, Bitcoin approached the price of $ 6,000, which was very disturbed by his investors. Two days later, it was already worth $ 4500, and it seems that this is not the limit. Cryptocurrencies are a risky asset from which investors during the crisis run first.

What to wait with

The main product victim of coronavirus is the new iPhone Se 2, the presentation of which was waiting in March. It was supposed to be a budget smartphone worth about $ 399 - the first since the time of the iPhone SE released back in 2016. The presentation was canceled : firstly, due to the fact that California banned events of more than a thousand people, and secondly, because the company was faced with delays in the production of components for “two main products” (which ones are unknown).

Smartphones that have already gone on sale are also not enough: it was difficult to buy the last iPhone 11 in New York stores in early March. In Russia, sales of gadgets began to grow rapidly in January. Due to coronavirus, the supply and helmets of the virtual reality of Oculus Quest, which Facebook are produced, were reduced -there are also not enough components for them.

In addition, you will have to wait with all the largest events and exhibitions in the field of technology. The first to abolish Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, ​​one of the most important annual events in the industry. The organizers tried to save him until the last, but surrendered when all the largest companies refused to go to Spain.

• Facebook canceled his annual conference for F8 developers, at which Mark Zuckerberg usually talked about what was happening with the company.
• Apple moved its WWDC 2020 forum online. The broadcasts are scheduled for June, but there are no exact dates.
• Google canceled both large annual conferences - for developers and cloud technologies.
• Microsoft announced that it cancel its forum for developers Build 2020.
• The exhibition South by Southwest (SXSW), one of the main events in the world of new media, was canceled.
• E3, the largest game event of the year, which was planned for June, is also canceled. But some participants, including Microsoft and Ubisoft, planned their online events.

In quarantine mode

• At the end of February, the coronavirus was infected by an employee of the Google office in Zurich. Then the company did not close the office, because the sick person was in it a “limited time”. But two weeks later, Google recommended that all employees in North America work from the house and organized the fund to help all employees who will not be able to work because of the coronavirus.
• In early March, tests showed that one of Amazon employees in Seattle became infected with coronavirus.
• Immediately after this, one of the Facebook contractors was also hospitalized with coronavirus, after which the company's office in Seattle closed the quarantine. The company continues to pay hourly salary even to those employees who cannot work remotely.
• Another potentially infected was found on Twitter : the employee had not yet been made an accurate diagnosis, but the company closed the office for sanitary processing and recommended that all employees around the world work from the house.
• Following the employee fell ill in the Irish office of Apple . After that, the company sent most of the employees in offices around the world to work remotely and began disinfection.
• Russian Internet companies take similar measures: Yandex and Citimobil were announced on the transfer of employees from home on March 13, Mail.ru and Tinkoff are recommended not to be advanced to the office at the slightest suspicion of illness, and the head of Tinkoff Bank, Oliver Hughes, even shot a video for employees. “We do not want this unpleasant crap to spread further,” he explains.

Virus as a window of possibilities

On the growing fears around the coronavirus, naturally, scammers and hackers try to cash in. The former thoroughly unfolded in Amazon, after which the company had to seriously clean its assortment. Amazon removed more than 1 million goods, in whose descriptions it was stated that they treated or protect against coronavirus. In addition, the company fights with unscrupulous sellers who inflame prices for medical masks and essential goods. And Facebook and Google had to ban advertising of speculative content related to coronavirus so as not to provoke panic.

Panic moods are also on hand to hackers. A group of cyber abusions has created copies of interactive cards, which in real time publish data on infection. Through these sites, malicious software was installed on user computers, with which criminals gained access to personal data, passwords and bank card numbers.

The facets of digital inequality

A significant part of the employees of technology companies undergo increased risk . These are taxi drivers, couriers of delivery services and other freelance employees, thanks to which there are all the reckoned services.

IT companies are attempting to cope with the problem: Uber blocked several hundred drives of drivers in Mexico, which could contact with infected coronavirus. Food delivery services leave orders under the door so as not to contact customers. This is also practiced by Delivery Club, whose couriers can leave an order on a backpack, and then move three meters from the door and only after that call the buyer, and Yandex.Dead - she offers to write a comment so that the courier leaves the order under the door.

The question arises of how much it is ethical at such a time to use delivery at all - because instead of you in stores, pharmacies and metro, the courier exposes its health. In the United States, a whole discussion has already unfolded about this, and there is something to think about: by refusing delivery, on the one hand, you will help protect the courier, on the other, it will be left without earnings and no one will pay him compensation. WireD advises at least to be polite and friendly, forget about complaints and put high grades in the applications.

Technology against coronavirus

One of the main tools in the fight against coronavirus in China is called machine learning technologies. There are several possible applications here .

• The Danish company UVD Robots supplies autonomous robots to China, which travel to hospitals and disinfect the premises with an ultraviolet light. The Chinese Xag Robot also makes similar robots.
• Cameras with thermal attires with the help of AI determine the sick with high temperature. Such cameras are installed, for example, in Singapore hospitals (they are made by the Kronikare startup) and at the Chinese stations (there are cameras developed by BAIDU).
• AI-algorithms determine how the epidemic will develop and where the following foci of distribution will arise. We already talked about Blueedot in one of our mailings - it was able to identify the epidemic in China a week before the first official messages.
• Doctors and researchers develop algorithms that can diagnose coronavirus based on the results of examinations with an accuracy of 95%. And also - they create algorithms that predict the survival of patients with an accuracy of 90%.

New curator "Yandex"

This week, it became known who will lead the Yandex public interests fund, the main element of the new company management structure . The fund will have the right to a veto to major transactions with the company's shares, as well as the right to nominate two special directors with special powers to the Yandex board (they have already become the general director of VTB Capital Aleksey Yakovitsky and Vice -Rector of the RANEPA, the head of the Russian Leaders competition, Alexei Komissarov). The chairman of the Council of the Fund was Elena Shmeleva, the head of the Sirius educational center, established by Vladimir Putin's friend, cellist Sergei Roldugin.

Shmeleva’s appointment is the idea of ​​Yandex himself, Two sources of The Bell, close to the company, say. Firstly, with its help, the company hopes to solve real problems (Shmeleva-in a good account with the president). Secondly, she has an excellent relationship with Bunina, who became the executive director of the public interest fund.

In addition, the Council of the Foundation, where representatives of universities and public organizations were supposed to be, unexpectedly entered the Gazprom Neftov, Alexander Dyukov, who was nominated from the University of ITMO. Last year, FT wrote that during the long approvals with the Kremlin, the new Yandex management structure Sergei Kiriyenko proposed introducing Dyukov, and at the same time the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, to the board of directors of Yandex himself. This, however, did not happen.

Taxes on IT corporations

Great Britain is going to introduce a new tax on IT corporations: 2% from the profit of search engines, social networks and online stores that earn on British users. Condition: they should earn more than $ 650 million, of which $ 25 million should be in the UK. This means that Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google will definitely fall under new requirements.

It seems that other countries that do not have their own global IT players are ready to adopt this practice. For example, a similar initiative is considered in Russia: the benefits of digital corporations income tax like Google or Facebook from work in Russia are talking at the Center for Strategic Development, the Ministry of Finance thinks about this.

Australia is played right away in a large way: a local regulator responsible for data protection put forward a lawsuit against Facebook at once $ 530 billion. The lawsuit was filed due to the old scandal with Cambridge Analytica. The Australian regulator found that more than 300 thousand Australians had undergone the risk of disclosure.

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