Google to launch native ad-blocker for Chrome

Search engine giant Google could introduce a built-in ad blocker in the Chrome browser next year, the media reported.

The ad blocker has been spotted in ‘Chrome Canary’ app browser which gives an insight into what the product would be like.
Users can download the recent ‘Chrome Canary’ from Google Play Store to try it out, TechCrunch reported on Tuesday.
Google has made it clear that it wants to tackle what qualifies as ‘intrusive ads’. The content that is to be blocked would be determined by a group named the ‘Coalition for Better Ads’, of which Google is a member.
Other members of the group are News Corp, Facebook and The Washington Post.
Google could make the feature live sometime next year, the report added.
The addition of a built-in ad blocker in Chrome is likely to stir a debate as the company has been making a majority of its revenue through its own ad business.

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Dial 999 in case of emergency: Uber

Uber, the world's largest on-demand ride-sharing company, on Tuesday announced the integration of the nationwide emergency number 999 in its rider app to increase riders' safety, reports UNB.

In a reinforcement of Uber's commitment towards safety of riders, Uber integrated the government's helpline number in the app, which would prompt riders to dial 999 in case of an emergency, Uber said in a statement.

In the event of an emergency situation during a ride, riders in an Uber can now access an in-app card and press 'Call Now' to connect to the toll free national help desk run by the ICT division of Bangladesh.

Once pressed, the rider will be prompted with 999 in their phone dialler.

Calling 999 will connect the rider to the government's control room where depending on the nature of the emergency situation, a caller can select '1' for Ambulance; '2' for fire service; '3' for Police; or '0' to speak directly with a government agent.

Commenting on this development, Arpit Mundra, GM-Uber Dhaka, said, "The safety of our riders is a priority for us at Uber. We're committed to making rides as safe as possible by leveraging technology. Uber's integration of the emergency number 999 is one such step from us highlighting our absolute commitment to safety at every step - before, during and after every ride."

The introduction of this feature adds to the existing in-built repertoire of safety features in the Uber app.

Technologies like Uber provide an incredible opportunity to improve safety of riders and drivers in new and innovative ways- before, during and after every ride.

To ensure a relatively safe, reliable and convenient travel from point A to point B, the Uber app gives passengers the ability to see their driver's details in advance, including his name, photograph, make of car and the car registration number.

While on trip, riders can avail themselves of the benefit of GPS tracking and by using the share my status option, share their trip details with as many contacts on their phonebook as they want.

This allows people to receive the message to immediately track the route and location of the vehicle at any point during the trip.

In the case of an emergency situation, riders can now access the 999 helpline through the app and connect to the government's helpline representative.

Uber, launched in Dhaka in November 2016, has received an overwhelming response in Bangladesh both from riders and drivers.

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Silicon Valley sees slowdown in seed funding

The bloom is off seed funding, the business of providing money to brand-new startups, as investors take a more measured approach to financing emerging US technology companies.

Seed-stage financing has been sliding for the last two years, with the number of transactions down about 40 per cent since the peak in mid-2015, data show. Dollar investments in fledgling companies have also declined, although less dramatically, dropping more than 24 per cent over the same period.

The slowdown comes despite an explosion of interest by wealthy individuals and foreign investors looking to park money in the next big thing.

And it has potentially big implications for Silicon Valley.

Early-stage funding is the lifeblood of a technology ecosystem built on risk-taking. Denied critical resources in infancy, companies can't hope to scale quickly enough to unseat incumbent industries and grow into the next Uber Technologies Inc or Airbnb.

"The reason why startups are disrupting companies in the 21st Century is not because they are smarter. It's because they have capital to do so," said Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur, startup mentor and adjunct professor at Stanford University.

Early-stage investors, known in Silicon Valley vernacular as seed and angel investors, often act as farm teams do in sports. They provide the first significant money and mentoring to help entrepreneurs prove their technology and hit milestones needed to attract even bigger investments from venture capitalists later on.

But the zeal that prevailed just two years ago has faded. Seed and angel investors completed about 900 deals in the second quarter, down from roughly 1,100 deals in the second quarter of 2016 and close to 1,500 deals during that time period in 2015, according to a report released last month by Seattle-based PitchBook Inc, which supplies venture capital data.

The dollar amount provided by seed and angel investors was $1.65 billion in the second quarter. That's just shy of the $1.75 billion for the same time period of 2016 and down significantly from 2015, which saw $2.19 billion invested into fledgling startups.

Veteran seed investors and industry analysts offer a number of reasons for the decline.

They cite concerns over inflated valuations as well as a tepid market for initial public offerings, which provide seed funders a way to recoup their investments. After some much-hyped IPOs such as GoPro Inc, LendingClub Corp and Fitbit Inc lost their sizzle, Wall Street has curbed its appetite for shares in unproven private companies with billion-dollar-plus valuations.

Others blame the rise of technology leviathans for the decline in seed funding deals.

San Francisco seed fund Initialized Capital, for example, has slowed its investment pace to about 20 companies a year, down from 50 to 60 just a few years ago, even though its fund size more than tripled to $125 million, according to managing partner Garry Tan.

Among his concerns: dominant players such as Facebook Inc have amassed so much wealth they can quickly challenge a hot startup, diminishing its value.

"Incumbents just get so much more power, so there are fewer super early-stage opportunities that are very valuable," Tan said. "I can imagine a 20 to 25 per cent reduction in valuable investment opportunities."

Fewer, Larger Investments

Funding cycles in Silicon Valley ebb and flow. Several veterans say the decline in seed deals is bound to reverse at some point.

Still, some early-stage investors say they're observing a rethinking of the traditional "spray and pray" approach to seed funding. Instead of putting small amounts of money into lots of startups in the hopes that a few will work out, seed investors are shifting to fewer, larger deals.

The median seed deal is now $1.6 million, according to Pitchbook, up from about $500,000 five years ago. That's more in line with what big venture firms used to invest.

And while data show that about 70 per cent of seed-funded companies never make it to the next level, there is no shortage of interest from investors.

About 450 seed funds have emerged in the past few years, according to fund managers, financed by investors as diverse as wealthy individuals, universities, sovereign wealth funds and Chinese family offices and corporations.

The experience of early-stage venture firm Floodgate is typical. Investment partner Iris Choi said the firm's average investment size has about tripled in the last four years, from $1 million on the high end to $3 million.

But along with big bucks come big expectations. Funders betting seven figures want to see a much more mature business than in years past.

The upshot is that some entrepreneurs are finding it harder to get a backer in the very early going, says Allan May, chairman and founder of angel investing group Life Science Angels, based in Sunnyvale, California.

"The bar is now higher to get early-stage financing," May said. "You've got to be further along."

In return for writing bigger checks - and assuming bigger risks - seed investors are also demanding larger ownership stakes in new companies.

Initialized Capital, whose investments include San Francisco-based grocery delivery service Instacart, seeks about a 50 per cent stake in startups in exchange for its investments, said Tan, the managing partner.

That's enormous considering other seed funders shoot for stakes closer to the 5 per cent to 15 per cent range.

But more shares gives seed investors more leverage in future funding rounds when additional investors come on board. Seed funders risk seeing their stakes diluted significantly if they don't take a large ownership from the start, or participate in future funding rounds so they don't get squeezed by other venture capitalists.

Venture Capital's "Train Wrecks"

To be sure, entrepreneurs still have ample opportunity to build the next big company. Launching a startup is cheaper than it has ever been, thanks to tools such as cloud computing that allow small fry to forgo the cost of building a data center. Startup incubator programs have helped too.

Still, quick deals could be harder to come by as seed funds with lackluster performances struggle to raise new funds.

"A lot of these funds didn't perform," said Samir Kaji, senior managing director at First Republic Bank. "They are still around but they aren't writing new checks."

In the last year or so, at least nine seed firms have gone out of business, according to PitchBook.

Veteran Chris Douvos, managing director with Venture Investment Associates, has put more than $250 million into seed funds over the last decade. He estimates that the hundreds of small seed funds that exist currently will dwindle to 40 to 80 in the next year or two.

"All of venture capital's train wrecks happen in slow motion," Douvos said. "The mass of these funds is on the bubble, and what will determine who lives and who dies is to some degree luck."

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Other planets may never be as hospitable as Earth

Scientists dealt a blow Monday to the quest for organisms inhabiting worlds besides Earth, saying our planet was unusual in its ability to host liquid water-the key ingredient for life.

It was thought likely that distant worlds orbiting stars similar to our Sun would go through water-rich phases.

This would happen when the young, dim star of an icy, lifeless planet-such as early Earth-starts warming, becomes Sun-like, and melts the ice on planets orbiting it at just the right distance-the so-called “Goldilocks” zone.

Icy orbs in our own Solar System, including Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus, or “exoplanets” in other star systems, may become habitable in this way, the theory goes.

But a team wrote in the journal Nature Geoscience on Monday that this was unlikelier than had been imagined.

Jun Yang, of Peking University in China, and a team used climate models to simulate the evolution of icy planets.

Without atmospheric greenhouse gases-a feature of Earth-the energy required to thaw an icy planet would be so high that it would transit from frozen to inferno without an intermediate, liveable phase, they found.

“We find that the stellar fluxes that are required to overcome a planet’s initial snowball state are so large that they lead to significant water loss and preclude a habitable planet,” the team wrote.

Some icy bodies, they suggested, may therefore never pass through a habitable Earth-like state.

Among these, Europa and Enceladus will likely morph from iceballs into fireballs by the time the Sun reaches it’s super-hot red giant phase heat in billions of years from now, said the team.

Earth was an example of an icy world that thawed just enough, some 600-800 million years ago, thanks to planet-warming atmospheric greenhouse gases emitted by volcanic eruptions during its snowball phase, the team said.

This meant that less solar heat would have been required for the ice to melt, enabling our planet to achieve a temperate middle ground.

Greenhouse gases, which are naturally present in the atmosphere but also released by humans burning coal, oil and gas, are what has kept our planet warm enough for humans, animals and plants to inhabit.

But humankind’s addition of mainly CO2 since the Industrial Revolution has caused the atmosphere to retain ever more solar heat, to a point that scientists say we are harming Earth’s perfectly-balanced climate beyond repair.

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Europe battles Google News

A major battle is brewing in Brussels over an EU reform plan that would force internet aggregators such as Google News to pay newspapers for displaying snippets of their articles online.

Google is furious at the reform idea, but powerful publishers, including Axel Springer in Germany or Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp in the UK, affirm that a tax is the only hope to save a news industry starving for revenue.

The fight, which will play out for the rest of the year, is the latest row straining ties between Google and the European Union, which slapped the Silicon Valley giant with a 2.4 billion euro ($2.8 billion) fine over unfair competition in June.
The proliferation of free news on the internet has brought the newspaper industry to its knees, with many consumers unwilling to pay for online service, preferring zero-cost platforms such as Google News or Facebook.

"Unauthorised internet use of media content" by aggregators and search engines "is threatening citizens' sustainable access to quality news content," said the European Alliance of News Agencies, of which AFP is a member.
"It is therefore crucial that neighbouring rights be created for news agencies and other publishers, covering all activity" on the web, the agency said.

Neighbouring rights is EU-speak for the obligation for online platforms such as Google or Facebook to pay for showing short quotes from copyrighted content, such as news articles.

The so-called "snippet tax" proposal is only one of several components of a major EU draft law intended to update European copyright law in the digital age.

The "snippet tax" is largely based on a tax introduced in Spain that critics say actually harmed publishers when Google decided to close down its news aggregator in response.

A similar law in Germany saw publishers swiftly give Google open access to their content following a steep drop in online traffic.
- 'Very sensitive topic' -
Based on these examples, the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), whose members include Google and Yahoo, called the idea "ill-founded, controversial and detrimental to all players."

In a blog post published last year, Google said: "It would hurt anyone who writes, reads or shares the news -- including the many European startups working with the news sector to build sustainable business models online."
The two camps on the issue are now battling it out at the European Parliament and the EU council, the institution that gathers the national governments of the 28 member states.

Diplomats said the snippet tax has divided member states, with no compromise in sight for this year. Approval will require a special EU majority that must account for 65 percent of the bloc's population and not solely a majority of member states.
For now, France, Spain and Germany have declared their support for the tax while Ireland, UK and the Nordic countries are against.

In the European Parliament, three committees have approved a version of the tax proposal, but the key Legal Affairs Committee has still to decide, with lobbyists working hard to influence its decision.
French MEP Marc Joulaud said the committee is expected to approve the law on October 10 with an eventual vote on the overall copyright reforms at a plenary session in December or January.

Then the hard work begins. EU member states, MEPs and the commission must negotiate a compromise of their separate texts.

"This is a very sensitive topic in parliament but also for journalists, some for, some against," said Andrus Ansip, Commission vice-president in charge of the Digital Single Market.
"I didnt promote this idea, but publishers are very keen for neighbouring rights," he added.

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