The Cybersecurity Association of China (CSAC) has urged a security review of Intel products sold in the country, claiming the US semiconductor firm poses ongoing threats to China’s national security and interests.
In a statement posted on its WeChat account, CSAC said that Intel’s major product quality and security management flaws indicate its extremely irresponsible attitude toward customers.
CSAC is an industry body, but its allegations raise concerns >about a potential security review and subsequent action by the country’s cyberspace regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). Last year, CAC banned products from Micron, citing national security risk.
Significantly, this year Intel has secured orders for its Xeon processors from several Chinese state-affiliated agencies for AI applications, according to Reuters.
This action marks the latest chapter in the ongoing trade conflict, which has seen US administrations ban Chinese-made hardware from domestic networks and impose export controls to limit China’s access to advanced computing technologies.
Impact on Intel and the industry
A ban could deal a significant blow to Intel, already struggling with financial challenges, a shrinking market share, and layoffs. It could also affect Chinese companies that are already contending with US export restrictions.
“If the CAC decides to take more drastic action than it did with Micron, Intel could face significant challenges with its sales and market share in China,” said Thomas George, president of Cybermedia Research. “This situation also poses a risk for the numerous companies in China that rely on Intel chips for high-performance computing (HPC), which is essential for scientific research, financial services, and even national security.”
A potential review and subsequent action from the CAC could substantially impact Intel’s strategies and market position, while also reshaping the strategic considerations of other key players in the semiconductor industry, George noted.
Other analysts also highlight that the broader impact would likely extend beyond Intel, affecting the industry as a whole.
“The sanctions will definitely have repercussions and a short-term impact on Intel,” said Pareekh Jain, CEO of Pareekh Consulting. “But although rivals like AMD might see some initial benefit, eventually they will likely be targeted as well. The medium-term goal seems to be to bolster China’s domestic chip industry.”
Speculations on Chinese companies
China has been pushing for self-sufficiency in the semiconductor sector, recently urging domestic car manufacturers such as SAIC Motor, BYD, Dongfeng Motor, GAC Motor, and FAW Group to boost their sourcing of automotive-related chips from local suppliers.
“Chinese firms like Huawei and Alibaba are accelerating their investments in semiconductor technologies,” George said. “Despite these ambitions, the readiness and capability of domestic alternatives to match Intel’s offerings remain uncertain.”
One potential way for US companies to overcome this challenge would be to invest more in China, Jain suggested, citing Tesla as an example.
“This strategy would demonstrate a commitment to the Chinese market and may provide some protection from retaliatory actions,” Jain added. “Essentially, US companies can position themselves as commercial entities with interests in China, separate from US government actions.”
Corporate law is nothing like you see on television. To prepare for a case, 150 attorneys might be tasked to travel to remote warehouses to comb through tens of millions of documents gathering dust or track down amorphous electronic communications. It’s a process known as discovery.
For more than a decade, law firms have been using machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to help them hunt down paper trails and digital documents. But it wasn’t until the arrival two years ago of OpenAI’s generative AI (genAI) conversational chatbot, ChatGPT, that the technology became easy enough to use that even first-year associates straight out of law school could rely on it for electronic discovery (eDiscovery).
Today, you’d be hard pressed to find a law firm that hasn’t deployed genAI, or isn’t at the very least kicking the tires on its ability to speed discovery and reduce workloads.
For all intents and purposes, no one practicing law today studied AI in school, which means it falls to firms to integrate the fast-evolving tech into their workplaces and to train young lawyers on matching AI capabilities to client needs while remaining accountable for its output. This is the essence of turning AI into a copilot for all manner of chores, from wading through data to analyzing documents to improving billing.
In that vein, longtime IT workers are no longer just on call for computer glitches and AV setups; they have moved to the forefront of running a law firm, handling AI’s role in winning cases, retaining clients, growing revenue and, inevitably, helping attract the best and brightest new talent. Multinational law firm Cleary Gottlieb is a prime example of that.
Cleary has been able to dramatically cull the number of attorneys used for pre-trial discovery and has even launched a technology unit and genAI legal service: ClearyX. (ClearyX is essentially an arbitrage play — an alternative legal service provider [ALSP] for offshoring eDiscovery and automating electronic workflows.)
While Cleary readily admits that genAI isn’t perfect in retrieving 100% of the documents related to a case or always creating an accurate synopsis of them, neither are humans. At this point in the technology’s development, it’s good enough most of the time to reduce workloads and costs.
Still, cases do pop up that can be more expensive when customizing a large language model to suit specific needs than deploying those dozens of eager attorneys seeking to prove themselves.
Computerworld spoke with Christian “CJ” Mahoney, counsel and global head of Cleary’s discovery group, and Carla Swansburg, CEO ClearyX and DLT (distributed ledger technology), about how the firm uses genAI tools. The following are excerpts from that interview:
Why is AI being adopted in the legal profession? Mahoney: “Because the legal profession is seeing an explosion of information and data created by their clients, and it’s become increasingly challenging to digest that information strictly through a team of attorneys looking through documents. That explosion probably started two decades ago. It’s been growing more and more challenging.
“I just had a case where we were measuring the amount of data we looking at, and for one case, we had 15 terabytes we had to analyze. It was over 50 million documents, and we had to do it in matter of weeks to find out what had to provide to the opposing party.
“Secondly, we wanted to find out what’s interesting in documents and what supported our advocacy. Traditional ways for looking through that type of information and getting a grasp of the case is really not feasible anymore. You need to incorporate AI into the process for analysis now.”
Swansburg: “One of the big shifts with OpenAI and genAI, in particular, is for the first time there’s ubiquity. Everyone’s hearing about it. Secondly, sophisticated clients are starting to approach it — even the formerly untouched Wall Street firms and other large firms with an eye on cost sensitivity.
“Fast forward to now. There’s a bit of an expectation that with the advent of genAI, things should be quicker and cheaper. Second of all, [there’s] the accessibility of AI through natural language processing. The third thing is the explosion of purpose-designed tools for the legal profession, and that does go back about a decade when you had diligence tools and tools for contract automation.”
Christian “CJ” Mahoney, counsel and global head of Cleary Gottlieb’s discovery group, and Carla Swansburg, CEO ClearyX and DLT
Cleary Gottlieb
How have the expectations of clients changed regarding the use of genAI? Swansburg: “A year-and-a-half ago, we were getting messaging from clients saying, ‘You’d better not be using AI because it seems really risky.’ Now, we’re getting requests from clients asking, ‘How are you using AI to benefit me and how are you using it to make your practices more efficient for me?’
“There’s a lot of changing dynamics. Legal firms that were historically reluctant to embrace this technology are asking for it — ‘When can I get some of this generative AI to use in my practice?’”
How has the job of an attorney changed with genAI? Swansburg: “Nobody went to law school to do this. I used to go through banker’s boxes with sticky notes as a litigator. Nobody wants to do that. Nobody wants to read 100 leases to highlight an assignment clause for you. The good thing is [genAI is] moving up the value chain, but it’s starting with things that people really don’t want to be doing anyways.”
Is genAI replacing certain job titles, filling job roles? Mahoney: “I’d say we’re not to the place where it’s replacing entire categories of jobs. It’s certainly making us more efficient such that if I would have needed a team of 60 attorneys on work I’m doing, I may need a team of about 45 now. That’s the type of efficiency we’re talking about.
“I had over 60 [attorneys] just this weekend working on just one case. It’s the big data explosion of evidence there is to comb through.
“We’re using more complex workflows using AI. I said I saw a 60-person to 45-person reduction. But, on this kind of case, I would have had probably 150 attorneys doing this 15 years ago. Back then, it would just be like ‘OK guys, here’s a mountain of evidence — go through it.’
“Now, we are using several AI strategies to help classify documents for what we need to turn over to help narrow the amount of content we have to look over. It’s helping us to summarize before we even look at the documents, so that we have a summary going in to help us digest the information faster.”
Swansburg: “In my world, it’s not really replacing jobs yet, but it’s changing how you do jobs. So, it’s allowing people to move up the value chain a little bit. It’s taking away rote and repetitive work.
“Our experience has been — and we’ve kicked tires on a lot of language models and purpose-designed tools — [genAI tools] are not good enough to replace people for a lot of the work we do. For something like due diligence…, you often must be right. You need to know whether you can get consent to transfer something. In other use cases, such as summarization and initial drafting, that sort of thing is a little more accessible.”
What does that big data you’re discovering look like? Is it mostly unstructured? Mahoney: “Most of my data sets are unstructured. We’re talking about email and messages on someone’s laptop or a portion of a document repository on a file server. These days, we’re talking about chats on platforms like Teams or mobile devices. Often, we’ll target those collections through good attorney investigations, but a lot of times we have unstructured data sources like mailboxes to comb through. What we’re doing there is use a large language model algorithm.
“We are reviewing some samples, some of them random and some of them with training approaches we developed to target documents we think will help the model understand what we’re trying to teach it quicker. We’re reviewing a few thousand documents to train the model to predict if a document is responsive to the other [opposing] side’s document requests. We’re then running that model over millions of documents. We find throughout iterative model training improvement processes, we are approaching and sometimes surpassing the type of performance we’d expect by that team of 150 attorneys looking at all these documents.
“So, we use that as our starting point and sometimes our only process for identifying what we need to deliver to the other side. But once we have that set, we are using similar processes to identify things like attorney-client privilege in the document. And again, to identify which of these documents are interesting and useful for our advocacy.
“Now we’re also coupling that with generative AI workflows where, in addition to this training strategy, we’ve identified small samples of the [document] universe; we’re also seeing prompt-based genAI queries on portions of the data set to find documents that support our advocacy.”
Have you found other uses for AI that you didn’t initially expect? Mahoney: “We’re using genAI to look at files that we could have never used old school keyword searches on because they don’t have any text in them. They could be images or movies. We created a genAI process using some of the really new algorithms out there to analyze things like images and video files for finding more interesting information.
“We’ve also created genAI workflows when we claim attorney-client privilege; we have to create a whole attorney-client privilege log. We’ve created genAI workflows to help us draft the privilege log. It’s the same concept as using genAI to summarize a document. We’re using it to summarize the privileged portion of a document, but summarize it in a way that we’re meeting our privilege log obligation without revealing what the privilege advice is.
“Then a lot of our human-in-the-loop practices are taking a look of those AI results and doing validation, making some improvements here and there, rather than relying entirely on the AI. The level of that validation depends on what the task is.”
AI has the tendency to go off the rails with errors and hallucinations. How do you address that? Swansburg: “In CJ’s world, they work off of percentages — like 80% accurate. For us, largely we need to be 100% accurate. A lot of what we do, whether it’s contract analysis and management or transactional diligence, we have a context set of materials. So, the potential for hallucinations is more limited. Having said that, some of the tools in market will still hallucinate. So, you’ll say, ‘Find me the address of the leased property’ and it’ll totally make something up.
“One of the key things we do, and some of the development work we’re doing, is to say, ‘Show me in the document where that reference is.’ So, there’s a quick and easy way to validate information. You’ve got a reference; you tell me what it says. You’re extracting a piece of it, so we have a really fast way to validate.
“For us, it’s always a discrete set of context documents. So, we can first of all solve through prompting and tailoring it to which set of documents they want us to use, but second of all always confirming there’s always a way to ensure the provenance of the information.
“Some of the work we’re doing is we’ve developed a way to prompt a model to tell us when the termination data of an NDA is? If a person’s reading it, they can usually tell. But NDAs have an effective date and then they have a term that can be written in any number of ways: two years, three years, and then there are often continuing obligations.
“So if you just said, ‘When does this NDA terminate?’ a lot of AI models will get it wrong. But if you generate a way to say, ‘Find me the effective date, find me a clause, find me the period of time or continuing obligations,’ it’s typically 100% accurate. It’s a combination of focused context documents, proper prompt engineering and a validation process.”
Are you using retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to fine-tune these models, and how effective has it been at that task? Mahoney: “We are using RAG to put guardrails on how the large language model responds and what it’s looking at in its response. I think at times that’s certainly a helpful tool to use on top of the LLM.
“I’d also say even though we are more aggressively using LLMs and genAI in the discovery space, the process Carla described looks exactly the same. The difference would be our tolerance for errors, as part of that validation process.
“That’s comparing it to what human results would look like. What we find historically on various tasks in electronic discovery over several decades — humans usually get things right about 75% of the time. So, when we’re looking at LLMs and genAI, we want to be careful it’s working well, but we also want to be careful that we’re not holding it to too high a standard.
“If you’re writing a brief, 75% accuracy would be horrible and unacceptable. But when you’re looking through two million documents, that might be perfectly acceptable. That’s how the process looks a little different, even though the structure of the process looks the same in terms of steps.”
Small language models as opposed to large proprietary models from Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI are growing in popularity because you can create a model for every application need. What kinds of AI models do you use? Mahoney: “We’ve actually been using open large language models for five years now. We started with what was the largest language model at the time, but it’s probably closer to a small language model now. We use a version of BERT a lot when we’re doing supervised learning.
“We are very LLM agnostic, in that we’re able to look at the different tasks and see which one is right for a particular task. For image analysis, or the multimedia analysis, we’re using the latest and greatest, such as the ChatGPT Omni. It’s unique in having capabilities for drafting [client-privilege] log lines. Depending on the data, we’re shifting between GPT-4 or GPT-3.5 Turbo.
“We’re actually looking at where we’re getting reasonable performance and comparing that to things like costs.”
Is price an issue you consider when adopting a model? Mahoney: “Different LLMs have very different price points. For some of our data sets, the way GPT 3.5 Turbo is performing log lines is actually quite good. So, we wouldn’t want to spend the extra money on GPT-4 there.
“On the small language model front, I’d say we’re doing tuning rather than a separate small language model for each application…. We’re taking an existing model — but where we have an industry that might look very different than what that model was built on — [and] we’re doing some fine tuning on top of that to introduce the model to a dataset before it starts making predictions on it.”
So, essentially, some LLMs are better at some tasks than others? Mahoney: “Some language models are better at certain tasks in summarizing or pinpointing whatever it is. Ideally you have a workflow with six steps and you’re using a different LLM at different steps. You never know who’s going to emerge tomorrow and being better at X or Y.
“We’ve been using OpenAI [LLMs] before it was publicly launched. And we’ve been testing Meta and Claude and using the ones that we think make the most sense for a particular task.”
Data scientists and analysts, prompt engineers — what roles do you have or have you added to address your LLM needs? Swansburg: “For the work CJ does, and the work we do, the larger the data set, the more the need for data scientists. So, he does work with data scientists on his side.
“On my side, in terms of prompt engineers, we have good software developers that can do that for you. We have people who are pure developers, and we have people who sit in the middle that we call ‘legal technologists.’ Those are the translators who take client and lawyer requirements and feed those back and do the customization to the platforms we build.
“We don’t have any data scientists yet, because we use discrete data sets. So it’s more about being able to engineer the prompts — and the team we have now has been able to do that on the developer side. As we grow, and right now we’re recruiting another half-dozen developers, we will get more nuanced and look for people with prompt engineering experience and building APIs with LLMs and other tools.
“So, it’s constantly changing.”
Are you’re mostly using proprietary rather than open-source models? Mahoney:“Right now, we’re just using proprietary models and plugging them in and testing them — OpenAI being the more common example. We’re building things through prompts like contract determination dates to extract that data we need and building bundles of questions that will be generated based on the automatic determination of what the system in ingesting. All of that is being tested now.
“Some of them are really expensive. Something like ChatGPT is very accessible. Even the enterprise models can do the trick, and they’re accessible and affordable. “
If legal departments and law firms were already using AI and ML, why is ClearyX needed? Swansburg: “We’re trying to build a model that’s a lot less expensive than contract management software…and to have much higher quality than a lot of providers and provide a service.
“A lot of companies don’t have people to own and operate these programs. So, they have shelfware. They buy a contract lifecycle management tool, and it take three years to get their return on investment; then people don’t use it because it’s not custom designed. So, we’re trying to build custom solutions for clients that work the way they work, and that are affordable.
“We’re not venture capital owned. We’re owned by the partnership, so we’re able to build things in the right way. We’re not just serving clients of the Cleary law firm; we also have a mandate to get outside clients.
“We started thinking we weren’t going to be a development shop. We were going to use existing solutions and weave them together using APIs, but a couple things happened. The tools on the market weren’t doing what we wanted them to do. We weren’t able to customize them in the nuanced way that made clients actually delighted to use them.
“The other is the ubiquity of AI, and the ability to customize them is way easier than it was three years ago. So, over the last eight months or so, we’ve been able to pivot to something that allows us to customize it more easily and collaborate with clients to figure out how they want it to work.”
Apple just gave smaller enterprises a chance to compete on a more equal basis with larger concerns with three nice improvements to Apple Business Connect: Business Caller ID, brand identity in Mail, and custom business logos for use with Tap to Pay.
Together, the three tools mean that smaller businesses — now including enterprises that do not work from a set location — can deliver a more professional-seeming degree of service. For example, a small plumbing company can show its logo and contact details when making a call to a customer’s iPhone, or attach its brand identity to emails and messages received by clients so they can more easily identify genuine communications.
The solution also makes life much harder for phone scammers, as it adds another barrier to prevent them pretending to be bona fide enterprises.
What is Apple Business Connect?
Apple Business Connect appeared in 2023, supplementing then existing integrations with Apple Maps that let brick-and-mortar businesses make themselves visible. The service then let business owners claim, edit, and manage location place cards and customize what business information appears in Maps (or in services that use data drawn from Maps, including Siri). Spaces called Showcases let business owners display images, offer online ordering, and provide other information to help draw attention to their business.
Apple’s system also offers an Insights page that provides historical information about how, and how many times, customers have already found you. This provides you with aggregated insights into what customers sought as they found you, a heat map to show you approximately where your customers are based, and the number of views your existing listing (if one exists at all) already generates via Apple’s system.
What are the new features in Apple Business Connect?
The new features build on those tools and widen the service so that it can also be used to promote businesses that lack a physical location. Any verified business can now create a consistent brand and location presence, using the following tools:
Branded Mail: Businesses can display their brand name and logo in emails to customers, so they become more visible in Mail. Business users can sign up today, and the service will go live with the release of iOS 18.2.
Tap to Pay: The brand name and logo can also be made visible when accepting payments through Tap to Pay on iPhone, so customers know they’re making a payment to a trusted and verified business.
Business Caller ID: This feature means that when a business calls a customer’s iPhone, the business name, logo, and department will appear on the inbound call screen. This should help customers know which calls to respond to and help blunt the ongoing wave of annoying spam calls. This feature won’t be available until next year.
What are the benefits of Apple Business Connect?
The beauty of the service is that it is made available online and via Maps and supporting applications to over a billion people using iPads, iPhones, and Macs. Once a customer or potential customer gets to your business listing, they will find the information there easy to use and access, while your control of that listing lets you work to communicate the benefits of your business to that potential customer.
The added advantage of the Showcase section is that this can be tweaked to provide special offers, including one-time and time-limited offers, to help you win new customers once they reach your card. You can also monitor and optimize the performance of your listing and draw some SEO benefits from the existence of the information in the Apple ecosystem.
“We’re excited to offer all businesses — including those without a physical location — the ability to create a brand that appears across the Apple apps that over a billion people use every day,” David Dorn, Apple’s senior director of Internet Software and Services Product, said in a statement. “We designed Business Connect to empower businesses to present the best, most accurate information to Apple users. With today’s updates, we’re helping even more businesses reach customers, build trust, and grow.”
While an Apple Business Connect listing won’t necessarily transform your enterprise, it is free, simple, and far more likely to generate new business than the lack of any listing at all. In the future, these listings may become the basis of some kind of ad placement service within Maps.
How does my business join Apple Business Connect?
Access to the service has been widened to include owners of virtual, online, and service businesses, as well as the brick-and-mortar businesses it already supported.
Business owners can sign their operation up to Apple’s service using their existing Apple Account (as Apple ID is now called). They can also create a new Apple Account for their business to use when signing up for the service.
Apple just gave smaller enterprises a chance to compete on a more equal basis with larger concerns with three nice improvements to Apple Business Connect: Business Caller ID, brand identity in Mail, and custom business logos for use with Tap to Pay.
Together, the three tools mean that smaller businesses — now including enterprises that do not work from a set location — can deliver a more professional-seeming degree of service. For example, a small plumbing company can show its logo and contact details when making a call to a customer’s iPhone, or attach its brand identity to emails and messages received by clients so they can more easily identify genuine communications.
The solution also makes life much harder for phone scammers, as it adds another barrier to prevent them pretending to be bona fide enterprises.
What is Apple Business Connect?
Apple Business Connect appeared in 2023, supplementing then existing integrations with Apple Maps that let brick-and-mortar businesses make themselves visible. The service then let business owners claim, edit, and manage location place cards and customize what business information appears in Maps (or in services that use data drawn from Maps, including Siri). Spaces called Showcases let business owners display images, offer online ordering, and provide other information to help draw attention to their business.
Apple’s system also offers an Insights page that provides historical information about how, and how many times, customers have already found you. This provides you with aggregated insights into what customers sought as they found you, a heat map to show you approximately where your customers are based, and the number of views your existing listing (if one exists at all) already generates via Apple’s system.
What are the new features in Apple Business Connect?
The new features build on those tools and widen the service so that it can also be used to promote businesses that lack a physical location. Any verified business can now create a consistent brand and location presence, using the following tools:
Branded Mail: Businesses can display their brand name and logo in emails to customers, so they become more visible in Mail. Business users can sign up today, and the service will go live with the release of iOS 18.2.
Tap to Pay: The brand name and logo can also be made visible when accepting payments through Tap to Pay on iPhone, so customers know they’re making a payment to a trusted and verified business.
Business Caller ID: This feature means that when a business calls a customer’s iPhone, the business name, logo, and department will appear on the inbound call screen. This should help customers know which calls to respond to and help blunt the ongoing wave of annoying spam calls. This feature won’t be available until next year.
What are the benefits of Apple Business Connect?
The beauty of the service is that it is made available online and via Maps and supporting applications to over a billion people using iPads, iPhones, and Macs. Once a customer or potential customer gets to your business listing, they will find the information there easy to use and access, while your control of that listing lets you work to communicate the benefits of your business to that potential customer.
The added advantage of the Showcase section is that this can be tweaked to provide special offers, including one-time and time-limited offers, to help you win new customers once they reach your card. You can also monitor and optimize the performance of your listing and draw some SEO benefits from the existence of the information in the Apple ecosystem.
“We’re excited to offer all businesses — including those without a physical location — the ability to create a brand that appears across the Apple apps that over a billion people use every day,” David Dorn, Apple’s senior director of Internet Software and Services Product, said in a statement. “We designed Business Connect to empower businesses to present the best, most accurate information to Apple users. With today’s updates, we’re helping even more businesses reach customers, build trust, and grow.”
While an Apple Business Connect listing won’t necessarily transform your enterprise, it is free, simple, and far more likely to generate new business than the lack of any listing at all. In the future, these listings may become the basis of some kind of ad placement service within Maps.
How does my business join Apple Business Connect?
Access to the service has been widened to include owners of virtual, online, and service businesses, as well as the brick-and-mortar businesses it already supported.
Business owners can sign their operation up to Apple’s service using their existing Apple Account (as Apple ID is now called). They can also create a new Apple Account for their business to use when signing up for the service.
Apple just gave smaller enterprises a chance to compete on a more equal basis with larger concerns with three nice improvements to Apple Business Connect: Business Caller ID, brand identity in Mail, and custom business logos for use with Tap to Pay.
Together, the three tools mean that smaller businesses — now including enterprises that do not work from a set location — can deliver a more professional-seeming degree of service. For example, a small plumbing company can show its logo and contact details when making a call to a customer’s iPhone, or attach its brand identity to emails and messages received by clients so they can more easily identify genuine communications.
The solution also makes life much harder for phone scammers, as it adds another barrier to prevent them pretending to be bona fide enterprises.
What is Apple Business Connect?
Apple Business Connect appeared in 2023, supplementing then existing integrations with Apple Maps that let brick-and-mortar businesses make themselves visible. The service then let business owners claim, edit, and manage location place cards and customize what business information appears in Maps (or in services that use data drawn from Maps, including Siri). Spaces called Showcases let business owners display images, offer online ordering, and provide other information to help draw attention to their business.
Apple’s system also offers an Insights page that provides historical information about how, and how many times, customers have already found you. This provides you with aggregated insights into what customers sought as they found you, a heat map to show you approximately where your customers are based, and the number of views your existing listing (if one exists at all) already generates via Apple’s system.
What are the new features in Apple Business Connect?
The new features build on those tools and widen the service so that it can also be used to promote businesses that lack a physical location. Any verified business can now create a consistent brand and location presence, using the following tools:
Branded Mail: Businesses can display their brand name and logo in emails to customers, so they become more visible in Mail. Business users can sign up today, and the service will go live with the release of iOS 18.2.
Tap to Pay: The brand name and logo can also be made visible when accepting payments through Tap to Pay on iPhone, so customers know they’re making a payment to a trusted and verified business.
Business Caller ID: This feature means that when a business calls a customer’s iPhone, the business name, logo, and department will appear on the inbound call screen. This should help customers know which calls to respond to and help blunt the ongoing wave of annoying spam calls. This feature won’t be available until next year.
What are the benefits of Apple Business Connect?
The beauty of the service is that it is made available online and via Maps and supporting applications to over a billion people using iPads, iPhones, and Macs. Once a customer or potential customer gets to your business listing, they will find the information there easy to use and access, while your control of that listing lets you work to communicate the benefits of your business to that potential customer.
The added advantage of the Showcase section is that this can be tweaked to provide special offers, including one-time and time-limited offers, to help you win new customers once they reach your card. You can also monitor and optimize the performance of your listing and draw some SEO benefits from the existence of the information in the Apple ecosystem.
“We’re excited to offer all businesses — including those without a physical location — the ability to create a brand that appears across the Apple apps that over a billion people use every day,” David Dorn, Apple’s senior director of Internet Software and Services Product, said in a statement. “We designed Business Connect to empower businesses to present the best, most accurate information to Apple users. With today’s updates, we’re helping even more businesses reach customers, build trust, and grow.”
While an Apple Business Connect listing won’t necessarily transform your enterprise, it is free, simple, and far more likely to generate new business than the lack of any listing at all. In the future, these listings may become the basis of some kind of ad placement service within Maps.
How does my business join Apple Business Connect?
Access to the service has been widened to include owners of virtual, online, and service businesses, as well as the brick-and-mortar businesses it already supported.
Business owners can sign their operation up to Apple’s service using their existing Apple Account (as Apple ID is now called). They can also create a new Apple Account for their business to use when signing up for the service.
The potential split up of Google that’s been proposed by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) could weaken the company, and thus the position of the US in its tech war with China, said former President Donald Trump, who suggested he may not break up the company if he wins the presidency again in November.
In comments made while speaking Tuesday at an event with Bloomberg News during a meeting of the Economic Club of Chicago, Trump said, “China is afraid of Google,” according to a report of the event in the New York Times. He went on to wonder whether splitting Google would “destroy” it, and thus also diminish the US competitively against China. The US and China are at war over tech supremacy, and the US has imposed trade restrictions on the export of technology to the country.
Trump’s comments are somewhat ironic, given that it was his administration that brought an antitrust suit against Google in 2020, weeks before the presidential election. The DOJ argued at the time that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in the online search business by paying companies like Apple to make it the default search engine on smartphones and in web browsers.
Last week, the notion that Google would be split up became more realistic after the release of a proposal by the DOJ, which said it “is considering behavioral and structural remedies that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search and Google search-related products and features … over rivals or new entrants,” according to a court filing.
The department said that Google’s longstanding control of the Chrome browser, with its preinstalled Google search default, “significantly narrows the available channels of distribution and thus disincentivizes the emergence of new competition.”
The DOJ also said it would target Google’s revenue-sharing agreements with device makers and telecom companies that spurred the case in the first place in its remedies. These deals have kept Google as the default search engine on the vast majority of devices globally, effectively blocking competitors from gaining market share.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday, either on Trump’s remarks, or on its position on the DOJ proposal.
Two Googles better than one?
That split now seems more likely if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the upcoming election, as Democratic administrations traditionally have been on the side of consumer protection and thus splitting up companies with too much power, noted Brad Shimmin, chief analyst, AI and data analytics, at Omdia. Republicans, on the other hand, tend to favor letting large corporations with monopoly market shares remain as they are, he said.
Shimmin and other experts said a split like the one that the DOJ has proposed would offer consumers and enterprises more choice in terms of which technology they use and/or bundle with products. “I think that capitalism thrives upon a bit of chaos and diversity,” he said, adding that breaking up Google would be a win for consumer protection.
“Anytime you have a very solid position with a dominant player, it really quells innovation and quells enrichments, and you end up with a zero-sum game,” he said. That’s because once a company has a dominant position that can’t be challenged, there is little accountability for product and/or service quality, so “companies simply test the bounds of tolerance” with their customers, Shimmin said.
Power corrupts; regulation corrects
While Trump might favor ensuring Google plays fair instead of breaking up the company, according to his comments reported by the Times, this may not be enough to encourage fair competition, noted another industry expert.
“The fundamental problem with big tech is the economic perversities of monopoly power,” said John Bambenek, president at Bambenek Consulting. “Sure, regulation can help, but if the problem is too extreme, splitting companies up is the only solution to maintain viable capitalism.”
Indeed, capitalism always runs the risk of one company playing the fair market game better than others, which means that regulators sometimes need to step in to rebalance the system. This doesn’t mean the US will lose its edge against global competitors like China, even if that country has more control over its technology development due to its government structure, Bambenek said.
“Communist and autocratic economies, of course, take a different approach,” he said. “However, I still believe we can have both a free market with competition and still be innovative and maintain our tech dominance.”
Apple’s researchers wanted to figure out the extent to which LLMs such as GPT-4o, Llama, Phi, Gemma, or Mistral can actually engage in genuine logical reasoning to reach their conclusions/make their recommendations.
The study shows that, despite the hype, LLMs (large language models) don’t really perform logical reasoning — they simply reproduce the reasoning steps they learn from their training data. That’s quite an important admission.
This is what Apple’s researchers found about AI
“Current LLMs are not capable of genuine logical reasoning; instead, they attempt to replicate the reasoning steps observed in their training data,” the Apple team said.
They found that while these models may seem to show logical reasoning, even the slightest of changes in the way a query was worded could lead to very different answers. “The fragility of mathematical reasoning in these models [shows] that their performance significantly deteriorates as the number of clauses in a question increases,” they warned.
In an attempt to overcome the limitations of existing tests, Apple’s research team introduced GSM-Symbolic, a benchmarking tool designed to assess how effectively AI systems reason.
Not-so-smart smart bots
The research does show some strength in the models that are available today. For example, ChatGPT-4o still achieved a 94.9% accuracy rate in tests, though that rate dropped significantly when researchers made the problem more complex.
That’s good so far as it goes, but the success rate nearly collapsed — down as much as 65.7% — when researchers modified the challenge by adding “seemingly relevant but ultimately inconsequential statements.”
Those drops in accuracy reflect the limitation inherent within current LLM models, which still basically rely on pattern matching to achieve results, rather than making use of any true logical reasoning. That means these models “convert statements to operations without truly understanding their meaning,” the researchers said.
Commenting on Apple’s research, Gary Marcus, a scientist, author, AI critic, and professor of psychology and neural science at NYU, wrote: “There is just no way you can build reliable agents on this foundation, where changing a word or two in irrelevant ways or adding a few bit of irrelevant info can give you a different answer.”
All the same, the high accuracy displayed when using these machines for more conventionally framed problems suggests that, while fragile, AI will be of use as an adjunct to human decision-making.
At the very least, the data suggests that it is unwise to place total trust in the technology, as there is a tendency to failure when the underlying logic the models derive during training is stretched. It seems that AI doesn’t know what it is doing and lacks the degree of self-criticism it takes to spot a mistake when it is made.
Of course, this lack of logical coherence may be great news for some AI evangelists who frequently deny that AI deployment will cost jobs.
Why?
Because it provides an argument that humans will still be required to oversee the application of these intelligent machines. But those skilled human operators capable of spotting logical errors before they are put into action will probably need different skills than those used by the humans AI moves aside.
“Understanding LLMs’ true reasoning capabilities is crucial for deploying them in real-world scenarios where accuracy and consistency are non-negotiable — especially in safety, education, health care and decision making systems. Our findings emphasize the need for more robust and adaptable evaluation methods. Developing models that move beyond pattern recognition to true logical reasoning is the next big challenge for the AI community.”
I think there is another challenge as well. Apple’s research team perhaps inadvertently showed that existing models simply apply the kind of logic they have been trained to use.
The looming problem with that is the extent to which the logic chosen for use when training those models may reflect the limitations and prejudices of those who pay for the creation of those models. As those models are then deployed in the real world, this implies that future decisions taken by those models will maintain the flaws (ethical, moral, logical, or otherwise) inherent in the original logic.
Baking those weaknesses into AI systems used internationally on a day-to-day basis may end up strengthening prejudice while weakening the evidence for necessary change.
Garbage out
To a great extent, even within recent AI draft regulations, these big arguments remain completely unresolved by starry-eyed governments seeking elusive chimeras of economic growth in an age of existentially challenging crisis-driven change.
If nothing else, Apple’s teams have shown the extent to which current belief in AI as a panacea for all evils is becoming (like that anti-Wi-Fi amulet currently being sold by one media personality) a new tech faith system, given how easily a few query tweaks can generate fake results and illusion.
In the end, it really shouldn’t be controversial to think that we don’t want AI systems in charge of public transportation (including robotaxis) to end up having accidents merely because the sensors picked up confusing data that their inherent model just couldn’t figure out.
In a world of constant possibility, unexpected challenge is normal, and garbage in does, indeed, become garbage out. Perhaps we should be more deliberate in the application of these new tools? The public certainly seems to think so.
Oh, hello Android 15. How’s that for an all-around excellent October surprise?
Yes, indeedly: Google’s latest and greatest Android version is officially on its way to Pixel devices near and far this week, just over a month after Google dropped the source code in an unusually detached move.
That means if you’ve got any still-supported Pixel phone or tablet — which includes, at this point, everything from the Pixel 6 series onward — you should be able to download the fresh ‘n’ zesty software any day now, if not immediately.
You can check to see if the software is available for your device by going into the System section of your Pixel settings, then tapping “Software updates” followed by “System update.” Be sure to hit the button within that section to check for any pending update — and, if it doesn’t show up as being available yet, check back in another day or two.
Google sometimes sends Android updates like these out in waves, reaching a subset of Pixel owners each day over the course of several days to a few weeks. That way, if any unexpected issues arise, the company can catch and correct ’em before they’ve affected every Pixel owner in the world. But the update should be available for you very soon, if it isn’t already.
And once that happens, my goodness, are you in for some splendid new treats.
Here are 15 new Android 15 Pixel features that are all too easy to overlook but well worth your while to find. Check ’em out for yourself — then come check out my completely free Pixel Academy e-courseto discover even more advanced intelligence lurking within your favorite Googley gizmo.
Android 15 Pixel feature #1: A private space
The highest-profile Android 15 addition on its way to Pixels is something Google’s calling Private Space. In short, it’s a way to hide sensitive apps or apps with especially important info out of sight completely — so any average person who gets their paws on your device couldn’t even see that they’re installed, let alone get at any info within ’em.
Once hidden, any apps placed into the new Private Space on your Pixel won’t show up in your app drawer, recent apps view, notifications, or even settings, and they’ll always require authentication — a pattern, PIN, password, or biometric verification — to be opened.
Any apps you add into a Private Space in Android 15 show up in a special secured — and optionally hidden — area of your Pixel app drawer.
JR Raphael, IDG
🔎 To find the feature: Open up the Security & Privacy section of your Pixel system settings and tap the new “Private Space” option within that area. That’ll let you fire up your first Private Space, and once it’s up and running, you’ll see it and all the tools around it at the bottom of your standard Pixel app drawer (the thing you access by swiping upward on the Pixel Launcher home screen).
Android 15 Pixel feature #2: Good vibrations
The best part of Google’s Pixel phones are the subtle slivers of simple intelligence they add into the Android equation — and this next Pixel-specific Android 15 addition is about as perfect of an example as there could be.
It’s a feature that uses your phone’s microphone and other sensors to detect the noisiness of your current environment as well as the physical placement of the device and then adjust the strengths of any incoming vibrations accordingly.
It’s available on the Pixel 7 and all newer models.
🔎 To find the feature: Head into the Sound & Vibration section of your system settings, tap “Vibration & haptics,” then tap “Adaptive vibration” and flip the toggle that comes up into the on and active position.
Android 15 Pixel feature #3: Pumped-up volume
Android 15 introduces a completely new design to the expanded Android volume panel on Pixels — with larger, more easily adjusted sliders for specific sorts of media volumes as well as a more prominent button to shift your phone’s audio output from the phone itself to any connected devices.
The full Pixel volume panel sports a whole new look on Android 15.
JR Raphael, IDG
🔎 To find the feature: Press either of your Pixel’s physical volume buttons, then tap the three-dot icon at the bottom of the minimized volume panel to open the new fully expanded version.
Android 15 Pixel feature #4: Bluetooth undo
Speaking of sound, have you ever flipped your phone’s Bluetooth function into the off position for a moment for one reason or another — then realized a day later you forgot to turn it back on? I know I have.
Android 15 has a subtle but brilliantly helpful new option in which it can automatically turn Bluetooth back on for you a day after you disable it, if you’re so inclined.
🔎 To find the feature: Make your way into the Connected Devices section of your Pixel’s system settings, then tap “Connection preferences” followed by “Bluetooth” and look for the new “Always turn on tomorrow” toggle.
Android 15 Pixel feature #5: Easier erasing
Google’s excellent Audio Magic Eraser system for reducing background noise in videos gets a nifty new upgrade in Android 15 — with more nuanced controls for independently manipulating the levels of specific and distinctive individual sounds within videos captured on your phone.
You can now reduce the volume of specific individual sounds within the Pixel’s Audio Magic Eraser tool.
JR Raphael, IDG
This one’s available for the Pixel 8 and newer models.
🔎 To find the feature: Open the Google Photos app and tap on any video in your library, then tap the “Edit” option at the bottom of the screen. Select “Audio” in the horizontally scrolling list of options at the bottom of the editing interface, then tap the “Audio Eraser” option that appears above that area.
Android 15 Pixel feature #6: Better weather
Blink and you might’ve missed it, but Google launched its own native Android Weather app along with its latest Pixel 9 series devices earlier this year — and now, that same app is (a) making its way to even more Pixel models and (b) gaining a new pollen tracking feature for areas where such data is available.
Handy for the sneezy among us, wouldn’t ya say?
🔎 To find the feature: If you have a Pixel 6 or newer, look for the Weather icon within your device’s app drawer.
Android 15 Pixel feature #7: Idle intelligence
Android’s screen saver system is one of the platform’s most useful but underused features — and with Android 15, it’s getting even more useful yet.
That’s because of a snazzy new option to show your custom Google-Home-associated connected-device control panel on your device’s display anytime the thing is docked or charging. It’s similar to what’s been available on the Pixel Tablet as well as any Pixel phones connected to a Google-made Pixel Stand for a while, but now you can have that same advantage on any Pixel device — no matter how or where you’re giving it power.
Connected device controls are available at your fingertips with the new Android 15 Home Controls screen saver feature.
JR Raphael, IDG
🔎 To find the feature: Dance over to the Display section of your Pixel system settings and tap “Screen saver.” Flip the toggle next to “Use screen saver,” then select “Home Controls” from the list of available options.
Android 15 Pixel feature #8: Precious pairs
The biggest issue with Android’s split-screen system is simply remembering to use it. With Android 15, you’ve got an especially easy way to enter split-screen mode anytime with one fast tap, thanks to a new type of instant app-pair shortcut you can create and then store in plain sight on your home screen.
Once you’ve created such a shortcut, all you’ve gotta do is touch its icon, and boom: Your two apps will open together — no extra steps or effort required.
srcset="https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-pixel-android-15-app-pairs.webp?quality=50&strip=all 750w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-pixel-android-15-app-pairs.webp?resize=300%2C290&quality=50&strip=all 300w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-pixel-android-15-app-pairs.webp?resize=721%2C697&quality=50&strip=all 721w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-pixel-android-15-app-pairs.webp?resize=174%2C168&quality=50&strip=all 174w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-pixel-android-15-app-pairs.webp?resize=87%2C84&quality=50&strip=all 87w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-pixel-android-15-app-pairs.webp?resize=497%2C480&quality=50&strip=all 497w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-pixel-android-15-app-pairs.webp?resize=372%2C360&quality=50&strip=all 372w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-pixel-android-15-app-pairs.webp?resize=259%2C250&quality=50&strip=all 259w" width="750" height="725" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px">One tap to split screen, with Android 15’s new extremely hidden app pairs option.
JR Raphael, IDG
🔎 To find the feature: This one’s a bit tricky to track down. First, you need to head into Android’s Overview mode by swiping up about an inch from the bottom of the screen and then stopping (or using the square-shaped Overview button, if you’re still resisting Android gestures and stickin’ with the old legacy three-button nav setup). Then, tap the icon above any app in that area, select “Split screen,” and select another app to pair with it — and finally, head back into that same Overview area, tap one of the icons above your newly created split, and tap the new “Save app pair” option in the menu that appears.
Android 15 Pixel feature #9: Better back
Provided you’re using Android’s current gesture setup, the system-wide “back” command — y’know, when you swipe your finger inward from the left or right edge of the screen to move back a step in whatever you’re doing — is getting a hefty upgrade as of Android 15.
In short, whenever an app is designed to support it, the system will now show you a quick peek at the screen you’re about to reach before you get there — a preview of sorts to make sure you’re headed where you want.
srcset="https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-pixel-android-15-predictive-back.webp?quality=50&strip=all 750w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-pixel-android-15-predictive-back.webp?resize=300%2C293&quality=50&strip=all 300w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-pixel-android-15-predictive-back.webp?resize=713%2C697&quality=50&strip=all 713w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-pixel-android-15-predictive-back.webp?resize=172%2C168&quality=50&strip=all 172w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-pixel-android-15-predictive-back.webp?resize=86%2C84&quality=50&strip=all 86w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-pixel-android-15-predictive-back.webp?resize=491%2C480&quality=50&strip=all 491w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-pixel-android-15-predictive-back.webp?resize=368%2C360&quality=50&strip=all 368w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/google-pixel-android-15-predictive-back.webp?resize=256%2C250&quality=50&strip=all 256w" width="750" height="733" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px">Peekaboo! Google’s new Android 15 predictive back addition lets you see where you’re going before you get there.
JR Raphael, IDG
🔎 To find the feature: Just swipe in from the side of your screen. If the app you’re using supports the new “predictive back” system, as it’s known, you’ll see that helpful little preview appear up until the point that you lift your finger and let go. (Your Pixel settings area is a simple place to try it out.)
Android 15 Pixel feature #10: Cutoff shutdown
One of the more irksome Android behaviors has long been how apps with longer names get cut off in the app drawer — showing up with only the first several letters and then an ellipsis.
Google’s Android 15 update for Pixels lets you fix this once and for all by opting to show full app names in your app drawer all the time — stretching onto two lines, if needed, to fit in every last letter for your non-truncated reading pleasure.
(The change doesn’t, unfortunately, also apply to the home screen — only the app drawer. But hey, baby steps!)
🔎 To find the feature: Provided you’re using the standard Pixel Launcher and not a custom Android home screen setup, long-press on any open space on your Pixel’s home screen and select “Home settings,” then tap “Apps list settings” and flip the toggle next to “Show long app names” into the on position.
Android 15 Pixel feature #11: App freezer
If you’ve got apps you aren’t actively using but still want to keep around on your device, Android 15 has a new built-in app archiving option that lets you do exactly that — without having to completely uninstall anything or lose all the associated data and settings.
Any apps that are archived become temporarily unavailable and compressed down to take up less space. But you can then reactivate ’em anytime and restore ’em to their previous form.
🔎 To find the feature: Head into the Apps area of your system settings, tap the line to see all apps, and select any app from the list — then look for the new “Manage app if unused” toggle. Note that the toggle seems to be on by default for all apps and so Android will automatically archive anything it deems to be unused unless you go in and turn this option off on a case-by-case basis.
Android 15 Pixel feature #12: The widget whisperer
Android widgets are awesome, but adding a new widget onto your Android device’s home screen isn’t always an incredible experience. Android 15 works to improve that by introducing a new more visual widget-adding interface — complete with categorized recommendations and a more visual, real-time preview of exactly what each widget will look like before you even select it.
The new and improved Google Pixel widget picking interface, as introduced with Android 15.
JR Raphael, IDG
🔎 To find the feature: Long-press on any open area of your Pixel home screen and tap the “Widgets” option.
Well, here’s a sight for sore eyes: As of Android 15, your Pixel has a new and improved option for customizing the color contrast all throughout your Android experience.
This can make text and other on-screen elements easier to read — and it can also let you move past some of the slightly monotonous pastel motifs that are so prominent throughout Google’s current Material You design themes.
What a contrast: Adjusting the new color contrast settings on a Pixel in Google’s Android 15 update.
JR Raphael, IDG
🔎 To find the feature: Press and hold any open area of your Pixel home screen, select “Wallpaper & style,” then tap “Color contrast” and explore the options within.
Got a Pixel Fold or Pixel Tablet? The same persistent taskbar trick introduced with this year’s new Pixel 9 Pro Fold phone is now making its way to those other large-screen Android devices — giving you an easy way to keep that on-demand taskbar visible and available all the time instead of only when you summon it.
🔎 To find the feature: First, summon the taskbar by swiping up gently from the bottom of the screen (while your phone is in its unfolded state, on a Fold). Then press and hold the little vertical line on the taskbar’s left side, between the app drawer icon and the first app in the list. That’ll reveal the newly added option to always show the taskbar.
Android 15 Pixel feature #15: A star-shooting spruce-up
Last but not least in our list is an option that makes it easier than ever to tap into one of the Pixel’s most impressive photography powers — and that’s the Google-aided ability to capture stunning night sky photos with your device.
Android 15 makes it possible to manually enable the Pixel’s astrophotography mode (at last!). So the next time you’re seeing stars, you can capture ’em in all their glory to show off to your colleagues in the morning without having to futz around and wait for the option to appear.
The Pixel Camera app, ready for astrophotography blastoff.
JR Raphael, IDG
🔎 To find the feature: On the Pixel 6 and higher, open up your phone’s camera, select “Night Sight” in the mode slider at the bottom of the screen, then tap the icon with a moon in the lower-right corner of the screen. Next, look for the “Max — Astro” slider that appears in the main viewfinder area. Slide your finger to the left on that to shift it into the “Astro” setting, then point your phone up to the sky and aim away.
All that’s left is to shoot for the stars — and that part, my Pixel-palming pal, is up to you to pull off.
The organization Fido Alliance has developed a proposal for a new standard for passkeys — i.e., alternatives to passwords such as hardware keys, facial recognition, fingerprints or PIN codes.
The big news in the proposal is that it will be possible to use the same passkeys even if you change platform or service, something that would make it significantly easier for users than at present.
I’ve been a happy WordPress user for almost 20 years. Before that, I wrote HTML by hand or used content management systems such as Drupal to run my websites. WordPress was so much better that I never looked back — and ‘m far from alone. WordPress is used by 43% of all websites, including business giants such as eBay, Sony, GM, Samsung, and IBM.
Wow. He went there. The most famous example of cancer and open source being mentioned together is when former Microsoft bigwig Steve Ballmer went off on Linux. Is this really where Mullenweg wanted to go? Yes, it is.
By his lights, “Lee Wittlinger at Silver Lake, the private equity firm with $102B assets that owns WP-Engine, is hollowing out the WordPress open source community by not including some WordPress features, such as its change revision system — and the company only contributes back 40 hours a week. Meanwhile, Automattic, Mullenweg’s for-profit WordPress company, “is a similar size and contributes back 3,915 hours a week.” (He also accused WP-Engine of violating WordPress’s trademarks.)
WP-Engine was not amused and fired off a cease-and-desist letter to Mullenweg and Automattic demanding they withdraw their comments. The company also revealed in its words that Mullenweg would take a “scorched earth nuclear approach” against WP Engine unless it agreed to pay “a significant percentage of its revenues for a license to the WordPress trademark.” Specifically, it claimed Mullenweg had demanded 8% of its gross revenues. That went over just as well as you’d think.
Mullenweg briefly banned WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org resources, affecting updates for 1.5 million websites. This move prevented users from updating their plugins, which are an essential part of WordPress site management. That decision was swiftly reversed after community backlash.
Things continued downhill from there. On Oct. 2, WP Engine sued Automattic and Mullenweg personally, alleging extortion, slander, and abuse of power.
It’s also, as tech journalist Ian Betterridge observed on Threads, “Fascinating that Mullenweg, on the one hand, claims WP Engine has contributed nothing to WordPress, and on the other reckons its plugin code is so valuable to the community it needs to be taken over.”
Additionally, WordPress.org — the non-profit arm of WordPress — implemented a mandatory checkbox on its login page requiring users to confirm they are not affiliated with WP Engine. How? Well, you see, it turns out WordPress.org doesn’t belong to the WordPress Foundation, where Mullenweg is one of its three leaders. No, as Mullenweg succinctly put it, “WordPress.org just belongs to me.“
Indeed, the more you look into this conflict, the clearer it becomes that this is no battle between a spunky old-school, open-source leader against a big bad commercial company and more a conflict between a capitalist who wants a bigger share of the WordPress pie and a company that had been doing quite well from the status quo.
If you spend a lot of time following open-source businesses like me, this might sound all too familiar. In the last few years, one successful open-source company after another, such as Hashicorp, Redis, and CockRoachDB, abandoned open source for fauxpen source licenses to try to make more money. All these were already multi-hundred-million dollar businesses, but they wanted more. Much more.
Greed is a powerful thing.
That appears to be the case here, too. WordPress can’t try the relicensing move. It’s licensed under the General Public License version 2 (GPLv2), This license is both irrevocable and requires any derived work to be licensed under the same license. What Mullenweg can — and is – doing, though, is trying to shake down WP Engine for more money.
As my fellow journalist Matthew Ingram pointed out in an excellent essay on the conflict, “Matt is not just the plucky founder of a nonprofit open-source project, he’s a wealthy CEO of a for-profit corporation that is attacking a competitor, and using his status as the founder of the nonprofit to extract money from that competitor.”
From where I sit, this is not a battle over open source. It’s a fight between someone worth hundreds of millions and a company worth billions. When you’re trying to figure out what’s going on in any conflict, whether it’s a family fight, a divorce, or a business fight, one of the best rules of thumb is to follow the money. What it’s telling me here is it’s about the cash.
Unfortunately, this battle can potentially affect me and everyone who uses WordPress and WP Express in particular. I didn’t need this. None of us do.
