Networking

In a previous piece, I discussed Amazon’s difficulty trying to convince its customers to buy new Alexa-powered smart speakers every year when the devices’ core functionality and capabilities haven’t changed — and whether we should be truly “owning” them in the first place.

I haven’t upgraded my devices since I purchased the first Generation 1 Echos in March of 2014 when the device premiered exclusively for Amazon Prime and invited customers. I currently own three, one in my bedroom, one in my office, and a Generation 1 Echo Dot in my main bathroom. We also have a Sonos Beam in our living room, which has some, but not all, Alexa capabilities.
For the most part, these devices work just fine. Amazon rolls out updates to the firmware continually and changes its cloud service and Alexa smartphone apps annually that introduce new functionality.
Also: Best smart speakers in 2020: Bose, Google, Apple, Amazon, Sonos, and more 
Speakers don’t go bad, as the basic loudspeaker hardware can last decades. The embedded microprocessor hardware in the original Echo is solid-state. The logic board is designed to function for a very long time, so short of the product taking an unexpected power surge, it would be highly unusual for it to break or have a catastrophic malfunction. Assuming Amazon continues to allow its first-generation products to use the Alexa cloud service to stay “smart” rather than become abandonware, they should and can remain useful for years to come.
But as I write this, it is the day before Prime Day 2020, the celebration of Amazon mass consumerism. Where many good deals, presumably on Amazon’s own devices, can be had. And this year’s Amazon Echo, Generation 4, has a new feature previous models have not had — a Machine Learning (ML) chip, the AZ1 Neural Edge processor.
Now, there’s no indication yet that the Gen 4 will be discounted on Prime Day — the current deal is if you buy two, you get $30 off the original price if you use the ECHO2PK code at checkout. That’s not a bad deal, especially if you are a new Echo customer. Still, I think Amazon needs to do better, especially on Prime Day and for their early adopters hanging on with Generation 1 devices.
But what does this AZ1 Neural Edge chip in the Gen 4 do for me if I were to decommission my old Echos? Well, as Amazon has demonstrated, it allows part of the processing from their cloud service that powers Alexa to run directly on the device itself, improving query response time. I have not seen a real-life demonstration of this, so right now, I’m just taking it on Amazon’s word that it means Alexa will be faster.
I can see how it might be useful in environments with limited connectivity, such as connecting Alexa to your car on a congested or spotty 4G network, as with the Echo Auto that is currently on sale for Prime Day. The Echo Auto doesn’t have the Amazon AZ1; it uses an Intel digital signal processor (DSP) with an “Inference Engine,” an ML deep learning chip of Intel’s design created for edge network applications.
Also: What is edge computing? Here’s why the edge matters and where it’s headed 

A promise of improved response time when my home broadband is degraded is not enough to convince me to spend $170 on two new Echos even with a discount code. $125, maybe. What I want to see is Amazon providing some actual innovation with the machine learning chip itself. 
There’s a lot of things you can do with machine learning and audio processing, which quite frankly, we haven’t scratched the surface of yet. Voice patterns, in particular, how emotion is sensed, may be useful for understanding stress. 
The company recently introduced Alexa Guard Plus, a premium service due to launch at the end of this year. Among the features it has is activity sound detection, which presumably, includes noises that might be sounds of distress and things like windows breaking. The company has not yet said whether that specific feature requires Echo devices with the AZ1 chip or if it will work with legacy devices.
When applied to voice and audio processing, machine learning may have other applications we don’t know about yet. Indeed, it might help Alexa to know about a request’s urgency or to know if you are annoyed with her responses. 
But so far, I am not seeing the “killer app” for Amazon’s neural edge processing chip. Show me something cool, something I need, Alexa. Because I’m just not seeing that compelling reason to upgrade yet.
Are you upgrading your older Amazon Echo devices for Generation 4 with the AZ1 for promises of machine learning apps that haven’t arisen yet? Talk Back and Let Me Know. More

In a previous piece, I discussed Amazon’s difficulty trying to convince its customers to buy new Alexa-powered smart speakers every year when the devices’ core functionality and capabilities haven’t changed — and whether we should be truly “owning” them in the first place.

I haven’t upgraded my devices since I purchased the first Generation 1 Echos in March of 2014 when the device premiered exclusively for Amazon Prime and invited customers. I currently own three, one in my bedroom, one in my office, and a Generation 1 Echo Dot in my main bathroom. We also have a Sonos Beam in our living room, which has some, but not all, Alexa capabilities.
For the most part, these devices work just fine. Amazon rolls out updates to the firmware continually and changes its cloud service and Alexa smartphone apps annually that introduce new functionality.
Also: Best smart speakers in 2020: Bose, Google, Apple, Amazon, Sonos, and more 
Speakers don’t go bad, as the basic loudspeaker hardware can last decades. The embedded microprocessor hardware in the original Echo is solid-state. The logic board is designed to function for a very long time, so short of the product taking an unexpected power surge, it would be highly unusual for it to break or have a catastrophic malfunction. Assuming Amazon continues to allow its first-generation products to use the Alexa cloud service to stay “smart” rather than become abandonware, they should and can remain useful for years to come.
But as I write this, it is the day before Prime Day 2020, the celebration of Amazon mass consumerism. Where many good deals, presumably on Amazon’s own devices, can be had. And this year’s Amazon Echo, Generation 4, has a new feature previous models have not had — a Machine Learning (ML) chip, the AZ1 Neural Edge processor.
Now, there’s no indication yet that the Gen 4 will be discounted on Prime Day — the current deal is if you buy two, you get $30 off the original price if you use the ECHO2PK code at checkout. That’s not a bad deal, especially if you are a new Echo customer. Still, I think Amazon needs to do better, especially on Prime Day and for their early adopters hanging on with Generation 1 devices.
But what does this AZ1 Neural Edge chip in the Gen 4 do for me if I were to decommission my old Echos? Well, as Amazon has demonstrated, it allows part of the processing from their cloud service that powers Alexa to run directly on the device itself, improving query response time. I have not seen a real-life demonstration of this, so right now, I’m just taking it on Amazon’s word that it means Alexa will be faster.
I can see how it might be useful in environments with limited connectivity, such as connecting Alexa to your car on a congested or spotty 4G network, as with the Echo Auto that is currently on sale for Prime Day. The Echo Auto doesn’t have the Amazon AZ1; it uses an Intel digital signal processor (DSP) with an “Inference Engine,” an ML deep learning chip of Intel’s design created for edge network applications.
Also: What is edge computing? Here’s why the edge matters and where it’s headed 
A promise of improved response time when my home broadband is degraded is not enough to convince me to spend $170 on two new Echos even with a discount code. $125, maybe. What I want to see is Amazon providing some actual innovation with the machine learning chip itself. 
There’s a lot of things you can do with machine learning and audio processing, which quite frankly, we haven’t scratched the surface of yet. Voice patterns, in particular, how emotion is sensed, may be useful for understanding stress. 
The company recently introduced Alexa Guard Plus, a premium service due to launch at the end of this year. Among the features it has is activity sound detection, which presumably, includes noises that might be sounds of distress and things like windows breaking. The company has not yet said whether that specific feature requires Echo devices with the AZ1 chip or if it will work with legacy devices.
When applied to voice and audio processing, machine learning may have other applications we don’t know about yet. Indeed, it might help Alexa to know about a request’s urgency or to know if you are annoyed with her responses. 
But so far, I am not seeing the “killer app” for Amazon’s neural edge processing chip. Show me something cool, something I need, Alexa. Because I’m just not seeing that compelling reason to upgrade yet.
Are you upgrading your older Amazon Echo devices for Generation 4 with the AZ1 for promises of machine learning apps that haven’t arisen yet? Talk Back and Let Me Know. More

New Zealand telco Spark and Australian IoT network builder National Narrowband Network Co (NNNCo) announced an agreement on Monday that will allow LoRaWAN users to deploy on either side of the Tasman and roam on the other side of the ditch.
In order to implement the roaming arrangement, NNNCo’s enterprise platform, N2N-DL, has been integrated into Spark’s network core.
“Data from devices on the Spark NZ network will feed into N2N-DL giving customers access to data on a single platform from devices enrolled in either country,” the pair said.
“Spark can also do the same for customers with devices enrolled on the NNNCo network in Australia.”
One of the first customers of the network will be Parkable, a New Zealand parking app that is looking to expand in Australia.
“As the economy continues to be shaped by COVID-19, we could expect to see more partnerships like this; where carriers and partners work together to enable the deployment and scaling of IoT solutions across markets,” Spark IoT lead Tony Agar said.
Elsewhere on Monday morning, Australian telco Optus announced it was opening up its 5G network for its wholesale customers.
The telco said it has 900 5G sites across the country, but has yet to deploy any cells in Tasmania or Northern Territory.
Spintel is the first mobile virtual network operator to jump onboard.
Not to be left out, Australian incumbent telco Telstra said on Monday its network has hit 41% population coverage.
“Our 5G now covers an area that more than twelve million Australians live, work or pass through on a daily basis, giving them access to a superfast network at a time when connectivity’s never been more important and when there’ll be more 5G devices to choose from than ever,” Telstra group executive for networks & IT Nikos Katinakis said.
“We’ve recently announced our intention to roll out Telstra 5G to 75 per cent of the Australian population by the end of June 2021, which will expand our network to even more suburban and regional areas.”
Telstra recently hit 2,000 5G sites across the country.
“We’re a long way ahead of our competitors because we’re investing more, we’ve got the technology leadership and we want to extend that lead because Australia needs 5G,” Katinakis added.
Last month, Telstra unveiled its invite-only 5G fixed wireless service.
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More consumers are expected to experience hardship in paying their National Broadband Network (NBN) bills as Australia’s telcos look to eventually turn off the tap for financial support, a Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) representative told a Senate committee on Friday.
Standing before the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network on Friday, TIO Judi Jones said the financial support given by government and industry had stalled any potential uptick of complaints that the agency expected from consumers.
“We’ve waited to see an increase in complaints about hardship and problems paying a bill — we think that will come, but by the end of the year it wasn’t showing up as a particular issue. It was starting to rise but it actually dropped off as an important issue in the pandemic because of financial support,” Jones said.
“We are anticipating, as government and providers wind back support measures, we’ll see more hardship issues for residential and small business consumers,” Jones said. 
She noted, however, that there has been a 1,500% increase of consumer complaints during the most recent quarter in the category of being unable to contact internet providers when experiencing connection issues.
The latest report by the TIO, released in July, had revealed there was a direct correlation between the coronavirus pandemic, and the complaints it received between March and June 2020. 
The TIO’s systemic investigation report uncovered that there was an increase in complaints from mid-March by consumers about not being able to contact their providers. By early April, the average number of daily complaints by consumers being unable to reach their providers peaked at 130.
“What we did see in their complaints that came to us was the impact was more important for consumers, so not having a working internet service impacted not just watching Netflix in the evening when you were home,” Jones told the committee. 
“It has impacted your kid’s ability to learn, and your ability to be able to continue to be employed by working from home, or for small businesses without pivoting to have a completely online interaction with the consumers.”
The proportion of fault and connection complaints from small businesses also increased from 14% to 15.7% quarter-over-quarter in relation to total fault and connection complaints for services delivered over the NBN in the most recent quarter, Jones said.
When asked by committee chair Tony Pasin whether the amount of fault and connection complaints from small businesses was disproportionate to those made by residential consumers, Jones was hesitant to provide a clear answer, noting small business customers do not necessarily use a small business account.
She explained that small businesses operating from home could potentially use a residential account and that there was not enough information on samples and operations. 
“It has been challenging for small businesses and indeed for residential consumers when their network is not performing, whether there is a degradation of the copper meaning that it is not receiving the optical services, or citizens are not receiving service that they can see as available in other areas,” she said.
Jones also said the proportion of unresolved and escalated complaints had increased, which reflected an emerging picture of complexity. 
As the NBN rollout moves into its later stages, the TIO expects to continue to see more complaints about connections that have been postponed due to their complexity. 
“Complex connections often take additional time to complete and may require a specific skillset, removal of other infrastructure, liaison with external parties such as strata management, or a fix that falls outside the scope of a standard installation,” TIO wrote in its submission to the committee.
Facing this increased complexity, TIO said it has formed specialist teams to handle these escalated complaints and continued to work closely with phone and internet providers to understand the barriers to resolving these issues, and how to prevent the issues from occurring. 
Last month, NBN announced its plan to spend AU$700 million to create 240 “business fibre zones” that will cover 700,000 business premises. Being part of a zone will allow businesses to get a full fibre Enterprise Ethernet connection, as well as reduced rates and connection fees.
Two days later, it announced that 2 million premises on fibre to the node would have the opportunity to move to full fibre, but only an additional 400,000 are expected to take it up by the end of the fiscal year 2024. However, NBN users that live or work within multi-dwelling units are not included as part of the upgrade.
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To say 2020 has been a significant year for Zoom Video Communications would be an understatement, but the video conferencing company is looking for continued growth beyond the pandemic as workplaces take on a new definition. It also is keen to expand its footprint in Asia-Pacific, where it has a data centre in Singapore and has seen accelerated growth. 
The year indeed had been “hyper accelerated” and “dramatic” for Zoom, which clocked 200 million meeting participants a day worldwide in March during the height of the pandemic, said Abe Smith, Zoom’s head of international. In comparison, this figure was at 10 million just a couple of months earlier in December 2019. By April, the number of daily meeting participants had climbed to 300 million, Smith said in a video interview with ZDNet. 
Zoom reached 370,200 paying enterprise customers with at least 10 employees in its second quarter, up 458% from just 66,000 a year ago. Ended July 31, the quarter also saw the company hit $663.5 million in revenue, up 355% year-on-year, 

Asia-Pacific is registering similar growth rates, according to Smith. For the second quarter, revenue from the region increased 572% year-on-year to some $81 million, or about 12.2% of the company’s total revenue. Its Asia-Pacific region includes China, Australia, and Japan. 
Zoom also saw accelerated growth in Singapore, he noted, where it clocked a 65-fold increase in the number of free accounts — where meeting sessions are capped at 40 minutes — in April, compared to January, while paying customers with at least 10 employees grew three-fold. Its local clientele includes Grab, GIC, and the Ministry of Education, where 45,000 educators across 400 schools had used the video conferencing platform extensively during the country’s lockdown earlier this year. 
The city-state also was home to the company’s first data centre in Southeast Asia, operational since July and joining 19 other sites worldwide, including two data centres each in Japan, India, and Australia.
The need and location for new data centres were assessed based on capacity and performance, Smith said, adding that the company would continue to expand its datacentre footprint. The company also pumped up capacity via cloud partners such as Oracle.
To boost its development efforts, Zoom recently unveiled a technology centre in Bangalore, where it would be looking to increase its engineering headcount. It also continued to maintain an engineering and devops team in China, despite having exited the market in August. 
Smith said: “So we still have a strong headcount there. While we’re not selling directly in China, we’re empowering native solutions [there] so products, which now are delivered through our local partners, are designed to serve the local market.” He added that having tech facilities in India and the US enabled the company to have a more diversified engineering team.
“We’re not stepping back from Asia, we’re leaning in,” he said, adding that Zoom offered a service that was relevant both in the current pandemic as well as beyond it. 
Tapping the untapped video market
Organisations in Asia-Pacific were struggling to understand how their workplace would function in the future, which Smith said likely would see the emergence of a hybrid work environment where some employees would return to the office, while others would continue to work from home. 
“So businesses need the flexibility and we need to help people solve that problem around how you connect, regardless of where you are and what device you have,” he said, pointing to Zoom Phone. Integrated with its core platform, the cloud phone service supports calls made through traditional PSTN (public switched telephone network) and allows customers to consolidate their PBX system and enterprise communication tools into the video platform. 
Businesses also were turning to Zoom to transform their own service offerings, he added. HSBC in the UK, for instance, had begun tapping the video conferencing platform to facilitate mortgage appointments, allowing home buyers to move ahead with their loan application amidst the global pandemic and giving customers more flexibility with appointment times. 
There was potential for more use cases where, for instance, helpdesk calls could be video calls, Smith said, noting that Zoom currently was integrated with some 600 applications, including Salesforce.com and ServiceNow. 
“The addressable market for what we do with video is massive [and] the opportunity with Phone is huge,” he said. “Before the pandemic, there were 60 million conference rooms worldwide, of which less than 5% were video-enabled.”
“As people return into the office, the need to connect with those working remotely [and] those from the office, that’s a massive market,” he noted. There also were opportunities in the home market, he added, and Zoom would continue to introduce products and features designed for this space. 
For some customer installations such as the deployment for Singapore’s Education Ministry, he added, customised features were built into the product, including mobile support and integration with single singon service and other learning systems. 
Acknowledging that it had hit a snag earlier with security issues, he said the company worked to resolve these, freezing development work for 90 days and dedicating the time to enhancing security. It also announced more than 100 security features, including the ability to push and force passwords and advanced encryption, as well as increased its data centre infrastructure and acquired encryption startup, Keybase. 
More security consultants also were brought into the company, and a CISO council was established, he said. In Singapore, it also worked with the Education Ministry to address security concerns, leading to the rollout of customised features such as the single signon and other access control policies.
Singapore schools had tapped Zoom as they began home-based learning, but this was quickly suspended after two reported incidents of Zoom-bombing within virtual classrooms. In one such breach, male strangers hijacked a lesson to broadcast obscene images and asked female students to expose themselves. Use of the video platform resumed after added controls were put in place and some features turned off. 
Smith alluded to the introduction of more features at the company’s Zoomtopia event next week, which he revealed would include an APAC-focused track.
Asked if security features would remain available to all its customers, he said security had to be “foundational” and would remain so. “Everyone, including those using our free service, wants to have meetings that are safe,” he said. “Sometimes, there are more stringent requirements for governments, such as meetings involving classified documents…these are areas we need to work with [customers] that can include unique systems or unique approach to integrating [added features].”
He noted that while some of such features would be accessible for paying customers, meetings should “always be safe and secure”. 
Zoom in June backtracked on an earlier decision to limit support for end-to-end encrypted calls for its paying customers, making the feature available to all users.
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These days, when many of us are working from home, having great broadband isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity. While I wouldn’t kill for Gigabit internet to my home, I’d consider maiming. Alas, I can’t get it. But, while I’m still worrying over that, Comcast is working toward delivering 10 Gigabit per second (Gbps) to homes.

That sound you hear is me crying with longing. 
Comcast has achieved a 10Gbps technical milestone by delivering 1.25Gbps upload and download speeds over a live production network using Network Function Virtualization (NFV) combined with the latest Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) hardware. This is being done with DOCSIS 4. With this cutting-edge cable internet technology, you can expect to see up to 10Gbps speeds downstream and up to 6Gbps upstream capacity over a hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) network.
In its first real-world test, to a home in Jacksonville, Fla., technicians achieved its Gigabit plus speed using upon Comcast’s Distributed Access Architecture (DAA). This is an edge-based computing model. This architecture has a suite of software-powered networking technologies, including digital fiber optics, “Remote PHY” digital nodes, and a cloud-based, virtualized cable modem termination system platform (vCMTS). The result? Comcast’s team consistently measured speeds of 1.25Gbps upload and 1.2Gbps download over the connection.
Yo, Comcast, if you never need to test this service in Asheville, N.C., feel free to give me a call.
You don’t think you need that much speed? I, and Comcast, beg to differ. 
“Our customers build their digital lives on the foundation of our internet service, so we continue to push the technological envelope to anticipate their future needs,” said Tony Werner, president of technology, product, and experience at Comcast Cable. “The great strength of our network technology is that we will have the ability to scale these next-generation speeds to tens of millions of homes in the future without digging up yards, or starting massive construction projects. This technology provides a path to meeting the needs of the future and making multi-Gigabit symmetrical speeds a reality for everyone, not just a select few.”
According to a study by Dr. Raul Katz of Telecom Advisory Services, 10Gbps internet will generate at least $330 billion in total economic output and create more than 676,000 new jobs over the next seven years. It will do by enabling not just 8K video streams for everyone living in your home, but by enabling 5G access points, virtual reality applications, and telehealth.    It’s not just hardware that’s making this possible. Comcast is a major open-source developer and user. As Comcast notes, “The trial was made possible not by a single technological innovation, but rather by a series of interrelated technologies that Comcast continues to test and deploy in its network, all powered by a DAA ecosystem. These include our increasingly virtualized, cloud-based network model.”
Comcast, like any smart open-source citizen, isn’t doing it on its own. Comcast is working on the “10G” initiative along with NCTA, CableLabs, and SCTE, and other telecom and cable operators from around the world. In addition, Comcast and Charter Communications have worked closely to align on their approaches to 10Gbps and are driving technology standards and architectures to benefit everyone.
I, for one, will be more than happy to welcome 10Gbps internet into my home office. Mind you, in the meantime, I wouldn’t say no to just getting gigabit to my house.
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Shares of chip maker NXP Semiconductors and of networking equipment vendor Extreme Networks both jumped in late trading as the two firms raised their forecasts for the quarter just ended.
NXP, which sells a broad line of semiconductors that go into many kinds of devices, but which has especially strong presence in automobile electronics, raised its outlook for revenue for last quarter to $2.27 billion, above the prior view of $2 billion, offered back on July 28th. Analysts have been modeling $2.01 billion.
CEO Kurt Sievers said that NXP “experienced material improvement in demand across all end markets, but particularly in the Automotive and Mobile end markets.”
Added Sievers,

Additionally, demand improved in both our direct and distribution channels. The business environment has improved at a faster than anticipated pace, driving a broad-based increase in revenue, which also enabled higher gross margin. Given the improved outlook, we increased operating expenses in relation to non-executive variable incentive compensation, which taken together, resulted in operating profit margin substantially above guidance.

Extreme, meanwhile, raised its outlook for revenue for the quarter, its fiscal first quarter, to $233 million to $236 million, above a prior forecast offered on August 5th for $220 million to $230 million. Earnings per share is now expected in a range of 5 cents to 8 cents, above its prior view of 1 cent to 4 cents. 
Analysts have been modeling $223.6 million and 2 cents per share. 
NXP plans to release full details on Monday, October 26th, after market close. The company will host a conference call with analysts the following morning, at 8 am, Eastern, which you can catch on the company’s investor relations Web site. 
CEO Ed Meyercord remarked that the “first fiscal quarter outlook improved across a number of financial metrics.”
Added Meyercord,

Our better-than-expected performance is a result of strong bookings and customer response to our ‘effortless’ strategy. The simplicity of our ExtremeCloud IQ platform, edge switching and Wi-Fi applications, and our end-to-end fabric technology is creating differentiation in the market during a challenging business environment. We are especially pleased with our team’s execution, as this marks the second quarter of sequential revenue and EPS growth in our business at a higher level of Non-GAAP profitability.

CFO Remi Thomas said the company carried out “continued cost and expense control drove” which lead to “solid operating leverage, and in turn strong cash flow.”
Added Thomas,

This allowed us to repay $20 million of our $55 million revolving credit facility during the quarter and reduce our net debt by approximately $24 million sequentially – all while maintaining ample liquidity as cash and cash equivalents remained relatively stable compared to the prior quarter.

NXP shares are up $8.47, over 6%, at $143.30, in late trading.
Extreme shares are up 63 cents, or 15%, at $4.74.
Extreme’s management will host a conference call to discuss the results in full on October 28th at 8 am, Eastern time. You can check it out on the Extreme investor Web site. 

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Microsoft, the onetime monopolist, must find it hard to play the role of underdog. But that’s exactly where the company finds itself today when it comes to the highly non-competitive search market, where Google continues to lead and Microsoft is an extremely distant number two.
Google’s dominance also extends to the browser category, where Microsoft Edge is far behind Chrome. It’s still too early to tell whether Microsoft’s all-new Edge browser, based on Google’s open source Chromium code base, can make a dent in Google’s overwhelming lead on desktop PCs.
Ironically, Microsoft’s latest strategy for winning people over to Bing and Edge involves the same sort of tactic that got them in trouble in the 1990s: tying its search engine and its browser tightly to Windows. The difference in 2020 is that Windows no longer has monopoly power in a world dominated by mobile devices.
That background helps put today’s Microsoft Edge announcements in better context. While Google is under pressure from European antitrust authorities for anticompetitive behavior in online shopping, Microsoft is integrating Bing-powered online shopping tools into Edge.
The first new feature adds price comparison tools to Edge collections. (For more on how Edge collections work, see “Bye-bye, Chrome: 10 steps to help you switch to Microsoft’s new Edge browser.”) When you add a product to a collection, Edge adds a “compare price to other retailers” link that displays a list of prices for that item from other retailers, along with direct links to those pages.

Microsoft adds price comparison option to its Collections feature for Edge.
A second new feature expands the Bing Rebates program, which offers cash back to shoppers who sign in using a Microsoft account and then click a product link from a Bing search page. Rebates are available in a wide range of categories, including fashion, electronics, groceries, travel, games, entertainment, and books.
A separate new feature expands the “Give with Bing” feature to seven new markets: the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain. Searches made through Bing earn points for anyone signed in to a Microsoft account; those points can be redeemed as contributions to more than 1.4 million charitable organizations worldwide, with Microsoft matching those contributions through the end of the year.
The goal, of course, is to win over Google fans to Edge and Chrome. Today’s announcements are part of a series of moves that try to put Bing in front of users who would otherwise never go there by making Bing the default search engine in the new Edge. Microsoft is also pressing that campaign by including Bing results when users enter terms in the Windows 10 search box, and organizations that use Microsoft 365 accounts can integrate work-related results from online assets, including SharePoint libraries and OneDrive for Business.
But the challenge might just be too overwhelming. Today’s announcements come just days after the release of a long, detailed report from a Congressional antitrust subcommittee that documents Google’s overwhelming structural dominance in search.
“The overwhelmingly dominant provider of general online search is Google,” according to the report. Google “captures around 81% of all general search queries in the U.S. on desktop and 94% on mobile,” they noted, compared to Bing, which captures a mere 6% of the market.
That dominance comes even as Microsoft spends billions of dollars a year to maintain its search index, a job that literally no one else in the Western world can do. The House subcommittee report notes that “Today the only English-language search engines that maintain their own comprehensive webpage index are Google and Bing. Other search engines—including Yahoo and DuckDuckGo—must purchase access to the index from Google and/or Bing through syndication agreements.”
See also:  Bing rebrands to Microsoft Bing | Microsoft Edge to get a web screenshot utility | How Edge’s new sleeping tabs will save your laptop battery life | Is Google better than Bing? I asked Google and Bing (and got surprising results)
And despite that massive investment over more than a decade, Bing continues falling further behind Google.
Congressional antitrust investigators quoted a 2016 Google document that calculated Bing had suffered significant declines in query volume revenue. They concluded that “Google’s monopoly power is durable and its lead insurmountable.”
As anyone who studied the Microsoft antitrust trial in the 1990s can tell you, though, no lead lasts forever, and a determined competitor can turn the tables with luck and persistence. Just ask Apple, which was a distant second behind Microsoft in the personal computing market at the beginning of the 21st Century. An investment from Microsoft kept Apple alive, and today it’s the largest publicly traded company in the world. More