Facebook, Google's digital advertising dominance crushing ad firms: Report

The dominance of Google and Facebook of digital advertising has led to the number of independent and smaller ad tech companies falling 21 per cent since 2013 to 185 in the second quarter of 2018, the media reported.

According to a report in The New York Times on Sunday, venture capital money going into ad-tech start-ups is falling sharply.

"Online advertising companies have struggled for several years as Google and Facebook solidified their grip on digital dollars, slowing revenue for the others," added the report, citing global marketing research firms including LUMA Partners.

While spending for online ads was more than $88 billion last year, over 90 per cent of that went to Google or Facebook.

"Amazon is also making inroads into advertising, with a new advertising arm, raising the possibility that it will become a top competitor," said the report.

The company generated $2.2 billion in revenue from its advertising business in the second quarter this year.

Indian-American lawmakers, activists attack Ajit Pai on net neutrality

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai has come under a blistering attack of several Indian-American lawmakers for his proposal to repeal the Obama-era net neutrality policy.

Pai is facing backlash for his proposal which seeks to reverse Obama-era net neutrality, which meant that all websites are treated equally by Internet providers.

The activists also protested outside Pai's home in Virginia with signs directing at his children.

Pai, 44, blasted the activists for "harassing" his family members, saying they "crossed the line".

He is facing backlash from his opponents for his proposal which seeks to reverse Obama era's net neutrality, which meant that all websites are treated equally by Internet providers.

His proposal would end net neutrality and give big Internet providers like Comcast and Verizon broad powers to determine what website should reach out to subscribers faster than others.

The activists not only staged protest outside Pai's home with signs directing at his children, they also reportedly sent pizzas to his home every half-and-hour. Some media reports said the frequency was every 15 minutes.
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Flights resume at Islamabad airport after 38-hour internet disruption

Flight operations at Islamabad's Benazir Bhutto International Airport were restored on Sunday after a 38-hour-long disruption caused by a fault in international submarine internet cable systems, which has since been repaired.

Internet services have been restored across the country after a 38-hour-long disruption caused by a fault in the India-Middle East-Western Europe (I-ME-WE) submarine cable that caused consumers and businesses across Pakistan to experience major internet disruptions, with many customers complaining of slow browsing speeds, a Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) representative said.

The disruption in the India-Middle East-Western Europe submarine cable prevented airport officials confirming flight schedules and ticket bookings, as a result of which at least eight flights domestic and international flights were cancelled earlier today, Dawn news quoted airport officials as saying.

Many domestic and international flights were cancelled. Flights to Medina, Manchester and Karachi have also been cancelled.PI-211, which was scheduled to reach Islamabad from Dubai, was cancelled as well. Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight, which was to reach Jeddah from Karachi were cancelled.

Pakistan Telecommunications Limited (PTCL) stated the company has successfully arranged for additional bandwidth through our international cable systems & partners.

The loss of these three submarine cables leaves Pakistan relying on SEA-ME-WE 3, SEA-ME-WE 5 and the AAE-1 submarine cables, out of which SEA-ME-WE 3 operates in a limited capacity.
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Google India's literacy programme 'Internet Saathi' now in 100,000 villages

Riding on the 'Internet Saathi' programme - a digital literacy initiative aimed at empowering women in rural India, Google India on Wednesday announced that it has now reached 100,000 villages in the country.

Launched as a pilot in Rajasthan in July 2015 along with Tata Trusts, Google announced plans to scale the programme to cover 300,000 villages across India in December the same year.

"From being afraid to touch a smartphone, worried that they will spoil it, to now demanding services that can help them get more from the Internet - women in rural India have come a long way," Sapna Chadha, Director Marketing, South East Asia and India at Google, a statement said.

"We are delighted with the progress we have made with the 'Internet Saathi' model and it is remarkable to see the passion of these women learning about the Internet," she added.

In its two-year journey, the initiative has continued to gain momentum and is today live in 10 states in India.

Nearly 25,000 fully-trained 'Internet Saathis' are working everyday in these villages to help women and children learn about the internet.

In total, over 10 million women have gained from the programme so far and have become familiar with the benefits of using the Internet in their daily lives.
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French President Macron says 'door always open' for UK to stay in EU

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday that the door was "always open" for Britain to remain in the European Union after Prime Minister Theresa May said Brexit talks would begin next week.

"Of course the door is always open as long as the negotiations on Brexit have not finished," Macron said in a press conference.

But he also stressed that he respected the sovereign decision of the British people to leave the EU in their referendum a year ago, adding that the start of talks was an important milestone.

"We need to be clear and organised and once it (the Brexit process) has started we need to be collectively clear that it's more difficult to reverse course," he said at the Elysee Palace.

Macron's comments echoed others by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

"If they wanted to change their decision, of course, they would find open doors, but I think it's not very likely," Schaeuble told Bloomberg Television.

May repeated her plans to stick to her timetable of starting discussions next week despite ongoing negotiations to form a government.
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Can the world ever really keep terrorists off the internet?

After London’s most recent terror attacks, British Prime Minister Theresa May called on countries to collaborate on internet regulation to prevent terrorism planning online. May criticised online spaces that allow such ideas to breed, and the companies that host them.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has said it is time to say ‘enough is enough’ when it comes to tackling terrorism.
May did not identify any companies by name, but she could have been referring to the likes of Google, Twitter and Facebook. In the past, British lawmakers have said these companies offer terrorism a platform. She also might have been referring to smaller companies, like the developers of apps like Telegram, Signal and Wickr, which are favored by terrorist groups. These apps offer encrypted messaging services that allow users to hide communications.

May is not alone in being concerned about attacks on citizens. After her comments on Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to work with allies and do whatever it takes to stop the spread of terrorism. He did not, however, specifically mention internet regulation.

President Donald Trump addressed the London terror attacks during an event at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC.
Internet companies and other commentators, however, have pushed back against the suggestion that more government regulation is needed, saying weakening everyone’s encryption poses different public dangers. Many have also questioned whether some regulation, like banning encryption, is possible at all.

Because the internet is geographically borderless, nearly any message can have a global audience. Questions about online regulation have persisted for years, especially regarding harmful information. As a law professor who studies the impact of the internet on society, I believe the goal of international collaboration is incredibly complicated, given global history.
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Digital Guerrillas Bring Down Russian State Censor's Website

When access to the messaging app Telegram was interrupted in Russia on June 3, for the second time in less than a week, some worried that the app had been blocked by state authorities. Telegram has been under pressure from Roskomnadzor, the state censor, to comply with a law requiring online services to turn over user data and register with the government for many months.

But for once, Rozkomnadzor was not the culprit. Instead, Telegram was the victim of a guerrilla campaign launched by dymoff.space, a domain that is blocked in Russia. Thanks to a flaw in Roskomnadzor's registry of blocked websites, dymoff.space was able to alter its technical settings and pass off other websites’ IP addresses as its own.

So when Internet service providers (ISPs) added dymoff.space's IP addresses to their block list, they unknowingly blocked Telegram and several other websites in Russia.

The loophole
Roskomnadzor was aware of this loophole before the attack and had instructed providers to take websites’ IP addresses directly from its registry of blocked sites, rather than from websites themselves. Recently, however, ISPs have reverted to manually checking blocked websites’ IP addresses, resulting in multiple major websites — and even a program run by Roskomnadzor itself — being blocked.

These attacks call to mind rogue efforts to undermine the state censor in the wake of its decision to block Alexey Navalny's blog in 2014. RuNet Echo's Andrey Tselikov summarized the efforts at the time:

Because Roskomnadzor requires ISPs to constantly check if a resource is trying to circumvent a ban by changing its IP address, blocked resources can introduce code that redirects some of these IP queries to a different website. Eventually, goes the theory, ISPs will pick up on this redirect and block the secondary website as well. So if a blocked site is savvy enough to redirect to a government site, say Kremlin.ru, ISPs will ultimately block Kremlin.ru, a block that obviously can't stay in place for long.
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