Marketplace Tech

It’s been a particularly busy week for Google. Three state attorneys general, plus one from Washington, D.C., sued the tech giant, alleging it misled consumers about when they were being tracked. Google also announced this week it’s going to change the way it collects user data for advertising purposes. What’s been happening with the company this week is our focus for “Quality Assurance,” where we take a deeper look at a big tech story. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Patience Haggin, who covers digital advertising and privacy for The Wall Street Journal.

There was a point last fall when school districts across the country were poised to finally fully return to in-person instruction. But as omicron cases surged among students and school staff, many of those plans had to change. Some districts decided to remain open, and, in others, teachers are bouncing between in-person and virtual instruction. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams has a story featuring several of these teachers. For some, virtual classes are an easier lift now compared to the start of the pandemic, but even as they struggled, some teachers have realized unexpected benefits of remote learning.

NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, are a bit of a tech fad at the moment, with plenty of different opinions about whether they are here to stay. But for now, they are continuing their push into the mainstream. NFTs are digital assets, like JPEGs or tweets, that can be bought and sold on a marketplace. They’re a way to make something that traditionally could just be copied and shared online, rare — and therefore, to some, valuable. And as transaction prices for these items climbs, so does the risk of scams. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Corin Faife, a senior reporter at The Verge, who’s been following this trend.

The last of the pandemic eviction moratoriums are winding down. New York’s ended on Jan. 15, and New Mexico’s is the only state-wide moratorium still in place. Various forms of rental assistance and other tenant protections are still available. Nevertheless, housing advocates say landlords have filed for hundreds of thousands of evictions since March of 2020. And many of those tenants can’t afford a lawyer to advise or defend them. As Stephanie Siek reports, some new tech solutions are available to help tenants fight eviction.

The latest effort to reign in Big Tech cleared a procedural step in the Senate last week, moving one step closer to a floor vote. The American Innovation and Choice Online Act would prevent big tech firms from giving preference to their own products and services. According to some lawmakers, that unfairly stifles competition. Though the bill has bipartisan support, bipartisan concern over the details means it’s getting hit with requests for changes on questions like privacy and who exactly it applies to. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Will Rinehart, a senior research fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity, about the bill’s significance.

Even before the pandemic, the economy was seeing a shift to automation as companies looked for cheaper, more efficient ways to build their products or serve more customers. Now, the pandemic has led to staffing shortages in multiple industries and has accelerated the trend, which means in the future you may be more likely to order your food with a QR code, interact with a chatbot instead of a person for customer service or use a self-operating kiosk at a business that may never go back to the old way of doing things. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Kristen Broady, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, about how the pandemic is speeding up this shift. For many businesses, it’s an economic decision, Broady says.

In order to make room for the expansion into 5G, carriers are shutting down their 3G networks. AT&T plans to discontinue its 3G network by February 22, T-Mobile by July 1st, and Verizon by the end of the year. Commercial 3G networks first started popping up in the early 2000s and were about 30 times faster than their 2G predecessors. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Joanna Stern, senior personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal, who wrote about the coming shutdown.

Microsoft announced plans this week to buy game developer and publisher Activision Blizzard, known for games like World of Warcraft and Overwatch, for an all-cash deal worth almost $69 billion. Both companies are big players in the gaming market — Microsoft makes the Xbox — meaning the massive deal is likely to attract scrutiny from antitrust regulators, even as Activision Blizzard continues to face allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Dina Bass, Seattle bureau chief and technology reporter for Bloomberg News, to get a sense of Microsoft’s strategy.

AT&T and Verizon are set to turn on their newest 5G technology Wednesday. Both companies purchased rights to more of the spectrum last year and have been ready to deploy it for months. But those plans have been on hold over concerns the expansion into that bandwidth could interfere with the tech on planes, specifically an aircraft’s altimeter, one of the tools that help planes land safely. To mitigate those concerns, the Federal Aviation Administration released a list of 50 airports that will have 5G buffer zones. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Joe Kane, director of broadband and spectrum policy at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.