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It started as a trickle. Now it's threatening to become a flood.

The phenomenon of cord cutting, or eliminating pay TV subscriptions by cable or satellite companies, is about to get even bigger, according to a report released today by eMarketer, a research firm.

Households that have cut the cord will soar by 19.2 percent this year, the report projects. By year's end, 40.2 million households will have eliminated their pay TV subscriptions, compared to 86.5 million who still have them.

The difference between those numbers will shrink, too, over the next few years.

By 2023, the number of households without pay TV will hit 56.1 million, while those with will fall to 72.7 million. In fact, by 2021, more than a fifth of U.S. households will have cut the cord.

Interestingly, the telco companies don't appear to be doing much to keep those customers. The report states that cord cutting growth "could partially be inflicted by TV providers themselves, as many are now prioritizing profit over revenues." Subscribers often drop services when they get to the end of a promotional deal and prices skyrocket.

“As programming costs continue to rise, cable, satellite and telco operators are finding it difficult to turn a profit on some TV subscriptions,” eMarketer forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom says in the report. “Their answer has been to raise prices across the board, and it seems that they are willing to lose customers rather than retain them with unprofitable deals. This has been a boon for TV providers,who also offer broadband internet, as it removes consumers from bundled deals. It forces consumers to pay a higher price for internet, which dramatically improves profit margins.”

Verizon’s Full Transparency Initiative Has Wide-Reaching Ramifications In The Fight Against Fake News

Satellite providers are notching the biggest losses, with subscriptions among households off by 7.1 percent this year. EMarketer forecasts telco (4.6 percent) and cable (2.4 percent) will see smaller but still notable drops.

Many cord cutters have replaced their bundles with subscriptions to over the top services such as Netflix, Amazon and/or Hulu. A slew of new services have bowed or are slated to bow in the coming year to compete for these customers, too, including OTTs from Disney, Apple and WarnerMedia.

Among those who still watch traditional TV, they appear to be doing it less. EMarketer reports a 3 percent decline in daily average TV viewing for all users, to (a still hefty) 3 hours and 40 minutes.

The biggest drop? That's among children under 17, many of whom have grown up without pay TV subscriptions and don't know what it's like to watch television shows on an actual schedule.

Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of web services at Amazon.com Inc., speaks during the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Summit in San Francisco on April 19, 2017.

Amazon's cloud division on Tuesday announced the availability of new virtual computing instances for software developers that run Apple's MacOS operating system, representing an alternative to Microsoft Windows and open-source Linux.

Amazon Web Services controls the cloud infrastructure market, and it has sought to keep its lead against the likes of Google and Microsoft in part by regularly adding to its wide assortment of tools. No major cloud provider to date has brought about a means to rent a remote computing infrastructure with MacOS from their clouds. As a result, at least initially, Amazon has an advantage that can attract customers to AWS, which is the main source of Amazon's operating income.

Rather than run MacOS on its standard computer servers, AWS is drawing on Apple's Mac Mini computers, featuring Intel Core i7 chips, to deliver EC2 virtual-computing instances with MacOS, according to a statement. The instances run on bare metal, meaning that a developer will get the full power of a Mac, rather than virtual machines, which deliver small virtual slices of physical computers, a spokesperson told CNBC on Monday. Instances of Mac Minis feature Apple's M1 Arm-based chips will arrive in 2021, AWS said in a blog post.

Developers can put early versions of their applications on the instances to run necessary tests before rolling out updates to the end users. The instances provide a way to remotely use Mac-specific software such as the Xcode integrated development environment. Through Xcode, developers can upload apps to Apple's App Store. Developers can alternatively do that with existing Mac computers, or by relying on Mac specialists such as MacStadium.

Intuit, a major AWS customer, has started using the new Mac instances, and Amazon's Ring subsidiary plans to use them. The instances are available from five of AWS' 24 data center regions located around the world, according to the statement.

Amazon and Apple have a close relationship. Apple's iCloud services rely on AWS. As of last year Apple was spending over $30 million on AWS. The two companies started working closely on developing EC2 instances with MacOS about a year ago, said Dave Brown, vice president for EC2, said during a press session. AWS is buying Mac Minis from Apple to provide the Mac instances, the spokesperson said.

AWS' annual Reinvent conference, normally a gathering of customers, software makers and employees in Las Vegas, kicked off Monday as an online event because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Correction: This article has been updated to include the correct number of data center regions that AWS operates.

WATCH: Cloud is one of the major digital trends accelerated by Covid, Atos CEO says

Free Webinar: Choosing a Codec in 2021 and Beyond

December 8, 2020, 2:00 – 3:00 PM EST

Codecs like H.264 and AV1 are the key enabling technologies for all entertainment and business-oriented video distribution, whether movies distributed via Netflix or videoconferencing from Zoom and similar services. At a high level, codecs come from two different sources; standards bodies like MPEG (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, H.264, HEVC, VVC, EVC, LCEVC) and from so-called open-source development (VP9, AV1). What does this mean regarding royalties and usage costs? And with so many codecs available, when will each become relevant for deployment, if ever?

This free webinar, produced by Streaming Learning Center’s Jan Ozer, explores issues like:

What codecs are and how they are created.

What codecs cost to deploy.

Where they play and when they will play?

The difference between a codec and an encoder (and why it matters)

How to compare codec performance (encoding speed, Rate-Distortion Curves, and BD-RATE comparisons).

The difference between academic and real-world codec trials.

The difference between a “hardware” codec and a “software” codec.

Key codec functions (live contribution, live transcoding, low-latency, VOD, HDR) and codec availability within these sub-markets.

Factors to consider when projecting codec adoption.

The key codecs available in 2020/2021 and their likely deployment schedules.

The webinar is designed for newbies who want to learn about codecs and experienced streaming professionals who want an update on codecs for 2021 and beyond. Attendees will walk away knowing which codecs are likely to stay or become relevant to their business, what they will cost to deploy, and how to evaluate their utility. If you can’t make it live, register anyway, and we’ll send you a limited-time link to view the recorded webinar.

An international group of climate activists and Amazon warehouse workers have launched an online campaign called “Make Amazon Pay,” calling on the tech giant to provide better working conditions for its employees and to reduce its expanding carbon footprint. The protests come just as the New York Times reports that the Seattle-based company has been on a hiring spree this year, expanding its global workforce.

“During the Covid-19 pandemic, Amazon became a trillion dollar corporation, with CEO Jeff Bezos becoming the first person in history to amass $200 billion in personal wealth,” the campaign states on its website. “Meanwhile, Amazon warehouse workers risked their lives as essential workers, and faced threats and intimidation if they spoke out for their rights to a fair wage.”

"“Amazon warehouse workers risked their lives as essential workers.”"

Launched on Black Friday, the campaign provides a list of demands for Amazon, which include raising pay for workers in Amazon’s warehouses, extending paid sick leave, and allowing workers to organize in unions. The campaign also tasks Amazon with “committing to zero emissions by 2030” and paying back society by “ending partnerships with police forces and immigration authorities that are institutionally racist” and “paying taxes in full, in the countries where the real economic activity takes place.”

The campaign lists a wide variety of international partners, including Progressive International, Amazon Workers International, 350.org, Greenpeace, and more. And the organization has planned a number of demonstrations in countries around the world. “Today there’s a global day of action with strikes, protests, and stunts across five continents,” James Schneider, the communications director for Progressive International, tells The Verge.

Nazma Akter tweeted: #Amazon has doubled profits through COVID19 but they have still not paid suppliers in Bangladesh for finished orders cancelled during the pandemic. Garment workers stand with #MakeAmazonPay Fair wages & union rights for all Amazon supply chain workers now! IndustriALL

The first demonstration got underway with a strike in Sydney, Australia, he says. Stunts — some in person and some online — are planned to take place in the Philippines, Bangladesh, India, Germany, Poland, Spain, Luxembourg, France, Greece, the United Kingdom, the United States, and more. Organizers have projected the “Make Amazon Pay” slogan on Amazon buildings in London, Berlin, and Hyderabad. A hashtag of #MakeAmazonPay is listed on the campaign’s website, and those who support the initiative can sign a petition on the site to “tell Jeff Bezos directly.”

“We’re asking people to add their name to those common demands and to donate to the strike funds for Amazon workers,” Schneider says. “So, today is just the start of the campaign. We aim to build the strike fund to enable further strikes and protests following this day of action.”

"“today is just the start of the campaign.”"

At the onset of the pandemic, Amazon workers staged protests in an attempt to get the company to take COVID-19 seriously. In October, Amazon revealed that 19,816 of its front-line workers have contracted the virus. On Thanksgiving, Amazon said it would provide holiday bonuses for its employees, with full-time workers receiving $300 and part-time workers receiving $150.

Amazon responded to the activist campaign by reiterating its COVID-19 response, its 2040 climate pledge, and its base pay and employee benefits. “We encourage anyone interested in the facts to compare our overall pay and benefits, as well as our speed in managing this crisis, to other retailers and major employers across the country,” Amazon spokesperson Lisa Levandowski wrote in an emailed statement to The Verge.

The Make Amazon pay campaign comes at the end of a dynamic year for Amazon. The pandemic created an increased demand for Amazon’s online shopping services, pushing the company to greatly expand its ...

Services around the globe have been affected by a major cloud computing outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Amazon's cloud computing unit experienced a multi-hour outage that affected many other sites and services on Wednesday. As reported by The Verge, an Amazon spokesperson explained in an email that only one of its 23 geographic AWS regions (US-East-1) was experiencing issues at the time. However, the outage was significant enough to take out a large number of other sites and online services that rely on the company's cloud computing arm.

Among the list of apps, services and websites affected by the outage were the likes of 1Password, Coinbase, Flickr, Glassdoor, Roku, Vonage, Autodesk and others. However, major AWS customers Apple, Slack and Netflix did not appear to be affected.

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AWS outage

On Amazon's end, the outage impacted many AWS services including ACM, Amplify Console, AppStream2, AppSync, Athena, Batch, CodeArtifact, CodeGuru Profiler, CodeGuru Reviewer, CloudFormation, CloudMap, CloudTrail, Connect, Comprehend, DynamoDB, Elastic Beanstalk, EventBridge, GuardDuty, IoT Services, Lambda, LEX, Macie, Managed Blockchain, Marketplace, MediaLive, MediaConvert, Personalize, RDS Performance Insights, Rekognition, SageMaker, and Workspaces.

In an update to its AWS Service Health Dashboard, the cloud computing giant explained that the issue affecting its Kinesis Data Streams API and other dependent services has been fixed though it is not yet taking the full traffic load, saying:

“We’d like to provide an update on the issue affecting the Kinesis Data Streams API, and other dependent services, within the US-EAST-1 Region. We have now fully mitigated the impact to the subsystem within Kinesis that is responsible for the processing of incoming requests and are no longer seeing increased error rates or latencies. However, we are not yet taking the full traffic load and are working to relax request throttles on the service. Over the next few hours we expect to relax these throttles to previous levels. We expect customers to begin seeing recovery as these throttles are relaxed over this timeframe.”

Sites and services that depend on AWS should be operating normally now and thankfully the outage didn't occur a few days later on Black Friday as that would have been quite detrimental to online retail sites on what is expected to be one of the biggest shopping days of this year.

We've also highlighted the best endpoint protection

Via The Verge

Fastly, Inc. (FSLY) shares moved 1.5% lower during Wednesday's session after Credit Suisse downgraded the stock to Neutral with a price target of $90.00 per share.

Key Takeaways

Fastly shares moved lower during Wednesday's session after Credit Suisse downgraded the stock to Neutral with a $90 price target.

The analyst believes that margin pressures could hurt near-term results but remains confident in the long-term picture.

The neutral outlook suggests that the stock could be range bound between $62.20 and $90.50 over the coming sessions until a further catalyst emerges.

Analyst Brad Zelnick cited a balanced risk-to-reward ratio following Fastly stock's recovery from its recent pullback but cautioned that the TikTok traffic loss and the increase in traffic during the first half of 2020 could create tough comps. Unused reserve capacity could put pressure on near-term gross margins during the upcoming quarters.

Despite these concerns, the analyst said that the company still operates a unique developer-centric edge computing platform and that TikTok traffic could return to the platform if the risk of a U.S. ban under the Trump administration diminishes.

From a technical standpoint, the stock moved off of its reaction highs just below the 50-day moving average following a November rally. The relative strength index (RSI) appears neutral with a reading of 52.05, but the moving average convergence divergence (MACD) remains in a bullish upswing – although below the zero line. These indicators suggest that the stock has room to run on the upside, but the intermediate-term trend remains at risk.

In technical analysis, a reaction is a short-term trend reversal in the movement of a security's price. Reactions are most often associated with a downward movement in the price of a security after a period of upward movement, often in response to news or data released.

Traders should watch for consolidation around Fibonacci support levels at around $79.70 over the intermediate term before a potential resumption of Fastly stock's uptrend. A rebound from these support levels could lead to a move toward Fibonacci resistance levels of $90.50, but a breakdown from these levels could lead to a move toward prior lows of $62.20.

The Bottom Line

Fastly shares moved lower during Wednesday's session after Credit Suisse downgraded the stock to Neutral with a $90.00 price target. While margin pressures could hurt the next couple of quarters, the analyst remains optimistic over the long run. The stock could see a period of consolidation between highs of $90.50 and lows of $60.20 as a result.

The author holds no position in the stock(s) mentioned except through passively managed index funds.

Industry experts expect increased investments in edge capacity to reduce latency and support personalized content delivery and custom security policies.

IDC predicts that the edge computing market worldwide will grow to $250.6 billion by 2024. Dave McCarthy, the firm's research director of edge strategies, thinks edge products and services will power the next wave of digital transformation.

Companies will need to think about how to build out edge capacity with new infrastructure and services. Industry experts predict that companies will start to incorporate edge computing capabilities into the software deployment pipeline and use this infrastructure to support personalized content and streaming services.

Ali Fenn, president of data center consulting firm ITRenew, said that edge computing is fundamentally about how to do compute close to data sources and data users.

"2021 will see major enterprises and tech companies driving towards homogenous, cost-effective infrastructure across these tiers, from public cloud, to private in colos, to modular commercial, and to consumer-proximal," he said. "Winners will look to advanced and modern paradigms for IT and networking, and untether from conventional stacks, racks, and vendors, to deliver plug-and-play, operationally efficient IT, at the lowest possible cost."

SEE: Top cloud providers in 2020: AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, hybrid, SaaS players (TechRepublic)

Keith Higgins, vice president of digital transformation for Rockwell Automation, describes the edge as the new cloud. He predicts that real-time availability of mission-critical workloads will be vital for companies scaling smart factory initiatives in 2021.

"Edge computing will complement existing cloud infrastructure by enabling real-time data processing where the work takes place: motors, pumps, generators, or other sensors," he said.

The industry will continue to move toward more decentralized compute environments, and the edge will add significant value to digital transformation initiatives.

"By integrating edge functionalities with existing cloud infrastructure, organizations will worry less about logistical IT considerations and, instead, focus on rethinking what's possible in a smart machine," he said.

Here's a preview of what 2021 trends in edge computing will look like.

Moving more services to the edge

Aruba launched its Edge Services Platform (ESP) in June 2020 as an AI-powered, cloud-native platform to automate, unify, and protect the edge.

Aruba CTO Partha Narasimhan said the company defines "the edge" as where the users and the actions are, which could be offices, sports stadiums, or homes. He said that edge computing provides the infrastructure to understand how people use physical spaces as well as to deliver experiences.

"If you create a connectivity layer that is always on, seamless, and secure, that drives participation," he said.

One trend in edge computing that he sees is a push to bring services closer to the connectivity layer to reduce latency.

"Authentication could be centralized but fulfillment will be local," he said. "Companies will have to rethink how to extend zero trust to the edge."

Narasimhan said that Aruba has built its services around a zero-trust model since 2002.

"We don't trust our own access points, they have to authenticate," he said. "Built-in authentication determines what policy gets applied to each device."

Automating some of this process is the only way edge computing will work well, Narasimhan added.

"Policies should be used on demand when and where you need them," he said. "That means not just automation for provisioning from the cloud, but provisioning locally where security rights and policies have to be plumbed in where the user connects."

SEE: 5 Internet of Things (IoT) innovations (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

Narasimhan said that companies should use two types of tactics to accomplish this: Automation that relies on scriptin...

Cloud computing, which underpinned the world’s economy, global supply chains and remote workforces during the coronavirus pandemic, will continue to be an essential target for organizations looking for increased scalability, business continuity and cost efficiency in 2021.

“The effects of COVID-19 will linger throughout 2021, as businesses will look to lay a foundation for increased agility,” said Dustin Milberg, field chief technology officer for cloud services at InterVision, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based IT service provider and AWS Premier Consulting Partner. “Cloud will take a key focus in this goal, given its benefits of improved accessibility, scalability and flexibility.”

But those companies who view cloud as a journey and not a destination will see more success, according to Milberg.

“This is because simply ‘getting to the cloud’ doesn’t automatically mean you’ll see improved performance and spending,” he said. “Instead, cloud is an iterative process of optimization and creating security by design to match your company’s goals, both now and in the long term.”

Enterprises’ technology needs have increased in complexity over the past year, as workplaces quickly became decentralized during the pandemic, with remote workers across the globe, noted Steve Miller-Jones, vice president of edge strategy and solution architecture at Limelight Networks, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based content delivery network (CDN) service provider.

“At the same time, exciting new technologies are making it easier to instantly generate, process and analyze data for better business performance,” he said. “These operational demands are shifting how businesses leverage cloud computing.”

Here’s a look at some of the cloud computing trends expected to loom large in 2021.

Global Public Cloud Infrastructure Market Hits $120B

The global public cloud infrastructure market will grow 35 percent to $120 billion in 2021, as the cloud continues to “take center stage” in the recovery from the pandemic, according to Forrester Research.

“The aggressive move to cloud, already proceeding at a healthy clip before the pandemic, will spike in 2021, yielding even greater enterprise adoption, cloud provider revenue and business value,” the Cambridge, Mass.-based market research company said in its “Predictions 2021” report.

Forrester previously forecast the public cloud infrastructure market would increase 28 percent to $113.1 billion next year.

The percentage of worldwide IT spending that’s dedicated to the cloud will continue to accelerate in 2021. Gartner, the Stamford, Conn.-based research and advisory firm, projects that worldwide public cloud spending by end-users will grow 18 percent next year to $304.9 billion, up from $257.5 billion this year.

“The pandemic validated cloud’s value proposition,” Sid Nag, research vice president at Gartner, said in a report this week. “The ability to use on-demand, scalable cloud models to achieve cost efficiency and business continuity is providing the impetus for organizations to rapidly accelerate their digital business transformation plans. The increased use of public cloud services has reinforced cloud adoption to be the ‘new normal’ now more than ever.”

While software as a service (SaaS) still will be the largest market segment for end-user cloud IT spending – it’s expected to grow approximately 16 percent to $117.8 billion -- application infrastructure services (PaaS) is expected to grow at a higher 26.6 percent rate to about $55.5 billion, according to Gartner. The growth in PaaS will be driven by remote workforces’ continued need to access to high-performing and scalable infrastructure via modernized and cloud-native applications, it said.

“The cloud is being used to facilitate much of our remote work environments, so companies will continue to migrate workloads and begin using more PaaS resources to take maximum financial advantage of these somewhat forced changes,” said George Burns III, senior co...

The COVID-19 pandemic produced few net-new technology and business developments, but it certainly accelerated many technology trends already in motion. Edge computing is one of the most notable among these accelerated technologies. Every type of technology vendor — hardware, software, and cloud — has jumped on the edge bandwagon, crowding the market and confusing buyers.

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The coming year will prove to be the real inflection for edge computing. Practical applications are finally emerging where this architecture can bring real benefits.

Forrester predicts the following key developments in edge computing that will illustrate this inflection point in 2021:

Data center marketplaces will emerge as a new edge hosting option. When people talk about the location of "the edge," their descriptions vary widely. Regardless of your own definition, edge computing technology needs to sit as close to "the action" as possible. It may be a factory floor, a hospital room, or a North Sea oil rig. In some cases, it can be in a data center off premises but still as close to the action as makes sense. This rules out many of the big data centers run by cloud providers or co-location services that are close to major population centers.

If your enterprise is highly distributed, those centers are too far. We see a promising new option emerging that unites smaller, more local data centers in a cooperative marketplace model. New data center aggregators such as Edgevana and Inflect allow you to think globally and act locally, expanding your geographic technology footprint. They don't necessarily replace public cloud, content delivery networks, or traditional co-location services — in fact, they will likely enhance these services. These marketplaces are nascent in 2020 but will become a viable model for edge computing in 2021.

Private 5G will push enterprises to the edge. If any term could challenge edge computing as top buzzword du jour, it's 5G. The 5G hype machine was in full stride as we entered 2020, and then it fell off the radar a bit as everyone dealt with more pragmatic priorities brought on by the pandemic. The 5G buzz is getting louder again, with trials now underway in key cities and Apple's iPhone 12 injecting a lot of energy into the dialogue. Despite the hype, 5G technology is superior in many ways to existing networking options. Public 5G from the carriers is indeed coming and will transform how we do many things, but it will take years to reach widespread adoption.

Forrester sees immediate value in private 5G — a network dedicated to a specific business or locale like a warehouse, shipyard, or factory. Private 5G is here now, and we expect it to fuel edge computing in 2021. Business infrastructure such as warehouse robots and factory machine tools enabled by the internet of things need local processing and low-latency networks; edge computing and 5G serve these, respectively. 2021 will be the inflection for 5G, but it will be private, not public.

New edge vendors will shave five points off public cloud growth. Cloud services continue to grow like weeds. The pandemic pushed cloud revenues higher than expected in 2020. That bull run will continue into 2021, but we will see edge computing moderate that meteoric growth a bit. As edge computing becomes a "cool" new platform for business computing, it will siphon some of the money that would otherwise have gone to cloud expansion.

To understand the business and technology trends critical to 2021, download Forrester's complimentary 2021 Predictions Guide here.

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The tweet was when Eric Yuan knew something had to change.

Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, shared a photo from his first ever virtual cabinet meeting. The cybersecurity red flags jumped out immediately.

Some cabinet secretaries' Zoom screen names were visible, you could see which platform the cabinet was running its computers on, and most glaringly, the meeting ID was visible for all to see.

The significance of the moment was not lost on the team at Zoom.

"That was the big aha moment," Zoom board member Santi Subotovsky told CNN Business.

Zoom founder Eric Yuan poses in front of the Nasdaq building after the company's IPO in April 2019. (Kena Betancur/Getty Images)

Zoom grew into a vastly profitable business selling software to businesses that could enable a venture capital firm to seamlessly take virtual pitch meetings from around the globe or an executive to deliver an all-hands to a remote workforce. Powering British Cabinet meetings was never on the radar.

"Our company that used to be a 100% enterprise-focused, is now powering the world. It's powering governments, education, social activities... And then when the other shoe dropped, it's like we need to get ready for that," Subotovsky said.

Zoom was already enmeshed in controversy. Less than two weeks earlier, The New York Times had raised the flag on "Zoombombing," opening the door to a flood of scrutiny, from its feeding data into Facebook to the New York State Attorney General scrutinizing its data practices

But for Eric Yuan, the 50-year-old founder and CEO of Zoom, it was the Johnson tweet that changed everything.

Boris Johnson tweeted: This morning I chaired the first ever digital Cabinet. Our message to the public is: stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives. #StayHomeSaveLives

"This was our wake-up call," Yuan told CNN Business over a Zoom interview from his San Jose home in April.

Yuan blames himself for not anticipating that users might want to share a screenshot of a meeting. For his business clients, sharing a screenshot of your board meeting would be unthinkable. But business clients weren't his only worry anymore. The world had become his customer.

Within a week, Zoom pushed out an update that would hide the meeting ID from view. But for Yuan and his team at Zoom, the damage had only just begun.

Yuan built Zoom to please his customers — to use Zoom-speak he wanted to "deliver happiness" — and for years that meant giving his business clients a high-quality video conferencing platform that was easy-to-use. "Frictionless," as the company likes to say.

church groups,

But during a global pandemic that has transformed Zoom into an essential tool for schools weddings, and the cabinet of a G7 economy, Yuan is trying to figure out how to make Zoom something it was never meant to be.

Now, "Zoom is not only a business communication company, suddenly it's becoming an infrastructure company," Yuan said.

Since the pandemic, Yuan has had little time to enjoy his family's multiplying fortune ($19 billion at last count, according to Forbes ). He refers to this time as the most stressful weeks of his life, which now consists of three things: Zooming, eating and sleeping, and he's barely been doing much of the last one.

"I've had several sleepless nights" Yuan said in front of a virtual background with the words "WE CARE" hovering over a heart-shaped earth.

What is the question keeping the CEO of the company — one that is now worth more than double General Motors —up at night?

Yuan takes a breath.

"How did we get here?"

Zoom is headquartered in San Jose, California. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

Shandong to Silicon Valley

Yuan grew up in the Shandong Province in China in what he describes as a middle-class family. The child of geological engineers, Yuan was an average student who studied computer science, and after a stint working in Japan, decided he wanted to come to the center of technological innovation: Sil...