Every company seems to be on a tear to suck more monthly subscription money out of us. Now, Google has hit a major milestone…100 million Subscribers for Google One. Theverge.com reports that Google announced the figure on Friday. Google One is their all-in-one subscription service that opens up additional storage for free services like Gmail, Drive, and Photos, as well as access to more features. It’s a step in their effort to move away from free plans, as they have discontinued unlimited Google Drive storage for photos. YouTube Premium took 9 years to do it, but they are over 100 million subscribers thanks to ad removal and adding extra like music and high-quality streamers. The new paid AI plan is another of Google’s plans to hoover up more cash…it’s similar to the existing $100 a year Google One Premium plan that has 2 TB of storage, VPN, and dark web monitoring…except the AI plan costs twice as much. Will generative AI be worth it? Time will tell. 

It has always gone without saying that you should watch what you do and say online with regards to your employer…now, this becomes even more important as some large employers are using AI to monitor employee messages. According to CNBC, employers like Walmart, Delta Air Lines, T-Mobile, Chevron and Starbucks, as well as European brands including Nestle and AstraZeneca, have turned to a seven-year-old startup, Aware, to monitor chatter among their rank and file, according to the company. What are they watching? The AI is analyzing your messages on Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and other popular apps. the data is supposedly anonymized, but is being used to see how employees of a certain age group or in a particular geography are responding to a new corporate policy or marketing campaign, and to read text and process images, it can also identify bullying, harassment, discrimination, noncompliance, pornography, nudity and other behaviors. The Aware analytics tool can also monitor employee sentiment and toxicity…and via a separate Aware eDiscovery tool, can…in the event of extreme threats or other risk behaviors that are predetermined by the client, attach employee names to the posts…so much for anonymized! As always…if you are using an employer device or program, watch what you post!

SpaceX and Elon Musk deny selling Russia…either directly or indirectly…Starlink satellite terminals…yet they have showed up on the front lines of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Arstechnica.com notes that Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence unit said on Telegram on Sunday that radio intercepts confirmed the use of Starlink terminals by Russian units operating in the occupied Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. There are photos of the unique, rectangular units out in the wild. Musk had provided thousands of the units to Ukraine in 2022…later it was disclosed that the US government underwrote the units. The Ukrainian media reports that Russian forces may have obtained the terminals from intermediaries in Dubai. 

A regulatory filing Friday afternoon indicates that Jeff Bezos just sold over $2 billion worth of Amazon shares….his first sale since 2021. Geekwire.com reports that as of February last year, he controlled around 12.3% of the company…counting shares he personally owns and those he has voting rights over…that belong to his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott. With this sale, he still controls around 11.8% of the online giant. I report this just to underscore what crazy wealth the big billionaires have. Bezos is worth some $195 billion. Just think about that…$2 billion would make most of us and our entire families insanely rich for generations…and Bezos has 20 times that much. Elon Musk has a bit more than Bezos at $201 billion, and Bernie Arnault, CEO of French luxury goods group LVMH checks in as world’s richest person with around $219.2 billion. A bit of food for thought…or in our case, a few crumbs for thought.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.