Tech’s Tall Order at Davos: The Information’s Weekly Newsletter

When Alphabet chief legal officer David Drummond stepped down 8 days ago, former Google Ventures head Bill Maris attacked him publicly. It was a very unusual display of the sort of corporate in-fighting usually kept secret—and we have the backstory in a look at the status of Google Ventures.

Elsewhere, it has been a busy week of scoops about one of SoftBank’s biggest investments yet, Sam’s 91(!) predictions about the next ten years in tech (feedback on which has been flooding our inboxes) and our list of troubled companies.

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The Tech Agenda at Davos

Next week, tech CEOs will trade their vests for furry hats and boots and trek to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Years ago, the trek was a sort of celebratory victory lap. With their businesses skyrocketing, executives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Uber and Salesforce, to name a few, were rock stars. But amid privacy scandals and competition concerns, last year unfolded more like an apology tour.

In 2020, expect more apologizing. But executives are going on the offensive, too. In fact, according to a copy of the agenda, there is an entire track entitled “Tech for Good.”

And Microsoft's Satya Nadella will join a group to discuss the role of “new industrialists.”

I received a hint of his views on that subject this week. Meeting with a group of editors in New York, Nadella spoke about how artificial intelligence will soon reshape businesses from agriculture to medicine.

But he made another point that particularly stuck with me.

The last time we saw “information technology show up in productivity stats is the PC revolution,” he remarked, citing the work of economist Robert Gordon. “All of this progress in technology is not showing up in broad spectrum economic growth.”

The sobering point wasn’t one I expected to hear during a press conference hosted by the world’s second largest technology company. And it explains the huge challenge technology executives face on the world stage broadly and Davos next week.

Tech executives not only need to rebuild trust and convince the public they aren’t too powerful. They also need to make the case they are doing good in the world—that we should want them to exist. I chided them last year for missing an opportunity to make that case. I failed to mention how hard it would be.

Until recently, convincing people tech was a positive force in the world seemed far easier than rebuilding trust or convincing legacy companies tech wasn’t going to put them out of business. After all, consumer tech companies have been extraordinarily popular with consumers who have benefited from their products and services in myriad ways.

But decades after the internet was invented, making the case for how tech will improve people’s lives for better in the near future is now a pretty tough challenge. Because despite all the things that technology has invented, so many things are going in the wrong direction.

Today we are confronted with major challenges that anyone paying even passing attention to the U.S. presidential election knows very well. Wage growth is stagnating for large parts of the population. U.S. life expectancy is declining. Large numbers of jobs will be replaced, eventually, by automation. And as Nadella said, tech isn’t driving GDP growth.

It’s not that people expected technology to be a panacea for all the world’s problems. But it’s hard to celebrate an industry that isn’t helping the overall picture and is hurting many other industries.

In response, tech executives talk about how they have driven small business growth, helped underserved populations access information and money and much more.

I also expect them to point to their work in dealing with another huge threat: the climate crisis. Read: Microsoft’s announcement we covered this week, with a nice chart comparing what other companies are doing.

To that end, next week, I expect tech CEOs to try to cozy up to climate activist Greta Thunberg, who will be in attendance. I’d like to see what she has to say about their sustainability plans—and take them to task over their private planes!

But will all this focus on “Tech for Good” be enough to sway opinions? Probably not.

Remember the watchdogs will have their Davos platform too. Rohit Chopra, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission commissioner who has been critical of Facebook, will be speaking on a panel called “Regional Protection vs. Global Innovation” that is slated to discuss GDPR and California’s new privacy law.

European Union Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who has signaled she will continue the region’s tough stance against Google and Facebook, will be there too. In fact, she is giving a keynote.

This Week's The Information Articles. To read these articles, subscribe here.

• The People With Power at Twitter by Alex Heath
• Grading My 2020 Predictions —and What I Learned by Sam Lessin
• My Predictions for the Next Decade by Sam Lessin
• NBCUniversal’s Peacock Will Look More Like Cable Than Like Netflix by Jessica Toonkel and Tom Dotan
• Netflix’s Asia Growth Challenge: Trading Price for Volume by Wayne Ma
• The Information’s Troubled Tech Companies List by The Information Staff
• Microsoft’s Plan to Go Carbon Negative Raises Bar for Tech Rivals by Kevin McLaughlin
• Drummond Departure Puts Spotlight on Google Venture Arm by Nick Bastone
• SoftBank’s Secret $750 Million Investment in GoPuff by Cory Weinberg and Amir Efrati
• The Information’s 411 — Drummond’s Base by Tom Dotan