2022 Tech Recap — what did you bet on?
And with that 2022 comes to an end; but before we end, here’s my retrospection of all news tech this year.
The year started with not just gaming nerds but companies wanting to buy video games. In January, Microsoft announced its plans to buy Activision Blizzard, the parent of Call of Duty, in a 68.7 billion dollar all cash deal. Since this is a huge deal, US Federal Trade commision,EU, UK CMA,US SEC and a bunch of other alphabets and authorities have raised concerns on the deal and are still pending approval. While a bunch of shareholders and the gaming community itself has filed lawsuits to block this deal. As of Dec 22, no deal.
Talking about gaming and acquisitions, Sony acquired the developer studio Bungie in a 3.6 billion deal. It can be argued that it is a large sum for a relatively small company, but Bungie’s history with Sony’s competitor Microsoft, Bungie’s highly successful game Destiny and its fine-tuned model for live service games might just pave ways for the future of Sony PlayStation making the deal worth the money.
In the subsequent month, Meta and the European Union got into a tiff. Europe enforced regulation on how data is being transferred across borders which Meta openly rejected and said they’d rather shut down Facebook and Instagram in Europe than follow data protection laws. As of December, the social media giant hasn’t done anything substantial towards following these regulations and has been slapped with fines worth $235 million, $400 million and $275 million in the past several months. Although that’s not even all the money, very recently Meta settled the Cambridge Analytica Scandal Case for $725 million dollars. Meta was accused of giving user information access to 3rd party firms including Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign in 2016, where user data was allegedly used for voter profiling, targeting amongst other things without consent.
As another tech move, the European Union agreed on a uniform charging cord. India also agreed to use only USB-C for all smartphones and other devices. The agenda behind was to be more sustainable and cut down on electronic waste. Which means Apple has to move on from their famous lightning port to USB-C in the coming future.
Speaking of moving on, we also said Goodbye to the OG Internet Explorer in June 22. The internet browser was amongst the first globally recognized browsers and was the gateway to introducing the internet for most of the world.
We ended the year with a thrilling fifa final but fans who went to Qatar had to also pay a price in data. Every visitor in Qatar had to mandatorily install 2 apps on their phone, “Erheraz’’- the covid app and “Hayya”- the FIFA ticketing app, which each had the permissions to access users’ entire phone storage, real time location tracking, wifi, bluetooth, personal device data, and every bit of information that unnecessary for the Qatar govt to have. Although the use of this data had not been clearly mentioned in the terms.
As the year ends in recession looming on our necks, most tech giants are embracing layoffs. Meta fired 11k of its employees, cutting 11% of its workforce, with a promise to cut budget and extend the hiring freeze in 2023. Twitter announced a 50% workforce cut stating management changes as the reason. Amazon too, laid off 10k employees with the promise to fire more in 2023. Google joined the race with 10k layoffs incoming on the “poorest performance first” method. While Microsoft is still behind in the race with 1800 employees fired.
Although Indian startups have not been too far behind, struggling with the funding winter 18000 employees across 52 startups have been fired in 2022. Looks like the startup bubble has started to burst. The irony is that these layoffs came just after “the great resignation” where we had techies threatening to resign for work from home benefits and better compensations. Back then, freshers were sitting ideally with 2–3 job offers at once. Now, experienced folks are crying for help for a job.
Since we’ve mentioned Twitter and its current weirdness, here’s a point of view of what’s happening:
- Elon Musk bought Twitter.
- Fired the then CEO Parag Aggarwal.
- Cut 50% of its staff.
- Imposed a somewhat toxic work environment.
- Reinstated various previously banned Twitter accounts.
- Rolled out the blue tick subscription
- Unrolled the blue tick subscription
- Fired employees he has had a feud with.
- Sunk various company stocks due to imposeters on twitter with blue ticks.
- Created a poll to choose the CEO of Twitter.
- And the list is still going on.
Speaking of sinking companies, We also saw the fall of FTX, the crypto exchange platform, and a severe dip in the crypto market this year. FTX, amid a lot of controversies, filed for bankruptcy this year. Sam Bankman, The former CEO and advocate of transparency, mismanaged company funds and made some extremely questionable financial arrangements. Just like understanding crypto, understanding this scam is also a little confusing. So to put it in simple words. Sam Bankman stole 8 billion dollars from over a million people and is currently arrested.
2022 was the year of recovery, stuck between accepting the drastic shift in tech or going back to our traditional methods. Accepting the WFH culture or opening offices; running into or out of the crypto world; Finding the balance between comfort and data protection; by December almost everyone has placed their bet. 2023 smells like the year of figuring out what choices wins.
So Happy New Year!
