Technology industry highlights Technology industry highlights

Meta goes all-in on VR and AR technology. 

In late 2021, Facebook changed its name to Meta and announced it would be pivoting from social media to the world of virtual and augmented reality. Nearly three years later, the company is doubling down on this change with the announcement of new AR and VR technology. 

First up is the announcement of Meta’s upcoming AR glasses, called Orion. According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, these glasses have been in development for nearly a decade. They will also be controlled by a neural interface that uses brain signals to project holographic images directly into the wearer’s field of vision, although Meta leaders have yet to expand on how exactly this technology will work. Initially, Orion will only be available to developers, and Meta has yet to set an official release date. 

In the same vein, Meta has also announced updates to its existing Ray-Ban smart glasses, which are already available to consumers. The current edition of Meta Ray-Bans can take photos and videos, make phone calls, and play music. The new version will expand on these capabilities with Meta AI, which can answer questions and conduct live language translation in real time. 

At the recent Meta Connect 2024 event, the company also announced changes to its existing VR technology. Most notably, the brand will be releasing the new Meta Quest 3S headset priced at $300, which is roughly $200 cheaper than the current Meta Quest headsets and over $3,000 cheaper than the trendy Apple Vision Pro. 

While the VR market is growing, 40% of US adults still say they’ve never tried the technology, which is likely due in part to its high price tag. By lowering the price point for its latest VR headset, Meta could make VR more accessible to a wider range of consumers. Meta has also recently announced that it will open its VR and AR platform to Android developers, which could expand the number of apps available for VR and AR devices. 

With these announcements, Meta is staking its claim to the AR and VR market. However, they’re not the only company exploring this new technology. Apple made a splash earlier this year with the release of the pricey Apple Vision Pro, and Qualcomm recently announced a partnership with Samsung and Google to create AR smart glasses. 

Over the last few years, OpenAI has been at the forefront of the AI revolution. ChatGPT made a large language model accessible to the general public, and it’s expanded over time with new features like image and video generation, advanced voice assistants, and more. 

However, the company has struggled with internal ups and downs that have the potential to change public perception and even affect the brand’s long-term success. 

This started in late 2023 when the OpenAI board abruptly fired founder and CEO Sam Altman. The majority of OpenAI employees signed a letter threatening to leave if Altman wasn’t reinstated, and major investors like Microsoft also objected to the decision. Altman resumed his role as CEO a few days later, and the board was restructured. 

However, this wasn’t the end of OpenAI’s internal challenges. In late September 2024, CTO Mira Murati announced that she will be leaving the organization, and two high-level research executives followed suit just a few hours later. 

These resignations come as OpenAI is reportedly considering changing its internal structure. Since its inception in 2015, OpenAI has operated under a non-profit model. However, recent reports have suggested that the company is planning to shift to a for-profit structure. This could remove an existing cap on returns for investors and give Altman a stake in the company. 

OpenAI has also faced controversy over the rapid development of its AI technology, with many critics concerned about the lack of safeguards and governance in place. If OpenAI shifts to a for-profit model, it could exacerbate these concerns. Altman also recently penned an essay with bold claims about the possibility of “superintelligence” in the near future that has raised eyebrows throughout the tech community. 

Despite these recent events, there are no signs of OpenAI slowing down. However, if these concerns continue to escalate, it could give other tech companies the opportunity to step up in a highly competitive market. 

Major players like Google and Microsoft have already invested heavily in AI and have released their own LLM-powered chatbots and virtual assistants to compete with ChatGPT. Amazon and YouTube are also exploring text-to-video tools, and Apple is throwing its hat in the ring with soon-to-be-released Apple Intelligence features for iPhone. However, these new AI tools have yet to achieve the ubiquity of ChatGPT. 

Amazon recently announced that it will be requiring corporate employees to return to the office five days per week, starting in 2025. The tech behemoth went fully remote during the pandemic and later switched to a hybrid work model. This has resulted in an uproar from the company’s employees. 

Since February 2023, employees have been required to work in-office for three days per week, but are allowed to work remotely for two days per week. The switch from fully remote to hybrid work already caused tension, as many employees were hired during the pandemic in fully remote roles and worked on teams spread out across the globe. 

The new back-to-office mandate is causing even more dissent among Amazon’s employees and could have a drastic effect on the company’s workforce. In a survey of verified Amazon employees, 91% of respondents were dissatisfied with the return-to-office policy, and 73% of respondents said they were considering getting another job. 32% of respondents also said they knew someone who had already quit in response to the new policy. 

Amazon isn’t the only large organization to go back to the office full-time, but it is one of the only major tech companies to do so. Right now, just 7% of large tech companies with more than 1,000 employees are working in the office full-time. 

Most other large tech firms have hybrid work policies, which require employees to work in-person for certain days of the week or certain tasks, while providing them the flexibility to work remotely in other scenarios. For example, both Apple and Meta have hybrid work policies. Many of the major organizations that mandate in-office work five days per week are in the financial industry, such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. 

Amazon’s announcement has prompted concerns that other tech companies will start implementing similar return-to-office mandates. This announcement also comes at a difficult time for the tech labor market, as there have been ongoing rounds of layoffs throughout the industry since 2022. 

WordPress is an open-source content management platform that powers roughly 40% of sites on the internet. There are many third-party hosting platforms designed to work with WordPress, with WP Engine being one of the most prominent. Site owners use hosting platforms like WP Engine to make the process of launching a WordPress site more accessible. 

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg recently created a blog post in which he described WP Engine as “a cancer to WordPress”. In the post, Mullenweg specifically criticized the fact that WP Engine disables revision options for its users, making it nearly impossible for them to undo changes they’ve made to their sites once they’re in place. 

Now, WordPress has officially blocked WP Engine users from installing plugins and themes and accessing other crucial WordPress resources. WordPress and its parent company, Automattic, have also claimed that WP Engine has breached WordPress trademark rules with its name, despite “WP” not being explicitly covered under the trademark. Legal action is pending. 

This turn of events could damage thousands of sites across the internet. WP Engine users will no longer be able to update their plugins, which could lead to a loss of functionality. Even worse, outdated plugins could increase the risk of cyber attacks for these sites, as they often contain vulnerabilities that are patched in future versions. 

In late September, Google filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft in the European Union. The complaint specifically states that Microsoft penalizes enterprise customers who attempt to switch from Azure to other cloud solutions, such as Google Cloud, AWS, or Alibaba Cloud. Microsoft already settled a $22 million deal in July to avoid another antitrust suit in Europe from CISPE, a non-profit association of cloud providers operating in Europe. 

Google has also been involved in antitrust cases of its own, this time in the United States. In early August, the courts ruled that Google had illegally run a monopoly with its web search services by operating as the default search engine in both Apple and Android devices. 

These cases highlight the sheer dominance of big tech organizations around the world, particularly as they continue to expand into new domains and purchase smaller software providers.