Tech Talk: Uber hack, Google tracks, AWS packs (in China) ... and Firefox is back

Uber comes in for criticism in how it handled last year's hack – as does Google for allowing Android to track its users location. Meanwhile, AWS is selling off hardware in China and one panelist wonders about the future of Firefox.

Compare and contrast: How Uber handled its data breach last year and how Imgur handled the same kind of thing last week. (Hint: Each company responded in radically different ways.)

That's what our tech panel – CSO's Michael Nadeau, Network World's Brandon Butler, Macworld's Michael Simon and Computerworld's Ken Mingis – chewed over first in this month's episode of Tech Talk. In short: Why did Uber keep the breach secret for so long and pay the hackers $100,000? And is that really better than Imgur, which found out it had been hacked three years ago and went public within 24 hours. On Thanksgiving Day.

As Simon notes: It's a matter of trust and whether the companies that collect, keep and use our data can be trusted. That's what bothered him about the recent news that Android users' locations were being secretly tracked by Google – even if location services were turned off.

Meanwhile, Butler explained why Amazon is having to sell off cloud hardware in China – where the regulatory environment is much tougher than in other countries – and what that means for other tech firms hoping to break into the market.

And Mingis rounded out the discussion with a simple question: Has anyone yet tried the new Firefox Quantum from Mozilla? 

To check out the specific discussions in this episode:

  • The Uber/Imgur discussion comes first.
  • At the 12-minute mark, we move on to debating what Google was up to with its tracking gambit
  • At the 19:33 mark we look at AWS and China
  • And finally, at the 25:56 mark, we look at the fate of Firefox Quantum and the browser market.

Tags GoogleFirefoxmozilla

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