Google

Google has released its latest report showing the ethnic and gender makeup of its employees. Here’s the summary: 75% of Google’s leaders globally are men 2% of its employees in the US are black Just 20% of tech employees are women But 48% of non-tech employees are women More than a third of Google’s US employees are Asian This is the company’s third diversity report, after it first began publishing data in 2014. And progress has been slow. Here’s the overall picture, comparing 2017 and 2014: The data shows that Google mostly employs white men. In this report, Google showed gender data globally, and ethnicity data for the US. The company didn’t give other regional breakdowns of employee data. The picture has barely changed from 2014, when 30% of Google’s staff were women, and 70% were men. Google also has mixed progress on ethnicity. Some 30% of the company’s staff were Asian in 2014, and that now stands at 35%. But the number … [Read more...] about Google is making slow progress on hiring people who aren’t white men

Daisee, an Australian artificial intelligence (AI) startup that finds commercial software applications for university research, has raised AU$8.8 million in a Series A funding. The business was co-founded in August last year by COO Frederick Charette and CEO Richard Kimber, whose CV includes Google’s first Australian MD, ANZ Bank exec and CEO of Australian foreign exchange group OFX, as well as chairing tech startup Unlockd Media. Daisee went official last month after six months in beta mode. There are now 22 employees, with offices in Sydney and Melbourne. The company’s software is based on AI platform Maestro, developed by Deakin University, which launched its own $20 million Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute (known as A2I2) for research into AI systems late last year. Deakin is an investor in Daisee. Daisee is using AI research from Deakin, the University of NSW, and other to create software applications for companies, developing apps for both structured and … [Read more...] about An Australian AI startup run by Google Australia’s former MD just raised $8.8 million

John Hennessy, chairman of Google parent company Alphabet, knew computers were for him when he built one as a teen and used it to win over his high school crush. He and his close David Patterson went on to become fathers of the modern day computer chip architecture. They were just honored by the Association for Computing Machinery with the prestigious Turing award. John Hennessy and David Patterson are legends in Silicon Valley, fathers of the modern-day computer processor. Earlier this week they won the prestigious Turing Award for their decades of work on chips. The Association for Computing Machinery’s Turing award is known as the Nobel Prize of computing and it comes with a sweet $US1 million cash prize. Hennessy, 65, is the former president of Stanford University and the long-serving Google board member who was appointed as chairman of Google parent company Alphabet in January when Eric Schmidt stepped down. Patterson is a famed professor at the University of … [Read more...] about Alphabet’s chairman and a Google distinguished engineer won a prestigious $1 million prize

A 40% tax rate on multinational companies that use overseas tax havens to avoid paying tax in Australia was passed by the Senate last night. The diverted profits tax (DPT), also known as the “Google tax”, was a key part of treasurer Scott Morrison’s budget measures last year and will begin on 1 July, 2017. The government hopes it will deliver $100 million in revenue annually from 2018-19. The DPT only applies to multinationals with a global income of more than $1 billion and an Australian income of more than $25 million and follows on from the Multinational Anti-Avoidance Law (MAAL), introduced in January this year, which targets artificial profit shifting by multinationals. The new law means Australia is just the second country in the world, after the UK in 2015, to introduce such a company tax. The 40% rate has a built-in penalty, 10% higher than the standard 30% company tax rate. The tax is triggered if a company moves revenue initially booked in Australia to a … [Read more...] about Australia’s ‘Google tax’ has been approved