导读
这期「Weekly Spot」，你将看到一下精彩内容：
- Google 搜索中国版新进展，员工公开信、高层刻意隐瞒事实；
- 微软市值超越苹果，以及微软、苹果、Google 的此消彼长；
- 苹果如何让公司股价与 iPhone 销量解绑？
- AWS 早期故事；
- 中美芯片之争；
- 一本没有数学公式的《网络》读物；
- 一周杂志封面秀；
观点和故事
本周，Google 搜索中国版的争议又有了新的进展。200 多名 Google 员工再次发布公开信，呼吁公司放弃搜索产品进入中国的计划：
Our opposition to Dragonfly is not about China: we object to technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wherever they may be. The Chinese government certainly isn’t alone in its readiness to stifle freedom of expression, and to use surveillance to repress dissent. Dragonfly in China would establish a dangerous precedent at a volatile political moment, one that would make it harder for Google to deny other countries similar concessions.
我强烈推荐大家去阅读这封公开信，这可能会是 Google 公司价值观的转折点，一如下面这则广告所展示的那样：
Seen our fake job ad for @Google on @LinkedIn? It was ‘promoting’ the secretive project leaked by Google staff to create a censored search engine for China. Tell their CEO @SundarPichai to do the right thing & #DropDragonfly! Chinese citizens deserve better than being spied on. pic.twitter.com/topiXfptWY
— Amnesty International (@amnesty) November 27, 2018
而最早爆料 Google Dragonfly 的 The Intercept 继续跟进相关报道，在最新的一篇报道里，我们可以领教到 Google 高层的「反侦察能力」，他们也非常明白，自己最大的敌人可能是自己的员工：
Google’s leadership considered Dragonfly so sensitive that they would often communicate only verbally about it and would not take written notes during high-level meetings to reduce the paper trail, two sources said. Only a few hundred of Google’s 88,000 workforce were briefed about the censorship plan. Some engineers and other staff who were informed about the project were told that they risked losing their jobs if they dared to discuss it with colleagues who were themselves not working on Dragonfly.
“They [leadership] were determined to prevent leaks about Dragonfly from spreading through the company,” said a current Google employee with knowledge of the project. “Their biggest fear was that internal opposition would slow our operations.”
这篇报道至少说明了三点：
- Google CEO 皮查伊说谎；
- 负责该项目的人故意掩饰该项目里的隐私甚至安全问题；
- Google 高层非常小心地推进项目，防止公司内外了解；
下周，皮查伊将前往美国国会参加众议院司法委员会的听证会，目前确认的主题是「Google 是否存在政治偏见」，不知道会不会有众议员提出中国版搜索的问题。
本周，微软市值终于再次超越苹果。之所以要用「终于」，是因为上一次微软市值高于苹果，还要追溯到「遥远」的 2010 年，而苹果上一次不在全球市值第一宝座，也要追溯到 2013 年。
关于微软超越苹果的分析很多，但必须注意到一点，过去的这一周，两家公司依然处在「你追我赶」的局面里，接下来的股价走势如何，还有不小的未知数。
《好奇心日报》本周做了一个盘点，将过去 20 年里，微软、苹果、Google 的市值变化放在一起进行梳理，市值与名次变化的背后，也是计算革命或者说互联网革命发展的变化趋势。
Bloomberg 专栏作家 Shira Ovide 在周四的 newsletter 里认为，苹果目前面临诸多焦虑，其中最重要的一点就是，苹果正在努力让公司股价和 iPhone 销量解除绑定。
事实上，苹果过去几年一方面拓展产品线，如 Apple Watch，另一方面则是讲述关于「服务」的故事，但这些产品又都是围绕 iPhone 来做文章，Ovide 这样写道：
It is a sound strategy, but Apple needs to prove to investors that it’s working. I – like the tech writer Ben Thompson – am talking about Apple offering a metric like ARPU, or average revenue per user, that companies such as Comcast Corp. and Facebook Inc. give to show their ability to grow revenue from their existing customer bases. This is what Apple is trying to do with its add-on hardware, software and services.
在本周，今年差点挤进「万亿美元俱乐部」的亚马逊，举行了一年一度的 AWS re:Invent 大会，这是一个展示 AWS 统治力的大会。
我在周五的会员通讯里也对其 CEO Andy Jassy 主题演讲中的几个要点进行了梳理，尤其提到，AWS 的市场宣传策略可能开始有了新的变化。本周早些时候，Andy Jassy 还在《纽约杂志》里口述了 AWS 早期的故事，比如 AWS 立项的时候，亚马逊内部有很多争吵：
The major debate that we had was, some of us said: “This is so different from the rest of our business, why don’t we just build something like a storage service, and see if anybody will use this capability from Amazon? If they do, we can think about building other services.” But the AWS team felt really strongly that we should either build a platform, or not build it at all. Virtually every application requires compute servers or storage or database or messaging or analytics, and we felt like, if we wanted to enable the end goal — letting developers build applications much more quickly than they had before — then providing just one component wouldn’t solve the problem. We also felt that if we waited to gauge response, then it would likely delay getting the right building-block infrastructure services to our customers by probably a couple of years.
虽说是口述，但整个思路还是比较清晰，推荐一读。
本周，《经济学人》杂志封面以及社论都在关注中美的芯片之争，其社论部分认为，随着中国技术的崛起，美国应该有新的应对策略：
The right approach for America, therefore, has three strands. The first is to work with its allies in Europe and Asia to keep pushing back against unfair Chinese practices (such as forced tech transfer and intellectual-property theft) at the World Trade Organisation, and to screen out inward Chinese investments when security justifies it. The second is to foster domestic innovation. More government funding is already going into chip research; greater openness to talent is needed. And the third is to prepare for a world in which Chinese chips are more powerful and pervasive. That means, among other things, developing proper testing procedures to ensure the security of Chinese-made products; and tightening up on data-handling standards so that information is not being sprayed about so carelessly. Measures such as these will not make the headlines at the G20. But they will do more to shape the world in the years ahead.
不仅是芯片，中国正在追赶美国的还有人工智能，本周《纽约时报》也有一篇文章讨论中国人工智能的优势，不同于过往数据量大以及缺乏隐私保护等，这篇文章提到了中国廉价劳动力推动了数据标注的发展，而当下数据标注对于人工智能尤为重要。
电影与图书
这周在书店里发现了一本有趣的书，由译林出版社出版的新书《网络》，豆瓣页面显示该书出版日期是 2018 年 12 月 1 日，但我在 11 月 28 日就买下了。
这本书有趣的地方在于，围绕一个宏大而去复杂的命题，作者用了一系列非常简单明快的语言进行了解释。
本质上说，从自然界到人类社会，都是一个个网络，那么如果以网络为观察这些问题的方法，又会有哪些发现呢？
读这本书的过程中，我也想到了最近看的《无敌破环王 2》。这部动画片对于网络世界的解读非常有创意，简直就是互联网原理的普及片，将搜索、流量、网络暴力、电商、弹窗广告甚至暗网都讲解的非常清楚。类似的还有一部名叫《头脑特工队》的电影。
封面秀
这期杂志除了封面的中美芯片之争，还有《科技季刊》，从新能源到交通新技术，内容非常丰富。另外，这期杂志还有年度图书评选，其中商业领域的图书里，我比较想看的是We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights，比较意外的是，李开复的《AI·未来》也入选了。
这期杂志的封面让我非常喜欢，计算设备作为家庭新成员，「理应」得到感恩，只是这种情况对于人类来说，多少有点无法接受。这期的内容也非常有看点， Patricia Marx 的长文分享了如何学会「爱」机器人，与其他媒体类似的题材不同，这篇文章更具文学性，也更具可读性。
- 《彭博商业周刊》
这期杂志里有一篇关于商汤科技的报道，这家公司的人脸识别技术已经在国内多个产品上得到应用，而文章的开篇用了这样的描述：「The lobby of SenseTime’s Beijing oice makes you feel a bit like you’ve stumbled into a Philip K. Dick novel.」
