Jeff Bezos is stepping down as Amazon CEO in 5 months and Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services, is taking the reins in a move that perhaps indicates the future of the e-commerce king. A 90-year old AT&T customer since 1960 took out a quarter-page ad in the Wall Street Journal to voice his displeasure with the company’s internet service. Tech companies’ commercials were front and center during the Super Bowl, highlighting some battles forth coming in 2021. Chowbotics, a robotic salad making vending machine company, has been acquired by DoorDash, signalling a unique partnership in food delivery.

Edge is rolling out a new security feature that will notify users if the accounts or passwords were potentially compromised on third-party sites. Spotify introduced classic literature as audiobooks to their users this week, signalling some attempt to compete in the market. SpaceX made history again as they launched 143 satellites into low Earth orbit during a single Falcon 9 launch. Kroger is introducing smart tech grocery carts, featuring a touchscreen, scale, and camera, to enhance the traditional shopping experience.

As tech companies begin to get anxious about calling employees back into their offices after vaccinations, about a third of polled employees are saying they would rather quit than return to the office. In Germany, the local GDPR agency issued a multi-million dollar fine to a local laptop retail for retaining and utilizing forms of intensive video surveillance on workers and customers. And in aeronautical news, Virgin successfully completed their final test of LauncherOne which sent a rocket into low Earth orbit making it one of the few corporations to do so and paving the way for work with NASA.

We kick off the new year talking about Twitch, tech resolutions, drone deliveries, and CES 2021. Twitch had its best year ever, clocking 17 billion hours watched in 2020 which is leading to the question of how they did it and how and if it can be sustained. Tech resolutions are always fun to consider, and we each share two resolutions this coming year. The FAA has passed their final rules to allow drone delivery, and we dissect these rules and share our thoughts on where the industry is moving and what must change. Lastly, CES 2021 kicked off this week, so we take a quick look at some items that have caught our attention during the first first days.

We are recapping the 2020 tech industry. SpaceX and NASA take the top mention this year purely based on their overall successes in terms of launching from American soil and the number of positive results in space travel. COVID-19 turned the tech industry in a new direction, as education, conferences, production, and more areas resulted in wholesale changes in how business is conducted and orchestrated. Big tech was once again challenged in many respects as executives and corporations felt the pressure from federal, state, and international governments. Apple turned another successful year as they turned to manufacturing their own chips and enhanced their services market. Streaming services continued to battle for money and attention as people’s viewing habits changed as a result of the pandemic and their day-to-day routines. And finally, the rollout of 5G made headlines leaving most users unhappy yet showed promise in terms of capability.

SpaceX and NASA Launches

Peloton has acquired Precor for around $420 million, which will expand the capacity and manufacturing of in-home cycling equipment to meet the growing demand from Peloton users. After years of failure with making DirecTV viable, AT&T is looking to shed the service from their books as they seek bids to take over the cable offerings. As most 2021 conferences are heading, CES will be an all-digital event featuring plenty of executives and hundreds of tracks for attendees. With the holidays days and weeks away, Zoom and other video conferencing services are confident they can meet the online demand as families and friends shift to gathering online to celebrate with one another.

Major players in the industry like HP, Tesla, and Oracle are packing up their offices, leaving California, and relocating to Texas. Google experienced a major outage causing hours of disruption to personal productivity and enterprise companies. To compliment their current suite of services with a modern communication tool, Salesforce acquired Slack for a mere $27 billion. Amazon is finally rolling out Sidewalk, a mechanism to use small fractions of home Wi-Fi to connect out of range eligible devices.

In a unique play to clean up space junk, the European Space Agency is working to build a claw to grip and direct defunct satellites into Earth’s atmosphere. It’s with some anticipation that we learned Ajit Pai, FCC Chairman, is leaving his post in January which opens the doors for restatement of net neutrality regulation. Zoom reported this week that, once again, their revenue soared to record numbers as they continue to experience exponential growth during the pandemic. Apple is new circulating hardware with their latest and self manufactured M1 chip, and we hear a story of the good and bad with one such Apple setup.

We are diving into a bit of a Thanksgiving special this week. With the holidays around the corner, we share what technologies we are truly thankful and appreciative of this year. Google has teamed up with a non-profit organization to build an application to assist blind and visually-impaired runners with technology to safely traverse a course. Lime, an e-scooter company, made headlines when they announced being profitable for the first time in company history and showing perhaps a bright future. Black Friday is just around the corner and we offer up some predictions on what items may be the high sellers this season.