Snap seeks salvation by tapping into Google’s talent pipeline

Snap, the parent company to Snapchat, named a new managing director of its India operations on Wednesday. It appointed Pulkit Trivedi, former director of Google Pay who spent nine years with the company. And Trivedi isn’t the first high-ranking Googler to jump ship for Snap in recent months. 

In June, Snap scooped Eric Young, Google’s vice president of engineering for Google Cloud. He became senior vice president of engineering at the social media company. Two months prior, Google’s Darshan Kantak joined Snap as senior vice president of revenue products. He previously managed search ads as vice president of product management at Google. 

The hires are part of a larger recruitment effort on Snap’s part to turn its business around. In addition to recruiting from Google in recent months, Snap has also pulled Microsoft’s global head of advertising and a Meta vice president. Snap is hiring for 114 positions, the majority of which are engineering and sales roles, according to its jobs page. Those hires would add to its headcount of 5,300, which is down 18% from the same time last year. 

While media companies across the board have taken losses from the post-COVID advertising downturn, Snap was hit especially hard. It lost $1.43 billion last year, triple its losses from the year prior. The company, which has traditionally relied on advertising revenue to turn a profit, is toying with paid subscriptions and an A.I. Chatbot to earn a buck and keep its app relevant. But recent earnings results don’t show any major improvements. Snap has never reported an annual profit since it went public in 2017, and its stock has been hovering around the same $10 price for the last year, a fraction of its $83 peak in 2021. 

Snap’s most recent hire in Trivedi signals the growth opportunities Snap sees in the Indian market. The company has 200 million monthly active users in the country, doubling in less than two years and representing one-quarter of its total monthly active users, according to Snap reports published earlier this year. 

While India presents opportunity, it is also one of the toughest regulatory environments for social media companies. With Trivedi’s hire, Snap restructured its reporting system in the country, giving India’s leaders a bigger say, according to TechCrunch. Trivedi will oversee all of India’s local operations, including revenue, content, and creator partnerships, Snap told TechCrunch. He will report to Ajit Mohan, Meta’s former managing director of India who defected last year. 

Here’s what else is going on in tech today.

Rachyl Jones

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NEWSWORTHY

AirPods versus ear sweat. Apple’s $550 headphones are reportedly susceptible to too much ear sweat. Condensation that builds up by the speaker when users workout or wear the pods for long periods of time can cause them to malfunction or stop working entirely, according to a report by 404 Media, which cites a recent lawsuit and online complaints. Apple’s lawyers did not dispute the potential for condensation buildup in their response to the lawsuit but argued that it would be the result of prolonged use, according to the report.

Google’s ad targeting practices for children. A group of nonprofits asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google and YouTube, which Google owns, over its advertising practices on children’s videos. The request follows a report last week that suggested Google could be tracking children across the internet—a claim which Google denied. FTC chair Lina Khan has made her name by taking on Big Tech companies. 

Snap allowing opt-out in Europe. The social media company will soon allow users to switch off the ability for Snap to track them and serve personalized ads, following similar measures from Meta and TikTok. The EU is requiring social media companies to offer that option, as part of a larger crackdown on tech companies.

ON OUR FEED

“Facebook is manipulating the public almost everywhere on Earth. That is why they won’t open source their algorithm.”

—Elon Musk, owner of Twitter-turned-X, in another tweet criticizing his rival Mark Zuckerberg. The two have sparred online in recent weeks, albeit on their respective-owned platforms, ahead of their proposed—but now seemingly unlikely—cage fight. X recently posted the source code for its recommendations algorithm online.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

The ugly truth about ‘open’ A.I. Models championed by Meta, Google, and other Big Tech players, by Sage Lazzaro 

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi reveals his ‘nightmare’ moonlighting as an Uber driver, by Chloe Taylor

Malaysia was so eager to get Elon Musk to invest in the country, it waived its decades-old policies for Tesla, by Nicholas Gordon 

IBM CEO who plans hiring pause for 7,800 jobs due to A.I. Says the world will be worse without the technology. ‘Otherwise quality of life is going to fall’, by Paolo Confino 

A product YouTube built 16 years ago could give the music industry a secret weapon to hunt down A.I. Generated ripoff songs, by Rachyl Jones

BEFORE YOU GO

The Peloton plunge. Peloton stock fell to the lowest price in its four-year history after its latest quarterly earnings report. The company’s revenue declined 5% year over year, and Peloton posted a quarterly loss of $242 million resulting in part from a massive product recall. Wall Street’s darling during the Covid years, Peloton once traded at a price of $159 per share. Today, shares cost just $5. 

The fitness equipment company is trying to make a comeback (and to be fair, the company lost $1.2 billion at this time last year). It is partnering with student athletes at Division 1 schools to market its products, and it is revamping Tread Plus, its recalled treadmill, CEO Barry McCarthy said in a Peloton shareholder letter. The company is also hiking the price of the Tread Plus from its original $4,295 to $6,000.