Chhattisgarh’s $71 million free-phone program - known by the acronym SKY after its name in Hindi - is supposed to bridge the digital divide in this state of 26 million people, which is covered by large patches of forest and counts 7,000 villages that do not even have a wireless data signal. The plan is to add hundreds of cellphone towers and give a basic smartphone to every college student and one woman in every household to connect more families to the internet and help fulfill the central government’s goal of a "Digital India."
Alphabet’s stock rose 3. 5 percent in after-hours trading, and some analysts recommended the company’s shares. With the regulatory issue settled, they said, Google could get back to focusing on selling ads across the internet." It’s like a delivery company having to pay for a parking ticket," Brian Wieser, a Pivotal Research analyst, said of the penalty, which Alphabet accounted for in the second quarter. "It’s not a meaningful fine in the context of the size of this company."
Amazon did not give a concrete reason for the decision beyond calling for federal regulation of the tech, although the company says it will continue providing the software to rights organizations dedicated to missing and exploited children and combating human trafficking. The unspoken context here of course is the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by former Minnesota police officers, and ongoing protests around the US and the globe against racism and systemic police brutality.