ITWire reports on how Norwegian firm Volue Technology handled a ransomware attack that began on May 5th: The company has set up a Web page with information about the attack and also links to frequent updates about the status of its systems. There was no obfuscation about the attack, none at all. The company said: "The ransomware attack on Volue Technology ('Powel') was caused by Ryuk, a type of malware usually known for targeting large, public-entity Microsoft Windows systems."

What is even more remarkable about this page is that it has provided the telephone number and email address of its chief executive, Trond Straume, and asked for anyone who needs additional information to contact him. Not some underling.
ITWire argues this response "demonstrated to the rest of the world how a ransomware attack should be handled."

Big Tech is wading into a legal fight over visas in an attempt to preserve jobs of spouses of its foreign employees who are working in the U.S. From a report: Amazon.com, Apple, Google, Microsoft and more than 20 other companies and organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, on Friday urged a federal court in Washington to reject a lawsuit seeking to eliminate work authorization for more than 90,000 H-4 visa holders. Eliminating H-4 visas "would not only siphon off U.S. gross domestic product, but gift that productivity -- and the innovation that comes with it -- to other nations, harming America's global economic competitiveness into the future," the companies and organizations said in a so-called friend-of-court brief.

Under the Obama-era "H-4 Rule," the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2015 issued visas to spouses, more than 90% of whom are women, of more than 580,000 highly skilled workers who live in the U.S. on H-1B visas, according to the companies' filing. H-4 visas are critical to couples' decisions to come to the U.S., buy homes and raise children, they argue. The Trump administration attempted to dismantle the rule, but never introduced regulation to do so.

Microsoft is shutting down its Azure Blockchain Service on September 10, 2021. Existing deployments will be supported until that date, but as of May 10 this year, no new deployments or member creation is being supported. ZDNet reports: Microsoft's initial foray into Azure Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) began in 2015 with an offering on the Etherum Platform with ConsenSys. In late January 2016, Microsoft made available a preview of a lab environment in Azure's DevTest Labs so that Blockchain-related services and partners can decouple the Blockchain technology from virtual machines. Microsoft's short-term goal for the Azure BaaS was to make available a certified blockchain marketplace. In the interim, the focus was to add blockchain partners of all kinds, rather than trying to pick a limited number of potential winners, officials said.

Microsoft ended up fielding a preview of Azure BaaS, but lately had not done much to update the service. However, Microsoft's product page for Azure BaaS lists GE, J.P. Morgan, Singapore Airlines, Starbucks and Xbox as customers. Microsoft's documentation suggests users start migrating to an alternative now. The recommended migration destination is ConsenSys Quorum Blockchain Service. Users also could opt to self-manage their blockhains using VMs.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: A dozen Wi-Fi design and implementation flaws make it possible for miscreants to steal transmitted data and bypass firewalls to attack devices on home networks, according to security researcher Mathy Vanhoef. On Tuesday, Vanhoef, a postdoctoral researcher in computer security at New York University Abu Dhabi, released a paper titled, "Fragment and Forge: Breaking Wi-Fi Through Frame Aggregation and Fragmentation" [PDF]. Scheduled to be presented later this year at the Usenix Security conference, the paper describes a set of wireless networking vulnerabilities, including three Wi-Fi design flaws and nine implementation flaws. Vanhoef, who in 2017 along with co-author Frank Piessens identified key reinstallation attacks (KRACKs) on the WPA2 protocol (used to secure Wi-Fi communication), has dubbed his latest research project FragAttacks, which stands for fragmentation and aggregation attacks.

The dozen vulnerabilities affect all Wi-Fi security protocols since the wireless networking technology debuted in 1997, from WEP up through WPA3. [...] In total, 75 devices -- network card and operating system combinations (Windows, Linux, Android, macOS, and iOS) -- were tested and all were affected by one or more of the attacks. NetBSD and OpenBSD were not affected because they don't support the reception of A-MSDUs (aggregate MAC service data units). [...]

Patches for many affected devices and software have already been deployed, thanks to a nine-month-long coordinated responsible disclosure overseen by the Wi-Fi Alliance and the Industry Consortium for Advancement of Security on the Internet (ICASI). Linux patches have been applied and the kernel mailing list note mentions that Intel has addressed the flaws in a recent firmware update without mentioning it. Microsoft released its patches on March 9, 2021 when disclosure was delayed tho Redmond had already committed to publication. Vanhoef advises checking with the vendor(s) of Wi-Fi devices about whether the FragAttacks have been addressed. "[F]or some devices the impact is minor, while for others it's disastrous," he said.

Some of the world's biggest chip buyers, including Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet's Google, are joining top chip-makers such as Intel to create a new lobbying group to press for government chip manufacturing subsidies. From a report: The newly formed Semiconductors in America Coalition, which also includes Amazon.com's Amazon Web Services, said Tuesday it has asked U.S. lawmakers to provide funding for the CHIPS for America Act, for which President Joe Biden has asked Congress to provide $50 billion. "Robust funding of the CHIPS Act would help America build the additional capacity necessary to have more resilient supply chains to ensure critical technologies will be there when we need them," the group said in a letter to Democratic and Republican leaders in both houses of the U.S. Congress.

A global chip shortage has hit automakers hard, with Ford Motor saying it could halve second-quarter production. Automotive industry groups have pressed the Biden administration to secure chip supply for car factories. But Reuters last week reported administration officials were reluctant to use a national security law to redirect computer chips to automakers because doing so could hurt other industries. The new coalition includes some of those other chip-consuming industries, with members such as AT&T, Cisco Systems, General Electric, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Verizon Communications. It cautioned against government actions to favor a single industry such as automakers.

Pentagon officials are considering pulling the plug on the star-crossed JEDI cloud-computing project, which has been mired in litigation from Amazon and faces continuing criticism from lawmakers. From a report: The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract was awarded to Microsoft in 2019 over Amazon, which has contested the award in court ever since. A federal judge last month refused the Pentagon's motion to dismiss much of Amazon's case. A few days later, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said the department would review the project. "We're going to have to assess where we are with regard to the ongoing litigation around JEDI and determine what the best path forward is for the department," Ms. Hicks said at an April 30 security conference organized by the nonprofit Aspen Institute. Her comments followed a Pentagon report to Congress, released before the latest court ruling, that said another Amazon win in court could significantly draw out the timeline for the program's implementation. "The prospect of such a lengthy litigation process might bring the future of the JEDI Cloud procurement into question," the Jan. 28 report said. Ms. Hicks and other Pentagon officials say there is a pressing need to implement a cloud program that serves most of its branches and departments. The JEDI contract, valued at up to $10 billion over 10 years, aims to allow the Pentagon to consolidate its current patchwork of data systems, give defense personnel better access to real-time information and put the Defense Department on a stronger footing to develop artificial-intelligence capabilities that are seen as vital in the future.

A ransomware attack affecting a pipeline that supplies 45% of the fuel supplies for the Eastern U.S. has now led U.S. president Biden to declare a regional emergency providing "regulatory relief" to expand fuel delivery by other routes.

Axios reports: Friday night's cyberattack is "the most significant, successful attack on energy infrastructure" known to have occurred in the U.S., notes energy researcher Amy Myers Jaffe, per Politico. It follows other significant cyberattacks on the federal government and U.S. companies in recent months... 5,500 miles of pipeline have been shut down in response to the attack.
The BBC reports: Experts say fuel prices are likely to rise 2-3% on Monday, but the impact will be far worse if it goes on for much longer... Colonial Pipeline said it is working with law enforcement, cyber-security experts and the Department of Energy to restore service. On Sunday evening it said that although its four mainlines remain offline, some smaller lateral lines between terminals and delivery points are now operational...

Independent oil market analyst Gaurav Sharma told the BBC there is a lot of fuel now stranded at refineries in Texas. "Unless they sort it out by Tuesday, they're in big trouble," said Sharma. "The first areas to be impacted would be Atlanta and Tennessee, then the domino effect goes up to New York..." The temporary waiver issued by the Department of Transportation enables oil products to be shipped in tankers up to New York, but this would not be anywhere near enough to match the pipeline's capacity, Mr Sharma warned.
UPDATE (5/10): "On Monday, U.S. officials sought to soothe concerns about price spikes or damage to the economy by stressing that the fuel supply had so far not been disrupted," reports the Associated Press, "and the company said it was working toward 'substantially restoring operational service' by the weekend."

CNN reports that a criminal group originating from Russia named DarkSide "is believed to be responsible for a ransomware cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline, according to a former senior cyber official. DarkSide typically targets non-Russian speaking countries, the source said... Bloomberg and The Washington Post have also reported on DarkSide's purported involvement in the cyberattack..."

If so, NBC News adds some sobering thoughts: Although Russian hackers often freelance for the Kremlin, early indications suggest this was a criminal scheme — not an attack by a nation state, the sources said. But the fact that Colonial had to shut down the country's largest gasoline pipeline underscores just how vulnerable American's cyber infrastructure is to both criminals and national adversaries, such as Russia, China and Iran, experts say. "This could be the most impactful ransomware attack in history, a cyber disaster turning into a real-world catastrophe," said Andrew Rubin, CEO and co-founder of Illumio, a cyber security firm...

If the culprit turns out to be a Russian criminal group, it will underscore that Russia gives free reign to criminal hackers who target the West, said Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the cyber firm CrowdStrike and now executive chairman of a think tank, the Silverado Policy Accelerator. "Whether they work for the state or not is increasingly irrelevant, given Russia's obvious policy of harboring and tolerating cyber crime," he said.
Citing multiple sources, the BBC reports that DarkSide "infiltrated Colonial's network on Thursday and took almost 100GB of data hostage. After seizing the data, the hackers locked the data on some computers and servers, demanding a ransom on Friday. If it is not paid, they are threatening to leak it onto the internet... "

The BBC also shares some thoughts from Digital Shadows, a London-based cyber-security firm that tracks global cyber-criminal groups to help enterprises limit their exposure online: Digital Shadows thinks the Colonial Pipeline cyber-attack has come about due to the coronavirus pandemic — the rise of engineers remotely accessing control systems for the pipeline from home. James Chappell, co-founder and chief innovation officer at Digital Shadows, believes DarkSide bought account login details relating to remote desktop software like TeamViewer and Microsoft Remote Desktop.

He says it is possible for anyone to look up the login portals for computers connected to the internet on search engines like Shodan, and then "have-a-go" hackers just keep trying usernames and passwords until they get some to work.

"We're seeing a lot of victims now, this is seriously a big problem now," said Mr Chappell.

In late 2019, Microsoft announced Windows 10X, a new flavor of Windows 10 designed for dual-screen PCs. Windows 10X, Microsoft said at the time, will power dual-screen PCs from Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and of course Microsoft. But it appears Microsoft has changed its plans about what it wants to do with this version of Windows 10. Microsoft-focused news outlet Petri reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter, that Microsoft will not be shipping Windows 10X this year and the OS, as was described by the company in 2019, will likely never arrive. From the report: The company has shifted resources to Windows 10 and 10X is on the back burner, for now. For about a decade, Microsoft has been trying to modernize Windows in various ways. We have seen Windows RT, Windows 10S, and now Windows 10X. The question becomes if there really is a future for anything other than traditional Windows 10? Microsoft said during their last earnings call that there were 1.3 billion active devices are running the OS each month and with that context in mind, does there really need to be a 'lite' version of the OS?

It's a fair question at this point because Microsoft's history of trying to overhaul Windows is a journey down a road with many headstones along the way to 2021. The reality is that if Microsoft is going to invest heavily in a modern version of Windows 10, it should be to run Windows 10 on ARM. A watered-down version of the OS to compete against Chromebooks is not working out today, much like it has not worked out in the past and it may never work out either but the future is hard to predict. While Windows 10 was put in the backseat for the past couple of years and many looked at 10X as a possible revival of excitement for the OS, all eyes should now be focused on Sun Valley -- the next major update to Windows 10. If something is going to return the limelight to Windows, it has to be Sun Valley because that's the only thing left. But just because 10X isn't coming to market anytime soon, the technologies that were built for 10X are migrating to Windows 10. Not everything from 10X will show up in 10 but I would expect to see things like UI updates, app containers, and more arrive in Windows 10.

Microsoft is now planning to refresh the Windows 95-era icons you still sometimes come across in Windows 10. The Verge reports: Windows Latest has spotted new icons for the hibernation mode, networking, memory, floppy drives, and much more as part of the shell32.dll file in preview versions of Windows 10. This DLL is a key part of the Windows Shell, which surfaces icons in a variety of dialog boxes throughout the operating system. It's also a big reason why Windows icons have been so inconsistent throughout the years. Microsoft has often modernized other parts of the OS only for an older app to throw you into a dialog box with Windows 95-era icons from shell32.dll. Hopefully this also means Windows will never ask you for a floppy disk drive when you dig into Device Manager to update a driver. That era of Windows, along with these old icons, has been well and truly over for more than a decade now. These new changes are part of Microsoft's design overhaul to Windows 10, codenamed Sun Valley. "We're expecting to hear more about Sun Valley at Microsoft's Build conference later this month, or as part of a dedicated Windows news event," notes The Verge.

A Windows Defender bug creates thousands of small files that waste gigabytes of storage space on Windows 10 hard drives. BleepingComputer reports: The bug started with Windows Defender antivirus engine 1.1.18100.5 and will cause the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Scans\History\Store folder to be filled up with thousands of files with names that appear to be MD5 hashes. From a system seen by BleepingComputer, the created files range in size from 600 bytes to a little over 1KB. While the system we looked at only had approximately 1MB of files, other Windows 10 users report that their systems have been filled up with hundreds of thousands of files, which in one case, used up 30GB of storage space. On smaller SSD system drives (C:), this can be a considerable amount of storage space to waste on unnecessary files. According to Deskmodder, who first reported on this issue, the bug has now been fixed in the latest Windows Defender engine, version 1.1.18100.6.

On iOS, Apple wants all the browsers to run WebKit. Even Google Chrome is forced to use WebKit on iOS devices. Alex Russel, Google's engineer, in a blog post outlines his case: Apple's iOS browser (Safari) and engine (WebKit) are uniquely under-powered. Consistent delays in the delivery of important features ensure the web can never be a credible alternative to its proprietary tools and App Store. Alex has cited an example of this by mentioning Stadia and other cloud gaming services. Apple did not allow those services to be available on the App Store and pushed them to use the web instead, which requires Apple to allow gamepad APIs so controllers can be used with these new web apps. That is a function that other browsers have offered for a long time except on iOS. He writes: Suppose Apple had implemented WebRTC and the Gamepad API in a timely way. Who can say if the game streaming revolution now taking place might have happened sooner? It's possible that Amazon Luna, NVIDIA GeForce NOW, Google Stadia, and Microsoft xCloud could have been built years earlier. It's also possible that APIs delivered on every other platform, but not yet available on any iOS browser (because Apple), may hold the key to unlocking whole categories of experiences on the web. Blog WCCFTech adds: Alex has also talked about how iOS browsers are underpowered in several other places compared to the competition. For starters, iOS browsers lack push notifications, standardized Progressive Web App (PWA) install buttons, background sync, and numerous other tools that make it easier for developers to make fully functional web apps. Access to hardware such as Bluetooth, USB, and NFC are also not easily available. Last but not least, the royalty-free AV1 standard is also not available.

Microsoft is preparing to issue two more Windows 10 updates in June and July that will eliminate unsupported Adobe Flash Player from Windows PCs for good. ZDNet reports: The update KB4577586 called "Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player" has been available as an optional update since October and now looks set for a broader deployment. Flash Player officially reached end of life on December 31, 2020 as per an announcement by Adobe and major browser makers in 2017.

"Starting in June 2021, the KB4577586 "Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player" will be included in the Preview Update for Windows 10, version 1809 and above platforms. It will also be included in every subsequent Latest Cumulative Update," Microsoft said. "As of July 2021, the KB4577586 "Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player" will be included in the Latest Cumulative Update for Windows 10, versions 1607 and Windows 10, version 1507. The KB will also be included in the Monthly Rollup and the Security Only Update for Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Embedded 8 Standard," it added.

It's no secret that Sony held back PS4 cross-platform play for years, but new confidential documents and emails reveal just how much Sony was against letting people play the same games with their friends on other platforms. From a report: Sony initially blocked cross-platform play for both Rocket League and Minecraft, despite Nintendo and Microsoft both enabling players to play across Xbox and Switch. The issue really blew up when Sony blocked Fortnite crossplay in 2018, and players were angry. It now appears that Sony may have been holding out to offset potential revenue losses. In the months leading up to Sony's decision to block Fortnite crossplay in 2018, Epic Games had pleaded with Sony to enable crossplay, emails in the Epic Games v. Apple case reveal. "I can't think of a scenario where Epic doesn't get what we want -- that possibility went out the door when Fortnite became the biggest game on PlayStation," said Joe Kreiner, Epic's vice president of business development.

Kreiner proposed, "We announce crossplay in conjunction with Sony. Epic goes out of its way to make Sony look like heroes." Epic even offered to brand its E3 presence with PlayStation or add unique characters, exclusive to PS Plus subscribers, to sweeten the deal. "Let's make this a huge win for us all. Epic's not changing it's mind on the issue, so let's just agree on it now," said Kreiner. Sony didn't agree. Gio Corsi, Sony's senior director of developer relations at the time, dismissed the idea of crossplay, noting that "cross-platform play is not a slam dunk no matter the size of the title" -- a clear reference to Epic's flex about Fortnite's dominance on PlayStation. "As you know, many companies are exploring this idea and not a single one can explain how cross-console play improves the PlayStation business," said Corsi. But as of August 2019, it appears that Sony may have found a worthy argument: a way to potentially siphon off money from its competitors in exchange for access to PlayStation players.

Analyst firm SlashData surveyed over 19,000 respondents from 155 countries for its "State of the Developer Nation" survey — and now estimates that there's 24.3 million active developers worldwide.

TechRadar reports: The report pegs JavaScript as the most popular language that, together with variants including TypeScript and CoffeeScript, is used by almost 14 million developers around the world. Based on SlashData's observations over the past several years, more than 4.5 million JavaScript developers have joined the ranks between Q4 2017 and Q1 2021. This is the highest growth in terms of absolute numbers across all programming languages...

Next up is Python with just over 10 million users, followed by Java with 9.4 million, and C/C++ with 7.3 million. The report notes that Python added 1.6 million new developers in the past year, recording a growth rate of 20%.
From ZDNet: SlashData estimates the next three largest developer communities are using C/C++ (7.3 million), Microsoft's C# (6.5 million), and PHP (6.3 million). Other large groups of developers are fans of Kotlin, Swift, Go, Ruby, Objective C, Rust and Lua...

SlashData, however, notes that Rust and Lua were the two fastest growing programming language communities in the past 12 months, albeit from a lower base than Python.
And Visual Studio magazine couldn't resist emphasizing that C# "has ticked up a notch in popularity, overtaking PHP for No. 5 on that ranking..." "C# lost three places in the rankings of language communities between Q3 2019 and Q3 2020, but it regained its lead over PHP in the past six months after adding half a million developers," the report states... "C# is traditionally popular within the desktop developer community, but it's also the most broadly used language among AR/VR and game developers, largely due to the widespread adoption of the Unity game engine in these areas..."

It was a different story one year ago, when the 18th edition of the report said: "C# lost about 1M developers during 2019... [I]t seems to be losing its edge in desktop development — possibly due to the emergence of cross-platform tools based on web technologies."

The language might see more desktop development inroads as new initiatives from Microsoft such as Blazor Desktop (one of those "cross-platform tools based on web technologies") and .NET MAUI provide a wide array of desktop approaches.

There was a big announcement this week from Mozilla. They've joined Fastly, Intel, and Microsoft "in announcing the incorporation and expansion of the Bytecode Alliance, a cross-industry partnership to advance a vision for fast, secure, and simplified software development based on WebAssembly." Building software today means grappling with a set of vexing trade-offs. If you want to build something big, it's not realistic to build each component from scratch. But relying on a complex supply chain of components from other parties allows a defect anywhere in that chain to compromise the security and stability of the entire program.

Tools like containers can provide some degree of isolation, but they add substantial overhead and are impractical to use at per-supplier granularity. And all of these dynamics entrench the advantages of big companies with the resources to carefully manage and audit their supply chains.

Mozilla helped create WebAssembly to allow the Web to grow beyond JavaScript and run more kinds of software at faster speeds. But as it matured, it became clear that WebAssembly's technical properties — particularly memory isolation — also had the potential to transform software development beyond the browser by resolving the tension described above. Several other organizations shared this view, and we came together to launch the Bytecode Alliance as an informal industry partnership in late 2019. As part of this launch, we articulated our shared vision and called for others to join us in bringing it to life... [W]e asked prospective members to be patient and, in parallel with ongoing technical efforts, worked to incorporate the Alliance as a formal 501(c)(6) organization. That process is now complete, and we're thrilled to welcome Arm, DFINITY Foundation, Embark Studios, Google, Shopify, and University of California at San Diego as official members of the Bytecode Alliance.

We have a real opportunity to change how software is built, and in doing so, enable small teams to build big things that are both secure and fast.

Achieving the elusive trifecta — easy composition, defect isolation, and high performance — requires both the right technology and a coordinated effort across the ecosystem to deploy it in the right way. Mozilla believes that WebAssembly has the right technical ingredients to build a better, more secure Internet, and that the Bytecode Alliance has the vision and momentum to make it happen.

Indie developer (and Humble Indie Bundle originator) Wolfire Games has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Steam creator Valve, saying that the company is wielding Steam's monopoly power over the PC gaming market to extract "an extraordinarily high cut from nearly every sale that passes through its storeâ"30%." Ars Technica reports: The lawsuit, filed in a Washington state federal court, centers on what it considers an illegal tying of the Steam gaming platform (which provides game library management, social networking, achievement tracking, Steam Workshop mods, etc.) and the Steam game store (which processes online payments and delivers a copy of the game). After years of growth, the vast majority of PC gamers are locked into the Steam platform thanks to "immense network effects" and the high switching costs to move to a new PC platform, the suit argues. That makes the platform "a must-have for game publishers," who need access to the players on Steam to succeed. But games that use the Steam platform also have to be sold on the Steam Store, where Valve takes its 30 percent cut of all sales. By leveraging its monopoly platform power into a "gatekeeper role" for the store, Valve "wield[s] extreme power over publishers of PC Desktop Games" that leads to a "small but significant and non-transitory increase in price" for developers compared to a truly competitive market, the suit argues.

The suit includes a laundry list of competitors that have tried to create their own platforms to take on Steam's monopoly, including CD Projekt Red, EA, Microsoft, Amazon, and Epic (not to mention "pure distributors" with platform-free stores like GameStop, Green Man Gaming, Impulse, and Direct2Drive). But the lawsuit argues that Steam's lock-in effects mean none of these stores have been able to make much of a dent in Valve's monopoly position, despite plenty of well-funded attempts. Even the Epic Games Store, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars securing exclusives and free game giveaways, has a market share of only "a little above 2 percent," according to one cited analysis (in an interview last June, Epic's Tim Sweeney estimated a more robust 15 percent market share for EGS).

"The failure of these companies to meaningfully compete against the Steam Gaming Platform shows it is virtually impossible as an economic matter to compete against the Steam Gaming Platform," the suit argues. "The Steam Gaming Platform has well-cemented dominance in the PC Desktop Gaming Platform Market, and given its unique and strong network effects, that is unlikely to change." The only meaningful way to avoid [Valve's] anticompetitive measures, the suit argues, is "to avoid using the Steam Gaming Platform at all." But Valve's monopoly position means that "there are no economically viable alternatives to the Steam Gaming Platform" for most PC games. While the suit acknowledges a few counterexamples (Riot's League of Legends is cited by name), such titles "typically require a long history of recognition and success before they can attempt to thrive without the Steam Gaming Platform," the suit says.

Earlier this week, The Verge reported that Microsoft now has 145 million people using its Microsoft Teams communications app, an increase of 26 percent over last year's reported 115 million daily active users. From the report: To put the 145 million figure in perspective, at the beginning of the pandemic, Microsoft had around 32 million daily active users of Microsoft Teams. That jumped to 75 million in a matter of weeks, and these numbers have more than doubled since even the early days of the pandemic. It's an impressive amount of growth, just as Microsoft has been aggressively pushing businesses to move to the cloud and adopt Teams over the past year.

As always, it's difficult to compare to rival services. Google and Zoom don't reveal daily active users and opt for a more vague daily active participants. This means a single user could be counted multiple times if they participate in different meetings during a day. Zoom revealed it had 300 million daily active participants last year, and Google said last year it had 100 million daily active participants. Slack revealed it had 12.5 million concurrent users during the beginning of the pandemic last year, but the company has shied away from daily active user counts ever since.

It's been just over a year since Microsoft announced it had hit its goal of 1 billion monthly active Windows 10 devices. It took a while to get there, but Microsoft now says Windows 10 is growing even faster, reaching a whopping 1.3 billion active installs in the last quarter. From a report: Like a number of other technology firms, Microsoft has the global pandemic to thank for its windfall. It turns out people buy more computers when they're stuck at home. "Over a year into the pandemic, digital adoption curves aren't slowing down. They're accelerating, and it's just the beginning," said CEO Satya Nadella. The latest device count comes from Microsoft's earnings report, which featured a stunning $41.7 billion in revenue for the quarter.

In the Great Recession more than a decade ago, big tech companies hit a rough patch just like everyone else. Now they have become unquestioned winners of the pandemic economy. From a report: The combined yearly revenue of Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook is about $1.2 trillion, according to earnings reported this week, more than 25 percent higher than the figure just as the pandemic started to bite in 2020. In less than a week, those five giants make more in sales than McDonald's does in a year. The U.S. economy is cranking back from 2020, when it contracted for the first time since the financial crisis. But for the tech giants, the pandemic hit was barely a blip. It's a fantastic time to be a titan of U.S. technology -- as long as you ignore the screaming politicians, the daily headlines about killing free speech or dodging taxes, the gripes from competitors and workers, and the too-many-to-count legal investigations and lawsuits.

America's technology superpowers aren't making bonkers dollars in spite of the deadly coronavirus and its ripple effects through the global economy. They have grown even stronger because of the pandemic. It's both logical and slightly nuts. The wildly successful last year also raises uncomfortable questions for tech company bosses, the public and elected officials already peeved about the industry: Is what's good for Big Tech good for America? Or are the tech superstars winning while the rest of us are losing?

Google was one of the first big companies to move its workforce out of the office in the early days of the pandemic, but now it's calling employees back. Some of them said they don't intend to return. From a report: While tech firms such as Microsoft and Twitter have announced plans to allow employees to work from home permanently, Google has resisted going fully remote, and employees said there's an increasing sense of frustration among a faction of the workforce. That frustration spilled onto social media last week: "Spoken to quite a few colleagues at Google that say they'll quit if forced to go back to the office in September," Chris Broadfoot, a Google Cloud programmer, tweeted on Thursday. Other employees joined the thread to cosign the message, with some saying they may look for another job if Google makes them go back to the office.

A half-dozen Google employees who spoke with Insider shared a similar sentiment or said they knew colleagues who had made permanent moves during the pandemic. They asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the press. "A lot of my colleagues have moved away with no real intention of coming back," one of those employees said. "Especially in that 30s-40s age bracket. I would say that's predominantly where it is." That same employee told Insider they had handed in their notice after their request to work in a location outside of the Bay Area was shot down by their manager. Further reading: Google Is Saving Over $1 Billion a Year by Working From Home.