DOCSLIB.ORG

Doug Elliott, City Manager RE: Friday Letter DATE: April 9, 2021 ______

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Doug Elliott, City Manager RE: Friday Letter DATE: April 9, 2021 ______ MEMORANDUM TO: Mayor Smith and Members of Council FROM: Doug Elliott, City Manager RE: Friday Letter DATE: April 9, 2021 _________________________________________________________________________ POTENTIAL INCOME TAX REVENUE LOSS In March 2020, Governor DeWine signed HB197 into law to respond to the public health emergency and economic crisis precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This legislation included Section 29, which, in effect, states that income taxes should be collected by the municipality where employers are located and not the city or village where remotely working employees reside. Section 29 will expire 30 days after the Governor ends his declaration of a state of emergency. Legislators have introduced HB157 and SB97 (134th General Assembly), which seek to immediately repeal the Section 29 provision. This repeal would allow jurisdictions of residence to collect income tax from employees who are working from home rather than the jurisdiction where they worked pre-pandemic. Also, there are now four lawsuits challenging the legality of collecting city income taxes from people based on where they worked ahead of the pandemic, even if they have since been working elsewhere remotely. The Regional Income Tax Agency (RITA), which administers the City’s income tax has amended its current refund form to allow people to submit claims for refunds if they have been working at home during the coronavirus pandemic. But RITA is making no promises to pay those refunds, instead cautioning on the form: “RITA will hold your request for refund in a suspended status until this litigation is concluded.” I have estimated the City of Oxford’s loss in income tax revenue at $1.5 million (or more). This represents 16.7% of estimated FY 2021 income tax revenue. COMMUNITY SOLAR PROJECT Mike and I met with representatives of Affordable Gas and Electric to review the City’s Draft Request for Proposals for Development of a Community Solar project on the City’s closed Municipal Solid Waste Landfill. The plan is to lease the closed Municipal Solid Waste Landfill site (14-18 acres) for development of a solar energy (photovoltaics) system. The RFP will require the solar energy development company to design, obtain approval from Ohio EPA, determine a point of interconnection (POI) with Duke Energy, finance, construct, operate and maintain the solar energy system. The City anticipates a long term lease of the site for 20-30 years or more with a possible option offer to purchase the power directly for the City’s own uses and/or the City’s Electric Aggregation Program. This community solar project could support a 1 to 2 megawatt system. (A megawatt is equal to 1 million watts which could power about 300 homes). The City anticipates completing the RFP by late April. MEETINGS I participated virtually in both the Leadership (Monday) and Covid-19 Leaders (Thursday) meetings. I also met with staff to discuss several projects and held my monthly meetings with Police Chief Jones and Fire Chief Detherage. ANNEXATION PETITION An Expedited Type II Annexation Petition has been filed with the Butler County Commissioners. The petition is for 22.014 acres of land (3 parcels) off of Brookville Road bordering the Oxford Community Park and Autumn Drive. The City of Oxford requires that properties wishing to be served by the extension of municipal utilities must annex to the City. The developer has had initial discussions with the Community Development Department for a residential housing project and has indicated a willingness to grant the City an easement for the Oxford Area Trail. The City is required to adopt two resolutions. One is a statement of services to be provided. The other is a stipulation of buffer area requirements if city zoning/permitted uses are incompatible with current county/township zoning in the adjacent remaining township land. Both items were adopted by City Council at the March 16, 2021 meeting. If no objections to the annexation by the City or Township are received by the Butler County Commissioners within 25 days after the filing of the petition, then the Commissioners must grant the annexation. Any objections to the annexation must be based solely on the petition’s failure to meet the required statutory conditions of the petition. Once the Commissioners grant the annexation, then, after 60 days has transpired, City Council must adopt an ordinance accepting the annexation. A resolution was entered at the March 29th meeting rescinding the previous action and entering the annexation petition into the journal as an Expedited Type 2 annexation. POLICE SERVICES SURVEY The City conducted a survey (provided by Polco, an external independent research firm) about the services provided by the Oxford Police Division. Residents were randomly selected by their mailing addresses. The information received will be invaluable in assessing the current services provided by the Police Division and providing input for ways to improve this service. The survey ended March 10, 2021. As of March 11, 2021, 464 responses have been received from the random sampled residents. The survey was later opened to all residents who wanted to participate and 183 responses were received from the open community survey. Residents were asked to provide an email address and zip code to submit the survey. This ensures one response per person. Also, it allows for the City to follow up with future research, while keeping responses anonymous and ensuring privacy. A draft final report was provided by Polco on April 8, 2021. A public presentation will be provided by Polco at the May 18, 2021 meeting. Also, the results will be presented online in interactive charts and tables. COVID-19 UPDATE The Butler County Board of Health (BCBOH) updated information regarding COVID-19 reported cases from the 45056 ZIP Code. The new figure is 3,163 as of April 3, 2021 and includes Miami University student confirmed cases. This represents 8.6% (down from a high of 13.0% in late December 2020) of all reported cases in Butler County. The total reported cases for Butler County are 36,902. There have been 563 confirmed deaths in Butler County. Under the Ohio Public Health Advisory System as of April 8, 2021, 52 counties (including Butler County) are at Level 3 (Red) Public Emergency, 32 counties at Level 2 (Orange), and 4 counties at Level 1 (Yellow). The state’s vaccination now includes all Ohioans ages 16 and older. The Ohio COVID-19 Vaccine Dashboard provides vaccination numbers for the state and for each county It provides information on how many individuals have been vaccinated (started) as a percent of the total population. For example, as of April 8, 2021 in Butler County, 115,060 individuals or 30.03% of the population have been vaccinated. For older age groups in Butler County, 69.96% of the 80 plus, 70.87% of the 75-79, 74.19% of the 70-74, and 66.66% of the 65-69 age groups have been vaccinated. You can also view the data by sex, race, and ethnicity. Confirmed cases in Ohio continue to increase, as well as, average new cases per day with one in 11 Ohioans infected since January 2020. OXFORD DIVISION OF FIRE & EMS- LABOR NEGOTIATIONS The City has received a Notice to Negotiate from the City of Oxford Professional Firefighters IAFF 5272 bargaining unit and an Assignment Letter from the State Employment Relations Board. A date will be set to adopt rules of negotiation and bargaining so that negotiations may begin. This will be a time consuming process for the administrative and legal staff of the City as this is the initial agreement between both parties. There are six IAFF Locals in Butler County with labor agreements. They vary in membership size from the City of Hamilton with 103 members to Liberty Township with 33 members. The City of Oxford’s will be the smallest with 9 members (including one vacancy). An executive session with City Council was held to discuss this. Staff and I have met to begin management planning for the negotiations. The first session has been held. Assistant City Manager Weekly Report: April 5-9, 2021 Submitted by: Jessica Greene Highlights for E-Newsletter: Participated in a webinar hosted by the Community Transportation Association of America about our vaccine hotline and transportation. This was attended by the CDC and Federal Transporation Administration. Kaiser Health News and Spectrum News also contacted me regarding stories on our vaccine hotline this week. Reviewing DEI training options for City staff members. Communications: City E-news regarding Council Agenda was sent 4/5 Weekly Staff Reports delivered 4/5 Student Reporters Re: o 110 E. High Street and underground fuel tank removal. o COVID and uptown businesses o E-scooters Web content review: o How to measure and track objectives on the new website o Articles on upcoming street paving for 2021. o Call for Art review for an artistic bike rack with PACO Special Projects and Meetings: Assistant City Manager Staff Meeting City Council Meeting Polco meeting to review Community Surveys that may help with our Comprehensive Plan development and Budget feedback from the public. Meeting with Sam Perry regarding personnel changes in his office and possible impacts to the Comprehensive Plan timeline. Meeting with Mike and Doug regarding Amtrak, planning, Oxford Area Trails maintenance, and Public Wi-Fi updates. COVID update meeting with MHMH and Miami. Meeting with Tyler Walsh and Mike Everett with MHMH Foundation. Meeting with Chamber of Commerce re: Wine and Craft Beer Festival Oxford Area Trail: Meeting with Bayer Becker and KZF as a project kick-off meeting for NW segment planning. Human Resources: Spent a lot of time on HR isues this week. Held meetings regarding a few employee issues and possible follow-up action steps.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Microsoft Advertising Client Brochure
    EXPANDMicrosoft YOUR Advertising. CUSTOMER Intelligent AUDIENCE connections. WITH Microsoft Advertising Thank you for considering Microsoft Advertising Though you may already advertise through other platforms such as Google Ads, the Microsoft Search Network can boost traffic by offering an additional customer audience and increase diversity, growth and profits for your business. Globally, the Microsoft 11 billion monthly Search Network is continually searches 1 expanding its reach in 37 markets The Microsoft Search Network powers millions of searches in Canada:2 14 MILLION 296 MILLION 22% unique searchers monthly of the PC who represent searches search market Reach a diverse audience in Canada3 34% 56% 43% have a household income are under the age of have graduated college of $80K+ CAD 45 (16-44 years old) (university/postgraduate degree) High-quality partnerships and The Microsoft Search Network integration add value to the reaches people across multiple Microsoft Search Network devices and platforms4 • Bing powers AOL web, mobile and tablet • Bing search is built into Windows 10, which is now search, providing paid search ads to AOL on over 800 million devices. properties worldwide. • Bing powers Microsoft search, which is a unified • Windows 10 drives more engagement and delivers search experience for enterprises including Office, more volume to the Microsoft Search Network. SharePoint and Microsoft Edge. • Our partnerships with carefully vetted search • Bing is on phones, tablets, PCs and across many partners, like The Wall Street
    [Show full text]
  • Ecosia Launches First Ever Out-Of-Home and TV Advertising Campaign to Let New Users Know They Can Plant Trees with Their Searches - No Matter How Weird
    Ecosia launches first ever Out-of-Home and TV advertising campaign to let new users know they can plant trees with their searches - no matter how weird The green search engine is launching its first international campaign on April 5th across 12 European cities with JCDecaux and Sky Media ● Ecosia’s ‘Weird Search Requests’ campaign will be live in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK ● Its concept expands on award-winning brand video created by students at Germany’s Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg ● The campaign has been developed together with JCDecaux’s Nurture Programme - which helps start-ups and scale-ups across Europe to scale their brand - and Sky Media in the UK ● With more than 120 million trees already funded by users’ searches globally, Ecosia expects the campaign across 12 European cities to generate significant growth for tree planting Paris, France, 31 st March, 2021: Green search engine Ecosia is launching its first major international brand campaign in cities across Europe, to let millions of potential new users know that they can turn their searches, no matter how weird, into trees. The user-generated campaign speaks directly to users in each city, by displaying searches they have shared via social media. It has been developed together with JCDecaux, the world’s leading out-of-home advertising company, and Sky Media in the UK. The concept stems from an award-winning brand video created by students at Germany’s Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, originally the students’ own initiative for a class assignment. It shows Ecosia users making unusual searches on the app, which leads to a tree sprouting up wherever the search was made - ranging from a bus to a lecture hall - and ending with the words: “No matter how weird your search request, we’ll plant the trees anyway .” The film won a number of awards, including silver in the prestigious Young Director Award award at Cannes.
    [Show full text]
  • PRESS RELEASE for IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact Name: Kendall Garifo Email: [email protected] ​
    PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact Name: Kendall Garifo Email: [email protected] ​ Ecosia and Trees for the Future announce partnership to plant trees in West Africa SILVER SPRING, MARCH 2, 2018— Trees for the Future (TREES) and Ecosia join forces to plant trees ​ ​ to combat climate change, revitalize degraded lands and improve livelihoods. TREES fully supports Ecosia in its ambitious journey to plant one billion trees by 2020. Ecosia has committed to fund a new Forest Garden site in Kaffrine, Senegal and plant 1.2 Million trees over a 46 month period. An estimated 300 farming families will benefit from this project. About Trees for the Future Trees for the Future (TREES) is an international development non profit that meets a triple bottom line: poverty alleviation, hunger eradication, and healing the environment. Through our Forest Garden Approach they train farmers to plant and manage Forest Gardens that sustainably feed families and raise their incomes by 400 percent. TREES receives donations to implement their work in areas where they can have the greatest impact. TREES currently works across five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa: Cameroon, Kenya, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda. Since 1989, TREES has planted nearly 150 million trees.​ Learn ​ more at trees.org. ​ ​ ​ About Ecosia Ecosia is the search engine that plants trees with its ad revenue. They are committed to donating at least ​ 80 percent of its sponsored links income to tree planting projects around the world. It is Ecosia’s mission to plant 1 billion trees by 2020. Ecosia looks to support poor agricultural communities by planting a trees.
    [Show full text]
  • The Ecosia on Campus Movement Tree Planting Quiz Q&A
    Baden-Württemberg! ● What is Ecosia? ● The Ecosia on Campus movement ● Tree planting quiz ● Q&A Fred Henderson Project coordinator Business development team ● Ecosia on Campus co-founder ○ Supporting students at 250 universities ● Organizational support ○ Corporate companies switching to Ecosia ● User support ○ Automating and answering user questions Where does Ecosia plant trees? ● 60 projects across 30 countries ● Focus on biodiversity hotspots ● New contracts signed in India, Australia + Malawi Why trees? ● Ecosia’s 100 million trees are sequestering between 1 - 3.5M of tons of carbon dioxide each year ● Trees benefit both people and planet ● Each project serves a unique purpose Your trees in Ethiopia ● Project with environmental and humanitarian NGO Green Ethiopia ● Over 9 million trees planted Video caption if needed Your trees in Australia ● In response to the bushfires in 2020. ● Ecosia dedicates search revenue from a day to finance a project with ReforestNOW ● 26,000 trees planted in a subtropical area Your trees in South America How does Ecosia make money? ● Ecosia generates revenue from users clicking on ads ● Ecosia is completely transparent with its finances. ● 80% of Ecosia’s profits each month goes towards financing tree-planting projects. ● 20% is put into a reserve to ensure Ecosia is always sustainable. Video caption if needed “Ecosia is not just producing enough solar energy to power all Ecosia searches with renewables - we are producing twice as much.” Wolfgang Oels Ecosia’s COO Video caption if needed Which Universities have switched? ● A global movement of students campaigning to make Ecosia the default search engine at their university; ● More than 250 active campaigns worldwide; What is Ecosia on ● Over 200,000 trees financed by Campus? students searches.
    [Show full text]
  • Ecosia at Your Faculty
    Ecosia at your Faculty Imagine your faculty could contribute to reforestation around the world with every internet search that is being done at the faculty. This opportunity can easily be offered by Ecosia. Ecosia is a search engine, just like Google and was founded in 2009 in Berlin. Like most search engines, it makes its money by clicks on advertisements. However in contrast to other search engines, Ecosia uses 80% or more of its profit to plant trees. This way Ecosia is effectively fighting deforestation worldwide. Ecosia calculated that on average every 45 searches are sufficient to plant one tree. So far, they were able to plant over 120 Million trees (February 2021). Ecosia is very transparent when it comes to the usage/storage of data, about privacy and financial reporting. Ecosia on campus is an initiative led by students around the world to implement Ecosia as the standard search engine at their Universities. Over 175,000 trees have already been financed by students' searches! With your help as faculty we’ll be able to plant thousands more! In January 2021, Maastricht University (as the first University in The Netherlands) has set the sustainable search engine Ecosia as the default search engine on 800 Student Desktops (SDT) in both library locations and the Randwyck Computer Facilities. To make UM even more sustainable we are planning to extend this project across all faculties. The sustainable search engine is easy to implement and it is possible to install it on every other UM workstation. For more information about the change at UM please refer to: https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/news/ecosia-now-default-800-student-desktops How to switch your standard search engine to Ecosia? The switch is very easy.
    [Show full text]
  • Thème : Le Web Les Moteurs De Recherche Moteur De Recherche
    Thème : Le Web Les moteurs de recherche Capacités attendues : - Comprendre le fonctionnement des moteurs de recherche - Mener une analyse critique des résultats d’un moteur de recherche - Comprendre les enjeux de la publication d’informations Moteur de recherche : application informatique permettant de rechercher une ressource (page Web, image, vidéo, fichier…) à partir d’une requête sous forme de mots-clés. 1. Le fonctionnement des moteurs de recherche * Au brouillon, essayez de schématiser le fonctionnement d’un moteur de recherche. Vocabulaire à retenir : - crawlers : robot d’indexation qui explore automatiquement le Web en suivant les liens entre les différentes pages pour collecter les ressources. - indexation : les mots-clés sont listés, classés et enregistrés sur des serveurs qui stockent les données. - pertinence : répond au besoin au moment où il est exprimé. Le Web est un immense graphe : chaque page est un noeud relié à d’autres nœuds par des liens hypertextes. On pourrait le schématiser de façon très simplifiée, comme ci-contre. Mme Suaudeau SNT 2019-2020 * A partir du nœud E, parcourez le graphe précédant en listant les pages consultées et les pages à visiter à chaque étape : Action Pages visitées Pages à visiter On visite E, lié à A et H E A H On visite A , lié à B E A H B On visite H , lié à J E A H B J On visite B , lié à A et C E A H B J C (A déjà visité) On visite J , lié à F E A H B J C F On visite C , lié à A E A H B J C C F (A déjà visité) On visite F , lié à C D G H E A H B J C F D G (C et H déjà visités) On visite D , lié à / E A H B J C F D G On visite G , lié à / E A H B J C F D G * Que se passe-t-il si l’on commence l’exploration par le nœud A ? La visite est terminée en 3 étapes mais on a « raté » une grande partie du graphe.
    [Show full text]
  • Thiswaifudoesnotexist.Net: Google Analytics: All Traffic 20190218-20190720
    This Waifu Does Not Exist Analytics All Web Site Data Go to report All Traffic Feb 18, 2019 - Jul 20, 2019 All Users 100.00% Users Explorer Summary Users 600,000 400,000 200,000 March 2019 April 2019 May 2019 June 2019 July 2019 Acquisition Behavior Conversions Source / Medium Avg. Goal Bounce Pages / Goal Goal Users New Users Sessions Session Conversion Rate Session Completions Value Duration Rate 1,161,978 1,170,333 1,384,602 46.58% 8.74 00:01:48 0.00% 0 $0.00 % of Total: % of Total: % of Total: Avg for Avg for Avg for Avg for % of Total: % of 100.00% 100.07% 100.00% View: View: View: View: 0.00% Total: (1,161,978) (1,169,566) (1,384,602) 46.58% 8.74 00:01:48 0.00% (0) 0.00% (0.00%) (0.00%) (0.00%) (0.00%) ($0.00) 1. (direct) / (none) 966,071 967,968 1,121,738 45.78% 8.39 00:01:47 0.00% 0 $0.00 (82.06%) (82.71%) (81.02%) (0.00%) (0.00%) 2. google / organic 30,702 28,990 44,887 48.86% 15.63 00:02:49 0.00% 0 $0.00 (2.61%) (2.48%) (3.24%) (0.00%) (0.00%) 3. m.facebook.com / referral 22,693 22,544 24,304 46.93% 4.77 00:00:51 0.00% 0 $0.00 (1.93%) (1.93%) (1.76%) (0.00%) (0.00%) 4. away.vk.com / referral 20,111 19,178 26,667 47.13% 13.97 00:02:31 0.00% 0 $0.00 (1.71%) (1.64%) (1.93%) (0.00%) (0.00%) 5.
    [Show full text]
  • Ecosia Brief
    CSSD Persuasive Brief Number B144723 EVALUATING 19th April 2019 as a default search engine for UoE What is Ecosia? Key points: Ecosia.org is known as a ‘sustainable’ search engine. The profits generated from every search Ecosia is an alternative search engine that using Ecosia go towards funding 20 tree planting uses ad revenue from searches to fund tree projects across 15 countries. Use of Ecosia has planting projects that contribute to the storage dramatically increased since 2017, with 7 million of approx. 2.5 million tonnes of CO2e. active users currently. Since they launched in The UoE could: 2009, Ecosia has been responsible for the • Replace Bing with Ecosia as the default planting of over 55,000,000 trees, storing search engine on the browser, Edge approximately 2.5 million tonnes of CO2e [1]. The • Trial Ecosia as the default search engine University of Edinburgh (UoE) has set targets for on all browsers carbon neutrality by 2040 (‘Zero by 2040’), which may be aided by switching to a carbon negative • Offset current search engine emissions search engine as its default choice. with an independent tree planting project Why is it different? Sahel region; limit the lowering of the water table UoE currently has 2 search engine defaults in Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and Spain; reduce across all internet browsers – Google and Bing. rural poverty in local communities; increase Every search on a search engine can generate biodiversity by allowing passage of animals along revenue from displaying adverts on search results tree corridors through human territories in pages. Search engines use this revenue to fund Madagascar, Brazil and Uganda, and; help the parent company and their projects.
    [Show full text]
  • Appendix I: Search Quality and Economies of Scale
    Appendix I: search quality and economies of scale Introduction 1. This appendix presents some detailed evidence concerning how general search engines compete on quality. It also examines network effects, scale economies and other barriers to search engines competing effectively on quality and other dimensions of competition. 2. This appendix draws on academic literature, submissions and internal documents from market participants. Comparing quality across search engines 3. As set out in Chapter 3, the main way that search engines compete for consumers is through various dimensions of quality, including relevance of results, privacy and trust, and social purpose or rewards.1 Of these dimensions, the relevance of search results is generally considered to be the most important. 4. In this section, we present consumer research and other evidence regarding how search engines compare on the quality and relevance of search results. Evidence on quality from consumer research 5. We reviewed a range of consumer research produced or commissioned by Google or Bing, to understand how consumers perceive the quality of these and other search engines. The following evidence concerns consumers’ overall quality judgements and preferences for particular search engines: 6. Google submitted the results of its Information Satisfaction tests. Google’s Information Satisfaction tests are quality comparisons that it carries out in the normal course of its business. In these tests, human raters score unbranded search results from mobile devices for a random set of queries from Google’s search logs. • Google submitted the results of 98 tests from the US between 2017 and 2020. Google outscored Bing in each test; the gap stood at 8.1 percentage points in the most recent test and 7.3 percentage points on average over the period.
    [Show full text]
  • May 19 with a Weekend Pass Option
    Enviro-News May 2019 Sponsored by Daemen College’s Global & Local Sustainability Program Newsletter Contents: • Articles- including events, courses, local news, grants, jobs • Upcoming Activities • Tips for the Environment • Volunteer Opportunities, Recycling, CSAs and Farms, Organization links Articles: Composter and Rain Barrel Sales: Last Call Erie County, in partnership with the Western NY Storm water Coalition, the City of Buffalo, and the Town of Wheatfield, is once again offering rain barrels and compost bins at wholesale prices. Order yours today. This offer ends May 3rd, 2019. There are 2 locations to pick up orders: City of Buffalo Engineering Garage (1120 Seneca St.) and Town of Wheatfield Town Hall (2800 Church Rd., North Tonawanda). The specific date/time and location for pick up must be selected when you check out. You must pick up your order at the location, date and time that you select at checkout or have someone pick it up for you. Orders are not available for pick up at these locations outside of the dates/times listed at check out. Pick up dates are May 15, 16 from 4:30 to 7:30pm or May 18 from 9am to 12pm. For costs and descriptions of items, visit https://eriecompostersale.ecwid.com Imagining a More Livable Niagara Falls Sponsored by Partners for a Livable Western New York, City of Niagara Falls and the New York Chapter of Congress for the New Urbanism, a six-week series of talks will present ideas and encourage discussion on how to help Niagara Falls move forward. The talks will be held on successive Thursdays beginning on May 2 at 6pm at the Niagara Falls Train Station.
    [Show full text]
  • Eco Search Engine Sees Surge in Downloads As Amazon Burns 28 August 2019, by Mae Anderson
    Eco search engine sees surge in downloads as Amazon burns 28 August 2019, by Mae Anderson technology and sells ads just like many other tech companies. But instead of rewarding mostly shareholders, the company said it is contributing 80% of its profits to tree-planting efforts and keeping just a small amount for itself. The company estimates it can plant one tree for every 45 searches that people do. Other companies and even celebrities are also taking action in response to the fires. Apple, for example, has pledged aid, though it has not given many details. Leonardo DiCaprio's foundation has pledged $5 million. Can a typical person help the rainforest by simply A tree stump glows with fire amid smoke along the road changing search engines or supporting certain to Jacunda National Forest, near the city of Porto Velho companies? in the Vila Nova Samuel region which is part of Brazil's Amazon, Monday, Aug. 26, 2019. The Group of Seven While switching to Ecosia requires little effort and nations on Monday pledged tens of millions of dollars to "might make a difference," the best way to respond help Amazon countries fight raging wildfires, even as is to give directly to a charity that specializes in a Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro accused rich cause and spends donations wisely, said Larry countries of treating the region like a "colony." (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) Chiagouris, a professor of marketing at Pace University. Art Markman, professor of psychology and Can you save the rainforest from your desk? A marketing at the University of Texas, said disaster spike in downloads for a search engine that's relief tends to be reactive and driven by the news contributing profits to planting trees shows people cycle.
    [Show full text]
  • Written Statement for the Record by Megan Gray, General Counsel And
    Written Statement for the Record by Megan Gray, General Counsel and Policy Advocate for DuckDuckGo for a hearing entitled "Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 2: Innovation and Entrepreneurship" before The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law Rep. David Cicilline, Chair Rep. James Sensenbrenner, Ranking Member Tuesday, July 16, 2019 DuckDuckGo is a privacy technology company that helps consumers stay more private online. DuckDuckGo has been competing in the U.S. search market for over a decade, and it is currently the 4th largest search engine in this market (see market share section below). From the vantage point of a company vigorously trying to compete, DuckDuckGo can hopefully provide useful background on the U.S. search market. Features of Competitive General Search Engines A competitive U.S. general search engine in 2019 must have a set of high-quality search features, and ensure none are substandard or shown at the wrong times. This set of mandatory high-quality search features includes: An up-to-date index of most all of the English web pages on the Internet (referred to as “organic links”) Maps Local business answers (e.g., restaurant addresses and phone numbers) News Images Videos Products/shopping Definitions Wikipedia reference Quick answers (calculator, conversions, etc.) Additional niche features may also be necessary to be competitive with particular consumer segments, such as: Up-to-date indexes of web pages in other languages Sports scores Airplane flight information Question/Answer reference (e.g., for computer programming) Lyrics When DuckDuckGo launched in 2008, this list was much smaller, and arguably just one item was a required feature: organic links (sometimes referred to as “the ten blue links”).
    [Show full text]