Welcome to In Conversation, the regular podcast of Esharp magazine.

Go to eSharp.u for free access to all our podcasts to date.

This is Paul Adamson, and I'm in conversation with Brad Smith.

Brad Smith is the president of Microsoft.

Brad, we're going to talk a lot

about tech lash this morning. This idea that there's a huge backlash, or certainly growing

backlash against certain tech companies from different directions, not just from government,

from the public at large, on a wide variety of issues. We can't cover everything in our

this podcast, but let's try and home in on two or three issues, starting with data.

The European General Data Protection Regulation is now a matter of law.

I know there's still issues about implementation and compliance, a lot of confusion out there about what it means to be fully compliant with the GDPR.

But as far as your concern, are there still bigger concerns out there that? about what it means to be fully complying with the GDPR.

But as far as your concern, are there still bigger concerns out there that companies,

especially in the tech sector, are still not sufficiently sensitive to the use they make of people's data?

I think fundamentally 2018 was a watershed year for the protection of privacy.

It certainly started with the implementation date last May 25th for GDPR.

Given the complexity of the regulation, people across the tech sector or in business more

broadly are still internalizing it to some degree.

But a huge amount of work has been done, and I think it's already changed the face

of privacy protection in a very positive way. Microsoft really is the only tech company that

decided last year that we would extend the rights to data subjects under the GDPR, not just to our

customers in Europe, but to all of our customers worldwide.

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