Silicon Valley

Russia Asks Google to Stop Advertising “Illegal Mass Events”
2019-08-11 16:07:42 UTC
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s state communications watchdog said on Sunday it had asked Google to stop advertising “illegal mass events” on its YouTube video platform. Tens of thousands of Russians staged what observers called the country’s biggest political protest for eight years on Saturday, defying a crackdown to demand free elections to Moscow’s city legislature. The watchdog, Roscomnadzor, said Russia would consider it interference in its sovereign affairs and a hostile influence should Google fails to respond to the request. Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; Editing by Janet Lawrence
Steve Jobs Design Chief to Start Own Firm
2019-06-28 00:58:11 UTC
(Reuters) - Jony Ive, a close creative collaborator with Apple Inc co-founder Steve Jobs whose iPhone and other designs fueled Apple’s rise to become a $1 trillion company, will leave later this year to form an independent design company. Apple said Ive will continue work on its products at his new venture, but shares fell as much as 1.5% to $197.44 in after-market trading, wiping about $9 billion from the firm’s value. Ive spent nearly three decades at Apple, playing a leading role in the design of the candy-colored iMacs that helped Apple re-emerge from near death in the 1990s to the iPhone, regarded by many business experts as one...
Hunt for Shoppers: Luxury Brands Raising Stakes on Instagram
2019-06-07 16:10:35 UTC
PARIS (Reuters) - Big-spending luxury brands like Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior are splashing out on everything from dance-fuelled fashion shows to teams of advisers as they target social media platforms in the hunt for young shoppers. Without the entry barriers of magazine advertising - where a one page glossy ad can cost tens of thousands of dollars - sites like Instagram, a fashionista favorite, have allowed unknown labels to find an audience with canny or eye-catching campaigns. But big bucks are changing the game as cash rich luxury goods groups like LVMH and Kering hike their social media budgets, giving them vast mea...
Apple wants its login button above Google and Facebook
2019-06-05 05:23:38 UTC
(Reuters) - Apple Inc will ask developers to position a new “Sign on with Apple” button in iPhone and iPad apps above rival buttons from Alphabet Inc’s Google and Facebook Inc, according to design guidelines released this week. The move to give Apple prime placement is significant because users often select the default or top option on apps. And Apple will require apps to offer its button if they want to offer options to login with Facebook or Google. Apple unveiled its login button on Monday, emphasizing users’ privacy and also introducing a feature that randomly generates an email address to avoid revealing the person’s true email....
Facebook Bans White Nationalism and Separatism on Its Platforms
2019-03-27 18:01:14 UTC
(Reuters) - Facebook Inc on Wednesday announced a ban on praise, support and representation of white nationalism and separatism on its social media platforms, furthering its efforts to tackle hate speech. These bans will be enforced next week, the social media giant said in a blog <a href="https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/03/standing-against-hate">here</a> post. Facebook said it would also start connecting people who search for terms associated with white supremacy to organizations focused on helping people leave behind hate groups. Reporting by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva
Chinese Company to Sell Popular Dating App Grindr
2019-03-27 17:54:06 UTC
(Reuters) - Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd is seeking to sell Grindr LLC, the popular gay dating app it has owned since 2016, after a U.S. government national security panel raised concerns about its ownership, according to people familiar with the matter. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has informed Kunlun that its ownership of West Hollywood, California-based Grindr constitutes a national security risk, the two sources said. CFIUS’ specific concerns and whether any attempt was made to mitigate them could not be learned. The United States has been increasingly scrutinizing app deve...
Facebook says hackers accessed data from 29 million accounts
2018-10-12 17:50:55 UTC
NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook says hackers accessed data from 29 million accounts as part of the security breach disclosed two weeks ago. The exact number hadn’t been known before. Originally Facebook said 50 million accounts could have been affected, but Facebook didn’t know if they had been misused. The hackers accessed name, email addresses or phone numbers from those 29 million accounts. For 14 million of those accounts, hackers got even more data, such as hometown, birthdate, the last 10 places they checked into or 15 most recent searches. One million accounts were affected but hackers didn’t gain information. The social media servic...
Dominated by men: Amazon scraps tool that showed bias against women
2018-10-11 21:53:47 UTC
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like women. The team had been building computer programs since 2014 to review job applicants’ resumes with the aim of mechanizing the search for top talent, five people familiar with the effort told Reuters. Automation has been key to Amazon’s e-commerce dominance, be it inside warehouses or driving pricing decisions. <blockquote><h2>Amazon’s experimental hiring tool</h2>The company’s experimental hiring tool used artificial intelligence to give job candidates scores ranging from one to fiv...
China lodges tariff case at WTO against the U.S.
2019-09-02 15:46:34 UTC
HONG KONG/GENEVA (Reuters) - China has lodged a complaint against the United States at the World Trade Organization over U.S. import duties, the Chinese Commerce Ministry said on Monday. The United States began imposing 15% tariffs on a variety of Chinese goods on Sunday and China began imposing new duties on U.S. crude oil, the latest escalation in their trade war. China did not release details of its legal case but said the U.S. tariffs affected $300 billion of Chinese exports. The latest tariff actions violated the consensus reached by leaders of China and the United States in a meeting in Osaka, the Commerce Ministry said in t...
CEOs: Trump's Immigration Policy Hurts U.S. Economy
2018-08-24 01:13:53 UTC
(Reuters) - A group of chief executive officers at the largest U.S. companies expressed serious concern about the Trump administration’s immigration policy and said the rules increase uncertainty and undermine economic growth. In the letter signed by 59 CEOs including Tim Cook of Apple Inc (AAPL.O), JPMorgan Chase & Co’s (JPM.N) Jamie Dimon and Doug Parker of American Airlines (AAL.O), the executives said that many of their employees were now facing uncertainty due to issues such as ‘inconsistent immigration decisions’ that would likely curtail work permits for spouses of skilled immigrants. “As the federal government undertakes its ...
Apple became the first $1 trillion listed US company
2018-08-02 18:06:54 UTC
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple became the first $1 trillion publicly listed U.S. company on Thursday, crowning a decade-long rise fueled by its ubiquitous iPhone that transformed it from a niche player in personal computers into a global powerhouse spanning entertainment and communications. The tech company’s stock jumped 2.8 percent to as high as $207.05, bringing its gain to about 9 percent since Tuesday when its reported June-quarter results above expectations and said it bought back $20 billion of its own shares. Started in the garage of co-founder Steve Jobs in 1976, Apple has pushed its revenue beyond the economic outputs of P...
Plunge in Facebook shares rattled Amazon options market
2018-07-26 18:56:45 UTC
SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - A plunge in Facebook Inc shares rattled the Amazon.com Inc options market on Thursday, with the social network’s fellow FAANG company due to report quarterly results later in the day. Facebook on Wednesday warned about a margin hit as revenue growth slows and user privacy costs climb, and its 20 percent share drop heightened focus on the online retailer, already a closely watched stock. Amazon was the second-biggest decliner in the so-called FAANG group of high-flying tech companies, but Facebook’s second-quarter earnings also cast a pall on shares of Apple Inc, Netflix Inc and Google parent Alphabe...
Tesla in 'Autopilot' mode crashes into parked police vehicle
2018-05-29 21:53:47 UTC
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The driver of a Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) vehicle crashed into an unoccupied, parked police vehicle in Laguna Beach, California, on Tuesday and the driver told investigators the Tesla was in “Autopilot” mode at the time, a police spokesman said. The driver suffered minor injuries, Laguna Beach Sergeant Jim Cota said. Asked about Tuesday’s crash, Tesla said, “When using Autopilot, drivers are continuously reminded of their responsibility to keep their hands on the wheel and maintain control of the vehicle at all times. Tesla has always been clear that Autopilot doesn’t make the car impervious to all accidents.” <hr>...
EU privacy law: Companies to be more attentive to user data
2018-05-25 06:40:19 UTC
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - New European privacy regulations that go into effect on Friday will force companies to be more attentive to how they handle customer data, while bringing consumers both new ways to control their data and tougher enforcement of existing privacy rights. The European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) replaces the bloc’s patchwork of rules dating back to 1995 and heralds an era where breaking privacy laws can fetch fines of up to 4 percent of global revenue or 20 million euros ($23.48 million), whichever is higher, as opposed to a few hundred thousand euros. Many privacy advocates around the world have ...
Facebook tracks people whether they have accounts or not
2018-04-15 17:05:17 UTC
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Concern about Facebook Inc’s (FB.O) respect for data privacy is widening to include the information it collects about non-users, after Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the world’s largest social network tracks people whether they have accounts or not. Privacy concerns have swamped Facebook since it acknowledged last month that information about millions of users wrongly ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, a firm that has counted U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral campaign among its clients. Zuckerberg said on Wednesday under questioning by U.S. Representative Ben...
Valuable Public Company: Amazon appears to beat Apple
2018-03-08 20:45:23 UTC
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc, the world’s most valuable publicly listed company, is in danger of being beaten by Amazon.com Inc to the $1 trillion mark. Wall Street’s optimism about last year’s 10th anniversary iPhone had propelled Apple’s stock 24 percent higher over the past 12 months, giving it a market capitalization of $893 billion. That is $141 billion more than the $752 billion market value of Amazon, the world’s second most valuable publicly listed company, but Amazon has been closing the gap. Amazon’s stock has surged 83 percent over the past year, bolstered by scorchingly fast revenue growth as more shopping mov...
BlackBerry sues Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram over messaging patents
2018-03-06 21:16:34 UTC
BlackBerry filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Facebook and its WhatsApp and Instagram apps, arguing that they copied technology and features from BlackBerry Messenger. Litigation over patent infringement is part of BlackBerry Chief Executive John Chen’s strategy for making money for the company, which has lost market share in the smartphone market it once dominated. “Defendants created mobile messaging applications that co-opt BlackBerry’s innovations, using a number of the innovative security, user interface, and functionality enhancing features,” Canada-based BlackBerry said in a filing with a Los Angeles federal court. ...
Twitter intends to notify users exposed to Russian propaganda
2018-01-17 21:49:39 UTC
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Twitter may notify users whether they were exposed to content generated by a suspected Russian propaganda service, a company executive told U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday. The social media company is “working to identify and inform individually” its users who saw tweets during the 2016 U.S. presidential election produced by accounts tied to the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Army, Carlos Monje, Twitter’s director of public policy, told the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. A Twitter spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about plans to notify its users. Face...
iPhone overuse could hurt children’s developing brains
2018-01-09 04:39:42 UTC
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Inc investors are shrugging off concerns raised by two shareholders about kids getting hooked on iPhones, saying that for now a little addiction might not be a bad thing for profits. Hedge fund JANA Partners LLC and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) pension fund said on Saturday that iPhone overuse could be hurting children’s developing brains, an issue that may harm the company’s long-term market value. <blockquote><img alt="Iphone_overuse_could_hurt_children%e2%80%99s_developing_brains" src="/system/images/16642/original/iPhone_overuse_could_hurt_children%E2%80%99s_developing_brai...
Apple issues apology for purposely slowed down older iPhones
2017-12-29 07:48:52 UTC
The tech giant has offered a major price cut to replace out-of-warranty batteries that affect iPhone performance. Days before issuing an apology, it acknowledged it purposely slowed down older iPhones to prevent issues. In a posting on its website Thursday, Apple apologized over its handling of the battery issue and said it would make a number of changes for customers “to recognize their loyalty and to regain the trust of anyone who may have doubted Apple’s intentions.” Apple made the move to address concerns about the quality and durability of its products at a time when it is charging $999 for its newest flagship model, the iPhone ...
Highly-skilled foreign workers favor Canada, not the U.S.
2017-12-18 03:45:11 UTC
Petra Axolotl knew her chances of getting an H-1B visa were slim. She had an MBA from Wharton and a job offer at Twitter, but luck would decide the Dutch data scientist's fate – and in 2016, it did not fall in her Favor. Axolotl missed out in the lottery for the coveted visa but remained determined to work in Silicon Valley, a place she considered the global capital of tech innovation. The plan was to reapply this year. Then Donald Trump became president, and she prepared to move somewhere else – Canada. Unlike many liberal-leaning technology workers in Silicon Valley, Axolotl doesn't consider herself "anti-Trump." But the new a...
Germany vows to back an "open and free internet" despite end of net neutrality in US
2017-12-15 21:32:27 UTC
Berlin has vowed to back an "open and free internet" following a US decision to repeal net neutrality rules. After US telecoms regulator FCC on Thursday moved to repeal Obama-era net neutrality rules, the German Economics Ministry said Friday it would continue to support EU internet rules that forbid discriminatory access to the web. "An open and free internet is indispensable for the successful development of a digital society that everyone wants to take part in," the ministry's spokeswoman, Beate Baron, told reporters. She declined to comment directly on the FCC's decision, but said that the German government had "taken note" of th...
US government rescinds rules aimed at ensuring a free and open internet
2017-12-14 19:40:07 UTC
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted along party lines on Thursday to repeal landmark 2015 rules aimed at ensuring a free and open internet, setting up a court fight over a move that could recast the digital landscape. The approval of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal marked a victory for internet service providers like AT&T Inc, Comcast Corp and Verizon Communications Inc and hands them power over what content consumers can access. Democrats, Hollywood and companies like Google parent Alphabet Inc and Facebook Inc had urged Pai, a Republican appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump, to keep the Obam...
The Next GOOGLE Could Come From Europe
2017-11-30 06:38:48 UTC
LONDON (Reuters) - Europe is making major strides to eliminate barriers that have held back the region from developing tech firms that can compete on the scale of global giants Alphabet Inc’s Google, Amazon.com Inc or Tencent Holdings Inc, a report published on Thursday shows. The region has thriving tech hubs in major cities, with record new funding, experienced entrepreneurs, a growing base of technical talent and an improving regulatory climate, according to a study by European venture firm Atomico. While even the largest European tech ventures remain a fraction of the size of the biggest U.S. and Asian rivals, global music stream...
Uber paid hackers $100,000 to keep secret a massive breach
2017-11-22 06:25:44 UTC
(Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc paid hackers $100,000 to keep secret a massive breach last year that exposed the personal information of about 57 million accounts of the ride-service provider, the company said on Tuesday. Discovery of the U.S. company’s cover-up of the incident resulted in the firing of two employees responsible for its response to the hack, said Dara Khosrowshahi, who replaced co-founder Travis Kalanick as CEO in August. "None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it," Khosrowshahi said in a blog post. The breach occurred in October 2016 but Khosrowshahi said he had only recently learned...