Techmeme
May 20, 2020, 7:35 AM

Top News

Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Mark Zuckerberg announces Facebook Shops, a free tool that helps businesses easily list products on their Facebook Page, Instagram profile, Stories, or in ads  —  - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook Shops, a new e-commerce feature that allows businesses to easily list their products on Facebook and Instagram.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Facebook details the AI behind its shopping experiences, accounting for consumer traits like body type, skin tone, location, socioeconomic class, age, and poses  —  Facebook today announced improvements to the shopping experiences across its platform, including Facebook Shops …
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Microsoft announces Project Reunion, its latest attempt to unify the Windows developer platform by reducing fragmentation between Win32 and UWP APIs  —  At Build 2020 today, Microsoft unveiled Project Reunion, its latest attempt to unify the Windows developer platform by reducing fragmentation …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Mehedi Hassan / Thurrott:
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Google launches Chrome 83 with updated safety and privacy settings, third-party cookies blocked in Incognito mode, DNS-over-HTTPS support, and new dev features  —  Google today launched Chrome 83 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS.  Chrome 83 includes redesigned safety and privacy settings …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Indian ride-hailing company Ola says it is cutting 1,400 jobs, or 35% of its workforce in the country, as revenue dropped by 95% in the last two months  —  Ola said on Wednesday it is cutting 1,400 jobs in India, or 35% of its workforce in the home market, as the ride-hailing firm works …
Sara Fischer / Axios:
NYT says it will stop using third-party data to target ads in 2021, building a first-party data platform instead, starting with 45 proprietary audience segments  —  The New York Times will no longer use 3rd-party data to target ads come 2021, executives tell Axios, and it is building out a proprietary first-party data platform.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Productivity tool Notion's free tier gets unlimited notes and blocks  —  There's never been a better time to check out the collaborative note-taking app  —  Notion, the workspace and note-taking app, just became much more appealing to individual users.  The company said today that people …
The Verge:
Interview with Sundar Pichai on Google's diversity, long-term plans for its hardware division, the pandemic's effect on its ads business, and more  —  Like all big tech companies, Google and Alphabet are playing an outsized role in our lives as the coronavirus pandemic continues.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is buying older movies and shows for Apple TV+ to build a back catalog; as of February it had ~10M subscribers but only half actively used it  —  - Company wants to create back catalog to complement originals  — TV+, launched in November, had 10 million sign-ups by February
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Khatabook, which helps small Indian businesses digitize bookkeeping and accept payments online, raises $60M led by B Capital; source: startup valued at ~$300M  —  Khatabook, a startup that is helping small businesses in India record financial transactions digitally and accept payments online with an app …
Eudora Wang / DealStreetAsia:
Chinese fitness app Keep raises $80M Series E at a $1B valuation led by Jeneration Capital Management  —  Chinese fitness app Keep has become the country's first sports tech startup to achieve a $1 billion valuation after raising an $80 million Series E funding round led …
Tweets: @ruima
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Joe Rogan's podcast, which he said had ~190M downloads/month in 2019, will become a Spotify exclusive this year; his YouTube will no longer have full episodes  —  A massive gain for the platform  —  Joe Rogan, comedian and host of one of the most popular podcasts in the world, is taking his show to Spotify.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Microsoft says it acquired Windows task automation startup Softomotive for an undisclosed sum, merging its tools with Microsoft's Power Automate  —  Microsoft today announced that it acquired robotic process automation (RPA) startup Softomotive for an undisclosed sum.
Taylor Lyles / The Verge:
Sony says PlayStation Now has 2.2M subscribers and PlayStation Plus has 41M+ subs; Xbox Game Pass had 10M subs and Xbox Live had 90M active users in April  —  PlayStation Plus has amassed over 41 million subscribers, too  —  Sony says 2.2 million people are subscribed to PlayStation Now …
Brian Merchant / OneZero:
Google says it won't “build custom AI/ML algorithms to facilitate upstream extraction in the oil and gas industry”, after new Greenpeace report on Big Oil ties  —  A Greenpeace report details Silicon Valley's ties to Big Oil — and spurs Google to take a step toward opting out

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More News

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Earlier Picks

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