Techmeme
July 29, 2020, 5:10 PM

Top News

YouTube:
Livestream of the House Antitrust Subcommittee hearing on online platforms and market power with the CEOs of Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple  —  TW: @HouseJudiciary |  FB: HouseJudDems |  IG: HouseJudDems |  M: /HouseJudiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law |
Washington Post:
Live blog of the House's antitrust hearing focused on Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple  —  The leaders behind Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are testifying before Congress virtually  —  Congress on Wednesday is starting to grill the top executives from Amazon, Apple …
New York Times:
At the hearing, Bezos, Cook, Zuckerberg, and Pichai will argue their businesses are relatively small, exist in competitive environments, and benefit consumers  —  The C.E.O.s are likely to argue before Congress that their companies aren't anticompetitive.  Here are the facts.
Peter Kafka / Vox:
Big Tech's antitrust hearing is largely theater, producing soundbites with little bearing on rule-changing and law-making, but it's still a valuable spectacle  —  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress in October 2019.  Aurora Samperio/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Bloomberg:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
The Amazon Blog:
Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
The Verge:
Emails from Mark Zuckerberg, revealed by the House antitrust panel, show that Facebook wanted to buy Instagram at least partly to explicitly avoid competition  —  In late February 2012, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg emailed his chief financial officer, David Ebersman, to float the idea …
Sara Fischer / Axios:
TikTok's new CEO Kevin Mayer says it'll release code driving its content moderation algorithms, accuses Facebook of maligning attacks “disguised as patriotism”  —  In his first public statement as CEO of TikTok, f ormer Disney exec Kevin Mayer says the company will be releasing …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Google and Samsung are working on a deal to give Google services more prominence on Samsung devices, discussing the roles of Bixby, Play Store, search  —  - Google Assistant, Play app store may gain more prominent roles  — Samsung seeks other revenue sources as handset demand drops
Reuters:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Spotify reports Q2 revenue of €1.89B, up 13% YoY, with MAUs up 29% YoY to 299M, premium users up 27% to 138M, and ad-supported MAUs up 31% to 170M  —  In addition, ad revenue fell 21% — which Spotify blamed on the coronavirus pandemic — but the drop wasn't quite as bad as forecast.
Sabahatjahan Contractor / Reuters:
US prosecutors are seeking 27 months in prison for ex-Uber executive Anthony Levandowski, who pleaded guilty in March to taking sensitive documents from Google  —  (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors are seeking 27 months of imprisonment for the former head of Uber's self-driving technology unit …
Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:
Instrumental, which uses vision-powered AI to detect manufacturing anomalies, raises $20M Series B led by Canaan Partners  —  This morning Instrumental, a startup that uses vision-powered AI to detect manufacturing anomalies, announced that it has closed a $20 million Series B led by Canaan Partners.
Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch:
Connecticut-based Sema4, which uses aggregate patient data to help doctors improve care, raises $121M from BlackRock and others, valuing the company at $1.1B  —  Sema4, the Stamford, Conn.-based digital healthcare company now worth just over $1 billion, takes its name from the system of sending messages via code.

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Transform ML Experimentation with Tangle  —  Save months of compute time with Tangle, built by Shopify.  Try this open-source platform to simplify ML workflows, ensure reproducibility, and seamlessly share with collaborators.
Zoho:
Contract Signed.  Project Ready.  Tasks Created.  —  Every project begins with a promise; a contract that outlines the deliverables, the timelines, and the terms.  But for most businesses …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:
The 100-person AI lab that became Anthropic and Google's secret weapon | Edwin Chen (Surge AI)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
AI Device Wars Heat Up, RIP Metaverse?, Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
"Hollywood is Truly Freaked Out." Inside the Netflix/WBD Deal with Lucas Shaw
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Hard Fork:
OpenAI Calls a 'Code Red' + Which Model Should I Use? + The Hard Fork Review of Slop
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Access:
Is Roblox making the internet better or worse? We asked the CEO
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:10 PM ET, July 29, 2020.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

Marc Santora / New York Times:
Sam Shead / CNBC: