Techmeme: Report: Facebook closed Irish subsidiary and moved billions in profits back to US following IRS suit; Irish subsidiary paid $101M in tax on $15B profit in 2018 (Andrew Davis/Bloomberg)

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December 28, 2020, 5:35 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:

China's central bank tells Ant it must overhaul its lending, insurance, and wealth management businesses and come up with a timetable as soon as possible — - Authorities require Ant to overhaul business, set up timetable — Ant was blasted over governance, disdain toward compliance

Coco Liu / Bloomberg:

Alibaba raises proposed stock repurchase program by $4B to $10B, but shares slide 5%+ to a six month low in early Hong Kong trading amid antitrust fears — - Investors flee biggest names from Tencent to Meituan and JD — It coincides with a harsh clampdown on part-owned Ant Group

More: China Internet Watch

Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:

Kuo: Apple Car's unclear development schedule means it may launch in 2025-2027, while changes in EV/self-driving market may push the launch to 2028 — Earlier this week, Reuters reported that Apple is targeting 2024 for production of its long-rumored electric vehicle with “next level” …

More: 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, Mashable, BGR India, 500ish, iPhone in Canada Blog, phonearena.com, iPhone Hacks, MyFixGuide.com, appleosophy.com, Pocketnow, Ubergizmo, Patently Apple, SlashGear, iMore, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, and iClarified

Tweets: @rsgnl, @asymco, @angellamuno, @bluelantern92, and @leaksapplepro

Lee Brown / New York Post:

Nashville mayor says the Christmas day explosion in the city appears to have targeted an AT&T building, amid reports the suspect was paranoid about 5G — Nashville's mayor said Sunday that the city's Christmas blast appeared to be an “infrastructure attack” on the AT&T building there …

More: The Guardian, AT&T, WSMV-TV, The Tennessean, Washington Post, phonearena.com, International Business Times, and UPI

Tweets: @kurtbardella, @brianstelter, @hannonizer, @charlesarthur, @nc5_akoehn, @atthelp, @josephmenn, @justinhendrix, @rstephens, and @rolandixor

Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:

A look at challenger search engines like UK-based Mojeek, You.com, and Neeva, founded by former Google execs, all targeting Google as it fights antitrust suits — Challengers such as Neeva bet on alternative approaches as tech giant faces regulatory scrutiny

Miles Kruppa / Financial Times:

Study: the median valuation for SaaS companies raising their Series C rose by 40% to $210M this year, while their median revenue grew 20%

Tweets: @outsidadgitator, @julianklymochko, @trengriffin, and @caffeinatedinv1

Kim Lyons / The Verge:

Citing environmental concerns, Xiaomi CEO says its flagship Mi 11 phone will not come with a charger in the box; Xiaomi mocked Apple earlier over the same issue — Xiaomi's CEO confirmed the decision on social media site Weibo — Lei Jun, the CEO of Chinese phone maker Xiaomi …

Scott Belsky / Medium:

Eight themes for the near future of tech: from decentralized workplaces and the rise of community-as-a-service to quirky social apps for kids under 16 — As we pull ourselves out of the ditch that was 2020, there are a few major themes of the future I'm particularly excited about.

More: Howard Lindzon. Tweets: @scottbelsky, @erickschonfeld, @om, @avidanross, @micahjay1, @benrbn, @satyap, @trengriffin, @soonaorlater, and @bill_gross

Andrew Davis / Bloomberg:

Report: Facebook closed Irish subsidiary and moved billions in profits back to US following IRS suit; Irish subsidiary paid $101M in tax on $15B profit in 2018 — Facebook Inc. has moved to wind down several Irish holding companies that had allowed it to shift billions of dollars in profit to the country …

Source: The Times. More: The Guardian and Engadget

Tweets: @reflectingman, @yesecondpost, @theactualcathal, @revolution_irl, @astraea1974, @_jack_poulson, @blmohr, @cnada, and @business

Greg Ip / Wall Street Journal:

Due to the pandemic, trends that normally may have taken years to unfold, like remote work or the shift from physical to virtual commerce, happened in months — Spurred by the pandemic, business changes that normally might have taken years unfolded in months.

Tweets: @csapkota, @jessefelder, @mileskimball, and @mileskimball

Michelle Gao / CNBC:

From working remotely to benefiting from the new normal, tech companies led the way in pandemic response but fell behind in stopping COVID-19 misinformation

Tweets: @mims, @mileskimball, @alecstapp, @joehall, @justrichwebster, @ruthbenghiat, @natbullard, @greg_ip, @cardiffgarcia, @shawndubravac, @karaswisher, @necn, @nbc10boston, and @gregorymcneal

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:

Apple's system status webpage indicates that the company has resolved an outage affecting iCloud Account and Sign In services — Apple's system status webpage indicates that the company has resolved an outage affecting “iCloud Account and Sign In” services.

More: AppleInsider, Engadget, BGR India, Gizchina, The Verge, MacRumors, Gizmodo, PCMag, iMore, Redmond Pie, Fortune, BleepingComputer, and Forbes

Tweets: @jonathanirl, @crazyswissie, and @lanceulanoff

Sam Richards / The Intercept:

Documents detail CellHawk, a little-known surveillance tool used widely by law enforcement, which can visualize large amounts of data collected by cell towers — Until now, the Bartonville, Texas, company Hawk Analytics and its product CellHawk have largely escaped public scrutiny.

Sara Harrison / The Markup:

With $87M in political contributions, $200M spent on Prop 22, and record spending on federal lobbying, tech industry spent record amounts on politics in 2020 — As politicians and regulators turned their attention to Silicon Valley, tech companies went on the offensive

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From Mediagazer

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Trump says Stephen Colbert is a “pathetic trainwreck” and “CBS should, ‘put him to sleep,’ NOW”, after CBS aired a Late Show rerun in which Colbert mocked Trump

Alex Ritman / Variety:

In Channel 4's 2025 Alternative Christmas Message, Jimmy Kimmel said “tyranny is booming” in the US and, on his ABC suspension, “We won, the president lost”

Henry Blodget / Regenerator:

Bari Weiss' 60 Minutes decision may have been a way to both signal that she's serious about shifting CBS' sensibility to the right and “improve” a story

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More News

Phred Dvorak / Wall Street Journal:

Data shows Japan's venture deal volume last year was less than a tenth of China's and 3% of the US'; in H1 2020, Japan's startup funding fell slightly YoY

Benedict Mander / Financial Times:

Uruguay's first unicorn, the payment processor dLocal, and GeneXus, a sophisticated COVID-19 advice app, have put the country's tech scene on the global map

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:

Report: Indian startups raised ~$9.3B from 1,088 deals in 2020, lower than $14.5B from 1,185 deals in 2019; rounds of $100M+ fell from 26 in 2019 to 20 in 2020

More: The Economic Times

Kevin Randall / Wired:

With traffic to Chatroulette booming amid COVID, the team is testing AI tools to moderate content; it now offers a filtered channel designed to exclude nudity

Tweets: @sub8u, @taylorlorenz, and @evelyndouek

New York Times:

Beijing's frenzied drive to free itself from a reliance on imported chips could prove to be one of the enduring legacies of Trump's trade policies toward China

Tweets: @nytimesbusiness, @orangeman1992, @nytimestech, and @jchengwsj

Earlier Picks

Lars Eidnes / ITNEXT:

Analysis of the top 1M pages on the web finds that HTTP/2 is now more common than HTTP/1.1; jQuery, Google Analytics were the top JavaScript libraries by usage

More: The Startup

Reuters:

Mastercard SpendingPulse: US online holiday sales from Oct. 11 to Dec. 24 grew 49% YoY, for a 19.7% share of overall retail sales, up from about 13.4% in 2019

Source: Business Wire. More: PYMNTS.com, Wall Street Journal, TheStreet, and Bloomberg

Steven Overly / Politico:

Facebook critics say a general animosity toward Facebook in Washington may push the Biden administration into taking more proactive measures against the company

More: Washington Post, Slashdot, Associated Press, New York Times, and Bloomberg

Tweets: @fboversight, @marcoarment, @justinhendrix, @rededdy56, @bruno_j_navarro, @alfonslopeztena, and @jason_kint

Will Knight / Wired:

David Silver, a principal research scientist at DeepMind, on AlphaGo, AlphaZero, and MuZero, applying reinforcement learning to real world problems, and more

More: Towards Data Science and furidamu

Tweets: @nickwaye and @louisgray

Paresh Dave / Reuters:

Laptop and desktop manufacturers are still months away from fulfilling outstanding orders as sales see a renaissance; shortages won't ease until 2022

More: PYMNTS.com, phonearena.com, MSPoweruser, and Thurrott

Tweets: @glenngabe, @sub8u, @seamus, @tomwarren, @gadgets360, and @gadgets360