| Amazon: |
Amazon plans to acquire podcast network Wondery, which will join Amazon Music — We've signed an agreement to acquire Wondery, a top-rated podcast creator and producer that entertains and educates listeners. — We're pleased to announce that Wondery—an innovative podcast publisher … | Stephanie Chan / Sensor Tower Blog: |
Consumers worldwide spent $407.6M across the App Store and Google Play on Christmas, up 34.5% YoY; mobile games rose 27% YoY to $295.6M, led by Honor of Kings — 2020 has been a record-setting year for worldwide spending on mobile apps and games, which passed $100 billion in a single year for the first time ever in November.| Christopher Palmeri / Bloomberg: |
| Flurry: |
| Lily Hay Newman / Wired: |
Ransomware attacks have transitioned from a model of many small payments from various individuals to a smaller group of large targets with massive ransoms — 2020 was a great year for ransomware gangs. For hospitals, schools, municipal governments, and everyone else, it's going to get worse before it gets better.| Golan Hazani / CTech: |
Sources: SimilarWeb is planning a Nasdaq IPO in Q2 2021, aiming for a $2B+ valuation; the company has raised $240M in total, including $120M in October — The market intelligence company joins list of Israeli firms set to embark on a U.S. IPO in the coming months which already includes eToro … | Rohit Prasad / Fast Company: |
The head scientist for Alexa argues that Turing Test, designed as a thought experiment, is no longer relevant for building AIs that are designed to help humans — This year marks 70 years since Alan Turing published his paper introducing the concept of the Turing Test in response to the question, “Can machines think?”| Jason Del Rey / Vox: |
eMarketer: US e-commerce sales, up 12%-16% in recent years, will have grown by 30%+ in 2020 and Amazon's US retail business grew an estimated 39% YoY in 2020 — When we look back at 2020 in the business world, we'll remember it as the year online shopping stopped being the future of retail and became the present.| Mark Sweney / The Guardian: |
Ampere: UK streaming subscribers grew 34% YoY in 2020, with a combined 32.4M for Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+, the top three services — Britons spent 40% of their waking hours watching TV during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, fuelling the biggest year for new subscribers to streaming services.| Kevin Helms / Bitcoin News: |
New York regulators have authorized a subsidiary of Japan's GMO Internet to issue the world's first publicly available stablecoin backed by the Japanese yen — The New York State Department of Financial Services, the Bitlicense regulator, has authorized GMO to issue U.S. dollar and Japanese yen-pegged stablecoins.| Nic Fildes / Financial Times: |
Researcher: Get Schooled, an education charity established by Bill Gates and Viacom, left personal details of hundreds of thousands of US students exposed — Database at charity set up by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was ‘open and accessible’ during website revamp| Nathaniel Popper / New York Times: |
Analysis of internal data at Coinbase through 2018 highlights pay inequity for women and Black employees; Coinbase says it implemented a new compensation plan — An analysis of internal pay data at the San Francisco company Coinbase shows disparities that were much larger than those in the tech industry.| Wall Street Journal: |
France says it has resumed collecting its digital services tax, as the UK and Italy prepare to collect their own; France's 3% levy brought in €400M in 2019 — Dispute centers on cross-border revenue at Google, Facebook, Amazon and other tech firms — Detente is ending in the global fight over tech taxes.| Elizabeth A. Harris / New York Times: |
Association of American Publishers: audiobooks revenue is up 17%+ YoY, e-book sales are up 16%+; NPD BookScan says US print book sales are up ~8% in 2020 — With people stuck at home and so many other activities shut down, a lot of reading — or at least a lot of book buying — happened this year.
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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:50 PM ET, December 30, 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.
| Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
| Emily Birnbaum / Protocol: |
| Reed Albergotti / Washington Post: |
| Svea Herbst-Bayliss / Reuters: |
| Reed Albergotti / Washington Post: |
| Bloomberg: |