Techmeme
June 22, 2021, 4:30 AM

Top News

Daisuke Wakabayashi / New York Times:
Current and former Google execs say the company suffers from both its size and Sundar Pichai's leadership, marked by delayed decisions and raging culture fights  —  Despite record profits, a number of them are worried that the company is suffering from both its size and leadership from its C.E.O., Sundar Pichai.
Global Times:
China's Sichuan Province closes crypto mines, following Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Yunnan; an estimated 90% of China's mining capacity has now been shut down  —  Many Bitcoin mines in Southwest China's Sichuan Province - one of China's largest cryptocurrency mining bases - were closed as of Sunday …
Coco Feng / South China Morning Post:
Ian Hamilton / UploadVR:
Resolution Games says it won't move forward with a Facebook VR ad test in its paid VR game Blaston, but will consider testing ads in its free fishing game Bait!  —  Resolution Games won't be moving forward with a Facebook advertising test in its paid VR game Blaston.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Facebook rolls out Live Audio Rooms, available to verified public figures and select Groups, and its podcast service, available to select partners, in the US  —  In April, Facebook announced a series of planned investments in new audio products, including a Clubhouse live audio competitor as well as new support for podcasts.
Nicole Lee / Engadget:
TikTok launches TikTok Jump to let creators enhance their videos by adding mini-app integrations from select partners including Whisk, Wikipedia, Quizlet, more  —  TikTok creators may no longer need to add a “link in bio,” at least to certain kinds of content.  Today,
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
A timeline of Google's long list of mostly-defunct messaging apps and services, starting in 2004 with Gmail and progressing to Google Talk, Hangouts, and Allo  —  What a decade and a half of confusing services can tell us about the future  —  Over the past 15 years, Google has introduced …
Richard Pallot / ITV:
Investigation finds Amazon has been destroying thousands of unsold goods at its UK-based Dunfermline warehouse; source says 130K items are destroyed per week  —  Exclusive: Watch footage showing the ‘destruction zone’ in Amazon's Dunfermline warehouse where millions of unsold items are destroyed every year
Katharine Schwab / Fast Company:
Survey of 37 tech giants: $3.8B committed to diversity efforts in 2020 and 2021, ~2/3 had made some kind of DEI policy change after the summer 2020 protests  —  One year after protests against police brutality shook much of the corporate world awake to the problems of racial equity in the workplace …
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
Google quietly pushed Massachusetts' MassNotify COVID tracking app to Android phones in the state; after debuting last week, the app has 1M to 5M installs  —  Massachusetts launched a COVID tracking app, and uh, it was automatically installed?!  —  Over the weekend, Google and the state …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
HPE says it has acquired Determined AI, which is developing an open source platform for building machine learning models; terms of the deal were not disclosed  —  Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) today announced it has acquired Determined AI, a San Francisco, California-based startup developing …
TechCrunch:
Vienna-based GoStudent, which connects K-12 students with online tutors, raises $244M Series C led by DST Global at a $1.7B valuation  —  Online teaching came into the spotlight for many students and parents in the last year, and today one of the companies that saw a big lift during that rush …
More: Sifted and CNBC

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More News

Katherine Anne Long / The Seattle Times:
BBC:
Choe Sang-Hun / New York Times:

Earlier Picks

Martin Arnold / Financial Times:
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Sam Shead / CNBC:
Sami Fathi / MacRumors:
Sarah Frier / Bloomberg: