Techmeme
February 4, 2022, 9:05 AM

Top News

Amazon:
Amazon reports Q4 revenue up 9% YoY to $137.4B, net income up 98% to $14.3B, AWS revenue up 40% to $17.8B, and FY 2021 revenue up 22% to $469.8B; stock up 10%+  —  SEATTLE—(BUSINESS WIRE) February 3, 2022—Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced financial results for its fourth quarter ended December 31, 2021.
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Amazon breaks out advertising services revenue for the first time: $9.7B for Q4, up 32% YoY, and $31.2B for FY 2021; subscription services grew 15% to $8.1B  —  - Amazon shares rallied in extended trading Thursday after the company posted a big earnings beat for the fourth quarter …
Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
Amazon will raise Prime's US prices by $20 to $139 per year and by $2 to $14.99 per month, on February 18 for new members and March 25 for current members  —  Amazon is upping the price of Prime, increasing the annual fee of its membership from $119/year to $139/year.
Bloomberg:
Source: in a company-wide meeting, Mark Zuckerberg told staff to focus on growing Facebook's short-video products, citing unprecedented competition from TikTok  —  Mark Zuckerberg quipped that if he started to cry, it wasn't because of the day's news.  —  His red, teary eyes were the result …
Bloomberg:
Meta closes down 26%, erasing ~$250B from its market cap, the biggest single-day loss in market value for a US company, after weak Q4 results and Q1 guidance  —  Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. is set to shed about $200 billion in market value, in what would be one of the biggest …
Stephanie Condon / ZDNet:
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple says it will charge a 27% commission for in-app purchases made using alternative payment systems in The Netherlands, following a Dutch legal decision  —  Apple today provided some additional details about how it will allow dating apps in the Netherlands to offer alternative payment systems …
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Snap reports its first quarterly net profit, with $1.3B in Q4 revenue, up 42% YoY, and $23M net income; FY 2021 revenue grew 64% to $4.1B; stock rises 45%+  —  - Snap reported earnings for the fourth quarter Thursday that beat analyst estimates on earnings, revenue and user growth.
Bloomberg:
Two more employees from Google's Ethical AI research group leave to join Timnit Gebru's new nonprofit research institute, adding to the turmoil at the unit  —  Google's Ethical AI research group lost two more employees, adding to the turmoil at the unit studying an area that is vitally important …
James Vincent / The Verge:
Twitter begins expanding testing downvoting replies globally on web and mobile; downvotes are not public and will be used to tweak which replies Twitter shows  —  Votes aren't public and are used to surface relevant replies  —  If you've seen the option to downvote replies on Twitter, you're not alone.
Blake Brittain / Reuters:
Nike sues online reseller StockX for selling unauthorized NFTs of its shoes, citing its trademarks, and promises “a number of virtual products” later this month  —  Sneaker giant Nike sued online reseller StockX in New York federal court on Thursday for selling unauthorized images of Nike shoes …
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Audio: Daniel Ek says Spotify needs exclusives for leverage to land deals with Amazon, Google, and others, and he finds many things Rogan says “very offensive”  —  He says Spotify is a platform, not a publisher  —  Spotify CEO Daniel Ek addressed employees about the Joe Rogan controversy …
Adam Satariano / New York Times:
A profile of Seznam, a leading search engine in the Czech Republic before Android's rise that is helping to inspire laws to limit Big Tech's power  —  A small search engine company in the Czech Republic helped inspire a law that is poised to put major limits on tech giants like Google.
New York Times:
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers write to Andy Jassy questioning why Amazon continues to sell a preservative used as a poison to die by suicide  —  Even as grieving families tried to warn Amazon and other e-commerce sites of the danger, there were more purchases and more deaths.

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