Google's Bard announcement tweet included a GIF of the AI chatbot giving an inaccurate answer to a question about the James Webb Space Telescope; GOOG drops 7%+  —  Google published an online advertisement in which its much anticipated AI chatbot BARD delivered inaccurate answers.

The UK CMA finds Microsoft's $69B Activision Blizzard acquisition would harm competition in the UK's gaming market, suggests and asks Microsoft for remedies  —  Microsoft Corp.'s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc. will harm competition in the UK gaming market …

Google's AI demo in Paris paled in comparison to Microsoft's “new Bing” event, highlighting why Google needs to widely release its ChatGPT rival service Bard  —  Google demoed its latest advances in AI search at a live event in Paris on Wednesday — but the features pale in comparison …

A live blog of the House Oversight Committee hearing with ex-Twitter executives Vijaya Gadde, James Baker, and Yoel Roth on Hunter Biden laptop “censorship”  —  A congressional hearing Wednesday represents a moment of political reckoning more than two years in the making …

NetBlocks: Turkish ISPs limit Twitter access two days after a major earthquake; Turkish police detain 18 people for sharing “provocative posts” on social media  —  Access to Twitter has been restricted in Turkey, according to reports by an internet monitoring company …

Netflix rolls out its long-anticipated password sharing rules in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain; other countries will be added in the next few months  —  Under new rules, premium and standard account holders will be given option to add extra members for $7.99 per month

Clay Bavor, a Google veteran of 18 years who recently led the company's AR/VR efforts, leaves to start an AI company with former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor  —  For the past few years, Google's AR and VR efforts have been led by Clay Bavor.  The longtime executive is now set to leave the company next month.

Microsoft plans to embed Adobe's Acrobat PDF tech in Edge for Windows 10 and Windows 11 starting in March 2023 and remove Edge's legacy PDF engine in March 2024  —  Microsoft announced today that it is partnering with Adobe to bring Acrobat PDF capabilities to the Microsoft Edge web browser on Windows.

Twitter introduces tweets with up to 4,000 characters for US Blue subscribers; in feeds, tweets will be capped at 280 characters with an option to “Show more”  —  need more than 280 characters to express yourself? we know that lots of you do... and while we love a good thread, sometimes you just want to Tweet everything all at once. we get that. so we're introducing longer Tweets! you're gonna want to check this out. tap this 👉... https://twitter.com/...

Uber reports Q4 revenue up 49% YoY to $8.6B, gross bookings up 19% YoY to $30.7B, MAUs up 11% YoY to 131M, and customer trips up 19% YoY to a record 2.1B  —  The company, which was hit hard in the early stages of the pandemic, saw revenue jump 49 percent from the same period a year ago.

Mozilla says the company is doing “exploratory work” for a Gecko-based browser on iOS in case Apple drops its WebKit requirement, after a similar move by Google  —  Work on a Gecko-based version of Firefox for iOS is underway, again  —  UPDATED Mozilla is planning for the day when Apple …

At the State of the Union, Biden called for Congress to strengthen data privacy protections and antitrust enforcement to stop Big Tech from self-preferencing  —  President Joe Biden threw his support behind tougher rules regulating Silicon Valley during his Second State of the Union speech Tuesday night.

Twitter launches its Blue subscription in India, Indonesia, and Brazil; in India, Blue costs ~$10.90/month on iOS and Android and ~$7.80/month on the web  —  Twitter has rolled out its subscription service, Twitter Blue, to users in India, Brazil and Indonesia, it said on Wednesday …

Masayoshi Son now owes SoftBank ~$5.1B on side deals he set up to boost his compensation, after his unrealized losses grew by ~$400M from three months prior  —  Masayoshi Son is now personally on the hook for about $5.1 billion on side deals he set up at SoftBank Group Corp. to boost his compensation …

Instagram expands Gifts, a monetization feature that lets fans tip Reels creators using its virtual currency Stars, to more US creators, after a test in 2022  —  Instagram announced today it's expanding access to a new monetization feature called Gifts to more creators across the U.S. The feature …

Binance Asia-Pacific Head Leon Foong says a full audit will take “a longer time” as accountants are still learning about crypto, after Mazars pulled its report  —  Binance Holdings Ltd., operator of the world's largest digital-asset exchange, indicated a full audit of its assets …

Alibaba confirms the company is developing a ChatGPT-style AI tool, currently in internal testing, after Baidu's announcement of its Ernie chatbot on February 6  —  China's Alibaba Group (9988.HK) on Wednesday said it is developing a ChatGPT-style artificial intelligence (AI) tool and that it was currently in internal testing.