Techmeme
April 16, 2021, 8:05 PM

Top News

Anne Steele / Wall Street Journal:
In a letter to artists, Apple says it pays a penny per stream, roughly double Spotify, which pays an average of about one-third to half a penny per stream  —  Streaming services open up about artist payouts, seeking to win credibility and subscribers  —  Apple Music told artists it pays …
Cristiano Lima / Politico:
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Firefox and major Chromium browsers like Edge, Opera, Brave, and Vivaldi are not joining FLoC, Google's proposed ad technology to replace third-party cookies  —  Brave, Vivaldi, Edge, and Mozilla are all out  —  Google is going it alone with its proposed advertising technology to replace third-party cookies.
Spencer Soper / Bloomberg:
Sources: Amazon is planning a furniture service that would require drivers to assemble items and take them back on the spot if the customer isn't satisfied  —  - Service expansion to appliances could target Home Depot, Lowes  — Online furniture sales grew 41% in pandemic to $36.1 billion
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency that started out as a joke in 2013, now has a market cap of $40B+ after growing nearly 400%+ in the past seven days  —  - Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency based on the “Doge” meme, which rose to popularity in late 2013.  It started out as a joke.
Naaman Zhou / The Guardian:
Australian Federal Court rules Google misled Android users into thinking it would not collect their location data when they turned location history off  —  Google collected data on some Android and Pixel phones even when customers ticked ‘No’ or ‘Do not collect’
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Ireland-based digital rights group begins “mass action” to sue Facebook over 2019 breach, citing the right to monetary compensation set out in the GDPR  —  Facebook is to be sued in Europe over the major leak of user data that dates back to 2019 but which only came to light recently …
The Information:
Source: Dapper Labs, maker of NFT-focused NBA Top Shot, is raising a new round at a $7.5B+ valuation, just a few weeks after raising $305M at a $2.6B valuation  —  The rush of enthusiasm for blockchain-based collectives is driving an extraordinary surge of investor interest in Dapper Labs …
Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:
Squarespace files for a direct listing on NYSE, says it had revenues of $621.1M in 2020, up 28% YoY, net income of $30.6M, and operating cash flow of $150M  —  Today Squarespace, a well-known software-and-hosting provider for SMB websites, released its S-1 filing.
Alex Heath / The Information:
Sources: group messaging app IRL is in talks to raise $50M+ at a $1B valuation; the company was last valued at $100M in September  —  Group messaging app IRL is in talks to raise more than $50 million at a $1 billion valuation, 10 times the level of its last round, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Associated Press:
Microsoft removes Positive Technologies from a list of vendors it gives early access to vulnerability info; IBM also lists Positive as a security partner  —  The Treasury Department on Thursday slapped six Russian technology companies with sanctions for supporting Kremlin intelligence agencies engaged in …
NBC News:
Patrick Howell O'Neill / MIT Technology Review:
David Priest / CNET:
Jeff Bezos says Amazon Prime now has 200M+ subscribers, up 50M from the beginning of 2020  —  A new letter to shareholders from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed that the tech giant's Prime service now has over 200 million subscribers.  That's up 50 million from the beginning of 2020.
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
The Guardian:
Facebook planned to remove a network of fake accounts that artificially inflated the popularity of an MP in India, until it realized it was for a BJP politician  —  Whistleblower points to double standard in Facebook's enforcement of rules against powerful  —  Facebook allowed a network …
Ece Toksabay / Reuters:
Turkey's central bank bans the use of cryptocurrencies and crypto assets to pay for goods and services directly or indirectly  —  Bitcoin tumbled more than 4% on Friday after Turkey's central bank banned the use of cryptocurrencies and crypto assets for purchases citing possible “irreparable” damage and transaction risks.
Ian Hamilton / UploadVR:
Andrew Bosworth says Facebook will not release an Oculus Quest Pro in 2021 and expects the Quest 2 to be in the market “for a long while”  —  Facebook won't release an Oculus Quest Pro in 2021 and Quest 2 is expected to be in market and selling to buyers “for a long while,” …

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