After two years of battling antitrust scrutiny on two continents, Amazon and iRobot have agreed to cancel the tech giant’s $1.9 billion acquisition of the robot vacuum company. In a joint statement today, the companies acknowledged they saw “no path to regulatory approval in the European Union.”
It’s the end of what became an increasingly icky deal for almost everyone involved. Regulators in Europe were expected to approve or deny the bid by February 14,
Earnings season is underway once more, and this week, the Big Tech companies move front and center.
The start of 2024 hasn’t brought a lot of favorable headlines to that industry, as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and others have announced mass layoffs. In the first four weeks of the year, tech companies, led by the giants of the industry, have laid off some 25,000 employees. Now, investors want to know how the financials look.
Stock prices for The Magnificent Seven (Ap
The Biden administration will start implementing a new requirement for the developers of major artificial intelligence systems to disclose their safety test results to the government.
The White House AI Council is scheduled to meet Monday to review progress made on the executive order that President Joe Biden signed three months ago to manage the fast-evolving technology.
Chief among the 90-day goals from the order was a mandate under the Defe
The golden age of video streaming services is quickly coming to an end. It was an age where subscription fees were affordable, plans were sharable, and content was ad-free. But starting today, one of the last video streaming services that didn’t show advertisements to viewers is jumping on the ad bandwagon.
Subscribers to both the individual Amazon Prime Video streaming service and the Amazon Prime membership (which includes access to Prime Video) will now see ads served to t
Reddit, the 18-year-old social media network, is all grown up. Almost. After meeting with potential investors ahead of its upcoming IPO, the company is considering a valuation of at least $5 billion, Bloomberg reports.
At the moment, private trades of unlisted Reddit shares value the company below that number, at between $4.5 billion and $4.8 billion. Those numbers may indicate that the company will achieve a lower valuation than $5 billion at the time of its IPO.
The comp
I am not a crypto purist. At best I am a dabbler. Back in 2020, I had to teach myself Web3 just to navigate the frenzied startup deal flow of the times. The whole ordeal cost me a few thousand dollars, which I spent on “gas” (not real gas), an .eth handle, and a smattering of JPEGs I was told were super valuable, though it wasn’t entirely clear why. Today I own a little bit of Bitcoin, a little bit of eth, and 3 NFTs—roller-coaster investments that my husband predi
Donald Knight
Word count: 882
Remote work isn’t just a hangover from 2020. For many employees, it’s become the new standard—a recent survey found that over half (51%) of respondents would not apply to a job if remote or hybrid working was not an option.
This is because flexible working has opened up a world of possibilities for people who, because of remote work, now have the opportunity to work jobs they may otherwise not have had access to.
In 2024 generative Artificial Intelligence will grow to be a potential part of work at every small business, every team in a bigger company, and every individual worker. What does that mean for how we’ll work?Since last year, we’ve seen people work with gen AI across our own products, through Duet AI in Google Workspace. Sometimes it’s improving existing skills, as when writers smooth their work with a virtual editor, or designers brainstorm new ideas. Or sometimes it
Most local TV stations air just a few weather reports a day: a forecast in the morning, perhaps an update in the afternoon, followed by an outlook for the next day at night. But when a winter storm was blanketing much of the U.S. earlier this month, Cleveland residents were able to get hourly updates on the situation on Haystack News—a TV news aggregator that recently began to use AI to produce local weather reports.
Haystack built an automated workflow on top of Amazonȁ
Perfect safety is no more possible online than it is when driving on a crowded road with strangers or walking alone through a city at night. Like roads and cities, the internet’s dangers arise from choices society has made. To enjoy the freedom of cars comes with the risk of accidents; to have the pleasures of a city full of unexpected encounters means some of those encounters can harm you. To have an open internet means people can always find ways to hurt each other.
But som