Apple, Netflix pull out of South by Southwest music and tech festival

Apple Inc and Netflix Inc stated, they are pulling out of the South by Southwest music and tech festival which is scheduled to be held later this month midst China’s coronavirus outbreak. As of Wednesday, the U.S. death toll from coronavirus infections stands at 11 with California Governor Gavin Newsom declaring a state emergency. Earlier…

Facebook tweaks ads policy, continues to allow political ads in U.S. Presidential 2020 campaign

In a statement, Facebook Inc stated, it has tweaked its approach towards political ads and has introduced limited changes, which includes an option for users to turn off certain ad-targeting tools. Facebook has defied critics’ demands of barring political ads in its platform which often spew out fake news. Facebook, the world’s biggest social network,…

HubSpot Inc ranked No. 1 in Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work in 2020

Midst heightened regulatory scrutiny over Facebook Inc, the social media giant has dropped to the 23rd spot in Glassdoor’s list of “Best Places to Work” in 2020, down from the seventh spot it secured last year. Employees have given Facebook’s senior leadership as well as its work-life balance a relatively lower rating in Glassdoor; The…

Amazon’s cloud business facing antitrust scrutiny from FTC

As per a Bloomberg report citing sources familiar with the matter at hand the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has broadened its scrutiny of Amazon.com Inc beyond its retail operations and now includes its cloud-computing business as well. As per the report, U.S. antitrust enforcers have been asking software companies questions pertaining to Amazon Web…

European Commission scrutinizing how FB and Google monetizes data, leverages it to expand, block competitors

In a statement, the European Commission said, it is investigating how Facebook collects and monetizes its data. The development signals the opening of a second front, on top of an existing investigation, into Facebook’s marketplace. As part of preliminary investigations into both Facebook and Google, the EU executive said, it had sent out questionnaires to…

Office for Civil Rights scrutinizes Google-Ascension data deal

As per a report from the Wall Street Journal, a U.S. federal regulator has initiated an investigation into a cloud computing deal between Alphabet Inc’s Google and Ascension Health which would give Google access to detailed health information of millions of patients. The Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services…

Launch of Huawei’s 5G compatible flagship Mate 30 smartphone clouded by lack of Android as its OS

In recent years, Huawei has shot up surprising fast into the global smartphone business. A U.S. ban citing theft of intellectual property and being a threat to U.S. national security has however crippled its sales outside China. On September 18 Huawei Technologies plans to launch its new Mate 30 line of smartphones in Munich, said…

France and the United States hammer out a draft agreement on French digital tax

U.S. tech giants such as Google, Amazon and Facebook routinely generate huge profits from digital services in countries but route the profits through low-tax countries, such as Ireland and Luxembourg, in order to lower their tax profile in the country from which they had generated their revenues. France’s proposal to rectify this anomaly had unnerved…