Here’s an example of ad targeting that’s actually good for public health: In a campaign encouraging people to wear masks, the Illinois state government has been focusing its digital ad dollars on the counties with the highest COVID risk. To achieve this, the government’s been working with Civis Analytics, the data science company founded by […]
The UK’s ICO has reduced the size of a data breach penalty for hotel business Marriott — dropping it to £14.4 million (~$23.8M) in a final penalty notice down from the £99M ($123M) figure that the watchdog initially said it would levy in July 2019. The fine relates to a data breach suffered by the […]
Global fitness giant Under Armour announced this morning that it will be selling MyFitnessPal to investment firm Francisco Partners for $345 million, five and a half years after acquiring it for $475 million. The company also announced that it will be winding down the Endomondo platform which it also acquired at the same time for […]
AOL founder Steve Case was there in Dulles, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C., when in 1996 the Communications Decency Act was passed as part of a major overhaul of U.S. telecommunications laws that President Bill Clinton signed into law. Soon after, in its first test, a provision of that act which states that, “[n]o […]
Amazon expects to incur $4 billion in COVID-related costs next quarter, an estimate that provides a bellwether for other businesses, large and small, trying to stay operational and control expenses amid the pandemic. The upshot: Amazon is planning for COVID to remain an unwelcome companion through the end of the year with costs higher than […]
WhatsApp, the popular instant messaging app owned by Facebook, is now delivering roughly 100 billion messages a day, the company’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said at the quarterly earnings call Thursday. For some perspective, users exchanged 100 billion messages on WhatsApp last New Year’s Eve. That is the day when WhatsApp tops its engagement figures, […]
What does a hologram-obsessed entrepreneur do for a second act after setting up a virtual Ronald Reagan in the Reagan Memorial Library, or beaming Jimmy Kimmel all the way from Hollywood to the Country Music Awards in Nashville? If that entrepreneur is David Nussbaum, the founder of PORTL Hologram, the next logical step is to […]
Tesla has made good on founder and CEO Elon Musk’s promise to boost the price of its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) software upgrade option, increasing it to $10,000 following the start of the staged rollout of a beta version of the software update last week. This boosts the price of the package $2,000 from its price […]
Polestar, the electric vehicle brand that was spun out of Volvo Car Group, has issued another recall for its newest electric vehicle. The company is voluntarily recalling nearly 4,600 vehicles over what has been described as faulty inverters, Reuters reported. Polestar said in a statement that all affected customers will be notified, beginning November 2. […]
Corsair Gaming today announced that it has acquired EpocCam, the software developer behind the iOS software of the same name. It’s easy to see why the gaming company would be interested in such an acquisition in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has lead to a worldwide spike in remote working — and, as a result, more […]
Google releases its latest earnings report, Spotify is getting ready to raise prices and Excel gets friendlier to custom data types. This is your Daily Crunch for October 29, 2020. The big story: Google had a good quarter Google’s parent company Alphabet released its third-quarter earnings report this afternoon, coming in well ahead of Wall […]
PUBG Mobile, the sleeper hit mobile game, will terminate all service and access for users in India on October 30, two months after New Delhi banned the game in the world’s second largest internet market over cybersecurity concerns. India on September 2 banned PUBG Mobile Nordic Map: Livik and PUBG Mobile Lite, along with more […]
Apple is launching its Apple One services bundle tomorrow, though the company’s workout service Fitness+ isn’t quite ready yet. On an earnings call today, CEO Tim Cook revealed tomorrow’s rollout and called the service the “easiest way for users to enjoy Apple services.” In a conversation with Bloomberg, Apple CFO Luca Maestri revealed the launch […]
Time for another Netflix price hike! About a year and a half after the last price increase, Netflix is bumping up the cost for most of its monthly plans in the U.S. by one to two dollars. Here’s how the changes break down: The “Premium” plan (4k and 4 simultaneous streams) will go from $15.99 […]
Twitter continued to see its total traffic rise in the third quarter, thanks to that trifecta of returning sports, the presidential campaign and the COVID-19 pandemic. But there wasn’t nearly enough growth to appease Wall Street. Twitter beat out analyst expectations on revenue and net income; however, Wall Street was stuck on Twitter’s user figures, […]
Facebook reported its Q3 earnings today, including revenues of $21.5 billion, and net income of $7.8 billion. The company earned $2.71 in per-share profit during the three-month period. Analysts had expected Facebook, the social giant, to earn a much-smaller $1.91 per-share off smaller revenues of $19.82 billion. The company also reported an average of 1.82 […]
On Thursday, Apple delivered a Q4 earnings beat but the stock slid anyway as wary investors saw worse than expected iPhone revenues. At the time of writing, stock was down around 5% in after-hours trading. It was a mild beat, with Apple posting $64.7 billion compared to the $63.7 billion Wall Street was expecting and […]
Amazon has continued to reap the rewards of a society increasingly dependent on ecommerce — a trend further fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic. The company crushed analyst expectations Thursday, reporting net income of $6.3 billion in the third quarter, or $12.37 per diluted share, compared with $2.1 billion in net income, or $4.23 per diluted […]
Comcast’s latest earnings report includes some official user numbers for Peacock, the new streaming service from Comcast-owned NBCUniversal. Specifically, Comcast says that Peacock has received nearly 22 million sign-ups since it launched in July, and that it’s “exceeding our expectations on all engagement metrics in only a few months.” What’s not clear, however, is how […]
Today after the bell, Alphabet announced its Q3 performance. The Google parent company generated revenues of $46.2 billion and per-share profit of $16.40 off the back of net income of $11.2 billion. Analysts had expected Alphabet to earn $11.21 per share, from revenues of $42.88 billion according to Yahoo Finance; other estimates were larger, targeting […]
