Techmeme
February 8, 2023, 2:00 PM

Top News

Martin Coulter / Reuters:
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 8%+  —  Google published an online advertisement in which its much anticipated AI chatbot BARD delivered inaccurate answers.
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Google launches Immersive View for Maps in London, LA, NYC, San Francisco, and Tokyo and plans to release “glanceable directions” globally in the coming months  —  Google is launching new updates for Maps that are part of its plan to make the navigation app more immersive and intuitive for users …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google details AI updates: expanding multisearch globally on mobile, new features for EV drivers, Lens translation, and updates to Translate  —  Google announced a bunch of AI-enabled search, Maps, and Translate updates as part of its Google presents: Live from Paris event on Wednesday.
Katharine Gemmell / Bloomberg:
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 …
Financial Times:
James Vincent / The Verge:
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 …
Parmy Olson / Bloomberg:
Google and Microsoft's race to add AI chatbots to search results will be messy and risky; Bing shows AI results in a sidebar with citations, which Google lacks  —  Here's something you don't see everyday: Microsoft Corp. is serving up a snazzy web search tool.
Washington Post:
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 …
Paul Thurrott / Thurrott:
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.
Thomas Claburn / The Register:
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 …
Kellen Browning / New York Times:
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.
Jack Schickler / CoinDesk:
The Bank of England issues two papers on a digital pound, seeming to favor a centralized database over a blockchain and limiting personal holdings to £10K-£20K  —  The Bank of England has set out technical features of its central bank digital currency, which officials have said is likely to be needed.
Pallabi Munsi / CNN:
How pro-military Telegram channels in Myanmar share hundreds of abusive sexual videos and images of women and dox them, often for their pro-democracy views  —  Editor's Note: This story is part of ‘Systems Error’, a series by CNN As Equals, investigating how your gender shapes your life online.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Twitter launches its Blue service in India, Indonesia, and Brazil; in India, the subscription costs ~$10.9/month on iOS and Android and ~$7.8/month on the web  —  Twitter has rolled out its subscription service, Twitter Blue, to users in India, Brazil and Indonesia, it said on Wednesday …
Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal:
Hands-on with the new AI-powered Bing, which, when asked for the 2023 Grammys winners, made a list with citations in a minute; search will never be the same  —  Our columnist got an early look at the software's new ChatGPT-like powers  —  Bing with AI: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Why Search Is Changed Forever
Politico:
UK PM Rishi Sunak creates the standalone Department of Science, Innovation & Technology, led by Michelle Donelan, stripping the DCMS of its digital oversight  —  LONDON — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is creating a standalone science, innovation and technology department as part …
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
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.
Wall Street Journal:
Some US officials and researchers say TikTok's proposed algorithm oversight faces practical difficulties and may not yield answers on possible Chinese influence  —  Concerns mount over TikTok's plan to address potential Chinese influence over what videos Americans see  —  How TikTok Could Become a U.S. Company

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Ashley Capoot / CNBC: