Techmeme
January 30, 2020, 4:00 PM

Top News

Charlie Osborne / ZDNet:
Avast will shut down its marketing subsidiary Jumpshot following controversy over selling user data to third parties  —  Avast's CEO said the move is “absolutely the right thing to do.”  —  Avast is winding down its subsidiary Jumpshot following an explosive investigation into the sale …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Apple says its updated Maps are rolling out across the US, with more detailed visuals and new features like Look Around, and coming to Europe later this year  —  Apple's updated and more detailed Maps experience has now rolled out across the U.S., the company announced this morning.
Financial Times:
Sources: Uber and DoorDash held failed merger talks around six months ago at the behest of SoftBank to consolidate the food-delivery industry  —  Uber and DoorDash held talks to combine last year in a deal that would have accelerated the long-awaited consolidation of the lossmaking food delivery industry …
Wall Street Journal:
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Reports from four analytics companies: Huawei surpassed Apple in 2019 with global smartphone shipments of 241M vs. 198M; Samsung retains its top spot with 298M  —  Apple's strong fourth quarter wasn't enough to hold off the Chinese challenger  —  Huawei overtook Apple to become …
Wall Street Journal:
Apple hired one of Netflix's top engineers in strategy to staff up the technical team supporting its newly launched TV+ subscription services  —  Apple Inc. AAPL 2.89% recently hired one of Netflix Inc.'s NFLX -1.87% top engineers, part of a broader strategy to build out the technical team supporting …
Emma Court / Bloomberg:
Practice Fusion, which offers free, ad-supported health records software to doctors, agrees to pay $145M DOJ fine for its role in boosting opioid prescriptions  —  - Practice Fusion ensured that addictive drugs were on the menu  — 'It's evil.  There's really no other word for it,' doctor says
Eun-Young Jeong / Wall Street Journal:
Samsung reports weak Q4 earnings from low memory chip sales as net profit slumps to $4.4B, down 39% YoY, on revenue of $50.52B, up 1.1% YoY  —  Company reports weak fourth-quarter earnings from low memory-chip sales  —  SEOUL—Samsung Electronics Co. reported a 39% drop in fourth-quarter net profit …
Katie Notopoulos / BuzzFeed News:
Woman tried for 4 years to get Facebook to remove a business page someone created for her butthole, which the company removed only after BuzzFeed wrote about it  —  “This unofficial Page was created because people on Facebook have shown interest in this place or business.
Angela Chen / MIT Technology Review:
Pitch deck details Column, a paid social network centered on tech/business notables, with Aron Ping D'Souza as CEO; investor Sarah Cone later said she was CEO  —  Business and technology leaders are being asked to spend $100,000 buying in to the service.  —  A proposed new social network …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Nintendo says Switch passed SNES in lifetime sales with 52M+ sold, reports sales of $9.39B and net profit of $1.8B for the nine months ended in December  —  Nintendo said it is upgrading its forecast for profits in the fiscal year ending March 31, thanks to strong sales of the Nintendo Switch and games that run on it.
Bloomberg:
California court orders Apple to pay $838M and Broadcom to pay $270M for infringing California Institute of Technology patents on Wi-Fi transmissions  —  Apple Inc. and Broadcom Inc. must pay $1.1 billion in damages for infringing California Institute of Technology patents on Wi-Fi transmissions, a jury in California ordered.
New York Times:
Facebook agrees to pay $550M to settle a class action suit over Illinois biometric law violations for tagging users in photos, after SCOTUS rejected its appeal  —  It was another black mark on the privacy record of the social network, which also reported its quarterly earnings.
The Information:
Source: Apple has terminated AI startup Xnor.ai's involvement in the Pentagon's Project Maven after its recent acquisition of the startup  —  Big technology companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Google have jockeyed to secure lucrative contracts supplying their products and services to the military.
Bloomberg Quint:
Online insurance marketplace Policygenius raises $100M Series D led by KKR  —  (Bloomberg) — Online insurance startup Policygenius raised $100 million from investors including KKR & Co. and venture capital operations backed by Axa SA, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. and Transamerica.
More: PR NewswireTweets: @k_chiglinsky

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