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April 29, 2020, 9:25 PM

Top News

Microsoft:
Microsoft Q3: revenue up 15% YoY to $35B, net income of $10.8B, up 22% YoY, Intelligent Cloud revenue of $12.3B, up 27%, LinkedIn revenue up 21%, Azure's up 59%  —  EDMOND, Wash. — April 29, 2020 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended March 31, 2020 …
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Microsoft says Teams has 75M+ DAUs, up from 44M in mid-March, a 70% increase, and attributes the growth to COVID-19  —  The coronavirus pandemic is juicing up numbers for remote work and learning.  Microsoft's fiscal Q3 2020 earnings call kicked off with CEO Satya Nadella sharing a slew of numbers.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Facebook:
Facebook Q1: $17.7B revenue, up 18% YoY, as DAUs rise 11% YoY to 1.73B, MAUs rise 10% YoY to 2.6B; COVID-19 will likely flatten Q2 revenue growth; stock up 8%+  —  Facebook, Inc. (Nasdaq: FB) today reported financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2020.
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Apple and Google release the first version of their contact tracing API, referred to as exposure notification API, in respective developer builds  —  Apple and Google have released the very first version of their exposure notification API, which they previously called the contact tracing API .
Washington Post:
Survey of US adults finds skepticism about Apple and Google's COVID-19 contact tracing efforts, with smartphone owners split 50-50 on whether they would use it  —  Nearly 3 in 5 Americans say they are either unable or unwilling to use the infection-alert apps under development by Google and Apple …
Jessica Bursztynsky / CNBC:
Filing: Lyft is laying off 17% of its workforce, or 982 staff, and will furlough 288 employees alongside salary cuts ranging from 10% to 30% for all staff  —  Lyft is laying off 982 employees and furloughing an additional 288, the company announced in a regulatory filing on Wednesday.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Google Meet is now free for everyone with a Google account, for meetings of up to 100 people, which are not time limited until September 30  —  Can it stem Zoom's meteoric growth?  —  Google is opening up its Google Meet videoconferencing service to anybody who wants to use it …
Shirin Ghaffary / Vox:
Sources: Amazon has begun cracking down on communication across its widely-read email listservs after employees used them to protest and organize  —  Amazon and other tech employees protesting during the global climate strike in September 2019.  Karen Ducey/Getty Images
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Sensor Tower: TikTok and its Chinese version, Douyin, pass 2B downloads on Google Play and Apple's App Store; last quarter's 315M downloads beat its 205M record  —  TikTok, the widely popular video sharing app developed by one of the world's most valued startup (ByteDance) …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Twitter updates its API platform to make it easier for developers and researchers to study the public conversation around COVID-19  —  Twitter is making it possible for developers and researchers to study the public conversation around COVID-19 in real time with an update to its API platform.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Spotify beats with Q1 revenue of €1.8B and net income of €1M; MAUs rose 31% YoY to 286M, premium users rose 31% to 130M, and ad-supported MAUs rose 32% to 163M  —  The coronavirus may be decimating some corners of the economy, but the impact on the digital music …
Andrew Tarantola / Engadget:
Facebook announces Blender, an open source chatbot aimed at AI research that it says has been trained on 9.4B parameters  —  It could help tomorrow's AI converse more naturally with people  —  The virtual assistants that inhabit our smartphones are helpful, sure, but they're not going to pass the Turing test any time soon.
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Qualcomm reports Q2 revenue of $5.21B, up 7% YoY, and says the pandemic reduced demand for smartphone chips by 21% YoY and will continue to do so into Q3  —  - Qualcomm reported second-quarter earnings on Wednesday.  — The stock was up more than 4% after hours, in addition to a nearly 5% rise during trading on Wednesday.
Reuters:
Sources: Amazon bought thermal cameras to check worker temperatures from Dahua, a Chinese company blacklisted by the US over alleged help monitoring minorities  —  NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) has bought cameras to take temperatures of workers during …
Doug Palmer / Politico:
Trump administration lists Amazon's websites in Canada, UK, Germany, France, and India as “notorious markets” for counterfeit goods; the move carries no penalty  —  The Trump administration Wednesday included Amazon's foreign websites in Canada, the U.K., Germany …
Samantha Cole / VICE:
USPTO says AI cannot be an inventor, as only “natural persons” can receive a patent, after two patents filed in 2019 had an AI system credited as inventor  —  On Monday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office published a decision that claims artificial intelligences cannot be inventors.
Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:
Pittsburgh-based Niche, a school search service for prospective US students, raises $35M Series C led by Radian Capital, bringing total raised to ~$44M  —  Niche, a school search platform, announced this morning it has raised a $35 million Series C round of funding led by Radian Capital.
More: EdSurgeThanks:@lisam_horton

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