Techmeme
March 8, 2021, 5:35 PM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
EU approves Microsoft's $7.5B deal to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, without conditions  —  Microsoft will have 23 first-party game studios  —  The European Commission has approved Microsoft's $7.5 billion deal to acquire ZeniMax Media …
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Microsoft took nearly two months to issue a patch after hearing of Exchange Server's flaws, even as a mass-hack unfolded; some of the flaws were 10+ years old  —  Sometimes when a complex story takes us by surprise or knocks us back on our heels, it pays to revisit the events in a somewhat linear fashion.
Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal:
Source: Discord generated $130M in revenue in 2020, up from $45M in 2019, and isn't profitable; CEO Jason Citron says its focus will be subscriptions, not ads  —  The chat startup is leaning on its millions of passionate users to fuel growth after nearly tripling revenue last year
Jeff John Roberts / Decrypt:
PayPal says it acquired Tel Aviv-based Curv, which facilitates secure storage of cryptocurrency, source says for nearly $200M  —  PayPal announced on Monday it has acquired Curv, a Tel Aviv-based startup that uses a novel form of cryptography to safeguard customers' stashes of Bitcoin and other digital assets.
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Apple partners with Common Sense Media, which specializes in age-based content reviews, to curate collections of podcasts for kids in the US  —  Coming to Apple Podcasts in the US  —  Apple is making it easier for parents to find podcasts to listen to with their kids.
Nate Lanxon / Bloomberg:
GSMA says Mobile World Congress Barcelona will go ahead in June, with plans for up to 50,000 in-person attendees  —  - MWC Barcelona is industry body's main source of revenue  — Gathering was among first major Covid-related cancelations  —  The global mobile industry is planning …
Marty Swant / Forbes:
Neeva, which is developing an ad-free search engine to be funded by subscriptions, raises $40M, valuing it at $300M and bringing the total raised to $77.5M  —  It wasn't long ago that Sridhar Ramaswamy was the king of Google advertising.  —  During his 15-year career at the search startup …
Dr. Ian Cutress / AnandTech:
Intel, Microsoft, DARPA announce the DPRIVE program, which aims to make fully homomorphic encryption fast enough for practical use, via custom silicon on Azure  —  When considering data privacy and protections, there is no data more important than personal data, whether that's medical, financial, or even social.
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Secureworks: a second threat actor targeting SolarWinds flaws, by adding backdoors via Orion bugs, has characteristics that suggest the group is based in China  —  Back in December 2020, days after the massive SolarWinds supply chain attack came to light, Microsoft warned …
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
The new Google Pay app that came out of beta this week replaces a perfectly fine service for P2P users with a less-functional service that has more fees  —  For P2P users, the new app has fewer features, is less convenient, and has more fees.  —  The new Google Pay app came out of beta this week …
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
McAfee announces the sale of its enterprise business to private equity firm Symphony Technology Group in an all-cash deal worth $4B  —  Join Transform 2021 for the most important themes in enterprise AI & Data.  Learn more.  —  McAfee is selling its enterprise cybersecurity unit …

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