Techmeme
June 30, 2023, 4:35 AM

Top News

Kent Walker / Google:
Google tells Canada's government it will remove Canadian news links from Search, News, and Discover and close Google News Showcase when Bill C-18 takes effect  —  President of Global Affairs, Google & Alphabet … The Government of Canada has enacted a new law called Bill C-18 …
Nitish Pahwa / Slate:
Canada may think it can negotiate with tech platforms over Bill C-18 based on Meta's 2021 deal with Australia, but it should take the firms' threat seriously  —  On June 22, the Canadian Parliament passed Bill C-18, also known as the Online News Act.  The new law, according to a government news release …
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
YouTube is running a test globally that limits ad blocker users to three videos, giving them the option to turn off their tool or subscribe to YouTube Premium  —  YouTube is currently running what it describes as a “small experiment globally,” warning users to toggle off their ad blockers …
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Meta plans to let people in the EU directly download apps through Facebook ads; a pilot is set to start with select Android app developers as soon as in 2023  —  Meta is planning to let people in the EU directly download apps through Facebook ads, setting the company up to eventually compete with Google and Apple's app stores.
Kotaku:
Niantic lays off 230 employees, closes its Los Angeles studio, and moves away from in-house game development, saying its expenses grew faster than its revenue  —  Pokémon Go will remain one of Niantic's top priorities moving forward  —  Niantic is shuttering its Los Angeles studio …
Bloomberg:
Filing: Fidelity refiles for a spot bitcoin ETF with the US SEC, after similar applications from BlackRock, Invesco, WisdomTree, Valkyrie, Bitwise, and others  —  Fidelity Investments is the latest financial services heavyweight to throw its name into the race to offer the first US exchange-traded fund investing in Bitcoin.
Julia Love / Bloomberg:
Police in San Francisco and other cities are obtaining warrants for Waymo and Cruise driverless car camera footage to help solve murders and other crimes  —  In December 2021, San Francisco police were working to solve the murder of an Uber driver.  As detectives reviewed local surveillance footage …
Aaron Holmes / The Information:
Court docs: Satya Nadella said Azure's cloud server business made $34B in revenue in the year ended June 2022; AWS generated $72B in revenue in the same period  —  For years Microsoft has kept a lid on details about the true size of its Azure cloud server rental business …
Alex Konrad / Forbes:
Inflection AI, a startup led by DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman that released its Pi chatbot in May 2023, raised $1.3B, a source says at a $4B valuation  —  Backed by Microsoft, Nvidia and billionaires Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt, the startup led by ex-DeepMind leader Mustafa Suleyman …
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Q&A with Marc Andreessen on “Public Intellectual Marc”, software and the physical world, his AI essay, COVID-19, Twitter, China, a16z, crypto bets, and more  —  Today's Stratechery Interview — and the last Interview of the summer — is with Marc Andreessen.
Josh Scott / BetaKit:
Ontario-based Passage, which is building a service that helps immigrants access financing to learn and work in Canada, raised a CA$40M seed led by Drive Capital  —  Ex-ApplyBoard CEO plans to finance skilled immigrants that meet Canada's workforce needs.  —  After spending seven years …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Microsoft adds AI-powered shopping tools, including GPT-generated buying guides in the US, to its Bing search engine and the Bing AI chatbot in Edge's sidebar  —  Microsoft today announced a slew of new AI-powered shopping tools for its new Bing search engine and the Bing AI chatbot in the Edge sidebar.
Andrew DeMillo / Associated Press:
Industry group NetChoice, which includes Meta and Twitter, sues Arkansas over a new law requiring parental permission for minors to create social media accounts  —  A tech industry trade group sued Arkansas on Thursday challenging a new state law that requires parental permission for minors to create social media accounts.
Sachin Ravikumar / Reuters:
The UK amends its Online Safety Bill, requiring higher age verification standards for porn sites and holding executives personally responsible for child safety  —  Britain said on Friday it had tightened protections in its Online Safety Bill that will prevent children from viewing pornography …
Brian Josephs / New York Times:
Mixtape sites democratized releasing music in the CD era, but with the rise of streaming they face the challenge of archiving music that isn't necessarily legal  —  Websites offering up free — and not always legal — music flourished in the gap between the fall of the CD era and the rise of streaming.
Kate Park / TechCrunch:
Seoul-based Levit, which operates the shopping app Alwayz that uses social features and gamification to draw customers, raised a $46M Series B led by DST Global  —  Seoul-based e-commerce company Levit, an operator of the shopping app Alwayz, wants to make the shopping experience more entertaining and affordable.

Sponsor Posts

Airtable:
Meet Airtable ProductCentral  —  The unified solution for managing your entire product development process in the AI era.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
Zoho SalesIQ turns 10: Transforming customer experiences since 2014  —  October marked a remarkable milestone for Zoho SalesIQ—our 10th anniversary.  What began in 2014 as a simple live chat tool has evolved …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 11/01 - ChatGPT Search
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:35 AM ET, June 30, 2023.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Reuters:
Richard Priday / Tom's Guide:
Brandy Betz / CoinDesk:
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Rachel Metz / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Matt Burgess / Wired:
Bloomberg:
Washington Post:
Nikkei Asia:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Ina Fried / Axios: