Techmeme
August 5, 2024, 6:50 PM

Top News

Leah Nylen / Bloomberg:
US v. Google: a federal judge rules that Google's payments to make its search engine the default on smartphone web browsers violate antitrust law  —  Google's payments to make its search engine the default on smartphone web browsers violates US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday …
More: The Verge, New York Times, CNN, Ars Technica, Axios, 9to5Mac, SiliconANGLE, Investor's Business Daily, The Guardian, CNBC, The Register, Android Authority, Computerworld, PCMag, Capital Brief, Wired, Business Insider, 9to5Google, MacRumors, Search Engine Land, Barron's Online, The Information, BBC, Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg Law, Financial Times, GeekWire, TechCrunch, Washington Post, Politico, The Independent, Engadget, UPI, Light Reading, Fox Business, News/Media Alliance, The Hill, Reclaim The Net, Cult of Mac, Patently Apple, GZERO, Spokesman.com, Adweek, Sky News, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Business Times, Search Engine Roundtable, Fast Company, Mashable, Semafor, LAW.com, Quartz, New York Post, PhoneArena, San Francisco Examiner, MarTech, The National, The Drum, Fortune, Yahoo Finance, The Hollywood Reporter, Tom's Guide, Entrepreneur, and Philip Elmer‑DeWitt
Aditya Soni / Reuters:
Apple, Alphabet, and Amazon shares fell 4%+, Nvidia fell 6%, and Microsoft and Meta fell ~3% amid worries about a potential US recession and massive AI spending  —  Apple (AAPL.O) and other heavyweight companies sold off on Monday as U.S. recession fears and Berkshire Hathaway's (BRKa.N) …
Tanaya Macheel / CNBC:
Bitcoin dropped below $50,000, its lowest level since February 2024 and down 17% since August 3, and ether dropped 15% to ~$2,300, as global markets plummet  —  Cryptocurrencies tumbled amid a global market sell-off spurred by recession fears.  —  The price of bitcoin was last lower by 7% …
Samantha Cole / 404 Media:
Sources: Nvidia scraped sources like Netflix and YouTube to train an unreleased foundational model; concerned staff were told they had full clearance to do so  —  Nvidia scraped videos from Youtube and several other sources to compile training data for its AI products, internal Slack chats …
New York Times:
In an email to staff, Linda Yaccarino says X will close its San Francisco office and move workers to San Jose offices and a new Palo Alto office shared with xAI  —  Elon Musk, X's owner, has clashed with California's leaders and has said the social media platform would move its headquarters to Texas.
Cade Metz / New York Times:
Elon Musk revives his OpenAI lawsuit, filing a complaint in California to allege that OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Greg Brockman breached OpenAI's founding contract  —  The Tesla chief executive has renewed claims that the A.I. start-up put profits and commercial interests ahead of the public good.
Washington Post:
In a letter, the secretaries of state from PA, WA, MI, NM, and MN ask Elon Musk to change X's AI assistant Grok to stop it from spreading false election info  —  Grok, the AI search assistant on Musk's X platform, suggested that Kamala Harris had missed the ballot deadline in nine states.  She hasn't.
Cherlynn Low / Engadget:
In a fifth dev beta for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS 15, Safari gets Distraction Control, which lets users block distracting elements on the page like pop-ups  —  You'll get to choose which page element to block on a site, as long as it doesn't change.  —  Ahead of the full release of iOS 18 …
Anne VanderMey / Bloomberg:
AI chip startup Groq raised a $640M Series D led by BlackRock at a $2.8B valuation, up from $1B after raising $300M in 2021, and adds an Intel executive as COO  —  Cisco and Samsung invested in the $640 million deal  —  Artificial intelligence startup Groq Inc. has raised $640 million in new funding …
Bloomberg:
CrowdStrike says Delta CEO Ed Bastian failed to respond to an assistance offer from CEO George Kurtz; CrowdStrike hopes Delta will “agree to work cooperatively”  —  The allegation, in a letter Sunday from attorneys for the technology firm, builds upon CrowdStrike's claim last week …
Harshita Mary Varghese / Reuters:
Lumen, which sells data center networking and security products, says it secured new deals worth $5B from tech companies amid AI surge; LUMN up 35%+ after hours  —  Telecommunications firm Lumen Technologies (LUMN.N) has secured new deals worth $5 billion from cloud and tech companies …
Reuters:
Software consultancy Thoughtworks to be taken private by PE firm Apax Partners for ~$1.75B; TWKS jumps 26%+ but is still far below its 2021 IPO price  —  Thoughtworks (TWKS.O) on Monday agreed to be taken private by Apax Partners in a deal worth about $1.75 billion, the technology consultancy firm said …
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with Booking CEO Glenn Fogel on the company's Booking.com, OpenTable, Kayak, Priceline, and Agoda brands, using AI to book trips, hotel industry, and more  —  The head of online hotel and flight giant Booking on how competition, regulation, and AI are changing travel.
More: Skift
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Source: Placer.ai, which provides AI-powered market research based on location data, raised $75M at a $1.45B valuation, up from $1B at its Series C  —  Location data, for better or worse, continues to be a part of the bedrock of how apps are built.  Now a startup developing AI market research based …

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