By Brian Fung, CNN Microsoft’s $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard could harm competition by letting Microsoft restrict Activision’s video games to proprietary platforms such as Xbox, UK officials said Wednesday, in the latest challenge to the tech giant’s blockbuster acquisition. The UK’s competition regulator said the proposed deal, which would make Microsoft the world’s
Continue ReadingCNN By Brian Fung, CNN Access to Twitter has been restored in Turkey, according to internet monitoring company Netblocks. “The restoration comes after authorities held a meeting with Twitter to ‘remind Twitter of its obligations’ on content takedowns and disinformation, ” the firm tweeted. Earlier on Wednesday, NetBlocks said traffic filtering had been applied at
Continue ReadingBy Brian Fung, CNN Access to Twitter has been restored in Turkey, according to internet monitoring company Netblocks. “The restoration comes after authorities held a meeting with Twitter to ‘remind Twitter of its obligations’ on content takedowns and disinformation, ” the firm tweeted. Earlier on Wednesday, NetBlocks said traffic filtering had been applied at the
Continue ReadingBy Clare Duffy, CNN Business Microsoft’s Bing search engine has never made much of a dent in Google’s dominance in the more than 13 years since it launched. Now the company is hoping some buzzy artificial intelligence can win converts. Microsoft on Tuesday announced an updated version of Bing designed to combine the fun and
Continue ReadingCNN By Catherine Thorbecke, CNN Google on Wednesday detailed plans to use artificial intelligence technology to radically change how people search for information online, one day after rival Microsoft announced a revamped version of Bing powered by AI. At an event in its Paris office, Prabhakar Raghavan, an SVP at Google, said the company will
Continue ReadingBy Catherine Thorbecke, CNN Google on Wednesday detailed plans to use artificial intelligence technology to radically change how people search for information online, one day after rival Microsoft announced a revamped version of Bing powered by AI. At an event in its Paris office, Prabhakar Raghavan, an SVP at Google, said the company will bring
Continue ReadingBy Catherine Thorbecke, CNN Zoom on Tuesday said it will lay off about 1,300 employees, or approximately 15% of its staff, becoming the latest tech company to announce significant job cuts as a pandemic-fueled surge in demand for digital services wanes. In a memo to employees, Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan said the layoffs would impact
Continue ReadingBy Clare Duffy, CNN Microsoft on Tuesday announced a revamp of its Bing search engine and Edge web browser powered by artificial intelligence, weeks after it confirmed plans to invest billions in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. With the updates, Bing will not only provide a list of search results, but will also answer questions,
Continue ReadingBy Brian Fung, CNN Twitter temporarily suspended Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines’s account for violations of the company’s sensitive media policy. For several hours on Tuesday, Daines’ Twitter profile displayed messages indicating the account was “temporarily unavailable because it violates the Twitter Media Policy.” According to an aide to the senator, Daines’ account was suspended
Continue ReadingBy Brian Fung, CNN Top US lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee want answers from Meta on a newly disclosed internal investigation it conducted in 2018 that found tens of thousands of software developers in China, Russia and other “high-risk” countries may have had access to detailed Facebook user data before the company clamped down
Continue ReadingBy Rob McLean, CNN Microsoft reported that a “full restoration” of its Outlook service was nearly complete mid-morning Tuesday after a widespread outage for several hours overnight halted email and disrupted Teams and other products. Earlier Tuesday morning, Microsoft said on its service page that it had “applied mitigation throughout the affected infrastructure, and we’re
Continue ReadingCNN By Michelle Toh, CNN Alibaba says it will launch its own ChatGPT-style tool, becoming the latest tech giant to jump on the chatbot bandwagon. The Chinese behemoth said it was testing an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot internally. It did not share details of when it would launch or what the application would be called. “Frontier
Continue ReadingBy Michelle Toh, CNN Shares in Baidu soared on Tuesday, after the Chinese search engine giant said it would be launching its own ChatGPT-style service. Its artificial intelligence chatbot called “Wenxin Yiyan” in Chinese or “ERNIE Bot” in English will launch in March, a spokesperson told CNN on Tuesday, adding that the project is currently
Continue ReadingBy Catherine Thorbecke, CNN Google on Monday unveiled a new chatbot tool dubbed “Bard” in an apparent bid to compete with the viral success of ChatGPT. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and parent company Alphabet, said in a blog post that Bard will be opened up to “trusted testers” starting Monday, with plans to make
Continue ReadingBy Brian Fung, CNN Dell plans to lay off roughly 5% of its workforce, the company said in a regulatory filing Monday, in the latest example of tech companies cutting costs in an uncertain economic climate. Dell has about 133,000 employees, the company told CNN. At that level, the 5% cut would represent more than
Continue ReadingBy Michelle Toh, CNN Apple supplier Foxconn says its January monthly sales hit a record high as it bounced back from Covid-19 disruptions in China. In a sales update on Sunday, the Taiwanese manufacturing giant reported revenue of 660.4 billion Taiwan dollars ($22 billion) in January, 48% more than the same period a year ago
Continue ReadingBy AJ Willingham, CNN The season of Twitter shakeups isn’t over yet. The social media platform has announced it will eliminate free API access for third-party developers. While the concept of an “API restriction” may not sound dramatic, this latest change has users once again worried about Twitter’s future. In simple terms, this means the
Continue ReadingBy Brian Fung, CNN Activision Blizzard will pay $35 million to settle US government allegations that the video game giant violated a whistleblower protection rule and lacked processes to collect workplace misconduct complaints, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The agreement announced Friday is the latest blow to the embattled publisher, which has faced
Continue ReadingBy Jennifer Korn, CNN A first-generation 2007 iPhone sold for more than $63,000 in an online auction Sunday, more than 100 times its original cost. Dubbed a “first-edition” device by auctioneer LCG Auctions, the box had never been opened. The original iPhone cost $599 and offered early Apple adopters a 3.5-inch screen with a 2-megapixel
Continue ReadingBy Brian Fung, CNN A member of the Senate Intelligence Committee is calling on Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores over concerns about national security, in the latest indication of mounting scrutiny on the short-form video app from members of Congress. In a letter sent to the two tech giants on
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