Technology

  Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc.’s battle with Apple Inc. over digital assistants is moving to a new venue: hotel rooms, where Alexa and Siri are both vying to be the voice-controlled platform of choice for travellers. Marriott International Inc., the world’s biggest lodging company, is testing devices from the two tech giants at its Aloft hotel in Boston’s Seaport district to ...

  AP Google wants to make it easier for you to find answers and recommendations on smartphones without having to think about what to ask its search engine. Its new feature, called “shortcuts ,” will appear as a row of icons below the Google search box. Instead of having to ponder and then speak or type a request, the shortcuts ...

  Bloomberg Dong Ximiao was buying a meal at KFC in Hangzhou on a recent Sunday and pulled out his phone to pay, like everyone does in China, when the cashier asked: “Alipay or WeChat Pay?” The problem was, Dong wanted to use Apple Pay for the 36 yuan ($5.20) bill, but the cashier told him she had never handled ...

  Bloomberg Google is giving marketers more control over their online ads after a slew of brands halted spending in the UK over concerns about offensive content. The Alphabet Inc. unit also expanded its definition of hate speech under its advertising policy to include vulnerable groups, which includes those discriminated against because of their identify, socioeconomic class or country of ...

  Bloomberg Eighth-grader Lakaysha Governor spends two hours on the bus getting back and forth to school each day. Thanks to a grant from Google, she can now use that time more productively and get her homework done. The aspiring forensic anthropologist is one of nearly 2,000 students in South Carolina’s rural Berkeley County who will ride to school on ...

  Bloomberg SoftBank Group Corp. invested $300 million in WeWork Cos., a person familiar with the matter said, an influx of cash that values the New York-based coworking giant at more than $17 billion. The investment from SoftBank is the first in what will probably be a much larger stake, said the person, who asked not to be identified . ...

  Bloomberg ARM, the UK-based semiconductor design firm, introduced a new chip targeted at markets ranging from self-driving cars to artificial intelligence. The new design, DynamIQ, is an update to ARM’s existing Cortex-A offering. The latter made up almost 20 percent of all ARM-based chips in the first three quarters of 2016, according to the company’s last available regulatory filing. ...

  Bloomberg Swiss watchmakers are diving further into the unproven smartwatch market, with Montblanc, TAG Heuer and Tissot seeking to attract younger shoppers with a technology the industry largely snubbed until consumers began turning away from traditional timepieces. TAG Heuer recently unveiled the new generation of a $1,650 smartwatch it makes with partners Google and Intel. Montblanc followed with the ...

  NEW YORK / AP Many people are still not taking routine precautions to safeguard their email accounts — and hackers are exploiting that. According to US officials who filed charges in a massive Yahoo break-in, Russian hackers didn’t have to work very hard to break into people’s email accounts, even those belonging to government officials or powerful executives. You ...

  Bloomberg Duan Yongping is convinced Tim Cook didn’t have a clue who he was when they first met a couple years ago. The Apple boss probably does now. Duan is the reclusive billionaire who founded Oppo and Vivo, the twin smartphone brands that dealt the world’s largest company a stinging defeat in China last year. Once derided as cheap ...