Technology

Bloomberg While many other technology giants embrace the metaverse as the next frontier of growth, Sundar Pichai sees Google’s future in its oldest offering: internet search. “I feel fortunate our mission is timeless,” Pichai, who is chief executive officer of Google and its parent, Alphabet Inc, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Emily Chang for the Bloomberg New Economy ...

Bloomberg Microsoft Corp has turned on a series of data centers at three sites in Sweden that run entirely on green energy through a partnership with state-owned utility Vattenfall AB. The Swedish computer halls, covering a total area of nearly 900 acres, are the latest in the company’s expansion to meet the huge appetite from businesses for secure cloud services. ...

Bloomberg American workers are hoping that the tight pandemic labour market will translate into better pay. It might just mean robots take their jobs instead. Labour shortages and rising wages are pushing US business to invest in automation. A recent Federal Reserve survey of chief financial officers found that at firms with difficulty hiring, one-third are implementing or exploring automation ...

Bloomberg Southeast Asia’s booming internet economy is set to double to $363 billion by 2025, eclipsing the previous forecast of $300 billion, research from Google, Temasek Holdings Pte and Bain & Co. shows. E-commerce, travel, media, transport and food are driving the region’s digital growth, with online spending rising 49% in 2021 to $174 billion, the companies said in their ...

Bloomberg Spotify Technology SA agreed to acquire Findaway, an audiobook company that gives the Swedish streaming giant additional products to market alongside music and podcasts. Findaway is a distributor for many audiobook services, publishers and authors, and will continue to serve them after the deal closes, the companies said. The purchase marks Spotify’s most significant investment in audiobooks, and is ...

Bloomberg Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc will remove thousands of ad-targeting categories that helped marketers reach users of a particular race, ethnicity and religion — categories the social network says “may be perceived as sensitive.” Meta’s Facebook and Instagram don’t ask users to share their race or religion, and don’t allow marketers to target consumers based on those topics. But ...

Bloomberg A lot of the content on Facebook’s social-media services may be seen as being toxic, but that hasn’t stopped investors from pouring money back into beaten-down stock. Shares of the social media giant, now known as Meta Platforms Inc, posted their first weekly gain since early September, before a trove of internal data from a whistle-blower unleashed another round ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc is re-christening itself Meta Platforms Inc., decoupling its corporate identity from the eponymous social network mired in toxic content, and highlighting a shift to an emerging computing platform focused on virtual reality. “The metaverse is the next frontier,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in a presentation at Facebook’s Connect conference, held virtually. “From now on, we’re ...

Bloomberg Pixel 6 is the latest smartphone to be released under the Google brand and the closest thing to an iPhone running Google’s Android software. It advances mobile photography with creative new uses of artificial intelligence (AI), but it ultimately falls short of competing with the world’s most popular handset. Controlling the operating system, hardware design and now also its ...

Bloomberg A warning from Snap Inc is rattling technology investors who have got used to turbocharged growth in ad spending on social media. Executives from the maker of Snapchat said that supply-chain bottlenecks are prompting companies to hold back on online ad spend for the upcoming holiday season, meaning sales will rise by only around 30% in the fourth quarter ...