Technology

Bloomberg Apple Inc. reversed course on a decision to force popular blogging platform WordPress to add in-app purchases to its app, a move that could help lessen tensions between Apple and developers amid a public battle with Epic Games. The WordPress said that Apple had informed it that it had 30 days to add in-app-purchases to its application, which would ...

Bloomberg Silicon Valley software notables — Unity Technologies Inc., Snowflake Inc. and Asana Inc. — are set to disclose their financials as soon as next week ahead of September trading debuts, according to people familiar with their plans. Palantir Technologies Inc., which also is planning to go public in late September through a direct listing, is nearing disclosure of its ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc. told the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that the social-media company needs clear guidance on how to comply with new laws that grant consumers the right to transfer their data, without running afoul of user privacy. Regulators in Europe and California have ruled that consumers have the right to collect and move their personal information to new websites ...

Bloomberg Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced the much-anticipated Gotham Knights, the first new Batman game in five years. The game will be out in 2021. During the event, developers showed footage of Batgirl and other superheroes fighting through Gotham in a setting where Batman is dead. Warner Bros. had been teasing Gotham Knights for nearly a year through Twitter posts ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc joined a growing list of developers to publicly criticise Apple Inc over its revenue-sharing policy for in-app purchases, suggesting the iPhone maker’s fee structure is hurting small businesses during a global pandemic. The social network rolled out a paid events feature in 20 countries, offering businesses the ability to charge users for access to live video streams, ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc is beginning to merge the chat function of its Instagram and Messenger services, the Verge reported. The changes are coming with an update of the company’s apps on Apple Inc’s devices as well as Android devices, said the Verge, citing reports from users. Once updated, the Instagram app embeds Messenger functionality, and adds more emojis and features ...

Bloomberg At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, contact tracing was considered the best hope for getting people back to offices and schools safely without a vaccine. The tech industry was optimistic that apps would provide a faster, more effective alternative to the usual painstaking human process of calling and interviewing the networks of infected people to figure out possible ...

Bloomberg Industrial robots are now being used to assemble everything from airplanes to smartphones, using human-like arms to mechanically repeat the same processes over and over, thousands of times a day with nanometric precision. But according to a new report entitled “Rogue Automation,” some robots have flaws that could make them vulnerable to advanced hackers, who could steal data or ...

Bloomberg Silicon Valley giants used to snap up smaller tech firms at will, safe in the knowledge that antitrust regulators rarely prevented them from expanding into new industries. The European Commission showed that those days are gone, opening an in-depth probe into Google’s $2.1 billion takeover of Fitbit Inc. — an investigation that focuses on the potentially huge value of ...

Bloomberg Microsoft Corp. is exploring an acquisition of TikTok’s operations in the US, according to a people familiar with the matter. A deal would give the software company a popular social-media service and relieve US government pressure on the Chinese owner of the video-sharing app. The Trump administration has been weighing whether to direct China-based ByteDance Ltd. to divest its ...