Technology

Bloomberg Google has won a multi-year deal to store Renault SA’s manufacturing data, marking the US tech company’s first major industrial cloud deal in France. The Alphabet Inc. unit will gather data from Renault factories, robots and supply chains, the companies said. Google called the contract the largest of its kind globally, though both businesses declined to comment on how ...

Bloomberg Getting products from one place to another with as little human contact as possible is becoming an imperative for businesses as retailers, warehouses and transport providers adapt to the coronavirus pandemic, seeking to minimise the risk of infections to their employees and customers. Tsubakimoto Chain Co. is seeing more demand for its sorting and conveyor systems as companies seek ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc. mistakenly shared some users’ personal data with outside developers for a longer period of time than promised, in a breach of policies the social network implemented following the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018. The company previously said that third-party app developers would be blocked from accessing user data if a person didn’t interact with the developer’s app ...

Bloomberg The takeover of fitness tracker Fitbit Inc. by Alphabet Inc.’s Google should get close scrutiny from global regulators because it would allow Google to strengthen its already dominant position in digital markets, privacy and consumer groups said. A coalition of 20 organisations raised their concerns in a statement sent to antitrust authorities in seven jurisdictions, including the US and ...

Bloomberg Chinese flexible display maker Royole Corp. is weighing an initial public offering in China while its planned US listing is put on hold, according to people familiar with the matter. Royole had filed confidentially for a US IPO that could raise about $1 billion, Bloomberg News reported earlier this year. However, the startup is now considering a listing in ...

Bloomberg Vertical agriculture company Plenty Inc. has an unusual selling point: Its crops of arugula, kale and microgreens are grown in an indoor farm run by robots. That hasn’t always been a winning proposition. Two years ago, the company had to scale back an ambitious international expansion plan, realising it wasn’t ready to bear the cost of pricey new markets ...

Bloomberg Microsoft Corp. said it will close its physical store locations permanently but will continue to invest in a digital storefront that, along with third-party retailers, has driven sales of products such as the Xbox game player and Surface tablets. The move will result in a pretax charge of about $450 million, or 5 cents a share, in the current ...

Bloomberg Consumers around the world will soon be able to know intricate life details of salmon they eat with a new blockchain initiative from top exporter Norway. The Norwegian Seafood Association has partnered with International Business Machines Corp. and technology provider Atea ASA to gather data on how salmon is bred, stored and shipped, information that consumers will eventually access ...

Bloomberg Twitter Inc. will let users record and post their tweets as short audio clips directly in the app, which other users can then listen to from their Twitter feed. The idea is to give people more space to share than allowed by typing the maximum 280 characters. “Sometimes 280 characters aren’t enough and some conversational nuances are lost in ...

Bloomberg Just a month ago, the chief executive officer of Wirecard AG boasted on Twitter that the future would still be bright for the digital payments company when “all the noise and dust settles.” At the time, Markus Braun was a paper billionaire. But over the course of a couple of days, the fintech veteran has been forced to step-down ...