Technology

Bloomberg Facebook Inc. acquired Giphy, a library of video clips and animated images known as GIFs that can be attached to messages to express emotion, adding features that could encourage users to communicate through its apps. Giphy will join the Instagram group within Facebook, according to a blog post, and the social-media giant has extended offers to more than 100 ...

Bloomberg Ubisoft Entertainment SA sued Apple Inc. and Google LLC, accusing the companies of selling a ripoff of its popular video game “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege.” “Area F2,” created by Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd.’s Ejoy.com, is a “near carbon copy” of Rainbow Six: Siege, and that can’t be “seriously be disputed,” Ubisoft said in a complaint filed Friday in ...

Bloomberg Mobile phone applications that trace the new coronavirus could help decide whether business travellers and vacation-goers get to meet clients or visit their favourite beaches this summer. But politics and disagreement over what system to use threatens to thwart that solution. Governments in Europe and elsewhere are turning to voluntary mobile apps to help trace possible infections of the ...

Bloomberg The UK’s contact-tracing mobile phone app includes code that could allow authorities access to a user’s detailed location data and to send information to Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, according to an initial technical analysis carried out by Privacy International. Like governments around the world, the UK is developing a voluntary mobile app that uses Bluetooth technology to ...

Bloomberg For Toru Kawakatsu, winning a 70-second spot on Nintendo Co.’s popular Direct showcase last month was the culmination of an unusual strategy many dismissed as quixotic. His four-person game studio, dubbed Petit Depotto, started work on an adventure game called Gnosia for the PlayStation Vita portable console back in 2015. The Vita was already ailing back then, and Sony ...

Bloomberg Twitter Inc. has more users than ever, but its advertising business was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic at the end of the first quarter. The social-media company reported revenue of $808 million in the period, ahead of Wall Street estimates of $773 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The shares surged about 10% in early trading. From ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc.’s revenue held up better than expected in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the company warned that the worst of the slowdown in ad spending isn’t over, raising the prospect of a bigger hit across the digital-advertising market. Chief Financial Officer Dave Wehner noted the “potential for an even more severe advertising industry contraction.” His ...

Bloomberg Alphabet Inc. is defying political taboos with record stock buybacks as mass unemployment and economic uncertainty boosts scrutiny for the long-controversial practice. S&P 500 companies are set to reduce buybacks by an estimated 50% this year, according to Goldman Sachs. Yet, the Google parent company bought $8.5 billion of its own shares in the first quarter alone. That’s the ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc. is launching a new group video chat product meant to capitalise on a world now stuck indoors and offer an alternative to services that have exploded in popularity in recent months, like Zoom. Messenger Rooms, a feature that will be available on Facebook’s core social network and its Messenger app, will allow video chats among as many ...

Bloomberg Apple Inc. and Google said they are putting stronger privacy protections in their upcoming contact-tracing tool for Covid-19 and that an early version will launch for developers next week. The companies said the system’s tracking keys — a string of characters linked to a user’s device — will be generated in more random ways, and that Bluetooth data will ...