Technology

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 ...

Bloomberg The pandemic has many of us acting in unusual ways, and the world’s largest e-commerce company is no exception. In a stunning reprieve from the prerogatives of capitalism, Amazon.com Inc. has begun discouraging users from buying things they don’t need. Amazon is suppressing extraneous consumption in various ways, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. It isn’t ...

Bloomberg By mid-March, John Lyotier’s travel software business Left Technologies Inc. was cratering with the spread of the pandemic. Seeking to cut costs, he reached out to his office landlord, who offered rent relief. Then he contacted Amazon.com Inc., asking to “explore creative financing opportunities” for his monthly cloud-computing bill. The response was succinct. “’Nope, that’s the way it is,’” ...

Bloomberg Twitter Inc. lost its six-year legal battle to let the public know exactly how many requests it received from the FBI to snoop on private user accounts. A federal judge said the government convinced her that granting the request “would be likely to lead to grave or imminent harm to the national security.” Twitter broke ranks with other large ...

Bloomberg Apple Inc and Google unveiled a rare partnership to add technology to their smartphone platforms that will alert users if they have come into contact with a person with Covid-19. People must opt in to the system, but it has the potential to monitor about a third of the world’s population. The technology, known as contact-tracing, is designed to ...

Bloomberg Latin America’s delivery app wars are intensifying as Brazil’s iFood and a unit of Delivery Hero SE said they will merge operations in Colombia, setting up a battle with SoftBank-backed Rappi Inc on its home turf. Sao Paulo-based iFood and Domcilios.com, a subsidiary of Delivery Hero, said the merger will create one of the largest food delivery companies in ...

Bloomberg With the vast majority of flights out of New York currently canceled and citizens sheltering in place, it would seem there isn’t much use for a helicopter service that’s made a name for itself by transporting the city’s elite above Manhattan gridlock. But Blade Urban Air Mobility Inc quickly adapted to the new way of the world—both to aid ...

Bloomberg Alphabet Inc’s Wing unit is seeing a dramatic increase in the number of customers using its drone delivery service in rural Virginia during the Covid-19 pandemic. Wing, which began routine deliveries under a test programme approved by the federal government last October, has added new vendors and expanded the items customers can order to better serve people during the ...