December, 2019

• 21 December

  German railroads should thank Greta Thunberg

  

  The upshot of a much-publicised Twitter altercation between climate activist Greta Thunberg and Germany’s state-owned rail operator, Deutsche Bahn: Train companies aren’t really ready for an increasing number of passengers who want to fly less to minimise their carbon footprint. Last week, Thunberg tweeted a picture of herself sitting on the floor in a train vestibule, next to a pile ...

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• 21 December

  Facebook pursues music video rights in challenge to YouTube

  

  Bloomberg Facebook Inc is pursuing rights to music videos from major record labels, programming that could boost interest in its Watch video service, according to people familiar with the matter. The company is in the midst of negotiating new licensing deals with the three largest music companies, Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group, and has asked for ...

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• 21 December

  AirPods, TikTok defined 2019 tech

  

  Bloomberg It’s mid-December, which means it’s time for the staff prognosticators at Bloomberg Technology to sheepishly revisit last year’s predictions while peering ahead with a brash certainty that we haven’t earned. On its surface, 2019 was the difficult year that most of us anticipated. The simmering trade tensions (perhaps diffused by the new phase-one trade agreement) raised the prospect of ...

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• 21 December

  NYC awaits Apple as FB, Google pounce in tech office boom

  

  Bloomberg One year after the tech giant announced it would bring hundreds of jobs to New York, and on the heels of major Manhattan lease announcements by Facebook Inc and Amazon.com Inc, the city’s real estate industry is wondering when the iPhone developer will make its move. “The absence is surprising,” Jim Underhill, chief executive officer of commercial-property firm Cresa. ...

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• 21 December

  Mercedes to pay up to $20mn for recall lapses

  

  Bloomberg Daimler AG’s Mercedes Benz has agreed to pay as much as $20 million in penalties for violations of how it operated its vehicle recall programme. Mercedes Benz’s US arm must pay $13 million immediately while the remainder is deferred in case there are additional violations. The penalty was announced by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The company had ...

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• 21 December

  Apple, Google, Amazon want one language for smart devices

  

  Bloomberg Apple Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Amazon.com Inc — three of the biggest smart-home and voice-assistant providers — are joining forces to make internet-connected homes easier to set up and safer to use. The rivals announced that they’re working with the Zigbee Alliance, a foundation that promotes standards for the Internet of Things, and its members including Samsung Electronics ...

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• 21 December

  Boeing woes mount as capsule space station docking scrapped

  

  Bloomberg Boeing Co. scrubbed plans for its CST-100 Starliner to rendezvous with the International Space Station on the capsule’s debut flight, raising doubts over whether the company will be able to ferry astronauts to the orbiting laboratory next year. The mishap represented another high-profile setback for an aerospace giant that was already contending with the prolonged grounding of its top-selling ...

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• 21 December

  Walmart set to double down on supercenters

  

  Bloomberg Walmart Inc. plans to place its giant brick-and-mortar stores at the center of its strategy to take on its web-based retail rival Amazon.com Inc., Dow Jones reported. Walmart President and CEO Doug McMillon, outlining the plans at a strategy meeting, pitched a vision where the company’s stores and its retail shopping model is the base of an expanding array ...

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• 21 December

  United is taking Boeing 737 Max off schedule until June

  

  Bloomberg United Airlines Holdings Inc. has given up on flying the Boeing Co. 737 Max until June, two months longer than rival US carriers, as the regulatory fate of the grounded aircraft remains unclear. The Max will be removed from its schedule until June 4, the Chicago-based carrier said. American Airlines Group Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co., the other US ...

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• 21 December

  Pilot in fatal Atlas crash had repeated flight-test failures

  

  Bloomberg A pilot on a jet carrying Amazon.com Inc. packages that crashed near Houston in February had a record of repeatedly flunking flight tests and may have become disoriented in clouds, according to newly released documents. The pilot mistakenly thought the plane’s nose was pointed too high and jerked the jet down so steeply that the Boeing Co. 767 dove ...

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