On Wednesday, Activision Blizzard employees will walk out of work to protest the company’s response to a giant sexual harassment and workplace discrimination lawsuit filed by the state of California. Now Blizzard, the studio at the center of many of those specific allegations, is giving the protest its blessing. Blizzard leadership emailed studio employees today to let them know they …
TikTok’s live video push continues with new features for creators and viewers, Chaim Gartenberg
TikTok has announced a slew of new live video features coming to the popular video app platform for both creators and viewers, including scheduled “events,” picture-in-picture support for iOS and Android, and group livestreams with two users. It’s part of the company’s increased efforts to push users to create and watch live videos. A lot of the new features bring …
The iPhone 12’s strong momentum helps Apple to another huge quarter, Chris Welch
Apple’s string of record-breaking earnings reports continued on Tuesday, with the company posting a strong fiscal third quarter that saw $81.43 billion in revenue. That’s a year-over-year increase of 36 percent and a new all-time record for the June quarter. It also crushes the $73 billion figure that analysts were expecting. Apple recorded a net quarterly profit of $21.7 billion. …
eBay cyberstalking conspirator sentenced to 18 months in prison, Adi Robertson
Former eBay security manager Philip Cooke has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for his role in an intense stalking campaign against a pair of eBay critics. A Massachusetts judge issued the sentence nine months after Cooke pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses. He’s the first of seven former eBay employees to …
Google sets all-time records as search and YouTube profits soar, Sean Hollister
Last quarter, Google roared out of the post-pandemic-peak period with a record $17.9 billion in profit, finally joining other tech giants that had been raking it in despite (or perhaps because of) the rise of COVID-19. But Alphabet’s Q2 2021 earnings do it one better — the company just set an all-time record revenue of $61.9 billion this quarter, and …
Google sets all-time records as search and YouTube profits soar, Sean Hollister
Last quarter, Google roared out of the post-pandemic-peak period with a record $17.9 billion in profit, finally joining other tech giants that had been raking it in despite (or perhaps because of) the rise of COVID-19. But Alphabet’s Q2 2021 earnings do it one better — the company just set an all-time record revenue of $61.9 billion this quarter, and …
Microsoft reports weaker Surface and Windows revenue amid global chip shortage, Tom Warren
Microsoft posted the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2021 financial results today, reporting revenue of $46.2 billion and a net income of $16.5 billion. Revenue is up 21 percent, and net income has increased by 47 percent. While cloud and Office services have boosted Microsoft’s revenues, it’s clear that the global chip shortage is taking its toll elsewhere. With the …
Microsoft reports weaker Surface and Windows revenue amid global chip shortage, Tom Warren
Microsoft posted the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2021 financial results today, reporting revenue of $46.2 billion and a net income of $16.5 billion. Revenue is up 21 percent, and net income has increased by 47 percent. While cloud and Office services have boosted Microsoft’s revenues, it’s clear that the global chip shortage is taking its toll. With the PC …
Twitter hires the team behind news summary app Brief, Jay Peters
Twitter will be bringing on the team building Brief, an app that summarizes news, the company announced Tuesday. The Brief team, which consists of four people, will work on projects that support features like Spaces and Explore, a Twitter spokesperson tells The Verge. Twitter declined to share details on the terms of the deal, but the spokesperson said that Twitter …
Twitter is testing notices that tell you if your account is suspended or locked, Jay Peters
Twitter is testing new notices that tell you if your account has been suspended or locked and has been put in read-only mode for violating Twitter’s rules. The notices, announced Tuesday, will show up as a banner at the top of your feed. They are in testing across a small percentage of Twitter users on iOS, Android, and the web, …