Maria Deutscher
Latest from Maria Deutscher
Adding to mounting global pressure on tech giants, UK to levy ‘digital services tax’
The U.K. government today announced plans to levy a “digital services tax” on major tech firms that could add up to hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The proposed scheme, which is set to take effect in April 2020, would require companies such as Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. to pay a 2 percent tax ...
Following HipChat sale, Atlassian offloads its Jitsi video conferencing platform
After selling its HipChat and Stride team collaboration services to Slack Technologies Inc. in June, Atlassian Corp. PLC is taking another big step back from the video communications market. The company today announced that it has sold its Jitsi video conferencing platform to 8×8 Inc., a major provider of online meeting services for the enterprise. The ...
Sales AI provider Conversica lands $31M in new funding
Conversica Inc., a Foster City, California-based artificial intelligence provider focused on making sales teams more productive, today announced that it has raised $31 million in new funding. Conversica offers an AI platform that enables companies to build conversational agents for automating interactions with prospects. These agents can engage users via email and texts, with support for ...
Microsoft completes $7.5B acquisition of code hosting platform GitHub
As of today, GitHub is officially a Microsoft Corp. business. GitHub Chief Executive Officer Nat Friedman (pictured, second from the left) shared the news in a blog post, exactly one week after the European Union approved the $7.5 billion transaction. Friedman took the opportunity to reiterate the commitments that Microsoft made in June when it ...
Report: Samsung planning 5G-capable Galaxy S10, new foldable handset
New details have emerged about Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s next flagship smartphone and the foldable handset that the company recently confirmed it’s developing. Citing anonymous sources, Bloomberg reported today that the upcoming Galaxy S10 will support 5G networking technology, which promises to enable connections 10 to 100 times faster than today’s carrier infrastructure. Leading telecom companies ...
UK fines Facebook for Cambridge Analytica breach as EU lawmakers demand audit
The U.K’s privacy watchdog today hit Facebook Inc. with a 500,000-pound fine over its handling of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, upholding a July decision that the social network unsuccessfully tried to contest. The sum, which amounts to $664,000, won’t make much of a dent in the company’s bottom line. Analysts polled by Zacks Investment Research project that Facebook ...
Google brings its Lens AI recognition service into image searches
Google LLC wants to make image search results more useful through a newly launched integration with Lens, its artificial intelligence-powered image recognition service. The company has been steadily adding new ways for consumers to interact with Lens since the service’s release in October 2017. Google initially offered the technology as an exclusive feature for its ...
AWS announces plans for first cloud data centers in Africa
Amazon Web Services Inc. is extending its global data center network to Africa. The cloud giant today announced plans to open an AWS region in Cape Town, South Africa, by mid-2020 that will enable regional customers to run their workloads locally for the first time. In AWS parlance, a region is a set of data centers locations, ...
Italy’s antitrust watchdog fines Apple and Samsung for slowing users’ phones
Italy’s antitrust watchdog today fined Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. over allegations that they used software updates to slow down handsets, thereby potentially pushing some consumers to buy new models. The issue of planned obsolescence in the mobile industry entered the spotlight last year when Apple admitted to throttling older iPhones. The company said ...
Samsung, Uber co-founder back $8M round into enterprise AR startup Spatial
Augmented reality startup Spatial Inc. exited stealth mode today with $8 million in fresh funding to bring immersive experiences into the enterprise collaboration market. The New York-based startup is backed by an impressive roster of investors. The round saw the participation of Uber Technologies Inc. co-founder Garrett Camp, Zynga Inc. founder Mark Pincus, Samsung Electronics ...