Square said Thursday it has agreed to acquire website-building company Weebly for $365 million. The cash-and-stock deal will allow small business customers to use both Weebly and Square to easily build professional websites and online stores, the companies said in a statement. The deal is expected to help Square accelerate its international expansion, as nearly …
Read More »
T-Mobile and Sprint, the third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers in the US respectively, expect to complete negotiations for a merger as early as next week, sources tell Reuters. Japanese conglomerate Softbank Group, which controls Sprint, and German company Deutsche Telekom, controller of T-Mobile, are discussing terms for how they would exercise voting control over the combined company, the news agency …
Read More »
Update, June 7: The Amazon Fire TV Cube has been officially announced. Amazon has dropped some hints about a next-generation video streaming Fire TV, apparently confirming information that leaked out late last year. An Amazon page invites customers to sign up to learn more about the “Fire TV Cube,” promising that details are coming soon. The page, first reported by …
Read More »
Don’t try to monkey with copyright laws. That’s the message a US appeals court seemed to deliver Monday to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, ruling that monkeys lack standing to sue for copyright protection and animal rights groups can’t act as legal guardian in such matters. The bizarre legal journey began when a crested macaque monkey named …
Read More »
YouTube took down 8.3 million videos in the last three months of 2017, responding to criticism it’s slow to address inappropriate content on its site. The majority of those videos were spam or attempts to upload adult content, the video-sharing site made the revelation Monday in its first quarterly moderation report. More than 80 percent of the videos removed were …
Read More »
Google is putting its Allo messaging app on the backburner as it concentrates on an Android alternative to Apple’s iMessage. The tech giant said in a blog post Thursday it’ll “pause investment” in development of Allo, confirming a report in The Verge. The move was made to focus resources on Rich Communications Services, or RCS, a standard known as Chat that …
Read More »
AT&T on Thursday revealed plans to launch a new streaming service to compete with industry veterans Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, but the unveiling was definitely off script. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson brought up the new offering, called AT&T Watch, during testimony in an antitrust trial, according to CNN. Stephenson was on the witness stand to defend AT&T’s proposed …
Read More »
Fingerprints taken from a photo sent over WhatsApp have led to the arrest and conviction of several members of a drug ring in the UK. The arrests occurred after police in Wales discovered a photo on the messaging app on another person’s phone that showed a man’s hand palm up, holding ecstasy tablets, according to the BBC. While the parts …
Read More »
Google is releasing an app intended to help internet users in Africa overcome poor connectivity and the high cost of data. The app, Google Go, reduces the amount of data needed to display search results by 40 percent and allows previous searches to be accessed offline, the search giant said in a company blog post. Voice search has been adapted …
Read More »
The CEO of Backpage.com, a classifieds site likened to an online brothel, pleaded guilty to money laundering charges in California on Thursday, while the company itself pleaded guilty to human trafficking in Texas. Carl Ferrer pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and three counts of money laundering in California, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Thursday. Ferrer will serve …
Read More »
