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That would leave Nintendo (7974.T) and Sony Group (6758.T) out in the cold, the FTC has said. Asked if Microsoft would have any incentive to shut out Sony's PlayStation in order to sell more Microsoft Xbox consoles, Nadella responded: "It makes no economic sense and no strategic sense." To address the FTC concerns, Microsoft has agreed to license "Call of Duty" to rivals. The FTC has asked Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco to temporarily stop the deal from closing in order to allow the agency's in-house judge to decide the case. Resolving the U.S. lawsuit is one of several key antitrust battles Microsoft and Activision have fought around the world.

Persons: Microsoft Corporation Satya Nadella, Read, Satya Nadella, Nadella, Jacqueline Scott Corley, Biden, Bobby Kotick, Diane Bartz, Lincoln Organizations: Microsoft Corporation, . Federal Trade Commission, Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, Federal Trade Commission, Activision, Nintendo, Sony Group, FTC, PlayStation, European Union, Thomson Locations: California, Downtown San Francisco , California, U.S, WASHINGTON, San Francisco

"You would have a revolt if you were to remove the game from one platform," said Kotick. He said that removing "Call of Duty" from PlayStation, which is made by Sony Group (6758.T), would be "very detrimental" to Activision's business. The Federal Trade Commission has asked a judge to stop the Microsoft acquisition temporarily in order to allow the agency's in-house judge to decide the case. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is scheduled to testify on Wednesday afternoon before Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in federal court. The agency says the transaction would give Microsoft, which makes the Xbox console, exclusive access to Activision games, leaving Nintendo (7974.T) and Sony Group out in the cold.

Persons: Bobby Kotick, Kotick, Satya Nadella, Jacqueline Scott Corley, Biden, Diane Bartz, Greg Bensinger, Matthew Lewis Organizations: FRANCISCO, Activision, Microsoft, PlayStation, Sony Group, Federal Trade Commission, FTC, Nintendo, Britain's, Markets Authority, Thomson Locations: United States, Washington, San Francisco

The Federal Trade Commission has asked a judge to stop the proposed acquisition because, it argues, it would give Microsoft, maker of the Xbox console, exclusive access to Activision games, which include the highly popular "Call of Duty." Asked if Microsoft would have any incentive to refuse to allow the games on Sony's PlayStation in order to sell more of its Xbox consoles, Nadella responded, "It makes no economic sense and no strategic sense." To address the FTC concerns, Microsoft has agreed to license the blockbuster "Call of Duty" to rivals. It has also argued that it is better off financially by licensing the games to all comers. Kotick argued there was no incentive for Microsoft, if it closes the deal for Activision, to restrict who offers the company's games.

Persons: Microsoft Corporation Satya Nadella, Satya Nadella, Nadella, Jacqueline Scott Corley, Biden, Bobby Kotick, Kotick, Diane Bartz, Greg Bensinger, Matthew Lewis Organizations: Microsoft Corporation, . Federal Trade Commission, Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, FRANCISCO, Activision, Federal Trade Commission, Nintendo, Sony Group, FTC, PlayStation, Britain's, Markets Authority, Thomson Locations: California, Downtown San Francisco , California, U.S, WASHINGTON, San Francisco, United States, Washington

☆ Microsoft, Activision CEOs expected to urge US judge to allow $69 billion merger
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-28 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

The Federal Trade Commission has asked a judge to stop the transaction temporarily in order to allow the agency's in-house judge to decide the case. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick is expected to testify on Wednesday morning, followed by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in the afternoon. The case, which is being heard in federal court in San Francisco, will be decided by Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley. The FTC says the transaction would give Microsoft exclusive access to Activision games, leaving Nintendo (7974.T) and Sony Group (6758.T) out in the cold. Reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington and Greg Bensinger in San Francisco Editing by Matthew LewisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Persons: Bobby Kotick, Satya Nadella, Jacqueline Scott Corley, Diane Bartz, Greg Bensinger, Matthew Lewis Organizations: FRANCISCO, U.S, Microsoft, Activision, Federal Trade Commission, FTC, Nintendo, Sony Group, Britain's, Markets Authority, Thomson Locations: San Francisco, United States, Washington

☆ Microsoft attempts to pick apart US legal argument against deal to buy Activision
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-27 | by ( Greg Bensinger | Thomson Reuters | Greg Bensinger Joined Reuters As A Technology Correspondent In Focusing On The World'S Largest Technology Companies. He Was Previously A Member Of The New York Times Editorial Board | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has asked a federal judge to stop the transaction temporarily in order to allow the agency's in-house judge to decide if it can go forward. If the deal goes through, Microsoft has pledged to provide the game to Switch for 10 years. Microsoft attorney Beth Wilkinson pressed Lee in an effort to poke holes in his analysis of the deal, pointing out limitations of his economic modeling. Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, a federal judge in San Francisco who will decide the case, said little on Tuesday. Reporting by Greg Bensinger in San Francisco Additional reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington Editing by Matthew LewisOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Persons: Microsoft's, Robin Lee, Lee, Beth Wilkinson, Wilkinson, “, Jacqueline Scott Corley, Greg Bensinger, Diane Bartz, Matthew Lewis Organizations: FRANCISCO, Activision, Harvard, U.S . Federal Trade Commission, Microsoft, Xbox, FTC, Nintendo, Sony Group, Britain's, Markets Authority, Thomson Locations: Redmond, Washington, San Francisco, United States

In recent days, Twitter owner Musk and Facebook parent Meta (META.O) CEO Zuckerberg - whose social media platforms duke it out daily for advertising dollars - have been trading bluster about going mano a mano. The brouhaha began Tuesday when Musk tweeted he was "up for a cage match" with Zuckerberg, who's trained in jiujitsu. “Vegas Octagon,” Musk tweeted, referring to an events center where mixed martial arts (MMA) championship bouts are held. Musk in recent months has stepped up criticism of Zuckerberg and his companies, and has mocked reported plans by Meta for a platform to rival Twitter. SportsBetting.ag gives better odds for Zuckerberg, who is 12 years younger than Musk.

Persons: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Musk, Zuckerberg, mano, who's, he's, ” Musk, Porte, Gonzalo Fuentes, Vegas . SportsBetting.ag, Owain Flanders, Flanders, Hyunjoo Jin, Greg Bensinger, David Gaffen, Jonathan Oatis Organizations: FRANCISCO, Facebook, Twitter, Elon, SpaceX, Tesla, Viva Technology, Porte de, REUTERS, Meta, Thomson Locations: Manila, Las Vegas, Paris, France, Vegas .

[1/3] Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at the Google I/O 2023 conference, in Mountain View, California, U.S., May 10, 2023. Called the Search Generative Experience, the revamped Google can craft responses to open-ended queries while retaining its recognizable list of links to the Web. "We are reimagining all of our core products, including search," Sundar Pichai, Alphabet's CEO, said after he took the stage at the event. Generative AI can, using past data, create brand new content like fully formed text, images and software code. WHAT OUTFIT TO WEARWith the embedded AI, Google still looks and acts like its familiar empty search bar.

May 10 (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google on Wednesday began unveiling more artificial intelligence in its products to answer the latest competition from Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), which has threatened its perch atop the nearly $300 billion search advertising market. He said Google is integrating generative AI into search. For years the top portal to the internet, Google has found its position in question since rivals began exploiting generative AI as an alternative way to present content from the web. That has represented a technological affront and a business one: Microsoft said every percentage point of share it gained in search advertising could draw another $2 billion in revenue. Pichai said earlier this year that generative AI to distill complex queries would come to Google Search, as would more perspectives, "like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar."

Google already has a Bard chatbot that competes with ChatGPT, the chatbot from OpenAI that has generated huge excitement among users with its humanlike responses. The company says that traditional Google search should still be used for finding and seeking information, such as locating something to purchase. WHAT ARE THE UPDATES TO GOOGLE SEARCH? With the enhanced search termed the Search Generative Experience, Google's home page still looks and acts like its familiar search bar. CAN I TRY THE NEW GOOGLE SEARCH NOW?

Google used the term 52 times on its first-quarter call on Tuesday, up from 45 in the fourth quarter. Both companies said AI was already juicing sales, but neither said when or if they would start breaking out any sales, costs, or profits from the technology. Bing has lagged Google search for decades but Nadella said that Bing downloads had jumped since the addition of AI features and now had 100 million daily users. Toyama said Google already used AI to monetize their search algorithms and he did not expect AI advances from its rivals to be as much of a threat as some thought. Meta, which has admitted it is playing catch-up in AI, has published an AI model that can pick out individual objects from within an image.

Investors cheered the buyback plan, sending shares of the Google parent as much as 4% higher in after-hours trade before they pared gains to trade up 1.6%. Demand rose for cloud services and Google's ad sales held up better than expected. Alphabet reported a slight dip in first-quarter ad sales from a year earlier to $54.55 billion, which nonetheless beat analyst estimates of $53.71 billion. It was the third such decline for the company since it went public in 2004, but was the second in a row following a fourth-quarter ad sales drop of 3.6%. Alphabet's revenue for the quarter ended March 31 stood at $69.79 billion compared with estimates of $68.95 billion, according to Refinitiv data.

☆ Porn on Amazon's Kindle app prompts warnings from Apple, Alphabet
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Greg Bensinger | Thomson Reuters | Greg Bensinger Joined Reuters As A Technology Correspondent In Focusing On The World'S Largest Technology Companies. He Was Previously A Member Of The New York Times Editorial Board | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

Reuters learned of the issue when two families told Reuters their pre-teen sons downloaded the explicit material via Amazon's Kindle Unlimited e-book subscription service and viewed the full-color photographs on the Kindle iPhone app. Pornography also is available through Amazon's Kindle online store and viewable on versions of the Kindle app. The adult material at issue is primarily self-published through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing arm. The Apple app store’s guidelines “prohibit apps dedicated to portraying overtly sexual or pornographic material,” the company said in a statement. As of Monday, adult materials were still accessible on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited via the iOS and Android apps.

[1/2] A sign for Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) headquarters is seen in Santa Clara, California, U.S. March 10, 2023. The bank's sudden shutdown sent a chill through Silicon Valley amid an otherwise gloomy period marked by tech layoffs and a pullback in spending as consumers tightened their wallets. Company executives, many of whom stashed all of their funds in Silicon Valley Bank, took to Twitter and other social media networks to beg for relief. A joint statement Sunday by U.S. government bodies including the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve indicated taxpayers would not bear any cost associated with the new plans around Silicon Valley Bank. Silicon Valley Bank until now had been a reliable source of funding for startups relative to other banks.

At some Silicon Valley Bank branch locations in California, depositors gathered early Friday to attempt to get their cash out, fearing it could be inaccessible in the coming days. It has had financial relationships with a who’s who of Silicon Valley firms over the years, including Snapchat's parent Snap Inc (SNAP.N). A locked door to a Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) location on Sand Hill Road is seen in Menlo Park, California, U.S. March 10, 2023. A Silicon Valley Bank spokeswoman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment sent Friday. As of Friday, FarmboxRx’s funds were still tied up with Silicon Valley Bank.

March 10 (Reuters) - The sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on Friday sent shockwaves through the startup community, which has come to view the lender as a source of reliable capital, particularly for some of tech’s biggest moonshots. It has had financial relationships with a who’s who of Silicon Valley firms over the years, including Snapchat's parent Snap Inc (SNAP.N)Snap declined to comment. A Silicon Valley Bank spokeswoman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment sent Friday. Uncertainty swept through Silicon Valley as startup founders and venture capital firms worried they could, among other things, fail to make payroll. As of Friday, FarmboxRx’s funds were still tied up with Silicon Valley Bank.

Executives across the technology sector are talking about how to operate AI like ChatGPT while accounting for the high expense. What makes this form of AI pricier than conventional search is the computing power involved. Still, footing the bill is one of two main reasons why search and social media giants with billions of users have not rolled out an AI chatbot overnight, said Paul Daugherty, Accenture's chief technology officer. Technology experts also said a workaround is applying smaller AI models to simpler tasks, which Alphabet is exploring. The company said this month a "smaller model" version of its massive LaMDA AI technology will power its chatbot Bard, requiring "significantly less computing power, enabling us to scale to more users."

☆ ChatGPT launches boom in AI-written e-books on Amazon
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Greg Bensinger | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +8 min

In the edition, Sammy the Squirrel, crudely rendered also using AI, learns from his forest friends about saving money after happening upon a gold coin. While that may not sound like much, it is enough to inspire him to compose other books using the software. There were over 200 e-books in Amazon’s Kindle store as of mid-February listing ChatGPT as an author or co-author, including "How to Write and Create Content Using ChatGPT," "The Power of Homework" and poetry collection "Echoes of the Universe." There is even a new sub-genre on Amazon: Books about using ChatGPT, written entirely by ChatGPT. In the video, White says anyone with the wherewithal and time could create 300 such books a year, all using AI.

☆ Analysis: From Meta to Microsoft, AI's big moment is here
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-03 | by ( Jeffrey Dastin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

[1/2] A Microsoft logo is seen a day after Microsoft Corp's $26.2 billion purchase of LinkedIn Corp, in Los Angeles, California, U.S. June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File PhotoFeb 3 (Reuters) - Big Tech companies have a new obsession: artificial intelligence. Executives from Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), behind the latest big rivalry in tech, took their battle to the conference-call front lines. We can bring those to life using generative (AI) art, which I think is really exciting," he said. "One of my goals for Meta is to build on our research to become a leader in generative AI," said Zuckerberg.

Shares of Alphabet, were down about 4% in after-hours trading, after losing about 40% of their value in 2022. Revenue from Google advertising, which includes Search and YouTube, fell 3.6% to $59.04 billion. Alphabet's net income fell to $13.62 billion, or $1.05 per share, from $20.64 billion, or $1.53 per share, a year earlier. Adjusted profit of $1.05 per share fell short of an expected $1.18 per share, according to Refinitiv. Like rivals, Alphabet had bulked up during the pandemic and into last year, adding 12,700 new jobs in the third quarter alone.

Across the company, Alphabet will "meaningfully" slow its pace of hiring this year, said Porat. Net income fell to $13.62 billion, or $1.05 per share, from $20.64 billion, or $1.53 per share, a year earlier. Adjusted profit of $1.05 per share fell short of an expected $1.18 per share, according to Refinitiv. Revenue from Google advertising, which includes Search and YouTube, fell 3.6% to $59.04 billion. Late last month, the Justice Department and eight states sued Google over what they said were anticompetitive practices in its digital ad sales.

Jan 25 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) said Wednesday it will reinstate former U.S. President Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks, following a two-year suspension after the deadly Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021. He has 34 million followers on Facebook and 23 million on Instagram, platforms that are key vehicles for political outreach and fundraising. "I worry about Facebook's capacity to understand the real world harm that Trump poses: Facebook has been too slow to act." Whether, and how, Trump will seize upon the opportunity to return to Facebook and Instagram is unclear. He did not indicate if or when he would begin posting on Meta platforms again.

Dec 22 (Reuters) - Tesla (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said on Thursday he will not sell any more Tesla stock for another two years. Musk has previously made promises about not selling Tesla stock before subsequently selling it. "I needed to sell some stock to make sure, like, there's powder dry...to account for a worst case scenario," the billionaire said. Musk said that Tesla is close to picking the location of its new "Gigafactory." "(Twitter) is maybe 10% of the complexity of Tesla," Musk said.

Dec 22 (Reuters) - Tesla (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said on Thursday he will not sell any more Tesla stock for about two years. His comments came after a Tesla stock sell-off deepened on Thursday over worries about softening demand for electric cars and Musk's distraction with Twitter and his stock sales. "I won't sell stock until I don't know probably two years from now. Musk has previously made promises about not selling Tesla stock before subsequently selling it. "(Twitter) is maybe 10% of the complexity of Tesla," Musk said.

☆ Twitter suspends accounts of several journalists
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Dec 15 (Reuters) - Twitter on Thursday suspended the accounts of several prominent journalists who recently wrote about its new owner Elon Musk, with the billionaire tweeting that rules banning the publishing of personal information applied to all, including journalists. On Wednesday, Twitter suspended @elonjet, an account tracking Musk's private jet in real time using data available in the public domain. Twitter on Thursday showed "account suspended" notices for a clutch of journalists' accounts. A spokesperson for The New York Times said: "Tonight's suspension of the Twitter accounts of a number of prominent journalists, including The New York Times's Ryan Mac, is questionable and unfortunate. We hope that all of the journalists' accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action."

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