🎄Microsoft released its geek version of holiday ugly sweater.

$70 worth Windows sweaters sold out in 24h.

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-buy-microsoft-paint-holiday-sweaters-2020-12?r=MX&IR=T

💵 In the light of recent $27.7 billion acquisition of Slack by Salesforce here is a recap of the greatest Big Tech deals:

• IBM buys Red Hat for $34 billion in 2019
• Amazon buys Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017
• Microsoft buys LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in 2016
• Facebook buys WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014
• Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011
• Facebook buys Instagram for $1 billion in 2012
• Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006

https://fortune.com/2020/12/02/slack-salesforce-deal-acquisition-big-tech-amazon-whole-foods-apple-beats-facebook-instagram-google-youtube/

🌵Elon Musk could be moving to Texas.

Three of Musk’s businesses SpaceX Tesla and Boring Company already have offices in Texas.

Getting out of California, with the highest income tax in the country %13.3, and into Texas, which has no state income tax, could save Musk billions of dollars.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/02/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-plans-to-move-to-texas-friends-and-associates-say.html

💃From dancing to fintech.

TikTok's biggest star, 16-year-old Charli D'Amelio, invested in teen banking app Step.

Step is a mobile app that provides teens with a bank account and a Visa card with no fees. It allows parents to set guidelines for their children's spending, and users can send and receive money.

The dancer, who's endorsed the app on her accounts, boasts 100 million followers on TikTok, 34.5 million on Instagram and 4.9 million on Twitter.

Charli D'Amelio earns an estimated $4 million a year from TikTok.

@OGoMono 🐈 can you dance?

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/03/business/charli-damelio-banking-app/index.html

🛰 Starlink will get $885.5 million worth of federal subsidies to support rural broadband customers through the company’s satellite internet network.

Starlink is SpaceX’s plan to build an interconnected internet network with thousands of satellites, designed to deliver high-speed internet to anywhere on the planet.

In October the company began a public beta test of Starlink, with service priced at $99 a month.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/07/spacex-starlink-wins-nearly-900-million-in-fcc-subsidies-auction.html

🦠 Apple and Google are launching a COVID contact tracing app called CA Notify in the state of California.

Your phone will automatically exchange a private key with another phone if they’re within Bluetooth range. (The key doesn’t contain location or any personally identifying information.) When someone tests positive, they can press a button to send a notification to every other person using the app whose phone virtually bumped into theirs, letting them know that they should get tested and quarantine.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/7/22159842/apple-google-covid-contact-tracing-tech-california

🚀 Big toys for big boys.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1336041065879580673?s=21

🖥 Apple is planning a series of new Mac processors for introduction as early as 2021 that are aimed at outperforming Intel.

They will be successors to the M1 chip, Apple’s first Mac main processor that debuted in November.

The company said it expects to finish the transition away from Intel and to its own silicon in 2022.

Intel’s shares slid 2.9% after the news.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-07/apple-preps-next-mac-chips-with-aim-to-outclass-highest-end-pcs

🚘 Uber is handing over its Self Driving Car unit to a Silicon Valley start-up Aurora.

Uber’s biggest expense was its drivers. If it could replace the drivers with machines, it could eventually reduce expenses and become profitable, ending years and billions of losses.

But the effort that could have been a salvation for their business turned into a legal and financial headache.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/technology/uber-self-driving-car-project.html

🚁 Uber sells its aerial ride-hailing division Uber Elevate to Joby Aviation.

For Uber, the transaction comes one day after selling its autonomous-driving division known as the Advanced Technologies Group to Aurora, a self-driving car start-up.

Parting with the Advanced Technologies Group and Uber Elevate will allow the ride-hailing giant to save hundreds of millions of dollars that would have been required over the next several years to develop autonomous ride-hailing and urban air taxi services.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/08/air-taxi-start-up-joby-acquires-uber-elevate-.html

📈Airbnb shares debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York Thursday.

The stock began trading at $146, higher than its initial-public-offering price of $68 a share.

The company ended the day worth $100.7 billion, greater than the combined market value of Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/airbnb-shares-more-than-double-in-market-debut-11607625899

🌵Oracle is the latest tech company to move its headquarters out of California.

The company said on Friday it’s moving its headquarters from the Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas.

Oracle is one of Silicon Valley’s older success stories, founded in Santa Clara in 1977.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/11/oracle-is-moving-its-headquarters-from-silicon-valley-to-austin-texas.html

🤸‍♀️Apple’s new Fitness Plus service is out.

Fitness Plus offers a variety of guided workouts (similar to competitors like Peloton) and costs $9.99 per month or $79.99 per year.

At launch, the service features workouts in 10 categories: High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), strength, yoga, dance, core, cycling, treadmill, rowing, and “mindful cooldown.”

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/14/22174574/apple-fitness-plus-watch-iphone-release-date-price

🚙 Amazon-owned Zoox unveiled on Monday an autonomous electric vehicle with no steering wheel that might one day be summoned with a ride-hailing app.

The vehicle can travel in either direction, with motors at each end and four-wheel steering. It is capable of operating 16 hours between charges.

Amazon acquired Zoox for $1.2 billion in June.

https://www.axios.com/zoox-driverless-autonomous-electric-vehicle-bc980691-4f20-4cad-9d15-c2b33ca5d7a8.html

🥩Apple and Facebook got beef over privacy.

With release of iOS 14.3 came an update to the App Store that shows "how developers may handle your data”.

And when it comes to Facebook app it’s a lot of data.

Follow the link below and make sure to scroll all the way to the bottom.

https://mashable.com/article/apple-ios-134-update-app-store-privacy-facebook/

📰 Facebook launched a PR assault against Apple on Wednesday, proclaiming that the iPhone maker’s upcoming changes to its mobile operating system will hurt small businesses’ ability to target advertising and app makers’ ability to offer free content.

When Apple updates iOS 14 on mobile devices early next year, it will require all apps to show a prompt allowing users to opt out of targeted advertising. People opting out of tracking will hinder Facebook’s ability to collect information it could use to personalize ads.

In full-page ads Wednesday morning in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, Facebook said it is “standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere.”

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebook-declares-war-on-apple-11608140590

📈Digital currency exchange Coinbase is going public.

On Thursday the company announced that it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company’s filing comes on the heels of a surge in the price of bitcoin. On Thursday the largest cryptocurrency rallied more than 12% to top $23,000 for the first time.

Bitcoin is now up more than 200% for the year.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/17/largest-us-cryptocurrency-exchange-coinbase-files-for-ipo-as-bitcoin-soars-past-23000.html

👨‍⚕️Amazon is building a telehealth business and pitching the service to major employers.

Amazon Care started as a pilot in 2019 for just Amazon employees in Seattle, providing them with medical care at home or in person. Now, it wants to sell that service to other large companies. 

Through Amazon Care, the $1.6 trillion shipping giant is getting into the business of actual medical services for the first time, dealing with patients, their protected health information, and their doctors.

https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-amazon-efforts-to-build-amazon-care-into-a-national-telehealth-empire-2020-12

🚘 Lyft and self-driving tech company Motional announced that autonomous vehicles will be available on Lyft's ride-sharing network in multiple U.S. cities beginning in 2023.

The announcement comes less than two weeks after rival Uber pulled the plug on AV development, selling its self-driving unit to Aurora.

A small fleet of self-driving test vehicles (with a human safety driver) have been available on the Lyft network in Las Vegas for several years. Last month, Motional received permission from the state of Nevada to remove the driver from those cars.

https://www.axios.com/lyft-self-driving-taxis-2023-73cb035c-6f54-4558-bae4-2479a6c54200.html

💻 Microsoft plans to design its own chips, possibly for both its Surface PCs as well as servers.

Intel has famously had a long-running partnership with Microsoft as the primary processor maker for Windows PCs.

The report comes a month after Apple started selling PCs using its own M1 processor, instead of Intel chips. The Microsoft chips are reportedly based on technology from Arm, which Nvidia is in the process of acquiring from Softbank.

Intel dropped 6.3% on Friday following the news.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/18/intel-falls-on-report-microsoft-will-design-own-chips-for-pcs-servers.html

🚙 Apple is moving forward with self-driving car technology and is targeting 2024 to produce a passenger vehicle that could include its own breakthrough battery technology.

The iPhone maker's automotive efforts, known as Project Titan, have proceeded unevenly since 2014 when it first started to design its own vehicle from scratch. At one point, Apple drew back the effort to focus on software and reassessed its goals.

Central to Apple's strategy is a new battery design that could "radically" reduce the cost of batteries and increase the vehicle's range.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-autos-exclusive-idUSKBN28V2PY