👨‍⚕️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

🍏 On Tuesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he considered selling his electric car company to Apple in recent years, but Apple CEO Tim Cook was not even interested in taking a meeting.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/22/elon-musk-pondered-sale-of-tesla-to-apple-says-tim-cook-wouldnt-meet.html

🤖 Boston Dynamics robots got moves.

See latest video from Boston Dynamics which shows its entire lineup of robots — the humanoid Atlas, the dog-shaped Spot and the Handle all come together in a coordinated dance routine.

Boston Dynamics was recently purchased by Hyundai, which bought the robotics firm from SoftBank in a $1.1 billion deal. The company was originally founded in 1992 as a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/12/29/22205055/boston-dynamics-robots-spot-atlas-handle-dancing-video

💵 Apple shoppers spent $1.8 billion on App Store services during a one-week span over the holiday season.

The swath of purchases, which occurred between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, was "driven largely by spending on games," the company announced Wednesday.

On New Year's Day, customers spent over $540 million, setting a new single-day record, according to Apple.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/apple-shoppers-spent-1-8b-on-apps-over-one-holiday-week

💵 Elon Musk just became the richest person in the world, with a net worth of more than $185 billion.

Thursday’s increase in Tesla’s share price pushed Musk past Jeff Bezos, who had been the richest person since 2017 and is currently worth about $184 billion.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/07/elon-musk-is-now-the-richest-person-in-the-world-passing-jeff-bezos-.html

📱Encrypted messaging app Signal says it’s seeing a swell of new users signing up for the platform, following a tweet from Elon Musk - “Use Signal”.

The company is seeing delays in phone number verifications of new accounts across multiple cell providers.

WhatsApp users appear to be fleeing the platform in large numbers to join Signal, a nonprofit-run encrypted messaging app not owned by the largest social network on the planet.

WhatsApp has outlined a new privacy policy going into effect next month that no longer includes language indicating it will allow users to opt out of data sharing with parent company Facebook. Instead, the new policy expressly outlines how WhatsApp will share data (stuff like your phone number, profile name, and address book info) with Facebook.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/7/22218989/signal-new-signups-whatsapp-facebook-privacy-controversy-elon-musk

📉 Twitter announced Trump’s permanent suspension after trading hours Friday and it fell 6% before trading started Monday morning.

The company’s market cap closed Monday at $38.319 billion, down from $40.944 billion at Friday’s close.

That’s a $2.625 billion drop.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-much-money-was-president-trumps-twitter-account-worth-11610395998

🍿 Netflix announced Tuesday it will release 70 new original movies this year - nearly 50 more than the next closest competitor, Disney.

It says it will release at least one movie every week for the entire year.

As traditional studios remain uncertain about if and how they can release content in 2021, Netflix’s playbook has hardly changed. For as long as the pandemic lasts, Netflix will dominate the film industry, releasing more movies - with more stars - than many of its rivals combined.

https://qz.com/1956095/netflix-will-release-a-new-movie-every-week-in-2021/

📈 Shares of payments company Affirm soared 98% in its initial public offering on the Nasdaq on Wednesday.

The stock began trading at $90.90 per share and closed at $97.24. Affirm had priced its shares at $49 apiece.

Founded in 2013 by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Affirm allows customers to finance online purchases that can be paid back in monthly installments without accruing compounding interest. 

Affirm said it is used by more than 6.2 million people and is “a viable alternative to credit cards” as put by Levchin.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/13/affirm-ipo-afrm-starts-trading-on-nasdaq.html

💉 A coalition known as the Vaccination Credential Initiative — which includes Microsoft, Salesforce and Oracle, as well as U.S. health care non-profit Mayo Clinic — was announced on Thursday.

The VCI said it wants to develop technology that enables individuals to obtain an encrypted digital copy of their immunization credentials that can be stored in a digital wallet of their choice, such as the Apple Wallet or Google Pay.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/14/microsoft-salesforce-and-oracle-working-on-covid-vaccination-passport.html

⌚️ Google has completed its $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit, the company announced Thursday.

The news follows the EU’s announcement late last year that it had approved the deal, after Google made a series of commitments about its planned operation of Fitbit and use of the its health data.

These pledges include not using Fitbit users’ health and wellness data for Google’s ad tracking.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/14/22188428/google-fitbit-acquisition-completed-approved

❤️ Bumble publicly filed for an IPO on Friday.

Whitney Wolfe Herd, a co-founder of Tinder, launched the dating-app company in 2014. The app is unique by requiring women to initiate conversations with men within 24 hours of a match. 

Bumble has 42 million monthly average users and 2.4 million paying users, per the filing.

https://www.businessinsider.com/bumble-files-to-go-public-ipo-2021-1

📱 WhatsApp said on Friday that it would delay a planned privacy update, as the Facebook-owned messaging service tries to stem a backlash by users worried about the changes.

WhatsApp said it would push back the changes, to May 15 from Feb. 8, to give users more time to review what it planned to do.

Many users and some media outlets interpreted the notification as a marked shift in WhatsApp’s data-sharing practices, mistakenly believing that the company could now read people’s conversations and other personal data.

People flocked to other messaging services, including apps like Signal — which offers so-called end-to-end encryption like WhatsApp — and Telegram, which offers some encryption options.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/technology/whatsapp-privacy-changes-delayed.html

🦆 DuckDuckGo, a search engine focused on privacy, increased its average number of daily searches by 62% in 2020 as users seek alternatives to impede data tracking.

DuckDuckGo does not track user searches or share personal data with third-party companies.

Because DuckDuckGo doesn’t track users, it’s not clear exactly how many people use it. However, the search engine's CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, estimates that nearly 25 million users use the platform. 

The news comes as more users flock to privacy-focused apps as companies, including Whatsapp, are changing their privacy policies. Signal and Telegram are seeing a rise in users amid these changes.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/01/18/search-engine-duckduckgo-increases-traffic-google-competitor/4202556001/

🚙 Microsoft is joining forces with Cruise, the self-driving subsidiary of General Motors, to help speed up the commercialization of autonomous vehicles.

The software giant is also chipping in on a new equity investment of $2 billion for Cruise, along with previous investors Honda and GM, bringing the AV company’s valuation up to a whopping $30 billion.

Last year, Cruise unveiled the Cruise Origin, a fully driverless prototype vehicle without a steering wheel, pedals, or any controls typically associated with human driving.

Cruise recently began testing its fully driverless vehicles in San Francisco for the first time.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/19/22238407/microsoft-cruise-self-driving-investment-azure-cloud

🍏 Apple is reportedly working on developing a high-end virtual reality headset for a potential sales debut in 2022.

The headset would include its own built-in processors and power supply, and could feature a chip even more powerful than the M1 Apple Silicon processor that the company currently ships on its MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro.

The headset will reportedly focus mostly on VR, but will also include some augmented reality features, in a limited capacity, for overlaying visuals on real-world views fed in by external cameras.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/21/apple-said-to-be-working-a-high-priced-standalone-vr-headset-as-debut-mixed-reality-product/

📰 Google threatened to disable its search engine in Australia if it’s forced to pay local publishers for news.

Google opposes a proposed law intended to pay media companies for displaying snippets of articles in search results.

Facebook Inc., the only other company targeted by the legislation, also opposes the law. The social media platform reiterated at Friday’s hearing it’s considering blocking Australians from sharing news on Facebook if the law is pushed through.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-22/google-threatens-to-remove-search-in-australia-as-spat-escalates

🍪 A new Google machine learning initiative aims to replace the rancid cookies with a privacy-first alternative. The search giant calls the system Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC).

FLoC (pronounced “flock”) allows businesses to send ads to groups of potential customers rather than specific individuals.

The system uses machine learning algorithms to create clusters of people with similar browsing habits. All the data analyzed by the algorithms — including your web history — is kept private on the browser and not uploaded anywhere else.

Google now plans to make FLoC available for public trials through a March update to Chrome. The company will also test the cohorts with advertisers in the second quarter of this year.

The tech remains under development, but the tests suggest it could provide more privacy than those unpalatable cookies.

https://thenextweb.com/neural/2021/01/26/google-unveils-privacy-friendly-ai-cookie-killer/