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Tag: GeekWire

  • Black Friday Online Sales Break Records Despite Inflation

    Black Friday Online Sales Break Records Despite Inflation

    The economy received a boost during Black Friday, with this year’s online spending breaking records despite inflation.

    Inflation has been rising at near record rates, prompting concerns of an impending recession. Despite the economic uncertainty, online sales reached a new record during this Black Friday, coming in at $9.12 billion, according to data from Adobe Analytics, via GeekWire. This was a 2.3% increase over the previous year.

    Electronic sales were especially robust, growing a whopping 221%. Similarly exercise equipment sales grew 218%, audio equipment sales were up 230%, smart home item sales grew 271%, and toys 285%. Meanwhile, mobile transactions reached a record 48% of online sales, up from 44% last year.

    Interestingly, Buy Now Pay Later orders increased 78% over the previous week. This is likely a result of the economic uncertainty, not to mention the layoffs many have experienced.

    Black Friday is likely not the end of the good news, with Adobe predicting Cyber Monday online sales will grow 5.1% over the previous year, to come in at $11.2 billion.

  • Expedia Ends COVID Vaccine Mandate

    Expedia Ends COVID Vaccine Mandate

    Expedia has ended its COVID vaccine mandate, for both employees and visitors to its offices.

    Like many companies, Expedia had a vaccine requirement for those who were visiting or working in the office. As the pandemic has started to wind down, the company has ended the mandate.

    According to GeekWire, Michael Davis Velasco, chief people, inclusion & diversity officer, notified employees via email.

    “We are moving from a pandemic to an endemic phase and are learning to live with the virus,” Velasco wrote. “We are in a different phase of the virus than when we launched the policy. Vaccines, boosters, and treatment options are now widely available and helping to protect people from serious illness.”

  • Mark Cuban Wants to Take on Amazon in Online Pharmaceuticals

    Mark Cuban Wants to Take on Amazon in Online Pharmaceuticals

    Mark Cuban believes his company can take on Amazon in the burgeoning online pharmaceutical market.

    Amazon has its own Prime Pharmacy services, giving users discounted prices for subscription drugs. The company has had mixed results, with a recent survey showing Prime Pharmacy is one of the least important services to customers. Nonetheless, the company is continuing to expand, eyeing a potential entry into the Japanese market.

    Despite Amazon being the 800-lb gorilla in the market, entrepreneur Mark Cuban believes he has the winning formula to compete with the e-commerce giant. Cuban launched his own Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs Co. earlier this year, competing in the same space as Amazon. Despite the overlap, Cuban told Kara Swisher his secret for success, according to GeekWire:

    “I look at Amazon and say, their margin is my opportunity,” Cuban said.

    Cuban expounded on what he meant when Swisher asked his opinion on Amazon’s plan to purchase One Medical for $3.9 billion.

    “They’re a big company, and in health care, particularly with medications, it’s hard to be lean and mean,” Cuban said. “And that’s what we are.”

    Amazon has a track record of dominating in the fields it enters, from e-commerce to cloud computing. That being said, if there’s anyone who can give the company a run for its money, it just may be Mark Cuban.

  • Google Bringing Back Employees Three Days a Week Starting April

    Google Bringing Back Employees Three Days a Week Starting April

    Google has told employees they should start coming into the office three days a week, beginning April 4, as the pandemic winds down.

    Like many companies, Google has changed its plans multiple times as the pandemic has continued. The company was preparing to bring employees back to the office months ago, before the Omicron variant gained traction.

    According to Geekwire, the company has notified employees in the Seattle and Kirkland, Washington area, that they will be required to be in the office at least three days a week.

    The company says employees should “aim to be fully functional in our hybrid working approach by April 4.”

  • Mazda Drivers Stuck on Public Radio, 5G Blamed

    Mazda Drivers Stuck on Public Radio, 5G Blamed

    Mazda drivers in Western Washington are getting a major dose of public radio, unable to change the station from public radio KUOW 94.9.

    According to GeekWire, some Mazdas made between 2014 and 2017 are experiencing issues with their vehicles radios and infotainment systems. In some cases the vehicles are stuck on KUOW, while in other cases the system has quit working altogether. The one common denominator is that everyone who’s had the problem was listening to KUOW when it started.

    Some dealerships believe the issue has to do with 5G, but KUOW disputes that assertion.

    “5G is just a cell standard,” Operations Director Dane Johnson told GeekWire. “When they talk about cars and a 5G vs. 3G issue it’s cars that have an actual cell receiver in them and are on a service like AT&T that may have problems if that provider sunsets 3G. It has nothing to do with broadcast terrestrial service.”

    Mazda is evidently aware of the issue, has figured out the cause, and is working on a fix.

  • Italy Fines Amazon $1.3 Billion For Antitrust Violations

    Italy Fines Amazon $1.3 Billion For Antitrust Violations

    Italian regulators have fined Amazon $1.3 billion for promoting third-party sellers that buy its extra services over other sellers.

    Amazon is the biggest e-commerce platform on the planet and, as such, serves as a gateway for countless other companies looking to sell online. Unfortunately, Amazon’s position as the market leader also makes it the gatekeeper for those third-party companies. The decisions it makes about which companies to promote can mean the life or death of a smaller company’s business.

    According to Italian regulators, Amazon has been abusing that position, favoring sellers that buy into its extra services over sellers that don’t. As a result, Italian antitrust regulators have fined the company $1.3 billion

    Amazon provided a statement to GeekWire disagreeing with the ruling.

    “We strongly disagree with the decision of the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) and we will appeal. The proposed fine and remedies are unjustified and disproportionate,” Amazon’s spokesperson said.

    “More than half of all annual sales on Amazon in Italy come from small and medium sized businesses and their success is at the heart of our business model,” the spokesperson added. “Small and medium-sized businesses have multiple channels to sell their products both online and offline: Amazon is just one of those options.”

  • NASA Pausing SpaceX Contract While Waiting on Blue Origin’s Lawsuit

    NASA Pausing SpaceX Contract While Waiting on Blue Origin’s Lawsuit

    NASA is pausing its SpaceX lunar landing contract while it waits for the initial phase of the lawsuit Blue Origin has launched.

    Jeff Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, made headlines and drew criticism when it filed a lawsuit against NASA for awarding SpaceX the sole contract for a new lunar landing system. Originally, NASA had wanted to award the contract to multiple companies, but settled on a single one due to budgetary constraints.

    Blue Origin sued after its initial appeal to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was found to be baseless. In spite of that, NASA has decided to voluntarily postpone the SpaceX contract until an initial ruling in the case, according to GeekWire. The voluntary pause will end November 1, which is two weeks after initial arguments are set to commence. NASA clearly seems to think that will be enough time to have an idea which way the case will go.

    Jeff Bezos was roundly mocked for videos that surfaced of him criticizing companies that are quick to sue when they don’t win a government contract — quite the contradiction for a man with not one, but two companies that have sued the government when losing out on a contract.

  • Amazon Pushes Back a Return to the Office to January 2022

    Amazon Pushes Back a Return to the Office to January 2022

    Amazon is the latest company to push back a return to the office, telling employees they won’t come back until January 2022.

    Like other companies, Amazon was originally planning on employees returning in September. The rise of the Delta variant of COVID is changing those plans, with multiple companies pushing back their return dates.

    Amazon is the latest to do so, and is pushing back its return date further than most. Whereas Apple, Google and Microsoft pushed theirs back to October, GeekWire reports that Amazon is pushing theirs to January 2022.

    So far, Amazon has not rolled out a vaccine mandate, although it does require unvaccinated individuals to wear masks.

  • Microsoft Lays Off More MSN Employees In Favor Of AI

    Microsoft Lays Off More MSN Employees In Favor Of AI

    Microsoft is continuing its shift to AI for its MSN editorial team, laying off additional personnel months after its initial layoffs.

    Several weeks ago, Microsoft laid off roughly 50 contractors working for the company’s MSN property. The contractors were involved in producing news, identifying trending stories and optimizing content. Microsoft decided to use AI instead. At the time, full-time, in-house employees were thought to be safe.

    According to the latest report, however, it appears that safety was short-lived. GeekWire is reporting that “the company is now laying off an unspecified number of direct employees from MSN, including some senior leaders on the Microsoft News editorial team, according to people familiar with the situation.”

    While the news does not bode well for MSN’s news staff, at least some believe its the beginning of the end for MSN as well. One editor who was previously replaced expressed to GeekWire that relying on an algorithm for the news would probably be the undoing of MSN.

  • Senators Want Spectrum Auction to Fund Rural Broadband

    Senators Want Spectrum Auction to Fund Rural Broadband

    According to GeekWire, a group of senators led by Senator Maria Cantwell are pushing to use proceeds from an upcoming 5G spectrum auction to boost rural broadband.

    According to the Pew Research Center, despite improvements in recent years, there is still a significant gap in broadband service between urban/suburban and rural Americans. While 79% of suburban residents enjoy home broadband and 75% of urban residents do, that number drops to only 63% for rural Americans. Some 83% of urban and suburban Americans enjoy broadband access on their smartphones, compared to only 71% of those who live in rural areas.

    Senator Cantwell hopes the upcoming 5G spectrum auction may provide the funds to help close that divide. According to GeekWire, “Cantwell introduced legislation this week that would ensure some of the proceeds from a public auction of C-Band airwaves would be invested in rural broadband deployment and next-generation 9-1-1 networks.”

    The C-band spectrum is currently used by satellite companies for video and radio programming, but the FCC plans to free it up for 5G wireless. If Senator Cantwell and her colleagues get their way, rural Americans may gain better access to broadband options.

  • Apple Acquires Edge AI Firm Xnor

    Apple Acquires Edge AI Firm Xnor

    According to VentureBeat, Apple has acquired artificial intelligence (AI) startup Xnor.ai for roughly $200 million.

    Xnor specializes in “the efficient deployment of AI in edge devices like smartphones, cameras, and drones.” Apple has been making increasing inroads in the AI field, first with Siri and then with the Neural Engine hardware on the company’s line of chips used in iPhones and iPads. With Apple’s emphasis on privacy and security, however, the company is trying to do as much as possible on-device, rather than relying on the cloud.

    Xnor’s technology is a perfect fit for Apple, as it would help the company expand the AI capabilities of its devices. According to GeekWire “the three-year-old startup’s secret sauce has to do with AI on the edge — machine learning and image recognition tools that can be executed on low-power devices rather than relying on the cloud.”

    Geekwire also believes the acquisition is likely to help improve the iPhone’s image processing features.

    “The arrangement suggests that Xnor’s AI-enabled image recognition tools could well become standard features in future iPhones and webcams.”

    Apple made headlines when Siri first debuted, but quickly lost its lead in AI as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and countless startups focused more heavily on the burgeoning field. Apple has a long history of leapfrogging it’s competition, however, so it will be interesting to see what role Xnor will play in the company’s AI endeavors.

  • Amazon Settles On Redmond, WA For Project Kuiper, Its Space-Based Initiative

    Amazon Settles On Redmond, WA For Project Kuiper, Its Space-Based Initiative

    Earlier this year Amazon announced “Project Kuiper, a new initiative to launch a constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world.”

    On Wednesday, the company disclosed, via its blog, that it has settled on new headquarters for the project in Redmond, WA. According to the post, the new facility “will consist of two buildings with a total of 219,000 square feet of space.” The facility will be used for R&D, design, prototype manufacturing and office space, with the Kuiper team expected to move in sometime in 2020.

    When Amazon made the initial announcement about Project Kuiper, a company spokesman emailed GeekWire the following statement:

    “Project Kuiper is a new initiative to launch a constellation of low Earth orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world. This is a long-term project that envisions serving tens of millions of people who lack basic access to broadband internet. We look forward to partnering on this initiative with companies that share this common vision.”

    According to GeekWire, “Amazon said the satellites would provide data coverage for spots on Earth ranging in latitude from 56 degrees north to 56 degrees south. About 95 percent of the world’s population lives within that wide swath of the planet.”

    With multiple companies rushing to provide space-based internet service, Amazon is one of the bigger entries in an already crowded field.