Articles by David Jones

Amazon is ready to disrupt the retail landscape for the third consecutive year, as it launches its July 11 Prime Day promotion. The company will offer thousands of discounted items and special promotions to reward its Prime customers and increase their numbers, while rivals scramble to maintain their decreasing share of the e-commerce pie. "Our te...

Amazon has set its third annual Prime Day promotion for July 11, promising its biggest-ever promotion with 30 hours of deals starting at 6:00 p.m. PT on July 10. The company has expanded the event to China, India and Mexico, to reach a total of 13 international markets. Amazon will go head-to-head with some of its most important international riva...

Google recently announced the end of its policy of scanning user emails for targeted advertising purposes -- a controversial practice that riled privacy advocates and spurred legal challenges. Gmail is the world's most widely used email provider, with more than 1.2 billion users.

The European Commission on Tuesday walloped Google unit with a record 2.4 billion euros fine -- about US$2.7 billion -- for giving its own shopping comparison site preference above smaller competitors, and thus abusing its dominant position as a search engine Google must end the conduct within 90 days or face penalties of 5 percent of its average d...

A new ransomware exploit dubbed "Petya" struck major companies and infrastructure sites this week, following last month's WannaCry ransomware attack, whichwreaked havoc on more than 300,000 computers across the globe. Petya is believed to be linked to the same set of hacking tools as WannaCry. Petya already has taken thousands of computers hostage...

As Uber reels from the fallout of a sexual harassment scandal that led to this week's ouster of Travis Kalanick and several of his top executives, the company faces twin dilemmas: how to clean up its corporate work environment and restock its executive ranks; and how to maintain credibility with its customer base and core team of street level drivers...

A Department of Homeland Security official on Wednesday told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Russian government-backed hackers targeted as many as 21 states during the 2016 presidential election. Hackers attempted to penetrate Internet-connected systems related to the elections in up to 21 states, but they were successful only in a small n...

Google on Tuesday announced a highly anticipated launch of its new job search aggregation technology, following last month's announcement of its Google for Jobs program at the company's annual I/O conference. The initiative will allow Google users to search for jobs either on mobile devices or personal computers, and to use a set of filters to ob...

A data contractor working on behalf of the Republican National Committee earlier this month allowed the personal data of 198 million voters to be exposed online, marking the largest ever leak of voter data in history, according to the cybersecurity firm that discovered the incident. Deep Root Analytics left 1.1 terabytes of sensitive information ...

Apple quietly has been strategizing to expand its growing healthcare business to include the management of digital health records, with the iPhone operating as a central data hub, CNBC reported last week Apple has been in talks with numerous health industry groups that are involved in setting standards for the storage and sharing of electronic med...

Nintendo previewed an impressive lineup of gaming content at E3 2017 this week, by many accounts. Its collection of new titles and targeted versions of some of the industry's hottest third-party content seemed to validate surprisingly strong sales of the Nintendo Switch console. Moving easily from a living room big screen to a mobile gaming device...

Federal and state officials have confirmed that cyberattacks against state voting systems during the 2016 election were more widespread than previously disclosed to the public, but they said the heightened activity did not impact final vote tallies. The confirmations follow Tuesday's Bloomberg report, citing three unnamed sources, that attempts t...

Uber Technologies CEO Travis Kalanick on Tuesday confirmed that he will take a leave of absence, as a company review led by Eric Holder, former U.S. Attorney General, was made public. The review sketches out a plan to make radical changes to diversify Uber in the wake of allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination. Kalanick accepted respo...

Uber Technologies on Monday lost its second-most-important executive in a shakeup stemming from an internal investigation into sexual harassment charges. The changes at the top reportedly could include the temporary loss of Uber's founder and chief executive, Travis Kalanick Emil Michael -- who served as the company's senior vice president of busi...

Microsoft on Thursday said it has agreed to buy a Hexadite, which incorporates artificial intelligence in its automated responses to cyberthreats. Microsoft was in talks to buy the firm for US$100 million, according to earlier published reports. However, Microsoft and Hexadite did not disclose terms of the official agreement.

Arms, the highly anticipated fighting game for Nintendo's Switch, will be available next Friday, and based on the early reviews, the company just may have found the magic bullet Nintendo's Switch console, launched earlier this year, has been something of a surprise success. Prior to its launch, it seemed like a risky play for the company, which has...

Before Apple launched its long-awaited HomePod smart speaker at its annual developers conference earlier this week, the expectation was that it would unveil a sophisticated Echo killer that would redefine the landscape that Amazon has dominated, with Google playing catch-up "Just like iPod reinvented music in our pockets, HomePod is going to reinv...

Alphabet shares reached a new record high on Monday, surpassing the US$1,000 benchmark just a week after Amazon accomplished the feat. Investors placed bets that Google's core search and emerging artificial intelligence technology will help maintain the company's dominance over its Silicon Valley rivals. The stock price surged after Pacific Crest ...

Apple has begun production of a high-end speaker with Siri-based digital assistant technology to compete directly with Amazon's Alexa-based Echo speakers and the Google Assistant-powered Home speaker, Bloomberg reported Wednesday Production is in the early stages, but the device could be unveiled as early as next week at WWDC, Apple's annual develo...

Microsoft on Wednesday showcased a new series of mixed reality headsets from partner firms Acer, HP, Asus, Dell and Lenovo at Computex 2017. The preview marked the company's commitment to establish Windows 10 as a leading driver of mixed reality capabilities, as well as to open up the market to a wider variety of price points and consumer demograp...