Techstrong News Recap – February 23, 2023
On Feb. 23, William Willis covered Microsoft’s announcement of a deal with Nvidia and Nintendo ahead of an EU hearing about its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Coinbase’s report of a $557 Million loss for Q4 2022 and Meta announcing a subscription service for account verification on Instagram and Facebook. He also talked about Amazon’s requirement that corporate employees return to office three days a week. Finally, he previewed articles from Digital CxO, Container Journal and DevOps.com, which covered the European Investment Bank investing in digital transformation, 10 Kubernetes-native observability tools and Tabnine announcing an extension of its generative AI platform.
Transcript
Hi again, everyone here the headlines for February 23rd. 7 billion dollar acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The deals were announced on Tuesday with the aim of appeasing European Union antitrust Regulators who held a closed-door meeting with Microsoft and its competitors.
The Partnerships involve a 10-year agreement with the shipmaker Nvidia to make Xbox games available on its cloud gaming service in a formalized commitment with two a similar deal with Nintendo. Microsoft's proposed acquisition is currently being investigated by Regulators in the US and Europe in a decision from the European commission is expected by March 23rd. Next up coinbase the cryptocurrency exchange reported in net loss of approximately $600 for the fourth quarter of 2022.
The company decided a significant downturn in trading volume and Retail Traders pulling back as well as increased regulatory scrutiny following the bankruptcy of FTX in November of last year. However, subscription and services Revenue increased by about 33% Thanks to Hefty interest rate hikes. Despite the loss analysts believe that the Outlook is encouraging supported by its expense control and improving Revenue trend.
Zooming out though. The overall crypto Market isn't doing too hot with investors and exchanges batten down the hatches as the crypto winter and continues. In other news meta has announced that it is testing a new subscription service that would allow users of its platforms to pay for a verified account.
Meta has announced the launch of meta verified which will allow users to verify their accounts using government identification for a blue badge on their profiles, which it says will provide extra protection against account impersonation and Direct Customer Support. The service will initially launch in New Zealand and Australia with plans to expand to other countries soon. This move comes after Twitter's announcement of Twitter blue, which also provides a verification service.
It seems that social media companies are looking for new revenue streams with meta reporting its third consecutive quarter of Revenue declines, despite an increase in users. So it seems like subscription Services might be the way of the future. Next up Amazon announced that the company will require its corporate employees to return to office at least three days a week marking a change from the current policy of allowing leaders to determine how their teams worked.
Amazon stated that it made the decision after observing what worked during the pandemic in concluded that employees tended to be more engaged in person in more collaborated easily. As well as saying that the move could help local economies. This being said the details of the policy haven't been finalized and there will be certain roles.
That will be exempt. This move follows a broader trend of other companies including Starbucks Disney and Walmart who have been calling employees back to the office after the covid-19 pandemic force them to work virtually. So it seems both companies in the tech industry and outside of it are moving back towards more emphasis on in-person work.
On digital cxo we even article that looks at how the European Investment Bank is backing digital transformation. Ever since the pandemic digital transformation is accelerated fast, but successful digital transformation starts with investment. That's why the European Investment Bank has backed 150 million dollar Middle East investment Capital initiative.
com. On container Journal we have an article that looks at 10 open source, kubernet native observability tools that you can use. Kubernetes is transforming the way organizations manage their Cloud infrastructure.
This being said though as this technology is being used proper observability needs to be maintained. com. com.
We have an article that looks at how tab 9 announced how it's extended. It's generative artificial intelligence platform to allow developers to write code faster. Tab 9 is stated that this new feature will make it easier for developers to test code at any time as part of its bigger push for more generative AI.
com. And that's today's text wrong news recap.
