GeekWire

The downfall of Zillow's iBuying business is a reminder of the downsides of relying too much on automation and machine learning algorithms at this stage in the evolution of technology. A conversation about the pitfalls of real estate valuations leads John Cook and Todd Bishop into a larger discussion about the continued importance of human judgment and attention in the modern world. Plus, cat vs....

Jane Park, the CEO of newly public Athena Consumer Acquisition Corp., hadn't imagined herself leading a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, before accepting the job. She decided to consider the pitch from venture capitalist Isabelle Freidheim for one reason. “It took some convincing, a little bit. I wasn’t sure if I had the right capabilities. I have always sat on the entrepr...

This week on the GeekWire Podcast ... We dissect Amazon's earnings , offering our take on Andy Jassy's take on the company's latest predicament . We assess a major Microsoft milestone, as the Redmond company surpasses Apple to become the world's most valuable company again . We look forward to the Metaverse , but question whether Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook friends are the right people to tak...

Everyone is closely monitoring the implications of remote work as we emerge from the pandemic, so it's no surprise that one of the most widely read stories on GeekWire this week — right behind the Titanic's disappearing bathtub and Facebook's potential name change — was a story on trends in tech salaries.  Two big trends stood out in the report from jobs site Hired : Average tech...

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: a new Microsoft leader finally gets to work, Amazon makes a surprising change in its remote work policy, and the promise of space for the tech industry. Our guest commentator is Charlie Kindel , who worked for many years as a Microsoft general manager in areas including its server and mobile businesses, before jumping into the world of startups and then endi...

This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we’re sharing a few highlights from the GeekWire Summit, our annual business and technology conference, which we held this week for an audience in Seattle and online. For online access to the full video of every GeekWire Summit 2021 session, purchase a ticket at geekwire.com/summit to watch at your convenience.  On this week's show: Computer scientist...

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella this week called the company's unsuccessful efforts to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations last year "the strangest thing" he's ever worked on. Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and newly named vice chair, laughed when he read that — agreeing with the sentiment, even if he has seen stranger things in his two decades representing the tech giant in its dealings with co...

Come on, how much has really changed in Windows 11 vs. Windows 10? To paraphrase a certain Spinal Tap guitarist , is it really worthy of taking it up to eleven? Kevin Stratvert hears that question all the time, and based on his experience so far, his answer is yes. Stratvert is a former Microsoft program manager who left the company to focus full-time on his work as a YouTube creator, producing ho...

Fred Moody is a retired journalist in the Seattle area, the former managing editor of Seattle Weekly, and the author of a series on Kindle Vella, Amazon’s new episodic storytelling platform for mobile devices. It's called Barfly on the Wall: A meteoric misadventure into Seattle bartending .   GeekWire's Todd Bishop has been looking into Kindle Vella and other story platforms as a r...

Jason Stoffer was still early in his career at venture capital firm Maveron in 2012 when he declined an opportunity to invest in Remitly , then a fledgling Seattle startup with ambitions to challenge Western Union by bringing a tech mindset to the business of international money transfers. He was impressed by Remitly co-founders Matt Oppenheimer and Josh Hug but knew they faced a huge challenge in...

Remote work is putting productivity and innovation at risk. That was one of the conclusions of a peer-reviewed study of more than 61,000 Microsoft employees, published this week, and it’s our first topic this week. We talk about the workplace dynamics that are creating the situation, and explain why the implications go far beyond Microsoft’s workforce as the COVID-19 Delta variant push...

GeekWire's Mike Lewis talks with U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat who represents the 7th Congressional District in Washington state, including Amazon’s hometown of Seattle. Rep. Jayapal is also the Vice Chair of the House Antitrust Subcommittee, and the author of a bill that aims to prevent what it calls monopolistic practices by big tech companies including Amazon. In additio...

A global pandemic might seem like the wrong time to pursue a new startup idea, given all the uncertainties, but in many ways, the timing couldn't be better. That's one of the insights from our GeekWire Podcast conversation this week with Seattle-area entrepreneur and investor Shirish Nadkarni , author of the book From Startup to Exit: An Insider’s Guide to Launching and Scaling your Tech Bus...

President Joe Biden brought together top executives from the nation's biggest technology, financial services and energy companies this week to address the growing challenge of cybersecurity , speaking to tech leaders including Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Apple CEO Tim Cook. "The federal government can't meet this challenge alone," Biden said in his public remarks to open...

The last 18 months have been an audio-visual adventure, requiring many of us to improve and refine our at-home tech setups for virtual meetings and remote work.  And just when we thought we'd figured it out, we were hit with a new scenario entirely: hybrid work, with some people together in the office, and others dialing in from home. Getting things to work seamlessly in these situations is n...

An online marketplace that helps to facilitate trade between marijuana sellers and buyers will soon see its own stock traded on the Nasdaq . Another that connects pet owners with walkers, boarders and other caregivers just posted its first earnings as a publicly traded company . And a 3-year-old Redmond-based biotech company with a mere 25 employees just raised $80 million its stock market debut....

Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman joins us on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast to discuss the latest twists in the housing market; delays in returning to the office; the role of climate in real estate; how technology is changing homebuying; and the impact of remote work and migration on Seattle and other big U.S. cities. In some ways, "it's our employees who are deciding where Redfin's headquarters are...

When Microsoft announced its acquisition of LinkedIn for more than $26 billion five years ago , there was lots of skepticism, and for good reason. After all, Microsoft was a company known for taking huge write-downs when its biggest acquisitions (aQuantive, Nokia, etc.) failed to live up to expectations. But that was then, and after becoming the new leader of the venerable software giant, Microsof...

This is a special presentation of Day 2, GeekWire's podcast about everything Amazon. For more episodes, see geekwire.com/day2 or subscribe to Day 2 in Apple Podcasts ,  Google Podcasts ,  Spotify  or wherever you listen. Direct retail sales are poised to represent less than half of Amazon's business for the first time in its history — a fundamental shift that reflects the e-co...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees recently that the company's long-term goal is to "bring the metaverse to life" — helping to create an interconnected world of physical, virtual and augmented reality spaces that will reshape the way we work, interact with each other, create new things, and generally experience life. So how exactly will Facebook approach such an audacious plan?&nbsp...

A new report details extensive gender and racial inequities in Washington state's technology workforce, and makes a series of recommendations to address them. Among the recommendations: creating state-supported worker-owned co-ops for independent and contract workers; establishing a state startup fund to support women and people of color in the technology industry; and broadening the focus of the...

Sir Richard Branson added new fuel to the billionaire space race July 11 when he and his Virgin Galactic crewmates floated in suborbital space.  "To all you kids down there, I was once a child with a dream, looking up to the stars," Branson said before unbuckling. "Now, I'm an adult in a spaceship with lots of other wonderful adults, looking down to a beautiful, beautiful Earth. For the...

Jeff Wilke did something unusual when he left his role as Amazon's Worldwide Consumer CEO in March, after more than two decades with the company: he learned to code in the Python programming language. "I had lots of computer scientists that were working for me and the organization, and I was heavily involved in a bunch of architectural decisions, but I hadn't written code in years," he explained....

Boone Langston is an accomplished LEGO builder from the Portland, Ore., area who shares his creations with the world at BooneBuilds.com and on his Boone Builds YouTube channel. He also runs a virtual Boone's Build Camp for kids and adults. After working as an IT support specialist and videographer early in his career, he became a fan favorite in 2020 as one half of the team Mark and Boone, a.k.a....

Another day, another deal. Keeping up with the flurry of acquisitions, IPOs, SPACs and venture capital these days is no easy task. In fact,  IPO dollar volume for 2021 has already reached $171 billion, surpassing the record totals of last year. Same goes for mergers and acquisitions, with record levels of deal activity tracked for 2021. The money is certainly flowing. Washington state now boa...