GeekWire

Did the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia really hack into Jeff Bezos' phone? It sure looks that way , based on a forensic analysis of what happened after a video was sent to the Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner via WhatsApp by Mohammed bin Salman, a.k.a. MBS. A United Nations report this week called the incident part of a broader campaign against the Washington Post seeking to stifle its coverage...

Apple doubled down on artificial intelligence and boosted its presence in Seattle with the acquisition of Xnor.ai, an Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence spinout with roots at the University of Washington, as first reported by GeekWire this week . It was a win for those institutions, and investors including Seattle's Madrona Venture Group, but it's also an example of an ambitious startup s...

CES is becoming less of a place where companies unveil game-changing products, and more where they show attention-grabbing ideas. That's one of the takeaways from GeekWire's CES 2020 coverage team, managing editor Taylor Soper and photographer/videographer Kevin Lisota, who just returned from several days at the big technology show in Las Vegas. On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, they recap...

More than half of the U.S. population over age 12 has now listened to a podcast, according to Edison Research . The medium has fundamentally altered the landscape for audio content, liberating and empowering both listeners and creators. And big acquisitions such as Spotify’s purchase of Gimlet Media signal that the business of podcasting is coming of age, too. But there remains an economic g...

From Amazon to Zillow, big successes to surprising failures, it was an extraordinary year for technology and innovation emerging from and impacting Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. That's the consensus from GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop, who independently compiled their own lists of the biggest stories of the year, then compared notes in this year-end GeekWire Podcast discussion...

John and Todd make it through the rain and into the studio to discuss some of the  biggest stories of the week: Car2go's exit from North Americ a, which will leave Seattle without a free-floating car-sharing service for the first time in many years; and the sudden downfall of Vicis , the high-tech football helmet maker backed by some of the NFL's biggest names. Plus the answer to last week's...

The hacking of multiple Ring cameras this week brought the sometimes abstract world of tech security and privacy into stark relief, as hackers watched and harassed families and children in their homes, demonstrating the frightening real-world consequences of weak password security.  On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we explain what happened in the incidents, discuss practical tips...

The leaders of Amazon's cloud division made a few things clear this week at the Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference in Las Vegas: AWS has broad ambitions in the $3.7 trillion enterprise tech market , looking for growth well beyond the current cloud sector. The company is urging more companies to move their computing to the cloud, at the same time it's developing hybrid technologies to run clo...

This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we go behind-the-scenes of some of the biggest and most interesting stories we covered this week: Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant, who overcame Amazon's opposition to win another term, tells us what she plans to do now . An innovation in solar energy, backed by Bill Gates, promises to dramatically reduce global carbon emissions . Amazon’s new smar...

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Amazon is formally protesting a decision by the U.S. Department of Defense to award its $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract to Microsoft, suggesting that the Pentagon succumbed  to political pressure from President Donald Trump.  Plus, Microsoft takes its Dreamers immigration lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court, what it's like to have Cortana read y...

LAS VEGAS -- Nearly 20,000 people are here this week to learn about the latest from Seattle-based Tableau Software, whose technologies turn large amounts of data into visualizations, or vizzes, interactive graphics and charts for interpreting and telling the underlying stories. They also heard from Tableau's new parent company, Salesforce, whose co-CEO Marc Benioff joined Tableau CEO Adam Selipsky...

Not only was Amazon's effort to back pro-business candidates for the Seattle City Council not effective, but its $1.45 million in contributions seems to have backfired on the company, energizing its opponents and leading to a new City Council that's collectively more to the left of the political spectrum than before. It's the latest in a series of political and policy missteps and missed opportuni...

A lot has changed in the world, the tech industry, and Microsoft since Satya Nadella published his book, "Hit Refresh," two years ago. One of the changes: Microsoft reclaimed the title of world's most valuable company in 2018, two decades since it last held that status. But the company didn't celebrate the milestone. "Success is important, but you have to remember that your success has to have com...

Artificial intelligence might sound like a futuristic concept, and it may be true that we're years or decades away from a generalized form of AI that can match or exceed the capabilities of the human brain across a wide range of topics. But the implications of machine learning, facial recognition and other early forms of the technology are already playing out for companies, governmental agencies a...

Amazon took a million-dollar gamble this week, betting a last-minute cash infusion will help elect a new Seattle City Council despite the inevitable backlash to the contribution. It's a risky move that has already emboldened Amazon's biggest critics in Seattle government. Whether the bet will pay off at the polls remains to be seen. Also on this episode:  Andrew Yang’s Bing ding creates...

The Federal Trade Commission is  ramping up its investigations into Big Tech, and one of the agency’s toughest enforcers visited Amazon’s backyard to discuss the state of competition in the industry with GeekWire's Monica Nickelsburg this week. FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra spoke at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle on Tuesday in a wide-ranging interview that covered antitrust law, t...

Our GeekWire Summit just wrapped up, and one of our sessions in particular made national news: our conversation on stage with Jay Carney , the former White House press secretary who is now Amazon’s senior vice president of public affairs. We talked about a wide range of issues, including antitrust and competitive concerns, and what it’s like to work for Jeff Bezos. We also asked for Ca...

Microsoft is back in the smartphone business with the unveiling of its new Surface Duo dual-screen folding device this week . It's a fascinating story all on its own, as the company finally goes public with a concept it has been experimenting with behind-the-scenes for much of the past decade. Surprise twist: It runs Android. But combined with the larger Surface Neo dual-screen tablet/notebook, th...

Amazon announced a series of new Echo and Alexa products and initiatives this week -- from smart glasses to wireless earbuds to a new neighborhood wireless initiative --  extending the reach of its devices and services well beyond the home, while attempting to address consumer concerns about privacy at the same time.   Here's our coverage from the week. Why Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sees new...

A new skyscraper in Seattle will bear the name Qualtrics Tower, after the technology company that will occupy more than a dozen floors in the building, with plans to quadruple its employee count in the region to more than 2000 people in the next several years. So what is Qualtrics, anyway? It’s an experience management company, with co-headquarters in Seattle and Provo Utah, that was acquire...

The climate crisis surged to the top of the tech industry's agenda this week, encouraged by a groundswell of activity from workers at Amazon, Microsoft, Google and other big tech companies, as part of global efforts to bring attention to the issue. It's the latest example of rising activism inside the tech industry, as a new generation of workers pushes employers to speak out and take action on po...

From package delivery to ride-hailing, companies including Amazon and Uber are facing new scrutiny over their use of contract workers to power the services they provide to consumers. California is poised to enact a law that would force Uber and Lyft to treat drivers like employees as part of a broader push around the country to ensure app-based workers have broader labor protections. Meanwhile, th...

In “ Tools & Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age ,” Microsoft President Brad Smith and his co-author Carol Ann Browne tell the inside story of some of the biggest developments in tech and the world over the past decade -- including Microsoft’s reaction to the Snowden revelations, its battle with Russian hackers in the leadup to the 2016 elections and its rol...

Amazon ousted Apple this year as the most loved brand among millennials, people age 19 through 39, according to a new stud y. What does this say about the future of the world? OK, that might be taking it too far, but some of our resident millennials offer their take on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast. And in news for slightly older generations, the startup HopSkipRide made its debut in Seattl...

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren appeared in Seattle on Sunday, a few blocks from Amazon's headquarters, and given the Democratic presidential candidate's call to break up the online retail giant as part of a larger crackdown on big tech companies, we were anticipating fireworks. It didn't happen. In fact, as we reported earlier this week , Warren didn't specifically mention Amazon in her public remarks...