One Thing Today in Tech

Multiple oil transport and storage companies across Europe are dealing with cyber-attacks, BBC reports. IT systems have been disrupted in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. In total, dozens of terminals with oil storage and transport around the world have been affected. TCS will add close to 1,000 jobs in New Jersey. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s mega-yacht needs a historic bridge in Rotterdam pa...

Facebook saw its first-ever quarterly decline of daily users globally. Parent company Meta warned of a slowdown in the growth of ad sales that sent its shares plunging by 20 percent on Wednesday. US IT services giant Cognizant joined its rivals in posting strong December quarter numbers. Chargebee, a SaaS company raised a quarter of a billion dollars with a big jump in valuation. Notes: Facebook d...

India will introduce a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) to “give a big boost to the digital economy,” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her speech yesterday outlining the government’s budget proposals for the coming fiscal year that starts April 1. India will also tax crypto transactions at the rate of 30 percent, she said. And Google’s parent Alphabet reported record revenues for 20...

Wordle, the super hit online web-only word game, has been bought by The New York Times, according to a tweet by the game’s creator Josh Wardle. New York Times will integrate the daily word puzzle into its suite of word games, Wardle said. Sony has bought video game maker Bungie for $3.6 billion. Plus, IT sector M&A and PE deals saw strong interest in 2021. Notes: New York Times buys online wor...

The vast majority of mobile apps aimed at children in India ask for dangerous permissions, according to the latest annual survey by Arrka, a company that offers a privacy management platform to businesses. Overall, Google—no surprise—by far is the biggest tracker of personal data in India, according to Arrka. Separately, Google is investing $1 billion in Bharti Airtel for an equity stake and joint...

Indian IT-BPM sector has concerns about exemptions in the Data bill India’s IT services and business process management companies will petition the government over concerns that the broad exemptions sought by lawmakers in the proposed Data Protection Bill will adversely impact the $190 billion sector in the European Union, Economic Times reports. In addition to opposing wide-ranging access to pers...

Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys have overtaken IBM to become the second and third most valuable IT services brands in the world, in the annual Brand Finance survey. Only Accenture remains ahead, retaining its top spot for the fourth consecutive year. Infosys made strong gains, jumping from 214 in 2021’s global rankings to 158 in 2022, which also put it among the 25 fastest growing brands of...

Google tracks you even when your location is turned off, US states allege Google tracks people’s movements using information from its search engine, Maps app, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth services even after users turn off location tracking, three US states allege in a lawsuit, Reuters reports. Texas, Indiana, Washington State, and the District of Columbia sued Google on Monday over what they called decept...

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen and other activists have urged the social networking giant to release a long-awaited report on its impact in India, alleging the company is purposely obscuring human rights concerns, The Guardian reports. Meanwhile, a US Senate panel backed a bill that proposes some curbs on Big Tech. And in startup news, blockchain venture Stader has raised more money, at a h...

Parallel Systems, a company founded by former SpaceX engineers to reimagine the railroad system, has raised $49.55 million in Series A funds to build autonomous battery-electric rail vehicles that move freight, the company said in a press release yesterday; Meanwhile GM said it is expanding its hydrogen fuel cells beyond vehicles to power homes, offices and malls. Former SpaceX engineers’ startup...

Microsoft to buy Activision for $68.7 billion Microsoft is acquiring Activision Blizzard in an all-cash deal valued at $68.7 billion, to “become the third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony,” the maker of Windows and Azure software said in an investor release. “Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today and will play a key r...

Ed-tech startups, institutes warned against outsourcing arrangement  The Universities Grants Commission and the All India Council for Technical Education, have warned higher education institutes in the country that outsourcing of various programmes to ed-tech startups is not permitted, and said that action could be taken against them. The Regulations governing higher education institutes in I...

India has its own National Startup Day now. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in online interaction with several startups over the weekend, designated January 16 as the country’s startup day. He called on entrepreneurs to “innovate for India and innovate from India.” The government is focused on institutionalising innovation, reducing silos, and assisting innovators, he tweeted later. India gets Natio...

After a revised filing by the US FTC, Facebook, now Meta Platforms, must face the US government’s monopoly lawsuit alleging that the company abused its dominance and should be broken up, a judge ruled, Bloomberg reports. Japanese scientists have made a mask that glows if the coronavirus is detected. China’s experimental nuclear fusion reactor sets a new record. Facebook to face US antitrust lawsui...

Messaging wars — Google’s RCS versus Apple’s iMessage A recent Wall Street Journal feature on how teens in the US are using Apple’s iMessage as a status symbol spotlighted another front on which the iPhone maker is at loggerheads with Google—messaging. Hiroshi Lockheimer , senior vice president of Android, tweeted that Apple is deliberately holding back from supporting the RCS, or rich communicati...

CCI seeks feedback on Google’s payments policies The Competition Commission of India will seek a detailed report from app developers explaining the impact of Google’s payment policies on their balance sheet and also suggest an alternative payment mechanism if possible, Economic Times reports. Google is seeking to enforce its policy of limiting developers to solely use its billing system for in-app...

At the start of 2022, we bring you a series of episodes pulling together the five most interesting predictions we found in multiple areas of tech. Today, we look at life sciences tech, where Covid-19 has changed everything. Pushed by the pandemic, the application of digital technologies and AI to life sciences research has accelerated big time, and that will continue into 2022 and more broadly as...

At the start of 2022, we bring you a series of episodes that pull together the five most interesting predictions we found in multiple areas in tech. Today we look at high-performance computing, in which the processing power of a billion-billion calculations per second is close to reality. As to quantum computing, real-world problem solving is still far away, experts say. 1. High-performance comput...

At the start of 2022, we bring you a series of episodes that pull together the five most interesting predictions we found in multiple areas in tech. Today we look at robotics, where vital technologies, such as simulation, are advancing and investments in others, such as tactile sensors, are set to increase. Most commentary suggests adoption will continue to be driven by industrial use cases, but r...

At the start of 2022, we bring you a series of episodes that pull together the five most interesting predictions we found in multiple areas in tech. Today, we look at blockchains, crypto and Web3, after a year in which these all saw unprecedented advancement. Experts can’t agree on whether Bitcoin will nosedive or surge to never before highs in 2022. On the whole, though, all things digitally dece...

At the start of 2022, we bring you a series of episodes that pull together the five most interesting predictions we found in multiple areas in tech. In this episode, we focus on AI and machine learning, which experts around the world expect will go mainstream and impact multiple industries much more significantly. From manufacturing to human language, in 2022, everything will begin to change in wa...

India  is offering a Rs. 76,000 crore ($10 billion) package to global semiconductor companies to create a comprehensive ecosystem for chip design, packaging and manufacturing, Economic Times reports. The funding, which will be provided over six years, is expected to bring in investments of up to Rs 1.7 lakh crore ($22 billion), India’s Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwi...

Investment in climate tech is continuing to show strong growth as an emerging asset class, with a total of $87.5 billion invested in the second half of 2020 and the first half of 2021, accounting and consultancy firm PwC says in a new report, State of Climate Tech 2021. H1 2021 saw record investments, over $60 billion. This represents a 210 percent increase from the $28.4 billion invested in...

Elon Musk  is Time Magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’ for 2021. Musk’s startup rocket company, SpaceX, has blasted past Boeing and others to own America’s spacefaring future. His electric car company, Tesla, controls two-thirds of the multibillion-dollar electric-vehicle market it pioneered. It is valued at $1 trillion, the magazine points out . That has made Musk, with a net worth of more than...

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter account was “briefly compromised” on Sunday, according to a statement from his office. Modi, whose handle @narendramodi has more than 73 million followers on Twitter, is among the most followed figures on the microblogging social media platform. Suspicions of a hack were prompted after a tweet was posted from his handle that claimed India had ado...