News

China gives approval for broader use of Sinovac vaccine

China has given broader approval for the domestic-made Sinovac coronavirus vaccine, expanding those who can receive it beyond the high-risk and priority groups already allowed under an emergency clearance. Regulators gave conditional approval for Sinovac Biotech Ltd’s shot, CoronaVac, on Friday, clearing the way for general use, The National Medical Products Administration announced in a […]

Resistance to coup grows despite Myanmar's block of Facebook

Myanmar’s new military government blocked access to Facebook as resistance to Monday’s coup surged amid calls for civil disobedience to protest the ousting of the elected government and its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. Facebook is how most people access the internet in Myanmar and the company urged that it be restored. The military seized […]

CEO of social media app Parler says board fired him

John Matze says he has been fired as CEO of Parler, which was among social media services used to plan the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. Matze’s announcement Wednesday followed Amazon’s Jan. 11 decision to remove Parler from its web-hosting service over its unwillingness to remove posts […]

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos may step down without stepping away

Even after stepping aside as CEO, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will likely keep identifying new frontiers for the world’s dominant e-commerce company. His successor, meanwhile, gets to deal with escalating efforts to curtail Amazon’s power. Tuesday’s announcement that Bezos will hand off the CEO job this summer came as a surprise. But it doesn’t mean […]

GameStop's stupefying stock rise doesn't hide its reality

Behind GameStop’s stock surge is the grim reality of its prospects: The video game retailer is floundering even as the industry around it is booming. GameStop has been swept up in a battle between big-moneyed hedge funds betting against it and small investors trying to prop it up. That has caused GameStop’s share price to […]

Microsoft backs Australian plan to make Google pay for news

Microsoft said on Wednesday it supports Australia’s plans to make the biggest digital platforms pay for news and would help small businesses transfer their advertising to Bing if Google quits the country. Microsoft has been positioning itself to increase market share for its search engine Bing after a Google executive told a Senate hearing last […]

Google shutters internal Stadia game studio

Google is closing the internal studio tasked with developing games for its Stadia cloud-gaming service, a move that raises questions about the future of the Stadia service itself. Google launched Stadia in November 2019 as a new type of video-game platform that operates without a console and that stores game-playing sessions in the cloud. It […]

Australian prime minister says Bing could replace Google

The Australian prime minister said on Monday that Microsoft was confident that it could fill the void if Google carried out its threat to remove its search engine from Australia. A Google executive told a Senate hearing last month that it would likely make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the government went ahead […]

Fight The Man: What GameStop's surge says about online mobs

It’s a fable for our times: Small-time investors band together to take down greedy Wall Street hedge funds using the stock of a troubled video-game store. But the revolt of online stock-traders suggests much more. The internet is shifting society’s balance of power in unanticipated ways. And the same tools that empower the little guy […]