Facebook

Alphabet  (GOOGL) - Get Alphabet Inc. Class A Report, parent company of Google, was one of the big beneficiaries of the economy of the Covid-19 pandemic. The firm has indeed taken advantage of the restriction measures which have forced millions of consumers to stay at home and communicate or stay in touch with the rest of the world mainly via technology. But with the reopening of economies and the return of employees to the office, the situation seems to have changed. In any case, this is the message sent by Alphabet when it published its first quarter results.Revenues have certainly increased by 22.95% to $68.01 billion compared to the first quarter of 2021 but they are below the expectations of financial analysts, who anticipated $68.05 billion. However, the rate of growth is slower than a year ago. In the first quarter of 2021, revenues had indeed increased by 34%.Alphabet posted net profit of $16.4 billion, down 8.33% year-on-year. Slow Growth at YouTubeWhat is interesting is the performance of YouTube.  » Read More

Facebook has concernsThe Canadian Press - Apr 26, 2022 / 1:45 pm | Story: 367112 Photo: The Canadian Press Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez rises during Question Period, Monday, April 25, 2022 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld Digital giant Meta says it has serious concerns about the federal government's online news bill, which would force tech companies to compensate news groups for reusing work on their platforms. Rachel Curran of Meta Canada told a parliamentary committee today that the company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is going through the proposed law in detail before deciding on a future response. Canada's bill to support the news industry is modelled on law in Australia, where Facebook introduced a temporary ban on viewing and sharing news on its social media site last year in protest of the draft legislation. At the House of Commons committee on public safety, Conservative MP Raquel Dancho asked Curran if a similar ban in Canada was off the table for Facebook.  » Read More

HILLSBORO, Mo. — Personal attacks, threats, and harassment were all aimed at the Jefferson County Health Department during the COVID pandemic. The department has since made big changes to its Facebook page. The administrative staff has decided to stop displaying public comments on its Facebook page. “We’ve seen bullying on there, between individuals as well as towards our staff and the community in general,” said Brianne Zwiener, public communications officer for the Jefferson County Health Department. The department used its Facebook page to make the announcement. The agency said dissemination of health updates over the past two years during the COVID pandemic has come at a cost, both educationally and mentally, for the staff and members of the public. “Obviously, some folks are going to look at things with a different filter,” Zwiener said. “Some are going to view things as toxic. Others will say, ‘Hey, this is just somebody voicing an opinion when it comes down to it. What we saw was a shift from our mission.” Department administrators got legal counsel before moving ahead with the decision.  » Read More

By Rachel Metz, CNN Business (CNN) — The parent company of Facebook and Instagram is taking on a new role as a brick-and-mortar retailer. On Monday, Meta announced the Meta Store, which will be the company’s first attempt at selling its physical products — including the Quest 2 virtual reality headset and Portal video calling device — directly to consumers in person. The store will also offer demos of the Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses that were developed with Ray-Ban, but customers who want to buy them will be directed to a Ray-Ban website to do so, Meta said. Unlike, say, the Apple Store, there will only be one Meta Store for now, and it will be based at the company’s campus in Burlingame, California (specifically, at 322 Airport Boulevard). Meta is the latest big tech company to open a retail store to showcase its hardware. Google opened one such store in New York last year. Microsoft shuttered its 83 stores in 2020,  » Read More

ROME, Ga. –  The Virginia women’s tennis team (20-5) had its run in the 2022 Atlantic Coast Conference Women’s Tennis Championship come to an end with a 4-1 loss against Duke (19-3) in the final on Sunday (April 24) at the Rome Tennis Center in Rome, Ga. Sophomore Emma Navarro earned the Cavaliers’ point. Junior Natasha Subhash and senior Sofia Munera opened the match with a 6-1 win on doubles court two. Duke won 6-2 on three to put the fate of the doubles point on court one. Sophomores Emma Navarro and Hibah Shaikh battled Georgia Drummy and Karolina Berankova to a 6-6 tie, but were edged 7-5 in the breaker as Duke took the 1-0 lead. Duke went up 2-0 with a win on singles court two before Navarro evened the match with a 6-4, 6-2 win against No. 8 Chloe Beck. Sara Ziodato battled Ellie Coleman on court six, but was edged 6-4, 7-6 (2) as Duke took a 3-1 lead. The Blue Devils clinched the match on another tiebreaker, this one to determine the third set on court three.  » Read More

You don't have permission to access "http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article260566912.html" on this server. Reference #18.15951160.1650847055.49b421b  » Read More

One of the many justifications Vladimir Putin has offered for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that NATO’s post-Cold War eastward advance threatens Russia’s national security. But if he hoped his assault on Ukraine would push the transatlantic alliance onto the back foot, Finland and Sweden are about to disappoint him. Both are preparing to join NATO in coming months, instantly doubling the length of the border that separates Russia from the largest and most successful military alliance in history. Many Americans may be surprised to learn that Russia’s large Nordic neighbors weren’t already members. Before and during World War II, Finland fought two wars with the Soviet Union that ended in stalemate. That allowed Finland to keep its independence in exchange for a pledge to remain neutral in the Cold War battle between East and West. For its part, Sweden has safeguarded neutrality as a central pillar of its foreign policy for 200 years. After Soviet collapse, the two countries joined the European Union, but neither felt an urgent need to sign up for a post-Cold War military alliance whose continuing purpose was unclear.  » Read More

Netflix signage next to the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, U.S., on Friday, Jan. 21, 2022.Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesNetflix surprised the world this week, saying it plans to finally address the rampant practice of password sharing.More than 100 million households are using a shared password, Netflix said Tuesday, including 30 million in the U.S. and Canada. But the video streamer doesn't plan to simply freeze those shared accounts. Instead, the company will likely favor the setting of an extra fee for those accounts being used by multiple people outside of the home.Netflix's plan to capture that lost revenue would start with an alert being sent to account holders whose passwords are being used by other households.The company has already started a test of this feature in Peru, Costa Rica and Chile. For accounts that are sharing a password across addresses, Netflix is charging an additional fee to add "sub accounts" for up to two people outside the home.  » Read More

The wait is nearly over for 1.6 million Illinois Facebook users who filed claims in a landmark $650 million biometric privacy settlement.Their $397 checks should be in the mail beginning May 9, according to Chicago attorney Jay Edelson, who brought the lawsuit against Facebook seven years ago.“Not only did we demonstrate that privacy cases can put real money back into the pockets of the class, we also showed that, when it comes to securing biometric privacy, the wind is at our collective backs,” Edelson said Friday.The payouts follow a ruling last month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which upheld the February 2021 class-action settlement over Facebook’s alleged violations of Illinois’ biometric privacy law. Two Illinois class members, Dawn Frankfother and Cathy Flanagan, who objected to the awarding of $97.5 million in attorneys’ fees agreed they “will not take any further action in this matter,” freeing up the distribution, according to an April 11 court filing.The settlement class included about 7 million Facebook users in Illinois for whom the social network created and stored a face template after June 7,  » Read More

Meta and Netflix five-year performanceCNBCTwo members of the FAANG group have been defanged.In the five months since the Nasdaq's peak late last year, Netflix and Facebook (now Meta Platforms) have gotten crushed, giving up most of the gains they'd accumulated over the prior half decade.Netflix is down nearly 68% since the Nasdaq peak on November 19, while Facebook has lost over 45% of its value since then and is down more than 50% from its high two months earlier.In the recent past, both companies appeared to have unstoppable growth and impenetrable moats. Netflix was so embedded in American households with must-see original content that the company could periodically raise its monthly subscription cost and not miss a beat. And Facebook, with its billions of users and dominant ad-targeting engine, was accumulating envious amounts of online ad revenue.Those stories have flipped relatively quickly — with investors reassessing the companies' prospects in the face of increased competition and a deteriorating macroeconomic environment.  » Read More