 | Apr 30, 2025 | | | | | | Good morning! A Google executive says a Chrome spin-off would jeopardize user security. Meta Platforms announces an application programming interface for Llama AI models. Amazon says it has no plans to display tariff costs on its shopping sites after a media report about such a move.
| | | | A senior Google cybersecurity executive testified on Tuesday that forcing Google to share data or spin off its Chrome browser, as the Department of Justice has proposed as the remedies for Google's illegal search monopoly, would jeopardize user security on those products. Google is seeking a more limited remedy that would only do away with exclusive search distribution deals. Heather Adkins, vice president of security engineering, testified that Google has built up a sophisticated security infrastructure over more than two decades to contend with what she called a "daily onslaught" of attempted cyberattacks. Adkins, who has worked at Google since 2002, said she has seen security practices at startups Google has acquired, and that those startups have prioritized getting their product to market over safety, unlike Google. Executives from OpenAI and Perplexity both tossed their hat in the ring when asked on the stand if they would be interested in purchasing Chrome. During cross-examination, a lawyer for the Justice Department pressed Adkins to admit that the U.S. government had some advantages that Google did not when it came to assessing cybersecurity. The lawyer said that the U.S. government would assess who would receive access to Google's data under a data sharing remedy. The lawyer also elicited from Adkins that Google already works with outside cybersecurity firms including Crowdstrike, although Adkins said that Google still has control over what changes to implement. | | | | Meta Platforms announced an application programming interface for developers to access and use its large language model Llama at its LlamaCon developer conference on Thursday. The Information previously reported that Meta was working on a business API. Llama API could help Meta more effectively sell its artificial intelligence models to business customers, after Llama has struggled to gain traction on cloud services. Previously, developers accessed Llama by downloading and running it by themselves or through APIs managed by cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services. Llama API is currently available as a limited preview and will host different versions of Llama, including the most recently released Llama 4 Maverick and Scout. Meta earlier this month released Llama 4 Maverick and Scout, one day after The Information reported that the model had been delayed over performance problems during its development. Those models had a rocky debut, in part because Meta uploaded an experimental version of Llama 4 Maverick to the LLM leaderboard LMArena, which performed better than the version actually released by the company. | | | | President Donald Trump's press secretary responded to a Punchbowl News report on Tuesday that Amazon would start showing shoppers how much an item's costs come from tariffs, calling such a move a "hostile and political act" by the company. The blowback highlights the challenges for U.S. e-commerce sites in messaging higher costs to consumers amid U.S.-China trade tensions. The Punchbowl report said that Amazon will show how much Trump's tariffs, which include a 145% levy on China, add to an item's total price. Amazon spokesperson Tim Doyle said that Amazon has considered listing import charges on Amazon Haul, the bargain shop it launched last year, but that the plan "was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties." Amazon later posted on X that listing import charges on Amazon Haul "was never approved and is not going to happen." Merchants on Amazon and across the internet have already started raising prices and paused new inventory orders from China in response to tariffs, The Information has reported. Many of Amazon's biggest third-party sellers, which make up more than 60% of the site's total sales, are based in China or manufacture their products there. The company has also pushed into direct-from-China sales, similar to China-founded bargain sites Temu and Shein, with its launch of Haul. | | | | Meta Platforms on Tuesday released a standalone smartphone app for its Meta AI assistant. The new app is a modified version of its Meta View app, which owners of its Ray-Ban smart glasses used to manage the device. It gives Meta's AI assistant more ways to reach people, putting it on par with AI assistants from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and xAI, all of which have their own apps. Meta previously relied on offering its AI assistant through its social media apps—Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. The Information previously reported on Meta's plans for a standalone app for Meta AI. The new app includes a social feed where people can share how they are using artificial intelligence. People can still use the app to manage their smart glasses, as well as "other kinds of AI devices that we're going to be building in the future," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on Instagram. Meta AI has almost 1 billion monthly active users across Meta's social media apps, Zuckerberg said on Tuesday, up from more than 700 million in January. Some of that usage is thought to be unintentional, which the company has previously attributed to people still learning how to use the assistant on its social media apps. | | | | Snap revenue rose 14% to $1.36 billion during the first three months of the year, but the company said it couldn't provide financial guidance for the second quarter due to uncertain "macro economic conditions" which could hurt demand for advertising. "While our topline revenue has continued to grow, we have experienced headwinds to start the current quarter," Snap wrote in a letter to investors. Snap shares fell more than 15% in after-hours trading on Tuesday. The Snapchat parent company also lost 1 million users in North America during the first quarter compared to a year earlier and the prior quarter. But its global daily users grew 9% to 460 million year over year. The company now has more than 900 million monthly active users. | | | | United Parcel Service plans to cut about 20,000 jobs and close 73 facilities as the U.S. delivery firm handles fewer packages for Amazon, the company said Tuesday. The cuts, which represent about 4% of UPS's workforce, are part of a plan to respond to "lower volumes from our largest customer," UPS said in a securities filing. The filing did not name Amazon, but UPS has previously disclosed that Amazon is its largest customer. UPS said in January that it expects the number of packages Amazon sends through UPS to drop by more than 50% by the second half of 2026. UPS has said for years that it wants to focus on higher margin customers, while Amazon has been sending a greater share of packages through its own delivery network. | | | | Thrive Capital announced a new vehicle called Thrive Holdings, aimed at "investing in, acquiring, and operating businesses for the long term," said the New York venture firm's founder Joshua Kushner in an X post. The investment vehicle will start and buy companies that could gain from artificial intelligence, including services-oriented industries such as accounting, reported The New York Times. The firm is finalizing about $1 billion for Thrive Holdings' initial round from investors including Thrive Capital's existing limited partners, said the newspaper. Its permanent capital vehicle structure allows the firm to continuously raise funds, hold investments without the pressure to exit in a fixed timeframe and reinvest profits into existing businesses or new acquisitions. Thrive has previously invested in some service businesses that buy other businesses. Last spring it invested in Crete Professionals Alliance, a Tampa, Fla.-based accounting firm, The Information reported. Crete has said it will invest in other accounting businesses and then use its technology to help run those firms. Other firms, such as General Catalyst and 8VC, have also pursued a similar roll-up strategy to create or invest in companies in fields such as call center support, accounting and property management. They're also incorporating AI to automate tasks and increase these businesses' efficiency. | | | | Spotify reported 15% growth in revenue to 4.2 billion euros, driven by its premium subscription business. Advertising revenue grew 8%, although excluding the impact of foreign exchange changes, growth in advertising was just 5%. Spotify said pricing in podcast ad inventory was soft. The quarter shows how the music streaming-and-podcasting firm has benefited from raising prices on its premium subscription offering. The number of premium subscribers rose 12% but premium revenue expanded 16%. Meanwhile operating income more than doubled to 509 million euros, helped by lower staffing and marketing costs. But the profit was below the company's forecast. Spotify shares were trading down 5.5% in pre market trading. | | | | Mastercard announced on Tuesday a set of tools to make it easier for artificial intelligence agents to handle card payments and make purchases on behalf of users, a move that comes as AI companies tout online shopping as a key area where agents can automate tasks. The initiative, Mastercard Agent Pay, will use tokenized payments technology, which anonymizes sensitive information like credit card numbers for secure transactions and is already used by digital wallets like Apple Pay. Agent Pay will verify agents are authorized to transact on behalf of users and help communicate verification to other payments companies and merchants. As companies offering AI searches and autonomous agents have rolled out new ways for shoppers to find and buy products, retailers are facing questions about how to weed out potentially fraudulent or risky transactions. Mastercard said it would partner with Microsoft "on new use cases to scale agentic commerce" and that other AI partnerships would follow. Mastercard also said it's partnering with checkout providers and other payments tech companies like Braintree and Checkout.com, as well as banks that issue cards. | | | | Waymo and Toyota are exploring a partnership to develop an autonomous vehicle platform for personally owned vehicles, Waymo said Tuesday. The automaker's mobility technology subsidiary, Woven by Toyota, may join the potential partnership. Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO at Waymo, said the partnership could bring Toyota vehicles into Waymo's ride-hailing fleet. Woven by Toyota was previously the advanced development arm of Toyota's Research Institute. It acquired Lyft's self-driving unit in 2021 for $550 million. Discussions between Waymo and Toyota are still on-going and the scope of the potential partnership has not been finalized, the companies said. | | | Popular articles By Cory Weinberg and Michael Roddan
By Cory Weinberg and Kalley Huang
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