Axios

Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Google's YouTube will be involved in a new coalition aimed at making the companies' "hosted consumer services hostile to terrorists and violent extremists," in the words of YouTube's blog post on the matter. The group has been dubbed the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism.

What it will do: The companies will share information with outside groups, work on technology to address extremism and "commission research to inform our counter-speech efforts and guide future technical and policy decisions around the removal of terrorist content."

Why it matters: Online platforms are under increasing pressure from governments — particularly in Europe — which think they should do more to crack down on terrorist content they host. Platform companies have long resisted being held legally liable for what users do.

The Chinese government is using facial-recognition technology to help promote good behavior and catch lawbreakers — even jaywalkers, according to the Wall Street Journal. Facial recognition is used to enter buildings, withdraw cash from ATMs and prevent cheating during competitions.

Big picture, big brother: China is installing iris scanners at check points throughout the country. The government already monitors social media, and there are plans to institute a national "social credit" system by 2020, which would give citizens ratings based on how they act at work, in public settings and financially. There are 176 million surveillance cameras in China, compared to 50 million in the U.S..

The tech: Chinese tech firms are competing to create surveillance systems to sell to the government. As artificial intelligence technologies advance, so does facial-recognition.

In the U.S., the FBI uses facial recognition to help catch suspects and the DHS is starting to use it in airports to keep track of foreign visitors. Other U.S. companies are using facial recognition in pilot programs.

Apple has quietly bought SensoMotoric Instruments, a German maker of eye-tracking glasses.

The deal was first reported by MacRumors, and Apple essentially confirmed the deal, offering the standard statement it gives when it buys companies. Founded in 1991, SMI does work in mobile eye tracking as well as for augmented and virtual reality, according to its website.

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans," an Apple representative said in a statement to Axios.

Why it matters: The deal could help Apple with its efforts in augmented and virtual reality. The company is building augmented reality tools for developers into iOS 11, the next version of the iPhone and iPad operating system.

Apple on Monday is releasing a public beta of iOS 11, the update to the iPhone/iPad operating system it previewed earlier this month.

Our take: Admittedly, we've only been testing the software for a couple days on a couple of devices, but iOS 11 seems stable enough for everyday use (though as with any beta software, people are cautioned not to use it on their primary device.) We've been using it on an iPhone 7 and it has been crash-free and all our apps have worked fine.

Shares of Hertz soared after Bloomberg reported that it had leased cars to Apple for its self-driving car effort. The stock was recently trading at 10.96, up $1.42, or nearly 15 percent.

However, there isn't a big collaboration here and a source says Apple has only leased six cars from the Hertz fleet-management unit. The report followed an earlier — and more consequential — leasing deal between Alphabet's Waymo and Avis.

The context: Apple has said it is exploring self-driving cars and has filed paperwork for test vehicles in California. And those vehicles had to come from somewhere since Apple has said it isn't building its own.

Uber is quietly reassuring some its Washington partners that the departure of CEO Travis Kalanick doesn't change its policy work, particularly on criminal justice reform.

The details: Malcolm Glenn, who manages outreach to external groups for the company, according to his LinkedIn, wrote in a message received by outside groups that Uber is still committed to its work on criminal justice reform, which has included fighting background check regimes that the company sees as burdensome and advocates say enables discrimination.

Why it matters: Uber has been grappling with allegations that its workplace culture is rife with sexism and harassment, which ultimately resulted in Kalanick's resignation. Glenn's message shows how the scandals at the company have rippled out to Washington, where the company has built up significant relationships in recent years.

Waymo is expanding its self-driving car fleet with a partnership with Avis Budget Group, which will provide maintenance services for Waymo cars at Avis and Budget car rental locations.

Reaching more "drivers": By partnering with a rental car company with thousands of locations, Waymo can get more people to experiment with its self-driving car technology. For Avis Budget Group, the partnership allows technicians to get hands-on experience servicing driverless vehicles, and also helping to offset declining rental car business. Avis also owns on-demand rental car service Zipcar, a relationship that could later help Waymo expand its technologies to a broader network of customers.

Where: Waymo has a public trial of its self-driving cars in Phoenix, Arizona, and recently announced it is adding Chrysler Pacifica minivans to build a 600-vehicle fleet. Avis will retrofit select facilities in Phoenix to house the minivans, Bloomberg reported.

The day dreaded by stubborn office workers around the country has finally arrived. At some point today, Google will replace its Google Talk feature in Gmail — known colloquially to most of the world as Gchat — with Google Hangouts.

• The reasoning: Google's announcement of the switch back in March touts Hangouts' better features and integration with other Google products over the barebones Gchat, which launched way back in 2005.
• Why it matters: Google's never really made much of a splash in social media — remember Wave? — so, as the company tries to position Hangouts as a business alternative to Slack or a social alternative to Facebook Messenger, it makes sense to force its core group of Gchat users to switch.
• Why it (really) matters: Look only to the elegiac think pieces on Gchat's death over the past few months to understand why a relatively featureless text chat matters to so many people.

European antitrust officials plan to slap a €1 billion fine on Google for abusing its search practices, the FT reports. Competition regulators say Google unfairly used its search dominance to steer customers to its own Google Shopping platform. The final decision is expected to be announced Wednesday, in what will undoubtedly strain tensions between Europe and Silicon Valley.

Why it matters: The Europeans don't share America's romantic view of Google, Facebook and other tech giants and are aggressively trying to highlight and restrain their market dominance, a move some White House officials such as Steve Bannon are watching closely as they debate future U.S. action.

President Trump blasted Barack Obama on Twitter Monday morning for having "colluded or obstructed" justice, following a Washington Post timeline Friday on the Obama administration's handling of Russian interference in the November presidential election:

"The reason that President Obama did NOTHING about Russia after being notified by the CIA of meddling is that he expected Clinton would win... and did not want to "rock the boat." He didn't "choke," he colluded or obstructed, and it did the Dems and Crooked Hillary no good. The real story is that President Obama did NOTHING after being informed in August about Russian meddling. With 4 months looking at Russia... under a magnifying glass, they have zero "tapes" of T people colluding. There is no collusion & no obstruction. I should be given apology!"

John Deere has quietly opened an office in San Francisco as the agriculture machinery giant looks to expand its efforts in computer vision and machine learning. Leading up John Deere Labs, as the office is known, is Alex Purdy, a former Boston Consulting Group principal who joined Deere about a year ago.

Purdy aims to hire 8-12 people, though he recognizes the company may need to be flexible given the fierce competition in the areas in which Deere is hiring.

"We're going to be a little bit opportunistic," Purdy said.

Pandora co-founder and CEO Tim Westergren plans to step down from the job, according to a report from Recode, which cited anonymous sources. Westergren will likely remain until the online radio streaming company finds a replacement, Recode said.

• Westergren took over as Pandora CEO last year from then-chief Brian McAndrews. Westergren was CEO of Pandora from 2002 to 2004 as well. A Pandora representative declined to comment to Axios on the report.
• Earlier this month, SiriusXM agreed to make a $480 million minority investment into Pandora and will get three seats on Pandora's board of directors, including chairman. The deal effectively killed a $150 million investment by KKR into Pandora, which the radio company decided to back out of (though it paid KKR $22.5 million as a break-up fee).
• Pandora has struggled to keep up with the rise of music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.

Pearl Automation, an automotive startup founded by former Apple engineers, has decided to shut down, Axios has learned from multiple sources. The move comes just a year after the company unveiled its first product, a wireless rear-view camera, which began to ship last September.

• What happened: Early product sales disappointed, which was exacerbated by a high burn rate.
• What next? The Pearl Automation team received several "acqui-hire" offers, but opted instead to shut down and part ways, according to a source close to the situation.
• Background: Pearl was founded in 2014 by three ex-Apple iPod engineers, and hired dozens of other ex-Apple employees. It eventually settled on the wireless rear-view camera as a first step in developing autonomous driving technology – and raised $50 million in VC funding from Accel, Shasta Ventures, Venrock, and Wellcome Trust.