Amazon is secretly testing robots for domestic use, using the same research division that created the Echo and Fire device families, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and Brad Stone report.
Yes, but: Amazon is catching up in its pursuit of home robots, not leading the wave. History is replete with latecomers who won anyway, and we don't know what Amazon will actually unveil. But unless it is about to surprise all the private and university labs on the planet, Amazon is actually behind the curve of other countries and companies.
Google parent company, Alphabet, beat earnings expectations for the first quarter of 2018, according to the numbers released Monday.
Why it matters: There's a big question market above Google as it prepares to face unprecedented data privacy regulations in Europe and its own privacy reckoning in the United States.
A "limited number" of Match.com users' profiles were mistakenly reactivated despite the fact that some accounts had been deactivated or deleted years ago, reports The Verge.
Why it matters: The hiccup highlights the legal gray area surrounding data retention policies, especially for social media and dating platforms, where users are encouraged to share as much sensitive personal information as possible.
The European Commission's antitrust regulator said Monday it would deepen its investigation of Apple's proposed purchase of music-recognition app Shazam.
Why it matters: Valued at a reported $400 million, the Shazam deal isn't huge, but on the bigger side for Apple, which tends to make mostly smaller acquisitions. The extra scrutiny demonstrates how Europe has started to view data as a key asset when it comes to approving deals.
On April 23, Mike Allen hosted a conversation in Chicago on the future of work in cities, featuring Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum and Imir Arifi, Head of AI & Machine Learning at Health Care Service Corporation.
Southwest Airlines said it canceled about 40 flights on Sunday — 1% of those scheduled — to perform voluntary fan blade inspections in the wake of last week’s deadly engine incident in Philadelphia.
The details: The airline said in a statement that this voluntary move is not in response to an emergency directive issued by the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday. The company had announced a fan blade inspection program Tuesday to examine engines similar to the one involved in last week's incident.
NewsGuard, a new service that uses trained journalists to rate thousands of news and information sites, will announce that it has launched a secure, encrypted digital and telephone hotline for political candidates and members of the public to report suspected fake news sites.
The big picture: Steven Brill, co-CEO of NewsGuard: “We’ve already seen one case of a candidate citing an endorsement from a bogus site that was created by supporters of that candidate. This is a particularly insidious variety of fake news, because it is aimed directly at unsuspecting voters.”
The big picture: But the chart above, from a poll by Stagwell's Harris X research consultancy (2,546 Americans polled online April 12-13, right after the Facebook hearings), shows Americans are far from satisfied with the status quo.
