In one of the biggest remote hiring pushes in memory, Amazon has 3,000 jobs open for remote customer service representatives. But there are caveats.
Between the lines: The Amazon customer service jobs, available in 18 states, are temporary, a company spokesperson said, with no career ladder. And they will be just an average of 20–29 hours per week at $15 an hour, which is the company's minimum wage.
Uber has agreed pay $20 million to settle a 6-year-old class-action lawsuit brought by drivers claiming they are employees of Uber, not independent contractors, and are therefore eligible for benefits and reimbursement for expenses, Reuters reports.
Between the lines: Last year, a California Supreme Court ruling made it more difficult for employers to label gig-economy workers as independent contractors. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen rejected Uber's offer in 2016 to pay the drivers a settlement of $100 million, claiming it was not sufficient. The class now includes 13,600 drivers in California and Massachusetts, significantly smaller than the original class size of 385,000.
The U.S. has made its first threat to curtail sharing intelligence with an ally if that government ignores U.S. warnings about Huawei 5G equipment, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Why it matters: This is no small threat. The warning to Germany represents an escalation from previous American statements that raised the prospect of strained relationships and suggested the U.S. can't safely maintain a presence in countries where it believes infrastructure is not secure.
Months after their departure from Facebook, Instagram's co-founders took to the stage at SXSW to explain why they sold their company to Facebook, and why they left the social network.
The big picture: “The idea behind it was that we wanted to make a bet on the company,” Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom said of the decision to sell to Facebook. And if the goal was to pick a company that would help Instagram continue to grow, that bet paid off, he said.
In a race to win over the hearts and budgets of consumers, tech giants are squeezing as many services together as possible, making it more cost efficient for users to buy those services, than individual music, video or news subscriptions.
Driving the news: Hulu and Spotify Premium announced a new entertainment bundle early Tuesday morning that would give individual U.S. Spotify Premium users access to Hulu's ad-supported digital TV and movie content plan at no additional cost to current.
When leaders in Silicon Valley assess the new antitrust fever among candidates and policymakers, the prospect of corporate breakups isn't their biggest worry. Instead, insiders fear missing the next cycle of industry change if they're distracted and hobbled by antitrust conflicts.
Why it matters: If executives are busy answering lawmaker inquiries and defending regulator lawsuits, they're less likely to be protecting their businesses from upstart challengers. And if they're under constant regulatory scrutiny, they'll be less able to either elbow aside or snatch up the competition.
New data from an exclusive Axios/Harris poll finds that public perception of companies is deeply impacted by how much those companies can promise a better future for society.
Why it matters: Legacy brands are facing their stiffest competition yet from mission-driven upstarts. Many are hoping that marketing campaigns centered around "social good" will improve the narrative that older corporate giants are stodgy and ruthless.
The most visible faces in the predicted coming wave of job displacement belong to the likes of factory workers and truck drivers — primarily men threatened by robots and AI.
The big picture: But the wave will crash harder over women, who do the majority of highly automatable jobs. Policymakers thus far appear blind to the coming job losses for women, experts say, and risk putting in place training programs and safety nets that mainly rescue men.
Facebook on Monday briefly removed and then restored Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s advertisements promoting hear plan to break-up big technology companies, including the social media platform.
"We removed the ads because they violated our policies against use of our corporate logo. In the interest of allowing robust debate, we are restoring the ads.”
— Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.
Details: The removal of the Democratic presidential candidate's ads was first reported by Politico. The publication also said that over a dozen of other Facebook advertisements on Warren's tech proposal were not affected.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney criticized President Trump’s presidency in a private session with Mike Pence at the annual American Enterprise Institute’s World Forum, Politico's Eliana Johnson reports.
What they’re saying: The criticism is notable since Cheney has remained largely silent on the Trump’s administration and tactics. Attendees told Johnson that Cheney tore into Trump’s tenuous relationship with the U.S. intelligence community and NATO, as well as his willingness to make major policy announcements on Twitter. Cheney also lambasted the administration’s foreign policy for resembling President Obama’s more than it resembled Republican values.
Microsoft is suing a unit of Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn over unpaid patent royalties on the consumer devices it makes for others.
Why it matters: Microsoft has a patent license with Foxconn that calls for it to make payments for smartphones, tablets and other devices and to provide an annual audit to Microsoft. The software maker says the company has not been doing either in recent years.
Amazon will no longer tell third-party merchants that sell products on its platform in the United States that they cannot offer the same goods for a lower price on another website, according to a person with direct knowledge of the company's decision.
Why it matters: Critics have said the so-called "most favored nation," or "price parity," provisions could violate antitrust law. But even without them, the company still faces a broader set of attacks on its size and power in the United States and around the world.
Apple is hosting an event at its headquarters on March 25, which the company expected to use to talk more about services like video and likely news.
Why it matters: As iPhone sales growth has slowed, Apple has been looking to services to help boost sales. It has made several moves in the space, including big video content deals with Oprah and others and the purchase of Texture, a sort of "Netflix for magazines."
The Trump administration informed the German government on Friday that it would curtail intelligence-sharing if Berlin allowed Huawei to participate in building the country's 5G network, WSJ reports.
Why it matters: The U.S. has been pushing allies to bar Huawei and other Chinese vendors from building out their 5G networks over concerns that these companies would facilitate Chinese spying, though this is the first time it has delivered a formal warning.
After denying to Republican donors that he mistakenly referred to Apple CEO Tim Cook as "Tim Apple," President Trump has admitted to the slip in a Monday tweet.
"At a recent round table meeting of business executives, & long after formally introducing Tim Cook of Apple, I quickly referred to Tim + Apple as Tim/Apple as an easy way to save time & words. The Fake News was disparagingly all over this, & it became yet another bad Trump story!"
Computer hardware company Nvidia announced Monday it will acquire Mellanox for $6.9 billion to help grow its chip-making for data centers.
Why it matters: The acquisition marks Nvidia biggest acquisition to date and reportedly tops a bid from rival Intel. Mellanox’s chips power high-speed networks that connect servers. The acquisition would allow Nvidia to wean off its reliance on the video game industry.
For all the many controversies around Facebook's mishandling of personal data, Google actually knows way more about most of us.
The bottom line: Just how much Google knows depends to some degree on your privacy settings — and to a larger degree on which devices, products and services you use.
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