The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $150 million for its coronavirus relief efforts on Wednesday, on top of the $100 million committed in February.
The big picture: Tech giants like Google and Facebook have donated hundreds of millions to COVID-19 relief efforts.
The world is learning the hard way that ramping up manufacturing of the equipment needed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic isn't as easy as scaling up the software that has come to dominate our lives.
Why it matters: Our economy has thrived on manipulating bytes, but to face the threats of the future, we'll need to relearn how to manipulate atoms in the real world. New technology like 3D printing can help by putting the flexibility of software at work in the creation of stuff.
The Pentagon's inspector general reported Wednesday that the White House did not influence the Defense Department's decision to award a $10 billion cloud-computing contract to Microsoft over Amazon, CNBC reports.
Why it matters: Amazon sued the department last year, claiming that President Trump influenced the decision by repeatedly and publicly criticizing the company and its CEO, Jeff Bezos.
Apple on Wednesday announced the second-generation iPhone SE, which combines many of the features of the iPhone 8 with the same A13 Bionic processor found in the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro in a $399 device.
Why it matters: It gives Apple a new product to sell and offers a lower priced option to those who need a new phone but are looking to save money amid the economic uncertainty created by the coronavirus pandemic.
The state of Washington sued Facebook on Tuesday, saying that the social network continues to sell political advertising in the state despite an agreement not to do so.
Why it matters: While Facebook continues to accept political advertising in most places, it had said it would stop selling such ads in Washington rather than comply with the state's strict disclosure law.
OnePlus launched two Android smartphones on Tuesday, including its most expensive model yet, the OnePlus 8 Pro, which starts at $899 and also comes in a $999 version with more memory.
The big picture: Product launches have changed a lot in the coronavirus era, but less so for companies like OnePlus that already did a lot of their events online. The biggest issue in the smartphone business, though, is demand, amid a struggling economy and a shelter-in-place market that favors home electronics.
Apple released data Tuesday from nations and cities worldwide that help to show the stunning reductions in travel due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Why it matters: Stay-at-home policies and closures of schools, offices and more are among the forces driving the collapse in oil demand — so is the decline of flying, which is not directly captured here.
Fear of the coronavirus and misinformation about the pandemic have created a pool of targets for online scammers.
The big picture: Misinformation around COVID-19 is rampant online, from phony cures to outlandish claims that 5G wireless signals cause the illness. Cybersecurity analysts are also seeing an explosion in phishing and other digital cons that base their scams on these popular coronavirus myths.
Why it matters: Like the rest of the travel industry, Airbnb has taken a huge hit from the novel coronavirus pandemic, which is also raising questions about its plans to go public in 2020.
David Thacker, a Google vice president of product management who oversees G Suite's apps, is joining venture firm Greylock Partners as a general partner focused on consumer technology.
The intrigue: "This is an opportunity right now, in this pandemic, where entrepreneurs have an opportunity to expose consumers to new products and delight them," Thacker tells Axios, noting part of the challenge will also be to spot the fads that emerge from the current circumstances.
A long-running legal showdown between Oracle and Google over whether common interfaces between software programs can be protected by copyright looks like it will drag on for months longer.
Driving the news: The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday it would take up a handful of cases from its spring term docket via teleconference, meaning those cases — including several relating to President Trump's business records — could be decided on their original schedule, despite the disruptions of the coronavirus shutdown.
Google has made significant progress toward developing its own processor to power future versions of its Pixel smartphone as soon as next year — and eventually Chromebooks as well, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: The move could help Google better compete with Apple, which designs its own chips. It would be a blow to Qualcomm, which supplies processors for many current high-end phones, including the Pixel.
