Amazon is suing Google over its hiring of Brian Hall, a former AWS marketing executive, to serve as a VP of marketing for Google Cloud, citing a non-compete clause in Hall's contract.
The big picture: The move speaks to the level of competition between Amazon and Google — as well as the fact that Washington state still allows some non-compete agreements, while the clauses are generally unenforceable in California.
The fast-moving world of Twitter has become the nerve center of the American news cycle — as evidenced by record-breaking downloads and engagement for the service last week.
Why it matters: Twitter is our mediaverse's grand interface between journalism and social media. While news organizations play a central role in sharing links to their coverage on Twitter, much of the visual content shared in real time during breaking news events like protests is shared by everyday users.
Tech companies, like many other businesses, are taking public stands against police violence and systemic racism, but their actions often fail to back up those stances, as critics and some employees have been quick to point out.
The big picture: Tech firms stand accused of contributing to the very problems being spotlighted by the nationwide protests they now vocally back. In many cases, the industry still hasn't reckoned with the way its products and services have deepened racial divides, or with its own failure to diversify.
In a letter to members of Congress on Monday, IBM said it is exiting the general-purpose facial recognition business and said it opposes the use of such technology for mass surveillance and racial profiling.
Why it matters: Facial recognition software is controversial for a number of reasons, including the potential for human rights violations as well as evidence that the technology is less accurate in identifying people of color.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai got personal in his address Sunday to the class of 2020, sharing his own story of coming late to the PC revolution, while also encouraging this year's graduates to take on the problems they see in modern society.
Why it matters: Pichai, also CEO of Google parent company Alphabet, remains fairly unknown outside tech circles. And his earnestness and origin story could prove to be an asset as the company faces increased regulatory scrutiny.
Bamboo Learning, a startup led by a former Amazon executive that primarily delivers educational content to Alexa-enabled smart speakers, on Monday comes to Google's rival ecosystem for the first time.
The big picture: Smart speakers offer opportunities for new categories of applications, but it remains difficult to make money in the market, which helps explain the relative dearth of startups focused on the space.
A new report from NYU finds that a heavy reliance on contractors to handle content moderation at Facebook, Google and YouTube has led to bad working conditions and a lack of attention to real-world harms caused by inflammatory or deceptive content.
Why it matters: A great deal of attention is paid to these platforms' content policies, but much of the actual moderation work is being left to people who don't even directly work for the companies.
