General Electric was once considered the most valuable company in the world, a conglomerate that spanned industries and was respected specifically for its management prowess.
But over the last two decades, the company has imploded in slow motion. On Tuesday, GE announced it would break into three distinct companies, marking the beginning of the end for the multinational behemoth.
Axios Re:Cap host Felix Salmon is joined by Ted Mann, journalist and co-author of Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the fall of General Electric.
Activision Blizzard is granting additional benefits to contract workers, including new holiday policies and paid sick leave.
Why it matters: The company's contractors in QA and customer service have spoken at length about toxic work conditions they've faced as part of their particularly vulnerable position of temporary work.
A group of modders have re-created downloadable "Mass Effect" content that was previously lost, allowing players to revisit — or experience for the first time — areas not even its own developers at BioWare could salvage.
The details: The content in question is "Mass Effect"'s Pinnacle Station, released in 2009, which modders were able to add to PC versions of trilogy remaster, "Mass Effect: Legendary Edition."
Meta, the parent company to Facebook, on Tuesday said that starting January 19, it will no longer allow advertisers to select terms for ad targeting related to sensitive identifying traits, such as race, ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation.
Why it matters: It's one of the more dramatic moves that the social media company has taken to minimize manipulation on its platform by advertisers.
Popular trading app Robinhood said Monday that hackers gained accessed to personal information belonging to millions of its users on Nov. 3, including full names and email addresses.
Details: The trading app said it does not believe any Social Security numbers or financial information was exposed from the security breach, but the details that were disclosed could leave people vulnerable to email and phone scams and identity theft.
OpenWeb, a platform used by publishers to manage comments and user interactions, has raised $150 million in a series E financing round that values the company at $1.1 billion, its CEO and co-founder Nadav Shoval tells Axios.
Why it matters: OpenWeb's growth is driven by a realization from publishers that building direct relationships with their audiences online is a stronger value proposition long-term than being reliant on social media and search giants.
Investors and consumers show growing enthusiasm for privacy-focused alternatives to Google and Facebook amid renewed scrutiny over the real cost of their "free" services.
Yes, but: It's still hard to compete with the massive profit engines those companies have built.
At about $11 trillion, the combined market value of the six most valuable American companies is now more than a quarter of the entire value of the S&P 500.
Why it matters: The stock price of most of these companies has roughly doubled in the past two years, pointing to the undeniable leverage they've had during the pandemic, as so many U.S. businesses shifted to digital operations.
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has introduced a bill that would require online platforms to let users opt out of having personal data-driven algorithms select the content they see, according to a copy of the text shared exclusively with Axios.
Driving the news: Recent revelations about Facebook's internal research findings have renewed lawmaker interest in bills that seek to give people more of a say in how algorithms shape their online experiences.
San Diego-based Cue Health, which went public in September and is best known for providing COVID-19 tests to Google, the Defense Department and the NBA, is now debuting a consumer version of its product, available for purchase on Nov. 15.
Why it matters: With experts predicting that the virus will be with us for at least a few years in some form, at-home testing is likely to become a growing need for many people.
