Business & Tech Google/Alphabet Joins Apple and Microsoft in the $1 Trillion Club Alphabet officially reached a valuation of $1 trillion on Thursday, becoming only the fourth American company — and the fourth tech company in history — to reach this once unthinkable milestone.
Business & Tech Apple Clashes With Justice Department Yet Again Over iPhone Backdoor A case backed by Attorney General William Barr is escalating quickly at the Department of Justice that will once again pit Apple against the federal government in a fight over smartphone privacy.
Business & Tech Small Oregon Coast Town Pushes Back On Facebook Plan To Land Trans-Pacific Cable There Residents of the tiny Oregon beach town of Tierra del Mar were attempting to go to battle with Facebook as the company moves to begin drilling a landing spot there for a fiber-optic cable from Asia, but Facebook won out with the county because there was no legislation against such projects.
Business & Tech Prepare for Ubers to Start Rejecting More Trips As AB5-Related Changes Roll Out After a new state law just took effect with the intention of protecting gig-economy workers, Uber is taking the position, temporarily, that it just has to make some changes to its driver-side app to comply with the law. And those changes are likely to impact riders across the board.
Business & Tech City Aims to Shut Down 'Rogue' Scooter Company Go X for Operating With Allegedly Forged Permit Calling the business's actions "next-level craziness," the SFMTA and the City Attorney's Office are seeking to shut down the e-scooter company Go X, which has been operating in San Francisco without a city permit now for a year.
Business & Tech Facebook Bans Some Deepfakes, But Not Those Made for 'Satire' In a seemingly cynical and tactical move ahead of another congressional hearing, Facebook announced today that it is officially banning intentionally manipulated video aimed at misinforming the public, a.k.a. deepfakes.
Business & Tech Uber and Postmates Join Forces To Seek Injunction In Gig-Worker Law AB-5 The two local app-based companies that rely on contract drivers are challenging a new California law that is set to go into effect on January 1, and which poses an existential threat to the so-called "gig economy."
Business & Tech The 2010s: When Tech Transformed How We Think, Talk, and Consume Media Companies based in the Bay Area are largely to thank — and blame — for how much the American psyche has changed. And as we close out this tumultuous decade, let's take account of the impacts the local tech industry has had on the world in a short span of time.
Business & Tech Bumble Deleted Sharon Stone's Profile Because They Thought It Was Fake Bumble, the dating app that lets women make the first move in hetero pairings, just made a gaffe when it deleted sometime Bay Area resident Sharon Stone's dating profile, believe it was a fake. It was not!
Business & Tech Hyatt Regency Converts Hallways Overlooking Embarcadero Into Tiny Rooms The grandly Brutalist and angular Hyatt Regency at the foot of Market Street has 15 new guest rooms thanks to some underutilized, oversized hallways that had some excellent Bay views.
Business & Tech Guy Implants Tesla Key In His Hand, Possibly Hastens Cyborg Revolution Tesla fanboys worldwide are surely wetting themselves with fascination as a Utah man has implanted his Tesla key into his hand, obvious medical and surveillance concerns be damned.
Business & Tech Twitter and Facebook Remove Falun Gong, Saudi Disinformation Campaigns Both Twitter and Facebook announced Friday that they were removing hundreds of inauthentic accounts with links to the Falun Gong spiritual movement — of Shen Yun fame. And Twitter also admitted it just had to remove 88,000 fake accounts linked to Saudi Arabia.
Business & Tech Uber Riders Tell Harrowing Story Of Feeling Kidnapped By Driver In Oakland A mistake by an Alaska Airlines gate agent and a very angry Uber driver led to a 911 call and a kidnapping story fit for local news — not to mention a fresh bit of bad PR for Uber.
Business & Tech Smash-and-Grab Thief Takes Facebook Hard Drives With Sensitive Employee Data A thief broke into the car of an employee in the payroll department at Facebook last month and made off with hard drives that contained banking and salary information for 29,000 Facebook employees.
Business & Tech Google and Facebook Slip Out of Top Ten In Glassdoor Ratings By Employees Two of the Bay Area's big tech companies that have long been evangelized by their employees and praised as places to work are steadily slipping in their popularity rankings on Glassdoor.
Business & Tech San Francisco Loses Major Convention, Oracle's OpenWorld, to Las Vegas Following several years in which the convention bureau has been decrying the visible homelessness on downtown streets as a deterrent for organizers of lucrative professional conventions, the city is losing one of its longstanding mainstays, Oracle's OpenWorld.
Business & Tech Apple Rolls Out Its Most Expensive Computer Ever, Topping Out at $53K The newest Mac Pro desktop models go on sale today, and while the base model costs just a dollar under six grand, add-ons bring the top-of-the-line version to $52,599.
Business & Tech Facebook Says It Will Fight Disinformation About the 2020 Census It's not only an election year next year, it's also a census year, and Facebook is saying that it plans to treat the census like a high-profile election — only in this case it will actually take down ads that spread lies.
Business & Tech It's Not Even Built Yet, But Downtown's 61-Story Oceanwide Center Is Already For Sale Chinese developer Oceanwide Holdings looks to be trying to exit the U.S. market, either partially or fully, putting its considerable development portfolio in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco all on the market at once.
Business & Tech Lyft Is Being Sued By 20 Victims In Second Sexual-Assault Suit A second lawsuit was filed Wednesday against Lyft in a case involving 20 cases of sexual assault involving drivers. And this suit joins a separate one filed in September by the same law firm that covers 14 other cases of assault.
Business & Tech 12 Years After The First iPhone, Craigslist Has Finally Launched a Smartphone App The purple peace sign power of Craigslist is now available as an official iOS app, though the Android app is more of a beta version casual encounter.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Google Co-Founders Step Down As Alphabet Chiefs Larry Page and Sergey Brin are ending remarkable two-decade careers by stepping down from their roles at Alphabet, the Tubbs Fire cause is again questioned, and closures begin at the Caldecott Tunnel.
Business & Tech Mark Zuckerberg Gets Grilled By Gayle King About Political Ads, That Secret White House Dinner Monday on CBS This Morning, Gayle King aired the first half of a two-part interview she did with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan — the first joint television interview the couple has ever done.
Business & Tech SF-Based Charles Schwab Buys TD Ameritrade, Will Move HQ to Dallas Area 48-year-old brokerage firm Charles Schwab confirmed its widely rumored acquisition of TD Ameritrade on Monday, and the news came with the added detail that the combined company's new corporate headquarters will be in Westlake, Texas.
Business & Tech Former CEO Travis Kalanick Dumps Uber Stock To the Tune of $1.5 Billion Following the expiration of the six-month lockup period for investors and employees' Uber stock, former CEO Travis Kalanick has had some big paydays this month.
