Yet another series of layoffs has hit Google, this time at its video-sharing platform, YouTube. The company will eliminate 100 employees, a spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch. Last week, Google laid off more than 1,000 workers across several divisions, including engineering, services and voice-activated product Google Assistant.“As we’ve said, we’re responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” a Google spokesperson said in a provided statement. “To be ...

Apple’s iPhone has overtaken Samsung for the first time ever as the best-selling smartphone in 2023, according to a new report from IDC. The tech giant accounted for 20% of the global market with 234.6 million shipments last year. Samsung closed the year with 226.6 million shipments, while Xiaomi and Oppo saw 145.9 and 103.1 shipments, respectively. Transsion rounded out the top five with 94.9 million shipments.The report notes that the last time a company other than Samsung was at the top of the smartphone ...

General Motors is recalling around 66 electric delivery vans made by its BrightDrop subsidiary after the front drive units in at least two of them caught fire late last year.The automaker says it’s still investigating the root cause of the fires, but believes a manufacturing defect may have caused the drive pinion to pierce the drive unit casing, creating an oil leak that could catch fire during heavy use. GM says in paperwork filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that it bel ...

Microsoft evidently envisions Copilot, the umbrella brand for its portfolio of AI-powered, content-generating technologies, becoming a significant future revenue line-item. And that’s perhaps not far off base; according to the company, more than 40% of the Fortune 100 participated in its Copilot early access program.But given the enormous cost of running GenAI models in the cloud, getting Copilot from expenditure to reliable revenue generator will require sustained — and large-scale, ideally — growth.Surely ...

Instagram has cut 60 technical program manager positions, eliminating a layer of management at the company, according to a new report from The Information. The impacted employees have two months to apply for other jobs at the company. After the two month period, their employment will be terminated if they are unable to secure a different role at the company.In a LinkedIn post, a former Instagram employee noted that some technical program managers may be expected to “re-interview for PM roles” or project man ...

Google announced today that the company plans to support more real-money games (RMG) on the Play Store this year by allowing more types of games in the category following local laws.The search giant said that the program with extended support for real-money gaming will start in India, Brazil, and Mexico in June with roll out in more countries planned in the future.Google is also considering a new service fee model for subscriptions and in-app purchases. However, the company didn’t disclose many details abou ...

Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook company, is laying off 5% of its staff, according to a leaked memo obtained by Business Insider.Per the memo, Audible CEO Bob Carrigan praised staff for a strong 2023 and assured them that the business was in good shape… but, due to the “increasingly challenging landscape,” the company is still making cuts. This is a common refrain in the tech sphere, where companies across all sectors have been beleaguered by ongoing layoffs since 2022.Audible did not respond to requests ...

Microsoft today announced that it has worked with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to use its Azure Quantum Elements service to whittle down millions of potential new battery materials to only a few — with one of them now in the prototype stage.Now, before you get too excited about the ‘quantum’ part of ‘Azure Quantum Elements’ (and why wouldn’t you — it’s in the name, after all), let’s get this out of the way first: no quantum computer was used in this project. A ...

The European Union is checking whether Microsoft’s investment in generative AI giant OpenAI is reviewable under the bloc’s merger regulations, it said today.The development comes in the wake of the turmoil at OpenAI in late November when the then board voted to oust founder and CEO Sam Altman — a shock move that triggered an aggressive counter manouever by OpenAI investor Microsoft, which stepped in to say it was hiring Altman. The tech giant also extended an offer to any other OpenAI staffers who wanted to ...

Isomorphic Labs, the London-based, drug discovery-focused spin-out of Google AI R&D division DeepMind, today announced that it’s entered into strategic partnerships with two pharmaceutical giants, Eli Lilly and Novartis, to apply AI to discover new medications to treat diseases.The deals have a combined value of around $3 billion. Isomorphic will receive $45 million upfront from Eli Lilly and potentially up to $1.7 billion based on performance milestones, excluding royalties. Novartis, meanwhile, will pay $ ...