Oracle to take charge of TikTok’s US biz; may help ByteDance avoid ban

Microsoft announced Sunday that its bid to buy TikTok has been rejected

The owner of TikTok has chosen Oracle over Microsoft as its preferred suitor to buy the popular video-sharing app, according to a source familiar with the deal.Under the proposed deal, Oracle will be ByteDance’s technology partner and will assume management of TikTok’s U. S. user data, the sources said. Oracle is also negotiating taking a stake in TikTok’s U. S. operations, the sources added. Some of ByteDance’s top backers, including investment firms General Atlantic and Sequoia, will also be given minority stakes in TikTok’s U. S. operations under the proposed deal, one of the sources said.Microsoft announced Sunday that its bid to buy TikTok has been rejected, removing a leading suitor for the Chinese-owned app a week before President Donald Trump promises to follow through with a plan to ban it in the US.

Microsoft said in a Sunday statement that TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, let us know today they would not be selling TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft. The Trump administration has threatened to ban TikTok by mid-September and ordered ByteDance to sell its US business, claiming national-security risks due to its Chinese ownership. The government worries about user data being funneled to Chinese authorities. TikTok denies it is a national-security risk and is suing to stop the administration from the threatened ban….

ByteDance in talks with Reliance for investment in TikTok: Report

The government in June banned 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok and WeChat, for threatening its “sovereignty and integrity” after border tensions with China

China’s ByteDance is in early talks with Reliance Industries Ltd for investment in its video-based app TikTok’s business in India, TechCrunch reported on Thursday, citing sources. The two companies began conversations late last month and have not reached a deal yet, according to the report. Reliance, ByteDance and TikTok did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

ALSO READ: US threat on TikTok is sheer gangster logic and daylight robbery: China

The Indian government in June banned 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok and WeChat, for threatening its “sovereignty and integrity” after border tensions with China. Last week, US President Donald Trump unveiled bans on US transactions with the China-based owners of messaging app WeChat and TikTok, escalating tensions between the two countries. Microsoft Corp has been in talks to acquire the US operations of the video-sharing app. Social media platform Twitter Inc has also expressed interest in having a deal with TikTok, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters late last week.

Trump gives Tiktok's ByteDance 45 days to agree to Microsoft sale: Report

One idea under consideration is to give Microsoft and ByteDance a transition period to develop technology for TikTok that will be completely separate from ByteDance

President Donald Trump has agreed to give China’s ByteDance 45 days to negotiate a sale of popular short-video app TikTok to Microsoft Corp, two people familiar with the matter said on Sunday. U.S. officials have said TikTok under its Chinese parent poses a national risk because of the personal data it handles. Trump said on Friday he was planning to ban TikTok in the United States after dismissing the idea of a sale to Microsoft.

But following a discussion between Trump and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the Redwood, Washington-based company said in a statement on Sunday that it would continue negotiations to acquire TikTok from ByteDance, and that it aimed to reach a deal by Sept. 15.

It was not immediately clear what changed Trump’s mind. Banning TikTok would alienate many of its young users ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November, and would likely trigger a wave of legal challenges. Several prominent Republican lawmakers put out statements in the last two days urging Trump to back a sale of TikTok to Microsoft.

Covid-19 impact: Gurugram MNCs may have to work from home till July-end

The Gurgaon district administration had issued an advisory in mid March asking MNCs, BPOs, IT companies, corporates and industries to allow work from home

MNCs, BPOs and IT enabled services (ITES) in Gurgaon may have to allow their employees to work from home till the end of July, says Gurgaon Metropolitan Development Authority CEO V S Kundu. Kundu, who is also additional chief secretary of Haryana, however, made it clear that this is his personal opinion and no such advisory has been issued. Several real estate projects, including those of DLF, have got the green signal to resume construction but within the norms of social distancing, he said. Gurgaon, which is part of the National Capital Region, is known as the millennium city and is home to many BPOs, MNCs and technology giants, including Infosys, Genpact, Google and Microsoft.

The Gurgaon district administration had issued an advisory in mid March asking MNCs, BPOs, IT companies, corporates and industries to allow work from home. As of now it appears this advisory for work from home will continue till end of July. All those who have offices in Gurgaon should continue to work from home to the extent possible, Kundu told PTI.

Kundu, who is in charge of handling the COVID-19 crisis for Gurgaon district, said it is advisable that companies should ensure that as many employees as possible work from home. This might not be possible in the case of industries and the manufacturing sector but should be followed wherever possible, he added. Later, the district administration also issued a statement. “It is only his personal estimation under prevailing situation that some staff in non-essential and routine offices in Gurugaon may have to work from home till July end and no such advisory or order has been issued by the govt…Read More

What can India expect from Satya Nadella’s visit as Donald Trump arrives

Microsoft launched its India operations in 1990 and for the past 30 years the company has played a major role in digital transformation of the country

With Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella all set to visit India next week — around the same time US President Donald Trump is making his first official visit to this part of the world — the software giant is looking forward to further consolidate its position in the country.

At a time when the Indian government is focused on digital transformation across sectors and modernise its IT infrastructure, Microsoft may take Satya Nadella‘s visit as an opportunity to showcase how it can help government achieve its goals across Cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), smart cities, industrial automation and robotics etc.

“Government engagement is a major focus for Microsoft top management in India for the past two decades, and all the more now with expanding digital plans and also rising nationalist resistance to global digital and tech companies,” leading tech policy and media consultant Prasanto K. Roy told IANS.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has on several occasions stressed on the importance of leveraging emerging technologies like AI and ML to solve India’s critical problems.

The National Crime Records Bureau of the Ministry of Home Affairs, for example, is inviting bids from tech companies to build hardware and software infrastructure that can help the country fight crime with automated facial recognition system.

Microsoft boss Satya Nadella to visit India later this month: Report

Nadella is planning to be in India between Feb. 24 and Feb.26 and will likely visit New Delhi, tech hub Bengaluru and the financial capital of Mumbai

Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella is planning to visit India later this month, multiple sources familiar with the plans told Reuters, a test for the Indian-born head who recently criticized Indian immigration policy. India is a major market for Microsoft and other technology companies. India’s southern city of Hyderabad, where Nadella grew up, is home to Microsoft’s biggest research and development center outside of the United States.

Nadella is planning to be in India between Feb. 24 and Feb.26 and will likely visit New Delhi, tech hub Bengaluru and the financial capital of Mumbai, two people familiar with the plans said. He is also likely to meet senior Indian industry leaders during his visit, the sources said. The sources did not want to be identified because the company has yet to make a public announcement. Microsoft declined to comment when asked about a visit. “We don’t have anything to share at the moment,” a company spokeswoman said.

Microsoft also is trying arrange for Nadella to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, one of the sources added, although the meeting has yet to be confirmed. The Prime Minister’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Nadella last month stoked controversy in India when he was quoted by Buzzfeed as saying a new law implemented by Modi’s government that eases the path to citizenship for non-Muslims in nearby nations was “just bad”.

India has potential for rapid economic growth over next decade: Bill Gates

The positive outlook by Gates for the Indian economy comes at a time when it is reeling under major slowdown amid apprehensions that the cycle may last for a longer period

India has the potential for “very rapid” economic growth over the next decade which will lift people out of poverty and allow the government to invest in health and education priorities in an “exciting way”, billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has said.

In an exclusive interview to PTI, Bill Gates, the world’s richest person, specifically complimented India’s Aadhaar identity system and the country’s performance in the financial services and pharma sectors. The positive outlook by Gates for the Indian economy, Asia’s third largest, comes at a time when it is reeling under major slowdown amid apprehensions that the cycle may last for a longer period.

“I don’t have any knowledge about the near term, but I’d say over the next decade, there’s potential for very rapid growth, which will lift people out of poverty and allow the government to invest in health and education priorities in a really exciting way,” he said.

On Friday, 64-year-old Gates, with a net worth of USD 110 billion, regained the position of the world’s richest person surpassing the Amazon Inc’s Jeff Bezos. The Microsoft co-founder has so far donated over USD 35 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for poverty reduction and social development programmes in various countries…

Not a good idea to break up biggest US tech companies, says Bill Gates

Microsoft is one of the few big U.S. technology companies not under regulatory scrutiny in Washington

Bill Gates, who knows a thing or two about antitrust investigations, doesn’t think it’s a good idea to break up the biggest U.S. tech companies as some politicians have suggested.

The Microsoft Corp. co-founder and former chief executive officer battled the Justice Department for years in the late 1990s in a bruising antitrust case. At issue was the software giant’s bundling of its Internet Explorer browser to Windows as a way to maintain its dominance in PC operating systems. Ultimately Microsoft remained intact.

Two decades later, Microsoft is one of the few big U.S. technology companies not under regulatory scrutiny in Washington. The Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general and a congressional committee are all scrutinizing so-called Big Tech — companies from Alphabet Inc.‘s Google to Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. — that Washington has concluded have gotten too big and too powerful. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a presidential candidate, has made a forceful and detailed plan about how she would go about breaking them up.

Gates disagrees. “You have to really think; is that the best thing?” Gates said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “If there’s a way the company’s behaving that you want to get rid of, then, you should just say, ‘Okay, that’s a banned behavior.’ But splitting the company in two, and having two people doing the bad thing– that doesn’t seem like a solution.”

Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates, dies of cancer at 65

Microsoft said Allen’s ‘contributions to our company, our industry and to our community are indispensable’

Billionaire Paul Allen, who founded US software giant Microsoft with Bill Gates in the 1970s, died Monday after his latest battle with cancer. He was 65.

“My brother was a remarkable individual on every level. While most knew Paul Allen as a technologist and philanthropist, for us he was a much loved brother and uncle, and an exceptional friend,” Allen’s sister Jody said in a statement.|BS

“Paul’s family and friends were blessed to experience his wit, warmth, his generosity and deep concern… At this time of loss and grief for us — and so many others — we are profoundly grateful for the care and concern he demonstrated every day.”

Allen died just two weeks after publicly revealing that the non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma he fought into remission nine years ago had returned. The incurable cancer affects white blood cells.Allen managed his business and charitable endeavours at Vulcan Inc.

Business Standard 

He was also active with the Allen Institutes of scientific research and owned professional US sports teams the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers. He was part owner of the Major League Soccer team the Seattle Sounders.

Allen founded Stratolaunch, a space company that has built the world’s largest plane, which hasn’t flown yet but is being tested at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.

National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell called Allen the “driving force behind keeping the NFL in the Pacific Northwest”. “His passion for the game, combined with his quiet determination, led to a model organisation on and off the field,” Goodell added.

Read More | Paul Allen

HMD gets iconic Nokia PureView trademark: Camera-centric phone in offing?

In 2012, Nokia introduced the Nokia 808 PureView, a camera-centric smartphone with a mammoth 41-megapixel primary lens, coupled with several industry-first camera-centric features

Technology News : HMD Global, the Finnish mobile phone manufacturer behind the Nokia-branded devices, has acquired the rights to use the PureView trademark, according to a report by technology portal GSMArena, which has cited a listing of the European Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO). This could mean that the Finnish company might be working on a camera-centric flagship smartphone that could resurrect Nokia’s PureView series.

In retrospect, the PureView was once a trademark of Nokia’s camera-centric smartphones. In 2012, the Finnish company introduced the Nokia 808 PureView smartphone with a mammoth 41-megapixel primary camera, coupled with several industry first camera-centric features such as optical image stabilisation, ND filter, mechanical shutter, bright Xenon flash and ability to save photos in RAW format. These features revolutionised the smartphone industry and marked the beginning of camera-centric smartphones. This was followed by other smartphone brands such as Samsung, Sony and HTC.

The Nokia 808 PureView remained the best camera smartphone for several years after its launch. However, marred by a declining market share, given Nokia's dependency on an obsolete operating system when compared with Android and iOS, the company sold off the smartphone business to Microsoft. In 2013, Microsoft also resurrected the PureView trademark with the launch of the Nokia 1020. This phone also featured a 41MP primary camera, along with OIS and Xenon flash, and ran on Microsoft Windows Phone-based operating system. This operating system lacked application support, which led to the sluggish demand for the otherwise capable camera-centric smartphone.

Keep reading : BS

From cricket to leadership: Satya Nadella shares his life experience

The Microsoft CEO, on a whirlwind trip of India for the promotion of his book Hit Refresh, is also expected to meet officials of PMO, IT ministry and NITI Aayog

 

On a whirlwind trip to India for the promotion of Hit Refresh, his book on his journey to becoming the chief executive of Microsoft, one of the world’s biggest tech companies, Satya Nadella made his final pit stop in Delhi. Over 100 Microsoft Students Programme members, startup entrepreneurs, met the Microsoft CEO, who talked about a range of issues – from cricket to various aspects of his professional journey.

Earlier, during his trip to the Microsoft India headquarters in Hyderabad, Nadella had spoken at length about artificial intelligence (AI). At the Delhi event, he spoke about leadership skills and his love for cricket. The event also saw entrepreneurs like Vishal Gondal, founder CEO of fitness app GOQii, talking about their respective journeys.

While Nadella's itinerary has been kept under the wraps, sources say that the Microsoft CEO plans to meet officials of the communications & information technology ministry, as well as the NITI Aayog and the Prime Minister’s Office during the final leg of his India visit. He leaves India for the US on Tuesday night.

In Hit Refresh, Nadella delves into three key technologies that would lead to massive shifts in economy and society – mixed reality, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. These three currently independent threads would ultimately converge in future, with quantum computing making AI more intelligent and mixed reality becoming an even more immersive experience.

Google, Uber, Twitter, Netflix & FB band up to challenge Trump travel ban

 

LATEST NEWS|The Trump administration could soon be facing another legal spoiler with Google, Facebook, Uber, Twitter, Netflix and other prominent tech companies planning to file a legal brief opposing the President's travel ban, reported the Washington Post while citing people familiar with the issue.

However, the report said that Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft were not party to the brief.

Citing sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the report said that Pinterest, Yelp, Square, Reddit, Kickstarter, Github, Glassdoor, Box, Mozilla, Dropbox, Twilio, Zynga, Medium, Pinterest, and Salesforce were some of the other companies which could be backing the filing. The filing was still being finalised as of Sunday.

The Washington Post accessed a draft of the filing, which said that President Donald Trump's entry ban – which targeted individuals from seven Muslim-majority countries, barring them from entering the US for at least 90 days, and suspended the US refugee programme – was discriminatory. The amicus brief, the report added, is expected to be filed with the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The possible legal challenge comes at a time when, on Sunday, a federal appeals court rejected a request by the Justice Department to immediately restore President Trump’s targeted travel ban, deepening a legal showdown over his authority to tighten the nation’s borders in the name of protecting Americans from terrorism. In the legal back and forth over the travel ban, the United States District Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco said a reply from the Trump administration was due on Monday.

The administration was fighting Seattle federal judge James Robart's decision on Friday that imposed a nationwide, albeit temporary, halt on Trump's travel ban order.

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