Data analytics provider Splunk endured “continued pressure” in fiscal Q3, ended Oct. 31, from COVID-19 “macro conditions” that resulted in some customers “hesitating to commit to long-term contracts,” said CEO Doug Merritt on a Wednesday investor call. Though cloud revenue of $145 million was 80% higher than in the year-earlier quarter, total revenue declined 11% to $559 million. As Splunk reached the end of October, “we saw a much lower than normal close rate among our largest deals, which caused us to fall short of our bookings target,” said Merritt. “Our third quarter did not meet our expectations.” Despite Q3 results, “I continue to believe that our opportunity is massive and our fundamentals remain strong,” he said. The stock plummeted 23.3% Thursday, closing at $158.03. Since exiting the quarter, Splunk “scrutinized the transaction pipeline and factors impacting our close rates,” said Chief Financial Officer Jason Child. “All indicators point to continued strong demand overall, and we are confident in the eventual closing of delayed transactions in the pipeline, but when they will actually close remains uncertain. As a result, we remain cautious on near-term market dynamics, but confident in our long-term growth trajectory.” Fiscal Q3 featured “the most unusual selling environment we’ve ever seen,” he said. “We believe this is a temporary market condition and the underlying demand remains strong, particularly for cloud.” Bookings that the Splunk sales team thought were in the bag “got stopped” by the customers' CEO, CFO or the board “in the final hours or days of routing for approval,” said Merritt. Looking back quarter over quarter, of “the top 10 deals that we went into a quarter with, we tend to close seven, eight or nine,” he said. “This quarter, we wound up closing three.” Customer personnel who previously had the authority to approve deals “had that authority pulled at the very end” of the quarter, he said. “There were some material, large-term transactions that got pushed.”

Consumers’ “omnichannel buying behavior” will drive 60% of direct-to-consumer brands to move toward “functional, rather than channel-based” organizations by 2025, reported Gartner Thursday. The COVID-19 pandemic “accelerated the blending of physical and digital commerce,” it said. Leading DTC brands in this environment “have proven the efficacy of blending digital and physical channels to support customers’ new preferred methods of shopping and fulfillment, rather than treating web and physical channels as separate entities,” it said. But the omnichannel blend “is not often reflected in marketing organizational structures,” with only 30% of DTC brands reporting they have functional organizational alignment, it said. “Brands hinging their future plans on e-commerce -- and structuring teams accordingly -- should think twice. Brands should take advantage of this time to reorient teams and objectives around a customer-first, channel-agnostic strategy.”

DOJ filed a lawsuit Thursday against Facebook, alleging the platform illegally favored temporary visa holders over U.S. workers. Facebook “engaged in intentional and widespread violations of the law, by setting aside positions for temporary visa holders instead of considering interested and qualified U.S. workers,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband. The company’s alleged discrimination concerned some 2,600 positions with an average salary of about $156,000. DOJ investigated for two years and secured a “reasonable cause” determination. “You cannot illegally prefer to recruit, consider, or hire temporary visa holders over U.S. workers,” he said. “Facebook has been cooperating with the DOJ in its review of this issue and while we dispute the allegations in the complaint, we cannot comment further on pending litigation," emailed a spokesperson.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday providing principles for design and development of government’s use of artificial intelligence. The principles were created “to foster public trust and confidence in the use of AI, and ensure that the use of AI protects privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties,” the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy said. The EO's nine principles emphasize that AI must be “lawful; purposeful and performance-driven; accurate, reliable, and effective; safe, secure, and resilient; understandable; responsible and traceable; regularly monitored; transparent; and accountable,” OSTP said.

Though there was much “pull-forward” tech product demand due to the pandemic, Black Friday/Cyber Monday “is still a massive event in consumer spending,” GoPro CEO Nick Woodman told a virtual Wells Fargo investor conference Tuesday. Those days are “still like a ring of the bell for a large percentage of consumers to say, OK, let’s get out our wallets and start shopping,” he said. As for concerns that consumers “weren’t going to show up” for Black Friday or Cyber Monday, “that myth has been dispelled,” he said. GoPro “got comfortable” with its shift to “being more direct-to-consumer because we had good data,” said Woodman. “We’ve been growing our direct business year over year for quite some time. There have been periods of time where certain regions were low on inventory at retail and we saw enormous spikes in our dot-com business.”

When strong PC “demand signals” began appearing early in the pandemic, “all of us who have exposure to the PC market were wondering” if the robust sales were a “short-term” phenomenon, Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su told a virtual Credit Suisse investor conference Monday. “As we've now gone through the last six or seven months, we spent a lot of time talking to our customers” and their customers, she said. “This is more of a longer-lasting situation where the PC has just become essential.” One per household makes sense “if you're only using it an hour in a day,” said Su. “Now it's really about one PC per person.” AMD sees 2021 as “a growth year for PCs, which perhaps we haven't heard in a while,” she said. Its product portfolio is “very focused on some of these higher-end feature sets” that will bode well for “our long-term share-gain prospects,” she said.

Uber closed on its all-stock transaction to buy on-demand delivery platform Postmates, said the ride-hailing company Tuesday. “The two companies have begun the process of integrating U.S. operations,” it said. “As we bring together Uber Eats and Postmates, we're kicking off a regional listening exercise (first virtually and later with in-person sessions when safe to do so) across North America” to better understand merchants’ needs, blogged Stephane Ficaja, head-Uber Eats, U.S. and Canada. “We’ll be partnering with restaurant associations and chambers of commerce to make sure the right folks are in the room, and that our answers are accountable to you.” The goal is to give “restaurants -- and increasingly other types of merchants -- a bigger seat at the table to provide feedback on products in development, policy decisions, and more,” said Ficaja.

A 45% spike in Thanksgiving Day broadband consumption tracked with holiday suspension of Zoom conferencing limits, emailed OpenVault Monday. Zoom lifted the 40-minute limit on free Zoom accounts for all meetings for an 18-hour period “so your family gatherings don’t get cut short.” Average broadband consumption per subscriber was 15.59 GB on Thanksgiving vs. 10.77 GB in 2019. The usage was 9.7% above that on the previous Thursday, it said.

Cyber Monday was on track to become the highest online spending day, said Adobe Analytics Monday, after Black Friday crushed records, soaring 22% to $9 billion. Black Friday was the No. 2 e-commerce day ever, lagging only Cyber Monday 2019. Consumers spent $3.6 billion via smartphones, a 25% increase and 40% of total online spending. Top-selling electronics were Apple's AirPods and Watch, Amazon Echo smart speakers and Samsung TVs. Best Buy advised customers of possible shipping delays, a situation stakeholders have been warning about.

The Supreme Court discussed what constitutes a computer crime, in a case concerning a former police officer who allegedly accepted a bribe to access license plate information. Nathan Van Buren is appealing a 2017 conviction on violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. SCOTUS received briefs from groups concerned about Van Buren’s interpretation of the law and what it could mean for privacy, said Justice Samuel Alito during Monday’s oral argument in Van Buren v. U.S. Government employees and citizens could potentially access highly personal information to make money, break the law or harass people if Van Buren prevails, groups said. In response to a question from Alito, Van Buren’s attorney Jeffrey Fisher said Congress wasn’t concerned about that when passing CFAA, only computer hacking, though lawmakers may want to regulate or criminalize the activity Alito described. The statute is designed to cover “serious breaches of trust,” like looking up personal information without authorization, said Deputy Solicitor General Eric Feigin. Before the court is whether a person authorized to access information on a computer for certain purposes violates CFAA if that user accesses “the same information for an improper purpose.” Justice Clarence Thomas questioned the distinctions Fisher tried to make. Thomas used the example of a car rental employee using GPS information to track a spouse rather than a vehicle, asking whether that would be a violation. The car rental employee is entitled to the GPS information, though there may be a breach of company policy, said Fisher: The question is whether the user is entitled to obtain the information. Justice Elena Kagan said a key question is what “so” means in the statute, referencing its definition of “exceeds authorized access,” which refers to information the “accesser is not entitled so to obtain or alter.” Fisher says it means “by accessing a computer,” she said, while Feigin said it means “by using your access.” Fisher has a point, Kagan said: “He is saying that what that prevents is using the statutes as to cases where you could obtain the information in a nondigital manner.”