Salesforce agreed to buy Tableau Software in a stock deal valued at $15.7 billion, said the companies Monday. Tableau helps companies see and understand data, and Salesforce helps companies engage and understand customers, said Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff. The combined company will help drive the “digital transformation,” they said, citing IDC projections of a worldwide spending on data-driven technologies and services reaching $1.8 trillion in 2022. The transaction is expected to close about Oct. 1.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo aren’t liable for hosting content posted by known scammers, a key appellate court ruled Friday. Citing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided (in Pacer) with the platforms over a group of 14 locksmiths. The group’s lawsuit claimed the platforms flood search engine results with listings from unlicensed locksmiths to incentivize legitimate locksmiths to pay for preferred listing placement. The platforms aren’t content providers because the information they’re hosting is provided entirely by third parties, the court said, and Section 230 protects computer services from liability. The court is incorrect that the platforms aren’t responsible for the content because they verify scammer locations, said Baldino's Lock & Key’s Mark Baldino. The platforms didn't comment.

Microsoft disingenuously told the FTC products that appear to impede self-repair are pro-consumer, emailed two right-to-repair advocates rebutting Microsoft’s filing (see 1906030020) posted May 31 in the “Nixing the Fix” docket. Microsoft “would like to avoid being told to stop using adhesives in their products despite the consequences of producing products that cannot be repaired,” said Repair Association Executive Director Gay Gordon-Byrne and CEO Kyle Wiens of iFixit, one of Byrne’s charter members. Using adhesives and “pouch batteries” in a device are “lower cost manufacturing techniques,” Byrne and Wiens emailed us last week. "These types of products cannot last longer than the least durable component, and batteries have known limitations on charge cycles.” Self-repair doesn't hurt innovation as the software maker claims, said the advocates. “If adhesives were to be banned, future IoT products would be assembled with the potential for repair on a level playing field at comparable costs to all OEMs." The company didn’t comment Friday. The FTC plans a July 16 workshop.

Google will buy Looker, a “unified platform for business intelligence, data applications and embedded analytics,” for $2.6 billion cash, it said Thursday. Google will incorporate Looker into Google Cloud when the transaction is complete later this year, it said. This will help "offer customers a more complete analytics solution from ingesting data to visualizing results and integrating data and insights into their daily workflows,” blogged Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian.

Most Americas are comfortable with drone use by local law enforcement (76 percent), utility and construction companies (71 percent) and educational institutions (70 percent), said a CTA survey report Thursday. A day earlier, Amazon unveiled the latest Prime Air drone design for its “future delivery system” that promises to deliver packages weighing up to 5 pounds to consumers in 30 minutes or less using “unmanned aerial vehicles.” In a 2014 FAA petition to test-fly drones on its Seattle property for a package delivery service, Paul Misener, currently vice president-global innovation policy and communications, said the company believed Amazon Prime Air drones in flight “will be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road today, resulting in enormous benefits for consumers” (see 1407150032). Wednesday, Amazon said that could begin happening in “within months.” Its latest drone design includes advances in efficiency, stability and safety, blogged Jeff Wilke, Amazon CEO-worldwide consumer. The most recent hybrid-design drone can do vertical takeoffs and landings “like a helicopter,” said Wilke, saying the machine easily transitions between vertical and airplane modes and is “fully shrouded for safety.” The aircraft is controlled with six degrees of freedom vs. the standard four, making it more stable and capable of operating in gusty wind conditions, he said. “We know customers will only feel comfortable receiving drone deliveries if they know the system is incredibly safe,” said the executive, “so we’re building a drone that isn’t just safe, but independently safe,” using artificial intelligence. Through Amazon-developed computer-vision techniques, Prime Air drones can “recognize and avoid wires as they descend into, and ascend out of, a customer’s yard,” he said.

G20 trade ministers convening this month in Osaka, Japan, “should support enabling frameworks for open trade in an increasingly digital global market,” said the Computer & Communications Industry Association, Internet Association and seven other tech groups Wednesday of “recommended outcomes” for the June 28-29 summit. To “facilitate” digital trade, the G20 should recognize the need for all countries to support a permanent World Trade Organization “moratorium against customs duties on electronic transmissions,” said the groups. “Approaches to data governance that fail to include such commitments should be discouraged.” The G20 should also “ensure that any new approaches to content regulation are made pursuant to comprehensive dialogue with meaningful opportunities for input by industry and civil society,” they said. The tech industry “recognizes the importance of building trust online to strengthen consumer confidence in digital trade,” they said. “Industry supports baseline privacy and consumer protection rules.” Prioritize "research and investment” in artificial, automation and “algorithmic data analysis” technologies, they asked. “Frameworks regarding the governance of these technologies should be adaptable to account for the future stages of the technology and should be designed to protect users from demonstrated, rather than speculative harms.”

Firefox added tracking protection as a default for new users, Mozilla said Tuesday. That protects "users from the pervasive tracking and collection of personal data by ad networks and tech companies,” blogged Peter Dolanjski, project lead. “The complexity of privacy settings shouldn’t be placed on users to figure out. The product defaults should simply align with consumer expectations.” Dolanjski said the company expects “to deliver the same functionality to existing users over the coming months,” though current users can turn on the function in settings. “Competition between products that respond to different consumer preferences serves consumers better than heavy-handed regulation,” said Computer and Communications Industry Association CEO Ed Black. “This action expands the choices consumers have when it comes to online privacy.”

Congress should pass and the FTC should adopt a federal privacy regulation pre-empting state privacy and data breach laws absent a private right of action, Business Roundtable wrote the agency Friday in docket 2018-0098. The association deferred to Congress on whether the FTC should have rulemaking authority. ISPs are “sufficiently different” from other online companies to merit privacy rules “tailored to them,” OTI said in separate comments on privacy. OTI cited a New School Digital Equity Laboratory report showing ISPs “generally employ language that is legally vague, with little specificity into their data practices for collection and use.” Disclosure about how data is used and shared is also lacking, OTI said. Users should have the right to access, correct, delete and port data, Companies should be restricted from using data for secondary and discriminatory purposes, OTI said.

Shares of Google and Facebook closed down Monday after DOJ and the FTC are reportedly considering heightened antitrust scrutiny. Facebook lost 7.5 percent to $164.15; Google 6.1 percent to $1,036.23. The agencies assigned antitrust jurisdiction over the companies, signaling potential increased scrutiny, The Washington Post reported. The FTC reportedly will do oversight of Amazon, while Google will come under DOJ scrutiny. The Wall Street Journal reported DOJ is preparing an investigation of Google, and the FTC will examine Facebook impacts on digital competition. Reuters reported DOJ has jurisdiction over Apple. The companies and agencies didn’t comment.

District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Fern Saddler denied Facebook's motion to dismiss D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine's data privacy lawsuit against the company (see 1812190039). With the lawsuit able to proceed, Racine will immediately focus on “obtaining all of the evidence proving that Facebook broke District law and did not follow its own policies to protect the privacy of more than 340,000 Facebook users who reside in the District,” a spokesperson said Monday. The lawsuit is meritless, and the company will continue defending itself “vigorously,” its spokesperson said Monday: The company believes privacy protection is a top priority, and it has “taken a hard look at the information apps can use when you connect them to Facebook, as well as other data practices.”