Lyft expects to price shares between $62 and $68 when they begin trading on the Nasdaq, it said in an amended SEC registration statement Monday. It plans to raise up to $2.2 billion in net proceeds from the 3.77-million-share initial public offering, $404.8 million of which it will use to pay off restricted-stock-unit “obligations,” said the filing. Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani is Lyft’s largest individual shareholder with 13.5 percent, it said. General Motors, which invested $500 million in Lyft three years ago (see 1602030048), owns 7.76 percent, it said.
Five U.S. companies reached FTC settlements in 2018 over allegations they misled consumers about EU-U.S. Privacy Shield participation (see 1811190029), the agency reported Friday in its annual privacy and data security roundup. The agency shut revenge porn website MyEx.com (see 1806220040), got Venmo to stop “deceptive” privacy practices (see 1805240049), expanded a settlement with Uber (see 1810260040) and reached a pact with BLU Products (see 1809100052).
A General Motors application to produce up to 2,500 autonomous vehicles yearly is advancing to the Federal Register for comment, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced Friday (see 1810040043). GM seeks a two-year waiver to build vehicles without steering wheels, foot pedals and other conventional automotive equipment. Nuro filed a separate application to build 2,500 automated delivery vehicles without requirements for rearview mirrors, a standard windshield and standard cameras for rear visibility.
DOJ’s Antitrust Division doesn’t “pick winners and losers,” but enforces the laws “equally to protect a level playing field,” Chief Makan Delrahim told the National Diversity Coalition Thursday. “Hard-nose competition ensures lower prices, increased innovation, higher quality goods and services, and improved opportunities for entrepreneurs,” said Delrahim. “When we see a large company try to buy its biggest competitor so that consumers can no longer compare the merits of one against the merits of another, we bring a lawsuit to block that.” If competitors collude to fix prices, “we bring a lawsuit to stop that anticompetitive conduct, and we bring criminal charges when the conspiracy warrants it,” he said. “If a company has succeeded to the point that it does not have much competition, we will bring a lawsuit if the company uses the advantages of its position to get in the way of companies that would otherwise be able to win customers on the merits and challenge the dominant player’s market position.”
Facebook and its Instagram were returning to service for some users, including in Washington, D.C., after what appeared to be a daylong outage Wednesday. "Anddddd ... we're back," Instagram tweeted at around midnight EDT Wednesday. Many responded they still couldn't access the photo-sharing platform, and we couldn't fully use it then, either. Due to "a server configuration change, many people had trouble accessing our apps and services," Facebook tweeted early Thursday afternoon. "We've now resolved the issues and our systems are recovering. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate everyone’s patience." Until this, the company hadn't updated its tweets after saying almost 24 hours earlier that there wasn't a distributed denial of service attack (see 1903130053). The server change "triggered a cascading series of issues," a spokesperson emailed Thursday afternoon. "Our systems have been recovering over the last few hours." The company didn't comment further Thursday.
Facebook and its Instagram weren't working for some users, including in Washington, D.C. The company's "aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible," it tweeted Wednesday at around 2 p.m. EDT. It later said it's not a distributed denial of service attack. The company didn't comment further.
DOJ, the Commerce Department and 20 other agencies should complete identification and coding for vacant information technology and cybersecurity positions, GAO recommended Tuesday. The recommendations are related to implementation of 2015's Federal Cybersecurity Workforce Assessment Act. Lack of workers is one reason securing federal systems is on GAO’s high risk list.
U.S. antitrust authorities won't oppose Juniper Networks buying wireless cloud company Mist Systems, said an FTC early termination notice dated Monday and released Tuesday. That ends the $405 million deal's Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period.
"All the convenience in the world doesn’t matter if you don’t feel safe using our products and services,” said eero smart home mesh network provider CEO Nick Weaver, reaffirming its "commitment to your privacy head-on.” Guiding principles shared with Amazon, which bought eero, are that customers have a right to privacy, to know what data is being collected in “easy to understand terms” and to have control over their data, he blogged Tuesday. Eero collects network diagnostic information only to improve the performance, stability, and reliability of its products and services and for customer support, he said. The companies have begun building customer experiences together, such as Amazon’s WiFi Simple Setup, he said. Soon, when customers who own both an eero system and an Echo smart speaker set up connected devices bought on Amazon, the devices will look automatically for the eero network and use encrypted credentials to connect, he said: “Gone will be the days of manually setting up each smart product we bring into our homes.”
There’s “substantial” evidence Facebook violated its 2011 FTC consent decree, and Google has “consistently misinformed users” about geolocation practices, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., wrote Chairman Joe Simons. The agency has been “toothless” in policing big tech, Hawley said, urging the FTC to use all resources available to probe privacy allegations. If the agency lacks the appropriate authority, it should explain how to Congress, Hawley said. The FTC didn’t comment.