Amazon shares hit a 52-week high Friday before settling to 3.6 percent higher at $1,572.62, after its Thursday after-market report of a 43 percent Q1 sales surge. The $51 billion in Q1 revenue was 2.5 percent above consensus. Profit was $1.6 billion vs $724 million in the year-ago quarter. Justifying a 20 percent annual price to $119 hike for Prime subscriptions on a Thursday-evening earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said the company continues to raise the value of the Prime program with expanded free same-day and one-day shipping; and two-day free shipping is available on more than 100 million items, up from 20 million in 2014.
Kudos & Co. agreed to modify privacy practices for its social media app to comply with the Children’s Advertising Review Unit’s Self-Regulatory Program for Children’s Advertising, CARU said Thursday. CARU determined the app’s “method of obtaining parental consent was insufficient for its information collection practices and did not meet” federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act requirements. To comply, “Kudos joined and completed certification through an FTC-approved Safe Harbor program,” the company said in a statement.
Sonos doesn’t “and will not sell your data to third parties,” it said in a lengthy update of its privacy policy Tuesday. Information users “voluntarily provide” is accessed when they want to learn more about Sonos products and services or when they contact customer support, it said. The company said it doesn't target those younger than 16, and if found, “will cancel the child's account and delete the child's personal information.”
A global policy approach to cybersecurity defense is “essential to effectively combat” threats, said BSA|The Software Alliance Wednesday, releasing its International Cybersecurity Policy Framework. “Thoughtful, robust cybersecurity policies are critical to the stability of the Internet and the vibrancy of the global economy,” CEO Victoria Espinel said. The framework suggests governments incorporate or consider 48 elements when establishing national cybersecurity policies.
Online platform users should have “full authority over their data,” said IAB Europe and IAB Tech Lab Wednesday in the group’s specifications designed to help industry comply with EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. The framework “will sit at the intersection of users, publishers, and the third-party partners (vendors) that support the publishers in monetising their content, giving both users and publishers more control and transparency in the new environment,” said IAB Europe CEO Townsend Feehan.
The European Commission will invest 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in artificial intelligence research across the region through 2020, the commission announced Wednesday, drawing guarded praise from the Computer & Communications Industry Association. “We welcome the commission’s constructive approach to boost the uptake of AI in Europe. While we support this positive approach, we caution that the current copyright proposal risks hindering Europe’s leadership ambition,” said CCIA Senior Policy Manager Maud Sacquet. “Since this is a new technology, a cautious approach to regulation will allow AI to have the space to grow.” American Enterprise Institute scholar Bret Swanson cited a report from McKinsey Global Institute projecting AI could “generate incremental value of between $3.5 and $5.8 trillion annually across nine business functions in 19 industries.”
The Department of Homeland Security failed to fully implement most of the 29 cybersecurity-related recommendations GAO has suggested since 2016, GAO reported Tuesday. “Until DHS fully and effectively implements its cybersecurity authorities and responsibilities, the department's ability to improve and promote the cybersecurity of federal and private-sector networks will be limited.” The department didn’t comment Tuesday.
Facebook expanded its appeals process to include individual posts removed for nudity, sexual activity, hate speech and graphic violence, the platform announced Tuesday, publishing internal enforcement guidelines. The appeals process was previously reserved for profiles, pages and groups removed from the platform. A Community Operations team typically reviews requests within 24 hours, the company said, and if the platform decides there has been a mistake, the post, photo or video in question will be restored. The House Judiciary Committee has a hearing Thursday to discuss online content censorship (see 1804200049).
After several years of truce, organizers of Berlin’s IFA show renewed their war of words with CES over which event reigns supreme in the world of consumer tech shows. IFA “is literally covering the world,” and is “undisputedly the No. 1 consumer electronics show,” Christian Goke, CEO of Messe Berlin, told the IFA global news conference Saturday in Rome. It’s true, “there are other tech events in the U.S., and they are formally known as CE shows,” said Goke. “But let’s be honest. It’s not always that easy to understand how these shows are structured. Sometimes it’s not that easy to go from hall to hall and hotel to hotel, even when the lights are on. For many brands, it’s always a bit of a gamble if you make your mark there are not. Which is sort of fitting, given the location.” Goke’s remarks on the lights were a reference to the blackout that struck the Las Vegas Convention Center Jan. 10 on Day 2 of CES (see 1801110030). The remarks prompted one journalist in Q&A to ask Goke why he denigrated CES to promote IFA, when IFA and CES are very different shows, serving different purposes with different audiences. Goke responded: “There was no denigration intended at all.” CTA representatives didn’t comment Monday but in the past have defended CES as having superior attendance and exhibit data as verified by global auditing authorities (see 1712140005).
Industry “can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” tweeted CTA President Gary Shapiro Thursday on the two recent autonomous-driving deaths involving a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, and a Tesla driver in Mountain View, California. “Self-driving car casualties are tragic. But we shouldn’t stop improving the technology,” headlined a piece Shapiro wrote for USA Today. “Only an ongoing, transparent discussion will create the sort of framework that combines consumer safety, company accountability and flexibility to advance self-driving technology” and prevent accidents like those in Tempe and Mountain View “from happening again,” he said. The “safety and security that passengers have come to expect” from commercial air travel “didn’t occur immediately,” he said. “It took years of investment and years of missteps to create the safe flight ecosystem we now have in this country.” Self-driving technology “has the same kind of potential,” he said.