Today in Big Tech — November 25, 2020
Oh, was it supposed to be a quiet week? News never sleeps.
Salesforce Is in Advanced Talks to Buy Slack Technologies by Cara Lombardo, Liz Hoffman, and Dana Cimilluca
“The companies could reach a deal within days — possibly by the time Salesforce reports its third-quarter financial results Tuesday, some of the people said. Slack, with a market value of more than $17 billion as of Wednesday morning, would be Salesforce’s largest acquisition ever. There is no guarantee the companies will reach an agreement.”
This does not surprise me in the slightest. Slack needs an out, and an enterprise tech company would be the perfect parent.
What Facebook Fed the Baby Boomers by Charlie Warzel & How Misinformation ‘Superspreaders’ Seed False Election Theories by Sheera Frenkel
If you have NYT subscription, you’ll want to read both of these. I have no idea how society and government even attempt to fix this.
Apple security chief maintains innocence after bribery charges by Timothy B. Lee
“‘We expect all of our employees to conduct themselves with integrity,’ an Apple spokesperson said in a statement. ‘After learning of the allegations, we conducted a thorough internal investigation and found no wrongdoing.’”
Chances are we’ll never learn the truth.
TikTok Granted One-Week Extension of Forced-Sale Deadline by David Yaffe-Bellany and Shelly Banjo
“The new deadline, which had already been extended by 15 days, is Dec. 4, TikTok’s parent ByteDance Ltd. said in a court filing Wednesday.”
I wrote this in September. These extensions are a joke.
Square to Buy Credit Karma Tax for $50 Million, Expanding Reach by Dan Weil
“Credit Karma Tax, which provides a free do-it-yourself tax-filing service, will go into Square’s Cash App unit.”
Imagine how much time, resources, and money people would save if the U.S. and Canadian governments had a simple tax filing system like other countries. Now think about what businesses could be doing instead of building solutions to the problem government created.
