Spotify has been forced to introduce new privacy features to its music streaming software after complaints by users about its Facebook integration.
It’s the first climbdown by an app maker after last week’s f8 introduced “frictionless sharing”, whereby every song listened to is shared on Facebook by default. Read more
After the spectacular leadership bust-up at Yahoo, co-founder Jerry Yang and Carol Bartz, the just-dumped chief executive, probably don’t make for the closest of boardroom allies. Ms Bartz, you will recall, denounced her former colleagues on the Yahoo board as “doofuses” and attacked chairman Roy Bostock for a lack of class in firing her over the phone.
Five miles east of Yahoo’s Silicon Valley HQ, though, Ms Bartz and Mr Yang still have to make nice. That’s the home base of another troubled tech titan, Cisco Systems, where both are on the board. Read more
Tech news from around the web:
News Corp’s iPad-only publication, the Daily, is averaging about 120,000 readers a week - less than a quarter than the 500,000 users the company said it needed to make money – Bloomberg reports. After the free trial, subscribers pay 99 cents per week or $39.99 a year to read the publication. Read more
Autonomy’s Mike Lynch gets the Oracle treatment
You have to hand it to Oracle, it never misses a chance to humiliate its rivals in public.
On Wednesday it was the turn of Mike Lynch, the founder of Autonomy. His provocation? To have publicly denied that he tried to “shop” his company to Oracle before eventually selling to Hewlett-Packard. (This has now turned into a “he said, she said” – see updates, below) Read more
For Google, another trip to the DoJ penalty box
No great surprise here: Google’s proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility is going to get a longer look from anti-trust regulators. But it does mean that the chance of the deal closing as quickly as Google originally predicted – perhaps even by the end of this year – now looks extremely slim. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
