tech:

taffy

Microsoft acquires Wand Labs

It has been a busy week for Microsoft. The company said was acquiring professional social network LinkedIn on Monday. On Thursday, the company announced it has acquired messaging app developer Wand Labs, for an undisclosed sum.

Wand says its mission is “to tear down app walls, integrate your services in chat and make them work together so you can do more with less taps.” The seven-member team had been working on integrating services into the chat experience, since it was founded in 2013. The goal, the company says, “being to leverage mobile scale, natural language capabilities and third-party services to enable users to easily access and share any authorized service or device.” Wand had been working on a plugin API for developers as well.

“Wand Labs’ technology and talent will strengthen our position in the emerging era of conversational intelligence,” said 

“Our deep experience with semantics, messaging and authority are a natural fit for the work already underway at Microsoft, especially in the area of intelligent agents and cognitive services,” said Vishal Sharma, CEO of Wand.

By the looks of it, the Wand app or the API will not see light of the day, as it get integrated into Microsoft’s ‘Conversation as a platform’ dream of combining semantics and conversation.

 

Just in

Apple sued in a landmark iPhone monopoly lawsuit — CNN

The US Justice Department and more than a dozen states filed a blockbuster antitrust lawsuit against Apple on Thursday, accusing the giant company of illegally monopolizing the smartphone market, writes Brian Fung, Hannah Rabinowitz and Evan Perez.

Google is bringing satellite messaging to Android 15 — The Verge

Google’s second developer preview for Android 15 has arrived, bringing long-awaited support for satellite connectivity alongside several improvements to contactless payments, multi-language recognition, volume consistency, and interaction with PDFs via apps, writes Jess Weatherbed. 

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is paid more than the heads of Meta, Pinterest, and Snap — combined — QZ

Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman has been blasted by Redditors and in media reports over his recently-revealed, super-sized pay package of $193 million in 2023, writes Laura Bratton. 

British AI pioneer Mustafa Suleyman joins Microsoft — BBC

Microsoft has announced British Artificial Intelligence pioneer Mustafa Suleyman will lead its newly-formed division, Microsoft AI, according to the BBC report. 

UnitedHealth Group has paid more than $2 billion to providers following cyberattack — CNBC

UnitedHealth Group said Monday that it’s paid out more than $2 billion to help health-care providers who have been affected by the cyberattack on subsidiary Change Healthcare, writes Ashley Capoot.