Google said Wednesday it would require its U.S. employees to be vaccinated before coming to work. Facebook followed suit shortly afterward with a similar announcement. Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP hide caption toggle caption Marcio… Source link

Facebook (FB) reported second-quarter earnings after market close on Wednesday, with the recovery across the internet advertising industry helping lift the social media company’s results beyond Wall Street’s expectations.  However, Facebook flagged an expected slowdown in revenue growth, and said that decreased ad targeting abilities following an Apple iOS update would negatively impact results going forward. Shares slid more than 3.5% in late trading.  Here were the main metrics from… Source link

As Robinhood (HOOD) prepares for its IPO on July 29 in a bid for a $35 billion valuation, some analysts warn that the company’s business model — specifically its reliance on payment for order flow (PFOF) — is an unseemly practice that won’t last. “This IPO is effectively selling investors on exploiting other investors,” David Trainer, CEO of New Constructs, said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “The whole payment-for-order-flow business model is probably not going to be long for… Source link

This article was first featured in Yahoo Finance Tech, a weekly newsletter highlighting our original content on the industry. Get it sent directly to your inbox every Wednesday by 4 p.m. ET. Subscribe China is relentlessly cracking down on tech giants ranging from ride-sharing firm Didi (DIDI) to internet giant Tencent and Alibaba (BABA) affiliate Ant Financial Group. Along the way, billions of dollars have been washed away, as Chinese stocks tank amid concerns that what were once easy growth… Source link

Pfizer (PFE) CEO Albert Bourla is betting big on repeating the success of its COVID-19 vaccine with an experimental oral treatment — and he’s putting the company’s money where its mouth is. Bourla told Yahoo Finance Wednesday the company is committing $1 billion to develop the oral treatment — a protease inhibitor — which would give the world an easy-to-use, targeted treatment, hopefully by year’s end. The current market for COVID-19 treatments includes monoclonal antibodies and some… Source link

Google announced it’s adding new caller ID, missed call, and SMS message features to Google Voice on Wednesday. The otherwise minor update is notable because Google Voice has fallen to the wayside while Google focused on other messaging boondoggles. From the missed calls or voicemail sections of the mobile Google Voice app, you can now learn why you might have missed a call (for example, Do Not Disturb was on), and receive directions on how to make sure that doesn’t happen again… Source link

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday held interest rates at near-zero, but hinted that the U.S. economic recovery is getting closer to a place where it may not need as much monetary support. The Federal Open Market Committee on Wednesday kept its benchmark interest rate in the range of 0% to 0.25%, but provided an update on its December 2020 commitment to purchasing at least $120 billion a month in U.S. Treasuries and agency mortgage-backed securities until the recovery looked like it was making… Source link

Even for tech companies who create the tools for remote work, returning to the office is proving a major challenge. After early work-from-home recommendations last March, companies like Google eventually closed up shop, requiring employees to take their work home with them. The intervening year and change have been a fraught balancing act for the company (along with most of the world), which began outlining return-to-work plans for some employees as early as May 2020. As Delta and other… Source link

Nearly 80 million adult Americans remain unvaccinated against Covid-19, which is causing an upsurge in infections, hospitalizations and deaths as the highly contagious delta variant spreads. With most of the unvaccinated either indifferent or resistant to the idea of halting the spread of this now-preventable disease, calls are growing for the Biden administration to make vaccines mandatory nationwide. There are better ways to end the coronavirus pandemic once and for all. A federal vaccine… Source link

If U.S. regulators crack down on the controversial practice of payment for order flow, it may have one unintended consequence. Big trading outfits could become much larger and even more influential in markets, explains Interactive Brokers chairman and founder Thomas Peterffy.  “If they were to prohibit payment for order flow, what has to happen is you would have Citadel buy Robinhood and Schwab would buy Virtu, and the two sides would be put together into one company,” Peterffy said on Yahoo… Source link