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

Sundar Pichai Source: CNBC Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company is extending its office return for employees until Oct. 18 amid the latest Covid-19 outbreaks. In an email to employees Wednesday, Pichai also said the company will require anyone coming to the office to be vaccinated, beginning in the U.S. in coming weeks. Pichai’s note represents the second delay in office returns for its workforce of more than 130,000-plus employees amid the ongoing pandemic. In December, Google delayed… Source link

Google said Wednesday that it would require employees who returned to the company’s offices to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. It also said it would push back its official return-to-office date to mid-October from September, joining a host of other companies whose plans have been scrambled in recent days by the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant. Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced the news in a note to employees, which was… Source link

Get inside Wall Street with StreetInsider Premium. Claim your 1-week free trial here. By Alexander Marrow MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian internet giant Yandex said on Wednesday it intends to spend around $650 million on e-commerce initiatives this year, more than previously planned, after reporting strong second-quarter results and upgrading its 2021 revenue forecast. Group revenue this year should now be between 330 and 340 billion roubles ($4.49-$4.63 billion),… Source link