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Uber is teaming up with Yandex, its Russian rival. The two companies will create a new entity, valued at $3.4 billion. This is similar to the joint venture/concession Uber struck with Didi in China last year. Reminder: Uber is looking for a new CEO, along with many other open positions. [Mike Isaac / New York Times]
Tech giants like Google and Twitter joined liberal activists in an underwhelming and mostly symbolic online “day of action” protest yesterday, a gestural attempt to pressure the U.S. Federal Communications Commission into preserving Obama-era net neutrality rules. Participating sites topped their homepages with banner ads and click-through icons, some of which led to online petitions or the FCC’s public comment page. Here’s why net neutrality matters; and here’s how some major websites rallied — or didn’t do much at all — in support of it. [Tony Romm / Recode]
Amazon generated about a billion dollars in sales yesterday on its self-invented holiday — the third annual Amazon Prime Day. The 30-hour online discount orgy grew by more than 60 percent from a year ago. The day’s top-selling item — the Amazon Echo Dot, a voice-controlled speaker that lets you buy more stuff from Amazon. [Jason Del Rey / Recode]
On his self-assigned quest to understand America, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has embarked on a 30-state journey to meet people who don’t typically cross his path. There are rules for ordinary people about to meet an extraordinary entrepreneur on short notice: Rule No. 1: You probably won’t know he’s coming, and No. 2, if you do know, keep it to yourself. Here’s what it was like for an Ohio family who found out that the 33-year-old billionaire philanthropist was dropping by for dinner. Yesterday, Zuckerberg was in Williston, North Dakota, to learn about fracking; here’s where his cross-country tour has taken him so far. [The Wall Street Journal]
The seventh and final season of “Game of Thrones” begins on Sunday — and it may be the final vestige of “event television”; the last TV show that the world watches at the same time. The HBO series averaged more than 23 million viewers across platforms last season and has ballooned into the flagship of an entire industry on the order of “Star Wars.” [Alison Herman / The Ringer]
Top stories from Recode
Alphabet doesn’t intend to settle its lawsuit against Uber just yet.
The two companies are in court-mandated settlement talks.
It took nine years, but Bitly turned short web links into a real company.
Spectrum Equity bought the no-longer-a-startup for $63 million.
This under-the-radar e-commerce giant is the NBA’s new best friend.
Fanatics’ Michael Rubin and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver will discuss why at Code Commerce in September.
Facebook is still trying to get people pumped about virtual reality.
The social network is adding more livestreaming to VR.
This is cool
Meet uBox, the hot new startup that's disrupting the innovators that are innovating disruption by giving you the box you didn’t know you needed.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
