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Apple shut down Google’s ability to distribute its internal iOS apps, following a similar shutdown that was issued to Facebook earlier this week. Early versions of Google Maps, Hangouts, Gmail, and other pre-release beta apps stopped working yesterday. Apple’s move to block Google’s developer certificate comes just a day after Google disabled its Screenwise Meter app, which was designed to monitor how people use their iPhones, similar to Facebook’s research app. Facebook says Apple has restored its access to developer certificates, and Apple says it is working to reinstate Google’s access. Here’s what it was like at Facebook and Google after Apple flipped the switch. In his newsletter, Casey Newton notes that this is a lesson for us all about the power tech titans like Apple and Google hold over us. [Tom Warren / The Verge]
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Amazon’s sales and earnings in the busy holiday quarter beat analysts’ estimates, with revenue gaining 20 percent to $72.4 billion in the fourth quarter versus the $71.9 billion projected by analysts; net income was $6.04 per share, compared with an average estimate of $5.56. Advertising was a key moneymaker, growing 95 percent to $3.39 billion in the quarter. And Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud-computing division, remains the company’s dominant source of profit, with sales climbing to $7.43 billion from $5.11 billion a year ago, and revenue jumping 45 percent. [Spencer Soper / Bloomberg]
Intel named Robert Swan as its permanent leader, ending a seven-month search for a new CEO; he is the company’s seventh CEO in 50 years. Swan started at Intel in 2016 as CFO and has been leading the company since former CEO Brian Krzanich’s ouster in June over a past affair with an employee. Meanwhile, former HP CEO Meg Whitman is leaving Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s board of directors; she is the CEO of Quibi, a video-on-demand startup founded by Hollywood exec Jeffrey Katzenberg. [Don Clark / The New York Times]
The Department of Homeland Security said it will transform the H-1B visa lottery program to prioritize applicants who hold advanced degrees from US institutions, which could give large tech companies an edge in recruiting highly skilled workers while also hurting outsourcing firms that hire entry-level employees for software jobs. The new rules are set to go into effect on April 1. [Melia Russell / The San Francisco Chronicle]
It is illegal to sell fake social media engagement, according to New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who announced a precedent-setting $50,000 settlement with Devumi, a now-defunct social media company that made millions of dollars selling bot followers and fake “likes” to social media users seeking to boost their online profiles. [Emily Birnbaum / The Hill]
Storage-on-demand startups like Clutter are hoping to get in on Marie Kondo’s tidying action. Clutter, which packs up, takes away, stores, and returns your possessions at the click of an app, is raising between $200 million and $250 million in new funding, giving it a valuation between $400 million and $500 million. For Clutter and its competitors, the target users are consumers based in urban areas who have the disposable income not only to buy stuff but to pay to keep it somewhere else. [Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch]
Hackers are passing around a mega-leak of 2.2 billion records stolen from the breached databases of Dropbox, LinkedIn and others. The hackers have cobbled together those databases into a gargantuan, unprecedented collection of unique usernames and associated passwords, and is freely distributing them on hacker forums and torrents, throwing out the private data of a significant fraction of humanity like last year’s phone book. [Andy Greenberg / Wired]
Movie buffs left out in the cold by the demise of FilmStruck will soon get a new streaming service from the Criterion Collection, stocked with more than 1,000 classic and contemporary art-house films. The Criterion Channel will launch April 8 in the US and Canada, and will be regularly priced at $10.99 per month or $99.99 for an annual subscription; it will be available on computers, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, iOS, and Android devices. [Todd Spangler / Variety]
Top stories from Recode
Amazon’s invincibility is showing some cracks — and a big one is in India. Regulations have put the company’s already-tenuous international growth plans at risk. [Jason Del Rey]
What it’s like to raise money when you’re Gwyneth Paltrow. People want selfies. They don’t usually want to give you money. [Theodore Schleifer]
Facebook said it has taken down nearly 800 fake pages and accounts from Iran. The social media giant said it found 783 pages tied to inauthentic behavior from Iran. [Shirin Ghaffary]
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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
