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Spotify struck a special deal with Google that lets it pay no commission to Google when people sign up for subscriptions using the music streaming service’s own payment system on Android, according to new testimony in the ongoing Epic v. Google trial first reported by The Verge. As part of the same deal, Spotify paid Google just four percent commission if users signed up for the service through Google, far less than most other apps which typically pay 15 percent for subscriptions through the Google Play Store.

“Listening to music is one of [the phone’s] core purposes… if we don’t have Spotify working properly across Play services and core services, people will not buy Android phones”, Google’s partnerships head Don Harrison reportedly said in court. Both Google and Spotify also agreed to put $50 million each in a “success fund” as part of the deal.

The remarks were made as part of a lawsuit first filed against Google by Epic Games, the maker of the wildly popular Fortnite, in 2020. Epic claimed that Google’s Play Store on Android was an illegal monopoly that forced app makers to part with huge sums of cash in exchange for offering users in-app purchases through the Play Store. Epic filed a similar lawsuit against Apple in 2021, which it lost.

Spotify initially supported Epic in its fight against Google and Apple. But in 2022, the company started using a Google program called User Choice Billing that let Android apps use their own payment systems in exchange for giving a reduced cut to Google. The special deal revealed in court showed that Google was willing to carve out even more exceptions for popular apps like Spotify.

Google has had some pretty big business secrets spilled in the last few days. Last week, an economics professor testifying on behalf of the company in a separate antitrust trial that has since wrapped up, revealed that Google pays Apple 36 percent of all ad revenue it generates through Apple’s Safari browser, a figure which Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai later confirmed while he was testifying in the Epic v. Google trial.

The Verge also reported earlier this month that Google offered Netflix, another popular streaming service, a custom deal. It offered a reduced commission of 10 percent, which Netflix turned down – instead choosing to not offer users a way to sign up for Netflix directly within its Android app.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/spotify-reportedly-struck-a-special-deal-with-google-that-let-it-skip-play-store-fees-224646377.html?src=rss 

Cruise, the self-driving car company owned by General Motors, confirmed to Reuters that its co-founder and chief product officer Daniel Kan has resigned. Kan’s departure comes just a day after the company’s CEO Kyle Vogt announced his resignation on X after a 10-year tenure. Kan is said to have announced his resignation over Slack, however, the reasoning for his departure has not been made clear by the company.

The company’s executive reshuffling follows a public relations nightmare that started last month when a Cruise robotaxi hit a pedestrian in San Francisco and pinned them under the vehicle. The parent company, GM, is still conducting a safety probe on the accident and both autonomous and manual vehicle operations at Cruise remain suspended. The company’s public image has been reeling from the accident ever since, and about 950 robotaxis had to be recalled by GM. The California DMV suspended Cruises’ driverless permits shortly after, and that ruling has remained in place.

In a recent tweet, Cruise said that the company is focused on taking steps “to rebuild public trust.” Things have yet to look up for the company, especially after an expose by The Intercept revealed that the company knew its self-driving cars have trouble recognizing children and large holes in the roads. Furthermore, the former CEO said that the company would have to lay off an undisclosed number of employees and staff members in a memo.

Cruise has not made any statements about finding replacements for either its CEO or chief product officer as of yet. The New York Times reports that “instead of installing a new chief executive” General Motors has appointed two new members to the company board and Mo Elshenawy, Cruise’s executive vice president of engineering, will take up the role of President.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cruise-co-founder-resigns-following-ceo-exit-214747271.html?src=rss 

It’s been an eventful weekend at OpenAI’s headquarters in San Francisco. In a surprise move Friday, the company’s board of directors fired co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, which set off an institutional crisis that has seen senior staff resign in protest with nearly 700 rank-and-file employees threatening to do the same. Now the board is facing calls for its own resignation, even after Microsoft had already swooped in to hire Altman’s cohort away for its own AI projects. Here’s everything you need to know about the situation to hold your own at Thanksgiving on Thursday.

How it started

Thursday, November 16

This saga began forever ago by internet standards, or last Thursday in the common parlance. Per a tweet from former-company president Greg Brockman, that was when OpenAI’s head researcher and board member, Ilya Sutskever, contacted Altman to set up a meeting the following day at noon. In that same tweet chain (posted Friday night), Brockman accused the company of informing the first interim-CEO, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, of the upcoming firings at that time as well:

– Last night, Sam got a text from Ilya asking to talk at noon Friday. Sam joined a Google Meet and the whole board, except Greg, was there. Ilya told Sam he was being fired and that the news was going out very soon.

– At 12:19PM, Greg got a text from Ilya asking for a quick call. At 12:23PM, Ilya sent a Google Meet link. Greg was told that he was being removed from the board (but was vital to the company and would retain his role) and that Sam had been fired. Around the same time, OpenAI published a blog post.

– As far as we know, the management team was made aware of this shortly after, other than Mira who found out the night prior.

Friday, November 17

Everything kicked off at that Friday noon meeting. Brockman was informed that he would be demoted — removed from the board but remain president of the company, reporting to Murati once she’s installed. Barely ten minutes later, Brockman alleges, Altman was informed of his termination as the public announcement was published. Sutskever subsequently sent a company-wide email stating that “Change can be scary,” per The Information.

Later that afternoon, the OpenAI board along with new CEO Murati addressed a “shocked” workforce in an all-hands meeting. During that meeting, Sutskever reportedly told employees the moves will ultimately “make us feel closer.”

At this point, Microsoft, which just dropped a cool $10 billion into OpenAI’s coffers in January as part of a massive, multi-year investment deal with the company weighed in on the day’s events. CEO Satya Nadella released the following statement:

As you saw at Microsoft Ignite this week, we’re continuing to rapidly innovate for this era of AI, with over 100 announcements across the full tech stack from AI systems, models and tools in Azure, to Copilot. Most importantly, we’re committed to delivering all of this to our customers while building for the future. We have a long-term agreement with OpenAI with full access to everything we need to deliver on our innovation agenda and an exciting product roadmap; and remain committed to our partnership, and to Mira and the team. Together, we will continue to deliver the meaningful benefits of this technology to the world.

By Friday evening, things really began to spiral. Brockman announced via Twitter that he quit in protest. Director of research Jakub Pachocki and head of preparedness Aleksander Madry announced that they too were resigning in solidarity.

How it’s going

Saturday/Sunday, November 18/19

On Saturday, November 18, the backtracking begins. Altman’s Friday termination notice states that, “Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”

The following morning, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap wrote in internal communications obtained by Axios that the decision “took [the management team] by surprise” and that management had been in conversation “with the board to try to better understand the reasons and process behind their decision.”

“We can say definitively that the board’s decision was not made in response to malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices,” Lightcap wrote. “This was a breakdown in communication between Sam and the board … We still share your concerns about how the process has been handled, are working to resolve the situation, and will provide updates as we’re able.”

A report from The Information midmorning Saturday revealed that OpenAI’s prospective share sale being led by Thrive Capital, valued at $86 billion, is in jeopardy following Altman’s firing. Per three unnamed sources within the company, even if the sale does go through, it will likely be at a lower valuation. The price of OpenAI shares has tripled since the start of the year, and quadrupled since 2021, so current and former employees, many of whom were offered stock as hiring incentives, were in line for a big payout. A payout might not be coming anymore.

On Saturday afternoon, Altman announced on Twitter that he would be forming a new AI startup with Brockman’s assistance, potentially doing something with AI chips to counter NVIDIA’s dominance in the sector. At this point OpenAI’s many investors, rightly concerned that their money was about to go up in generative smoke, began pressuring the board of directors to reinstate Altman and Brockman.

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella reportedly led that charge. Bloomberg’s sources say Nadella was “furious” over the decision to oust Altman — especially having been given just “a few minutes” of notice before the public announcement was made — even going so far as to recruit Altman and his cohort for their own AI efforts.

Microsoft also has leverage in the form of its investment, much of which is in the form of cloud compute credits (which the GPT platform needs to operate) rather than hard currency. Denying those credits to OpenAI would effectively hobble the startup’s operations.

Interim-CEO Mira Murati’s 48-hour tenure at the head of OpenAI came to an end on Sunday when the board named Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear as the new interim-CEO. According to Bloomberg reporter Ashley Vance, Murati had planned to hire Altman and Brockman back in a move designed to force the board of directors into action. Instead, the board “went into total silence” and “found their own CEO Emmett Shear.” Altman spent Sunday at OpenAI HQ, posting an image of himself holding up a green “Guest” badge.

“First and last time i ever wear one of these,” he wrote.

Monday, November 20

On Monday morning, an open letter from more than 500 OpenAI employees circulated online. The group threatened to quit and join the new Microsoft subsidiary unless the board itself resigns and brings back Altman and Brockman (and presumably the other two as well). The number of signatories has since grown to nearly 700.

It doesn’t look like that will be happening, however — despite Sutskever’s early morning mea culpa. The board has already missed its deadline to respond to the open letter, Microsoft has already hired away both Altman and Brockman and Shear has already been named interim-CEO.

Shear stepped down as CEO of Twitch in March, where he led the company for more than 16 years and has been working as a partner at Y Combinator for the past seven months. Amazon acquired the live video streaming app in 2014 for just under $1 billion.

“I took this job because I believe that OpenAI is one of the most important companies currently in existence. When the board shared the situation and asked me to take the role, I did not make the decision lightly,” Shear told OpenAI employees Monday.

“Ultimately I felt that I had a duty to help if I could,” he added.

Shear was quick to point out that Altman’s termination was “handled very badly, which has seriously damaged our trust.” As such he announced the company will hire an independent investigator to report on the run-up to Friday’s SNAFU.

“The board did *not* remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety, their reasoning was completely different from that,” Shear continued. “I’m not crazy enough to take this job without board support for commercializing our awesome models.”

Following his departure to Microsoft on Monday, Altman posted, “the OpenAI leadership team, particularly mira brad and jason but really all of them, have been doing an incredible job through this that will be in the history books.”

“Incredibly proud of them,” he wrote.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/what-is-going-on-with-openai-and-sam-altman-215725312.html?src=rss 

X CEO Linda Yaccarino called a report from a watchdog group that led to a large-scale advertiser pullout “misleading and manipulated” in a note she sent to X employees on Sunday night.

“While some advertisers may have temporarily paused investments because of a misleading article, the data will tell the real story,” Yaccarino wrote in the note, which was first published by The Hollywood Reporter, and which Engadget has seen a copy of. “Because for all of us who work at X, we’ve been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination, as there’s no place for it anywhere in the world.” Yaccarino’s note was titled “Our Work is Meaningful”.

She also framed the situation as a free speech issue, writing that “no critic will ever deter us from our mission to protect free speech.” In doing so, she aligned herself with X owner Elon Musk’s repeated claims that free speech on the platform is paramount. Musk has repeatedly dismissed concerns of hate speech increasing on X ever since he bought the service last year.

Major advertisers including IBM, Apple, Disney, Lionsgate, Warner Brothers Discovery, Paramount Global, and NBCUniversal, whose advertising division Yaccarino previously headed, pulled their ads from X last week after a report from watchdog group Media Matters for America found that ads from some of these brands ran next to pro-Nazi content on the website. The move also came days after Musk publicly endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory as a response to a far-right X user. Musk’s comment drew widespread criticism, including a statement from the White House, which called his post an “abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate” that “runs against our core values as Americans.”

On Friday, Musk said that the company would file “a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company” when court opens on Monday. As of Monday afternoon, there was no sign of a lawsuit.

Yaccarino was already under pressure to resign as X CEO from advertisers who are questioning her decision to risk her reputation to protect Musk, Forbes reported. In a post on X on Monday morning, Yaccarino doubled down on her criticism of Media Matters. “When you’re this consequential, there will be detractors and fabricated distractions, but we’re unwavering in our mission,” she wrote. “Thank you for standing with us!”

An X spokesperson sent a link to Yaccarino’s X post in response to Engadget’s request for comment.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/x-ceo-calls-article-that-led-to-latest-brand-exodus-misleading-and-manipulated-204025411.html?src=rss 

In 2022 Polyend announced the Play, a fascinating sample-based groovebox and MIDI sequencer that was pretty much universally beloved by anyone who could get their hands on one. The pandemic fueled chip shortage made them pretty hard to come by, at least initially. But my, how things have changed in a little over a year. In just around 18 months, the company has managed to bring the cost of the Play down from $799 to just $499. More exciting though, is the availability of the Polyend Play+. 

The updated version is dramatically more powerful than the original. It still has eight tracks of sample playback and eight tracks of polyphonic MIDI sequencing. But, it now supports stereo sample playback and there are four built-in synth engines that can be controlled by the dedicated MIDI tracks. There’s also support for audio over USB-C. And impressively, it’s multitrack with 14 individual stereo tracks available for each of the eight sample channels, the three synth slots, the reverb and delay sends, plus a master audio out.

The synths are limited to eight voices collectively, but you can divide them up over three tracks however you see fit. So you can have a monophonic bass, a duophonic lead and then have a five note polyphonic track for chords. The four different engines are ACD, FAT, VAP and WTFM. The first three are different flavors of virtual analog synths, with ACD delivering simple single oscillator not unlike Roland’s famed SH-101. While FAT and VAP are more complicated, with the former delivering thick three-oscillator tones, and the latter having a pretty extensive modulation matrix for evolving pads. WTFM, is a two operator FM synth that, at least based on the samples posted on Polyend’s site, is far more capable and versatile than you’d expect.

While you can do some menu diving and customize the synth patches to your liking. There are plenty of presets, each with macro controls for quickly dialing in something pleasing. That is the big selling point of the Play in general, its immediacy. There’s still the semi-generative pattern filling options, and that includes being able to auto-generate bass and chord progressions using the synth engines. 

One of the more intriguing things, however, is that Polyend is allowing owners of the original Play to trade theirs in for the Play+ for $399. This gives people who shelled out for a unit an upgrade path to the new more powerful hardware, but also reduces waste (and potentially saves Polyend some money) by allowing it to sell those returned units as refurbished down the road. 

The Polyend Play+ is available now for $799. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/polyends-799-play-has-a-shot-a-being-the-ultimate-groovebox-210001667.html?src=rss