Apple is investing $1 billion in Didi Chuxing (formerly Didi Kuaidi), the Chinese ride-hailing giant. Didi is in the middle of raising more than $2 billion at a $25 billion valuation in order to build its war chest in its fight against Uber. China watchers point out that the deal could help Apple gain credibility with the Chinese government.
[Dawn Chmielewski | Recode]
An article in the Guardian, and subsequent releases from Facebook, revealed that a human is involved at just about every stage of the process by which Facebook picks "Trending Topics" headlines. This contradicts what the company has said on multiple occasions previously. In his own post, Mark Zuckerberg said that there's no ideological bias in Trending Topics, and that he plans to talk to people all across the political spectrum to prove he's serious.
[Noah Kulwin | Recode]
A surprising story out of Silicon Valley has been the success of Nvidia, the high-end PC graphics card maker. The company posted earnings that yet again beat analyst expectations yesterday, and its share price has nearly doubled to around $40 a pop over the last year.
[Ian King | Bloomberg]
On the newest episode of the Too Embarrassed to Ask podcast, travel site Gogobot CEO Travis Katz tells Lauren Goode and Kara Swisher about key travel tips — international phone plans, "smart" luggage and more — to help you plan properly for the summer.
[Eric Johnson | Recode]
Because Amazon is becoming the dominant retailer in an increasing number of sectors, it is creating antitrust issues in a lot of different spaces. For instance, the FTC recently killed an Office Depot-Staples merger, because it would give so much office supply market share to Amazon, and the agency fears Amazon can't handle that much new enterprise business.
[Rachel Abrams | The New York Times]
