Amazon and Walmart are in an all-out price war that is terrifying America’s biggest brands. The result: A high-stakes race to the bottom between Walmart and Amazon that seems great for shoppers, but has consumer packaged goods brands and wholesalers feeling the pressure.
[Jason Del Rey / Recode]
Self-driving-car competitors Google, Ford and Uber are seeing engineers jump ship to take advantage of the autonomous-driving gold rush. And an Uber executive accused of stealing driverless-car tech from his former employers at Google is exercising his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination, according to his lawyers.
[Johana Bhuiyan and Rani Molla / Recode]
Elon Musk’s SpaceX made history by successfully reusing a rocket. The Falcon 9 was launched from the Kennedy Space Center yesterday afternoon, sent a satellite into space and then landed back to Earth on a drone ship SpaceX had stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
[April Glaser / Recode]
Volkswagen agreed to pay $157.45 million to settle environmental claims from 10 U.S. states over its excess diesel emissions. With a symbolic nod from the EPA, VW is allowed to sell diesel vehicles in the U.S. for the first time since the emissions scandal broke in 2015.
[Weston Williams / Christian Science Monitor]
North Carolina lawmakers passed a repeal of House Bill 2, a nationally controversial state law that had restricted transgender bathroom use in public buildings. The law had triggered a backlash from companies, entertainers and sports leagues that considered it to be discriminatory.
[Richard Fausset / The New York Times]
After Samsung’s exploding-battery embarrassment last year, the company needed to repair its brand, and its new Galaxy S8 may be the phone to do it, says The Verge’s Dan Seifert on the latest episode of Too Embarrassed to Ask.
[Eric Johnson / Recode]
Top stories from Recode
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is leaving Facebook.
He was the face of Oculus, but ran into some trouble last fall.
Recode Daily: The Amazon vs. Walmart price war is scaring suppliers
Plus, Elon Musk’s reusable rocket and James Comey’s super-secret Twitter account.
Walmart
YouTube creators have complained about declines in ad revenue.
Google has started tweaking the system to respond to advertiser concerns about brand safety.
Vevo makes its pitch to advertisers after they flee YouTube.
The video site says: Advertise with us, we’re safer than other stuff on YouTube.
Twitter is finally giving users more room to reply to other people’s tweets.
Usernames no longer count toward Twitter’s signature 140-character limit.
This is cool
Ashley Feinberg and the case of the super-secret tweets
Gizmodo thinks it has discovered FBI Director James Comey’s secret personal Twitter account. [via Gizmodo]
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
