A district court judge gives the go-ahead to AT&T-Time Warner, Microsoft gives Office a new look and Toyota gives Grab $1 billion. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for June 13, 2018. 1. Court approves merger of AT&T and Time Warner This feels like a rebuke to the Trump Administration, which opposed the deal through the Department of Justice. The DoJ argued a merger would hurt consumer choice and competition, but a district court judge is allowing the deal to go forward without any restrictions or conditions. This will likely have big consequences across the telecom and media landscape. For one thing, Comcast is expected to make a bid for 21st Century Fox. For another, businesses like Netflix and Alphabet may need to become Internet providers themselves if they want to compete with the giant ISPs buying up content companies. 2. Microsoft gives Office a refreshed look and feel This new look will be in line with the Fluent Design System the company launched last year. It'll roll out to both the Office.com online apps and the Office desktop tools over the course of the next few months. 3. Everything Nintendo announced at E3 2018 The biggest highlights: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Super Mario Party and Fortnite. 4. Southeast Asia's Grab lands $1B from Toyota at a $10B valuation Toyota will get a board seat and the opportunity to place an executive on Grab's team. Grab said it plans to work with its new investor "to create a more efficient transport network that will ease traffic congestion in Southeast Asia's megacities" and help its drivers increase their income. 5. Adblock Plus wants to use blockchain to call out fake news The browser extension, which is called Trusted News, is intended to help Internet users spot sources of fake news when they're exposed to content online. As eyeo (the company behind Adblock Plus and Trusted News) put it, the system "democratically scores the integrity and trustworthiness of online news sources." 6. Truecaller makes first acquisition to build out payment and financial services in India The vision is to go deeper into mobile payments and associated services, turning Truecaller into a utility that goes beyond just handling messages and calls. 7. Salesforce deepens data sharing partnership with Google The announcement involves four new integrations that effectively allow marketers to round-trip data between the two platforms. For starters, consumer insights from both the Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Google Analytics 360 will be brought together into a single analytics dashboard inside Marketing Cloud. |