Davemichels

Google is putting a new pair of restrictions on Chrome extensions meant to make the browser add-ons more considerate of users’ privacy. The major change is that all extensions will now be required to use the “minimum set of permissions necessary” when asking for access to data. So if a task can be accomplished through multiple routes, the extension will be required to take the one that requires access to the least-sensitive amount of data.

On top of that, Google will also begin requiring more extensions to post privacy policies in the Chrome Web Store. This requirement is already in place for extensions that require “personal and sensitive user data,” but now it’s being expanded to extensions that need access to any kind of personal...

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• More than 13,000 Facebook users reported issues loading the site on Wednesday, according to Downdetector.com
• Nearly all of the reports came within a window of about 15 minutes starting at 2:30 p.m. EST.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Facebook seemingly went down for thousands of users on Wednesday afternoon, based on reports submitted to Down Detector.

More than 13,000 users reported issues using the site during a 15-minute time span starting at about 2:30 p.m. EST.

After the short time period, many users returned to report that Facebook was working normally again, but a handful of reports continued to trickle in. About 1,000 Instagram users reported issues with the app at about 11 a.m. EST on Wednesday, while WhatsApp users did not appear to have any issues. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp all suffered from downtime on April 14.

Facebook confirmed the issue in a statement to Business Insider. 

"Earlier today, a technical issue caused some people to have trouble accessing Facebook and Messenger," A Facebook spokesperson said. "We quickly resolved this issue for everyone, and we apologize for any inconvenience."

SEE ALSO: Facebook apologizes for going down for a couple of hours this morning

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: I've used iPhones for nearly a decade and switched to the Samsung Galaxy S10. Now I understand Android loyalty in a way I never understood before.

Last year, Salesforce chairman Marc Benioff mentioned, perhaps for the first time, his interest in the blockchain. It was not known at the time if he was seriously interested, or if Salesforce would indeed offer a way to use the blockchain on the Salesforce platform. Today, a little more than a year later, the company announced its first blockchain product, and it’s one aimed squarely at developers.

Salesforce’s MO with new tech is always to start slowly and branch out after it gets a feel for customer requirements. Today’s announcement follows a similar path. The company is announcing a low-code blockchain development tool on the Lightning platform. It’s important to note that this is only available to select design partners for now, and won’t become generally available until sometime next year.

About the time Benioff was making his first public statements about blockchain, the company began looking at how it could incorporate blockchain into Salesforce and use it to take advantage of gaps in the CRM platform, or if it even made sense to. As Adam Caplan, SVP of emerging technology at Salesforce put it, “Was this technology just looking for a problem to solve, or could it really drive big business impact?”

After talking to 100 customers over the last year, Salesforce realized there was something there and felt like they could help companies, especially those working with partners outside the organization. The blockchain could provide a way for these companies to collaborate in a trusted environment.

Caplan said many of the customers he spoke to had begun experimenting with the idea of working in trusted environments with immutable records and other distributed ledger concepts, but most were stuck in Proof of Concept stages and were looking for a way to streamline the application development process.

Bret Taylor, who is president and chief product officer at Salesforce, says the company has been focusing on how the decentralized nature of the blockchain can really open up new business models that might not have been possible on the Salesforce platform in the past.

“We love the idea of extending the CRM with this capability because it really does enable multiple parties to work together in a trusted way and create business models around ecosystems, rather just direct customer relationships,” Taylor explained.

Taylor says the company went for developers as initial entree into blockchain to help customers get going with it in a fairly quick way by abstracting away a lot of the complexity associated with developing blockchain applications.

Brent Leary, who owns the CRM consultancy CRM Essentials, sees a lot of potential with the new blockchain tools, even though he cautions it’s still very early. “The concept of leveraging blockchain technology to allow companies to [combine] decentralized data with CRM data can be potentially big. And even though it won’t be available for awhile, Salesforce has the resources and mindshare to bring their large customer base, and enterprise customers with huge scale to blockchain and speed up the adoption process,” Leary told TechCrunch.

The new product will consist of three components: Blockchain Builder to help developers build blockchain applications; Blockchain Connect to integrate blockchain actions directly with applications on the Salesforce platform; and Blockchain Engage to invite parties to the blockchain application, regardless of whether they are part of the Salesforce ecosystem or not.

“We think that having the Salesforce gravity being around the customer and customer experience, and making blockchain really accessible to a broad range of developers will help enable a lot of our customers to start experimenting with these new business models and new approaches to build ecosystems around their products and experiences,” Taylor said.

Startups are often associated with the benefits and toys provided in their offices. Foosball tables! Free food! Dog friendly! But what if the future of startups was less about physical office space and more about remote-first work environments? What if, in fact, the most compelling aspect of a startup work environment is that the employees don’t have to go to one?

A remote-first company model has been Seeq’s strategy since our founding in 2013. We have raised $35 million and grown to more than 100 employees around the globe. Remote-first is clearly working for us and may be the best model for other software companies as well.

So, who is Seeq and what’s been the key to making the remote-first model work for us?  And why did we do it in the first place?

Seeq is a remote-first startup – i.e. it was founded with the intention of not having a physical headquarters or offices, and still operates that way – that is developing an advanced analytics application that enables process engineers and subject matter experts in oil & gas, pharmaceuticals, utilities, and other process manufacturing industries to investigate and publish insights from the massive amounts of sensor data they generate and store.

To succeed, we needed to build a team quickly with two skill sets: 1) software development expertise, including machine learning, AI, data visualization, open source, agile development processes, cloud, etc. and 2) deep domain expertise in the industries we target.

Which means there is no one location where we can hire all the employees we need: Silicon Valley for software, Houston for oil & gas, New Jersey for fine chemicals, Seattle for cloud expertise, water utilities across the country, and so forth. But being remote-first has made recruiting and hiring these high-demand roles easier much easier than if we were collocated.

Image via Seeq Corporation

Job postings on remote-specific web sites like FlexJobs, Remote.co and Remote OK typically draw hundreds of applicants in a matter of days. This enables Seeq to hire great employees who might not call Seattle, Houston or Silicon Valley home – and is particularly attractive to employees with location-dependent spouses or employees who simply want to work where they want to live.

But a remote-first strategy and hiring quality employees for the skills you need is not enough: succeeding as a remote-first company requires a plan and execution around the “3 C’s of remote-first”.

The three requirements to remote-first success are the three C’s: communication, commitment and culture.

• Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign is running a billboard in San Francisco calling for the breakup of the tech giants.
• Warren has made challenging the power of the industry's largest players a key piece of her campaign.
• The billboard is near a station for the rail line many tech workers use to commute to their jobs in the city.

Elizabeth Warren is taking her message of breaking up the big-tech giants directly to those most affected by the companies.

The senator's presidential campaign has posted a billboard in San Francisco touting her stance against the industry's behemoths. The advertisement is half a block away from the city's main station for Caltrain, the commuter rail line many tech workers ride on their way to and from their jobs in the city or in Silicon Valley. 

"Break up big tech," the sign reads, then asks people to text the campaign to "join our fight."

The campaign posted the ad days before Warren is slated to visit the Bay Area. She's scheduled to hold a town hall in Oakland on Friday and to appear at both the California Democratic Convention and a MoveOn event in San Francisco Saturday.

Warren campaign representative Saloni Sharma did not respond to questions about why the campaign decided to post the billboard with its particular message in San Francisco near the station. Instead, in an email, she echoed Warren's warning about the dangers of the big-tech companies.

"Today's big tech companies have too much power," Sharma said. She continued: "Elizabeth's plan would help ensure tech giants do not crowd out potential competitors, smother the next generation of great tech companies, and wield so much power that they can undermine our democracy."

Warren has made challenging the power of the tech giants a centerpiece of her campaign. She's called for breaking up the larger companies, including Facebook and Amazon, and more strictly regulating smaller ones.

Read this: Elizabeth Warren pulled a ninja move to turn tech angst into a crackdown with real teeth, and tech is going to suffer even if she's not president

It's unclear how Warren's message will play in San Francisco. The city and the Bay Area are ground zero for the tech industry and home to many of its largest companies, including Facebook, Google, and Apple. But the region has also suffered from many of the consequences of the industry's immense wealth, including sky-high housing costs, gridlocked traffic, overstuffed transit systems, and displacement of non-tech residents.

Such factors have led to a burbling backlash by some longtime residents against the tech industry.

Got a tip about the tech industry? Contact this reporter via email at twolverton@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @troywolv, or send him a secure message through Signal at 415.515.5594. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

SEE ALSO: Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon have too much power — so it's time for regulators to take on tech's titans

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 9 simple ways to protect your data that don't take much time, but could have huge security benefits

• A new report from eMarketer showed that Facebook users in the US are spending less time using the social network.
• The average daily time spent on Facebook fell by 3 minutes last year to 38 minutes a day, and is expected to drop to 37 minutes in 2020.
• Facebook has also seen user growth rates stall in the US in recent years.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

People are spending less time on Facebook.

That's according to a new report from eMarketer, which found that the average daily time US adults (those aged over 18 years old) spend on Facebook fell by 3 minutes in 2018 to 38 minutes a day.

eMarketer is expecting this number to flatline in 2019 and drop to 37 minutes by 2020.

"Facebook's continued loss of younger adult users, along with its focus on downranking clickbait posts and videos in favor of those that create 'time well spent,' resulted in less daily time spent on the platform in 2018 than we had previously expected," said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer principal analyst.

A spokesperson for Facebook did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

It supports a gloomy trend for Facebook. The platform had its slowest 12 months of user growth since its 2012 IPO last year, with the rise in daily active users falling below 10% for the first time. Facebook had 2.32 billion daily active users in 2018.

Read more: We can see what it looks like when Facebook and Snapchat stop growing

Meanwhile, a set of charts that were shared its most recent earnings showed how daily active users in the US and Canada have flatlined for the past two years; monthly active user data followed a similar pattern in 2018. Most of the growth during the quarter was reserved to countries outside of the US, Canada, and Europe.

It was not all bad news for Facebook, however. Instagram was a bright spot for the company after users spent more time with the social network, according to eMarketer. It is also taking share from its competitors such as Snapchat.

"Features like Stories, influencer content and video are all contributing to more engagement and a slow but steady uptick in time spent on Instagram," Williamson said.

SEE ALSO: This fruit-picking robot can pick up to 25,000 raspberries a day, and it could someday replace human workers

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NOW WATCH: I tried the $1,980 Samsung Galaxy Fold and it's impressive for a first-generation foldable phone, though far from perfect

It’s been nearly seven years since Windows 8 first debuted, ushering in an era of weird and wonderful laptop designs. We witnessed the birth of Lenovo’s Yoga laptop, some crazy hinge gymnastics from Acer, and even the early beginnings of Microsoft’s Surface line. While most of the more wacky designs have come and gone, we’re now entering another phase of wild experimentation: dual-screen laptops.

Computex is one of largest computer and technology trade shows in the world, and it’s an annual event where PC makers like to show off their latest laptops and crazy concepts. Laptops have largely focused on better displays, trackpads, and battery life in recent years, but this year we’ve started to see laptops with multiple screens emerge.

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US president Donald Trump has made Huawei the biggest story in tech right now by banning it from doing business with US companies. Huawei, China’s tech champion, has lost access to Google’s Android and Intel’s chips, and it’s even seen other international partners like ARM and Panasonic bowing to American influence and discontinuing trade. Having previously been on track to becoming the world’s biggest smartphone maker, Huawei is now in such dire straits that the best metaphor its founder could come up with to allay fears is that the company is like a plane with a hole in its side: not doing great, but still up in the air.

Bludgeoning Huawei with the ban hammer is, by Trump’s own admission, a negotiating tactic to focus China’s attention...

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• Juul, Airbnb, and the We Company are among some of the most valuable private startups in the US.
• Major VC investments in the past year have shaken up the list, with video gaming and cryptocurrency startups entering the rankings.
• Using data from PitchBook, we've compiled a list of the 26 startups in the US with the highest valuations.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Tech companies are continuing to garner major investments from venture capitalists.

With major companies like Uber, Lyft and Pinterest going public, there's a new cast of major tech startups that have taken the top spots of most highly valued private companies, PitchBook reports. But recent major investments into burgeoning tech startups — including Juul and Pokémon Go-creator Niantic — have brought new players into the spotlight. At this point, there are almost too many billion-dollar startups to count.

The We Company's $47 billion valuation solidifies the company's spot at the top. Other companies in the rankings, including Slack and Airbnb, are rumored to be planning IPOs, so the standings could change soon.

Here are the 26 most valuable VC-backed startups in the US:

SEE ALSO: 12 startups that failed this year and took $1.4 billion in VC funding with them

(tied) 24. Niantic — $4 billion

Company role: Augmented reality video games, including Pokémon Go

Founded: 2010

Latest investment amount: $245 million (January 2019)

Read more about Niantic at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

(tied) 24. Credit Karma — $4 billion

Company role: Platform for consumer finance and free credit score reports

Founded: 2007

Latest investment amount: $175 million (June 2015)

Read more about Credit Karma at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

(tied) 24. Houzz — $4 billion

Company role: Platform for home remodeling and design

Founded: 2009

Latest investment amount: $400 million (June 2017)

Read more about Houzz at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

23. Intarcia Therapeutics — $4.1 billion

Company role: Therapeutic drugs for chronic diseases

Founded: 1995

Latest investment amount: $615 million (August 2017)

Read more about Intarcia Therapeutics at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

22. Peloton — $4.2 billion

Company role: At-home stationary bikes and other fitness equipment

Founded: 2012

Latest investment amount: $550 million (August 2018)

Read more about Peloton at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

21. SoFi — $4.3 billion

Company role: Financial services for loans and wealth management

Founded: 2011

Latest investment amount: $500 million (April 2019)

Read more about SoFi at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

20. Compass — $4.4 billion

Company role: Platform for real estate agents and customers

Founded: 2012

Latest investment amount: $400 million (September 2018)

Read more about Compass at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

19. Machine Zone — $5 billion

Company role: Multiplayer mobile games developer

Founded: 2007

Latest investment amount: $330 million (August 2016)

Read more about Machine Zone on PitchBook.

18. Unity — $6.3 billion

Company role: Game development platform

Founded: 2003

Latest investment amount: $125 million (May 2019)

Read more about Unity at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

17. Magic Leap — $6.4 billion

Company role: Augmented reality and 3D imagery technologies

Founded: 2010

Latest investment amount: $963 million (March 2018)

Read more about Magic Leap at Business Insider or on PitchBook .

16. Tanium — $6.7 billion

Company role: Endpoint security systems

Founded: 2007

Latest investment amount: $200 million (October 2018)

Read more about Tanium at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

(tied) 14. UiPath — $7.1 billion

Company role: Robotic process automation software

Founded: 2005

Latest investment amount: $568 million (April 2019)

Read more about UiPath at Business Insider and on PitchBook.

(tied) 14. Slack — $7.1 billion

Company role: Collaboration and communication platform for workplace

Founded: 2009

Latest investment amount: $427 million (August 2018)

Read more about Slack at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

(Note: Slack confidentially filed to go public on February 4th.)

13. Robinhood — $7.3 billion

Company role: Financial investments platform

Founded: 2013

Latest investment amount: $200 million (May 2019)

Read more about Robinhood at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

12. Instacart — $7.9 billion

Company role: On-demand grocery delivery app

Founded: 2012

Latest investment amount: $871 million (December 2018)

Read more about Instacart at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

11. Wish — $8 billion

Company role: Digital shopping app for items directly from suppliers

Founded: 2010

Latest investment amount: $500 million (May 2017)

Read more about Wish at Business Insider or  on PitchBook.

10. Coinbase — $8.1 billion

Company role: Bitcoin exchange platform

Founded: 2012

Latest investment amount: $300 million (October 2018)

Read more about Coinbase at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

9. Samumed — $12.4 billion

Company role: Drugs for degenerative diseases

Founded: 2008

Latest investment amount: $438 million (August 2018)

Read more about Samumed at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

8. DoorDash — $12.6 billion

Company role: On-demand food delivery app

Founded: 2013

Latest investment amount: $600 million (May 2019)

Read more about DoorDash at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

7. Epic Games — $15 billion

Company role: Developer of video games, including Fortnite

Founded: 1991

Latest investment amount: $1.3 billion (October 2018)

Read more about Epic Games at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

6. Palantir — $20.5 billion

Company role: Data fusion platforms for companies

Founded: 2004

Latest investment amount: $20 million (November 2016)

Read more about Palantir at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

5. Stripe — $22.5 billion

Company role: Online payment platform

Founded: 2010

Latest investment amount: $100 million (January 2019)

Read more about Stripe at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

4. Airbnb — $31 billion

Company role: Online marketplace for short-term home rentals

Founded: 2008

Latest investment amount: $1 billion (September 2017)

Read more about Airbnb at Business Insider or  on PitchBook.

3. SpaceX — $31.5 billion

Company role: Space transport vehicle manufacturer

Founded: 2002

Latest investment amount: $536 million (May 2019)

Read more about SpaceX at Business Insider or on PitchBook.

2. Juul — $38 billion

Company role: Nicotine vaporizer developer

Founded: 2017

Latest investment amount: $12.8 billion (December 2018)

Read more about Juul on Business Insider or on PitchBook.

1. The We Company (formerly WeWork) — $47 billion

Company role: Shared workspaces for small businesses

Founded: 2010

Latest investment amount: $5 billion (January 2019)

Read more about the We Company on Business Insider or on PitchBook.

KAZOOcon is this year’s must-attend UC conference whether you’re interested in the most recent UCaaS and CPaaS technologies, cutting-edge best practices, leading industry insights, or valuable networking opportunities. Inspired by KAZOO — 2600Hz’s advanced carrier-grade UCaaS/CPaaS solution — will be hosted in sunny San Diego, CA June 18th through June 20th at the Bahia Resort and Hotel.

If I’m being honest, the phrase “Honeycomb Glacier” makes me think of a frosty dessert with a crunchy bee-produced treat on top, not a concept gaming PC.

But standing in a semi-secret lab deep inside Intel’s Santa Clara headquarters, I can’t help but think it’s the most convincing argument ever made for a beefy laptop with two screens.

You may know that chipmakers like Intel don’t just produce processors — they spend big bucks building new markets for those chips by figuring out what people want in their next computer and working with PC manufacturers to make those new features a reality. Sometimes, they build entire example PCs for the industry to crib, like we saw firsthand when Intel’s dual-screen Tiger Rapids prototype became the...

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Google Duo, Android’s built-in video chat app, is getting support for eight-person video calls. That compares with 32 for FaceTime, four for WhatsApp, 50 for Skype, and 50 for Facebook Messenger (although only six video feeds will actually be shown at a time on Facebook’s service). The new feature is available in both the iOS and Android versions of the app.

Although Duo is also the default video chat service for Google’s smart displays, VentureBeat reports that its group calling functionality is exclusive to mobile at launch. That also means no group calls through Duo’s web client, which launched earlier this year. If you need to make a video call through a browser, and you have to do it using a Google video calling service, then the...

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Asus always likes to use its hometown trade show of Computex, which also happens to be the world’s biggest computer hardware event, to show off a wide and occasionally wild lineup of new products. And it’s really outdone itself this time — the headline announcement is one of the most decadent laptops ever created.

The ZenBook Pro Duo has not one, but two 4K screens. (At least if you’re counting horizontal pixels.) There’s a 15-inch 16:9 OLED panel where you’d normally find the display on a laptop, then a 32:9 IPS “ScreenPad Plus” screen directly above the keyboard that’s the same width and half the height. It’s as if Asus looked at the MacBook Pro Touch Bar and thought “what if that, but with 32 times as many pixels?”

Unlike the Touch...

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Over the past week, the US government has taken extreme and unprecedented steps against Huawei, cutting it off from every US partner at the risk of a long-term rupture in trade between the US and China. But while the impact of the order is clear, it’s still not entirely clear why it was put in place.

The official explanation, according to the initial executive order, is that Huawei hardware puts the US at risk for espionage. As the order puts it, “foreign adversaries are increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in information and communications technology and services,” and the “unrestricted acquisition or use” of hardware made by foreign adversaries makes those vulnerabilities worse.

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• Huawei's placement on the US government's trade blacklist will likely require the Chinese tech giant to rethink the way it develops key products across its smartphone, laptop, and wearable lines.
• Since the US government added Huawei to the list, companies such as Google, Qualcomm, Intel, and others have suspended business with the Chinese firm.
• Here's a look at the Huawei product lines that could be impacted.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. 

The US government recently placed Chinese tech behemoth Huawei on a trade blacklist, a move that could require the world's second-largest smartphone maker to rethink everything from the way it designs its chips to the software that powers its line of smartphones and tablets.

Under the new requirements, US companies must obtain government permission before conducting business with Huawei.  Following the announcement, a slew of technology companies have said they are suspending business with the firm. These include Google, which operates the popular mobile operating system Android, as well as chipmakers Qualcomm and Intel among others, as reports have indicated. 

Huawei has since downplayed the potential ramifications of these sanctions and severed ties, as founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei recently said that he only expects the company's growth to slow slightly when speaking with Nikkei Asian Review. Huawei has also said that it's been working on its own mobile operating system to replace Android, and the company already develops its own Kirin mobile processors.

Those processors, however, rely heavily on designs from United Kingdom-based Arm, which recently said it has suspended business with the tech giant. The company is also said to have stockpiled enough chips to last for three months as it designs its own chips, according to Bloomberg.

The government has since given Huawei a 90-day reprieve to continue maintaining its current products, but it's unclear how its product line will change after that window closes. 

Huawei may be best known for its line of smartphones, but the company makes a wide variety of products ranging from laptops to smartwatches. 

Not every company or supplier mentioned below has said it will stop working with Huawei. In fact, many of them have not spoken publicly about how their business will change if at all given the new government requirements. But the list below demonstrates how large of a role US tech firms play in the development and production of Huawei's gadgets.

SEE ALSO: Trump's Huawei ban may leave the tech giant up a creek without a paddle for its next 2 major smartphones

Smartphones

Perhaps the most obvious product line that could be impacted by Huawei's placement on the US trade blacklist is its smartphones. Popular Huawei smartphone models such as the P30 Pro and Mate 20 Pro were built using a variety of components from US tech companies.

The P30 Pro, for example, uses flash storage from Micron, according to iFixit, which was founded in Boise, Idaho, in 1978. It also uses front-end modules from the Massachusetts-based Skyworks Solutions and California-based Qorvo. The company's popular Mate 20 Pro smartphone also includes Skyworks modules and a wireless power receiver from IDT, according to iFixit, which is also headquartered in California.

Supplier Lumentum has also said it's stopped shipping parts to Huawei, according to Reuters. It's unclear precisely how Lumentum's components are used in Huawei's phones, but the components maker said that Huawei was responsible for 18% of its revenue in its last reported quarter. Lumentum is also a supplier for Apple's Face ID facial recognition technology, so it's possible that its parts have been used to power the facial recognition features on phones like the Mate 20.

But those are some of the more granular ways in which Huawei's phones could be impacted by the new requirements. Of course, Google's revocation of Huawei's Android license means Huawei can no longer use the firm's widely popular software. And designs from Arm, which recently told employees to stop working with Huawei, play a big role in Huawei's line of Kirin chips that power its smartphones and tablets. (However, since firms usually license technology from Arm, it's possible that Huawei has years worth of licenses stored for future use.)

New York-based Corning's Gorilla Glass can also be found on a wide variety of Huawei smartphones ranging from its Mate 20 Pro to its less expensive Honor V8, among many other models, according to the glass maker. 

Laptops

Huawei works with many US-based companies on its laptop line as well.

Laptops like the MateBook X and Matebook 13, among many other models, run on Microsoft's Windows operating system. Like many other US companies that work with Huawei, Microsoft has not made any public statements about its relationship with Huawei since the company was blacklisted. But it did recently remove Huawei's laptops from its online store.

Intel, a key supplier of chips for Huawei's laptops, has also told employees that it will not supply Huawei until further notice, according to Bloomberg. Intel's chips power a variety of Huawei laptops including the Matebook 13, Matebook X Pro, Matebook X, and Matebook E, among others.  

Certain models, such as the Matebook 13 and Matebook X Pro, also include an option for graphics powered by Nvidia, which is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.

Corning's Gorilla Glass can also be found on models such as the Matebook X Pro, Matebook 13, Matebook 14, and Matebook X, according to the company. 

Tablets

Huawei also sells a variety of tablets in different sizes and price points. There's the MediaPad M5 line, which comes in 8.4-inch and 10.8-inch sizes, in addition to a cheaper "lite" model, as well as its T-series of MediaPad tablets.

But these slates run on Android, which means Huawei may have to use an alternative for future MediaPad products. They also all run on Huawei's Kirin chipsets, which are based on Arm's underlying technology. While the company can continue manufacturing existing Arm-based chips, the ban may prevent it from using the company's designs in new chips moving forward, according to the BBC.  

Wearables

Like many consumer tech giants, Huawei also has a stake in the wearables market — the company sells a variety of smartwatches, fitness trackers, and sports watches.

Some of these products use components from US-based companies as well. The company's TalkBand B3 fitness tracker uses Corning Gorilla Glass, according to Corning's website, as does the Huawei Fit, says the Chinese company's US product page.

I have a dumb question that no one seems capable of answering directly: Why is 5G a race?

Everyone — the wireless industry, Democrats, Republicans, the major media, you name it — frames the building of next-generation 5G networks as a “race” in which the United States needs to demonstrate “leadership.”

Here is The Washington Post declaring America has the lead in the race to 5G. Here’s CNN asking “Who’s winning the race to 5G?” Here’s AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson declaring that China isn’t beating the US to 5G “yet,” as some sort of ominous warning. Here’s T-Mobile CEO John Legere telling the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology that merging with Sprint will let his company “win the race to 5G.” Here is an entire microsite...

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• The US government blacklisted Huawei last month.
• Major US companies like Google, Qualcomm, and Intel were quick to sever business ties with the company to comply with the order. Now Facebook has joined the party.
• Firms outside the US have also decided to cut ties with Huawei, including in the UK and Japan.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Since the US government blacklisted the Chinese tech giant Huawei last month, a slew of companies have cut ties with the firm.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month declaring a national emergency that allowed Huawei to be designated as a national security risk, leading the Department of Commerce to place the firm on an "entity list." This means US firms have to seek government permission before doing business with Huawei.

Read more: Huawei's torment in the US could be about to backfire, dealing a stinging blow to Apple

Big US firms were quick to respond to the order, though Huawei subsequently received a three-month grace period to get its house in order before the blacklisting fully kicks in. It isn't just American companies that are cutting ties, however.

Here is a rundown of the biggest firms that are severing business relations with Huawei.

Google

Shortly after Huawei was blacklisted by the US government, Google announced that it was revoking the company's access to its Android service. Bloomberg reported that Google had cut off supply to hardware as well as software.

The news was a huge blow to Huawei, as all of its phones a run on Google's Android operating system. It means millions of Huawei customers could lose access to security updates and suffer other disruption.

Read more: Google dramatically severed ties with Huawei — here's what that means for you

After the Department of Commerce granted Huawei a 90-day reprieve before the ban fully kicks in, Google said it had put its Android suspension on hold. But at the moment, this is simply delaying the inevitable.

Huawei has been working on building its own operating system as a "plan B" for years, and though little is known about it, an executive told CNBC it could be ready for China by this fall and for the rest of the world in the first or second quarter of 2020.

The Financial Times reported that Google executives have been lobbying the Department of Commerce to gain either a second temporary license or a permanent exemption from the ban. Their argument is that if Huawei were forced to deploy its own hybrid version of Android it would be more likely to contain bugs and therefore be more vulnerable to attack — posing a national security risk.

Facebook

Reuters reported in June that Facebook banned Huawei from pre-installing any Facebook apps — which include WhatsApp and Instagram — on its phones.

A source told Reuters that the new ban had taken immediate effect on any Huawei phones that had not yet left the warehouse, although Facebook declined to comment on when the ban actually took effect.

Facebook said its decision doesn't have any effect on current Huawei owners, who will still be able to use and update their apps. New Huawei customers will be able to download Facebook-owned apps from the Google Play Store as well, so the company isn't fully cut off.

However, with Huawei's future relationship with Google looking uncertain, it's hard to know whether Huawei will retain access to the Play Store, at which point customers would have no access to Facebook apps.

Qualcomm

Key US chipmaking companies such as Qualcomm were quick to act. Three days after Huawei was blacklisted, Bloomberg reported that Qualcomm had told its employees it wouldn't be supplying Huawei until further notice.

Intel

Intel was another big name on the list of American chipmakers to cut Huawei off, though according to Bloomberg, Huawei has stockpiled at least three months' worth of chips and other components in anticipation of a ban.

Lumentum, the US maker of mobile-phone parts, also announced it had stopped shipping parts to Huawei, which it said made up 18% of its total revenue in its latest quarter.

Panasonic

The Japanese tech behemoth Panasonic on Thursday announced it had cut ties with Huawei. "We've stopped all business transactions with Huawei and its 68 group companies ... that are subject to the US government ban," a spokesman told The Guardian.

Arm

The UK chip designer Arm issued a memo to employees telling them to stop "all active contracts, support entitlements, and any pending engagements" with Huawei, the BBC reports. The memo said its designs contained "US-origin technology."

Arm licenses its technology rather than manufacturing chips itself. The Economist's Hal Hodson pointed out on Twitter that companies typically buy up licenses from Arm several years in advance, meaning it's possible that Huawei has two to three years' worth of licenses stored up.

Vodafone

The UK's largest mobile carrier, Vodafone, on Wednesday announced it was dropping Huawei handsets from its 5G launch, which is due July 3.

"We are pausing preorders for the Huawei Mate 20 X (5G) in the UK," a spokesman told The Guardian. "This is a temporary measure while uncertainty exists regarding new Huawei 5G devices. We will keep this situation under review."

EE

The British mobile carrier EE joined Vodafone in excluding Huawei from its 5G plans, which are due to launch May 30.

EE told The Guardian it took the decision to can Huawei's 5G phones following Google's withdrawal of Android.

Telefonica and Three: under review

Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica, which owns UK mobile network operator O2, said it is "reviewing the details of the executive order to understand any potential implications for our customers," Reuters reported.

British mobile network operator Three is also reviewing its relationship with Huawei ahead of its 5G launch. "We are currently considering what all the implications are. We will evaluate what impact this has on the customer, both short and long term, and act accordingly," a Three spokesman told the Telegraph.

Microsoft

Microsoft was slower to release an official statement on its relationship with the company, although Huawei's MateBook laptops disappeared from Microsoft's online store the weekend after Trump's executive order.

The laptops re-appeared on Microsofts's store in June, and the company then confirmed that it will be selling off the remainder of the Huawei laptops it has in stock. Once any Huawei model runs out, it won't be offered again unless the conditions of Trump's ban change.

A Microsoft spokesperson told Business Insider Huawei devices will still receive software updates.

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Google's smart speaker ecosystem just got bigger and more diverse with two new announcements involving third-party manufacturers.

Here's how device-manufacturing partners are embracing Google's smart home tools:

• Google Assistant is now available on select Bose and Sonos smart speakers.Previously, both companies' smart speakers only supported Amazon's Alexa. Bose's integration of Google Assistant follows a similar announcement by Sonos last week that it too would integrate the voice assistant into its lineup of smart speakers. Sonos' and Bose's smart speakers expand the range of devices available in Google's smart home ecosystem to include devices with first-rate audio quality and higher price points, which gives consumers more options that suit their preferences — Google's flagship Google Home smart speaker sells for $99, Sonos speakers start at $199, and Bose at $399.

• Lenovo's Google Assistant-enabled Smart Clock is now available for preorder and will ship next month.The $79 device, which debuted in January at CES 2019, is a small smart display designed for use in the bedroom, and features quick access to an alarm function, weather, and traffic. The clock will directly compete with Amazon's Alexa-enabled Echo Spot, which sports many similar functions but includes a camera that can be used for video calling. The Smart Clock is beneficial for Google because adds a new class of device to the company's smart home ecosystem — it currently doesn't offer its own direct competitor to the Echo Spot.

The bigger picture: Google is building out a wider ecosystem of supported smart home devices than its rival Amazon by embracing third-party device makers.

Google's partnerships with third-party manufacturers are expanding its ecosystem of Google Assistant devices, but much of Amazon's lineup is staying in-house. While Google Assistant is included in smart displays from companies such as JBL, Lenovo, and LG, there are currently no Alexa-enabled third-party counterparts on the market (although Amazon does offer a development kit for smart display devices like the Echo Show and Echo Spot).

That has limited the scope of Amazon's smart home ecosystem. Amazon needs third-party manufacturers to make displays that utilize its voice assistant to prevent the market from being flooded with Google Assistant-powered smart displays, something that Google seems increasingly intent on doing.

Google's efforts to make its voice assistant platform attractive for smart display makers could help it catch up to Amazon in the US smart display market — in 2018 67% of US smart displays used Amazon Alexa compared to just 33% for Google Assistant.

Catching up to Amazon will be especially important for Google given that smart display adoption is growing, particularly among smart speaker owners — in January 2019, 13% of US smart speaker owners also owned a smart display, up from just 3% a year earlier.

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Earlier this month, I shadowed several restaurants throughout New York and talked to restaurant employees across the US to see how they’ve received Google Duplex, the AI that makes life-like calls for reservations on your behalf. Most if not all agreed that those calls sounded unmistakably human — and according to Google’s response to reporting by The New York Times, there’s a 25 percent chance that they were.

Google says that a quarter of Duplex calls start with human callers, and 15 percent start with the AI and are later intervened by a person from the Duplex call center. The company told The New York Times that it uses a variety of signals to decide whether a call should be placed by a human or a robot, “like if the company is unsure...

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At a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Republican and Democratic leaders discussed growing concerns over the use of facial recognition software by law enforcement. In an unusual show of bipartisanship, both parties agreed it was time to take a hard look at the technology and potentially draft legislation to regulate it.

The hearing, held by the House Oversight Committee, was the first in a series of hearings that will analyze the impacts of facial recognition technology offered by Amazon and other companies. Wednesday’s panel was focused on the implications the technology poses to American civil liberties when used by law enforcement.

”You’ve now hit the sweet spot that brings progressives and conservatives together,” Rep. Mark...

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There’s a long, excellent profile of the new AT&T and its CEO Randall Stephenson in Fortune today, which you should read. AT&T has transformed itself into a media colossus by buying Time Warner, and understanding how the company plans to use its incredible array of content from HBO, CNN, TNT, and others in combination with its huge distribution networks across mobile broadband, DirecTV, and U-verse is important for anyone who cares about tech, media, or both. Seriously, go read it.

Here’s the part I want you to pay attention to: two quick paragraphs describing how AT&T sees the future of advertising across those media properties and networks. It’s the same plan AT&T has laid out before, but it’s more specific now, and that specificity...

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• Pilots for three airlines that operate much of Amazon's Air delivery service are set to picket Amazon's annual meeting on Wednesday. 
• The pilots' union says the companies have purposefully stalled negotiating a new contract for more than three years. 
• Pilots who spoke to Business Insider said their worried another accident — like that involving an Atlas Air jet in February — could happen again soon as crews are stretched thin. 
• Atlas Air, in a statement to Business Insider accused the pilots of spreading misinformation. 
• An Amazon spokesperson said if the companies do not come to an agreement with the pilots' union, it could result in a change of its allocation for aircraft. 

As Amazon investors convene for the e-commerce giant's annual stockholder meeting, pilots responsible for many of the company's overnight package deliveries are sounding the alarm about potential safety issues.

The pilots, represented by the Airline Professionals Association, say the cargo airlines Atlas Air, Southern Air, and Air Transport Service Group — the three of which provide many of Amazon Air's daily operations — say the companies have dragged their feet on negotiating a new contract. As a result, the pilots say, staffing is being stretched thin and talented recruits are opting to fly for competitors instead.

"Now, after several years of losing pilots to airlines like FedEx, UPS, and Delta, we find ourselves basically with a staffing crisis," Michael Russo, a 15-year veteran of Atlas Air, told Business Insider in an interview.

"The operation is being stretched thin due to this mind-boggling expansion that I don't think we can keep up with, but the company executives seem to just mislead Amazon by saying 'yeah, we can keep all of these airplanes flying. I don't know how we're going to do it."

Read more: An Amazon Air plane crashed in February, killing all 3 people on board. Weeks earlier, several pilots said they thought an accident was inevitable.

The pilots' union and the company have been at odds since early 2016 when the two groups first began to negotiate a new contract. Now more than three years later, there's still no contract on the table. Because of federal labor laws, pilots can't go on strike without presenting their case before a judge or being released by a national mediation board.

According to Robert Kirchner, executive council chairman for Atlas Air's APA members, pay at the airline lags way behind competitors, which is making hiring hard.

"From July 2018 through March of 2019, they hired over 300 pilots but only grew by four," he said of Atlas's recruiting struggles. "We pay 60% less than FedEx, UPS or any of the US major airlines, our working conditions are much worse, and there's no retirement here. The most common call I get from pilots is 'Gee, I really like the flying here, but I don't like the company management and I can't afford to stay because the benefits for me and my family at other airlines are too much better."

None of their complaints are new.

In February, an Amazon Air plane operated by Atlas Air cashes in Houston, killing all three people on board. In the days and weeks before the crash, several pilots told Business Insider's Rachel Premack they that felt the accident was inevitable.

"I don't know what the cause of that is, or what it will turn out to be," Captain Kirchner said of the crash, "but we're really worried about the safety here because of the day-to-day operational problems we see, which can't be good for safety."

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that if Atlas cannot find common ground with the pilots' union, it could shift its plan for aircraft allocations going forward. Here's the company's statement:

We are disappointed with the current state of relations between Atlas and their pilot union. Neither side seems willing to work towards a reasonable compromise. This is contrary to the interests of Atlas, the pilots, and the customers they both serve. We repeatedly hear claims made by the union regarding Atlas's service for Amazon that when investigated are factually inaccurate. The continued inability of Atlas and their pilot union to resolve these negotiations could result in a change to the allocation of our current and future aircraft. We have an obligation to deliver to our customers, and so do they. 

And while the company's name is only attached through a business partnership, Kirchner said the retail giant likely has more pull into the cargo carriers operations than it's letting on.

"What Amazon is going to say is 'that's our contractor and we don't have anything to do with their operation,'" he said. "That's not true. They have a complete shadow flight operations system set up in the headquarters. They're exercising control and making an operational decision throughout the Atlas network."

A spokesperson for Atlas, in response to a request for comment from Business Insider, accused the pilots of spreading misinformation:

We are proud of our strong and growing workforce of more than 2,000 pilots, and we are eager to reward them with a new contract and increased pay. These protest efforts are common tactics that are often used by unions to spread misinformation and gain leverage in contract negotiations. The fact is Atlas is committed to its pilots. We have an uncompromised commitment to the safety and well-being of our pilots – and our practices meet or exceed all regulatory requirements and industry standards. Together with our pilots, we are committed to the success of our customers, and have worked hard to earn a strong record of delivering trusted service. It's time to put pilots first, ahead of protests, and get to a new contract.

That doesn't sit well with Captain Russo, who's looking forward to picketing once again on Wednesday as he did in April when pilots held a similar demonstration.

"We just have to keep shining light on the way that they're doing business and really trying to subvert as I said our legal right to negotiate and a new contract," he said.

SEE ALSO: An Amazon Air plane crashed in February, killing all 3 people on board. Weeks earlier, several pilots said they thought an accident was inevitable.

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On Wednesday, the Antitrust Division at the United States Justice Department recommended that the law enforcement agency block the proposed merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, according to Reuters.

The $26 billion merger deal was greenlit by Republican commissioners for approval by the Federal Communications Commission earlier this week after T-Mobile agreed to new terms that would reportedly encourage a faster 5G rollout and provide greater in-home broadband access to rural America.

Reuters reported that the decision is expected to be made in about a month, likely sinking the deal that has been waiting for approval for over a year.

Developing...

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One of the bigger developments in customer services has been the impact of social media — both as a place to vent frustration or praise (mostly frustration) and — especially over messaging apps — as a place for businesses to connect with their users.

Now, customer support specialist Zendesk has made an acquisition so that it can make a bigger move into how it works within social media platforms, and specifically messaging apps: it has acquired Smooch, a startup that describes itself as an “omnichannel messaging platform,” which companies’ customer care teams can use to interact with people over messaging platforms like WhatsApp, WeChat, Line and Messenger, as well as SMS and email.

Smooch was in fact one of the first partners for the WhatsApp Business API, alongside VoiceSage, Nexmo, Infobip, Twilio, MessageBird and others already advertising their services in this area.

It had also been a longtime partner of Zendesk’s, powering the company’s own WhatsApp Business integration and other features. The two already have some customers in common, including Uber. Other Smooch customers include Four Seasons, SXSW, Betterment, Clarabridge, Harry’s, LVMH, Delivery Hero and BarkBox.

Terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but Zendesk SVP  class="il">Shawna Wolverton said in an interview that the startup’s entire team of 48, led by co-founder and CEO Warren Levitan, are being offered positions with Zendesk. Smooch is based out of Montreal, Canada — so this represents an expansion for Zendesk into building an office in Canada.

Its backers included iNovia, TA Associates and Real Ventures, who collectively had backed it with less than $10 million (when you leave the inflated hills surrounding Silicon Valley, numbers magically decline). As Zendesk is publicly traded, we may get more of a picture of the price in future quarterly reports. This is the company’s fifth acquisition to date.

The deal underscores the big impact that messaging apps are making in customer service. While phone and internet are massive points of contact, messaging apps is one of the most-requested features Zendesk’s customers are requesting, “because they want to be where their customers are,” with WhatsApp — now at 1.5 billion users — currently at the top of the pile, Wolverton said. (More than half of Zendesk’s revenues are from outside the U.S., which speaks to why WhatsApp — which is bigger outside the U..S than it is in it — is a popular request.)

That’s partly a by-product of how popular messaging apps are full-stop, with more than 75% of all smartphone users having at least one messaging app in use on their devices.

“We live in a messaging-centric world, and customers expect the convenience and interactivity of messaging to be part of their experiences,” said Mikkel Svane, Zendesk founder, CEO and chairman, in a statement. “As long-time partners with Smooch, we know first hand how much they have advanced the conversational experience to bring together all forms of messaging and create a continuous conversation between customers and businesses.”

While the two companies were already working together, the acquisition will mean a closer integration.

That will be in multiple areas. Last year, Zendesk launched a new CRM play called Sunshine, going head to head with the likes of Salesforce in helping businesses better organise and make use of customer data. Smooch will build on that strategy to bring in data to Sunshine from messaging apps and the interactions that take place on them. Also last year, Zendesk launched an omnichannel play, a platform called The Suite, which it says “has become one of our most successful products ever,” with a 400% rise in its customers taking an omnichannel approach. Smooch already forms a key part of that, and it will be even more tightly so.

On the outbound side, for now, there will be two areas where Smooch will be used, Wolverton said. First will be on the basic level of giving Zendesk users the ability to see and create messaging app discussions within a dashboard where they are able to monitor and handle all customer relationship contacts: a conversation that was initiated now on, say, Twitter, can be easily moved into WhatsApp or whatever more direct channel someone wants to use.

Second, Wolverton said that customer care workers can use Smooch to send on “micro apps” to users to handle routine service enquiries, for example sending them links to make or change seat assignments on a flight.

Over time, the plan will be to bring more automated options into the experience, which opens the door for using more AI and potentially bots down the line.

• The BioLite FirePit is a fan-powered, app-controlled marvel of the great outdoors in the 21st century.
• A rechargeable, motorized, Bluetooth-ready fan pumps air through two parallel tubes that create a vortex.
• Use charcoal or wood, and cook just about anything on the hibachi grate that comes included.
• Adjust the flame with the swipe of your finger to control your heat output or cooking temperature.

Something about plastics and electronics sitting at the edge of a fire may alarm you — it did me.

But, by Jove, BioLite's FirePit is a masterfully-engineered contraption built to foster, contain, and withstand the hottest little blaze you can muster, which, thanks to the fan, you can tend all night from the same seat without a single faceful of smoke. If that isn't at least a small miracle, I don't know what is.

The Bluetooth-connected, USB-charged fan, by the way, is what sets the FirePit apart. It hooks up to the side of the wire mesh cage (enabling a 360° view of your glorious flame within) and blows air through two hole-riddled tubes to create a vortex for optimal fuel burning and almost no smoke.

On the subject of fuel, the FirePit burns both charcoal and wood, each with astounding efficiency. The only adjustments you'll want to make when switching between the two is lowering the fuel rack for wood and raising it for charcoal (and maybe for cooking), and tossing on the grill grate when you want to cook.

Out of the box, it's recommended by BioLite that your first fire be a wood fire. This builds a layer of ash in the basin, which, they say, makes the perfect base for charcoal fires. I can confirm they're not wrong.

We started out with nothing but a bit of paper, a few precious drops of lighter fluid, some very wet wood, and not a whole lot of hope. We'd get a corner of a besotted piece of wood lit just barely before it would flicker out. After a few tries and no lasting luck, we affixed the electronic fan and got it rolling, from which point on we didn't even need to touch the thing.

Once you get your fire rolling reasonably well, all you have to do is connect your phone to the BioLite app and watch, perhaps in awe, as the size of your flame corresponds almost instantaneously to the swipe of your finger (or thumb) upon your screen.

The FirePit can hold about eight pieces of cordwood, which might not sound like much, but burning as optimally as it does, is plenty.

Once you're done with your fire, turn the fan off and take it inside. While it may survive rain or snow if the electronic ports are properly capped, you may want to charge it anyhow. As for the FirePit itself, make sure the fire and embers are out before attaching the cover and calling it a night or carrying on with further endeavors.

Perhaps as heartwarming as their wildly futuristic fire basin is BioLite Energy's humanitarian endeavor to bring heat and light to off-grid households around the world. To date, they've either illuminated, heated, or otherwise equipped, by their estimates, some 300,000 people around the world to date. They also have offices in Uganda, Kenya, India, in addition to their Brooklyn, New York headquarters, which is fun, but respectably modest, I ought to add.

You could do a lot worse — though hardly any better, I'm convinced — for a small outdoor fire pit or grill than the BioLite FirePit, especially in an urban or suburban setting where outdoor space is limited and large plums of smoke from traditional fire pits are cause for alarm, if not a visit from some faction of your local authorities.

Thanks in large part to how easy it was to control the flame, cooking was a breeze:

Cooking with the BioLite FirePit was a delightful breeze. I found it a relaxing relegation of duty to sit several yards from my production, effortlessly (and somehow familiarly) swiping left or right to tamp or fan my flame.

I was able to sit back and entertain while still keeping an eye on everything. I might not be the most technologically inclined millennial on this planet, but there is a lot to be said for a remote-controlled campfire and stove (in effect). Between tossing things on and pulling them off, I never once had to come within arm's length of the FirePit, and certain dishes that I felt would be better off contained in a skillet cooked wonderfully — especially the marinated tuna belly, which I was afraid might fall apart if placed directly on the grate.

In short, the BioLite FirePit fan gets things roaring in a flash whether you're using charcoal or wood, though BioLite does advise (and I agree) that having a good base of wood-fire coals makes this little thing shine.

It's going to live in my backyard for the winter, and on my boat this summer for island hopping and fish frying, when I'll probably put it through hell and report back with more.

Buy the BioLite FirePit from BioLite for $199.95 on BioLite's website. Also find it at Amazon and REI for $199.95. 

SEE ALSO: The best camping gear you can buy

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• From tariffs and levies to the Huawei ban, the global tech industry is at the center of an escalating cold war between the US and China.
• This clash affects giant tech companies with global supply chains, like Apple, Intel and Qualcomm. And Chinese tech giants like Huawei that want to do business with US companies. 
• Among the causes for the standoff are accusations of unfair trade practices, economic espionage and military links. It's involved everyone from government officials and tech execs to ordinary consumers.
• Business Insider has covered all of the drama, and we've pulled together all our latest reporting on the key areas of conflict in this trans-Pacific showdown. Here's everything you need to know.

Google Android and the Huawei ban

3 tech execs who tried to create new smartphone and PC operating systems explain why Huawei's plan to build an Android replacement will be almost impossible

A Wall Street firm figured out how much money Google will sacrifice by cutting off Huawei

A longtime industry expert explains why Trump's attack on Huawei could end up hurting Google and other US tech giants

Huawei developed a 'plan B' operating system for smartphones in case it was banned by the US government from using Google products. Here's what we know about it so far.

Google has more control over Android than we realize, and right now, companies like Huawei have no other choice but to accept that

• Google offers Huawei a brief reprieve by putting its Android suspension on hold

• These are the areas around the world where Google's breakup with Huawei will likely be felt the most
• I tried one of the newest smartphones from Huawei, the Chinese tech giant that just got blacklisted in the US, to see what the hype was about. Here's what I discovered.

• This is a crippling blow: What Google's decision to cut ties with Huawei means for the Chinese tech firm

Huawei and 5G

Huawei slams Trump's 'unreasonable' ban, saying that the move will only harm US interests in its own 5G rollout

President Trump's national emergency likely won't stop you from buying a Huawei phone, much less an iPhone. Here's what it means for you.

Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei says the company is 'fully prepared' for a conflict with the US

Everything you need to know about Huawei, the Chinese tech giant accused of spying that the US just banned from doing business in America

Trump is being mocked on Chinese social media for giving Huawei free publicity

Here's why it's so hard to buy Huawei devices in the US

Apple and China

Trump's tariffs may be the excuse, but Apple and other companies have plenty of additional reasons to move out of China, experts say

Here's why Apple's plan to escape Trump's tariffs by building iPhones outside of China won't actually be possible anytime soon

Chinese patriotism will halve Apple's sales in China, analysts warn

Trump's Huawei ban could spark a tit-for-tat fight with Beijing that puts Apple in the crossfire

Trump's Huawei ban may have dire implications for Apple — but investors shouldn't 'jump to conclusions' just yet, analyst says

Wall Street is worried that the US-China trade war could drive up iPhone prices, which is the last thing Apple needs right now

Huawei, the Chinese tech giant embroiled in controversy, just overtook Apple to become the second-largest smartphone maker

Artificial Intelligence, chips and enterprise software

As a tech Cold War looms, this veteran Silicon Valley patent attorney says that China's push to win the AI processor market is a serious threat to American tech

Trump's blacklist of Huawei has serious implications for Red Hat, Oracle, VMware, and other huge US software companies

We spent a day with China's rock star of AI, whose new book says China's machine learning superiority will subjugate Americans to 'technological colonization'

Google's former China boss says the search company won't stand a chance against today's Chinese 'gladiator' entrepreneurs

Spies, surveillance, trade secrets, and arrests

The US just warned that drones made in China could be used as a way to spy, but not in the way you think

The founder of Chinese tech giant Huawei reportedly expects his daughter, Huawei's CFO, to go to jail, but he's 'not worried about her future'

'My inner self has never felt so colorful and vast': Huawei's CFO wrote a heartfelt email to staff in a show of defiance to the US

Explosive report claims Europe's biggest phone company found 'backdoors' in Huawei equipment

Huawei's CFO was carrying a whole bunch of Apple products when she was arrested

Huawei's security boss says the company would sooner 'shut down' than spy for China

Huawei is accused of attempting to copycat a T-Mobile robot, and the charges read like a comical spy movie

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Jeff Bezos is worth over $160 billion — here's how the world's richest man makes and spends his money

"This war for talent is intense. You can't depend solely on one geographic location anymore if you want to scale," said Amy Chang, senior vice president of the collaboration technology group at Cisco.