Despite ongoing competition from Apple Inc., Spotify AB continues to thrive with the company announcing Wednesday that it had hit 40 million paying subscribers. The figure is up a full 10 million from when Spotify announced it had hit 30 million paying subscribers in late March, slightly less than 6 months ago. Interestingly, that follows an ...

The future is now, with Uber Technologies, Inc.’s delayed self-driving car trial finally getting under way in Pittsburgh Wednesday. Despite previous reports that the trial would include a fleet of modified Volvo XC90 sport-utility vehicles, Uber instead went with a fleet of modified Ford Fusions that were outfitted with an array of cameras, lasers, radar ...

SAP SE-owned enterprise travel and business expense management firm Concur Technologies has acquired online travel startup Hipmunk Inc. for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 2010, Hipmunk offers a travel search site that aims to help people book travel faster and more efficiently in differentiating itself by delivering results not just by price but also key ...

The born-again version of the once great social sharing site Digg Inc. has raised a Series C round from Gannett Co. Inc., the parent company of USA Today. Although the amount of the round was not disclosed, Politico reports that it was a seven-figure sum. Digg itself became a standalone company (again) when it spun off ...

Google-owned video hosting site YouTube has entered the social networking space with a new product called YouTube Community. The new service is being pitched as a way to help “strengthen the bond” between creators and viewers by allowing YouTube content creators to engage with their viewers between video uploads by allowing them to share text, ...

Verizon Communications Inc. has acquired smart lighting startup Sensity Systems Inc. for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 2010, Sensity offers a high-speed, sensor-based, multiservice, open networking platform known as a Light Sensory Network (LSN) that is designed to help lighting owners improve lighting control and energy efficiency, as well as delivering business processes that go ...

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. may be planning to brick its Note7 smartphones that have not been returned following the recall of the device earlier this month. The source of the potential decision is unclear, with some sites attributing it to a subsequently deleted thread on Reddit that claimed at the very least, Samsung was planning to remotely ...

Cryptocurrency exchange service ShapeShift AG has disappeared from Apple’s App Store, with some suggesting the removal may be due to Apple restricting what sort of cryptocurrencies are permitted to be supported by apps in its market. ShapeShift’s iOS app, launched in June 2015, allowed users to exchange bitcoin for other cryptocurrencies, including Dogecoin, Litecoin, Namecoin ...

A new social service that promises a free speech alternative to Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. is starting to gather steam off the back of a number of high-profile conservative endorsements. Called Gab, the service is probably closer to Twitter than any other service but with the ability to vote on posts, it also has ...

In a case that could have chilling effects on the open Internet, a European court has ruled that linking to copyright infringing material is itself a copyright infringement. The case was brought by Sanoma Oyj, the company that publishes the Dutch edition of Playboy Magazine, against GS Media, the publishers of celebrity gossip and news ...