Top Tech Stock News: 7 Things You Missed This Week (20-Sep-2019)

1. Amazon Altered Search Algorithms to Promote Certain Products

Amazon.com Inc. reportedly altered its product search system to better feature items which are more profitable for the company. According to reports, Amazon had apparently optimized its search algorithm late last year, so that instead of showing the most relevant and best selling items, it will instead promote items which are most profitable to the company.

The move to change the search algorithm was the result of several years of discussions with Amazon’s Seattle retail interests, which supported the changes, and the company’s California-based search team, who opposed it.

Any changes to Amazon’s search system will greatly affect many businesses because of how shoppers use the search bar to find items online. According to marketing analytics firm Jumpshot, nearly two thirds of all product traffic comes from first page results. So the introduction of the new search algorithm will therefore shift priority from best-selling items to items which are most profitable to Amazon’s profit margins.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-changed-search-algorithm-in-ways-that-boost-its-own-products-11568645345

2. Apple Launches Apple Arcade

Apple recently launched the Apple Arcade app on September 19. This new app will allow players to play games that were developed over the course of several years.

According to the official Apple site, the Apple will include several interesting games with rich and subtle stories. One game, called ‘The Enchanted World,’ takes place in a magical fantasy setting, where a fairy is given the task of solving various puzzles in order to save her world.

Another game is ‘Patterned,’ and it involves coloring various puzzle pieces in order to complete a new canvas. Nate Dickens, who developed the game, claimed that he developed it as a way to ‘find calm.’

Two other popular games include “Overland,” a post-apocalyptic road trip type game and ‘Card of Darkness,’ a game that involves various card-type puzzles. Interested gamers can find more information on Apple’s app store.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/09/apple-arcade-its-time-to-play/

3. Elon Musk: Tesla Expanding Services at ‘Max Speed’

Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently reported that Tesla is now expanding its services at “Max Speed.” The new policy was intended to help Tesla balance its service capacity with its production capacity and fleet size, both of which grew significantly over the past two years. In contrast, Tesla’s service coverage lagged behind other aspects of the company, a problem that Musk admitted was a ‘foolish oversight.’

Now, the company is expanding the number of services centers that it has all over the world. In fact, Tesla announced last month that it will be opening more than 30 new service centers, and several more in the coming months. Some of the new service centers are also intended to complement the arrival of the new Model 3 in Europe.

Tesla announces more than 30 new service centers everywhere but on Mars

4. Oracle and Intel Collaborate on Next Generation Oracle Exadata X8M

Intel and Oracle recently announced that Oracle is incorporating the capabilities of the Intel Optane DC persistent memory into its new Exadata platform, the Oracle Exadata X8M. The new integrated platform will be used to support and power the Oracle Autonomous Database, Oracle Cloud Applications as well as the database infrastructure of several major banks, retailers and telecoms.

The Oracle Exadata X8M was designed to perform several tasks, including support for Online Transaction Processing (OLTP), database consolidation, machine learning as well as analytics and mixed workload database requirements.

The new integration is also expected to provide superior services activities that require sensitive latency, such as stock trading, data processing, security detection, financial trading and real-time interaction apps.

https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/oracle-intel-collaborate-persistent-memory-performance-breakthroughs/#gs.4r1gy8

5. eBay to Offer Managed Payments Outside the US

Ecommerce giant eBay announced earlier this week that it recently launched Managed Payments in Germany. Managed Payment is a payment processing system that allows buyers to pay eBay for the items they buy instead of the sellers.

So far, there are ‘thousands’ of sellers in the US who are now integrated into the new system, but eBay plans to shift most or all of its sellers into the new system by 2021, which is intended to drive ‘significant efficiencies’ that will benefit both buyers and sellers by providing more payment options to buyers and giving sellers a more ‘streamlined’ way of managing their eBay accounts and businesses. eBay’s expansion of its Managed Payment Option is another step in its drive to transition buyers and sellers into the new payment system.

https://www.ecommercebytes.com/2019/09/17/ebay-launches-managed-payments-outside-the-us/

6. Cisco and Apple Team Up to Make the iPhone 11 More Wifi-Friendly

Apple and Cisco are teaming up to enhance the iPhone’s performance across different wireless networks. Their latest goal is to integrate the iPhone 11 with the WiFi 6.

However, Cisco and Apple’s partnership is nothing new. The relationship was originally established back in 2015 with the goal of integrating Cisco ‘enterprise environments with iPhones and iPads. The partnership was driven – in part – by the growing role that smartphones and other similar devices played in modern commercial and entrepreneurial environments.

Cisco estimates that a total of 111.4 exabytes of mobile data traffic will be offloaded to Wi-Fi, and that a total of 8.4 billion mobile devices will be used all over the world by 2022.

https://www.networkworld.com/article/3439098/cisco-apple-team-up-to-make-iphone-11-better-for-wifi-6.html

7. Hewlett Packard Prepares for Post-Brexit Scotland

Hewlett Packard Enterprises is committed to a post-Brexit Scotland, regardless of how negotiations with the EU turn out. HPE’s Ray McGann said on a radio interview that “The lack of clarity maybe over the last three years has meant that nobody was taking any particular outcome for granted, therefore the planning would have taken the worst case.”

Furthermore, he also added that Hewlett Packard is working with several European partners on issues of logistics and shipments to make sure that they can withstand a hard Brexit scenario. “We’re confident we have the expertise, the knowledge to support the eventual outcome,” he added.

More importantly, Hewlett Packard also expects certain changes in how IT customers operate both in and outside of the UK. HPE’s Renfrewshire site, located at Erskine, is already prepared for the looming effects of a post-Brexit UK, and is ready to expand operations regardless of how negotiations turn out.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-49713197