Bulletins

Salesforce's top marketing executive to depart

Salesforce chief marketing officer Stephanie Buscemi is leaving the company, according to a Tuesday tweet, a key departure that comes as the enterprise software giant prepares to acquire Slack, Salesforce's most costly acquisition to-date.

Buscemi joined Salesforce in 2014. Sarah Franklin, one of the leaders of the company's successful skill development program known as Trailhead, is taking over as CMO, according to a Salesforce spokesperson.

Buscemi's departure is the latest in a string of executive defects, most notably former co-CEO Keith Block's decision to step-down in early 2020. But Buscemi's is particularly noteworthy given the pending $28 billion acquisition of Slack and the importance of marketing its new offerings.

Joe Williams

Joe Williams is a writer-at-large at Protocol. He previously covered enterprise software for Protocol, Bloomberg and Business Insider. Joe can be reached at JoeWilliams@Protocol.com. To share information confidentially, he can also be contacted on a non-work device via Signal (+1-309-265-6120) or JPW53189@protonmail.com.

Latest Bulletins

Google turns down the heat in App Store billing battle

Google is allowing some Android apps to use their own payment systems after getting into battles with both Match Group and Epic Games' Bandcamp, but the move might be temporary. The company is facing legal action for requiring apps in the Google Play Store to use its billing, and the interim solution Google came up with is to let those apps use their own payments — with a catch.

Keep Reading Show less

Report: Larry Ellison joined call about contesting 2020 election

Larry Ellison was among the participants on a call in November 2020, during which top Trump allies discussed ways to contest the election results, according to The Washington Post. It's unclear what role Ellison played on the call, but The Post found evidence of Ellison's apparent involvement in court records and confirmed with one of the call's other participants.

Keep Reading Show less

Microsoft censored sensitive Chinese search topics, even in the U.S.

Microsoft Bing has exported Chinese censorship abroad, according to a new report by The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab.

Bing searches for national figures, leaders within the Chinese Communist Party, dissidents and topics that Beijing considers politically sensitive did not appear in auto-suggest in North America, according to the report. Among the search terms that didn't generate autocomplete suggestions were searches for President Xi Jinping, the late human rights activist Liu Xiaobo and searches related to the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Keep Reading Show less

Google hired more Black and Latinx employees in 2022

Google had its "best year yet" for hiring Black and Latinx employees in the U.S. as well as women globally, according to its 2022 Diversity Annual Report. The hiring rate increased for Black, Latinx, Native American and female employees, although these identities are still very underrepresented compared to white and male employees.

Keep Reading Show less

Meta to employees: Don't talk about abortion at work

Tech companies are figuring out how to handle the upcoming historic Supreme Court decision that could overturn abortion rights. In the case of Meta, that includes telling employees to not talk about it at work. Meta VP of HR Janelle Gale told workers during an all-hands on Thursday not to talk about abortion on Workplace, the company's internal messaging platform.

Keep Reading Show less

Coinbase is reeling in its big spending

As many tech companies face a slump and crypto looks set for a deep freeze, Coinbase is facing reality and hitting the brakes on spending. The company is halting some business projects, freezing hiring for two weeks and cutting its spending on Amazon Web Services, the Information reported Thursday.

Keep Reading Show less

AWS privately settles employee discrimination, harassment case

AWS reached a private settlement with a female employee who accused now-former executive Joshua Burgin of discrimination and harrasement, Protocol has learned.

Keep Reading Show less

No one on the FTC wants ed tech to go the way of other online services

The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday unanimously reminded providers of education technology to follow federal limits on the collection and use of kids' data in an attempt to ensure that common practices in the data economy don't become the norm in schools.

Keep Reading Show less

Y Combinator to portfolio founders: 'Plan for the worst.'

The apocalypse is coming, at least according to one of the world's biggest startup accelerators.

Y Combinator sent an email to portfolio founders this week, obtained by TechCrunch, advising the startups to "plan for the worst" as the market turbulence has prompted many companies to initiate layoffs, cost-cutting measures and hiring slowdowns.

Keep Reading Show less

Apple's first AR/VR headset inches closer to launch

Apple just hit an important milestone in developing its mixed-reality headset as rivals like Meta are making strides in developing similar devices. Executives showed off an AR/VR device to Apple's board last week, according to Bloomberg, a sign that the product is really happening and it's inching closer to a public launch.

Keep Reading Show less

The SEC doesn't want Ripple to have these emails

The SEC is pushing back on Ripple’s bid for access to emails and other documents that the crypto giant believes could bolster its case against the regulator.

The SEC, which sued Ripple in 2020 for failing to register $1.4 billion worth of XRP as securities, has refused to release emails related to a 2018 speech by former director William Hinman in which he argued the ether cryptocurrency was not a security. The speech sparked a rally in ether’s price and was interpreted as an endorsement of the industry’s view that cryptocurrencies are not securities.

Keep Reading Show less

Tesla’s Autopilot is under investigation again after a fatal crash

Tesla’s autopilot system is being investigated by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration following a fatal crash in California that killed three passengers this month. It is the 35th accident the agency has investigated since 2016 related to Tesla's Autopilot feature, according to Reuters. Those accidents have resulted in a total of 14 deaths.

Keep Reading Show less

Most Google employees have left Russia

Google has reportedly pulled out of Russia, and many employees there have moved to Dubai.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that most of Google’s Russia-based employees had chosen to leave the country, and that the company will soon have no workforce presence in Russia amid the country’s ongoing war in Ukraine.

Keep Reading Show less

Everyone is mad about the Commerce Department solar probe

Add lawmakers to the growing list of people, companies and trade groups that are ticked off about the Commerce Department’s solar probe.

This week, a collection of 85 House Democrats wrote to the White House saying that they're concerned “about the devastating economic and environmental impacts” of the probe, which began in April and has already had already stunted the clean energy transition in the U.S. While the probe has not resulted in any changes to the U.S. tariff structure so far, the chance that it could has the industry upset. Lawmakers have heard those concerns, and they're turning up the pressure on the Biden administration to wrap the probe up as quickly as possible.

Keep Reading Show less

The DOJ says it won't prosecute good-faith security research

A major reversal by the U.S. Department of Justice on how it views good-faith security research is expected to be warmly welcomed by the cybersecurity community.

Keep Reading Show less

TikTok is expanding into gaming

TikTok is getting much more serious about gaming, according to a new report from Reuters. The social video platform is already testing mobile games with users in Vietnam, due to the country's high concentration of younger smartphone owners. Eventually, TikTok plans to roll out games more broadly in Asia and possibly other markets as well.

Keep Reading Show less

Top lawmakers are going after Google's online ads business

A bipartisan group of senators wants to force Google to spin off huge chunks of the online ads business at the heart of its profits.

A bill introduced Thursday, led by Republican Sen. Mike Lee, would ban major digital exchanges that match buyers and sellers of online ad space from also operating technology that allows publishers to manage their part of the sales and advertisers to control their purchases. Google is the biggest player in all three areas.

Keep Reading Show less

Twitter goes after 'crisis misinformation.' It's going to get messy.

Twitter will begin taking action against misinformation in crisis situations, the company said Thursday. The new policy will be immediately applied to misinformation surrounding the war in Ukraine.

Keep Reading Show less

Cisco stock plunges after forecasting a revenue decline next quarter

Cisco blamed COVID-19 lockdowns in China and the war in Ukraine for its flat revenue growth during the fiscal third quarter, and forecast for a declining current quarter when it reported earnings late Wednesday.

Supply shortages appear to be the largest culprit, and CEO Chuck Robbins said during a conference call Wednesday that the company’s disappointing revenue was the result of its inability to secure adequate components to sell its various products. The lockdowns in China were especially damaging, Robbins said.

Keep Reading Show less

Block's new bitcoin wallet is for regular folks

Block just detailed plans for its self-custody bitcoin hardware wallet, aiming to bring together the often contradictory goals of convenience and crypto security. Block's goal is to monetize the wallet through a subscription service.

Keep Reading Show less

Apple's loss is Google's gain

Apple's loss is Google's gain: Ian Goodfellow, who was a director in Apple's machine learning division, left the company recently, citing the company's return-to-office policy as the reason for his departure. Goodfellow is reportedly joining Google's DeepMind AI group.

Keep Reading Show less

Gensler rings the crypto-crash alarm bell

SEC Chair Gary Gensler warned Congress Wednesday that consumers and investors are vulnerable in an increasingly volatile crypto market now reeling from a sharp downturn.

Citing the recent collapse in the crypto market's value, Gensler said, “This is a field that is now worth $1.2 trillion. Two weeks ago it was supposedly worth $2 trillion.”

Keep Reading Show less

Tech companies are under investigation for their role in the Buffalo shooting

New York Attorney General Letitia James is launching an investigation into social media companies' role in this past weekend's mass shooting in Buffalo, which the shooter mapped out on Discord for months prior to the attack and livestreamed on Twitch before the video was taken down.

Keep Reading Show less

Salesforce is the latest software company to slow hiring

Salesforce will slow hiring and cut back other expenses, according to a Wednesday report from Insider. The company will join Meta, Netflix, Coinbase, Uber and others that have slowed or frozen hiring in recent weeks.

Per an internal memo, cutbacks will include corporate travel and some upcoming off-sites, Insider reported.

Keep Reading Show less

Elon Musk is furious Tesla got taken off the S&P 500 ESG list

Tesla's cars have helped spur an electric vehicle revolution. But that wasn't enough to stop the S&P 500 from removing the company from its ESG list on Tuesday, leading Elon Musk to call the list a "scam" that has been "weaponized by phony social justice warriors."

Keep Reading Show less
Bulletins