The leaks from Google are coming in thick and fast, and they’re painting the picture of a search giant that’s not above acting on its strongly-held political beliefs. A week after a leaked video had shown how Google’s executives had reacted with dismay and anguish at the weekly townhall after Donald Trump was elected President, leaked emails have now shown how Google’s employees had planned to use its remarkable reach to counter Trump’s policies.  A…

Over the years, Amazon has built itself a pretty solid recommendation engine which analyzes your purchase history, and then suggests other products you might like — if you’ve previously bought a P G Wodehouse book, you’re shown more P G Wodehouse books; if you’ve purchased a Samsung phone, it shows you links to Samsung phone accessories. But Amazon’s looking to upturn this model by explicitly asking users what they like and don’t like, and then using this information…

16 billion dollars is usually a lot of money, but Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal says Walmart got itself a good deal when it acquired the Indian e-commerce company. “Walmart didn’t overpay for Flipkart,” Bansal said at a Recode event on Monday. Bansal was reacting to a previous speaker who’d hinted that Walmart might’ve been a little too generous by paying $16 billion (Rs. 1,12,000 crore) to acquire Flipkart. “Did Walmart underpay then,” his interviewer teased….

When they’d started out, e-commerce companies in India had competed to provide the best shopping experience online. The action then shifted offline, with Amazon acquiring a stake in Shoppers Stop, Flipkart acquiring a phone repair retail company, and Paytm Mall trying to sell their goods through physical stores. The next frontier, if the indications are to be believed, seems to be finance. Amazon India wants to start by selling life, health and general insurance according…

Ola might’ve started its journey in India, but turning out to be quite the world traveler. After starting operations in Australia, and following up with a launch in the UK, Ola has said that it’ll soon start services in New Zealand. Ola will serve the cities of Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington, and is already inviting drivers in New Zealand to sign up on its platform. Like with other markets, Ola is starting off with low commissions —…

The times, they are a changin’. Time, the iconic magazine which was founded in 1923 and running weekly editions ever since, has been sold to Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. Benioff paid $190 million (Rs. 1,300 crore) for Time in cash, and says he won’t interfere with the day-to-day functioning of the magazine. Time was best known for its memorable covers, and its Person of the Year feature, which had been running since 1927, and had covered people…

Flipkart could soon negate the biggest advantage Amazon has over it own offerings — video streaming. Flipkart is in talks to acquire a stake in Hotstar, Mint reported. The talks are still at a preliminary stage, sources said. Mint wasn’t able to immediately ascertain what sort of a stake would Flipkart be looking to acquire in the video streaming service. While there isn’t any certainty yet over whether the deal will go through, Flipkart and Hotstar have…

As Uber moves from being a brash young startup to a company that’s preparing for an IPO, it’s giving itself a bit of a makeover. Uber’s changed its logo and design in a major new rebranding exercise. The old logo with the square in the middle of a circle is out, and has been replaced with simple text that says “Uber”. The text is written in a font that’s custom-designed for Uber, and there’s some…

Things are heating up in India’s payments space. PhonePe has attacked Google and other foreign companies for dragging their feet in complying with the RBI guidelines requiring payments apps to store their data on Indian shores. In a surprisingly blunt blogpost, PhonePe has hinted that one of the reasons that foreign firms are unwilling to store their data only in India is that they want to evade taxes.  “Most of the protests by Internet companies…