Microsoft is in talks to acquire Discord for more than $10 billion, Apple takes the profit crown from a Saudi oil giant, and hospitals are hiding pricing data from search results according to a Wall Street Journal investigation.
It’s all the tech news that’s popular right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Tuesday, March 23 and I’m your host Baneet Braich.
Microsoft is in talks to buy discord for more than $10 billion according to Bloomberg sources familiar with the discussion. But the deal isn’t imminent, with one person saying Discord would rather go public than seek an acquisition. Discord is a hot topic as Amazon and Epic Games have also been in discussion with the gaming-focused chat software. Discord has about 140 million monthly users and made $130 million in revenue last year. The Wall Street Journal says that even though company isn’t yet profitable, its last valuation was $7 billion after a funding round generated $100 million in December.
Oil giant Aramco, formerly known as the world’s most profitable company, has lost its crown to Apple. The Saudi company recorded a $49 billion profit for its 2020 fiscal year, while Apple reported $57.4 billion. The pandemic impacted oil prices but Apple hardly saw any issues in its steady high margins. The pandemic is not stopping people from buying Macs, iPhones, iPads and more.
Hospitals are hiding pricing data from search results according to a Wall Street Journal investigation. While pricing information must be disclosed under a federal rule aiming to make the sector more consumer-friendly, this has not been the case. Hundreds of hospitals embedded code in their websites that prevented Alphabet Inc.’s Google and other search engines from displaying pages with the price lists, according to the Journal examination of more than 3,100 sites. The code keeps pages from appearing in searches related to a hospital’s name and prices. Technically the prices are there but it’s quite the loophole to find them. Anyone patient enough to wade through several links and access multiple layers of pages can eventually find them.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire Newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. I’m Baneet Braich, thanks for listening!