technology

Instead of handing out envelopes of cash to Alibaba’s employees this Lunar New Year, Jack Ma is distributing a huge reality check.

Pinterest, a major source of revenue for personal style bloggers, is turning off that money-making spigot.

Luxury fashion brands are shedding the concept that they must limit where their goods are sold to retain the waft of exclusivity, and startups are jumping at the chance to sell the wares through websites and mobile applications.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook delivered a fiery speech at a White House cybersecurity summit, hammering those he said compromise the right to privacy and security of people around the world.

Singapore is reviewing guidelines governing the kind of short-term rentals used by home sharing companies like Airbnb, underscoring the regulatory uncertainties the fast-growing startup faces as it expands abroad.

China’s two largest taxi-hailing app companies backed by Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings are discussing a merger as an alternative to an increasingly costly battle. Kuaidi Dache and Didi Dache have been ramping up their marketing to attract more drivers and passengers.

Memex is a different kind of search engine.

Xiaomi will open its e-commerce site in the U.S., but has no plans to offer its popular handsets in the U.S.

Valuations rise across board, not just in later rounds.

Parliament has passed legislation that says anyone who distributes sexual images without the subject's consent – and with the intent to cause harm – could be punished with a fine and up to two years in prison.

Zoopla Property Group said thousands of estate agents have stopped listing homes on its websites after defecting to a new competitor set up to smash a perceived duopoly in the U.K. real estate website market.

John Emerson, US ambassador to Germany, took to the stage at the Startup Europe Summit in Berlin on Thursday to talk about the big divide between the US and Europe on data protection, government surveillance, and privacy. He also had a message for German entrepreneurs: learn to tolerate failure.

Data breaches increased 49% with almost 1 billion data records compromised in 1,500 attacks in 2014 – a 78% increase in the number of data records either lost or stolen in 2013, a new report by digital security firm Gemalto said. The Netherlands-based firm said about 575 million records were compromised in 2013.

Zalando is the largest purely e-commerce fashion retailer in Europe, with custom online stores for all 15 European countries in which it is active.

A number of dating apps have emerged in Asia that aim to offer something for users who aren’t quite ready for marriage but aren’t interested in casual hookups. We check out three.

Dropbox has a hired a new chief financial officer, a sign the online-storage company could be moving closer to an initial public offering.

In an annual report on labor and environmental practices in its supply chain, Apple said it is making progress eliminating so-called conflict minerals.

Twitter has acquired Niche, a New York startup that connects rising social media stars with big-brand advertisers.

EBay said it will give PayPal roughly $5 billion in cash when the payment unit splits into a separate publicly traded company later this year.