This segment, brought to you by Uncle Nearest. I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve had a challenging work week. It’s the unofficial start of the weekend and I’m glad to be back on with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week, Bezos steps down and has a Jassy replacement, the Pennsylvania AG delays data caps, and Gearbox has been acquired. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern.
This week’s big news is that Jeff Bezos will be stepping down as Amazon’s CEO. Andy Jassy, the President and co-founder for Amazon Web Services, AWS, will move in to become the new CEO. AWS powers a third of the Internet’s cloud infrastructure and is responsible for half of Amazon’s income, so the move is a no-brainer and Amazon investors thought the same. AWS is the virtual computing service Amazon sells to other companies. My company uses it, and I personally use AWS. Bezos said he’ll still be around but he wants to spend more time running his non-profit and nurturing the Washington Post. He won’t be hurtin’.
PENNSYLVANIA AG DELAYS COMCASTIC DATA CAPS
When Net Neutrality fell we all knew it was coming. Comcast had announced data caps for residential customers and will be charging $10 overage fees for every 50GB consumed over 1.2TB (terabytes). Which, I may say, my household burns up easily. Comcast’s announcement drew the ire of the Pennsylvania attorney general who raised objections that Comcast was implementing data caps in the middle of a pandemic. So instead of having customers pay more in March, the data caps will be delayed until July. Comcast will also waive early cancellation fees if you want to switch, but many people live in regions with one ISP. Of course, Comcast will be more than happy to sell you an unlimited plan. If you live in Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Vermont, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia, as well as parts of North Carolina and Ohio be prepared to watch your bill. I switched to Verizon FIOS.
LAST INDY GAME MAKER SNAPPED UP
The Swedes have picked up Gearbox. If you’re a Borderlands fan the Swedish company, Embracer has purchased Gearbox for $363 million in cash and stock, which could balloon to $1.2 billion if Gearbox meets revenue projections. The company’s employees in Texas and Quebec will become shareholders in Embracer. Embracer claims that Gearbox will operate independently. Gearbox represents the last of the major independent studios. Microsoft bought the storied Bethesda Softworks in a Zenimax acquisition last year and Codemasters was recently bought by EA. Gearbox is famously known as the license holder for Duke Nukem. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll now get a real treatment for Duke Nukem Forever.
