Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Friday.
- The White House reportedly directed the Department of Defense to review a $10 billion cloud contract because it would probably go to Amazon. The Secretary of Defense says that JEDI won't be awarded pending a full review of the deal.
- US regulators are talking to founders of companies Facebook acquired as part of the government's new antitrust probe. It's not immediately clear which founders of which companies have been approached by the FTC, but Facebook has a long history of purchasing startups working in similar fields to itself.
- Google has been temporarily forced to stop listening in on its users across Europe after leaked data sparked privacy concerns. The ban comes as a result of a July report in which a Dutch media outlet used leak audio snippets from a third-party reviewer to show that some Google Assistant users had been recorded by their devices unknowingly.
- Apple will temporarily suspend and review a global program that allows contractors to listen to Siri recordings. The program's suspension follows a report published by The Guardian last week that revealed contractors involved in the review program could "regularly hear confidential medical information, drug deals, and recordings of couples having sex" often as a result of Siri being triggered by accident.
- Facebook took down hundreds of accounts connected to the Saudi Arabian government, which were being used to spread propaganda. The social network suspended more than 350 different accounts and pages, which had about 1.4 million followers.
- Professional gamer Ninja is leaving Amazon's Twitch for an exclusive deal with Microsoft's video game streaming platform, Mixer. Ninja will leave more than 14 million followers behind on Twitch, along with a large number of paid subscribers.
- DoorDash is buying its competitor Caviar from Square for $410 million as the red-hot delivery space continues to heat up. Square's stock price fell as much as 8% following the announcement, which coincided with the company's quarterly earnings report.
- Pinterest's stock popped more than 12% after beating Wall Street's Q2 targets. Pinterest's $261 million in revenue for Q2 was higher than analysts anticipated and up 62% from the same period the year prior.
- Amazon is disabling its Dash buttons, the little buttons that let people re-order groceries with a push. The company stopped selling the buttons earlier this year, but had continued to support ones already in customers' hands.
- Microsoft hired a man named Mac Book to star in its latest ad slamming Apple's laptops. The ad takes a jab at Apple's MacBook laptops by saying Surface computers perform faster, last longer, and have touch screens.
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