{"id":199087,"date":"2026-04-16T10:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T10:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/199087\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T10:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T10:17:08","slug":"fortune-tech-ticketmaster-monopoly-snap-layoffs-apple-and-google-app-stores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/199087\/","title":{"rendered":"Fortune Tech: Ticketmaster monopoly, Snap layoffs, Apple and Google app stores"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Did you hear the one about the shoe company Allbirds<\/a> pivoting to providing AI compute?<\/p>\n

Sounds like a Silicon Valley subplot, but it\u2019s true<\/a>. The Nasdaq-traded company (BIRD, of course) jumped from $2.50 a share to about $17\u2014yes, really\u2014on the news, valuing the company at about $148 million.<\/p>\n

The San Francisco outfitter\u2019s wool shoes have always been, for better or worse, linked to the real Silicon Valley; now it can confidently dispense with any abstraction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Besides, employees are gonna need comfortable footwear to walk all those data center aisles. Who says you can\u2019t teach an old bird a new trick? \u2014Andrew Nusca<\/p>\n

P.S. For the more fashionable among you, a favorite epithet for men\u2019s tech pants, per GQ: \u201cAllbirds for your legs<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want to send thoughts or suggestions to\u00a0Fortune Tech?\u00a0Drop a line\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Live Nation and Ticketmaster are monopolists, jury says\"Michael<\/a>Michael Rapino, president and CEO of Live Nation Entertainment, arrives at federal court on March 19, 2026 in New York City.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Michael M. Santiago\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Hear me now, Eddie Vedder: Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation illegally monopolized U.S. live event markets, according to a New York jury<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The jury found that \u200bLive Nation holds illegal \u2060monopolies for ticketing at more than 200 major venues and unlawfully made the use of dozens of large amphitheaters it controls conditional on artists using its promotion services.<\/p>\n

The court has yet to determine penalties for the transgressions, but the stock price for rival StubHub noticeably ticked up. (Most other companies in the category\u2014SeatGeek, AEG\u2019s AXS, and as of last month, Eventbrite\u2014are privately held.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

For its part, Live Nation was untroubled. (Its shares were down by 6%.) The company estimates it will owe less than $350 million in damages and expects the final outcome to be similar to the settlement it made with the U.S. Department of Justice during the trial, which required Ticketmaster to open ticketing to other vendors at 13 venues.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, the company is hardly out of the woods. Live Nation could face more legal action from various states\u2014including a forced sale of Ticketmaster, acquired in 2010\u2014as it plays out. \u2014AN<\/p>\n

Snap to lay off 1,000 staffers<\/p>\n

Activist investors strike again. Snap, the Los Angeles-area company behind Snapchat, will indeed shed 1,000 staffers, or about 16% of its full-time workforce.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Snap will also close more than 300 open roles.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe \u2026 made tough choices to prioritize the investments we believe are most likely to create long-term value,\u201d CEO Evan Spiegel wrote in a memo<\/a>, later adding: \u201cWe believe that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was only a few weeks ago that Irenic Capital \u200bManagement, which owns a 2.5% stake in Snap, pushed for a leaner<\/a>, more performant company. \u201cSnap should be worth a lot more than $7 billion,\u201d the firm wrote, calling out cash burn for its Specs smart glasses, broad overhiring, and larger rival Meta\u2019s substantial outperformance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But life moves pretty fast, as Ferris Bueller once said. The clock is now ticking for Snap\u2019s CEO to do the hard things\u2014spin up the great money-making engine at the company\u2019s core and ditch everything else\u2014before the relief wears off. \u2014AN<\/p>\n

Apple and Google can\u2019t escape nudify apps<\/p>\n

No matter how tough a stance some of the world\u2019s mightiest corporations can take against so-called nudify apps\u2014which allow the creation of nonconsensual, sexualized images of people\u2014they can\u2019t seem to stamp them out in their app stores.<\/p>\n

According to a report published Wednesday<\/a> by the Tech Transparency Project, Apple and Google explicitly prohibit such apps on their platforms, yet their \u201csearch and advertising systems actually point users to them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cApple and Google ran ads for nudify apps in some of the search results, and the app stores even suggested additional nudify search terms through their autocomplete function,\u201d TTP found. Oof.<\/p>\n

(Apple declined to weigh in on the findings; Google said that it had since suspended many of the apps in question.)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hardly a matter of money. TTP estimates that the racy apps \u201cmade more than $122 million in lifetime revenue,\u201d a drop in the bucket for Apple or Google, which together generate that in about as much time as it takes to watch an episode of Severance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No, this is about running a tight ship. It\u2019s clear that more enforcement is necessary when this latest generation of apps uses generative AI with looser standards than what\u2019s acceptable in the stores in which they\u2019re sold. \u2014AN<\/p>\n

More tech<\/p>\n

\u2014Apple Siri staffers<\/a> will reportedly be sent to an AI coding bootcamp.<\/p>\n

\u2014Caterpillar acquires self-driving assets<\/a> from Monarch, an electric tractor startup.<\/p>\n

\u2014Amazon launches Shenzhen smart warehouse.<\/a> The Shein-Temu wars rage on.<\/p>\n

\u2014Euro VC funding in Q1:<\/a> Up 30% in value, down 40% in volume, and mostly AI-focused.<\/p>\n

\u2014FTC settles with WPP, Dentsu, Publicis<\/a> over \u201cbrand safety\u201d boycott claims, as expected.<\/p>\n

\u2014A nationwide survey of data center energy usage<\/a> is coming via the U.S. Energy Information Administration.<\/p>\n

\u2014EU threatens to force Meta<\/a> to allow third-party AI assistants in WhatsApp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good morning. Did you hear the one about the shoe company Allbirds pivoting to providing AI compute? Sounds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[79236,24552,586,6080,79237,5886,79238,32911,4685,63312,32912,9,24,55,54,18348,56,10604,43008,5586],"class_list":{"0":"post-199087","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-allbirds","9":"tag-alphabet","10":"tag-amazon","11":"tag-apple","12":"tag-caterpillar","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-federal-trade-commission-ftc","15":"tag-fortune-tech","16":"tag-google","17":"tag-live-nation-entertainment","18":"tag-meta","19":"tag-new-york","20":"tag-new-york-city","21":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","22":"tag-new-york-city-news","23":"tag-no-copyright","24":"tag-ny","25":"tag-snap","26":"tag-ticketmaster","27":"tag-venture-capital"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}