Plus, 23andMe lays off 40% of its staff. And SoftBank returns to profit. James Rundle hosts.
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[00:00:16] Here's your TMB Tech Minute for Tuesday, November the 12th. I'm James Rundle for The Wall Street Journal.
[00:00:22] We're exclusively reporting that Meta is changing how it delivers ads to Facebook and Instagram users in the European Union by making them less personal.
[00:00:31] European users must currently pay a fee to access an ad-free version of Meta's products or agree to highly targeted ads.
[00:00:38] They will soon be able to choose advertising options that only pull in data from their current browsing session, along with a few other identifiers, such as age, and location in free versions.
[00:00:48] The launch of the subscription model earlier this year prompted European regulators to charge Meta with violating the EU's new competition law and triggered an investigation.
[00:00:58] Meta will also cut the price of its monthly subscription fee as part of the change.
[00:01:02] The company said that its changes meet EU regulator demands and go beyond what's required by EU law.
[00:01:08] A spokeswoman for the European Commission said the investigation is still ongoing.
[00:01:13] DNA testing company 23andMe says that it's firing more than 200 people and shutting down its drug development arm, once seen as crucial to the company's future.
[00:01:22] The company said that the restructuring will save it $35 million annually.
[00:01:27] CEO Ann Wojcicki had seen drug development as a way to profit from the company's vast trove of data from its core consumer business, which is unprofitable.
[00:01:37] 23andMe's development unit had been conducting human trials for two of its drugs, which the company said it would wind down and attempt to sell.
[00:01:45] And technology investment giant SoftBank says it returned to a net profit for the three months ended September.
[00:01:51] The Japanese company reported a second quarter profit of 1.18 trillion yen, or roughly $7.7 billion.
[00:01:59] That's compared with a loss of 931 billion yen for the same quarter last year.
[00:02:04] The company has been bullish on artificial intelligence, making big investments in OpenAI and chip designer arm holdings in recent months.
[00:02:12] For a deeper dive into what's happening in tech, check out Wednesday's Tech News Briefing podcast.