6 Most Important Things in Business Today

December 12, 2017 by Douglas A. McIntyre

Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA) has dropped out of the race to buy assets from Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. (NYSE: FOX), which leaves Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) as the only viable bidder for assets that include Fox’s movie studio.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) bought a song recognition company. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. said it has acquired Shazam Entertainment Ltd., giving it ownership of one of the popular song-recognition apps at a time the iPhone maker is looking to boost its music-subscription service.

Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Apple said Monday it has “exciting plans” for Shazam but declined to disclose more. Shazam said Apple would enable it to “continue innovating.”

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is expanding its huge cloud computing business into China. According to CNBC:

Amazon expanded its cloud footprint in China Tuesday in one of the fastest-growing but most competitive markets in the world.

The U.S. e-commerce giant said it partnered with Ningxia Western Cloud Data Technology Co (NWCD) to open its second Amazon Web Services (AWS) operating region in China. AWS is Amazon’s cloud computing arm.

Amazon will now have cloud services available to customers in the Ningxia region, which is south west of Beijing.

Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google has topped Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) as a provider of traffic to publishers. According to Recode:

Google used to be the main source of referral traffic for web publishers. Then Facebook eclipsed it.

And now, Google is back on top again.

Over the course of 2017, the search engine has become publishers’ main source of external page views, according to new data from Parse.ly, a digital analytics company.

North Korea may be making a profit on bitcoin. According to CNNMoney:

Speculators aren’t the only ones cheering the runaway bitcoin boom — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may also be celebrating a windfall.

In recent months, experts and officials say North Korea has been “mining” bitcoin, demanding it as ransom payment and outright stealing the digital currency.

“It is a fact that North Korea has been attacking virtual currency exchanges,” said Lee Dong-geun, a director with South Korea’s state-run Korea Internet and Security Agency. “We don’t know how much North Korea has stolen so far, but we do know that the police have confirmed the regime’s hacking attempts.”

The CEO of United Continental Holdings Inc. (NYSE: UAL) set new expectations for sexual misconduct at the carrier:

United Continental CEO Oscar Munoz has asked employees to commit to a “zero tolerance” policy on sexual harassment, heading the call of a union president who urged top executives to contest the culture of harassment in the aviation industry.

Sponsored: Find a Qualified Financial Advisor

Finding a qualified financial advisor doesn’t have to be hard. SmartAsset’s free tool matches you with up to 3 fiduciary financial advisors in your area in 5 minutes. Each advisor has been vetted by SmartAsset and is held to a fiduciary standard to act in your best interests. If you’re ready to be matched with local advisors that can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now.