San Francisco Financial News

Avantax, the tax-oriented financial planning and wealth management firm under Cetera, continues to demonstrate its appeal for planning-focused advisors as it adds a seasoned professional from LPL.

A federal judge has indicated he will order major changes in Google’s Android app store

Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms has shut down CrowdTangle

A newly published study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco reveals that the substantial liquid wealth US households sopped up during the pandemic has run out, particularly for those in the lower- and middle-income bands of the economic spectrum.

The Conference Board chief economist Dana Peterson analyzes the job market and consumer confidence on Making Money.

Google experienced a significant outage affecting users across the globe. Starting around 9 am ET, individuals reported issues accessing key Google services, including Gmail, the search engine, YouTube, and more. Downdetector, which monitors online outages, recorded a sharp increase in complaints, revealing a widespread impact. Regional Impact and Service Breakdown The outage particularly affected major US cities such as Los Angeles and New York City, with additional reports from Houston, San Francisco, Dallas, Boston, and Chicago. According to Downdetector’s heat map, 57% of the reported problems were related to Google’s search functionality, 31% were linked to website performance, and 11% concerned Google Drive.

Bengaluru recently took to social media to highlight the plight of international travelers from India when their tickets are arbitrarily canceled by airlines. According to the woman, she had recently booked a Delhi-San Francisco flight, but Air India canceled it without notice and offered passengers the option to fly on a different date. When passengers objected, they were offered seats on an alternate flight with a 10-hour layover. The woman claimed that Air India refused to provide the passengers with tickets for a flight departing directly from Bengaluru.

lawsuit accusing Google of unlawfully dominating web search on smartphones, but said the consumers should get another chance after a Washington, D.C. court separately ruled the tech giant spent billions to create an illegal monopoly. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco on Friday dismissed the consumers' antitrust lawsuit against Google, finding they had not provided enough factual evidence showing any harm from the Alphabet unit's market dominance. Lin said the plaintiffs could file an amended lawsuit, citing the D.C. court's blockbuster Aug. 6 ruling that found Google's exclusive contracts with Apple and other companies helped it create an illegal monopoly over search engines.

A federal indictment has charged three current and former executives of Smartmatic in a scheme to pay more than $1 million in bribes to put its voting machines in the Philippines, a setback for a company that has been feuding with allies of Donald Trum...

board member, Omid Kordestani, sued the social media company owned by Elon Musk on Friday, claiming that the billionaire refused to cash out more than $20 million worth of shares. Kordestani, who joined Twitter's board in 2015 and helped oversee the sale of the company to Musk in 2022, received most of his compensation in stock. But after Musk bought the company, now called X, he refused to pay Kordestani for those shares, the lawsuit said. X «seeks to reap the benefits of Kordestani's seven years of service to Twitter without paying him for it,» said the suit, which was filed in California Superior Court in San Francisco.

Goldman Sachs is intensifying its focus on the wealth channel as it hires a BlackRock alum to its asset management unit.

ride-hailing drivers are facing the threat of job loss from artificial intelligence as robotaxis begin to proliferate. Self-driving technology, still experimental, is being aggressively greenlit in China compared to the US, where approvals are often suspended after accidents. At least 19 Chinese cities are testing robotaxis and robobuses, with seven cities approving tests without human-driver monitors from at least five industry leaders: Apollo Go, Pony.ai, WeRide, AutoX, and SAIC Motor. Apollo Go, a subsidiary of technology giant Baidu, plans to deploy 1,000 robotaxis in Wuhan by year-end and operate in 100 cities by 2030. Pony.ai, backed by Japan's Toyota Motor, operates 300 robotaxis with plans to increase to 1,000 by 2026. WeRide is known for autonomous taxis, vans, buses, and street sweepers, while AutoX, backed by Alibaba Group, operates in cities including Beijing and Shanghai. SAIC Motor has been operating robotaxis since 2021. In the US, Alphabet's Waymo operates uncrewed robotaxis that collect fares, with over 1,000 cars in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. Cruise, backed by General Motors, resumed testing in April after an accident last year.

Lyft shares tumbled to their biggest loss in more than a year on Wednesday after the ride-hailing app reported gross bookings that spooked investors

Airbnb says its profit fell 15% in the second quarter from a year earlier, as higher income taxes cut into the short-term rental giant’s bottom line even as bookings and revenue rose

A federal judge has branded Google as a ruthless monopolist bent on suffocating it competitors

Big Tech is following a crafty playbook to hoover up AI talent: Instead of buying the hottest AI startups, the giants hire their leadership and license their intellectual property, essentially sucking the life out of them. So long as they leave behind the shell of a company, antitrust scrutiny can be avoided. Alphabet’s Google [which just had bad news in the form of a court ruling against it for its search market monopoly], is the latest to follow this template by hiring the co-founders of Character.ai, Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, along with a few other employees.

The Oakland Athletics has reached a tentative agreement to sell its half of the Coliseum to a private Black development group for $125 million

San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly on Monday said she expects that interest rates will be cut later this year but declined to provide a timetable or the extent to which the central bank will ease.

Those who think about politics and history as a profession can’t resist comparing presidential years. “This is 1968 all over again." “We’re back to the dynamics of ’72." We do this because we know political history and love it, and because there are always parallels and lessons to be learned. But it should be said as a reminder: This year isn’t like any previous time.

DoorDash set quarterly records for total orders and revenue despite slowing U.S. restaurant traffic

The founder and former CEO of a startup social media platform has been accused of misleading investors and defrauding them to the tune of $170 million.