For anyone who has been following the soap opera unfolding between Netflix and Paramount Skydance over the past few months in their financial brinksmanship to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, the saga may be nearing its end. Today, WBD said its board of directors have determined that the latest offer from Paramount Skydance amounted to the better proposal. The media outfit gave Netflix four business days to match Paramount's terms, but the streamer didn't waste any time in declining to raise its own bid. 

"We believe we would have been strong stewards of Warner Bros.' iconic brands, and that our deal would have strengthened the entertainment industry and preserved and created more production jobs in the US," the statement from Netflix  co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said. "But this transaction was always a 'nice to have' at the right price, not a 'must have' at any price." 

In addition to the purchase price of $31 per WBD share, Paramount's latest offer also included a provision that it would cover the $2.8 billion termination fee that WBD would owe to Netflix for dissolving the existing merger agreement between the businesses. So rather than paying $82.7 billion to acquire the Warner Bros. part of the operation, it appears Netflix may walk away with no new content but padding its coffers with an extra nearly $3 billion. 

After Netflix's initial offer, Paramount Skydance swooped in with a hostile takeover attempt of the entire Warner Bros. Discovery business. WBD rejected it, Paramount tried again. Several additional volleys between the involved parties occurred over the past few weeks. While WBD has not yet formally accepted Paramount's offer — which will be subject to long-winded regulatory approvals sure to spark more drama — it seems the dust will soon settle for this chapter.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/netflix-backs-out-of-warner-bros-discovery-bidding-war-233117188.html?src=rss

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Block is the latest business to announce layoffs, with the operator of payment platforms Square and Cash App opting to cut jobs in favor of using more AI tools. The financial tech company, helmed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, is slashing its current staff of 10,000 to "just under 6,000." CNBC highlighted a letter Block sent to shareholders announcing the decision to nearly halve its workforce. According to the message from Dorsey: 

"The core thesis is simple. Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company. We're already seeing it internally. A significantly smaller team, using the tools we're building, can do more and do it better. And intelligence tool capabilities are compounding faster every week."

We learned last year that Block had developed an AI agent called "codename goose" for interacting with LLMs. Leadership is clearly putting high expectations on that project and any other in-house tools to fill the shoes of thousands. "intelligence will be at the core of how the entire company works. How we make decisions, how we build trust and manage risk, how we build products, and how we serve customers," the shareholder letter states.

Block also reported its latest financial results today. It finished the 2025 financial year with operating income (profit after expenses) of $1.71 billion.

This isn't the first time the fintech company has made deep cuts in its employee count. Layoffs numbering about 1,000 were rumored both in 2024 and 2025.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/block-the-parent-of-square-and-cash-app-is-laying-off-over-4000-people-223343068.html?src=rss

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eBay announced that it is cutting about 800 jobs from its global staff. "We are taking steps to reinvest across our business and align our structure with our strategic priorities, which will affect certain roles across our workforce," the retailer said in a statement as reported by Bloomberg. This move will see about 6 percent of eBay's current full-time workers laid off. Bloomberg noted that eBay would continue hiring in "key areas" but did not specify what those fields are.

The downsizing follows a week of business updates for eBay. On the same day it shared its latest financial results, the company announced that it would acquire Depop, a consumer-to-consumer secondhand fashion retailer, from Etsy. The Depop purchase carried a $1.2 billion price tag, which could put at least a small dent in the $11.1 billion it reported in 2025 full-year revenue.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/ebay-will-lay-off-800-workers-or-6-percent-of-its-staff-191500844.html?src=rss

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Instagram is adding a new alert for the parents of teen users of its social media platform. The network will alert the adult if their child repeatedly searches for terms about suicide or self-harm in a short time frame. From that notification, the parent will optionally be able to access resources for having conversations with their teen about these topics. These alerts will begin rolling out for parental supervision users in the US, UK, Australia and Canada next week, with later regions to be added in the future.

"We chose a threshold that requires a few searches within a short period of time, while still erring on the side of caution," Instagram's blog post explains. "While that means we may sometimes notify parents when there may not be real cause for concern, we feel — and experts agree — that this is the right starting point, and we’ll continue to monitor and listen to feedback to make sure we’re in the right place." 

The platform reiterated that search results for terms connected to suicide and self-harm are blocked for teen younger users, and content about those topics is not shown to them under its current policies. Instagram also noted that a similar parental alert feature is in the works for its AI tools, but news on that isn't expected until later this year.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-will-alert-parents-if-teens-repeatedly-search-for-suicide-or-self-harm-content-120000156.html?src=rss

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