Canadian charged in 2014 Yahoo breach is expected to plead guilty in the U.S

Karim Baratov, a Canadian citizen who the U.S. accused of helping Russian intelligence operatives hack Yahoo accounts in 2014, is expected to plead guilty next week, Reuters reports.

Baratov recently waived his right to fight the request for extradition from Canada and will appear in federal court in San Franciso this coming Tuesday.

The 22-year old Baratov is a Canadian citizen who was born in Kazakhstan. Last March, Canadian law enforcement arrested him at the request of U.S. prosecutors, alleging that he helped with the 2014 Yahoo breach.

In March, the Department of Justice filed charges against Baratov and three other men for their part in the 2014 theft. Two of the men were part of Russia’s Federal Security Service. The information obtained from the reports implies that the Russian agents were the ringleaders of the operation. Alexsey Belan, one of the FBI’s most wanted cybercriminals, was the one who carried out the actual hack of Yahoo’s server.

Baratov was apparently brought on when it was discovered that victims of the hack had non-Yahoo email addresses. Baratov is alleged to have hacked at least 80 non-Yahoo email accounts, with 50 of those hacked accounts reported to be Gmail accounts.

As of right now, the exact targets of the hack have not been revealed, but we do know the FSB agents sought information on Russian officials, a wealthy banker, and the leader of a metals company.

Despite the charges, Baratov is the only culprit to have been arrested in relation to this case. In August, he pleaded not guilty to several charges including “conspiring to commit computer fraud, conspiring to commit access device fraud, conspiring to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.”

It is unclear what charges Baratov will be pleading guilty to on Tuesday, though court records indicate that the hearing will be a “change of plea” hearing overseen by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria.

It is currently unknown why Baratov is changing his plea. It is possible that he worked out a deal with prosecutors, which would make sense, given that he appears to be one of the least important actors in this hack.

AMD is more than the Threadripper. Here are the best AMD CPUs on any budget

It’s safe to say that AMD made a massive resurgence in 2017 with the success of its Ryzen processors. But whether you’re looking at the top of the range, the bottom of the barrel, or anywhere in between, AMD has a solid option. In this guide, we’ll tell you which are the best AMD processors money can buy, whatever your budget.

For a more general look without all the manufacturer attachments, check out our guide to the best CPUs or our guide to the best gaming CPUs. Having trouble picking which of the below chips is right for your next build? Here’s our guide on how to pick the right Ryzen chip.

While we tackle the main segments of AMD’s CPU line up and offer a few alternatives too, it should be noted that there are other chips lower down the scale that we don’t address. There are Intel CPUs that are worth considering too, but if you’re dead set on AMD, these are the best.

Entry level: Ryzen 3 1200 ($100)

Although AMD put a lot of pressure on Intel’s top-end chips with its more powerful Ryzen processors, its entry-level CPUs still pack a hell of a punch. The Ryzen 3 1200 takes the fight to the Core i3 CPUs and then some. It packs four cores on the same die and has 8MB of L3 cache. Its core clock speed is 3.45GHz when using AMD’s automated overclocking extended frequency range (XFR) feature, though can be manually overclocked too.

The Ryzen 3 1200 does lack the multithreading support of its higher-end cousins, but four cores at this price point is a steal. Although Intel’s recently introduced Core i3-8100 does offer credible competition, it’s currently restricted to the expensive Z370 motherboards. You can grab a compatible AM4 motherboard for far less.

One important thing to remember when buying this (or any) Ryzen chip however, is that it does not come with a built-in graphics chip. That means you will need an add-in graphics card of some sort to power your display and any games you play.

Buy one now from:

Amazon

Mid-range: Ryzen 5 1600 ($190)

As arguably the most competitive price point for processors, the mid-range is where you’re spoilt for choice. Of all of the chips available though, we have to recommend the ultra-affordable, impressively powerful, Ryzen 5 1600.

Bucking the trend of quad-cores dominating the mid-range, the Ryzen 5 series introduced us to our first mid-range hexacore chip when it debuted earlier this year. With full support for multithreading, you get 12 threads along with your six cores and its frequency is no slouch either. It idles at 3.2GHz and boosts up to 3.6GHz when needed. Though it doesn’t have XFR support, it is entirely unlocked so overclocking is easy.

Although it typically retails just north of $210, you can currently find the Ryzen 5 1600 at $190, with an included cooler. As an alternative, its closely priced brother, the 1600X is a viable option, coming with slightly higher clocks and XFR support. However, its comparatively priced bundle does not come with a cooler, so factor that into your purchasing decision.

Although Intel’s new eighth-generation chips are giving Ryzen some stiff competition, AMD’s Ryzen 5 1600 and 1600X processors are two of the best mid-range CPUs available today.

Buy one now from:

Amazon

High-end: Ryzen 7 1800X ($310)

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Although when first introduced the Ryzen 7 1800X did fall behind comparatively priced Intel chips in terms of gaming, it was still a monstrously powerful processor, especially in multithreaded tests. Better yet, its price has come crashing down since then, making it vastly more affordable and attractive as a high-end purchase.

The Ryzen 7 1800X CPU comes packing a full eight cores and (thanks to multithreading support) has a total of 16 threads to play with. That makes it a fantastic processor for multi-tasking or using software that can take advantage of lots of additional threads. Video editing or encoding should see big gains from it, but the 1800X is a great gaming processor too — just not quite as powerful in some titles as the Intel counterparts.

As the highest powered processor in the Ryzen range without edging into Threadripper territory, the 1800X sports an impressive clock speed. Its base sits at 3.6GHz, boosting up to 4.0GHz — and when required, and you can net yourself an extra 100MHz from XFR too. If you want to overclock it yourself, you can go ahead and do so, as like every Ryzen chip, this one is entirely unlocked. It’s not the best overclocker, but you can get yourself a little extra with some effort.

If you want to go for a slightly cheaper option, you can pick up a Ryzen 7 1700 (with cooler) for $270 and when overclocked there isn’t a huge performance difference between the two, especially when it comes to gaming.

Buy one now from:

Amazon, Newegg

Extreme: Ryzen Threadripper 1950X ($800)

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

The Threadripper range is the jewel in the Ryzen crown and from top to bottom the trio of chips are all fantastic. The shiniest of those gems though, is easily the 1950X. An absolute powerhouse of a processor, if you need top-tier performance, especially in applications that can really take advantage of additional threads, this is arguably the best processor in the world right now.

Coming in well under the price of the Intel competition and noticeably cheaper than when it debuted, the 1950X packs a full 16 cores and a near-unprecedented 32 threads, making it capable of multitasking even with intensive applications. It stormed through every test we threw at it in our review and dominated not only the Intel competition, but even its own Ryzen contemporaries in almost all settings.

Although, like other Ryzen chips, the Threadripper 1950X does fall behind in the odd single-threaded benchmark or game, you buy a CPU like this for its workhorse capabilities and it fully embodies that mentality. With a clock speed of 3.4GHz at base, 4.0GHz boosted, and up to 4.2GHz with XFR, it’s plenty fast, but with the right cooling, you can take it north of 5.0GHz if you know what you’re doing.

If you don’t want to spend quite as much on your monster CPU, the 1920X and 1900X are also viable alternatives in this space. They can be had for $650 and $450 respectively and support the same 64 PCI  Express lanes and boosted frequencies as the big daddy 1950X. They do come with less cores and threads though and the performance difference, especially in heavily multithreaded applications, is certainly noticeable.

Buy one now from:

Amazon

These five 2016 phones are still great buys worth considering

Technology often moves at terrific pace, but owning the latest and greatest products will cost you a hefty premium. Smartphone innovation is slowing. The best phones from a year or two ago are still great phones. They may lack the latest style trends, but they’re plenty powerful enough for most people. If you want to stretch your budget further, starting with last year’s flagships is a great idea because some of them are now heavily discounted. Here are five of our favorite phones from 2016 that are easy to recommend.

Note: One problem with buying older smartphones is that they will not get software updates as long as the latest releases. Two years is standard for flagships, which means this crop of 2016 phones should keep getting updated for at least another year, but schedules vary by manufacturer.

Google Pixel ($550)

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

The perfect phone for the Android purist, the Pixel from Google offers the most slick, stylish, and elegant experience you can find on the Android platform. It’s fast and smooth in performance, it has a stylish design with a bright AMOLED display, and the camera is nothing short of superb. It also comes with free unlimited cloud storage for your snaps and videos through Google Photos. Add in the fact it already has Android 8.0 Oreo, the latest version of the operating system, and continues to get the latest security patches, and you can forgive the average battery life and lack of water resistance.

Read our full Google Pixel review to learn more.

Verizon Google Store

ZTE Axon 7 ($400)

Malarie Gokey/Digital Trends

A stylish, solid metal slate with powerful front-facing speakers flanking a high-resolution AMOLED screen, the ZTE Axon 7 was one of the biggest bargains of 2016. It matched far more expensive Android smartphones on the spec sheet and managed to come in hundreds of dollars cheaper. The lack of water resistance and ZTE’s user interface are weak points for an otherwise strong all-rounder. It has also been relatively quick to receive Android updates, but there’s no word on whether it will get the latest Android 8.0 Oreo just yet.

Read our full ZTE Axon 7 review to find out more.

Amazon Newegg

Apple iPhone 7 ($550)

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

We can’t blame you if the $1,000 price tag of the iPhone X has given you pause. Why spend that much when you can get a great iPhone for just over half that amount? The iPhone 7 offers lightning fast performance, an excellent camera, decent battery life, and water resistance in a well-designed package. There’s no headphone jack and it lacks the dual camera setup of the 7 Plus, but it’s still a solid smartphone that will serve you well. If you can scrape together an extra $120, the iPhone 7 Plus is also worth a look. Apple continues to update its devices for longer than its competitors, so you can expect to keep getting software updates for several years to come.

Read our full Apple iPhone 7 review for more.

Apple Best Buy

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge ($500)

Jessica Lee Star/Digital Trends

Shop around and you should be able to find some hefty discounts on perhaps the most desirable smartphone of 2016 in terms of style. Curved glass front and back blends into a metal frame to produce a phone that’s comfortable to hold and packs a sizeable, stunning, 5.5-inch Super AMOLED screen into a relatively svelte body. It’s fast, water resistant, and boasts a camera that performs admirably in low light conditions. Samsung’s bloatware and the fragility of the S7 Edge may put you off, but the user interface has been much improved with post-release software updates and this is a phone that’s hard to put down.

Check out our Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge review to learn all about it.

Amazon Samsung

HTC 10 ($370+)

Jessica Lee Star/Digital Trends

It failed to attract the audience it deserved, but the HTC 10 is a stylish smartphone with plenty of power under the hood. It feels nice in hand and offers almost everything you’d expect from a flagship phone. You’ll find a sharp, 5.2-inch screen in an aluminum body, powerful stereo speakers, and a very capable camera here. The lack of water resistance and average battery life are the only real disappointments. Shop around and you should be able to find some aggressive discounts on this handset, which make it even more enticing.

Read our HTC 10 review for all the details.

HTC

Snapchat and BMW team up to bring augmented reality ads to life

Despite the app’s popularity, Snapchat isn’t doing too well from a business perspective. Last quarter saw Snap Inc.’s stock fall as revenues fell $30 million short of projections. In an attempt to turn things around, the company is turning to augmented reality advertisements. The first of these AR ads will come courtesy of BMW.

Building off of Snapchat’s World Lens ads, these AR Trial ads will allow users to interact with various products and see them in the real world. In the case of BMW’s new X2, the app will project an image of the car into the world around you. Users will be able to walk around the car and tap it to change its paint job.

BMW hopes these ads will allow the carmaker to more organically reach new audiences, especially among the younger generations.

“We wanted to insert ourselves in an organic way into the Snapchat environment and its users’ world,” said BMW’s Jörg Poggenpohl. “That is the most meaningful way to address our fans in a style that fits the channel and the target group.”

BMW is the first company to experiment with Snapchat’s AR ads, but we expect other advertisers will be watching closely. The problem with previous Snapchat ads is the same issue that Twitter has dealt with. The banner ads are small and non-intrusive, which is a good thing for users, since it is easy to ignore them. Advertisers were not convinced of the platform’s benefits, however.

The hope is that even if users do not share these ads with their friends, they’ll still take time to play around with the AR and build an association with the brand. Being able to interact with BMW’s X2 will likely hold people’s interest more than a YouTube video that we skip after five seconds.

From Snapchat’s angle, the goal is to derive more money from its existing customer base, since it is having trouble reaching new users. It remains to be seen rather or not this system will be effective in the long-term, but you can expect that the sheer novelty of the approach will attract users in the beginning.

You could buy a MacBook. Or you could buy this laptop — and 137 lattes

We all waste our money on lattes, and we all feel bad about it. But what if you shopped smarter for your next laptop, and opened up $550 for your latte budget? You can do it — with the Asus Zenbook UX330UA.

We know what you’re thinking. If the product sounds more like a serial number than a name, stay clear. Yet the Zenbook UX330UA really is the everyman computer you should consider when buying a new laptop. It checks off most the boxes for what you’d want in a modern Windows laptop, including a thin profile and a snappy keyboard.

We don’t mean to say it’s a perfect laptop. The design won’t make you stand up and cheer — nor will some slip-ups in the details, like the lack of precision in the touchpad or the slight flex in the keyboard.

But for $750 — less than the cost of a new iPhone 8 Plus — you get a laptop that competes with laptops and 2-in-1s that double its price. The UX330UA comes with an 8th generation Core i5-8250U processor, the same one featured in the $1,100 HP Spectre 13, the $1,196 Lenovo Yoga 920, and even the $1,500 Surface Book 2.

While we haven’t tested the i5 versions of all those laptops, we have tested the Core i7 versions (which are even more expensive), seen in the results below.

You’re probably as impressed as we were — the UX330UA holds up against these more expensive laptops surprisingly well. So well, in fact, that you may wonder why you’d ever need to spend more. 

Again, this is a $750 laptop. It’s not the best laptop ever built by human hands. When it comes to performance, though, the Zenbook UX330UA offers great value for what you get. You may want to think twice before dropping that stack of cash for a Microsoft Surface Book 2 or Apple MacBook Pro.

Will.i.am releases augmented reality app to go with his graphic novel

Rapper, producer, and philanthropist will.i.am does a lot more than just make music, with one of those endeavors being comic books. His graphic novel, Black Eyed Peas Present: Masters of the Sun ― The Zombie Chronicles, debuted earlier this summer. But that’s not all. On Friday, the Black Eyed Peas frontman released an augmented reality app that brings the pages of the graphic novel to life. It’s certainly not the entrepreneur’s first foray into the tech world.

When using the new app, you simply hold your phone over the pages of the comic and the illustrations are imbued with animation, complete with a voice cast and amazing music. The project was able to attract such great talent because it was so fresh and new.

“That’s the benefit of working the way we work. There is no freakin’ hound, there is no freakin’ limitation on what we can do and how we should go about doing it. It’s like ‘let’s figure it out,’” will.i.am recently told TechCrunch. “You better push the boundaries or do not come out at all.”

Masters of the Sun: The Zombie Chronicles, published by Marvel Comics, is about a hip-hop group from East Los Angeles who decide to take on an ancient, alien god who transforms drug dealers and gangsters into zombies. The story mixes Egyptology and L.A. gang culture, and the first issue was released back in August, co-written by Benjamin Jackendoff and illustrated by Damion Scott.

“We did the book first for the traditionalists, and will expand upon it with augmented reality and then virtual reality,” will.i.am said while speaking with Business Insider.

The voice talent features the likes of Jaden Smith, Snoop Dogg, Slick Rick, Flavor Flav, Rakim, KRS One, Queen Latifah, Rosario Dawson, and Jamie Foxx. The legendary former Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Stan Lee provides his own narration as well. The music is done by Academy-award-winning composer Hans Zimmer, who certainly is no stranger to the comic book/superhero world, having recently provided the score for Batman  v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Man of Steel, and Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.

The augmented reality app is currently available on iOS and Android and goes for $2, and you need to own the graphic novel in order to use it.

Google Pixel Buds review: You (and Google) can do better

When Google revealed its new Pixels earlier this year, it made a tacit statement: the age of headphone jacks on smartphones is over. So, what’s a diehard Google phone fan to do? Buy Google’s new wireless earbuds — in theory, at least. Several leaks ensured we knew they were coming, but the Pixel Buds were still a surprise because they emphasized functionality over convenience. Obviously, you can listen to music with them, but you can also sift through notifications and translate languages on the fly. Still, despite lots of potential, Google’s Pixel Buds just don’t live up to the hype.

Getting started

Chris Velazco/Engadget

Assuming you’ve got an Android device running Nougat or newer, the setup process couldn’t be easier: Open the case next to a compatible phone, and you’ll get a pop-up that walks you through the process. Keep in mind, though, that this dead-simple pairing only works with the first phone you set it up with; otherwise, you have to press and hold a button inside the case to put the Pixel Buds into pairing mode. From there, you pop into the Bluetooth settings and pair them the old-fashioned way. This is also the setup process you’ll use if you want to use the Pixel Buds with an iPhone. It would’ve been nice if the Pixel Buds paired as seamlessly with the second or third device as they do with the first, but really, that’s the least of the problems here.

Design

Chris Velazco/Engadget

Each Pixel Bud has two distinct sections: the part that sticks in your ear and the tiny bulb that sits outside it. Because of the way these two parts are connected, the Pixel Buds ultimately rest right on the edges of your ears — it took me a few days before I could plop the Buds into the sweet spot without any extra fiddling. The bulbs are admittedly a little odd-looking, but they’re still more subtle than, say, Apple’s AirPods.

The Buds are connected by a nylon cord. I know, I’m not a fan either. While a fully wireless design might have looked better, the cord dangles around your neck unobtrusively and makes the buds harder to lose. (Unless you’re me — I once draped them around my neck and forgot they were there for an entire day.) Chances are you’ll barely notice the cord while you’re wearing these.

You’ll definitely notice it when it’s time to charge the Buds in their cloth-covered case. Google’s preferred method involves popping the Buds into their respective nooks, wrapping the length of the cord around an inner column and shoving the remainder into the space where the Buds sit. I joked on Twitter last week that I’d never remember how to do it, but it’s much easier than my glibness let on.

That doesn’t mean it’s not annoying. If the cord isn’t snugly wrapped, it could prevent the case from closing properly. That doesn’t keep the Buds from charging, but it does mean the case is prone to pop open accidentally — that already happened in my backpack once, and by the time I got where I was going, the Buds had worked their way free of the case entirely. You’re also meant to make tiny loops by pulling the nylon cord near the buds to make sure they anchor sturdily in your ears. I did, but they ultimately made no difference — the Pixel Buds stayed put in my ears during runs regardless of whether I made those loops. Your mileage will vary though: I’ve let a few other people try the Buds, and the loops didn’t prevent them from falling out of place.

In use

Chris Velazco/Engadget

Personally, I prefer in-ears that sit snugly in the ear canal. They just sound better. That said, I was pleasantly surprised with Google’s first-generation earbuds. You’ll notice more definition with wired in-ears, but the Pixel Buds produced loud, clear audio with more oomph than Apple’s AirPods. My test tracks ran the gamut from EDM to Jazz to lots of weird Japanese stuff, and just about all of it came through with a surprising sense of substance. If you like a lot of bass in your music, though, the Pixel Buds will probably leave you wanting. For people who really care about audio quality, there are much better ways to spend $160. Still, for a set of nearly wireless earbuds, the Buds sound pretty good.

Unfortunately, You’re going to hear a whole lot more than just your music. Since the Pixels Buds sit right on the edge of your ear, you’re going to notice a lot of ambient sound leaking in unless you have the volume cranked up. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you’re a city dweller who often has to navigate busy streets and intersections, the Pixel Buds still allow you to hear oncoming traffic. Of course, if you’re toiling away in a noisy office, the Pixel Buds do nothing to block out the sound of raucous conversations around you. If you’re like me and need to shut out the world to get work done, the Pixel Buds will disappoint.

When it’s time to actually interact with the Pixel Buds, you’ll need to reach for your right ear. A quick tap on the touch-sensitive right bud plays or pauses whatever you’re listening to, and swipes forward and back along the surface raise and lower the volume, respectively. Compared to the limited controls on Apple’s AirPods, the Pixel Buds’ are considerably more nuanced — the AirPods can play/pause and skip tracks with a double-tap, but not both. You have to jump into settings to change what that action does. The Pixel Buds let you do it all, and with surprising competence; since each gesture is so different, I never accidentally turned up the volume when I meant to listen to my notifications or pause a song.

Chris Velazco/Engadget

The problem is, the touch surface is easy to activate by accident, especially when the Buds are dangling around your neck. I burned through the Pixel Buds’ batteries twice because my neck had un-paused Spotify without me noticing, leaving my screwed for the commutes home. The fact that this happened twice is surprising if only because of the Buds’ battery life — in general, they last between four to five hours on a charge,

Of course, the Pixel Buds mainly exist as a vessel for Google’s Assistant. You access it by saying — what else? — “OK, Google” or by holding your finger against the right earbud, but the tell-tale Assistant bloop only happens when you do the former. It should really happen when you press the earbud, too, if only to make absolutely clear when the Assistant has actually started listening for a command.

Once you get the hang of things, the experience of talking to Google Assistant through the buds is mostly identical to using it on your phone or through a Google Home. That’s often a good thing, but I wish Google had done a little more to tune Assistant for wearable use. When I ask it to play a certain song, for instance, Assistant only does so after telling me the name, the artist and the service it’s playing on. Uh, maybe just play the damn track, Google.

Sometimes, Google Assistant appears to listen to what I’m saying and then fails to do anything about it. These weren’t arcane commands, either — I asked the Assistant to play a song or playlist I had requested multiple times before, and it just hung. This was such a pervasive issue that I sent my first review unit back to Google on the suspicion that it was defective. The replacements I received didn’t exhibit the same problem quite as often, but it still happened once or twice. My network connection was strong, and I make it a point to speak extra clearly to virtual assistants, so I can’t really explain what’s causing these failures.

Chris Velazco/Engadget

You can use the Pixel Buds as in-ear translators, too — a use case Google specifically highlighted at its most recent launch event, last month. The idea of having an in-ear translator (like an inorganic Babel fish) is a compelling one, but in practice we’re still a ways off from seamless, cross-language conversations. To get started, Google suggests you say things like “I need a [language] translator” to launch the Google Translate app in the correct mode. Fair enough, but on a few occasions, the buds just spit a snippet of a foreign language into my ears when given that command. Weird.

When Translate does launch normally, you lay a finger on the right bud and start talking. Your words then get rendered into one of forty target languages, and the native speaker listening holds down a button on the Pixel to start responding. The translation process itself typically happened in mere moments, but this really boils down to the strength of your network connection. When I tried using the feature where AT&T coverage was sort of lousy, it took a few extra seconds to get the spoken translation. Responses rendered in your language get routed right into your ears, but for such exchanges to work best, you’d have to hand over your phone so the other person can hold down the button and respond when appropriate. Depending on where you are, that might not be such a great idea.

And, of course, since Google Translate is doing the cross-cultural heavy lifting, expect a few misfires here and there. Engadget’s video producer Brian Oh is a native Korean speaker, and for every mostly accurate translation I ran by him, there was one that just made him roll his eyes. Ditto for the handful of Vietnamese friends I tested the feature with. As always, Google Translate is super literal about what you say so the idioms that pepper our daily conversations rarely make sense when rendered in another language. If you were planning to rely the Pixel Buds in some far-flung locale, it’s probably best to keep your utterances succinct.

Wrap-up

Chris Velazco/Engadget

I’m not entirely sure why Google released the Pixel Buds in their current form. At best, they’re decent. At worst, they feel unfinished. The concept certainly has promise, and I appreciate that Google wanted the Pixel Buds to be feature-rich compared to its most notable rival. Ultimately though, it feels like Google was more concerned with getting these things out the door (and maybe making a few bucks over the holidays) than giving them the polish necessary to be truly valuable. It’s possible that Google will iron out some of these issues over time with software updates, and if that’s the case, we’ll update this review. Until then, though, you can do better.

Uber gets the go-ahead for its Russian merger

Uber’s merger with Yandex’s taxi service is effectively a done deal. Russian antitrust regulators have approved the union between the two ride-hailing companies, clearing the way for its expected completion in January 2018. The deal gives Yandex majority control (59.3 percent), but prevents the newly united companies from blocking drivers, partners or passengers from getting involved with rival services.

When the merger does finalize, Uber and Yandex will be interchangeable: either company’s app will let you book rides, and drivers can accept either service’s ride requests.

The alliance represents Uber’s second withdrawal from direct competition in as many years, following its Chinese division’s merger with Didi Chuxing in 2016. And in both cases, there were similar reasons to bow out: Uber struggled against both an incumbent and its own troubles (whether finances, regulation or protests) in the area. A merger with the local heavyweight lifts some of that burden for Uber while maintaining a stake it wouldn’t have if it exited the market.

Via: Bloomberg

Source: Federal Antimonopoly Service