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Finding top-performing stocks doesn't have to mean a tradeoff with environmental, social and governance values. Microsoft and Edwards Lifesciences are two top stocks that made IBD's just-released ESG 50 list. Their strong fundamentals and ESG initiatives show up in the chart action.

Zendesk, iHeartMedia, Nvidia and Microsoft highlighted as Zacks Bull and Bear of the Day

Amazon (AMZN) files lawsuit against U.S. Defense Department's decision to award its $10 billion JEDI cloud contract to Microsoft.

(Bloomberg) -- Big tech companies are making changes to some of the viral mechanics that drew users to their services in the first place. Instagram has started to hide “Like” totals on posts in the U.S. and will soon do it for the rest of the world. Twitter Inc. now gives its members the option to hide replies to their tweets, allowing them to partially conceal the ugliness and combativeness that’s endemic on the service.And Amazon.com Inc., a pioneer of crowdsourcing product reviews, recently changed the way it displays customer feedback at the top of all product page on the site. It now prioritizes ratings from customers over those who took the extra time to write a review. It’s the first such adjustment in 20 years.The companies all deserve credit for conscientiously reconsidering the consequences of their design choices. These seemingly simple mechanics created bad incentives—be it the mental toll of the Instagram popularity contest, the bullying nature of online comments or the fake reviews paid for by desperate brands.But examine these moves further, and it’s easy to conclude that they don’t completely fix the unhealthy dynamics that have ruined our attention spans, corrupted political discourse and tricked us into buying junk.Let’s take Instagram’s move first: The photo app is obscuring the number of Likes on everyone’s pictures. A few prominent Instagram personalities condemned the decision and threatened to seek the dopamine hit of Like totals elsewhere. “I’m not posting on IG after this week cuz they removing the likes. Hmmmm what should I get into now?” tweeted singer Nicki Minaj (108 million Instagram followers).But the most striking aspect of Instagram’s change is how feeble it is. While users can no longer compare the relative popularity of their photographs to other people’s, they can still find the Like totals on their own pictures with an additional tap. Instagram is owned by Facebook Inc., famous for testing changes to see how they impact user behavior, and it’s likely the company has concluded that without Like totals, people will post more. The move is unlikely to change the feedback loop of attention and approval that’s been linked to negative outcomes like increased anxiety and depression, especially acute in teenagers.Twitter’s change is similarly thin. Users can conceal replies to their posts, but another user needs only to click an additional link to unlock them. Twitter is likely hoping that the option to conceal replies can stimulate casual users to post more. It’s not so much hiding the vitriol endemic to its discourse as much as it’s offering users the option to throw a white sheet over it.Amazon’s move is a little harder to understand. I started noticing customer rating totals were appearing instead of review totals over the summer. In an emailed statement, an Amazon spokeswoman says only that it’s easier than ever to submit a one- to five-star rating on a purchased product and that the company is “always experimenting to provide a better shopping experience for customers.”The change may have been driven by similar thinking to Instagram and Twitter. Over the years, Amazon’s product review system has been famously corrupted by competitive and avaricious third-party sellers (see here, here and here). Those merchants give out free products to earn reviews and try to break Amazon’s rules by paying people to gin up positive feedback, which then improves their visibility through the site’s search engine.By changing the overall feedback mechanism to prioritize customer rankings, Amazon may be trying to break this cycle of gamesmanship. But like Instagram and Twitter, it’s hesitant to disavow the reviews tool altogether. Customer reviews are still easy to find, even in cases where the bulk of them were created by content farms of paid contractors.Tristan Harris, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit that aims to get technologists to consider the impact of their work, is largely unimpressed. “It’s fine and great that they are changing some of the feedback loops,” he says, but “you have this digital Frankenstein wrecking the world, and this is basically just tying a pinkie behind its back.”Here’s a more optimistic way to think about these changes: They’re a start.This article also ran in Bloomberg Technology’s Fully Charged newsletter. Sign up here.And here’s what you need to know in global technology newsAmazon sued the U.S. over losing a $10 billion Pentagon contract to Microsoft.SoftBank may look to Japan for lessons on how to revive WeWork. First, the company will have to do more to lift morale among employees, many of whom hold stock that’s underwater.Netflix data shows that subscribers aren’t bailing for rival services from Apple and Disney.Some 200 employees demonstrated outside Google’s San Francisco offices, protesting personnel decisions.Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen says that tech CEOs should be sent to jail if they allow a foreign power to meddle in elections again.Elon Musk said orders for the Cybertruck have climbed to 200,000. Customers can reserve the truck with a $100 refundable deposit—and hope that Tesla has figured out how to fortify the windows by the time production starts in 2021.To contact the author of this story: Brad Stone in San Francisco at bstone12@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Milian at mmilian@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

Inequality has become an obsession among global elites and in America, the left charges President Donald Trump’s economic policies exacerbate the problem. Democrats want to raise income taxes on the affluent and corporations, and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are pushing wealth taxes to pay for student-debt relief, free college tuition, infrastructure projects, and similar initiatives to lessen inequality.

From Zillow Group to Amazon.com, Seattle is home to some of the largest online marketplaces in the nation. Former Microsoft product manager and entrepreneur Shan Sundaram is following their lead, but with a new target offering: small businesses. Together with co-founders Aimee Zhang — a real estate broker at Compass — and Microsoft program manager Aravind Namasivayam, Sundaram is creating an online marketplace called BizPappa for entrepreneurs to buy businesses, and for mom-and-pop shops to sell.

An infamous Iranian hacker group could be targeting industrial control systems to cause major disruptions in power grids, oil refineries, and other physical energy assets in the US and other nations

Microsoft released the Windows 10 October 2018 Update on October 2, then pulled it days later. The update has still not been re-released. Where's the problem? And will it happen again? Read more: https://zd.net/2RhmsDH

Is Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) a good stock to buy right now? We at Insider Monkey like to examine what billionaires and hedge funds think of a company before spending days of research on it. Given their 2 and 20 payment structure, hedge funds have more incentives and resources than the average investor. The funds have […]

Amazon, for the first time, directly links comments by President Trump to the award of the contract to Microsoft last month.

Amazon.com Inc. has filed a lawsuit challenging the Pentagon’s award of a $10 billion cloud contract to arch-rival Microsoft Corp., the latest twist in a months-long dispute over the coveted deal.

(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. filed a lawsuit on Friday challenging the Defense Department’s choice of rival Microsoft Corp. for a Pentagon cloud-computing contract worth as much as $10 billion.The lawsuit, which was filed under seal in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, marks Amazon’s most aggressive push to defend its competitive edge in the lucrative and cutthroat world of federal government contracts.Amazon previously said it planned to formally protest its loss of the Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, cloud contract because the evaluation process was deficient.“It’s critical for our country that the government and its elected leaders administer procurements objectively and in a manner that is free from political influence,” Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener said in a Nov. 14 statement. “Numerous aspects of the JEDI evaluation process contained clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias -- and it’s important that these matters be examined and rectified.”Representatives of the Pentagon and Amazon didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.In court paperwork, Amazon said the lawsuit was filed under seal because it contains “sensitive” information that “would cause severe competitive harm” if it’s released.Read More: Amazon Seen Focusing on Trump in Pentagon Contract ChallengeMicrosoft asked to intervene in the suit, arguing in a filing that the case will “directly affect Microsoft’s interests” and “carries the potential for significant economic and other harms to Microsoft.”It’s widely expected that Amazon will argue that its loss of the high-profile contract was due to improper political influence by President Donald Trump. Exhibits filed with Friday’s complaint include Trump’s comments to the press in July as well as a Fox News segment called "Swamp Watch."In July, Trump stunned lawmakers and technology companies when he openly questioned whether the JEDI contract was being competitively bid, citing complaints from Microsoft, Oracle Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. Trump has long criticized Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on everything from the shipping rates his company pays the U.S. Postal Service to his personal ownership of what Trump calls “the Amazon Washington Post.”A new book by Guy Snodgrass, a speechwriter to former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, alleges that Trump, in the summer of 2018, told Mattis to “screw Amazon” and lock it out of the bid. Mattis didn’t do what Trump asked, Snodgrass wrote. Mattis has criticized the book, but hasn’t commented on the allegation concerning Amazon.Dana Deasy, the Pentagon’s chief information officer, said during his confirmation hearing in late October that to the best of his knowledge, no one from the White House reached out to any members of the JEDI cloud contract selection team.Read More: Trump Attack on Cloud Bidding Gives Pentagon Chief Hard ChoicesProcurement experts have said it’s difficult for losing bidders such as Amazon to overturn contract awards by alleging political or vendor bias because it requires the company to show the agency took Trump’s comments into consideration when it picked Microsoft.While no law prohibits a president from weighing in on a contract, federal agencies must follow strict rules about what they can and can’t consider when making an award decision. Agencies must choose vendors based on the criteria outlined in their requests for proposals to avoid inviting a successful legal challenge, according to procurement experts.Amazon isn’t the only losing bidder suing the Pentagon. Oracle is also appealing a July ruling from the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that dismissed its legal challenge to the cloud contract.Both legal challenges could delay the Pentagon’s implementation of the contract the Defense Department considers critical to its modernization. The cloud project is designed to consolidate the department’s cloud computing infrastructure and modernize its technology systems. The contract is worth as much as $10 billion over 10 years and could offer the winner a bigger foothold in the burgeoning federal cloud market.(Updates with previous Amazon comment in fourth paragraph.)\--With assistance from Matt Day.To contact the reporter on this story: Naomi Nix in Washington at nnix1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Larry Liebert at lliebert@bloomberg.net, Peter Blumberg, John HarneyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

Amazon.com Inc on Friday filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims contesting the Pentagon's award of an up to $10 billion cloud computing contract to Microsoft Corp. An Amazon spokesman said that the company filed a complaint and supplemental motion for discovery. "The Complaint and related filings contain source selection sensitive information, as well as AWS's proprietary information, trade secrets, and confidential financial information, the public release of which would cause either party severe competitive harm," Amazon said in a court document seeking a protective order.

An Amazon spokesman said that the company filed a complaint and supplemental motion for discovery. "The Complaint and related filings contain source selection sensitive information, as well as AWS's proprietary information, trade secrets, and confidential financial information, the public release of which would cause either party severe competitive harm," Amazon said in a court document seeking a protective order. Last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper rejected any suggestion of bias in the Pentagon's decision to award Microsoft the contract after Amazon announced plans to challenge it.

Since 2016, Mary Ellen Smith has been responsible for transforming operational processes from a physical to digital supply chain and facilitating ease of partnering with Microsoft.

AWS is protesting the potential $10 billion cloud computing contract that the Defense Department awarded to Microsoft Corp. last month.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) shares have surged 34% in the last three months. Now the question is will HPE's recent run of success continue after it reports its quarterly financial results on Monday, November 25?

Get ready to hear a lot more about Kubernetes. The Greek word for helmsman or pilot, Kubernetes is shaping up to be the next big wave in computing. Cloud apps increasingly run in aptly-named containers.

A headline that shook the financial world Friday is Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, betting more than $1 billion that stock markets around the world will fall by March. Regardless, this is how prudent investors ought to think about the U.S. stock market. • The most important point from the chart is divergence in the relative strength index (RSI).

Let's dive into three tech stocks we found with our Zacks Stock Screener that growth investors might want to consider buying right now as the stock market remains near its new highs...