Discord could be up for sale, with sources at VentureBeat and Bloomberg suggesting the group communication platform could have a US$10 billion price tag hanging on the door. Bloomberg's sources suggest Microsoft could be the main company in talks to make a purchase, while further sources suggest the company may be considering the alternate option of going public. Discord built its reputation within the gaming community but during the pandemic began to broaden its focus to wider communities and businesses as a free alternative to communication platforms like Slack.

In local news, this week Telstra announced exactly how it plans to split itself into separate entities, with a notice to the ASX outlining a separation into four distinct companies – ServeCo, InfraCo Fixed, InfraCo Towers, and Telstra International. All four entities will be owned by Telstra HoldCo, which is the company shareholders will own shares in. Telstra expects the changes to be finalised by the end of 2021 and will put the company into a position to make a play for buying the NBN.

Australia's biggest ever hybrid solar and battery farm has begun construction near Uralla in Northern NSW. The project will result in 720 Megawatts of energy generation, costing $768 million and taking around three years to complete with some parts going live earlier during a staged rollout. Eventual capacity should serve 250,000 homes. The project is set to continue to allow sheep to graze the same lands the solar farm is built upon.

New research shows that Google's ratio of zero-click searches has grown to almost two-thirds of all search during 2020. Data from a panel of 100 million users via SimilarWeb and research firm SparkToro places the percentage of searches worldwide that lead to no clickthrough to another website at 65%. Zero click searches indicate Google provided enough information on the resulting page that no further click was necessary, which feeds into wider arguments around the search engines control over the presentation of information online.

Elsewhere at the Alphabet company, YouTube is testing a new feature that can automatically detect products that appear in videos on the platform and provide related content links, opening up new possibilities for online shopping via the video platform. This could also turn out to be even more annoying than all the pop up recommendations at the end of videos.

Microsoft has announced it will rename its Xbox Live service to Xbox network as a way to clarify the difference between the general online network service and the paid Xbox Live Gold membership service. On Xbox consoles having an Xbox Live Gold membership has been a requirement for all online play, but Microsoft announced in January it will soon change that so free-to-play games like Fortnite can be played online without a membership.

In entertainment news, Disney has announced two of its biggest releases for this American summer have been delayed but will also release on Disney+ the same day they go into movie theatres. Cruella will now release in May while Black Widow has moved to July, both becoming available as premium streaming options via Disney+ on the same release day as theatres. With Australian dates for Black Widow originally scheduled slightly ahead of US cinemas local release may be in cinemas for a number of days prior to Disney+ launch.

After its success with Pokemon Go, Niantic has announced a new partnership with Nintendo to create an augmented reality game based on Nintendo's Pikmin games. Pikmin games are a real-time strategy and puzzle game hybrid, letting you grow cute little creatures to help overcome obstacles.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.