Daily Pulse: Yahoo to Cut Back on Content, Binge On is Big for T-Mobile, IBM's Watson and Google's AI Look to Level Up

Boohoo: Yahoo is on the verge of shuttering about half of its content verticals, Peter Sterne reports for Politico. The ax is falling for tech, food, autos, health and music. Yahoo tech editor Dan Tynan is leaving the company (he announced in a memo obtained by Politico), but star tech writer David Pogue is expected to remain. The backdrop is this internet pioneer’s continuing struggle to define itself, a Herculean task Marissa Mayer signed on for 3+ years ago. More bad related news: Amir Efrati at The Information reports that traffic to Yahoo’s “three most important products — Yahoo Mail, the Yahoo.com home page and Yahoo Search … declined meaningfully” over the past year (paywall).

Apple Stands Alone: CEO Tim Cook was quick to issue a full-throated defense of its decision not to cooperate with law enforcement by unlocking the iPhone of a perpetrator in the San Bernardino terror shootings. Twitter was on fire, of course, but as of this writing no other major Silicon Valley tech company has weighed in. True, none of them make smartphones, but many are responsible for the protection the private data of millions of customers. 

Good News / Bad News: The Fed did not include an assessment of economic conditions with today’s release of its January minutes, a strong signal that a March rate increase isn’t likely because “they could not decide whether market turmoil would impede domestic economic growth,” writes Binyamin Appelbaum of The New York Times. Markets seemed to like the (lack of) news, extending gains when the comments were revealed. Indeed — equities capped the biggest three-day gain since last August's mini-crash.

T-Mobile’s controversial “Binge-On” promotion has had the desired effect on the company’s fortunes: Q4 profit nearly tripled and it added more than two million subscribers. "We aren't just winning customers, we're keeping them too," CEO John Legere said on an earnings call.

Today in AI: You can't beat Watson — so you might as well join him. IBM is holding a $5 million competition to come up with something for Watson to do. Actually, the challenge is to "come up with something revolutionary while using Watson as the underlying technology," writes Jonathan Vanian at Fortune ... Go grandmaster Lee Sedol has accepted a $1 million challenge to go head-to-head with Google's Go-playing machine, which shocked the AI world three weeks ago by beating Europe champion Fan Hui. Sedol is ranked 5th in the world, Fan 633rd, so it's going whole 'nother level. The match commences March 9 in Seoul, and this revolution will be televised — or at least streamed on YouTube.

Cover Art: Italian composer Ennio Morricone performs at the O2 Arena, on February 16, 2016 in London, England. (EDITOR'S NOTE: Image has been processed with digital filters) 

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What you may have missed — and really should read:

• Uber’s CEO says regulators doomed a company just like his 100 years ago
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• Are women's conferences really all that helpful?

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