Finally, Marlin Equity Partners completed its purchase of media collaboration platform SHIFT, which specializes in sharing content for the media and entertainment industries. Marlin is another frequent martech investor, with a portfolio including Aprimo, Bazaarvoice, and Blue Hornet.
Any chance you’d hear more about Amazon’s pre-Thanksgiving data breach was swept away by Friday’s report that personal information on up to a 500 million guests at Marriott, Sheraton, Westin, and other Starwood hotels was exposed in a hack of its reservation systems. The breach began in 2014 and was only shut down this past September. We also learned last week that more 60 million email accounts were exposed over two years by a breach at the U.S. Postal Service.
Ah, but here’s some good news: Google and anti-ad-fraud vendor White Ops announced they have dismantled one of the biggest and most sophisticated ad fraud operations ever. The :”3ve” botnet infected at least 1.7 million computers at any time, counterfeited more than 10,000 Web sites, and generated from 3 to 12 billion requests per day to sell fake online advertising. The U.S. Attorney in New York filed criminal charges against the fraudsters. This does count as good news, right?
Enterprise AI vendor Uniphore has acquired CDP ActionIQ and cloud data engineering system Infoworks. The combination of products will create a Zero Data AI Cloud that simplifies AI deployments by enabling companies to access data for AI projects without moving it from existing systems. Prices were not announced.