The Briefing

By Nick Wingfield

Greetings!

This is the time of year when the leaves begin to turn color, Earth, Wind and Fire blares from car stereos, and two tech companies that aspire to be players in consumer hardwareAmazon and Microsoftshow off the gadgets they want you to buy this holiday season. This year, Amazon goes first with an event on Wednesday, followed by Microsoft on Thursday. Already, though, an unexpected personnel change has upstaged the product news from the companies: Panos Panay, the Microsoft executive in charge of its hardware efforts, announced Monday morning that hes leaving the company after 19 years. Bloomberg reported that Panay is expected to land at Amazon, replacing that companys outgoing devices chief, Dave Limp.

The defection of talent from one of the Seattle areas biggest tech companies to another is fun gossip fodder, the way a player jumping between the New York Yankees and Mets might be (to make things even more interesting, Microsoft ought to hire Limp). But changes in hardware leadership may not be enough to get either Amazon or Microsoft to the World Series of consumer devices, an event that seems to feature a single contestantApplecompeting against itself year after year.

Microsofts devices business, including its Surface family of computers and other hardware, isnt doing great at the moment, at least from a growth standpoint. In its fiscal year ended June 30, devices revenue fell 24% to $5.52 billion from a year earlier. Meanwhile, Amazon, which doesnt disclose its device sales, has earned a reputation for not knowing when to say no to new hardware projects. In years past, it has released an Alexa-powered microwave oven, a security drone that flies around your house and a robot that follows you. Dont be surprised to see Amazon release fewer such goofy products this year under its newish CEO, Andy Jassy, than it did in the Jeff Bezos era.

At the end of the day though, Amazon and Microsoft are dabblers in consumer hardware, while Apple is all in on the category. Bringing in fresh blood wont change that.

Unity Takes It Back

Change of plans: On Monday, after an uproar from its customers, game development company Unity Technologies said it was walking back big portions of a plan that would have smacked its customers with additional fees, according to Bloomberg. The company initially said it was going to charge developers every time a user installed one of their games if it exceeded a certain number of installations, but now its tentatively adding a cap on how much revenue it can squeeze out of a gamerelative to the game's revenuethe report said.

This story might sound familiar. A few months ago, Reddit faced its own backlash when the social media company said it would charge developers and third-party applications that access Reddits site with software called application program interfaces. But unlike Unity, Reddit dug in its heels. It threatened to remove moderators protesting the companys changes and in some cases has started replacing them with new ones, multiple outlets have reported.

Its hard to know why one revolt succeeded and the other didnt. Perhaps the fact that Reddit controls one of the internets biggest discussion platforms, Reddit itself, allowed it to more easily squash dissent. Or maybe, as a private company, Reddit was less sensitive to public opinion. In any case, Unitys backtracking may defuse the outcry from its customers, but it wont solve the problem that prompted it to change its business plan in the first place: It needs to turn a profit.Akash Pasricha

In Other News

• Instacart priced its IPO share price at $30, at the upper end of the companys target range. That will give the company a valuation of $9.9 billion (more here).
• Marketing tech company Klaviyo lifted its IPO price range to between $27 and $29, which means the firm will now target a valuation of around $9 billion, quite close to the valuation it fetched in 2021 when it last raised money.
• Stitch Fix is shutting down its operations in the U.K. by the end of 2023 as it continues to cut costs, and the company said revenue in the U.S. could decline by up to 20% this quarter (more here).
• The CEO of Square, Alyssa Henry, is leaving the payments processing company on Oct. 2. Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Square's parent company Block, will take on the Henry's duties (more here).

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What Were Reading

DeepMinds Co-Founder: Generative AI Is Just a Phase. Whats Next Is Interactive AI (MIT Technology Review)

U.K. Broadcasters Develop Free Digital TV Service to Take On Streaming (Financial Times)

A Key Question in Googles Trial: How Formidable Is Its Data Advantage? (The New York Times)

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About Nick Wingfield

Nick Wingfield joined The Information as senior editor in 2018 after previously reporting on technology for The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. He is based in Seattle and can be found on Twitter at @nickwingfield.

Email Nick | Twitter (@nickwingfield)