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LONDON — Amazon will start selling home insurance in the U.K. through partnerships with three local insurers, further expanding the e-commerce titan’s push into financial services.

The company announced Wednesday it is opening a new service called Amazon Insurance Store.

The product will show shoppers quotes for policies from insurance providers including Ageas, Co-op and LV+ General Insurance, with Amazon pocketing a commission on each sale from its partners. It is similar to offerings from price comparison sites like Comparethemarket and Moneysupermarket.

Customers who want to apply for home insurance on Amazon can do so by filling out a questionnaire, which asks them questions on their home insurance needs. They’re then shown a list of quotes from Amazon’s insurance partners, along with reviews and star ratings from other customers. Once a user decides on which policy they want to go with, they pay for it using Amazon’s own online checkout. The service is initially rolling out to a few select customers but will be available across the U.K. by the end of 2022.

“Finding the right home insurance policy can be a time-consuming and confusing task, with quotes that often leave out essential coverage in order to lead with the lowest price,” said Jonathan Feifs, general manager of Amazon’s European Payment Products, in a press release Wednesday. “When we set out to create the Amazon Insurance Store, we wanted to improve the experience for customers shopping for home insurance so they could easily compare options and make an informed, objective decision—just like shopping on Amazon.”

Feifs added that the launch was “just the beginning,” suggesting Amazon may expand into other insurance categories over time. It’s the first time the company has launched a store selling insurance. Amazon’s earlier insurance products include product warranty and third-party seller insurance.

It marks the latest foray by Amazon into the world of finance. The company already offers lines of credit to merchants selling items on its platform. It also offers buy now, pay later loans — which allow shoppers to pay off purchases over monthly installments — in the U.S. through a partnership with fintech firm Affirm, and in the U.K. with banking giant Barclays. Last year, the company launched insurance for small and medium-sized business customers in the U.K.

Ben Wood, an analyst at research firm CCS Insight, said the move showed how Amazon is “reinvigorating its efforts to further diversify its business as we emerge from the pandemic and pressure grows on its traditional activities.”

The company “has a wealth of consumer data that it can use as it ventures into new areas,” Wood told CNBC, adding: “Whether this is relevant to this foray into home insurance is unclear, but the value can’t be underestimated as it expands its its business in the future.”

Amazon saw sales on its site boom after the 2020 Covid-19 outbreak, which drove shoppers online as they were restricted from being able to go outside. However, shares of the company have fallen over 30% this year, with higher interest rates hammering tech stocks and investor fears of softening e-commerce sales as the cost-of-living crisis dents sentiment. Add to that the fact that Amazon is heading into a bleak holiday shopping season — particularly in the U.K., where officials have warned of blackouts this winter due to disruption to gas supplies caused by the Russia-Ukraine war.

Earlier this year, Amazon increased the price of its Prime subscription service, which offers faster delivery times and TV and film streaming, to $139 from $119 in the U.S., highlighting the challenges posed by supply chain disruptions, labor constrains and high inflation. Prices for Prime in Europe saw even steeper climbs. Higher subscription costs helped boost Amazon’s revenues in the second quarter, which rose 7% to $121.2 billion. Amazon is due to release its third-quarter numbers later this month. In July, the company forecast third-quarter revenue growth of between 13% and 17%.

Amazon’s move into the insurance market comes amid increased hype over so-called insurance technology, or insurtech. Quite a few startups have scored sizable sums of cash from investors with the proposition that insurance is a market in severe need of digitization. Wefox, a German insurtech firm, recently raised $400 million in a round valuing the company at $4.5 billion, for example — 50% higher than its previous funding round, despite a grim fintech funding climate.

– CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report

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Google agrees to pay Texas $1.4 billion data privacy settlement

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Google agrees to pay Texas .4 billion data privacy settlement

A Google corporate logo hangs above the entrance to the company’s office at St. John’s Terminal in New York City on March 11, 2025.

Gary Hershorn | Corbis News | Getty Images

Google agreed to pay nearly $1.4 billion to the state of Texas to settle allegations of violating the data privacy rights of state residents, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Friday.

Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully tracking and collecting the private data of users.

The attorney general said the settlement, which covers allegations in two separate lawsuits against the search engine and app giant, dwarfed all past settlements by other states with Google for similar data privacy violations.

Google’s settlement comes nearly 10 months after Paxton obtained a $1.4 billion settlement for Texas from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to resolve claims of unauthorized use of biometric data by users of those popular social media platforms.

“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement on Friday.

“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” said Paxton.

“This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”

Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company did not admit any wrongdoing or liability in the settlement, which involves allegations related to the Chrome browser’s incognito setting, disclosures related to location history on the Google Maps app, and biometric claims related to Google Photo.

Castaneda said Google does not have to make any changes to products in connection with the settlement and that all of the policy changes that the company made in connection with the allegations were previously announced or implemented.

“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Castaneda said.

“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”

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Virtual chronic care company Omada Health files for IPO

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Virtual chronic care company Omada Health files for IPO

Omada Health smart devices in use.

Courtesy: Omada Health

Virtual care company Omada Health filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital health company that’s signaled its intent to hit the public markets despite a turbulent economy.

Founded in 2012, Omada offers virtual care programs to support patients with chronic conditions like prediabetes, diabetes and hypertension. The company describes its approach as a “between-visit care model” that is complementary to the broader health-care ecosystem, according to its prospectus.

Revenue increased 57% in the first quarter to $55 million, up from $35.1 million during the same period last year, the filing said. The San Francisco-based company generated $169.8 million in revenue during 2024, up 38% from $122.8 million the previous year.

Omada’s net loss narrowed to $9.4 million during its first quarter from $19 million during the same period last year. It reported a net loss of $47.1 million in 2024, compared to a $67.5 million net loss during 2023.

The IPO market has been largely dormant across the tech sector for the past three years, and within digital health, it’s been almost completely dead. After President Donald Trump announced a sweeping tariff policy that plunged U.S. markets into turmoil last month, taking a company public is an even riskier endeavor. Online lender Klarna delayed its long-anticipated IPO, as did ticket marketplace StubHub.

But Omada Health isn’t the first digital health company to file for its public market debut this year. Virtual physical therapy startup Hinge Health filed its prospectus in March, and provided an update with its first-quarter earnings on Monday, a signal to investors that it’s looking to forge ahead.

Omada contracts with employers, and the company said it works with more than 2,000 customers and supports 679,000 members as of March 31. More than 156 million Americans suffer from at least one chronic condition, so there is a significant market opportunity, according to the company’s filing.

In 2022, Omada announced a $192 million funding round that pushed its valuation above $1 billion. U.S. Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity’s FMR LLC are the largest outside shareholders in the company, each owning between 9% and 10% of the stock.

“To our prospective shareholders, thank you for learning more about Omada. I invite you join our journey,” Omada co-founder and CEO Sean Duffy said in the filing. “In front of us is a unique chance to build a promising and successful business while truly changing lives.”

WATCH: The IPO market is likely to pick up near Labor Day, says FirstMark’s Rick Heitzmann

The IPO market is likely to pick up near Labor Day, says FirstMark's Rick Heitzmann

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Google would need to shift up to 2,000 employees for antitrust remedies, search head says

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Google would need to shift up to 2,000 employees for antitrust remedies, search head says

Liz Reid, vice president, search, Google speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022.

Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images

Testimony in Google‘s antitrust search remedies trial that wrapped hearings Friday shows how the company is calculating possible changes proposed by the Department of Justice.

Google head of search Liz Reid testified in court Tuesday that the company would need to divert between 1,000 and 2,000 employees, roughly 20% of Google’s search organization, to carry out some of the proposed remedies, a source with knowledge of the proceedings confirmed.

The testimony comes during the final days of the remedies trial, which will determine what penalties should be taken against Google after a judge last year ruled the company has held an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.

The DOJ, which filed the original antitrust suit and proposed remedies, asked the judge to force Google to share its data used for generating search results, such as click data. It also asked for the company to remove the use of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones. 

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Google pays Apple billions of dollars per year to be the default search engine on iPhones. It’s lucrative for Apple and a valuable way for Google to get more search volume and users.

Apple’s SVP of Services Eddy Cue testified Wednesday that Apple chooses to feature Google because it’s “the best search engine.”

The DOJ also proposed the company divest its Chrome browser but that was not included in Reid’s initial calculation, the source confirmed.

Reid on Tuesday said Google’s proprietary “Knowledge Graph” database, which it uses to surface search results, contains more than 500 billion facts, according to the source, and that Google has invested more than $20 billion in engineering costs and content acquisition over more than a decade.

“People ask Google questions they wouldn’t ask anyone else,” she said, according to the source.

Reid echoed Google’s argument that sharing its data would create privacy risks, the source confirmed.

Closing arguments for the search remedies trial will take place May 29th and 30th, followed by the judge’s decision expected in August.

The company faces a separate remedies trial for its advertising tech business, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 22.

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