Alphabet’s YouTube is planning to launch an online store for streaming video services, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The company has renewed talks with entertainment companies about participating in the platform, which it is referring to internally as a “channel store”, the report said, citing people close to the recent discussions.

The platform has been in the works for at least 18 months and could be available as early as this fall, the report added.

Alphabet did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

With more consumers cutting the cord on cable or satellite TV and shifting to subscription-based streaming services, the planned launch will allow YouTube to join companies like Roku and Apple in a bid to gain a portion of the already crowded streaming market.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that Walmart has held talks with media companies about including streaming entertainment in its membership service.

Last month, YouTube collaborated with Shopify to allow merchants to sell through the video platform, as the Canadian company looks to tap into the growing number of content creators launching their own e-commerce stores. The partnership, which builds on an existing one with Google, will allow merchants to integrate their online stores with YouTube, which reaches over two billion monthly users. Shopify, which makes tools for merchants to set up their online stores, in June launched new features to help its clients sell to other businesses and on Twitter in a bid to counter a post-pandemic slowdown in online shopping.

© Thomson Reuters 2022

An armed man who fled after attempting to breach an FBI office in Ohio appears to have posted a “call to arms” on Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform after federal agents searched the ex-president’s home, US media reported Friday.

An account bearing the name of 42-year-old suspect Ricky Shiffer, identified by Ohio authorities on Friday, featured multiple posts of violent anger including his failed plan to attack the FBI, according to screen shots of the profile, multiple US outlets reported.

“This is your call to arms,” an account bearing Shiffer’s name posted on Truth Social.

“I am proposing war,” the account posted, urging “patriots” to kill federal agents the day after Trump’s Florida residence was searched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation — a move that sparked outrage in right-wing circles.

Shortly before it was removed from the social media platform, the same account appeared on Thursday to confess to attempting to storm FBI offices in the midwestern state of Ohio.

The FBI said Thursday that a person armed with a weapon had tried to breach the entry to the bureau’s office in the city of Cincinnati.

According to local media, the man fired a nail gun and brandished an AR-15-style rifle before fleeing by car.

“Well, I thought I had a way through bullet proof glass, and I didn’t. If you don’t hear from me, it is true I tried attacking the FBI, and it’ll mean either I was taken off the internet, the FBI got me, or they sent the regular cops while,” read a post, which appears to end mid-sentence and was shared Thursday morning, according to reports.

The incident drew nationwide attention as it occurred only a few days after the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion, although there was no immediate confirmation the events were linked.

The suspect in Ohio was killed in a standoff with police after a vehicle pursuit and exchange of gunfire, authorities said.

Amid his ongoing legal battle against Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk teased a potential social media site of his own as a competitor for Twitter. While responding to a question from one of his followers, Musk dropped a cryptic tweet, hinting at a potential new social media platform ‘X.com’.

On Tuesday, a social media user asked the billionaire tech tycoon whether he had given any thought to creating his own social platform.

Musk, who is quite active on Twitter, noticed the question and responded by just writing “X.com”.

X.com used to be the domain name of a startup Musk founded two decades ago, which he later merged with financial services company PayPal.

In fact, last week, Musk talked about the website during Tesla‘s annual shareholder meeting last week as well.

“I do sort of have a grander vision for what I thought X Corporation could have been back in the day. It’s a pretty grand vision and of course, that could be started from scratch but I think Twitter would accelerate that by three to five years,” Musk had reportedly said.

The tweet comes at a time when Musk is involved in a high-stakes legal battle with Twitter.

Twitter recently sued Musk after he decided to back out of the $44 billion (roughly Rs. 3.5 lakh crore) takeover deal. In April, Musk reached an acquisition agreement with Twitter at $54.20 (roughly Rs. 4,500) per share in a transaction valued at approximately $44 billion.

However, Musk put the deal on hold in May to allow his team to review the veracity of Twitter’s claim that less than 5 percent of accounts on the platform are bots or spam.

Back in June, Musk had openly accused the microblogging website of breaching the merger agreement and threatened to walk away and call off the acquisition of the social media company for not providing the data he has requested on spam and fake accounts.

Musk alleged that Twitter is “actively resisting and thwarting his information rights” as outlined by the deal, CNN reported, citing the letter he sent to Twitter’s head of legal, policy and trust, Vijaya Gadde.

Musk demanded that Twitter turn over information about its testing methodologies to support its claims that bots and fake accounts constitute less than 5 percent of the platform’s active user base, a figure the company has consistently stated for years in boilerplate public disclosures.