Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, March 23

• Google Ad Crisis Spreads as Biggest Marketers Halt Spending: Google’s advertising crisis went global after some of the biggest marketers including AT&T Inc. and Johnson & Johnson halted spending on YouTube and the internet company’s display network, citing concern their ads would run alongside offensive videos.The controversy erupted last week after the London-based Times newspaper reported that some ads were running with YouTube videos that promoted terrorism or anti-Semitism. The U.K. government and the Guardian newspaper took down ads from the video site and Havas SA, the world’s sixth-largest advertising and marketing company, pulled its U.K. clients’ ads from Google’s display ad network and YouTube. On Wednesday, the boycott spread across the Atlantic as U.S. companies that are among the heaviest ad spenders pulled back, potentially costing Google and YouTube hundreds of millions of dollars in lost business. AT&T and Verizon Communications Inc., the largest U.S. wireless carriers, said they had stopped non-search advertising spending with Google. Johnson & Johnson, the world’s biggest health-care company, paused all YouTube advertising globally.

• China Bets on Sensitive U.S. Start-Ups, Worrying the Pentagon: When the United States Air Force wanted help making military robots more perceptive, it turned to a Boston-based artificial intelligence start-up called Neurala. But when Neurala needed money, it got little response from the American military. So Neurala turned to China, landing an undisclosed sum from an investment firm backed by a state-run Chinese company. Chinese firms have become significant investors in American start-ups working on cutting-edge technologies with potential military applications. The start-ups include companies that make rocket engines for spacecraft, sensors for autonomous navy ships, and printers that make flexible screens that could be used in fighter-plane cockpits. Many of the Chinese firms are owned by state-owned companies or have connections to Chinese leaders. The deals are ringing alarm bells in Washington. According to a new white paper commissioned by the Department of Defense, Beijing is encouraging Chinese companies with close government ties to invest in American start-ups specializing in critical technologies like artificial intelligence and robots to advance China’s military capacity as well as its economy.

• Amazon delays its entry into Southeast Asia: Amazon has postponed its much-anticipated entry into Southeast Asia. The company initially planned to launch local e-commerce services in Singapore during the first quarter of this year, as we reported in November, but two sources with knowledge of the plans told TechCrunch that the schedule has slipped to “later this year”. The Singapore launch project has been fairly guarded within Amazon itself, details of the initiative are not widely known by Amazon staff in the region, but it appears that the groundwork required to set its business up has taken longer than the company originally anticipated. In an interesting recent twist, it looks like Amazon is gearing up to launch in Australia first. A Twitter account associated with the U.S. firm this week teased an imminent launch, while ABC News reported that Amazon has hired a team of over 100 in Sydney to kick things off. Nonetheless, Amazon’s eventual entry to Southeast Asia will create a new front for its battle with Alibaba, which purchased a major share in regional e-commerce firm Lazada for $1 billion last year and is already fighting Amazon in India, where it has a major stake in e-commerce and payments firm Paytm.