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February 4, 2019, 6:05 PM
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| Alphabet: |
Alphabet Q4: revenue of $39.3B, up 22% YoY, net income of $8.9B, CPC down 29%, and paid clicks on Google properties up 66% YoY; stock down 3% — MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - February 4, 2019 - Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) today announced financial results for the quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2018.
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Wall Street Journal, GeekWire, The Verge, Android Authority, ABC News, ZDNet, Business Insider, CNBC, and Investor's Business Daily
Tweets: @levynews, @backlon, @fredericl, @lexnfx, @lexnfx, and @martyswant
| Sara Salinas / CNBC: |
Alphabet's traffic acquisition costs hit $7.44B for Q4, up from $6.58B in Q3, and ad revenue grew 20% YoY to $32.6B, amid competition from rivals like Amazon — - Traffic acquisition costs as a percent of advertising revenue came in at 23 percent, matching analyst estimates and falling right in line with previous quarters.| Abner Li / 9to5Google: |
Alphabet's “Other Bets”, which includes Waymo, Verily, Fiber and others, had Q4 revenue of $154M, with operating losses rising to $1.3B, up from $732M in Q3 — Alphabet today announced its Q4 2018 earnings to wrap up the last fiscal year. Including the busy holiday season … | Mark Zuckerberg: |
On Facebook's 15th anniversary, Zuckerberg says it will spend more on safety and security in 2019 than it had revenue at its IPO, pans critics' “negative” focus — Fifteen years ago today, I launched the first version of the Facebook website from my college dorm.
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New York Times, Recode, Business Insider, CNET, and Boing Boing
Tweets: @anandwrites, @sarahfrier, @rmac18, @anandwrites, @alexhern, @facebook, @dseetharaman, @rmac18, @sarahfrier, and @alexstamos
| Vox: |
Tweets: @pessimism, @haleyoverland, @mikhlin, @antirobust, @thatguybg, @seanilling, @ezraklein, @antoniogm, @ambi24, @mattyglesias, @moskov, @chadfelixg, @karaswisher, and @alexstamos
| Lauren Feiner / CNBC: |
Slack says it has submitted a confidential draft IPO filing with the SEC — Slack confidentially filed to go public, according to a press release published Monday. — Slack is one of a number of tech IPOs expected in 2019, including Uber, Lyft and Airbnb. — Here is the full release from Slack:
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Bloomberg, Slack, TechCrunch, SiliconANGLE, The Hill, TechCrunch, New York Times, PYMNTS.com, Geek News Central, CNET, GeekWire, Neowin, Forbes, VentureBeat, Fortune, Axios, Mashable, and Slashdot
Tweets: @ashleyfeinberg, @t_blom, and @kidney_boy
| Janko Roettgers / Variety: |
Avi Bar-Zeev, veteran AR/VR pioneer and Hololens co-inventor, left Apple's AR team this past month; he joined the company in June 2016 — AR/VR pioneer and Hololens co-inventor Avi Bar-Zeev left Apple last month, Variety has learned. Bar-Zeev had been working on Apple's augmented reality headset …
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MacRumors, Engadget, 9to5Mac, Neowin, Cult of Mac, MSPoweruser, iPhone Hacks, and Road to VR. Thanks:@jank0
| Dieter Bohn / The Verge: |
Google announces Live Transcribe, a near-real time transcriber, and Sound Amplifier; both are Pixel 3 accessibility features and available as apps on Play store — It's also releasing a Sound Amplifier feature — both only on Android — Google is announcing two new features for Android phones today …
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The Keyword, Android Police, Google AI Blog, PhoneArena, CNET, Lifehacker, Thurrott, WinBuzzer, VentureBeat, 9to5Google, Engadget, TechCrunch, SlashGear, Android Authority, Droid Life, and Axios. Tweets: @googleeurope
| Alex Hern / The Guardian: |
After the death of a British teen, Instagram head announces plans to debut “sensitivity screens” to blur images of self-harm unless users click to reveal them — Facebook-owned app promises changes to better shield users from self-harm images — Instagram will introduce …
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Telegraph, The Hill, BBC, CNET, TechCrunch, The Verge, and Boing Boing
Tweets: @tamaleaver and @matthfield
| Erik Schatzker / Bloomberg: |
How a US-based manufacturer of an “indestructible” smartphone screen helped FBI in its Huawei sting after the Chinese giant allegedly tried to steal its secrets — The sample looked like an ordinary piece of glass, 4 inches square and transparent on both sides.
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Mashable, Business Wire, BGR, Engadget, Gizmodo, Android Authority, CNBC, and CNET
Tweets: @paulmozur, @niubi, @waltmossberg, @bw, @b_fung, and @davidjoachim
| Alex Heath / Cheddar: |
Sources: Facebook hires the team behind Chainspace, a startup building tech for decentralized “smart contracts”, its first blockchain acquisition — Facebook has made its first acquisition in the blockchain space. — The social network has quietly hired the team behind Chainspace …
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The Block, CoinDesk, BREAKERMAG, and Cointelegraph
| Joe Rossignol / MacRumors: |
Apple's iOS 12.2 beta has a new Motion & Orientation Access toggle in Privacy settings, off by default, that limits gyroscope and accelerometer access in Safari — Last month, Apple released iOS 12.2 in beta with several new features, including the Apple News app in Canada …
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Digiday, 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, Softpedia News, Apple Must, Cult of Mac, and The Mac Observer
| Jeff John Roberts / Fortune: |
Crypto exchange Kraken acquires British trading startup Crypto Facilities in a deal worth at least $100M, says it is raising $100M from its largest customers — The cryptocurrency exchange Kraken says it has paid “nine figures” to acquire Crypto Facilities, a British trading firm that specializes in derivatives.
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Kraken Blog, CoinDesk, The Block, Financial Post, CryptoSlate, Bitsonline, FinSMEs, Ethereum World News, NewsBTC, NullTX, TechCrunch, and CryptoGlobe. Tweets: @jonnymoetrades. Thanks:@jeffjohnroberts
| Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: |
Microsoft acquires DataSense, a data management platform used by schools across the US, and the team behind it from BrightBytes for an undisclosed sum — One of Microsoft's oldest and biggest verticals for its Azure cloud business has been education, and today it announced an acquisition …
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Microsoft EDU, SiliconANGLE, BrightBytes, EdSurge, Xconomy, ZDNet, and GeekWire
| Jessica Guynn / USA Today: |
Filing: Amazon names Rosalind Brewer, Starbucks' COO and board director, to its all-white board, making her its second black director and the first since 2005 — SAN FRANCISCO — Amazon.com has named its first black director after facing growing pressure to diversify the all-white board overseeing … | Julia Fioretti / Reuters: |
Tencent-backed Maoyan Entertainment, China's biggest movie-ticketing platform by sales, fell 1.1% in its Hong Kong debut after raising $250M in its IPO — HONG KONG (Reuters) - Tencent-backed Maoyan Entertainment, China's biggest movie-ticketing platform by sales, fell 1.1 percent …
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TechCrunch, South China Morning Post, Variety, and Tech in Asia
| Abner Li / 9to5Google: |
Instant Tethering, launched in 2017 to let Chrome OS easily share a Pixel's cell connection, is coming to dozens of non-Google Chrome OS and Android devices — Google introduced Instant Tethering in 2017 to let Chrome OS devices automatically share an Android phone's cellular connection.
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CNET, The Verge, ZDNet, TechCrunch, XDA Developers, Thurrott, Android Police, Android Authority, VentureBeat, Engadget, Droid Life, and About Chromebooks
| Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: |
EU report: tech firms are now assessing 89% of flagged content within 24 hours and 72% of such illegal hate speech is removed, up from 40% and 28% in 2016 — In its latest monitoring report of a voluntary Code of Conduct on illegal hate speech, which platforms including Facebook …
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EU Press Room, CNET, Computer Business Review, New Europe, and MIT Technology Review. Tweets: @danbraun79
| Nat Levy / GeekWire: |
New filing: Amazon spent $1.65B on acquisitions in 2018, headlined by Ring and PillPack deals — Amazon spent $1.65 billion on acquisitions in 2018, according to a new regulatory filing from the company. That makes it the second most acquisitive year in the company's history by dollar volume … | Kris Holt / Engadget: |
Periscope says users can now add up to three guests as voice call-ins to a stream, “like a talkshow”, and is working on letting the guests share video — Periscope is paving the way for broadcasters to host talk shows and invite viewers to go beyond comments and hearts by joining the conversation with their voices.
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Android Police, Periscope, Digital Trends, The Verge, CNET, TechCrunch, and Mashable
| New York Times: |
The Instagram egg account, with 10M+ followers, was started by an advertising professional; a Hulu ad based on the egg debuted Sunday promoting mental health — He works in advertising. — When Chris Godfrey learned in early January that the record for “likes” on an Instagram post was held …
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Fortune, Mashable, ClickZ, TechCrunch, Socialnomics, CNBC, CNET, Adweek, USA Today, Tubefilter, Vox, BuzzFeed News, TIME, Digital Trends, Business Insider, and iPhone in Canada Blog
Tweets: @pardesoteric, @jbillinson, @nytimes, and @willsommer
| Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica: |
US court overturns FCC's attempt to deny tribal residents broadband subsidies, says FCC failed to provide evidence and ignored harm of limiting broadband access — Court: FCC failed to provide evidence and ignored harm to broadband access. — A federal appeals court has overturned Ajit Pai's attempt … | Kate Clark / TechCrunch: |
Interview with Bird CEO Travis VanderZanden on scooter startup copycats, unit economics, safety, Bird Platform, electric bikes, seasonality, and more — Bird's electric scooters were on full display at the Upfront Summit in Malibu last week, a two-day event that brings together the likes of Hollywood …
Tweets: @maestromobile
| Yuji Nakamura / Bloomberg: |
Amid a relatively weak-looking lineup of games for 2019, Sony reports operating income in games fell 14% YoY to ~$666M for the holiday quarter; stock drops 8%+ — Sony Corp. reported weaker profits in the PlayStation business and cut its annual revenue forecast, triggering the steepest share decline in almost three and a half years.
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Gamasutra
| Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: |
Aurora Solar, which wants to use a combination of lidar data and computer vision to design and streamline solar panel installation, raises $20M Series A — Despite recent setbacks, solar remains a bright spot in the often wobbly renewable energy sector. In the U.S., the solar market …
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PR Newswire, TechCrunch, and FinSMEs
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