Techmeme
November 2, 2019, 12:30 PM

Top News

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Google can make a success of Fitbit if it can be managed as well as the integration of HTC's smartphone team, but it can also end up as a fiasco like Nest  —  The HTC acquisition went well, Nest did not — will this?  —  Google is buying Fitbit and the reasons why are both simple and complicated.
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Google to acquire Fitbit at $7.35 per share in cash, valuing the company at about $2.1B  —  - The acquisition pits Alphabet against fellow tech giant Apple in the wearable fitness tracking space.  —  Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks on stage during the annual Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, May 8, 2018.
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David Ruddock / Android Police:
Google's Fitbit acquisition feels like a top-down decision of executives who found enough yes men to agree to the delusion that Fitbit can revive Wear OS  —  Google announced today that it would purchase Fitbit, the ailing manufacturer of fitness-focused wearables and smartwatches, for $2.1 billion.
Swati Khandelwal / The Hacker News:
Google releases patch for a Chrome zero-day vulnerability being used in the wild that allows hackers to escape sandbox protections via malicious websites  —  Attention readers, if you are using Chrome on your Windows, Mac, and Linux computers, you need to update your web browsing software immediately …
Elizabeth Schulze / CNBC:
Russia's “sovereign internet” law, which aims to enable disconnecting the country's internet from the rest of the world, went into effect on Friday  —  - The law tightens Moscow's control over the country's internet infrastructure and aims to provide a way for Russia to disconnect its networks from the rest of the world.
Will Oremus / OneZero:
Twitter's ban on political and issue ads will let companies advertise things like fossil fuel-based products but ban ads from activists advocating against them  —  The company's feel-good decision is already a mess.  —  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced on Wednesday that the company …
Kyle Orland / Ars Technica:
Julia Carrie Wong / The Guardian:
The debate over Facebook's political ads policy has been too US-centric and the company hasn't explained how that policy will work in other countries  —  When Facebook wrote to Joe Biden's campaign to say it would not back down from its decision to exempt politicians from its ban …

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