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Techmeme
December 4, 2019, 11:10 AM

Top News

The Keyword:
Larry Page steps down as Alphabet CEO; Sundar Pichai to lead both Alphabet and Google  —  Our very first founders' letter in our 2004 S-1 began: … We believe those central tenets are still true today.  The company is not conventional and continues to make ambitious bets on new technology, especially with our Alphabet structure.
Peter Kafka / Vox:
Tom Krazit / Mostly Cloudy:
Amazon unveils Local Zones, small data centers far from main AWS regions, general availability of Outposts, and a Verizon partnership for low latency 5G gear  —  THE AWS TAKE ON EDGE COMPUTING  —  AWS CEO Andy Jassy (left) and Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg (right) introduce AWS Wavelength Tuesday at re:Invent 2019.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Amazon launches a battery-powered portable Echo speaker in India with an enclosed 4,800mAh battery, claims up to 10 hours of continuous music playback  —  After launching nearly a dozen Echo speaker models in India in two years, Amazon said on Wednesday it is adding a new variant to the mix …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Mozilla removes four Firefox extensions made by Avast and AVG after reports that they were harvesting user data and browsing histories  —  The four extensions, two from Avast and two from AVG, are still available on the Chrome Web Store.  —  Mozilla removed today four Firefox extensions …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Kustomer, an omnichannel CRM platform for enterprise customer service, raises $60M Series E led by Coatue, bringing its total raised to ~$173M  —  Kustomer, a CRM startup that's taking on the likes of Zendesk, Salesforce, and many other bigger and older providers, has closed yet another round of funding …
More: FinSMEs and VentureBeat
Newley Purnell / Wall Street Journal:
India, which is increasingly trying to shelter local companies, has erected regulatory hurdles over the past year for how US tech firms operate in the country  —  New barriers make world's biggest untapped digital market a slog for Walmart, Facebook; taking cues from China's protectionism
Anna Wiener / New Yorker:
A profile of Hipcamp, a platform for campsite booking where listings include off-grid plots, RV hookups, ski huts, farmhouses, tepees, tree houses, and cabins  —  Can a startup save the wilderness by disrupting it?  —  In Northern California, booking a public campsite is a blood sport.
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Firefox 71 arrives with Picture-in-Picture support on Windows for all video sites, Enhanced Tracking Protection and Lockwise password manager improvements, more  —  Mozilla today launched Firefox 71 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS.  Firefox 71 includes Lockwise password manager improvements …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google adds a chat feature to Google Photos, rolling out over the next week to iOS, Android, and the web  —  An argument could be made that Google has over-indulged in its creation of way too many messaging apps in years past.  But today's launch of a new messaging service …
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Postmates shuts Mexico City office laying off employees; sources say at least several dozen have been laid off including people across its offices in the US  —  - Postmates has laid off dozens of employees and told employees in Mexico City that it's closing that office.

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UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
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Featured Podcasts

The Social Radars:
Ron Conway, Founder, SV Angel Part 4 (Bonus)
Come be a fly on the wall as Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston and Carolynn Levy talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it.
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Hard Fork:
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The Logan Bartlett Show:
Rick Smith (CEO, Axon): The Wild Ride From Near-Bankruptcy to $50B+
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
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The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'Sewing Machine Repair Shop', With Patrick McGee
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
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Decoder with Nilay Patel:
How private equity kills companies and communities
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
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Earlier Picks

Shara Tibken / CNET:
Dani Deahl / The Verge:
Caroline Haskins / VICE:
Shirin Ghaffary / Vox: