Techmeme
December 4, 2019, 11:30 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:
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 …
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 …
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.
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
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
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 …
TechCrunch:
SEC filing: Sequoia Capital has raised nearly $1B for later-stage US investments and ~$2.4B for venture and growth deals in China  —  Noted Silicon Valley venture capital fund Sequoia Capital has raised nearly $1 billion for later-stage U.S. investments and roughly $2.4 billion for venture …
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.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Reddit publishes its 2019 retrospective: 430M MAUs, up 30% YoY, with 199M posts, 1.7B comments, and 32B upvotes; Bill Gates AMA had the most upvotes with 110K  —  In a year-end retrospective released this morning, Reddit says its user base grew 30% this year to reach 430 million monthly active users, as of the end of October.

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