Techmeme
February 7, 2018, 7:55 AM

Top News

Olivia Zaleski / Bloomberg:
Inside the battle among Airbnb investors and executives over whether to remain private or IPO; sources say founders and early employees cashed ~$350M of equity  —  Investors and executives disagreed over when to take the home-rental company public.  The stay-private crowd is winning.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
A pollster Facebook hired in April '17, who quit after 6 months, says his role was to measure Zuckerberg's approval ratings and track speeches amid US tour  —  Why Tavis McGinn quit after six months  —  Tavis McGinn applied for a job at Facebook last year hoping to work in market research.
Snap Investor Relations:
Snap reports Q4 revenue of $285.7M, up 72% YoY, as DAUs rise 8.9M to 187M, up 18% YoY; net loss of $350M, up 106% YoY  —  02/06/18 VENICE, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)— Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP) today announced financial results for the quarter and full year ended December 31, 2017.
Eric Zimmerman / The Keyword:
Google begins rolling out ability to book flights and hotels directly from search results  —  Planning a trip involves lots of searching for flights, hotels, things to do, itineraries and more.  The process is often cumbersome because we have to use multiple tools to gather everything we need—especially on a mobile phone.
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Microsoft is offering OneDrive for Business for free to select businesses for the length of their existing contracts with Google/Box/Dropbox, for up to 3 years  —  Microsoft has a new OneDrive-for-Business compete offer for organizations which currently use some of its rivals' cloud storage services.
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Streaming service ESPN Plus launching next month at $4.99/mo; sources say it won't have ESPN cable channels' content, which still requires ESPN subscription  —  How much would you pay for sports you weren't watching on TV?  —  Want to pay for a subscription to ESPN without paying for a subscription to other cable channels?
Motherboard:
Pornhub says it's banning AI-generated fake porn videos because they're “nonconsensual”, yet such “deepfake” videos are still available via site search results  —  In its search of a platform that will host fake porn videos of celebrities created with a machine learning algorithm …
Mark Maurer / The Real Deal New York:
Sources: Google to buy 1.2M sq. ft. Chelsea Market building in NYC, where it leases 400K sq. ft. already, for $2B+ in deal expected to close in two months  —  Jamestown in contract to sell the 1.2M sf office-and-retail property at 75 Ninth Avenue  —  Google did not have to search far and wide for results.
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Apple HomePod review: best-in-class sound for $349 and above, looks great, but Siri only works with Apple Music, bad support for third-party services  —  I don't think I've ever described a tech product as “lonely” before, but it's the word I thought about the most as I was reviewing Apple's new HomePod.
Ben Lovejoy / 9to5Mac:

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Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:

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