Daily Tech Snippet: Monday October 26

• Big headlines from last week: Smashing earnings from  Alphabet (the new Google), Amazon and Microsoft. Markets loved Google for lower spending and a share buyback; and Microsoft and Amazon for gushers of cash from their cloud businesses. Amazon Posts an Unexpected Profit, and Its Shares Soar; Microsoft Earnings Climb, Lifted by Strong Growth in Cloud Computing; Google Announces Stock Buyback as Earnings Rise. 

• Twitter's Jack Dorsey gave back a third of his stock to Twitter employees to lift morale. 

• Google's first earnings amid a change of guard led to this headline: The New Google: ‘All the Assholes Have Left’

• Zuckerberg Flies to India, Where Facebook’s Web Access for All Has Been a Tough Sell: The Internet.org suite, rebranded last month as Free Basics, is now in 25 countries, from Indonesia to Panama. Facebook is investing heavily in other parts of the project, including experiments to deliver cheap Wi-Fi to remote villages and to beam Internet service from high-flying drones. Mr. Zuckerberg is also determined to win over the Indian public. Last month, he hosted a live-streamed chat with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, from Facebook’s Silicon Valley headquarters. And this week, Mr. Zuckerberg will be in New Delhi, where he will take questions from some of Facebook’s 130 million Indian users. Internet.org’s free services — which include news articles, health and job information and a text-only version of Facebook — are deliberately stripped down to minimize data use and the cost to the phone company. Facebook says the primary goal is to show people what the Internet is all about. But many Indians want more and complain that, contrary to its altruistic claims, the project is simply a way to get them onto Facebook and to sign up for paid plans from Reliance. Internet activists have also attacked Facebook, accusing it of cherry-picking partners to include in its walled garden rather than simply offering a small amount of free access to the whole Internet. Their concerns have struck a chord with the Indian government, which is considering new rules that would govern such free services. The magnitude of the task ahead was apparent during a reporter’s visit in August to Dharavi, home to as many as a million of Mumbai’s poor. Several billboards advertised Freenet, Reliance’s version of Internet.org. But in the neighborhood’s narrow alleys, where rivulets of raw sewage competed with sandaled feet, there was little evidence that anyone had taken notice. At Yahoo Mobilewala, a nearby phone shop named in honor of the American Internet company, the owner, Rizwan Khan, offered service from every major carrier. But his stack of Reliance chips — each in a blue Freenet envelope that said “Go free Facebook” — was gathering dust in its display case.

• Rumor: Uber Refueling Its Warchest Yet Again, At A Valuation Of Up To $70B: Another month, another billion for Uber… The ride-hailing business is reportedly raising yet again — planning to raise close to $1 billion in new investment according to the NYT citing “people close to the matter”, with investors looking at a valuation of between $60 billion and $70 billion for the six-year-old startup. If the NYT’s report is on the money, it comes mere months after the WSJ reported Uber had raised almost $1 billion in new financing, with a valuation then, in July, of more than $50 billion.

• Facebook updates its search feature to drive more conversation: On Thursday, Facebook announced that it's making a few updates to the way search works on the site to make it easier than ever to find conversations running through your social circle. In a company blog post, Facebook said that it wants to make search a better tool for sparking conversation on the social network. For example, public posts or posts made by your friends will begin showing up in search results, as will what Facebook calls "public conversations." Basically, that enables Facebook to become a place where people can more easily dip into discussions about the topic of the day. "When a link gets shared widely on Facebook, it often anchors an interesting public conversation," the company said in a post. "With one tap, you can find public posts about a link, see popular quotes and phrases mentioned in these posts, and check out an aggregate overview of sentiment." So if you found yourself completely perplexed by "pizza rat" or "pirate cat" or, you know, "Hillary Clinton Benghazi hearing," you should be able to hop into Facebook and look up what your friends and others are saying about it. The updates to search will start rolling out for its U.S. English users Thursday, Facebook said, with more plans for search  in the pipeline.

• YouTube has a new music service... What is YouTube Music? YouTube Music is a new app from Google that lets you specifically search for music on the site. That means you get more focused results — a search for "Prince," for example, won't bring up videos about royalty. Well, not of the non-musical variety, anyway. The app will also suggest other songs that you may like, based on your preferences. Doesn't YouTube already have a music service? You may remember that YouTube previously launched a service called YouTube Music Key, which was in an open beta, and seems to have been discontinued in light of the new service. how does this work with YouTube's new subscription service, YouTube Red? Subscribing to YouTube Red, Google's new ad-free subscription service, will get you access to ad-free versions of YouTube, YouTube Gaming and YouTube Music, plus Google Play Music. That will cost you $10 per month if you're an Android user and $13 per month if you're on iOS. You will be able to use the YouTube Music app for free, but those who don't pay will still see ads and not have access to some of the more advanced features. How does this stack up against other services? You could always listen to YouTube, with ads, for free, so why would you pay for that? There are a few perks that may convince you. For one, you no longer have to leave the soundtrack of your day up to the whim of the auto-play algorithm or take the time to actually make your own playlists. Plus, on mobile, you couldn't just keep it running in the background — if you wanted to listen to YouTube, that was all you were going to do. YouTube Music fixes all of these problems. Can I download it now? Not yet. You will have to wait a little while. Although YouTube Red will launch next Thursday, the Music portion of it is scheduled to be out only by the end of the year.

• ..and that caused Disney's ESPN to withdraw content from YouTube: Walt Disney Co's sports network ESPN said it will not make its content available on YouTube, due to the recently announced ad-free subscription-based offering coined YouTube Red. ESPN would not be part of the subscription service at launch due to "rights and legal" issues, a YouTube spokeswoman told Reuters.

• Microsoft Goes Upscale With Fifth Avenue Flagship Store: Most of the luxury brands on the storefronts of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, one of the world’s most famous shopping thoroughfares, seem to belong together, like the notes of a song. There are Tiffany & Company, Gucci, Armani, Valentino, Rolex and — cue the sound of a record needle sliding off vinyl — Microsoft? Yes, the company that brought us Windows and Office is opening a store on the street that brought us $5,000 handbags and $20,000 watches. The doors of the striking new flagship Microsoft Store will open to the public on Monday. It’s an expensive gamble on a retail strategy that is still a long way from paying off. It does not take a detective to see that the foot traffic is often light at the Microsoft stores the company has opened — the Fifth Avenue store will be its 113th — over the last six years. That’s a contrast with the jamborees usually found over at Apple’s stores, inevitably a few blocks away or across the mall from Microsoft’s electronics boutiques. I got a preview tour of the store last week. It’s clear the building renovation cost a fortune, though Microsoft executives wouldn’t say how much. The company gutted a building from the 1930s that was previously a Fendi store, replacing all but the top of its facade with huge sheets of glass. Walking into the store, what hits you first are the Microsoft devices arrayed on large open tables in the middle of the room. There is a collection of Surface Books, the company’s first laptop, which has received positive reviews and goes on sale Monday. Nearby is the Surface Pro 4, the latest version of the company’s popular tablet computer. An Xbox set up in the front corner of the store — an area Microsoft calls the living room — lets people play Halo 5: Guardians, the science-fiction shooter game that goes on sale Tuesday. Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, is showing more patience with the company’s stores than he has with other unfulfilled initiatives begun under his predecessor, Steven A. Ballmer. Mr. Nadella shut down a Microsoft group that made television shows for people with Xboxes, and he cut the staff working on Microsoft’s phone hardware to a fraction of its former size. Why do Microsoft Stores survive? The bricks-and-mortar alternatives for showing new Microsoft products in their best light are not great. The number of electronics stores has dwindled, leaving just one giant in the United States, Best Buy. And while the stores of wireless carriers are good for putting smartphones in front of the public, category-bending tablets and laptops often require explanations from more-trained specialists.

• Hackers Demand Ransom From TalkTalk, British Telecom Firm ...BAE Hired to Investigate: The chief executive of TalkTalk, a British telecommunications provider, said on Friday that she had received a ransom demand from hackers who had claimed responsibility for stealing data on some of the company’s four million customers. TalkTalk, which offers cable and fixed-line services in Britain, said local authorities had opened a criminal investigation into the widespread data breach. The hackers may have gained access to personal data on the company’s customers, including sensitive information like credit card details, dates of birth and addresses. TalkTalk’s shares fell as much as 11 percent in morning trading in London, but recovered by the afternoon and were down 2.3 percent in midafternoon trading. Despite the claims of responsibility, it remained unclear whether the group that had contacted TalkTalk was behind the breach or whether the ransom demands were credible. Yet TalkTalk’s data breach — the third successful attack on the company in the past 12 months — is the latest in a number of online hackings that have affected a wide range of companies, including Target, Home Depot and JPMorgan Chase. It also potentially represents a high-profile example of hackers’ efforts to ransom stolen online data to companies or individuals. Such tactics, commonly known as ransomware, have often involved hackers encrypting people’s computer data and holding it hostage until a fee is paid. In certain instances, hackers have also stolen data directly from companies and demanded payment for not publishing the material online.