Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, March 17 2016

• Flipkart and Amazon may have explored sale talks, say sources: Flipkart reportedly considered selling itself to Amazon, upending the notion that India’s largest online retailer would go full distance as an independent Internet giant. half-a-dozen sources told ET of the discussions between Flipkart and Amazon, and emphasised there is no reason to believe that a deal will be struck or that talks are still ongoing between the two. The talks were held until as recently as the last quarter of 2015, one of the sources said. ET was not able to determine the exact timeline of these talks or if they were initiated by one of Flipkart's investors. Flipkart itself denied that it is up for sale, or that it is in the market for capital. Three of the sources, who are top-level executives in venture capital and private equity firms, said Amazon made a preliminary offer of up to $8 billion to acquire Flipkart, nearly half of its previous stated valuation of $15.2 billion. A mutual fund managed by Morgan Stanley slashed the value of its Flipkart shares by 27% last month to about $11 billion, increasing speculation that new investors will back the company at a lower valuation. Flipkart-Amazon talks went cold after the offer was perceived to be too low, but the sources said the situation can change given Alibaba's interest in Flipkart.


• What AlphaGo’s sly move says about machine creativity: AlphaGo, the computer system Google engineers trained to master the ancient game of Go, needed only one move to make it abundantly clear that it has left humans in its dust. The move came Thursday, in the second game of AlphaGo’s 4-1 landmark victory over South Korean Lee Sedol, one of the world’s best Go players. About an hour into the match, AlphaGo placed one of its stones in a nontraditional spot on the board that surprised those watching. “I don’t really know if it’s a good or bad move,” said Michael Redmond, a commentator on a live English broadcast. “It’s a very strange move.” Redmond, one of the Western world’s best Go players, could only crack a smile. “I thought it was a mistake,” his broadcast partner, Chris Garlock, said with a laugh. Sedol, however, was more serious. He stared at the board, then got up from the table and left the room. As Sedol returned after a few minutes and pondered his next move, it became clear that AlphaGo’s move was no mistake. It might be strange, but it definitely wasn’t bad. It was brilliant.  Sedol would take almost 16 minutes to make his next move. He would never recover, losing the match. “Almost no human pro would’ve thought of it, I think,” Redmond said after the match. Pedro Domingos, a computer science professor at the University of Washington and author of “The Master Algorithm,” saw a parallel between AlphaGo’s style and how chess prodigy Bobby Fischer was feared because his early moves were considered too foolish to even be made. But as Fischer’s matches wore on, the ill-advised moves suddenly looked genius. “If that’s not creative, then what is?” Domingos asked. He sees machines delivering creative results, and they’re just getting started. Domingos believes a computer eventually will write a best-selling book. And he thinks there’s a 50-50 chance that a computer writes a hit pop song in the next decade, given advances in artificial intelligence techniques and computing power.Domingos said such advances shouldn’t come as a surprise, as machines increasingly demonstrate that creativity isn’t magical and distinctly human.

• Apple looks to Google’s Cloud Platform as it diversifies its infrastructure: Rumors are flying today that Apple is moving part of its cloud business from AWS to Google’s Cloud Platform. We did some asking around and yes, it does appear that Apple has made some moves to diversify its iCloud storage, tapping Google for some of that business. This is another huge win for Google and a — at the very least perceived — loss of ground for AWS, which has watched as Dropbox moved large parts of its US storage business in-house and Spotify moved at least part of its business to Google, too. If you’re keeping score, it’s been a good month for Google and especially the new head of its cloud business Diane Greene. High profile clients like Spotify and Apple would certainly make it more attractive to other enterprise customers. Google’s Cloud Platform may have the power of Google’s data center technology behind it, but that hasn’t yet helped the company in competing against AWS and Microsoft’s Azure platform. AWS has the advantage of an early start and Azure profits from Microsoft’s existing sales channels and it’s focus on hybrid cloud technologies. And even with the power of Microsoft behind it, though, Azure remains a distant second in the cloud business. One industry insider who chose not to be identified, however, told TechCrunch that Apple was definitely exploring its options around public cloud vendors, looking at Microsoft Azure and Google, but it had not made any firm decisions yet. It’s worth noting that Apple already uses  Azure (and AWS) for iCloud services and media serving. Whether Apple will continue moving off of AWS and onto other platforms is anyone’s guess. But at the moment it appears that this is a matter of diversifying its portfolio of cloud suppliers. Another wrinkle here is that Apple is currently expanding its data center in Prineville, Oregon, and is also expected to invest heavily in new data centers in both the U.S. and Europe. If that’s the case, moving from AWS to Google, then Google to Prineville wouldn’t seem to make sense. Why not just wait until the data center construction is complete?If Apple is indeed simply looking to diversify its infrastructure, though, then adding Google (on top of Azure, AWS and its own data centers) would be a fairly logical move. It’s also possible that Apple is only looking at some very specific services on the Google cloud, with theBigQuery data analytics platform being the prime suspect here.


• Morgan Stanley Downgrades LinkedIn, Slashes Price Target by 34 Percent: Why we were wrong" isn't a phrase one might want to include when sending out a note to clients, but it's what Morgan Stanley analysts were forced to deploy on Wednesday morning as they downgraded LinkedIn Corp. The shift from "overweight' to "equalweight," is the latest in a series of cuts for LinkedIn after it reported lackluster earnings last month that sent shares tumbling by more than 40 percent the following day.  "With its current product offering, LinkedIn isn't likely to be as big of a platform as we previously thought," the team, led by Brian Nowak, said. "We are reducing our price target to $125 [per] share (from $190) as well, driven by our lower long-term cash flow forecasts and increased execution uncertainty." Two key factors that had kept Morgan Stanley bullish are now abating. The first was growth in LinkedIn's Talent Solutions segment, which includes such things as subscription revenue. Nowak and his team now believe that growth has slowed both domestically and internationally for this segment and that the increased focus on small- and medium-sized businesses betokens that LinkedIn is hitting a peak when it comes to larger companies. The second was the monetization potential in new segments, known as Lynda and Sales Navigator. Recent events have caused the team to grow skeptical.

• Oracle Increases Buyback Program by $10 Billion:  Oracle reported a higher-than-expected quarterly profit and increased its stock buyback program by $10 billion. Oracle, like other established tech companies, is moving its business to the cloud by providing services remotely through data centers versus selling installed software. Total cloud revenue rose 39.5 percent to $735 million, accounting for about 8 percent of Oracle’s total revenue. Net income fell to $2.14 billion, or 50 cents a share, in the third quarter, from $2.50 billion, or 56 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company reported a profit of 64 cents a share. Revenue fell 3.4 percent to $9.01 billion. Shares rose more than 4 percent in after-hours trading.

• Beyond Swipe Right: The Pickup Line Gets a Makeover: Thanks to the popular dating app Tinder, a one-size-fits-all gesture of approval, swipe right, has in theory replaced awkward fumbles at an opening conversational gambit. But in fact, the migration of courtship online has resulted in a refinement of pickup lines far beyond ’70s singles-bar relics like “Hey baby, what’s your sign?” and “Are those space pants? Because your butt is out of this world.” The simple “Hi” and its variations are the surest ways to end a conversation; they’re too generic and, lately, indistinguishable from the way bots initiate contact. Only those with the most flattering profile pictures can get away with generic questions like “How was your weekend?” A more common approach in Tinder-land is to quickly skim the other person’s profile and find something to comment on — a detail from a photo, or a line of profile text. Statements tend to work better than questions as conversation starters; they’re less personal and invite reactions and commentary rather than disclosure. With the help of a friend, Brent Bailey, 24, a programmer in New York, came up with a successful opener to someone who mentioned her life being “a bit messy” in her profile. “I could make your life a whole lot messier,” he responded. Mr. Bailey said he was more successful with crowd-sourced pickup lines. “As a rule, my friends are way less concerned about my dignity, so they usually come up with something way more interesting than I would,” he said. On the dating service Bumble, where women must initiate all conversations, Ms. Smothers decided to try what she called a “dumb troll-y” gimmick — asking every match if he was a feminist. Men loved it, and she got a high response rate she has yet to match.

• LivingSocial is laying off more than half of its workers: LivingSocial will cut more than half of its workforce, according to anannouncement from the company saying it has completed its "initial phase of turnaround." The move is the latest sign of the decline of "daily deal" sites once thought of as the next big thing for online shopping. The sites typically offered users heavily discounted vouchers at local businesses in exchange for a cut of deal sales. But some business complained that the model wasn't actually a good deal for them -- and consumers seemed to tire of the flood of emails sent by the services. The latest job cuts are part of a series of layoffs. The local company cut 400 jobs in 2014 and another 200 in October of last year. Competitor Groupon has also struggled: In September it announced it would lay off 1,100 people -- roughly 10 percent of its workforce -- and close operations in six countries. LivingSocial plans to move away from the voucher business, but hopes to expand "card-linked" discounts, according to the press release. The company is trying out a program called Restaurant Plus in handful of cities that works by letting customers reserve a deal with payment card information on file, but not charging them for it until it's actually used.