- Alphabet Edges Toward Settling the Android or Chrome Question: For years, Google, now known as Alphabet, has supported two operating systems on two very different tracks: Android and Chrome. But now the company is nodding in the direction of Android. Google is working toward allowing its low-cost Chromebook computing devices to work on the popular Android operating system. The work will take place over the next year, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Google is not indicating it plans to stop development of Chrome OS, but making Android work on Chromebooks opens the door to one of the few products that Chrome OS, the lesser-known operating system, had to itself. Chrome OS should not be confused with Google’s popular Chrome web browser. The first Android operating system for mobile devices was introduced about seven years ago as a direct competitor to Apple’s iOS mobile operating system. Since then, it has become the most widely used operating system in the world. Its development was led by an executive named Andy Rubin, who went on to lead much of the company’s robotics efforts before leaving Google last year. Google introduced Chrome OS about a year later, surprising some who wondered why the company needed two operating systems. Interestingly, its early development was led by Sundar Pichai, who is now the chief executive of the part of Alphabet that is still called Google. Chrome OS has gained a following in academia but very few other places. According to IDC, a market research firm, about 3.9 million Chromebooks were shipped to the American education sector last year. If Google should drop the Chrome OS, it will follow in the footsteps of Microsoft. The latest version of Microsoft’s flagship Windows operating system is meant to run on both PCs and mobile devices. Apple still supports separate operating systems for mobile devices and PCs.
- Amazon Launches ‘Pay With Amazon’ Buttons for Mobile Apps: Amazon says it is finally ready to turn its huge customer base into a big payments business outside of Amazon. For real this time. The e-commerce giant is bringing its “Pay with Amazon” buttons to mobile apps, while “tripling down” on placing its Pay with Amazon buttons on websites in overseas markets like Japan. The moves are the latest in the company’s on-again, off-again efforts to take advantage of the more than 200 million customer accounts it has on file by processing payments on websites outside of its own walls. Earlier this year, Amazon hired PayPal vet Patrick Gauthier to lead a newly created team dedicated solely to building a payments business across the Web and app world. The payments industry is watching closely. For years, it has been waiting for Amazon to become a real player, perhaps challenging PayPal along the way.
- Baidu’s Profit Tops Estimates Even as Spending Rises - Revenue up 36%, Shares pop 7%: Baidu Inc. kept spending under enough control to report a third-quarter profit that topped projections, giving the Chinese Internet search provider more room to boost a share buyback program to $2 billion. Revenue climbed 36 percent to 18.4 billion yuan ($2.89 billion), matching estimates. The board authorized a new block of share repurchases, after completing a $1 billion buyback program in the latest quarter, the Beijing-based company said in statement Friday. Chairman and Founder Robin Li is betting new services including home delivery and online video will drive growth beyond the company’s mainstay search advertising business. Baidu said this week its Qunar travel site will form an alliance and swap shares with rival Ctrip.com, the latest move toward consolidation in China’s Internet industry. Baidu Inc. kept spending under enough control to report a third-quarter profit that topped projections, giving the Chinese Internet search provider more room to boost a share buyback program to $2 billion. Adjusted earnings per ADS was $1.43 a share, exceeding the $1.28 average of analyst projections, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue climbed 36 percent to 18.4 billion yuan ($2.89 billion), matching estimates. The board authorized a new block of share repurchases, after completing a $1 billion buyback program in the latest quarter, the Beijing-based company said in statement Friday. Chairman and Founder Robin Li is betting new services including home delivery and online video will drive growth beyond the company’s mainstay search advertising business. Baidu said this week its Qunar travel site will form an alliance and swap shares with rival Ctrip.com, the latest move toward consolidation in China’s Internet industry. Baidu’s three major new businesses, video service iQiyi, online commerce site Nuomi and travel site Qunar, remain loss-making, dragging on profit generated by its core search advertising business. By taking a 25 percent stake in Ctrip, in return for 45 percent of Qunar, Baidu intends to cut costs and benefit from reduced competition. That may affect Baidu’s revenue.
- Microsoft Sells $13 Billion of Bonds in Month's Busiest Day: Microsoft tapped the bond market for $13 billion Thursday, its biggest sale ever, in the busiest session of the month for high-grade issuers. The seven-part deal eclipsed a mark set just eight months ago by the tech giant as it raises money to repurchase stock and repay existing debt. It sold its longest portion, a 40-year bond, at a yield that was 1.8 percentage points more than comparable government debt, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company sold $3 billion of 10-year notes at a spread of 0.18 percentage point more than its similar maturity debt in the secondary market on Wednesday. “This is a banner year for tech issuance, so they needed to price wide to get people to take down $13 billion,” CreditSights Inc. analyst Jordan Chalfin said in an interview. “For Microsoft, an extra five-10 basis points doesn’t really matter. Their debt-funded share buybacks are very accretive for equity holders.” Microsoft, one of only three non-financial companies with top AAA credit ratings, said in a filing on Thursday that it will use the proceeds for anything from working capital to stock repurchases and repayment of existing debt.
- LinkedIn Earnings Beat Expectations With $780M In Revenue, Stock Jumps 9%: LinkedIn handily beat analyst expectations today with revenue of $780 million and earnings of 78 cents per share. Analysts were expecting earnings of 45 cents per share on about $756 million in revenue. LinkedIn shares promptly spiked as much as 8 percent in extended trading. In total, the company’s revenue grew 37 percent year-over-year, up from around $568 million in the third quarter last year. The company’s Talent Solutions division was its fastest growing segment, up 46 percent year-over-year to $502 million in revenue. Marketing solutions grew 28 percent to $140 million in revenue, while subscription revenue grew 21 percent year-over-year to $138 million to round out the rest of the company’s revenue report. LinkedIn’s domestic growth continues at a healthy clip, up to $484 million in revenue from $343 million in the third quarter last year, up 41 percent. Its international segment is still not quite as large as its domestic business, but was still up from $225 million to $295 million, a jump of 31 percent. Basically, its domestic business is performing stronger than its international business — which is not all that surprising given the big presence and brand it has in the U.S. So, as expected, the company’s recruiting segment continues to be one of its fastest-growing. LinkedIn has basically become the go-to service for what are effectively a more modern form of resumes, making it a gold mine for recruiters seeking new talent. So it’s not all that surprising that recruiting and the company’s Talent Solutions division is one of its most important — and getting a lot of attention. The company has two new launches coming up — its referrals product in November, and a new revamped Recruiter platform coming early next year. Both those products are geared toward better automating the process, and eliminating redundant tasks, of searching for new recruits.
- Flipboard's Fanfare Fades as Executives Exit, Sale Talks Stall: Flipboard Inc. debuted in 2010 with the kind of fanfare any startup would envy. The news-reading app piggybacked perfectly on the debut of Apple’s iPad tablet and Steve Jobs’s promise of a new era for digital media. Critics loved Flipboard’s magazine-like layout, created by one of the first software designers of the iPhone, and investors poured money into the company. Almost five years later, Flipboard is struggling to live up to the praise. Several senior executives have departed, including co-founder Evan Doll, and talks to sell the company haven’t reached the finish line, according to people familiar with the plans, who asked not be named discussing private matters. Flipboard’s woes are indicative of a larger malaise gripping startups across the technology landscape as questions emerge about the sustainability of the tech-investment boom. Flipboard is performing well enough -- and, after raising more capital earlier this year, is at no risk of going out of business -- but is no longer a breakaway hit. People are finding media through their Facebook or Twitter feeds, limiting the need for a stand-alone application like Flipboard. Meanwhile, advertising rates -- the company’s main revenue stream-- have been in decline. While Flipboard’s reading app was a showpiece for the iPad five years ago, the company is now working to adjust to a changing digital-news market and live up to its $800 million valuation. Other companies facing similar questions about whether they can make good on early investor expectations -- and lofty private-market valuations -- include online storage service Dropbox Inc., note-taking company Evernote Corp., music-streaming service Deezer SA and blood-testing company Theranos Inc., said Anand Sanwal, chief executive officer of CB Insights, a firm that tracks startup investing. The companies face a challenge in that they could be too expensive for another company to buy, yet may not have the business fundamentals to justify their valuations to public investors through an initial public offering, he said.
- Samsung Deploys Cash Pile With $10 Billion Buyback, Capex Boost, As Phones Fail To Revive Growth: Samsung Electronics is tapping its $50 billion cash pile to buy back shares and invest in its components business after struggles in the smartphone division battered investors. Shares surged. The company will buy back and cancel 11.3 trillion won ($10 billion) of shares and boost capital spending by 14 percent this year, Samsung said Thursday. The announcements came after the company posted profit that trailed analyst estimates. Capital expenditure will rise to 27 trillion won this year as the company invests in chips and display plants. Samsung is struggling for an answer to Apple Inc. in high-end smartphones, trying price cuts, a $120 rebate program and new models to tempt consumers from buying iPhones. That has prompted a renewed focus on making components for earnings growth, with new semiconductor and display plants to get its parts into other vendors devices. Samsung said it will increase capital spending after posting profit that missed analysts’ estimates as price cuts on new Galaxy S6 smartphones failed to sway consumers from buying iPhones. Capital expenditure will rise 14 percent to 27 trillion won ($24 billion) this year, the company said Thursday. Net income, excluding minority interests, was 5.31 trillion won ($4.7 billion) in the third quarter with profit to fall in the current period, Samsung said. Increased marketing spending, including a $120 rebate program, hasn’t sparked sales of the premium devices that generate fatter profit margins. Samsung is investing in computer chip plants as it tries to revive Galaxy smartphone demand through a new mobile payment service and by releasing larger devices at least a month before the new iPhones to recapture market share from Apple Inc. Shares of Samsung rose 4.9 percent in Seoul, the highest since May. The rally erased their decline for the year.
- Ebay Exceeds Expectations While Paypal Flops: PayPal CEO Dan Schulman defended his strategy of inking deals with big merchants and smartphone applications and offering free peer-to-peer payments as investors sent shares down on concerns the efforts are hurting the company’s quarterly profit. PayPal, in its first quarter as a stand-alone company separate from EBay Inc., said it added 4 million accounts to reach 173 million users. Its total payments volume gained 20 percent to $69.7 billion from a year earlier. But investors reacted to the company’s declining take rate, a measure of how much money PayPal keeps from each payment made on its platform. That metric fell to 3.24 percent in the third quarter from 3.39 percent a year earlier, the company reported Wednesday in a statement, and shares dropped as much as 7.8 percent in extended trading. The goal of the July split with EBay was to make sure that each company could focus on their main businesses. EBay last week reported quarterly profit and sales that topped analysts’ estimates and raised its outlook, sending shares up the most in 10 years. PayPal’s strategy is to attract more customers and merchants and offer them expanded services as competition in the payments industry intensifies with startups Square Inc. and Stripe Inc. as well has Apple Inc. and Google Inc. who are trying to create digital wallets. Even JPMorgan Chase & Co., entered the digital payments race Monday. PayPal is processing more payments in stores like Macy’s and on popular smartphone applications like Uber and Airbnb. But PayPal keeps less money from each transaction because the clients that bring bigger volume to the payments company also have the leverage to negotiate lower rates. The downside of that strategy was on display when Square disclosed its money-losing relationship with Starbucks Corp. The challenge for Schulman is to differentiate PayPal as competition intensifies. Among the additional services the company offers is a merchant cash advance program called PayPal Working Capital, which gives preapproved loans to businesses that process payments through PayPal. PayPal also is getting into the international money-transfer business by purchasing Xoom Corp. for $890 million in a deal announced in July.
- Yelp - struggling so far this year - beats Street expectations on revenue sending shares up 7%: Yelp reported a bigger-than-expected 40 percent jump in quarterly revenue as more local businesses advertised on Yelp.com, its consumer review website. Shares of the company, whose website and app allow users to rate restaurants and a variety of other businesses, rose about 7 percent after the bell on Wednesday. To Wednesday's close of $22.07, Yelp's stock had fallen nearly 60 percent this year. San Francisco-based Yelp, which gets about four-fifths of its revenue from local advertisers, said the number of local advertising accounts rose about 37 percent to 104,200 in the third quarter. Yelp has been investing to grow its website beyond user reviews by investing in services such as restaurant reservations, food ordering and delivery. The company reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $8.1 million, or 11 cents per share, for the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with a profit of $3.6 million, or 5 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue rose to $143.6 million from $102.5 million.
- Verizon says Internet of Things revenue at $500 million year-to-date. Aimed at connecting to the Internet everything from household devices to industrial machines, the business is growing at a "double-digit" rate, Mike Lanman, senior vice president of enterprise products at Verizon said at an event in San Francisco. "A large portion of our revenue comes through connectivity but a significant part of it comes from the application layer already," he said in a phone interview after introducing a platform to help customers develop applications in healthcare, agriculture, utilities and connected cars. Last year, Verizon's annual revenue from the business totaled $585 million. The global Internet of Things market is expected to grow to $1.7 trillion in 2020 from $656 billion in 2014, according to market research firm IDC. Examples include Verizon's fleet management tracking application and a partnership with Intel Corp (INTC.O) to provide water management sensors in vineyards, Lanman said. At the event, Verizon also unveiled a chip that Lanman said halves the cost of connecting low data usage devices like dog trackers to high-speed networks. AT&T has also been working on growing its "Internet of Things" business and previously launched initiatives such as a cloud-based data-analytics platform for companies and a global SIM card for connected cars. AT&T said last week it added 1.6 million connected devices including 1 million connected cars in the third quarter of 2015.
- Alphabet, Indonesian companies to expand Web access via balloons: Alphabet, the new holding company for Google, has teamed up with three Indonesian telecommunications companies to expand Internet access in that country using solar-powered balloons. Alphabet officials, including co-founder Sergey Brin, and representatives from Indonesian companies Telkomsel, XL Axiata Tbk PT (EXCL.JK) and Indosat Tbk PT (ISAT.JK) signed an agreement Wednesday to bring so-called Project Loon to the nation of 250 million people. The project sends solar-powered balloons 16,000 feet (5,000 meters) into the air to deliver Internet access through radio frequency signals to antennae connected to buildings on the ground. The balloons use algorithms to find the best winds to carry them along their charted course. Project Loon is part of Alphabet's secretive X division, where the company experiments with far-off technologies dubbed "moonshots" such as its self-driving car technology. Alphabet and its partners will deploy hundreds of balloons in 2016 over the country of more than 17,000 islands in an effort to determine where gaps in service lie as part of the tests before full-scale service is launched. The U.S. tech company has already tested the project in Brazil, New Zealand and Australia but with only a single carrier. Project Loon Vice President Mike Cassidy said the Indonesian partnership marks the first time it will send signals from multiple telecommunications companies through a single balloon, and that it will be the service's largest deployment to date and could eventually reach 100 million users. Cassidy said the effort is also a model for how Alphabet will move the product into the commercial market. He said the telecommunications companies will use the trial period to determine pricing and billing while Google works out technical issues.
- GoPro Plunges 15% After-Hours Following Q3 Earnings Miss: GoPro took a dive Wednesday after releasing Q3 financials that disappointed street expectations. At the market’s close, GoPro reported a miss on its Q3 earnings, posting an adjusted $0.25 per share on $400.3 million non-GAAP revenue during the period. Those figures compared to street expectations of a $0.29 per-share profit, and revenue of $433.6 million. The action camera maker’s $400.3 revenues represented a 43% year-over-year increase from $280.0 in Q3 2015, with EPS also up significantly from $0.12 in the corresponding quarter last year. The company shipped 1.6 million camera devices in Q3, up 46% from Q3 2014, but still less than the street had expected. Interestingly, GoPro emphasized how important foreign markets, specifically China, had been to the company’s growth. Sales outside of the U.S. reportedly made up more than 50% of the company’s revenue. The company said China was “the fastest growing market in GoPro’s history.”
- 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.
