Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, September 23

• Facebook Says It Gave Advertisers Inflated Video Metrics: Facebook Inc. has been giving advertisers an inflated metric for the average time users spent watching a video, a measurement that may have helped boost marketer spending on one of Facebook’s most popular ad products. The company, owner of the world’s largest social network, only counts a video as "viewed" if it has been seen for more than 3 seconds. The metric it gave advertisers for their average video view time incorporated only the people who had watched the video long enough to count as a "view" in the first place, inflating the metric because it didn’t count anyone who didn’t watch, or watched for a shorter time. Facebook’s stock fell more than 1.5 percent in extended trading after the miscalculation was earlier reported in the Wall Street Journal. Facebook had disclosed the mistake in a posting on its advertiser help center web page several weeks ago. Big advertising buyers and marketers are upset about the inflated metric, and asked the company for more details, according to the report in the Journal, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation. The Menlo Park, California-based company has kept revenue surging in part because of enthusiasm for its video ads, which advertisers compare in performance to those on Twitter, YouTube and around the web.

• Apple Inc. has acquired Indian machine-learning startup Tuplejump  as it seeks to expand its expertise in artificial intelligence. The iPhone maker bought the Hyderabad, India-based company in June, according to a person familiar with the deal who asked not to be identified. Tuplejump’s software specializes in processing and analyzing big sets of data quickly. The deal was reported earlier by TechCrunch. The purchase price wasn’t disclosed. Tuplejump has about a dozen employees, many of whom were already based on the west coast of the U.S., the person said. Founder Rohit Rai’s LinkedIn profile says he started working for Apple in May and is now also based in Seattle.

• Yahoo has confirmed a data breach with 500 million accounts stolen, as questions about disclosure to Verizon and users grow: Yahoo confirmed today that it had been subject of a massive hacking attack that exposed the data of at least 500 million users. Recode previously reported that Yahoo was about to reveal the breach and Yahoo had declined to comment when contacted last night. Now, the company is unveiling a situation much worse than expected, although the Recode report noted that it would be. Earlier this summer, Yahoo said it was investigating a data breach in which hackers claimed to have access to 200 million user accounts and one was selling them online. “It’s as bad as that,” said one source. “Worse, really.” The announcement has huge implications on Yahoo’s pending deal to be bought by Verizon for $4.8 billion. Sources at Verizon said they were largely unaware of the severity of the attack until recently and that CEO Marissa Mayer and others did not flag them as to the extent of the issue in the bidding process. You can read that ire clearly between the lines in a statement from Verizon-owned AOL, which is expected to be integrated with Yahoo when the deal is complete. "Within the last two days, we were notified of Yahoo's security incident. We understand that Yahoo is conducting an active investigation of this matter, but we otherwise have limited information and understanding of the impact. We will evaluate as the investigation continues through the lens of overall Verizon interests, including consumers, customers, shareholders and related communities. Until then, we are not in position to further comment." In addition, internal sources at Yahoo said the company had been subjected to a number of previous incidents that were not managed swiftly by CEO Marissa Mayer. One executive close to the situation said that former Yahoo information security head Alex Stamos had tried aggressively to get management to act more strongly at the time, but he had not been successful. The well-regarded techie left Yahoo in mid-2015 for a job as chief security officer at Facebook. This whole incident was first revealed in August when “Peace,” an infamous cybercriminal, advertised the sale of user credentials for some 200 million Yahoo users on the “dark web.” The data included user names, some passwords and personal information like birth dates and other email addresses. At the time, Yahoo said it was “aware of the claim,” but declined to say if it was legitimate. Instead, it opened an investigation, but did not issue a call for a password reset to users.

• Uber rival Grab partners with driverless car firm in Singapore: Users of ride-hailing firm Grab will be able to book driverless cars from Friday as it partners with a start-up testing the technology in Singapore, just days after rival Uber debuted its self-driving vehicles in the United States. The move comes as technology companies and automakers race to build autonomous vehicles and develop new business plans for what is expected to be a long-term makeover of personal transportation. Southeast Asia's Grab said its app will allow select commuters to book and ride start-up nuTonomy's driverless vehicles within a western Singapore district, where the vehicles are being tested, and adjacent neighborhoods. A safety driver and support engineer will ride in each nuTonomy car, the two companies said in a statement. nuTonomy, which started a limited public trial of the first driverless taxi in August in Singapore, has said it hopes to have 100 taxis working commercially in the city-state by 2018. Countries around the world are encouraging the development of autonomous technologies, and Singapore, with its limited land and workforce, is hoping driverless vehicles will encourage its residents to use more shared vehicles and public transport. Grab said its data showed drivers in Singapore are less likely to accept a passenger booking request originating from or destined for remote locations, highlighting the need for "robo-cars" that can meet transportation needs in far-flung areas. If a trip requires travel on roads outside of Singapore's one-north district, the safety driver will take control of the vehicle for that portion of the trip.

• LinkedIn is bringing Lynda.com courses to its news feed and building a messaging bot. LinkedIn is finally bringing Lynda.com — the online education company it bought 18 months ago for $1.5 billion — into its news feed. Beginning Thursday, LinkedIn will start recommending online courses for its members based on things like their jobs and their listed skills, and recommended courses shared by friends of colleagues. Users can take the course on LinkedIn, then add completed courses and new skills to their profiles after completion. CEO Jeff Weiner also teased out a number of upcoming products. Among them: A new LinkedIn messaging bot that will help LinkedIn users schedule and arrange meetings. The bot will pull info from users’ calendars to help find time for people to meet, then suggest physical meeting locations based on where the two people have met in the past. It’s the first such messaging bot from LinkedIn, which is not known for having an advanced messaging product. (It didn’t even announce a text-like messaging feature until a year ago.)

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, August 16

• Xiaomi Phone Shipments Fall 38% in China as Huawei Takes Lead; Apple Falls Behind: Xiaomi Corp., the once-hot Chinese smartphone maker, saw shipments tumble 38 percent in China in the second quarter as Huawei Technologies Co. took over the top spot in the world’s largest market. Xiaomi shipped 10.5 million smartphones in the quarter, down from 17.1 million in the same period a year earlier, according to research from International Data Corp. That made the company the fourth-largest competitor in the market behind Huawei, OPPO and Vivo. Xiaomi was once valued at $46 billion, according to CB Insights. The Chinese market has grown increasingly competitive as domestic manufacturers have improved their quality, design and marketing, putting pressure on global leaders Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Apple saw shipments in China drop 32 percent in the second quarter and the iPhone maker fell to fifth in the market, according to IDC. The research firm said that Huawei and OPPO gained ground by concentrating on one or two key attributes in their marketing messages. Huawei emphasized the Leica lens now available on its phones, while OPPO pitched fast-charging technology. Apple’s global shipments are set to decline in 2016 as it continues to lose ground in its largest overseas market, Canalys said in a separate report. “The iPhones lack features such as waterproofing and wireless charging. Apple needs to catch up with the competition if it wants to compete,” Canalys research analyst Jessie Ding wrote.

• Microsoft’s HoloLens Technology Adopted by Israeli Military: If Pokemon Go achieved one thing, it was showing the world that augmented realitytechnologies are ready for the mainstream. Israel’s military thinks AR is ready for another use: battlefield training. The Israeli army’s C2 Systems Department recently purchased two HoloLens glasses from Microsoft Corp. The commander of the head programming department, Major Rotem Bashi, intends to develop the technology to improve battlefield strategy and train field personnel. And quickly: He intends for HoloLens to be used on active duty within months. At the army base outside Tel Aviv, a handful of developers in Bashi’s team created a software program in less than a month that allows commanders to manipulate military terrain models and intelligence data to monitor troop positioning from enemy vantage points. Battlefield maps are superimposed on top of the real terrain, streamed in via satellite, to create a blend that can be interacted with via sight, voice and hand gestures. The unit is now finding ways to allow HoloLens-wearing medics to operate on wounded with simultaneous instruction from trained surgeons, and combat soldiers to fix equipment malfunctions. It’s far removed from hurling Pokeballs at Pidgeys and Rattatas in Pokemon Go, but based on similar principles. Besides adapting the HoloLens to military life, Bashi’s unit is working on a product that will give headquarters an online report about a combatant’s physiological state in the field.

• LinkedIn sues anonymous data scrapers: LinkedIn is trying to lock down its exclusive relationship with its users. The professional networking company filed suit against 100 unnamed individuals last week for using bots to harvest user profiles from its website. The lawsuit is a preliminary step to revealing the identities of the scrapers — LinkedIn intends to ask the court to reveal the true identities behind the scrapers’ IP addresses — and a way to maintain its exclusive hold on users’ resumes. But LinkedIn’s lawsuit also raises questions about how to police bot use. The company, which was recently snapped up by Microsoft for $26.2 billion, has invoked the controversial Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) in its suit against the unidentified scrapers, claiming that collecting user profiles from the site amounts to hacking. LinkedIn’s case accuses the anonymous scrapers of building a massive botnet and circumventing the restrictions LinkedIn uses to prevent profile collection by undesirable third parties. The lawsuit details several of LinkedIn’s automated tools that prevent data harvesting. Dubbed FUSE, Quicksand and Sentinel, these tools monitor the web traffic of LinkedIn users and limit how many other profiles a user can view, and how quickly a user can view those profiles. This tracking is intended to prevent scrapers from signing up for fake LinkedIn profiles and then vacuuming up vast amounts of data. The company also uses a tool called Org Block to block IP addresses it suspects of scraping and uses Member and Guest Request Scoring to track page requests. But paradoxically, LinkedIn doesn’t want to prohibit scraping altogether. Search engines like Google use bots to index websites and turn up relevant results — and LinkedIn wants to allow this type of scraping to occur. “LinkedIn ‘whitelists’ a number of popular and reputable service providers, search engines, and other platforms so as to permit them to query and index the LinkedIn website, without being subject to all of LinkedIn’s security measures,” the company explains in its suit. The scrapers targeted in the lawsuit circumvented LinkedIn’s bot-blocking tools by sending their requests through one of these ‘whitelisted’ entities, a third-party cloud service provider.

• Peter Thiel says journalism will be just fine, since he’ll decide what’s good journalism: Peter Thiel is a billionaire who decided he didn’t like Gawker Media after it outed him as gay. So he funded Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against the company, and they won. Now Gawker is selling itself in a bankruptcy auction. Today, the same day that bids for Gawker are due, Thiel published an op-ed in the New York Timesas a sort of victory lap, but also to muster votes for a bill currently wending its way through Congress, the Intimate Privacy Protection Act. It's more commonly known as the revenge-porn bill, which would make it illegal to transmit private images and messages, but Thiel has co-opted it for his own purposes, referring to it by a lesser-known nickname, the Gawker Bill. But the most interesting part of Thiel’s editorial is what he says about the need for a free press: It’s telling that despite the fact he felt Gawker had invaded his privacy, Thiel himself never filed a lawsuit — he’s fighting via proxies. In trying to determine what should and shouldn’t qualify as journalism, Thiel is exercising the classic Silicon Valley pretension to attempt to own the definition, to write its own narrative, devoid of context or skepticism. But smart publishers will react to Thiel’s call to arms in a similar vein to the closing words of his editorial: He can’t do it, if we don’t let him.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, August 5

• Meet the China ‘whisperers’ who get the big deals done in Silicon Valley: When Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick wanted advice about whom to hire to run his ride-hailing business in China, he asked Carmen Chang, a longtime Silicon Valley lawyer and investor who had helped a previous generation of tech companies navigate that murky territory. When Uber sold its China business to its rival Didi this week, Chang was a trusted confidante.When Lyft, Uber’s smaller rival, needed an entree into China, the company’s president turned to another Silicon Valley insider who shuttles between worlds. The introduction from Connie Chan, a partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, to China’s largest ride-hailing company led to a $100 million investment and partnership. Behind the scenes of an unprecedented flood of capital from China into Silicon Valley over the past two years is an elite network of brokers. These brokers do more than deal-making; they play anthropologist and cultural translator -- from coaching startup founders about the culturally appropriate place to sit at a conference room table in China to breaking down how emojis are used in Chinese apps. Their acumen is growing more valuable, entrepreneurs say, as they navigate a cast of hard-to-parse characters with alluring deep pockets and promises of big business opportunities overseas. “She is the whisperer between China and Silicon Valley,” said Matthew Prince, chief executive of Cloudflare, a web security startup, of Chang. Last year, Chang helped Prince -- whose company had given up on China in 2011 -- clinch a partnership with Baidu, China’s search giant. “There’s very few that really understand both sides.” Chang, who was born in Nanjing, China, came to the States to seek a doctorate in Modern Chinese History. She got pulled into tech industry after graduating from Stanford Law School in the early 1990s, when she got a job as an associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the Silicon Valley firm known for its ties to the clubby venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road. One of her early clients was Masayoshi Son, the billionaire Japanese investor who founded the Japanese telcommunications giant Softbank. At the time, she said, senior management at the firm had never been to Asia, and Son “wasn’t considered important enough” to be represented by a general partner. “So he got an associate,” she says.

• Snapchat Used to Spook Advertisers. Not Anymore. When Snapchat opened itself up to advertisers more than a year ago, many initially griped that the company needed to lower its ad prices. Some were mystified about how to reach the right audience with the ads, since Snapchat did not provide traditional ad-targeting tools. Most of all, brands wondered how Snapchat could be effective when the ads — like Snapchat messages — disappeared. In the last 15 months, Snapchat has moved to respond. It introduced new ad formats. It dangled its attractive user base — the service now claims 150 million daily users, including nearly half the country’s population from ages 18 to 34 — to lure advertisers. Most important, Snapchat has persuaded brands like Tiffany & Company, Kraft Foods and Burger King that its ads let them interact playfully with this young audience.Now Snapchat faces the challenge of keeping up its nascent ad business as its early success raises the competitive hackles of rivals. On Tuesday, Instagram, the photo-sharing app owned by Facebook, introduced a near carbon copy of a Snapchat photo and video service known as Stories. A lot is riding on Snapchat’s building up its ad business. The company, which Mr. Spiegel helped found in 2011 and is now based in the Venice Beach neighborhood of Los Angeles, needs to justify a valuation of about $19 billion that its investors have placed on it. The company also faces sky-high revenue expectations; the investment bank Jefferies recently projected that Snapchat’s revenue would grow to $1 billion next year from more than $350 million this year.Mr. Khan’s biggest job was to explain why Snapchat’s unusual platform was better for advertisers. The task was thorny because Snapchat is a messaging, sharing and broadcast service where most content disappears. Companies had few comparable apps to judge Snapchat against. The potential became clearer after brands started experimenting with Snapchat’s geofilters, a tool that adds custom stickers, a type of colorful icon, to the app when people enter a certain geographic area, and lenses, which are whimsical images that transform someone’s face in the app.

• Facebook's News Feed to show fewer 'clickbait' headlines: Facebook's News Feed will show fewer "clickbait" headlines over the next few weeks, the company announced Thursday, as it seeks to establish itself as the prime web destination for news and social updates. The company receives thousands of complaints a day about clickbait, headlines that intentionally withhold information or mislead users to get people to click on them, Adam Mosseri, vice president of product management for News Feed, said in an interview. In an effort to eliminate clickbait from the site, Facebook created a system that identifies and classifies such headlines. It can then determine which pages or web domains post large amounts of clickbait and rank them lower in News Feed. Facebook routinely updates its algorithm for News Feed, the place most people see postings on the site, to show users what they are most interested in and encourage them to spend even more time on the site. The system looks for commonly used phrases in clickbait headlines, similar to how filters for email spam work, Facebook said in a blog post. It categorized tens of thousands of headlines as clickbait by looking for headlines that intentionally withheld information and those that exaggerated the content of an article. News Feed, a team of about 200 people, uses a similar classification system to determine what it should show each user, Mosseri said.

• Amazon adds several new devices to its Dash Replenishment auto ordering service: At the beginning of the year, Amazon flipped the switch on Dash Replenishment, a service aimed at bringing the instant reordering of its devoted product buttons directly to connected devices. The idea being that you don’t have to, say, order ink for your printer or batteries for your smart lock — the devices will do it for you. The retail giant has already announced a slew of different partners for the program, including Brother Printers, the Gmate SMART blood glucose monitor and a GE washing machine, all of which went live in the first round. Today the company announced a number of new additions. The highest profile of the additions is GE, which will be extending its involvement to driers and dishwashers, which will be updated to order fabric softener and dishwasher detergent, respectively, when supplies start to dwindle. Neato joins the list as well, bringing the Wi-Fi-connected robot to the service to order replacement filters and brushes, while Petcube’s Kickstarter-supported Bites camera will be able to order pet food. Also on the list are the Behmore Connected coffee brewer, Simplehuman trashcan and SmartThings platform. Even The Hershey Company has been added to the stable with an unnamed device. That should be interesting.

• LinkedIn Results Beat Expectations Ahead of Microsoft Deal: LinkedIn Corp. reported earnings and revenue that were higher than analysts expected, after the company negotiated a $26.2 billion sale to Microsoft Corp. LinkedIn said second-quarter revenue was $933 million, up 31 percent from a year earlier. The average analyst estimate was $899 million. Earnings, excluding some items, were $1.13 cents per share in the second quarter, compared with analysts’ projection of 78 cents. This may be LinkedIn’s last earnings report as an independent company, before it joins Microsoft in one of the largest technology industry deals on record. 

• As Chinese hacking abates, FireEye plans layoffs, cuts forecasts; shares plunge: Cyber security firm FireEye Inc said on Thursday it planned to lay off 300 to 400 of its 3,400 workers as it announced quarterly sales below its own forecast, due to a slowdown in demand for its services helping businesses respond to hacking attacks. FireEye's shares were down 16.2 percent at $14.02 in extended trading.Chief Executive Kevin Mandia said the company is now responding more frequently to financially driven cyber criminals, who engage in crimes such as ransomware, which are relatively simple to clean up. "The size and scope have changed. The whole remediation was more complex" when the company was responding to large numbers of state-sponsored hacks from China, he said. FireEye cut its full-year revenue forecast to $716 million-$728 million from $780 million-$810 million.Executives blamed much of the trouble on a slowdown in its services business, including its high-profile Mandiant forensics unit that helps organizations respond to cyber attacks. That division's revenue rose just 2 percent in the second quarter, compared to a 40 percent increase in the first quarter. Its total number of engagements rose, but average revenue from each one fell dramatically because work performed was less extensive. Mandia said that was due to a shift away from previous years where there were large numbers of state-sponsored espionage hackers from China attacking customers in the United States. FireEye and other cyber security firms said in June that cyber espionage attacks from China appeared to have dropped this year as the Chinese government made good on a pledge with the United States to stop supporting the digital theft of U.S. trade secrets.

• Zynga plummets 9% in after-hours trading: Social game developer Zynga tumbled 9 percent in after-hours trading following the second quarter 2016 earnings announcement after the bell today. The company reported a net loss of $4.4 million, while still beating analysts’ expectations in terms of revenue.For the second quarter ended June 30, the San Francisco-based maker of FarmVille and Words with Friends posted revenue of $181.7 million and non-GAAP net earnings came in at $0. 

• Grand Theft Auto' publisher Take-Two's revenue jumps 13 percent: Videogame publisher Take-Two Interactive Software Inc reported a 13 percent rise in revenue, helped by strong sales of its "Grand Theft Auto V" and "NBA 2K16" titles. Take-Two, like its rivals, has also benefited from a shift by players downloading digital copies of its videogames – which generate higher margins – rather than buying physical game discs. Take Two's net revenue rose to $311.55 million in the first quarter ended June 30 from $257.30 million a year earlier. Digital downloads accounted for about 55 percent of revenue in the quarter. Net loss narrowed to $38.57 million, or 46 cents per share, from $67.02 million, or 81 cents per share.

• Activision revenue surges on "Overwatch" launch, "Candy Crush" deal: Activision Blizzard Inc reported a 50.4 percent surge in quarterly revenue on Thursday, propelled by the popularity of the newly-launched "Overwatch" game and the boost from the acquisition of "Candy Crush" maker King Digital. Activision's total adjusted revenue, which excludes deferred revenue and related costs, rose to $1.57 billion in the second quarter ended June 30 from $1.04 billion a year earlier.The company's shares were up 1.4 percent at $41.40 in extended trading. Activision, best known for its "Call of Duty" and "World of Warcraft" games, released "Overwatch" on May 24 to rave reviews. The multi-player futuristic game now has more than 15 million players and has generated about $500 million in revenue to date, excluding deferrals, the company said. The company's net income dropped 40 percent to $127 million, or 17 cents per share, mainly due to costs associated with the near $6 billion acquisition of King Digital in February.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, July 13

• EU-U.S. commercial data transfer pact enters into force: A new commercial data pact between the European Union and the United States entered into force on Tuesday, ending months of uncertainty over cross-border data flows, and companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft can sign up from Aug. 1. The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield will give businesses moving personal data across the Atlantic - from human resources information to people's browsing histories to hotel bookings - an easy way to do so without falling foul of tough EU data transferral rules. The previous such framework, Safe Harbour, was struck down by the EU's top court in October on the grounds that it allowed U.S. agents too much access to Europeans' data. Revelations three years ago from former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden of mass U.S. surveillance practices caused political outrage in Europe and stoked mistrust of big U.S. tech companies. In the months that followed the EU ruling companies have had to rely on other more cumbersome mechanisms for legally transferring data to the United States. The Privacy Shield will underpin over $250 billion dollars of transatlantic trade in digital services annually. Google and Microsoft said they would sign up to the Privacy Shield and would work with European data protection authorities in case of inquiries. A person familiar with social network Facebook's thinking said the company had not yet decided whether to sign up.

• Google just scored a bunch of new property to make its crazy dream campus come true: Google couldn’t score LinkedIn’s business. But it’s getting LinkedIn’s real estate. On Tuesday, the two companies announced a large, surprising property swap encompassing over three million square feet of existing and future real estate, including LinkedIn’s corporate headquarters. The companies wouldn’t share financial terms, but they said neither side paid a premium for the properties. From Google, LinkedIn is picking up seven buildings, a plan it said will consolidate its staff around its Sunnyvale and Mountain View Calif., offices. The company said the deal is unrelated to its recent Microsoft acquisition. In return, Google is getting LinkedIn’s Mountain View headquarters office and — far more critical for the internet giant — four different surrounding properties that enable Google to follow through on its ambitious plan for a new, green, crazy-futurist campus. But here’s the kernel: Google proposed the aforementioned crazy-futurist campus in early 2015. It was a big deal; the “genius” architect behind it got a magazine cover. Then LinkedIn spoiled the fun: Mountain View’s city council voted last May to cede the property to LinkedIn, blocking Google’s grand vision. But now the runway for Google is clear.

• Amazon Says ‘Prime Day’ Sales Up 30 Percent for Merchants: Amazon.com Inc. said Prime Day sales from third-party merchants surged 30 percent compared with a year earlier, fueled largely by international demand. While U.S. sales appeared to start slowly on Tuesday, hampered by technical glitches, the world’s largest e-commerce company built momentum on the summertime promotion it created last year to entice shoppers to subscribe to its $99-a-year Amazon Prime membership. “Led by strong growth internationally, we are seeing more than 30 percent increase over last year in the number of items sold by small businesses and sellers on Prime Day,” Amazon said in an e-mail, reflecting sales as of 3 p.m. New York time. “We are expecting a record day for small businesses and sellers on Amazon with many more deals to come today.” Amazon also used Prime Day to push shoppers beyond physical goods by offering discounts on housecleaning through Amazon Home Services, restaurant delivery in several cities and on-demand video rentals for movies such as “Kung Fu Panda 3” and “Deadpool.” Hot-selling items on Tuesday included pressure cookers and iRobot Roomba vacuums, according to the company.The event highlights the benefits of Prime membership, such as free two-day shipping on many items, which converts the occasional Amazon shopper into a devotee. Prime subscribers spend about $1,200 annually on the website, compared with $500 for non-subscribers, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners in Chicago. Amazon had 63 million Prime subscribers as of June 30, an increase of 43 percent from a year earlier, according to the research firm.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, 4th July

• How AWS came to be: There are lots of stories about the formation of AWS, but this much we know: 10 years ago,Amazon Web Services, the cloud Infrastructure as a Service arm of Amazon.com, was launched with little fanfare as a side business for Amazon.com. Today, it’s a highly successful company in its own right, riding a remarkable $10 billion run rate. What you may not know is that the roots for the idea of AWS go back to the 2000 timeframe when Amazon was a far different company than it is today — simply an e-commerce company struggling with scale problems. Those issues forced the company to build some solid internal systems to deal with the hyper growth it was experiencing — and that laid the foundation for what would become AWS. Speaking recently at an event in Washington, DC, AWS CEO Andy Jassy, who has been there from the beginning, explained how these core systems developed out of need over a three-year period beginning in 2000, and, before they knew it, without any real planning, they had the makings of a business that would become AWS. It began way back in the 2000 timeframe when the company wanted to launch an e-commerce service called Merchant.com to help third-party merchants like Target or Marks & Spencer build online shopping sites on top of Amazon’s e-commerce engine. It turned out to be a lot harder than they thought to build an external development platform, because, like many startups, when it launched in 1994, it didn’t really plan well for future requirements. Instead of an organized development environment, they had unknowingly created a jumbled mess. That made it a huge challenge to separate the various services to make a centralized development platform that would be useful for third parties.At that point, the company took its first step toward building the AWS business by untangling that mess into a set of well-documented APIs. While it drove the smoother development of Merchant.com, it also served the internal developer audience well, too, and it set the stage for a much more organized and disciplined way of developing tools internally going forward.

• Salesforce Pushed Microsoft to Up LinkedIn Bid Before Deal: Salesforce.com Inc. battled Microsoft Corp. for LinkedIn Corp. deep into the negotiating process, forcing the world’s largest software maker to boost its offer to buy the professional-networking service just days before the $26 billion deal was announced. Three other companies were involved in the discussions, which lasted almost four months, according to a regulatory filing Friday. One of those was Facebook Inc., which passed on an acquisition, according to a person involved in the negotiations. Microsoft increased its offer to $196 a share June 11, from $182 a share earlier, after the other main bidder offered "approximately $200" a share for the company, the filing said. The board ultimately decided the Microsoft offer was stronger in part because it was an all-cash deal, while the other bidder was offering to pay with its stock and cash, the filing said.There were other companies that expressed interest in acquiring LinkedIn, or were involved in the process. Those were referred to as Parties B, C and D in the filing. Recode reported Friday that Party B was Google, the internet search business of Alphabet Inc., and Party D was Facebook, operator of the largest social network.

• Tesla crash raises concerns about autonomous vehicle regulation: The fatal crash of a Tesla Motors Inc Model S in Autopilot mode has turned up pressure on auto industry executives and regulators to ensure that automated driving technology is deployed safely. The first such known accident, which occurred in Florida in May, has highlighted tensions surrounding efforts to turn over responsibility for braking, steering and driving judgments to machines. It may delay the U.S. government's plan to outline guidelines for self-driving cars this month. The cause of the Model S crash is still under investigation by federal and Florida state authorities, which are looking into whether the driver was distracted before his 2015 Model S went under a truck trailer. Shares of Tesla and Mobileye NV, the maker of the camera vision system used in the Model S, rose on Friday as analysts said the accident was likely a short-term setback. The stocks fell in after-hours trading on Thursday after an investigation of the crash was made known.

• Why Tech Support Is (Purposely) Unbearable: “Don’t think companies haven’t studied how far they can take things in providing the minimal level of service,” Mr. Robbins said. “Some organizations have even monetized it by intentionally engineering it so you have to wait an hour at least to speak to someone in support, and while you are on hold, you’re hearing messages like, ‘If you’d like premium support, call this number and for a fee, we will get to you immediately.’” The most egregious offenders are companies like cable and mobile service providers, which typically have little competition and whose customers are bound by contracts or would be considerably inconvenienced if they canceled their service. Not surprisingly, cable and mobile service providers are consistently ranked by consumers as providing the worst customer support.Of course, companies rated best for tech support often charge more for their products or they may charge a subscription fee for enhanced customer care so the cost of helping you is baked in, as with Apple’s customer support service, AppleCare, and theAmazon Prime subscription service.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, 17 July

• Uber Rival’s $28 Billion Valuation Shows Size of China’s Ride-Sharing Market: The Chinese car-hailing app Didi Chuxing said on Thursday that it had brought in $7.3 billion in its latest round of fund-raising, which included Apple, Alibaba, and SoftBank as investors. The new funds give the company a total of $10.5 billion in disposable funds, and put its valuation at $28 billion, according to a person familiar with the fund-raising. That Didi’s valuation is now almost half that of the $62.5 billion valuation of its main rival in China, Uber, shows how much potential investors see in China. Yet the size of the cash infusions also underscores the market’s difficulties. In part because of China’s widespread blocking of foreign websites, the competition between Uber and Didi marks the first time in recent history a major foreign tech company has vied so intensely with a local Chinese business. In other markets the contest over ride-sharing has focused on regulation and technology, but in China it has been much more about cash, with the two companies spending billions. The most recent round has also pulled in Apple, pitting America’s biggest tech company against America’s best-known start-up, Uber, in a tricky Chinese market. Both see China as critical to growth. The fund-raising comes as executives from Didi and Uber have signaled that they are focusing on profitability in China. Since then both companies have been locked in a spending war. Though it has primarily taken the form of subsidies, both companies have also tried to develop technology specific to China, and have actively wooed both local and national government officials. Didi has focused on technology that better predicts car arrival times, given China’s unruly traffic, while Uber has developed a commute function that links drivers with riders based on where they live and work.

• Why back-up cameras haven’t stopped drivers from backing into stuff: With or without eyes in the back of their heads, drivers keep hitting things. Despite the growing prevalence of back-up cameras, federal data shows that this technology hasn't significantly cut down on cars backing into people and causing them harm. That research on so-called "back-over incidents" comes as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration moves to make back-up cameras standard and presses automakers to add a bevy of new technologies -- from automatic braking to lane collision warnings -- to even entry-level cars to reduce accidents on the road.As car companies and even regulators increasingly lean on technology to make roads safer, the tepid success of the back-up camera is a red flag. Sure, drivers can see more of what's behind them -- the cameras reduce blind zones while in reverse by 90 percent, according to a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety -- but they keep hitting things.Even with back-up cameras, drivers still don’t look around their vehicles enough when in reverse and sometimes get distracted by any number of things as their cars roll backward. Back-up cameras also often beam images to display screens in the front of the car, and drivers can become too reliant on them. Instead of looking backward and through their rearview window or checking mirrors, their eyes are glued to a screen.

• LG Electronics sells mosquito-repelling TV in India: The Indian arm of South Korea's LG Electronics Inc has begun selling a TV with a feature that it says repels mosquitoes, which can spread diseases such as malaria, Zika and dengue. The TV's "Mosquito Away Technology" uses ultrasonic waves that are inaudible to humans but cause mosquitoes to fly away, according to the company. It was released in the country on Thursday, LG said. The same technology, which was certified as effective by an independent laboratory near Chennai, India, has been used by LG in air conditioners and washing machines, the company said. The technology, which also functions when the TV is switched off, is available in two models, priced at 26,500 rupees and 47,500 rupees ($394 and $706). The TV is targeted at lower-income consumers living in conditions that would make them vulnerable to mosquitoes. It will go on sale next month in the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Kim Sang-yeol, an LG Electronics official, said there are no plans for now to market it elsewhere.

• Oracle's cloud strength boosts quarterly revenue: Business software maker Oracle Corp reported a higher-than-expected quarterly revenue as sales in its cloud business surged due to more customers. Shares of the Redwood City, California-based company rose as much as 3.8 percent to $40.10 in extended trading on Thursday. Like its rivals such as SAP SE, IBM Corp and Microsoft Corp, Oracle has focused on moving its business toward the cloud-computing model, essentially providing services remotely via data centers rather than selling installed software. Total revenue from the company's cloud-computing software and platform service rose 49.1 percent to $859 million in the fourth quarter ended May 31. It contributed 8 percent of Oracle's total revenue during thequarter. The company's total revenue fell 1 percent to $10.59 billion, beating analysts' average estimate of $10.47 billion. Oracle's net income rose to $2.81 billion, or 66 cents per share, in the quarter ended May 31, from $2.76 billion, or 62 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, it earned 81 cents per share, meeting average analysts' estimate. Up to Thursday's close, Oracle's stock had risen 5.8 percent this year.

• Salesforce also made a bid for LinkedIn, CEO Benioff confirms: Salesforce was also a serious bidder for LinkedIn, the business networking site that sold to Microsoft for $26 billion this week, said CEO Marc Benioff. While he would not give details of the effort, sources said Salesforce was primarily interested in LinkedIn's recruiting business, which makes up the bulk of its revenue. Sources said LinkedIn was already deep into negotiations with Microsoft when Salesforce made its approach, which would have required both debt and stock financing. Microsoft was able to buy LinkedIn in cash and also promised to let it operate independently. Interestingly, sources confirmed numerous reports that Microsoft had tried to buy Salesforce earlier this year, and both price and the way it would be operated within the company were among the issues that resulted in it not happening. Indeed. Salesforce recently bought Demandware for $2.8 billion.

• InMobi Technologies to discontinue use of mascot function on Miip platform:  InMobi on Thursday said it has shuttered the animated-discovery commerce part of Miip for now, a product it launched amid much fanfare in July last year. Instead, the firm will look to help e-commerce companies reach inactive customers using more traditional ad formats, using the underlying technology it built for the platform. In July, InMobi launched a beta version of Miip, which took the form of an animated monkey, that tracked users’ browsing habits across various mobile apps and showed ads in the forms of bubbles and animations instead of traditional display ads. It allowed consumers to interact with the mascot and tell it what they liked, and how they felt about the products and ads they saw. The promise of such a technology was that first, it enabled personalised discovery of products, and second, the completion of purchases within the ad itself as InMobi had tied up with payments providers like Stripe, AliPay and Paytm. This hasn’t worked out. “The larger vision behind Miip is to enable consumers to buy products and complete transactions through ads. The mascot was conceptualized simply as a ‘face’ to the Miip platform. Over the course of testing, users responded better to an advertiser’s brand as against the Miip branding on an ad unit,” said Arun Pattabhiraman, vice president and global head of marketing, InMobi

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, June 14

• Microsoft, Reasserting Its Muscle, Buys LinkedIn for $26.2 Billion:  Microsoft has made its most ambitious move in years to reassert itself in a technology market it once dominated. The software giant said Monday morning that it would acquire LinkedIn in a $26.2 billion cash deal. The acquisition, by far the largest in Microsoft’s history, unites two companies in different businesses: one a big maker of software tools, the other the largest business-oriented social networking site, with more than 400 million members globally. The deal is Microsoft’s biggest bet yet that the traditional software business is shifting quickly to cloud computing, a model in which customers rent software and other services delivered over the internet. While LinkedIn does not have the household name of Facebook, a much larger and more lucrative social network, it is the most widely used site for people to advertise their professional skills and work history.Though they operate in different businesses, Microsoft and LinkedIn make most of their money by catering to professionals. Executives involved in the deal said that the common thread prompted the acquisition. “They know the interconnections of the business world,” said Brian Blau, an analyst at Gartner, a technology research firm. “That could really benefit Microsoft from a sales standpoint.”

• How generous is Microsoft’s takeover bid? It puts LinkedIn’s enterprise value at 79 times the social network’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, for the 12 months that ended on March 31. On the basis of that multiple, the transaction is more expensive than any big internet deal paid with cash, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.Microsoft is paying $220 for each of LinkedIn’s monthly active users. By comparison, when Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion two years ago, it spent $40 for every user. For LinkedIn, the attractions of the deal are obvious: Its shares fell nearly 42 percent from the beginning of the year through last week, as investors expressed disappointment over a weak earnings forecast for 2016. Finding a buyer with deep pockets dulls the pain of being a publicly traded company.

• One Unspoken Reason Behind the LinkedIn Sale: “Let me explain why.” Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn’s chief executive, wrote a lengthy memorandum to his employees Monday morning, ticking off a list of reasons behind the surprise decision to sell the company to Microsoft for $26.2 billion: Most important, he said, was the heft that Microsoft gives LinkedIn “to control our own destiny.” But there may have been another reason that he left unspoken. That would be the company’s struggling stock price and its reliance — some might say overreliance — on stock-based compensation.On one grim day in early February, LinkedIn’s stock price plummeted more than 40 percent after it forecast weaker-than-expected growth for the year. The share price had hovered at $225 at the beginning of 2016; a month later it briefly got close to $100. The rapid devaluation has posed more than just a problem for investors. LinkedIn’s employees are paid largely in stock, and therein lies the rub: Around the company’s new 26-story skyscraper that opened in downtown San Francisco in March, as well as the corporate headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., there have been persistent whispers about whether LinkedIn could retain its top talent as the marketplace clobbered their incomes.Mr. Weiner — who took over as LinkedIn’s chief in 2009, succeeding Reid Hoffman, the founder — has done a tremendous job in the past years building the company’s business, which is primarily about helping people connect to one another for employment and conduct business-oriented social networking. But despite all the headlines about growth and profits, LinkedIn has been a money-losing operation for the last two years. You wouldn’t know that if you only glanced at LinkedIn’s news releases. That’s because LinkedIn steers investors to focus on what’s known as its adjusted Ebitda, or non-GAAP earnings. The company purposely strips out the cost of stock-based compensation, which has the effect of turning losses into gains. LinkedIn paid out $510 million in stock-based compensation last year; over the last two years, that stock-based compensation represented a whopping 96 percent of operating income, or 16 percent of revenue, according to Mr. Mahaney. Companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook paid out about 15 percent of operating income, or well under 10 percent of revenue.

• Baidu Reduces Revenue Forecast on Ad Restrictions: Baidu, China’s biggest internet search engine, cut its revenue forecast for the second quarter, saying regulatory restrictions cut advertising from drug companies and other health-care groups. Shares declined as much as 8.9 percent in extended trading after the announcement. The company said it projects sales of 18.1 billion yuan ($2.81 billion) to 18.2 billion yuan compared with its previous forecast of 20.1 billion to 20.6 billion yuan. The new regulations on online marketing by health-care companies have caused a reduction or delay in advertising “from a significant portion” of medical customers, Baidu said in a statement Monday. The company said the lower revenue also is a result of the cut in the number of sponsored links, which Baidu announced last month. While these actions will have a negative impact in the short term, Baidu said it expects users to become accustomed to the changes and health-care advertising will eventually recover. Last month, Baidu announced that it will restrict the number of sponsored posts to 30 percent of a results page, and establish a 1 billion yuan fund to fight fraud after the death of Wei Zexi, a 21-year-old computer science student who sought out a controversial treatment advertised among search results.

• Does the LinkedIn sale put Twitter in play? Yes, it does: LinkedIn just gave Twitter investors something they haven’t felt in a long time: Hope. News that LinkedIn sold to Microsoft on Monday for more than $26 billion has pushed Twitter stock up more than 8 percent in early-morning trading. The reason? If Microsoft is willing to break the bank for LinkedIn, maybe there’s a savior out there for Twitter, too! There have long been talks that a big tech company like Google or Facebook or even Microsoft might swoop in for Twitter. Now that feels almost inevitable, especially given that Twitter’s stock is down nearly 60 percent from where it was a year ago when then-CEO Dick Costolo announced he was stepping down. Simply put, that means the LinkedIn acquisition has done more to boost Twitter’s value than CEO Jack Dorsey has. Of course, the stock move is typical investor arbitrage, but if Twitter’s shares stay up, it's a clear signal investors would rather see it in someone else’s hands. Who might save Twitter? It could still be Google, or perhaps a bigger media player like Comcast*. We talk all the time with smart people close to Twitter, and the growing feeling is that Twitter’s best option is to finally sell to someone with deep pockets. With LinkedIn now off the market, those deep pockets may come take a closer look.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, May 19

• This $5 Billion Software Company Has No Sales Staff: Atlassian sold $320 million worth of business software last year without a single sales employee. Everyone else in the industry noticed.: Atlassian, which makes popular project-management and chat apps such as Jira and HipChat, doesn’t run on sales quotas and end-of-quarter discounts. In fact, its sales team doesn’t pitch products to anyone, because Atlassian doesn’t have a sales team. Initially an anomaly in the world of business software, the Australian company has become a beacon for other businesses counting on word of mouth to build market share. “Customers don’t want to call a salesperson if they don’t have to,” says Scott Farquhar, Atlassian’s co-chief executive officer. “They’d much rather be able to find the answers on the website.” The way technology companies sell software has changed dramatically in the past decade. The availability of open source alternatives has pushed traditional brands and rising challengers to offer more free trials, free basic versions of their software with paid upgrades, and online promotions. Incumbents such as IBM, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which employ thousands of commissioned salespeople, are acquiring open source or cloud companies that sell differently, says Laurie Wurster, an analyst at researcher Gartner. Slack, Dropbox, and GitHub are among the companies trying to attract corporate clients with small-bore efforts that rely largely on good reviews. The idea is to distribute products to individuals or small groups at potential customers big and small and hope interest spreads upstairs. So far, though, Atlassian remains the most extreme example of this model. It’s a 14-year-old company, valued at $5 billion since going public in December, without a single salesperson on the payroll. More than 80 Fortune 100 companies use Atlassian’s software, and venture capitalists and peers often talk about trying to follow, at least partly, its sales strategy.Atlassian’s roots lie in Sydney’s barren tech scene. It was kept aloft early on not by venture capital, but by the founders’ credit cards, meaning it didn’t have impatient investors to answer to. “I don’t think their success is replicable,” says Tomasz Tunguz, a partner at Redpoint Ventures.

• Cisco's forecast tops Wall Street estimates; shares rise: Network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc reported better-than-expected results and gave an upbeat forecast for the current quarter, sending its shares up about 7 percent in extended trading. The company has been beefing up its wireless security and datacenter businesses to offset the impact of sluggish spending by telecom carriers and enterprises on its main business of making network switches and routers. Results in the latest reported quarter were mainly driven by a 17 percent jump in sales in its security business, which offers firewall protection as well as intrusion detection and prevention systems. Revenue in the company's collaboration unit, which sells IP phones, rose 10 percent in the third quarter ended April 30. Sales in the data center business, which makes servers, rose 1 percent. The company's legacy switches and routers business is still by far its largest, accounting for nearly 60 percent of total revenue. Sales in the switching unit fell 3 percent, while router sales fell 5 percent, painting a grim picture of corporate technology spending.The company's net profit fell to $2.35 billion, or 46 cents per share, in the third quarter, from $2.44 billion, or 47 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company earned 57 cents per share. Analysts on an average had expected a profit of 55 cents per share and revenue of $11.97 billion. Revenue fell to $12.00 billion from $12.14 billion.

• Tesla to raise $1.4 billion with public offering to fund Model 3 production:Tesla will raise at least $1.4 billion through a secondary stock offering, the company announced in SEC filings today, and an additional 5.5 million shares will be purchased by CEO Elon Musk via a stock option exercise. The funds will be used to "accelerate the production ramp of Model 3," according to the filing, with Tesla moving its 500,000 vehicle per year build plan to 2018 from 2020. Musk will exercise all his outstanding stock options for a total of 5,503,972 shares, with 2,777,901 of those being offered for sale to cover his tax burden. Tesla will not receive any of the proceeds from that sale, and Musk's net holdings in Tesla will increase. The Tesla Model 3 was unveiled in March and is the first "affordable" Tesla car, priced at around $35,000. Tesla says it will go more than 215 miles on a full charge and the success of the Model 3 will determine the future of the company. The first deliveries of the car are expected in late 2017, with volume production beginning in 2018. Initial demand for the car appears to be very strong, with the company reporting that it had taken roughly 400,000 preorders with refundable $1,000 deposits as of late April. In the filing Tesla revealed that as of May 15th, it currently had 373,000 preorders after 8,000 customer cancellations and 4,200 duplicate orders were cancelled by the company. Tesla is no stranger to secondary offerings. It raised around $500 million in a smaller offering last year.

• LinkedIn Says Hackers Are Trying to Sell Fruits of Huge 2012 Data Breach:  LinkedIn said on Wednesday that hackers were attempting to sell what they claimed were 117 million email addresses and passwords of its users, suggesting that a data breach in 2012 was magnitudes bigger than initially thought.LinkedIn is investigating the authenticity of the data, the company said. But a security researcher, Troy Hunt, said on Twitter that he had verified a portion of the breach and that it was “highly likely this is legit.” The hacker is trying to sell the data on an illegal marketplace for five bitcoin, or about $2,200, according to Motherboard. In 2012, the account information of 6.5 million users was posted to a Russian hacker site. LinkedIn settled a class-action lawsuit in 2015, agreeing to compensate 800,000 people who had paid for its premium services. Since the attack, the company has stepped up its security procedures, including enabling two-step verification, a technique security experts recommend for your most sensitive online accounts.

• Google Home vs. Amazon Echo. Let the Battle Begin. Google on Wednesday introduced Google Home, a voice-controlled, Internet-connected speaker that competes directly with Amazon’s smart speaker, Echo, which costs $180. The company also introduced Allo, a messaging app, and a rebranding of its virtual assistant. Here’s a quick explanation of what these major announcements, made at the Google I/O developer conference, mean for consumers. What do Home and Echo have in common? Home and Echo are both speakers that require a wired power connection. They stream music and perform tasks like web searches, adding calendar appointments and looking up movie showtimes over an Internet connection. What are the differences between Google Home and Amazon Echo? Google has yet to share many important details, including a price tag, about Google Home, which is scheduled for release this fall. However, from the announcement we can glean a few differences: Home, which can easily be held in one hand, is shorter and more compact than Echo. Both speakers have a cylindrical shape, but the top of Home is slanted downward, whereas Echo’s top is flat. Google is allowing consumers to choose from different colors for the bottom part of Home, while Echo comes only in black. (Amazon also sells a smaller voice-controlled speaker called Tap.) Most important, the brains of Home will be Google’s virtual assistant, which draws from Google’s extensive search database, whereas Echo relies on Alexa, Amazon’s assistant. In other words, consumers can expect voice commands that already work with Google’s assistant to work with Google Home. In a recent test comparing virtual assistants from Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, Google’s assistant was the most capable of performing basic tasks, largely because it drew data from Google’s search engine. Is Home smarter than Echo? Thanks to Home’s reliance on Google’s search engine, it will probably be a smarter speaker than the Echo when it comes to basic tasks like web searches and looking up traffic data. However, when it comes to actions offered by outside companies — like the ability to order a pizza from a restaurant or to set your Internet-connected thermostat — Home’s success will depend largely on whether Google persuades third-party developers to create tasks that work with it.

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Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, May 4

• Uber enables global e-hailing through Alipay to fend against Lyft/Didi alliance: Starting today, Uber riders from China won’t have to worry about language barriers or currency when traveling outside of the country. Now, riders will be able to pay for and hail a ride in the Alipay app in the more than 400 cities in which Uber operates. It’s an extension of Uber’s existing partnership with the company, which initially only allowed passengers in China to pay for their rides using Alipay. The move comes just a few weeks after Lyft and China’s Didi launched a similar integration that allows Didi riders to hail a Lyft in the U.S. using the Didi Chuxing (formerly Didi Kuaidi) app, and vice versa. That partnership is part of a larger global ride-hail alliance that also includes South East Asia’s Grab and India’s Ola. The clear winner in this entire situation is Alipay’s affiliate company, Alibaba. That’s because the Chinese e-commerce company is playing both sides of the fence — Alibaba is an investor in both Didi and Lyft, and Ant Financial, which operates Alipay, has had this partnership with Uber since 2014. It’s certainly true that Alibaba has a higher stake in Lyft and Didi beating out Uber, but the transportation industry isn’t a zero-sum game. Since there’s room for both sides to coexist, Alibaba can afford to put bets on Didi and Lyft, and Uber too. But Alipay may be playing favorites. According to company SVP of business Emil Michael, Uber will be the primary featured transportation app on Alipay’s platform outside of the U.S. Alipay is essentially promoting Uber to its 450 million users.

• Instagram is selling a new type of video ad: Instagram has been pushing users to create more video content. Now it’s pushing advertisers to create more video ads. Instagram announced Tuesday that it will soon roll out video carousel ads, a move that will let advertisers share up to five separate videos with one single ad purchase. Each video can be up to 60 seconds long. Instagram already sells carousel ads, the kinds of ads that let users swipe between different pages (often called cards). But video functionality wasn’t available until now. The change aligns with Instagram’s conscious push into video more broadly, a strategy reminiscent of Facebook’s video push a few years back. Instagram is adding video featuresand making video more prominent in search in hopes users will watch more of it. It’s essentially feeding people what it wants them to consume — and video can be good business. If users expect to see videos when they open Instagram, then video ads, which are typically more lucrative than static ads, won’t feel out of place. These new video ads are now in beta and will roll out to all advertisers in the “coming weeks,” according to a company spokesperson.

• Amazon, Web Giants Shift to Report Real Cost of Equity Pay: For more than a decade, technology companies doled out heaps of stock to recruit top talent -- then pretended this wasn’t a normal part of doing business by reporting profit numbers that subtracted the cost. That’s changing as the industry grows up and responds to pressure from regulators and investors. Amazon.com Inc. started breaking out stock-based compensation in the results of its different businesses in the first quarter. This is “the way we now evaluate our business performance and manage our operations,” Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky told analysts after the earnings report last week. Facebook Inc. Chief Financial Officer David Wehner had a similar message. From now on, he said he’ll talk about the social network’s results and other metrics based on U.S. standards known as Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP, which include equity-based pay costs, instead of a mix of GAAP and non-GAAP numbers. “We view it as a real expense,” he said. Some technology companies, such as Netflix Inc. and Intel Corp., already take this approach, but many don’t. If the shift to focusing on the real bottom line catches on more broadly, it could slice billions of dollars off the reported profits and official forecasts that underpin the technology sector’s lofty market valuations. Facebook stock trades at about 35 times estimated earnings over the next 12 months. Add in equity compensation expense and that price-to-earnings ratio jumps to 50, according to a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analysis. Amazon would trade at 122 times projected profit, rather than a multiple of 63. Using GAAP numbers, Alphabet Inc. would trade at 26 times forecast profit, versus 21 times, Bernstein estimates. The change also highlights the struggles of smaller Internet companies like Twitter Inc. and LinkedIn Corp. to generate GAAP earnings. Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet may have high stock valuations, but they are also very profitable by GAAP and non-GAAP measures. Twitter shares trade at about 36 times estimated profit, but including stock-based compensation analysts expect it to have a loss over the next 12 months, Bernstein research shows. “Some companies have been egregious with stock compensation,” Fish said, citing LinkedIn, which has relatively high equity-based pay compared to its revenue and earnings. LinkedIn shares have declined 44 percent this year, while rival social network Facebook is up 13 percent.

• Google, Fiat Chrysler to partner on self-driving minivans: Alphabet Inc's Google unit and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV have agreed to work together to build a fleet of 100 self-driving minivans in the most advanced collaboration to date between Silicon Valley and a traditional carmaker, the companies said Tuesday. The deal marks the first time that Google has worked directly with an automaker "to integrate its self-driving system, including its sensors and software, into a passenger vehicle," the companies said in a statement on Tuesday. Google and Fiat Chrysler engineers will work together to fit Google's autonomous driving technology into the Pacifica minivan. Some engineers for both companies will work together at a facility in Southeast Michigan, where Fiat Chrysler has its major North American engineering center, the companies said. Google said it is not sharing proprietary self-driving vehicle technology with Fiat Chrysler, however, and the vehicles will not be offered for sale to the public. The agreement between Google and Fiat Chrysler comes as rival technology and auto companies are accelerating efforts to master the complex hardware and artificial intelligence systems required to allow vehicles to pilot themselves.

• Match Group revenue beats as Tinder attracts more paid users: Dating website operator Match Group Inc reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue on Tuesday, as its popular dating app Tinder attracted more paying users. The company's shares rose 7.3 percent to $11.98 in after-hours trading. Match Group, which also owns Match.com and OkCupid, gets bulk of its revenue from membership fees and paid features. The company said its average paid-member count jumped 36 percent to 5.1 million in the first quarter ended March 31, also helped by the acquisition of PlentyOfFish. Match Group, majority owned by media mogul Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, agreed to buy Vancouver-based PlentyOfFish for $575 million in July last year. Tinder surpassed 1 million paid members during the quarter. The Dallas-based company's dating business, its biggest, which includes apps such as Tinder, recorded a 24 percent rise in revenue to $260.4 million. Total revenue rose 21.4 percent to $285.3 million. Revenue from the company's non-dating business, which includes educational websites Princeton Review and Tutor.com, was flat at $24.9 million. Up to Tuesday's close of $11.16, Match Group's shares had fallen 7 percent since the company went public in November.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, April 29

• Amazon’s Cloud Business Lifts Its Profit to a Record:  Amazon delivered a blowout quarter on Thursday, joining Facebook as one of the rare bright spots in a technology sector that has recently produced a string of disappointing earnings reports. Helped by its fast-growing Amazon Web Services business, the company jumped to the most profitable quarter in its nearly 22-year history.For the first quarter, which ended March 31, Amazon reported net income of $513 million, or $1.07 a share, up from a loss of $57 million, or 12 cents a share, in the same period a year ago. Revenue at the company rose to $29.13 billion from $22.72 billion a year ago. Amazon’s share price jumped more than 12 percent in after-hours trading after the results were released. Investors were happy to see the company show profits after the disappointing run of reports from Apple, Google,Microsoft and Intel. The biggest source of the company’s profits is Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing business that started just over a decade ago and is now on track to bring in more than $10 billion a year in revenue. A.W.S., as the business is known, is the most popular cloud service for start-ups and for a growing number of big companies that want to rent computing capacity, rather than run their own hardware and software. Cloud computing is also much more profitable than Amazon’s North American retail business, which runs on thinner margins, and its international retail business, which runs at a loss. The operating income for A.W.S. more than tripled in the quarter to $604 million. The profits from A.W.S. represented 56 percent of Amazon’s total operating income, even though the $2.57 billion in revenue from A.W.S. — up 64 percent from a year earlier — amounted to less than 9 percent of total revenue.

• Baidu First-Quarter Profit, Revenue Outlook Beat Estimates: Baidu Inc. posted earnings in the first quarter that beat analysts’ estimates and forecast revenue in the current quarter that also tops projections after China’s biggest search engine provider controlled its spending and increased sales from new businesses. Earnings excluding some costs were $1.06 per American depository share in the first quarter, the Beijing-based company said Thursday. That compares with the average analyst estimate compiled by Bloomberg of $1.01. Sales for the quarter increased 24 percent to $2.45 billion compared with estimates for $2.44 billion. For the second quarter, Baidu said it expects revenue of $3.12 billion to $3.19 billion, compared with estimates of $3.10 billion.Baidu’s depository receipts rose 5.5 percent to $195.80 in extended U.S. trading.

• LinkedIn Rises on Better-Than-Expected Earnings Forecast: LinkedIn Corp. forecast earnings that beat estimates on improved performance from its main recruiting tools, suggesting a surprise slowdown earlier this year was not as dire as analysts feared. The operator of the largest online professional network said second-quarter profit, excluding some items, will be from 74 cents to 77 cents a share. That beat the 71-cent average analyst estimate. First-quarter earnings topped expectations by a wide margin and the company raised its full-year revenue guidance to $3.65 billion to $3.70 billion, from an earlier range of $3.6 billion to $3.65 billion.  LinkedIn Corp. forecast earnings that beat estimates on improved performance from its main recruiting tools, suggesting a surprise slowdown earlier this year was not as dire as analysts feared. The operator of the largest online professional network said second-quarter profit, excluding some items, will be from 74 cents to 77 cents a share. That beat the 71-cent average analyst estimate. First-quarter earnings topped expectations by a wide margin and the company raised its full-year revenue guidance to $3.65 billion to $3.70 billion, from an earlier range of $3.6 billion to $3.65 billion.  LinkedIn climbed as much as 16 percent to $142.89 in extended trading. The shares had declined 45 percent this year as of Thursday’s close. 

• Icahn: We're out of Apple, and it's China's fault: Billionaire investor Carl Icahn told CNBC on Thursday he has sold hisApple position as the tech giant's stock continues to shed value after disappointing earnings. "We no longer have a position in Apple," Icahn told CNBC's "Power Lunch," noting Apple is a "great company" and CEO Tim Cook is "doing a great job." Icahn previously owned a little less than a percent of the tech giant's outstanding shares, which were down more than 3 percent midafternoon Thursday after falling more than 6 percent Wednesday. He said he made roughly $2 billion on Apple, a stock he continued to tout as "cheap" despite his reservations.Icahn said China's attitude toward Apple largely drove him to exit his position. "You worry a little bit — and maybe more than a little — about China's attitude," Icahn said, later adding that China's government could "come in and make it very difficult for Apple to sell there ... you can do pretty much what you want there." He added, though, that if China "was basically steadied," he would buy back into Apple.

• The Apple Watch did not change the Apple Store like we thought it would: It was just over a year ago that the Apple Watch was slated to be unveiled, and the Internet rumor and analysis machine was running in overdrive: Wall Street-types weighed in on whether the new gadget could propel the world’s most valuable company to greater revenue and an even higher stock price. Tech geeks were chattering about the nitty-gritty of its features, and culture mavens debated whether it would become a game changer like the iPod or iPhone before it. And in the retail world, the major question was this: Would the arrival of a product that was not just a gadget, but also a luxury fashion item, push Apple to shake up its successful store format? The root of the speculation, or at least, the primary fuel for it, was a single paragraph in a New Yorker profile of Apple’s design chief, Jonathan Ive. In that story it was reported that Ive and Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice president of retail, were working on a redesign of Apple stores, perhaps to make the setting more conducive to selling a luxury timepiece. The story noted that Ive had “overheard someone saying, ‘I’m not going to buy a watch if I can’t stand on carpet.’ ” And so analysts — and reporters, including this one — began wondering: Would certain sections of the store be carpeted? Would they be outfitted with full-length mirrors so people could see how the watch fit into their overall look? Would there be showcase lighting, like at an upscale jeweler? If you’ve set foot in an Apple store lately, you know the answer to all of these questions: No. Apple did end up adding a backroom VIP area to at least one store in New York where customers could try on the Edition, the luxe version of the watch that has a five-figure price tag. But the Apple Store, by and large, still has the same vibe and aesthetic that it did in the pre-Watch era. Sure, some newer stores have fresh features, such as one in Brussels that is outfitted with live trees. An Apple representative has said that a forthcoming store in Memphis is to be a “next-generation” Apple store, with new design elements such as a large TV screen that can display a changing array of products or artwork. But even with those kinds of potential changes, the Apple Store continues to be defined by a spare, contemporary look and feel — and the changes that have been implemented or are on the way don’t exactly seem linked to the unique needs of selling the watch.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, April 19

• Netflix’s Forecast for Growth Disappoints Wall Street: On Monday, Netflix announced that it expected to add just two million members outside the United States in the second quarter this year — less than the 3.5 million analysts had expected. The figure also represents a decrease from the 2.4 million members the streaming service added internationally in the same period the previous year. That cloudy forecast sent shares down more than 10 percent in after-hours trading, as Netflix has tied its future to its bold global push. The company has been pouring resources into its expanding its international footprint, telling investors that it would run at break-even profitability until the end of 2016 as it continued to roll out the service abroad and increased its investment in content. That uncertainty over the competitive landscape, as well as fears about growth prospects both inside and outside the United States, overshadowed the generally positive first-quarter financial results that Netflix announced on Monday. The company beat expectations for profit and revenue growth during the first quarter. Profits totaled $28 million, up 16 percent from the same period last year, and total revenues increased 24 percent to nearly $2 billion. Netflix added a record 6.7 million total streaming members during the first quarter, bringing its total to 81.5 million, with about 42 percent outside the United States. Netflix had forecast that it would reach nearly 80.9 million total paid members in the quarter. In the United States, Netflix surpassed its forecasts for subscriber growth during a period in which price increases went into effect for some customers. The company added 2.23 million subscribers in America during the quarter, bringing its paid membership in the country to 45.7 million. Outside the United States, Netflix also beat its expectations for growth, adding 4.5 million international streaming subscribers. The company said it was planning to spend more than $6 billion on programming in 2017, up from $5 billion this year.

• IBM reports worst revenue in 14 years, shares slide: IBM on Monday reported a 21 percent decline in net profit from continuing operations, to $2.3 billion in the first quarter that ended March 31. Its operating earnings per share fell 19 percent, to $2.35 a share, though that was above the average estimate of Wall Street analysts of $2.09 a share, as complied by Thomson Reuters. The company’s first-quarter revenue declined 5 percent, to $18.7 billion. But that was ahead of analysts’ consensus forecast of $18.29 billion. After adjusting for the impact of currency translation, revenue was down 2 percent. IBM shares fell about 5 percent in after-hours trading, a retreat from a recent uptrend for the stock. In the first three months of this year, IBM’s stock price had increased 17 percent. IBM delivered a quarterly performance that shows the steady headway it is making in new businesses led by cloud computing and data-analysis software, like its Watson artificial intelligence technology. But the company’s transformation remains very much a work in progress. The erosion of some of its hardware and software products continues to be a drag on growth and profits, overshadowing the gains in the new fields.

• LinkedIn built a new app for college kids - from which Lynda is missing: In an effort to lure more young people to its professional network, LinkedIn built a standalone app specifically for college students. The app helps students quickly create a profile (if they don’t already have one), find career paths and job postings that relate to their major, and connect with alumni who studied the same topic. The app is appropriately named “LinkedIn Students.” LinkedIn’s challenge is that its product is most useful once you already have a job. Or at least know a bunch of other people who do. Oftentimes, college students have neither, which makes the idea of creating a profile seem overwhelming, said Ada Yu, a product manager at LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is trying to appeal to young people with an app that’s less cumbersome than its flagship app. LinkedIn users can already do most of what the college app offers in LinkedIn’s main app; it’s just more simplified now. Two things worth noting: Lynda.com, the online library of classes LinkedIn bought for $1.5 billion last year, is noticeably missing from the app. It seems likely that LinkedIn will add online classes to the app at some point. LinkedIn can make money from this app. Once students scroll past the daily job and alumni recommendations, they get to an “extra credit” section which will include some branded content. LinkedIn will launch with branded content from J.P. Morgan. What LinkedIn will not do, however, is recommend career paths or job openings in exchange for cash. All suggested jobs will be based on LinkedIn’s algorithm, Yu said.

• China's Crowded Smartphone Market Heads for an Epic Shakeout: Smartphone sales in China exploded earlier this decade as incomes rose, prices for chips and displays plummeted, and carriers offered arrays of discounts. Shelves were flooded with hundreds of brands—from national heavyweights Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi to the smaller Dakele, Tecno Mobile and Gionee. Shipments more than doubled in each of the three years ending 2012, according to researcher Canalys. Xiaomi's valuation rocketed to $45 billion, and the phone maker started selling devices in India, the world’s fastest-growing major economy. Lenovo Group Ltd. spent $2.91 billion to acquire Motorola Mobility to help make it "a global player." In 2011, only four of the top 10 vendors in China were domestic. Last year, there were eight.  Now that wave has crested. Smartphones no longer are novelties in China, and most domestic brands target the mid- and low-price ranges, where buyers don't upgrade as frequently as those for high-end Apple and Samsung phones. China's herd of 300 phone makers may be halved in 12 months by competition, a sales plateau and economic growth that's the slowest in a quarter-century, according to executives and analysts. "The mobile-phone industry changed more quickly and brutally than expected," Dakele Chief Executive Officer Ding Xiuhong said on his Weibo messaging account. "As a startup, we couldn’t find more strategies and methods to break through."

• Don’t want your startup to fail? Arianna Huffington tells founders to go to bed: Sleep deprivation is the undoing of startup founders, according to Arianna Huffington. “There is this kind of founder myth that if you are a founder you can’t afford to get enough sleep,” she told me over the phone while catching a plane back to New York. “The truth is three-quarters of startups fail and if founders got more sleep they’d have a better chance of succeeding.” Wanting to get more sleep isn’t the problem for most of us. It’s fitting in the recommended seven to 9 hours of sleep with work, eating, exercise, relationships and a social life – and on top of that founders need to spend a lot of time growing their fledgling company. The advice is obvious – no caffeine after 2 pm and keep your bedroom dark and quiet – but like exercise and eating right, a lot of us probably don’t do it anyway. And sacrifices will be made – no tech in the bedroom and you might not get through all of those critically acclaimed Netflix dramas – Arianna tells me she’s only seen one episode of House of Cards because sleep is the priority. But then, maybe you’ll think clearly and your startup won’t fail.

• Media Websites Battle Faltering Ad Revenue and Traffic:  This month, Mashable, a site that had just raised $15 million, laid off 30 people. Salon, a web publishing pioneer, announced a new round of budget cuts and layoffs. And BuzzFeed, which has been held up as a success story, was forced to bat back questions about its revenue — but not before founders at other start-up media companies received calls from anxious investors. “It is a very dangerous time,” said Om Malik, an investor at True Ventures whose tech news site, Gigaom, collapsed suddenly in 2015, portending the flurry of contractions. The trouble, the publishers say, is twofold. The web advertising business, always unpredictable, became more treacherous. And website traffic plateaued at many large sites, in some cases falling — a new and troubling experience after a decade of exuberant growth. Online publishers have faced numerous financial challenges in recent years, including automated advertising and ad-blocking tools. But now, there is a realization that something more profound has happened: The transition from an Internet of websites to an Internet of mobile apps and social platforms, and Facebook in particular, is no longer coming — it is here. It is a systemic change that is leaving many publishers unsure of how they will make money. “With each turn of the screw, people began to realize, viscerally, that this is what it feels like to not be in control of your destiny,” said Scott Rosenberg, a co-founder of Salon who left the company in 2007. Audiences drove the change, preferring to refresh their social feeds and apps instead of visiting website home pages. As social networks grew, visits to websites in some ways became unnecessary detours, leading to the weakened traffic numbers for news sites. Sales staffs at media companies struggled to explain to clients why they should buy ads for a fragmented audience rather than go to robust social networks instead.