Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, April 7

• After 10 Years, Amazon’s Cloud Service Is a $10 Billion Business: Amazon’s cloud computing business is bigger after 10 years of operation than Amazon itself at the same milestone, and is on its way to being a $10 billion annual business this year, CEO Jeff Bezos wrote in a letter to shareholders today. Amazon Web Services “is bigger than Amazon.com was at 10 years old, growing at a faster rate, and — most noteworthy in my view — the pace of innovation continues to accelerate,” Bezos wrote, adding that the unit added 722 new features in 2015, which amounted to a 40 percent increase over the prior year. Last month AWS observed its 10th year of operations, and was the bright spot in an otherwise disappointing fourth-quarter report in January. The unit clocked $7.9 billion in revenue in 2015, amounting to more than 7 percent of Amazon’s overall sales, with an operating margin of 24 percent. “Many characterized AWS as a bold — and unusual — bet when we started,” Bezos wrote. “We could have stuck to the knitting. I’m glad we didn’t.”

• Yahoo Paints Grim Financial Picture as Deadline for Bids Nears: As Yahoo asks potential bidders to submit first-round offers for its core business next week, it is also warning them about a troubling decline in revenue and profit while obscuring the costs and cash flow of various business units. Yahoo is projecting revenue of $4.4 billion this year, down from $5 billion last year, according to two people close to the bidding who have seen the confidential data the company has shared with potential bidders. That figure is on the low end of the revenue estimate the company shared publicly with investors in February. Even that revenue is coming at a cost, with Yahoo expecting to pay other sites about $1 billion this year for sending traffic to its advertising services. The company’s cash flow is also declining. Yahoo has reaffirmed to bidders its February projection that adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization would be about $750 million this year, down from $952 million in 2015. Initial bids are due at the end of next week, but that deadline might be pushed back. Starboard Value, an activist hedge fund that is seeking to replace Yahoo’s entire board of directors at the next shareholders’ meeting this summer, has repeatedly accused the company of running a halfhearted sales process. That sentiment has been echoed by some potential bidders. For example, Yahoo has told private equity firms and other financial players considering a bid that it considers them to be second-tier bidders, compared with so-called strategic bidders like Verizon and AT&T that would integrate Yahoo into their existing businesses.

• Twitter is basically a cable company now: Twitter is basically becoming a cable company. The social network's paid deal with the NFL to show Thursday night football games gives Twitter exclusive rights to stream the matches over the Internet. What this means for sports fans is access to another channel to watch the most popular professional sport in the country, presumably so long as they're willing to see a slew of promoted tweets on Twitter's website. It's akin to what the television industry has done for decades: Provide live events in hopes of growing an audience while making tons of money in advertising doing it. Twitter isn't about to stop there. It's considering expanding from live sports coverage into political news and other types of video content, the company's chief financial officer, Anthony Noto, told Bloomberg News. If that happens, Twitter will have built a bundle that isn't much different in style from what you get from Comcast, Verizon or many of the heavyweight TV distributors that currently dominate America's entertainment ecosystem. It might be a skinnier one, but it's a bundle nonetheless.

• The surprising thing that got the biggest share of online shopping dollars in 2015: In a new report from the online metrics firm ComScore, researchers aimed to capture the ways our online shopping habits did (and did not) change in 2015, and the results contain some surprises. ComScore analyzed which shopping categories drew the biggest online sales in 2015. Computer hardware — a category that includes personal computers and tablets — has been the leader for at least a decade. But last year, for the first time, spending on apparel and accessories took the e-commerce crown. In three of out of four quarters in 2015, apparel and accessories pulled down the most dollars. For the year, clothing generated $51.5 billion in online sales, slightly edging out $51.1 billion spent on personal computers and tablets. In some ways, this might seem logical: Tablets sales growth has slowed overall as shoppers instead opt for smartphones with bigger screens. But recall, too, that 2015 wasn’t exactly a banner year for the apparel industry: Retailers from Macy’s to Gap reported gloomy sales results as shoppers chose to spend their money on things like travel and dining out. So the fact that online clothing sales surpassed computer hardware sales is likely telling us something bigger about customers’ online shopping patterns. For starters, it probably reflects retailers’ efforts to make it feel less risky to shop for clothes online. In other words, people are getting more used to the idea that if a pair of jeans doesn’t fit them quite as expected, or a sweater is not quite the same color blue it looked to be on a website, it can be returned with little hassle and often at no cost. Apparel also is among the categories that is seeing particular benefit from the explosive growth in shopping on smartphones. Lipsman said that many of the categories that registered particularly strong increases in online spending last year were ones in which the purchases are not “highly considered,” meaning that customers don’t spend much time researching before buying. These purchases are especially conducive to being made on a small screen, and so with the lion’s share of online shopping growth coming from mobile devices, they are getting a particular tailwind from this change in shopping habits.

• Samsung Beats Estimates as Early Debut of S7 Boosts Sales:  Samsung Electronics Co. posted a better-than expected first-quarter profit after the early release of Galaxy S7 smartphones gave it a head-start on Apple Inc. and Chinese rivals and helped counter an industry downturn. Operating income rose to 6.6 trillion won ($5.7 billion) in the three months ended March, the world’s largest maker of phones and memory chips said in preliminary results released Thursday. That compares with the 5.53 trillion-won average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.Samsung debuted its high-end smartphones in March, about a month earlier than last year’s, with sales of the S7 line-up estimated to have hit 9 million units during their first month -- triple those of the S6 in the same time-frame. Production of curved displays for its Edge version also went more smoothly this time, avoiding the hiccups that plagued last year’s wraparound-screen line. “The biggest reason for the sharply improved profitability is largely due to much lower marketing spending for the mobile business,” said Yoo Eui Hyung, an analyst at Dongbu Securities Co. in Seoul. “The big disparity between the earlier profit estimates and the latest revisions stems entirely from the mobile business. The faster release surely helped but it’s dubious whether the S7 can continue to surprise the market in the longer run.”

• Daimler confirms HERE in talks with Amazon, Microsoft: Amazon.com and Microsoft are in talks about taking a minority stake in HERE, a digital mapping business controlled by Germany's luxury carmakers to help develop self-driving cars, Daimler said on Wednesday. Germany's luxury carmakers including Daimler's Mercedes, Volkswagen's (VOWG_p.DE) Audi division and BMW bought HERE for 2.5 billion euros ($2.8 billion) from Nokia last year to create an alternative digital mapping business to Google.The consortium needs cloud computing providers to manage the mass of data collected from sensors on board thousands of Mercedes, BMW and Audi cars. The data about traffic and road conditions is then fed into digital maps.  "We need a cloud provider to handle the huge amounts of data created by HERE and its users. We haven’t taken any decisions yet," Weber told the Wall Street Journal. Intelligent mapping systems supply information to control self-driving cars, which are equipped with street-scanning sensors to measure traffic and road conditions. This location data can in turn be shared with other map users. 

• Yik Yak’s CTO drops out as the hyped anonymous app stagnates: Is Yik Yak a thing anymore? Not so much, according to download stats, traffic charts, surveys and a source that says the college app’s monthly user count has been declining. That source — with intimate knowledge of the company — also tipped me off that Yik Yak‘s original CTOTom Chernetsky has bailed, which the startup now confirms. He’s not the only one who thinks the supposed rocket ship won’t fly as high as some expected when Sequoia led a mammoth $62 million at $400 million valuation in November 2014. Since late last year, Yik Yak’s VP of Product, Director of Engineering, Lead Product Designer and other senior employees have departed. Months after Sequoia pumped a ton of cash into the Atlanta startup, download rates and traffic began to drop, according to App Annie and comScore charts dug up by GigaOm. Things have gotten worse since, as Google Play dropped it from its charts last March, likely due to hate speech in the app. These stats all mesh with what my source says, which is that Yik Yak has had zero significant growth in over a year, and consistently misses its growth targets. They cite 4 million monthly active users as the count in January, noting the number has declined since then, though I can’t confirm that exact number. The problem with anonymous apps is that over time they start to feel exhausting. The crude stories, played-out jokes stolen from Reddit and cringe-worthy bullying wear on people. While they might have a few juicy quips of their own to share, blowing off steam can eventually feel pointless. That’s why my Secret and Yik Yak usage dried up. Yik Yak’s product has continued to plod along, despite some colleges’ attempts to ban the app for facilitating cyberbullying. But nothing has made it feel fresh again.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, November 13

• Cisco quarterly forecast misses expectations, shares down 5%: Network equipment maker Cisco forecast adjusted profit and revenue growth for the second quarter below analysts' estimates, citing a slowdown in order growth and weakness in its enterprise business outside the United States. Shares of Cisco, considered a bellwether for the performance of the broader network gear industry, fell 5 percent to $26.41 in extended trading on Thursday. Revenue rose 3.6 percent to $12.68 billion, while analysts were expecting $12.65 billion. Net income rose 33 percent to $2.43 billion, or 48 cents per share, in the first quarter ended October 24. Needham & Co analyst Alex Henderson attributed Cisco's disappointing forecast to its exposure to emerging markets. "It has a much higher percentage exposure to those emerging markets than most companies," Henderson said. Cisco is beefing up its enterprise and wireless security businesses to counter lower spending by telecom carriers, its traditional customers, and nimbler rivals who are quickly grabbing market share through their software-focused networking products. In August, Cisco teamed up with Apple to improve the performance of iPads and iPhones on its network.

• Uber Signs Digital Mapping Deal With TomTom: Uber, the ride-hailing service, agreed on Thursday to use digital maps provided by the Dutch technology company TomTom in its smartphone applications. The move is the latest foray into digital mapping for Uber, which had offered to buy Nokia’s mapping business for around $3 billion early this year but lost out on the deal to a consortium of German automakers. Uber, which is increasingly using digital maps to run its fast-expanding global operation, has also acquired a portion of Microsoft’s map technology and hired a number of engineers from Microsoft’s mapping team. As part of the latest deal, Uber will license TomTom’s mapping and traffic management services in the more than 300 cities where it operates. Uber did not say how much it would pay for the licensing rights. The agreement represents a lift for TomTom, which also provides the core mapping services used in Apple’s Maps app, as well as in its own mapping products. TomTom has faced stiff competition from the likes of Google Maps and Nokia’s former mapping unit, called Here, which is now owned by Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler. Both of those competitors have greater financial resources to invest in their mapping services, though analysts said the Dutch company could benefit as people who do not want to rely on Google or the German carmakers look for alternatives. That appears to be the case with Uber, which has shown increased interest in developing its own mapping operations despite maintaining close ties to Google. In February, for instance, Uber announced plans to open a research and development center in Pittsburgh, where the company said it would study autonomous cars.

• Facebook Is Now Selling Virtual Reality-Like Video Ads: Facebook will start publishing more 360-degree video content into your News Feed — and it’s also going to start including 360-degree video ads. You don’t need a virtual reality headset to watch these videos, but they simulate what it’s like to look anywhere in a scene. Facebook first launched 360-degree video in News Feed back in September — you can see how it works down below — and now it’s bringing that functionality to iOS devices and opening it up to advertisers for the first time. It’s also creating tools to make it easier for people to share 360-degree content to their profiles. It added a resource hub so people can learn more about how to upload 360-degree videos, and it’s partnering with camera manufacturers like Theta and Giroptic to add “publish to Facebook” features directly into the camera. It also poached three Microsoft researchers last month to handle this very challenge — to get people sharing more VR-like content to Facebook.

• Apple is working on a person-to-person payments service that may give iPhone owners another reason to use their Apple Wallets. The company is in talks with banks about the new service, which would let people use their smartphones to send money to one another as easily as they send messages, according to a person with knowledge of the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The service, which could be ready as soon as next year, would compete with PayPal’s peer-to-peer payments app Venmo, and Square’s Square Cash. Apple started Apple Pay, a mobile payments service, in October 2014. This summer it combined payments with Passbook, an app that stored digital tickets and airline boarding passes, as the rebranded product Wallet. Apple has said that it wants a bigger slice of the payments industry. Jennifer Bailey, vice president of Apple Pay, said at the company’s annual developer conference in June that Apple’s goal was “replacing the wallet.” Peer-to-peer payment services, which can foster consumer loyalty, are growing. This year, users of Facebook Messenger were offered a payment service akin to one that users of China’s popular messaging app WeChat use to send payments to friends. Google has also experimented with payments in its messaging service. Banks are trying to create peer-to-peer payment products within their own mobile banking apps using a bank-owned digital payments network called clearXchange, which covers about 80 percent of all of the banks. And Square Cash has processed more than $1 billion in money transfers since the peer-to-peer program was introduced about two years ago, according to Square’s recently filed prospectus for its initial public offering. Venmo, the money transfer app owned by PayPal and popular among younger users, processed nearly $2.4 billion in 2014. To date, few of these efforts are direct moneymakers for the companies. Square Cash and Venmo are free to use when linked to a customer’s checking account, and consumers are charged only a small fee when using a credit card. For companies like Apple and Facebook, peer-to-peer payments are a way to involve customers more deeply with their products and to encourage them to leave their wallets at home.

• Amazon might export delivery model from India: E-commerce giant Amazon.com is taking lessons learnt from its daily battles with India's choked roads and cramped cities to some of its largest developed markets, exporting a model of cheaper deliveries and reduced warehousing costs. Online shopping is booming in India, where millions of consumers are newly able to access the Internet thanks to cheap smartphones. For Amazon, it is already the largest contributor of new customers outside the United States. More than two years on from its arrival in India, Amazon says it is now ready to apply some of the innovations applied here to markets including the United States, Mexico and Brazil. Britain, for example, could get a delivery service called Easy Ship, where orders are picked up by Amazon's crew directly from sellers, cutting out the time and cost of sending goods to a warehouse and the need for more space. Launched in India in 2014, Easy Ship, for example, cuts out costs of storing, packing and separately shipping goods. "This probably cuts your overall transportation cost at least by half," said Samuel Thomas, Amazon India's director of transportation, adding that it trains sellers to provide the service, now used by 30,000, or more than 75 percent of them. Another service introduced in India in May and considered for export to other markets, Seller Flex, allows sellers to have the flexibility to store goods and ship them to customers on their own, instead of routing them through Amazon. Amazon provides technology and training to ensure goods are packed, labeled and delivered as the company would. While Amazon in developed markets may not want to tweak its model for best selling goods, analysts said, it could consider the made-in-India seller solution to cut down on warehousing and delivery costs for thousands of "non core" products which are offered, but infrequently bought.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday September 17

• Oracle earnings disappoint: Revenue falls 1.7%, Stock down 2.8%: Oracle Corp's sales fell more than expected in the first quarter, hurt by a strong dollar and a continued drop in licensed software sales and the company warned revenue could fall in the current quarter even on a constant currency basis. Oracle's revenue declined 1.7 percent to $8.45 billion in the quarter ended Aug. 31, missing analysts estimates for the third quarter in a row. The company said sales increased 7 percent on a constant currency basis. However, it forecast revenue to range between a fall of 2 percent to growth of 1 percent in the current quarter. Oracle's shares fell as much as 2.8 percent in extended trading on Wednesday. Sales of Oracle's cloud-computing software and platform service rose 34 percent to $451 million. Sales of traditional software licenses fell 16 percent to $1.51 billion. Like its rivals such as SAP, IBM and Microsoft, Oracle is striving to boost Internet-based software sales to head off fast-growing competitors such as Salesforce.com. But, analysts have said Oracle's cloud software business has not been growing fast enough to make up for declines in the 38-year-old company's licensed software business due to reasons ranging from slow customer adoption to tough competition.

• Lyft Announces Deal With Didi Kuaidi, the Chinese Ride-Hailing Company: The pink mustache is coming to China. And it will receive a warm welcome — not a snub — from its new hosts. Lyft, the San Francisco-based ride-hailing start-up that has its drivers affix a striking pink mustache logo to their cars, announced a partnership with Didi Kuaidi, China’s pre-eminent ride-hailing company, that will allow the American company to operate in China for the first time. The cross-border deal will also let Didi Kuaidi operate in the United States. Lyft’s partnership with Didi Kuaidi offers a somewhat novel approach to international expansion. Didi Kuaidi, which comprises China’s two largest ride-hailing start-ups, will let Lyft users from the United States find rides in China using the Lyft app. Didi Kuaidi will fulfill those ride requests using its drivers, while Lyft users will not have to leave the app to download or sign up for any new services. Didi Kuaidi will have much the same agreement with Lyft for its users. Chinese users entering the United States can find a ride using the Didi Kuaidi app, with those rides being fulfilled by Lyft. The partnership between the two companies is perhaps the clearest sign yet of the race to conquer different parts of the world in the global ride-hailing industry. The handful of major companies in the business of providing car rides have raised giant sums of money — some into the billions of dollars — and are using the money to open in new markets and release new product offerings. Nearly all of these companies have their eye on Uber, the huge on-demand ride company that has raised more than $7 billion in venture capital and is valued at more than $50 billion. Over the last five years, Uber has exploded in growth to more than 300 cities across 60 countries. China, in particular, has recently been a hotbed of contention and competition for ride-hailing start-ups. Uber has earmarked more than $1 billion for its aggressive push into Asia — and particularly China — and is spending millions in subsidies to attract drivers and riders to its service with lucrative promotions. Still, Uber’s presence in China is dwarfed by that of Didi Kuaidi, which controls 80 percent of the overall ride-hailing market in China. 

• Apple Acquires Mapsense, a Mapping Visualization Startup: Apple’s steady stealth campaign to rival Google in maps continues apace. This month, the company acquired Mapsense, a San Francisco startup that builds tools for analyzing and visualizing location data, according to multiple sources. Apple paid somewhere between $25 million and $30 million for the Mapsense 12-person team, which will now join the Cupertino company, according to two sources. “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” the company said in a statement. Mapsense was formed in 2013 by Erez Cohen, a former engineer for the data science company Palantir Technologies. The company’s offering lets users slice and dice graphical models of maps that hold huge sums of data. It’s cloud-based, naturally. The company launched its developer platform in May, noting that it was welcoming customers from the financial sector, advertising, government and Fortune 500 firms. That same month, Mapsense raised $2.5 million in a seed round led by General Catalyst with other backers including Amplify.LA and Redpoint Ventures. Over the years, Apple has quietly scooped up several location-services companies, including HopStop, a crowd-sourced maps tool, in 2013 and Coherent Navigation, a GPS company, this past May.

• BlaBlaCar, a French Ride-Sharing Start-Up, Is Valued at $1.6 Billion: BlaBlaCar, the French ride-hailing start-up, announced on Wednesday that it had raised $200 million, primarily from United States investors, which valued the company at $1.6 billion. The funding comes as the Paris-based company, which was founded in 2006 and aims to connect people who want to split the cost of long-distance journeys, has expanded beyond its European roots into a growing number of emerging markets like Turkey, India and Russia. With roughly 20 million users spread across three continents, BlaBlaCar is hoping to follow in the footsteps of other on-demand services like Uber, the ride-booking company, and Airbnb, the vacation rental website, to expand its international operations. BlaBlaCar has so far mostly skirted controversy, unlike companies like Uber, which has faced protests from many regulators and taxi associations. That is because BlaBlaCar does not allow drivers to profit from the ride-sharing service. People can only split the cost of long-distance travel, say between Paris and Marseilles or Moscow and St. Petersburg. The French start-up says the average ride in Europe costs roughly $25 per person, significantly less than the region’s costly high-speed trains. The funding comes as the Paris-based company, which was founded in 2006 and aims to connect people who want to split the cost of long-distance journeys, has expanded beyond its European roots into a growing number of emerging markets like Turkey, India and Russia.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, August 4

As Employees Flee Twitter and Shares Continue to Slump; Drop to Lowest Since IPO May Lure Takeover Offers: Shares slumped 5.6 percent on Monday to $29.27, the lowest price since the company’s November 2013 initial public offering. The move pushed Twitter below $20 billion in market value, making it more attractive to potential acquirers like Google, investors said. Last week, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s interim chief executive officer and co-founder, and Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto warned that it will be a while before the social media company stems a slowdown in user growth. They also noted that demand from advertisers missed their expectations. Meanwhile, Twitter is conducting a search to replace former CEO Dick Costolo. “Their comments could be suppressing the stock price for a reason, because their strategy is to be acquired,” said Jeff Sica, president of Sica Wealth Management, who has clients who hold Twitter. “I’m advising anyone that owns Twitter to hold, because I do think at this point there’s going to be an acquisition.” Even at these levels, Twitter with a small premium would probably be the largest acquisition ever for Google or Facebook Inc. Facebook last year acquired WhatsApp Inc., a messaging application, for $22 billion. Twitter has been increasing its ties with Google, making a deal earlier this year to display tweets in search results and partnering with Google’s Doubleclick ad product. Twitter’s price would have to drop to $11.16 a share, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. For Facebook’s earnings to benefit, Twitter shares would only need to drop to $20.78. Competitors are looking at some of Twitter’s assets: its employees. Two product executives announced their departures on July 28, the same day the company reported earnings. Todd Jackson, who helped Twitter debut its Highlights product, left for Dropbox Inc., while Christian Oestlien, who helped drive growth, is going to Google’s YouTube. Trevor O’Brien, also in product leadership, announced his departure a few days later. Without a clear path to a leader who can help Twitter accelerate user growth, “the only strategy that will work for them is if they’re acquired”.

Alibaba Declines as Chinese ADRs Retreat on Economic Slowdown; Down 35% from Post-IPO High: Alibaba, China’s biggest online retailer, slid for an eighth day as fresh data highlighting China’s weakening economy stoked concern that the company’s sales growth is slowing. The American depositary receipts retreated 0.4 percent to $77.99 in New York on Monday, capping the longest slump since the company’s September debut. The drop pushed Alibaba’s decline from its high in November to 35 percent. Alibaba sold ADRs for $68 apiece in a record $25 billion initial public offering on Sept. 18. They had climbed as much as 75 percent in the following two months to a record high of $119.15 in November. The company will probably report a 34 percent increase in sales for the June quarter, down from 46 percent in the same period last year, according to the average estimate of 26 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. LightInTheBox, a web-based retailer of China-made goods to overseas markets, tumbled 9.3 percent to $3.63, the lowest since its U.S. listing in June 2013. Jumei International, which sells beauty products online, sank 6.7 percent to $17.46, dropping the most in four weeks.

Apple Falls Below Its 200-Day Moving Average for First Time Since 2013: The bull market’s base just lost another brick. Amid a collapse in breadth and the threat of falling earnings, add a correction in Apple shares to the concerns facing investors. The iPhone maker slipped 2.4 percent to $118.44 today, extending its decline since February to 11 percent and dropping below another chart threshold, its 200-day moving average, for the first time since 2013. The iPhone maker’s shares had spent 471 sessions above the 200-day threshold, last falling below it in September 2013. It entered a correction territory today after coming within 40 cents of one on July 9 before rallying.

For Mobile Messaging, GIFs Prove to Be Worth at Least a Thousand Words: Just as smartphones drove the rise of emoji, mobile devices are propelling GIFs into a more widespread form of instant visual-messaging. Tumblr, the blogging site, said it had 23 million GIFs posted to its site every day. In March, Facebook began supporting GIFs, with more than five million of the animations sent daily through its messaging app. Slack, the workplace collaboration start-up, says it counts more than two million GIF integrations each month. In total, online searches for GIFs have risen by a factor of nine since mid-2012, according to Experian Marketing Services, an industry research firm. While the brief animations are not new — GIFs were created in 1987 by Steve Wilhite, a programmer at CompuServe, and have been omnipresent on desktops — major improvements in mobile technology and a surge of messaging applications are pushing GIFs to break out beyond the web forums of old. They have become a mainstream form of digital expression, a way to relay complex feelings and thoughts in ways beyond words and even photographs, making them hugely popular with young audiences who never leave home without their smartphones. The animated snippets are being spread on mobile devices by a new generation of GIF start-ups, which are backed by venture capital. Riffsy, which makes the GIF keyboard for smartphones, just raised $10 million. Giphy, which provides a search engine for a vast library of GIFs, has raised more than $23 million. And there are numerous other companies, like Imgur, PopKey and Kanvas, all eager to snip and remix video clips into short, ready-to-share packages. For now, few of these companies are profiting from GIFs as they focus on propagating the use of the clips. But the start-ups see potential for profit, especially as brands increasingly integrate the animations into advertising and other marketing. GIFs are marked by certain characteristics. They are typically a few seconds long, soundless and play in a loop. They are often culled from movie and TV clips and can include text on top of the animated image. Their use has seeped into professional venues, frequently replacing text. Google recently sent a reporter a GIF of a toddler throwing her hands up in response to a question. Digital publications like BuzzFeed regularly use GIFs as a storytelling method. And office workers like Jerrod Howlett, an employee at Google, regularly respond to email with GIFs. “I’m not that great with words,” Mr. Howlett said. “But if I find the perfect GIF, it nails it.”

German Carmakers Buy Nokia’s Here Mapping Unit for $3 Billion: Nokia said that it had sold its Here digital mapping unit to a consortium of German automakers for 2.8 billion euros, or about $3 billion. The announcement signals the latest chapter in Nokia’s transformation, as the company tries to rebound from the demise of its once world-leading mobile phone unit, which was sold to Microsoft last year for about $7.6 billion. As part of the changes, the Finnish company has pared its operations to focus almost entirely on its telecom network infrastructure business, which provides communications equipment to some of the world’s largest carriers. The members of the German consortium said that they would use Nokia’s digital mapping unit for their own autonomous driving plans, but that they would be willing to license the technology to other companies. The sale of Nokia’s mapping unit comes as the Finnish company is close to completing its $16.6 billion acquisition of the French-American telecom equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent. Nokia has received regulatory approval from United States and European antitrust authorities for that deal, but it is still waiting for the go-ahead from Chinese officials. By agreeing to a sale price of roughly $3 billion, the Finnish company is essentially writing off years of research and development, and a series of multibillion acquisitions that had turned Here into a global mapping champion. Those deals include the $8.1 billion purchase in 2007 of Navteq, the maker of digital mapping and navigational software based in Chicago, as Nokia tried to keep pace with other handset makers and mobile operating systems. As digital maps are becoming a crucial focal point of many emerging industries, a number of bidders had expressed interest in Here, including the ride-booking service Uber, which submitted a $3 billion bid for the business before dropping out last month. Other tech giants, including Amazon, the Chinese search engine Baidu and Facebook, also rely on Nokia’s geospatial data for their mapping services. These companies had turned to Here to reduce their reliance on Google — a company that they increasingly compete with for users, engineers and advertising revenue. It will now be up to the German automakers to convince these tech companies that they can continue to offer the same level of digital mapping services that had made Nokia’s unit the main global rival to Google Maps.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, June 30

• Here is an MP3 version of this snippet.

• Amazon looks to offer loans to sellers in eight countries including India: Amazon.com will start a business loan program for small sellers in the United Kingdom on Tuesday and is looking to launch it this year in seven more countries including India. Until now, the e-retailer has offered the service only in the United States and Japan. Amazon Lending, founded in 2012, plans to offer short-term working capital loans in other countries where it operates a third-party, seller-run marketplace business. The countries are Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Spain and China, where credit is becoming a key factor in competing for new vendors and grabbing market share. The service is on an invite-only basis and is not open to all sellers on Amazon's platform. Amazon said it can safely offer loans based on internal data and because it takes loan payments out of the sales proceeds it pays sellers. Amazon offers three- to six-month loans of $1,000 to $600,000 to help merchants buy inventory. It makes money on interest and takes a cut of all sales on its marketplace, which now account for about 40 percent of total Amazon site sales. Amazon said it has offered hundreds of millions of dollars in loans since 2012, with more than half of its sellers opting for a repeat loan. Sellers interviewed by Reuters and writing on Amazon forums cited interest rates on Amazon loans ranging from 6 percent to 14 percent, in line with loans from banks and business credit cards. Stephan Aarstol, chief executive of Tower Paddle Boards, an Amazon seller, said he has taken four loans from the company starting in March 2014 because of the speed and simplicity of the process. It took him five days to get his first loan.


• Microsoft Said to Exit Display Ad Business, Cut 1,200 Jobs: Microsoft is shutting down its Web display advertising business and handing operations over to AOL and AppNexus, a person with knowledge of the matter said. About 1,200 jobs at Microsoft will be impacted, with some positions to be moved to AOL and AppNexus. Some people will be offered other positions at Microsoft, while other jobs will be cut, the person said.


• Uber Bonds Term Sheet Reveals $470 Million in Operating Losses on $415 Million in Revenue: Uber is telling prospective investors that it generates $470 million in operating losses on $415 million in revenue, according to a document provided to prospective investors. The term sheet viewed by Bloomberg News, which is being used to sell $1 billion to $1.2 billion in convertible bonds, doesn’t make clear the time period for those results. The document also touts 300 percent year-over-year growth. Investors in this round will be able to convert the notes at a compounded 11.5 percent discount if the company sells shares on the public market, the document shows. The bonds mature in 2022, with an 8 percent annual return if held through maturity. Uber aims to complete the deal by Tuesday, according to the document. The car-booking startup has been on a spree to raise cash. Uber is negotiating a $2 billion credit line from a group of Wall Street banks, a person with knowledge of the situation said last week. Earlier this year, it raised $1.6 billion in convertible debt from Goldman Sachs wealth-management clients, which valued the company at $40 billion. “These are substantially old numbers that do not reflect business activities today,” Uber spokeswoman Nairi Hourdajian said in an e-mail. Hourdajian declined to say why the numbers are being used to promote a current funding round.


• Uber to Acquire Mapping Technology and Know-How From Microsoft: Uber will acquire a portion of Microsoft’s maps technology and extend employment offers to around 100 engineers on Microsoft’s mapping team. Uber would not discuss the terms of the acquisition, which will bring it a data site outside Boulder, Colo., as well as cameras, image-analysis software and a license to the intellectual property. Although most Uber services rely on digital maps, much of its interest in mapping is focused on how to improve its carpooling service, UberPool. While Uber relies heavily on mapping technology from Apple, Baidu and especially Google, the company has taken strides to bring as much mapping expertise in-house as possible. Microsoft said the deal on Monday was part of a broader strategy to focus on its core products.


• The Apple Watch Hasn't Killed Fitbit: Two months after the Apple Watch launch, the leading wrist-based fitness tracking company is doing just fine. The Apple Watch was expected to be a disaster for companies like Fitbit. It hasn’t been. While Fitbit’s sales dipped as anticipation for Apple’s smartwatch grew, the company has bounced back this spring and appears to be doing just fine, according to data provided exclusively to Bloomberg by Slice Intelligence. After Apple’s monster first week, Fitbit products have actually outsold Apple Watches, according to Slice. Slice collects data from the e-mailed receipts of about 2.5 million people. Over the past year, Fitbit has outsold the rest of the fitness tracking market combined (excluding Apple). While the entire industry saw a bump during last year’s holiday season, companies such as Jawbone, Garmin, and Samsung saw their wearable sales decline quickly after Christmas. Fitbit’s never dropped to their pre-holiday levels, and began ramping up again this spring. People are seeking out Fitbit products specifically. When people buy Fitbit products online, the most common place they’re doing it is on the company’s own website. More than 43 percent of Fitbit sales take place on Fitbit.com, slightly edging out Amazon, which accounts for 40 percent of online sales of Fitbit devices. Apple Watch's and Fitbit's consumer bases don’t overlap much. Fitbit is tightly focused on fitness. Apple pitches its product as a more general-use device. There's also a significant difference in price, with Fitbit devices ranging from $60 to $250 and the Apple watch starting at $350 and going straight up to ridiculous. According to Slice, less than 5 percent of people who bought a Fitbit since the end of 2013 have also purchased an Apple Watch. For now, it seems like there’s room in wearable computing for both companies—but maybe not anyone else.


• Quikr is reportedly in talks to acquire Housing.com: Online classifieds firm Quikr is in talks to acquire real estate portal Housing.com.When contacted, co-founder and CEO of Housing.com Rahul Yadav confirmed the news but only to retract it later. SoftBank had invested in the promising online realty startup close to $90 million in December 2014 valuing the company around $270 million. SoftBank is said to have initiated talks with the potential acquirer Quikr, which has been looking to strengthen its newly launched property sales vertical QuikrHomes by way of inorganic expansion. The sale efforts seem to have been initiated by its investors as they are trying to salvage their investment in the company.


• With New Budgeting Tools, AWS Makes It Easier For Developers To Manage Costs: Amazon today announced two new tools that make it easier for developers to control their expenses on its AWS cloud computing platform. The first tool, called Budgets, allows AWS users to define a monthly budget for their AWS cost. As the name implies, this means you can now set up a budget for all of your AWS spending, or set up a specific budget for just the EC2 service, for example. Then, when you get close to exceeding your monthly budget — or when your forecasted cost exceeds 100 percent — AWS will send you an alert. In addition, AWS is launching a new tool for its Cost Explorer service today that tries to forecast monthly cost up to three months into the future. This service can look at data on an aggregate level, but more interestingly, it can look at specific services, tags, availability zones, purchase options and API operations. Given that there is probably some variability in how you use AWS in a given month, the service will also show confidence intervals for its prediction. Estimating AWS cost is something of an arcane art, which is only complicated by Amazon’s granular pricing structure. The more complex the app you’re hosting on AWS, the harder it gets to figure out how much it’ll cost to run it on Amazon’s service (which also makes it hard to compare AWS cost to other cloud platforms). These new services will hopefully make it a bit easier to at least keep track of AWS cost without having to resort to third-party tools.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, June 5

• Here is an audio (MP3) version of this snippet on SoundCloud

• The Apple Watch will hit retail stores on June 26: Apple said it would start selling some models of its watch at its retail stores this month, and also roll out the gadget in seven more countries. The watch has been on display in Apple stores around the world since April 10, when it became available for preorder online and at shops including trendy fashion boutiques in Paris, London and Tokyo. Apple had directed people to order online, preventing long queues around its stores that have become a norm with the company's rollout of new products. Apple Watch will be launched in Italy, Mexico, Spain, South Korea, Singapore, Switzerland and Taiwan on June 26, the company said. The watch is currently available in the United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan and the UK. Apart from online stores, customers in these countries can also buy the devices at Apple's retail stores and some authorized resellers. The company has not given any sales figures for the watch since it began taking orders, but has often said demand was outstripping supply. "The response to Apple Watch has surpassed our expectations in every way," said Jeff Williams, senior vice president of operations. "We're also making great progress with the backlog of Apple Watch orders."

• Amazon's e-gifting offering launched quietly recently: Amazon Allowance, which recently debuted without much fanfare, lets people set up monthly or weekly payments to credit their kids' — or anyone else's — Amazon account with a cash balance, like a gift card. That saves parents from having to find cash, write a check or a make a bank transfer, and gives the recipient a way to shop on the website without a credit or debit card. The initiative is significant in a few ways. The e-giving (electronic gift card) market is projected to reach $14 billion in 2017, up from $6 billion last year, according to CEB, and U.S. retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and JC Penney Co. have all made e-gifting a part of their strategy. It's also a way to get younger shoppers accustomed to buying things on Amazon. And with Apple Inc. and Google Inc. aiming to turn smartphones into digital wallets, Amazon needs to keep shoppers close. Amazon account holders will be able able to set up one-time and recurring allowances for "family, friends, or employees that are age 13 and above," according to the website. The recipient must have an Amazon account (a parent or guardian will have to help set up an account for those under 17). People can also set up allowances for themselves to budget or save up for a purchase. "Sending money to family or friends can be a frustrating process," said Manish Bansal, general manager of gift certificates at Seattle-based Amazon. "A lot of early customers are using Amazon Allowances as a way to budget —whether through one-time or recurring allowances. We’re also seeing parents using Amazon Allowances to send money to college kids who need help buying textbooks and dorm essentials."

• Snapdeal, GoJavas to pick up return orders in 90 minutes: E-commerce marketplace Snapdeal, and QuickDel Logistics, which operates under the GoJavas brand, have launched a new service that will ensure pick up of return or replacement e-commerce orders within 90 minutes of intimation. The new service, christened ‘go-90′, has gone live in 15 cities, as per a press statement. GoJavas was previously a part of Jabong, a lifestyle e-tailer incubated by Rocket Internet. The move is seen as another step towards stimulating online shopping in the country since returns are seen as a major challenge. Reportedly, around 5-9 per cent of all e-commerce orders end up being returned in India.

• Facebook Launches Facebook Lite - A Stripped Down Android App For The Developing World: Today, Facebook is launching a bare-bones, low-resolution version of its Android app that works well on crummy networks or outdated phones, and burns much less data than its normal smartphone apps. It will roll out today in Asia, and come to parts of Latin America, Africa, and Europe in the coming weeks. Facebook Lite is designed specifically for the developing world to help the social network on-board its next billion users. Facebook Lite doesn’t offer data-intensive features like videos or Nearby Friends. But if users are willing to accept that and lower-resolution image thumbnails, they can access Facebook quick, smooth, and cheap from the most remote corners of the planet. Roughly a year back, that’s when we realized that our current Facebook experiences needed a lot more work, specifically in emerging markets and more specifically where networks are bad” Facebook Lite’s product manager Vijay Shankar tells me. So Facebook set out on two parallel paths. First, it would try optimize its flagship apps to load faster with less data. It’s already shrunk down its main Android app. Second, Shankar tells me “We floated another idea. What if we were building this from scratch for emerging markets? How do we completely re-architect this?” Rather than imagine what the problems in these areas were, Shankar says “we did a lot of research on the ground and spent a lot of time in Africa, and India and Indonesia.” The team discovered the solution would need three things: One, to work on any Android phone, regardless of storage space, RAM, and CPU. Two, to load fast even on 2G mobile connections, which is what 4 billion people on earth are stuck with. Three, to use as little data as possible, as the prohibitive cost of data plans is actually the largest barrier to Internet usage, not network access. The main way Facebook makes the app use less data is by never pre-loading full-resolution images. Photos and link preview thumbnails in the News Feed appear a bit grainy at first. They’ll load in full-res if tapped, but Facebook only wants to do those big data pulls if people volunteer for them. If you try to post a photo to Facebook Lite, the app compresses the image and then sends it in the background, so its small and you don’t have to spend the wait time staring at the screen. “Every roundtrip to the server is painful” Shankar says, so “we’re very careful about what features and experiences we offer in the app.” There will be some ads, but several of Facebook’s top formats like app install ads won’t be in Facebook Lite. Advertisers might not love the idea of their creative assets being compressed into low-res. But otherwise, users would probably scroll past them before they even load. Today, Facebook Lite begins its official global rollout. At under 1 megabyte in size, Shankar says it can be downloaded in seconds for cheap on even slow 2G connections. I played with it for a few minutes, and was surprised by how slick and full-featured it was despite the compromises.

• Coke's New Twitter Ads Call Out Viewers by Name As Social Promos Get Personal. Coca-Cola has been buying Promoted Tweets that show up in viewers' Twitter feeds and address them by their first names. The ad copy starts with: "Hey [NAME], #ShareACoke is back! Order..." You can see the full promo in the above image. The new tactic is part of a larger, ongoing "Share a Coke" campaign that debuted earlier this spring. The company is encouraging people to buy 8-ounce bottles of the soda, personalized with their names, for $5 apiece. Coke wasn't available for comment. But it appears the Atlanta-based soda giant is employing Twitter's Tailored Audiences platform in an innovative way to create this targeted style of advertising. Twitter deferred to Coca-Cola about the campaign and didn't state whether other brands were using the personalized call to action. But it would certainly interest any marketer that is looking to increase its click-through rates on the microblogging platform.

• Alibaba has tied up with China's largest loan restructurer to sell bad debt online. Alibaba will cooperate with the biggest state-owned loan restructurer to dispose of more than 4 billion yuan ($645 million) of non-performing assets on its online shopping platform Taobao. China Cinda Asset Management, which announced the tieup with Ma last week, saw profits rise 32 percent to a record in 2014. China’s non-performing loans climbed by an unprecedented 140 billion yuan in the first quarter to 982.5 billion yuan, the most since 2008 and almost the size of Vietnam’s economy. UBS and Standard Chartered are among companies that bought stakes in Cinda before its 2013 public share sale as a stepping stone into the distressed asset market. Cinda’s market value of $23 billion is now larger than KKR’s $19.1 billion. Cinda already sold two bad loans on Alibaba’s retail site Taobao in April for a combined 24.5 million yuan, according to a China Banking Regulatory Commission statement at the time. Four more were auctioned last month for 31.4 million yuan. One of the soured loans auctioned in May was originally from Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. with a clothing company in the eastern Zhejiang province as the debtor. Cinda disclosed details such as the name of the borrower, the principal amount, accrued interest and guarantors of the loan on Taobao. Bidders were advised to look at the loan documents and check the collaterals before auction. Both individuals as well as institutions were allowed to bid. “Alibaba’s online loan auction platform broadens the investor base for bad loans and therefore will lead to better price discovery for distressed assets,” said Liao Qiang, a banking analyst at Standard & Poor’s in Beijing. The legal complexities involved in unwinding such debts and the need to divulge information publicly may limit growth in online auctions, according to KPMG’s Gleave. “Alibaba’s auction site is just a market place,” he said. “Whether that’s a good way to trade bad debts is still to be seen.”

• Yahoo Says Shutting Down Maps Service Site, Other Tools: Maps.yahoo.com will close at the end of June, Amotz Maimon, chief architect at the Sunnyvale, California-based company, said in a blog post. Yahoo will still support mapping as part of other services including search and the photo-sharing website Flickr. Yahoo also is paring back or ending support for other sites and services, including mail support for older versions of Apple Inc.’s iPhone operating system. The company is shuttering market-specific media properties, including Yahoo Music in France and Canada and the home page for the Philippines. In addition, it will end support for creation of Pipes, a Web-content gathering tool. Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer is looking for ways to keep costs under control as she works to turn around the company she has led for almost three years.

• Facebook Messenger Ditches Constant Mapping To Lay Groundwork For More Location Features. Facebook is removing the confusing, slightly creepy always-on location sharing feature in Messenger for a more explicit, one-time way to share where you are or will be. Location will no longer be a “second class citizen”, Messenger Head Of Product Stan Chudnovsky tells me. Instead, Messenger has big plans for GPS features, saying “What we’re launching is the foundation of everything that’s coming.” For example, “You might want to make reservations. How are we all getting there? Maybe there’s a transportation service somehow” Chudnovsky hints. When I ask if Messenger might build on Uber’s API to let you instantly book rides, he coyly replied “I didn’t say that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like what you’re saying.” The new design for location sharing in Messenger is rolling out today for everyone on iOS and Android. It banishes the blue arrow and any way to constantly share your coordinates. It’s replaced with a pin button alongside those for sending photos, stickers, or money, or an option in the three-dot More drawer. Tapping it pulls up a map with your current location pinned, which you can send to friends with one more tap. This makes it easy to tell a friend “Here’s where I am, come meet me.” By dragging the map, you can change the pin’s location. That lets you pick a meetup spot. You can also use suggestion of nearby Facebook Places like local businesses, or search for one to set the pin to a specific destination. Chudnovsky says trying to do something similar by opening Google Maps would take “7 taps, 2 app switches, and 150% frustration.”

• Computer Scientists Are Astir After Baidu Team Is Barred From A.I. Competition: A group of researchers at the Chinese web services company Baidu have been barred from participating in an international competition for artificial intelligence technology after organizers discovered that the Baidu scientists broke the contest’s rules. The competition, which is known as the “Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge,” is organized annually by computer scientists at Stanford University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Michigan. It requires that computer systems created by the teams classify the objects in a set of digital images into 1,000 different categories. The rules of the contest permit each team to run test versions of their programs twice weekly ahead of a final submission as they train their programs to “learn” what they are seeing. However, on Tuesday, the contest organizers posted a public statement noting that between November and May 30, different accounts had been used by the Baidu team to submit more than 200 times to the contest server, “far exceeding the specified limit of two submissions per week.” This year, Baidu announced that it had built a custom supercomputer named Minwa with the intention of dedicating it to the image recognition contest. Baidu researchers subsequently made a series of announcements about the success of the computer, including one playing up a result more accurate than an earlier score by Google scientists. On May 4, Baidu posted an article on its technology blog headlined “Baidu Achieves Top Results on Image Recognition Challenge.” The article has since been removed.

• Zomato’s revenue and operating loss more than tripled last year; Meritnation’s growth slowed to a crawl: Zomato, which recently expanded to allow food orders online and has been aggressively expanding overseas with as many as nine firms in its kitty in the past 12 months alone, saw operating revenue rise over three times from INR 30.6 crore in FY14 to INR 96.7 crore last year. Its operating EBITDA loss in the same period also more than tripled to INR 136 crore from INR 41.39 crore in the year ended March 31, 2014. Operating revenue growth for Meritnation was just 6.5 per cent to INR 21.59 crore. However, the firm managed to restrict its operating losses which declined by a fifth to INR 22.72 crore.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, May 25

• Google adds a Buy Button to YouTube "TrueView" Pre-Roll Ads - Initial Results Very Positive: Google today announced that its YouTube TrueView ad product will now come with an optional "click to shop" button on pre-roll spots. The new button will often appear adjacent to the "Skip" button that YouTube fans know very well. A few brands have been testing the ads, which allow viewers to click through to e-commerce pages and add items to their shopping carts. Per Google, home goods merchant Wayfair has been getting three times the digital revenue compared to previous YouTube campaigns, while the cosmetics retailer Sephora saw more than an 80 percent jump in brand consideration and a 54 percent lift in ad recall. The move for Google is designed to shift YouTube's ad business into a higher gear as the site faces increased digital video competition—chiefly from Facebook, although Snapchat, Kik and other mobile startups also pose a threat. Jonathan Opdyke, CEO of HookLogic, predicted the feature would be a hit with merchant brands. Sridhar Ramaswamy, svp of ads and commerce at Google, revealed the new feature while speaking earlier this afternoon at the ad:tech conference in San Francisco.

• Amazon to Stop Funneling European Sales Through Low-Tax Haven: In a move that could put pressure on its rivals to follow suit, Amazon will start paying taxes in a number of European countries where it has large operations, instead of funneling nearly all its sales through Luxembourg, a low-tax haven that is the home base in the region for Amazon and many other large tech companies. Several European countries, including Germany and France, have criticized the tax strategies of some American tech companies, including Google, which use complicated structures that sharply reduce the amount of tax they pay in individual European countries. The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, is also investigating whether Apple and Amazon receive unfair state support through low-tax agreements in Ireland and Luxembourg, respectively, where the companies run their European operations. On May 1, Amazon said that it had started reporting revenue from its operations in Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain. By altering how it reports its revenue, the online retailer may become liable for larger tax charges in certain nations, though it may still be able to reduce its tax burden through other complex accounting practices.Amazon reported a 14 percent rise in European revenue, to 13.6 billion euros, or $15 billion, in 2013 (the latest full-year figures available), according to company filings.The changes to the company’s tax arrangements, however, are likely to put pressure on other tech companies in the United States that funnel the majority of their European revenue through low-tax countries like Ireland and the Netherlands. In Britain, George Osborne, the country’s finance minister, has championed a so-called Google Tax that imposes a 25 percent tax on the local profits of international companies that are perceived to route money unfairly overseas. The new policy came into effect last month. And in response to mounting criticism from other European countries, Ireland announced late last year that it would phase out a tax loophole called the “Double Irish” that would often be used by tech companies. The structure allows corporations with operations in Ireland to make royalty payments for intellectual property to a separate Irish-registered subsidiary. That subsidiary, though incorporated in Ireland, typically has its home in a country that has no corporate income tax. The Double Irish policy has allowed companies like Google to limit how much tax they pay on their international operations. The policy was phased out for new companies at the beginning of 2015, and will be stopped entirely by the end of the decade. Yet, despite the growing clampdown on tax structures used by American tech companies and others, analysts say that European countries are still vying to attract international companies through low-tax policies. Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands have already created new policies that allow companies to apply for a lower tax rate on profits that result from certain patents that are held locally. The European Commission, however, is currently reviewing the legality of these so-called patent boxes.

• Contest for Nokia's maps business heats up; German carmakers, Uber and Baidu, and Tencent are all in the fray: The contest for Nokia's maps business has become a three-way race between German carmakers, a consortium including Uber and Baidu, and a third group including China's Tencent and Navinfo, people familiar with the process said. Finland's Nokia has started an auction of its maps business HERE while it completes its 15.6 billion euros ($17.2 billion) takeover of network equipment maker Alcatel Lucent. German automakers Daimler , BMW and Volkswagen's premium brand Audi have teamed up with private equity firm General Atlantic to form what is being described as the "Industry consortium", two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday. Nokia, Daimler, BMW and General Atlantic declined to comment. The automakers have agreed to contribute potentially more than 700 million euros, but below 1 billion euros, said one auto industry source, who declined to be named. The consortium could be widened to include more carmakers, the source added. Another group consists of Chinese media, mobile and Internet services firm Tencent Holdings, Chinese map maker Navinfo, and Swedish buyout firm EQT Partners, three sources who declined to be named said. Navinfo and Tencent were not immediately available for comment. EQT declined to comment. Private equity firm Apax has joined U.S.-based taxi service Uber and China's Baidu in a third consortium, a financial source who declined to be named said. Apax and Uber declined to comment. Baidu was not immediately available for comment. Analysts put the potential value of HERE at 2 billion euros to 4 billion euros.

• Chinese Car-Hailing App, Backed by Both Alibaba and Tencent, Gives Away Free Rides to Fend Off Uber: Chinese car-hailing app operator Didi Kuaidi will give away 1 billion yuan ($161 million) worth of rides to commuters starting next week to promote its new chauffeur service. The company, backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., is expanding into the market for ride-sharing and carpooling after winning an estimated 99 percent of the taxi-hailing market share. The giveaway is expected to hit Uber Technologies Inc. and Yidao Yongche, two other companies competing for the estimated $1 trillion-a-year market for transportation services in the world’s most populous country. China’s car-hailing industry is currently dominated by Didi and Kuaidi, which together account for a combined 78 percent of ride bookings, with Uber a distant third at 11 percent, according to Analysys International, an industry researcher. “Three years from now, our goal is to allow everyone to hail a taxi or get a ride within three minutes and to serve 30 million people per day,” Cheng Wei, chief executive officer of Didi Kuaidi, said in a statement. The company hopes to meet the demand by supplying more cars in a more flexible way, he said in the statement. Starting May 25, commuters in 12 Chinese cities will enjoy free rides for Didi Kuaidi’s chauffeur service every Monday for a month, according to the company. Didi Kuaidi aims to create the largest “one-stop transportation platform” in the world, the company said. The goal is to cover commuting needs from hailing taxis through mobile apps, to carpooling and booking premium cars with chauffeurs, it said. Formed out of an alliance of two competing apps, the two former rivals had engaged in intense competition, giving out subsidies to drivers and riders, before agreeing to work together in February. Alibaba and Tencent own 10 percent and 13 percent, respectively, in the merged company. Didi Kuaidi won a breakthrough this month after Shanghai said it will include the company in a new taxi-booking platform, the first official recognition of mobile-booking apps. The company is in talks with more local governments about cooperating on car-hailing services, Cheng said, declining to name the cities. By contrast, local media reported Uber’s offices in Guangzhou in southern China were raided by local authorities.

• EBay Plots European Growth With Click-and-Collect Expansion; Surplus Space at Supermarkets Adds to Opportunity: EBay Inc. plans to expand its click-and-collect service in the U.K. and across Europe, after buyers on its site collected 1.5 million parcels from British store chain Argos in the first 18 months of the service. Click and collect is becoming “the dominant way that consumers want their online purchases to be fulfilled” in the U.K., EBay’s senior vice president for Europe Paul Todd said in an interview at Bloomberg’s London headquarters. EBay, based in San Jose, California, is looking at all kinds of partnerships to boost its presence, Todd said. The Argos service, covering about 750 stores across Britain, is used by about 160,000 EBay merchants. Click-and-collect services are booming in Europe as more shoppers choose to fetch their purchase from a store rather than risk missing a home delivery. More than half of online orders placed with John Lewis department stores in the U.K. last Christmas were picked up from a store. France’s Darty Plc said Thursday that 20 percent of all Web sales in the fourth quarter were collected, up from about 10 percent a year ago. Surplus space in U.K. supermarkets may be one avenue that the company explores to boost its collection capabilities. J Sainsbury Plc said this month that about a quarter of its stores will have some under-utilized space in the next five years. The need for grocers to fill that space presents a “huge opportunity” for EBay, Todd said.

• Tinder Gets Into Music by Offering Zedd's New Album for $3.99: Tinder users who spot Zedd's fake profile and "swipe right"—which indicates interest in someone—receive a link to download his new True Colors album for $3.99 (compared to $7.99 on iTunes or Google Play). The profile is also tied to a contest to win an autographed CD. It may be the initial foray for Tinder in terms of selling music, but it's not the first time the red-hot dating app has linked up with music. Earlier this year, pop singer Jason Derulo created a profile to drive views of his YouTube music video. A Tinder rep confirmed to Adweek that the Zedd promo is not an actual ad—it's a partnership that the dating app has been testing with a number of marketers, such as Twentieth Century Fox, E!, and New York's Urban Mudder event on July 25. Bud Light was the first and only brand to run Tinder ads last month as part of its "Whatever, USA" campaign.

• Consolidation in China's online travel sector: Expedia gives up on China partner, sells off $671M majority stake in eLong: Ctrip, China’s top travel site, this afternoon announced it has taken a US$400 million stake in long-time arch-rival eLong. The deal, which closed today, was done by acquiring eLong shares from Expedia. Ctrip now has a 37.6 percent stake in its erstwhile rival. Expedia has sold off its entire 62.4 percent stake in eLong, worth US$671 million, by selling the remaining shares to three other buyers (Keystone Lodging Holdings, Plateno Group, and Luxuriant Holdings), the US-based company said today. As a result of this deal, Ctrip says that it and Expedia have agreed to cooperate with each other on “certain travel product offerings for specified geographic markets.” Expedia’s brief statement did not make clear why it’s exiting eLong. The huge Expedia sell-off marks a major sea-change in China’s highly competitive travel ecommerce sector. It seems to be a huge win for Ctrip, which has now tamed its closest competitor. That leaves Ctrip freer to focus on newer and fast-growing rivals such as Baidu-owned Qunar, Tuniu, and LY. Ctrip has US backing of its own in the form of Priceline, which owns about eight percent of the company.