Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, June 23

• Clash of Clans May Spur Tencent’s Marvel-Like Aspirations: Tencent is spending $8.6 billion to gain control of Supercell Oy -- the Finnish maker of mobile games including Hay Day, Clash Royale and Boom Beach -- from SoftBank Group Corp. To see how that portfolio may fit into Tencent’s emerging entertainment empire, look at how the Chinese company leveraged World of Warcraft and League of Legends into global powerhouses.League of Legend’s 67 million monthly users helped Tencent earn $9 billion in game revenue last year, and the Tencent-backed movie “Warcraft” is setting box-office records in China since this month’s release. Acquiring Supercell reinforces Tencent’s entertainment aspirations against Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Baidu Inc., and comes after Tencent bought the rights to 300-plus Japanese anime franchises in a push to become a worldwide multimedia brand like Marvel, DC and Disney. “Tencent has taken on a strategy to convert good IPs into movies and anime,” said Mark Tanner, founder of China Skinny, a Shanghai-based research and marketing agency. “It’s creating a world of superhero characters for entertainment.” Supercell occupied the top spot on researcher App Annie’s rankings of publishers fortwo years running. Clash of Clans was named an “essential” app by Apple Inc. and was promoted during the 2015 Super Bowl in a commercial featuring Academy Award-nominee Liam Neeson. Yet the game hasn’t been among the 10 top-grossing apps in China and Japan’s iOS Store since 2015, which is where Tencent’s clout can help.The company’s QQ and WeChat instant messaging apps have more than a billion users combined, and it could use those apps to promote Supercell games, Tanner said. That distribution system helped Tencent’s mobile-game revenue increase 16 percent to 8.2 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) in the quarter ending March 31, compared with the previous three months. China’s mobile gaming market expected to reach 68.8 billion yuan by 2018. “We do see there’s an opportunity for IPs of games and movies and video to cross and splice with each other, in the right way,” Martin Lau, Tencent’s president, said during a conference call Tuesday.

• Okta hires Goldman Sachs to lead IPO or sale: Okta Inc, a U.S. cloud identity management company valued at $1.2 billion in its latest private fundraising round, has hired Goldman Sachs Group to lead an initial public offering or outright sale, people familiar with the matter said. Okta's exploration of both an IPO and a sale underscores the dilemma faced by several technology companies this year, as frothy stock market valuations of many of their peers begin to come down, prompting potential buyers to enter the fray. Okta could file for an IPO as early as the second half of this year, the people said this week. However, the San Francisco-based company has also held talks with technology peers about being acquired, and could pursue a sale if it believes it can fetch a significantly higher valuation than in an IPO, the people added.Okta helps companies organize passwords and authenticate the identity of employees who log into work applications made by other software firms. Its customers include satellite TV provider Dish Network Corp and hospitality company MGM Resorts International. Okta has raised a total of roughly $230 million to date with investors such as Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners and Khosla Ventures, Janus Capital Group and Altimeter Capital.

• Twilio prices its IPO at $15 per share, above its previous target: Twilio today said it would price its initial public offering at $15 per share, which would value the company at around $1.23 billion. That would value Twilio above its previous $1 billion valuation from its last financing round. With the pricing, the company expects to raise around $150 million, with an option for another 1.5 million shares to be purchased. It’s also a higher price than the $12-$14 per share price that the company previously targeted. Twilio’s IPO will be an important one given the drought of tech IPOs this year. Anxiety has gripped many startups that have hit unicorn status given the complete lack of tech IPOs for 2016 (Twilio will only be the third of the year). The hope, for many startups, is that Twilio will re-open the tech IPO window with a strong showing after trading begins tomorrow. If that happens, it might convince investors that many startups that have hit frothy valuations have come back in line with reality, and these companies could be good investment targets if they choose to go public. Twilio is not profitable, with the company reporting a net loss of $35.5 million on $166.9 million in revenue last year. But it’s showing strong revenue growth, with the company bringing in $88.8 million in revenue from 2014. In total, Twilio has raised more than $200 million in venture financing, with Bessemer Venture Partners owning the largest chunk of the company at 28.5 percent per its last IPO filing. Twilio is expected to start trading tomorrow, and we’ll see whether or not the appetite for tech IPOs will be coming back with its performance.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, September 11

• Google Starts Rolling Out Android Pay to Challenge Apple: Google is starting to roll out Android Pay this week, seeking to catch up with Apple Pay and grab a chunk of the growing market for mobile payments. The Web company, which announced plans for the service in May, has signed up partners including Macy’s, Staples and Whole Foods Market, Pali Bhat, Google’s director of product management for the new feature, said in a blog post Thursday. Android Pay turns smartphones into digital wallets that store credit and debit cards, which can then be used in physical and virtual stores. The mobile-payments market is projected to top $142 billion by 2019, up from $67 billion this year, according to Forrester Research Inc. Android Pay users will be able to shop for goods in more than 1 million U.S. locations and in over 1,000 apps, according to Google, which competes with Apple Inc., PayPal Holdings Inc. and other rivals that have introduced digital wallets. Google is betting Android Pay will help its smartphones lure more consumers. Like Apple Pay is built into iPhones, Android Pay will be integrated into smartphones running Google’s mobile operating system. Google’s earlier effort, Google Wallet, has been reoriented to focus on sending and receiving money, the company said today. Android Pay is also is working on new features, including the ability to use loyalty cards and special offers.

• Uber’s China Foe Said to Join Alibaba, Tencent in Lyft Deal: Uber’s Chinese rival invested in U.S. ride-sharing service Lyft around the second quarter, according to people familiar with an investment that takes the battle with Uber abroad. Didi Kuaidi joined Alibaba and Tencent in the funding round between March and June, the people said, asking not to be named because the deal was private. Their joint investment was intended to fuel Didi Kuaidi’s expansion abroad and bankroll Uber’s U.S. competitor, the people said. Alibaba invested $25 million, one of the people said. Asia’s two largest Internet companies already back Didi Kuaidi, the leading Chinese car-hailing service formed in February from two competing apps. Uber and Didi Kuaidi are locked in a costly struggle in China, competing for market share with incentives and subsidies to lure drivers and passengers. Both are close to raising more than $4 billion combined from investors in their latest fundraising rounds, people familiar with the plans said previously. Alibaba had been part of a consortium that backed San Francisco-based Lyft, whose cars in the U.S. sport distinctive pink mustaches on their front. The service counts Carl Icahn among its investors and was valued in a March fundraising round at $2.5 billion. Uber, in contrast, was said to be valued at more than $40 billion in its last round.

• Apple Sells Bonds in Euros Extending Debt Binge to $55 Billion: Apple sold bonds in euros for the second time, increasing the amount the iPhone maker has raised in global debt offerings since 2013 to more than $55 billion. The 2 billion-euro ($2.3 billion) sale was split evenly between bonds maturing in eight years and 12 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Apple sold the longer-dated notes at 85 basis points more than benchmark rates. That compares with the 45 basis-point premium for securities maturing in 2026 that the company sold in its debut euro offering in November, the data show. Apple has sold bonds around the world to diversify funding as it works to return $200 billion to investors by March 2017 and expands its global retail network. While the cost of funding has increased since Apple’s debut euro sale, U.S. companies can still raise capital in the single currency at a 2.07 percentage-point average discount to borrowing in dollars, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch indexes.  “It’s slightly more expensive than last year’s euro-bond sale, but you’re still paying less than 2 percent for 12 years,” said Geraud Charpin, a portfolio manager at BlueBay Asset Management in London. “It’s pretty cheap money. What else do you want to ask for?” Apple will use the proceeds from the bond sale for general corporate purposes, as well as to buy back shares, pay dividends, boost working capital and to fund capital expenditure, acquisitions and repayment of debt, according to the person.

• China says Apple unit underpaid $71 million in tax in 2013: A China unit of U.S. tech giant Apple underpaid taxes in 2013 by 452 million yuan ($71 million), according to a report from the country's finance ministry, which comes as China toughens its stance on tax payments by foreign firms. The Ministry of Finance (MOF) report, dated Sept. 9 but cited by official news agency Xinhua on Thursday, said Apple had already repaid the taxes as well as paying 65 million yuan in late fees. The investigation, however, underlines an increasingly hard stance being taken by Beijing against foreign firms underpaying taxes after authorities said in December they would crack down on the practice. The finance ministry report said the Apple subsidiary had understated its revenues by 8.8 billion yuan and its costs by 3.4 billion yuan. It had also overstated its profits by 5.4 billion yuan. China levied around $140 million in back taxes from Microsoft Corp at the end of last year.

• Ubers Are About To Start Carrying Their Own In-Car Magazine: Starting this week in NYC, you can grab a copy of Uber’s new in-car magazine, called “Arriving Now,” from the seat-back pockets. A new print publication isn’t exactly a revolutionary move (airlines have been rocking inflight magazines for a while), but Uber has an interesting opportunity here to test the content waters. At face value, it seems like kind of a funny move for them to get into the truly burgeoning print journalism market, but there are a ton of different directions that this could be taken. Uber is probably more interested here in testing out a content arm where they can push out cool stories that gives people a better “brand experience” with the company. Though most people probably spend their time on a phone in the back of an Uber regardless, seat-back, always-on touch screens could probably be coming soon enough to a car near you, allowing users more ways to interact with Uber’s continually growing on-demand services that don’t necessarily involve getting people from place-to-place.

• The Bloomberg Terminal, a Wall Street Fixture, Faces Upstarts:  For nearly three decades, the flickering orange-on-black screens of the Bloomberg terminal have been omnipresent on Wall Street trading floors and executive suite desks, maintaining a vital lifeline of data and communication. In knitting together the world of finance, those $21,000-a-year terminals have generated billions of dollars for Bloomberg, almost single-handedly paying for the company’s journalistic ambitions, as well as the fortune, political career and philanthropic largess of its founder, Michael R. Bloomberg. Now that golden egg — and all that it pays for — is a target for new competitors looking to knock it from its dominant position. Bloomberg has fended off competition before, but the latest upstarts are gunning for the company at a time when Wall Street is already aggressively looking to cut its spending on Bloomberg terminals. Later this month, a start-up called Symphony, created by Goldman Sachs and backed by the large banks, is introducing software that provides an alternative to what many traders say is the most valuable part of the Bloomberg terminal — the chat program used by traders and investors. At Goldman, more than half of the people who have Bloomberg terminals use them primarily for chat and other simple functions, according to people briefed on the subject who were not authorized to speak publicly. At the same time, Money.Net, a start-up that has been built by a former top Bloomberg executive, is looking to challenge Bloomberg head-on and is gaining momentum and stealing away customers. After more than a decade as New York’s mayor, Mr. Bloomberg has been retaking the reins of the company and pushing to refine its focus. Last week, dozens of Bloomberg journalists were laid off as part of a broader effort to reconfigure how journalism fits into the company. Bloomberg’s news offerings — including BusinessWeek and the company’s website — generate less than 4 percent of the company’s revenue and cost more than they earn, according to Burton-Taylor Consulting. The terminals generate 75 percent of Bloomberg’s revenue. All service providers for Wall Street, not just Bloomberg, are unusually vulnerable at the moment. The financial industry is in the middle of an aggressive run of cost-cutting as it grapples with new regulations and changes in the markets. A Bloomberg contract, which can be upward of $100 million at larger institutions, is a tempting target to whittle down. The number of Bloomberg terminals grew only 1.9 percent, to 325,000, last year. In the 10 years before the financial crisis, the number of terminals grew at an average rate of 12 percent each year, with most companies signing on for multiyear contracts. Bloomberg has sustained several challenges to its dominant market position, fending off smaller competitors hoping to bite off a corner of its business. And it has the cash reservoirs to wage a vigorous defense this time around. But Bloomberg’s own history shows that it is not easy to maintain a profitable market position like the one it has held for more than two decades. Bloomberg rose to prominence in the 1990s by nimbly replacing earlier Wall Street data companies — like Quotron and Telerate — that failed to change quickly enough to protect their longtime market dominance. Morgan Downey, the former Bloomberg executive who is building Money.Net, said he decided to leave Bloomberg in late 2013 and create a low-cost challenger after seeing how slowly Bloomberg was changing and how many of the company’s clients wanted a cheaper alternative. “When they go visit the banks, they are being told, ‘We are trying actively, not passively, to get away from being your customers,’ ” Mr. Downey said. “They’ve gotten very lazy and fat.”

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, September 9

• Facebook Equips Business Pages With Mobile Storefronts For Shopping And Services: Likes ≠ Dollars. Facebook wants Pages to actually earn money for the 45 million small businesses that use them. So today Facebook is upgrading Pages with a tabbed mobile layout that lets them display storefront “Sections” where users can “Shop” for products or view a list of “Services” the business offers. The company is also making calls to action on business Pages, such as “Call Now,” “Send Message” and “Contact Us,” bigger, more colorful and more prominent beneath the cover image. The “Shop” section will include Buy buttons powered by Facebook’s partnership with Shopify so users can check out without leaving the social network. Facebook is also testing Buy buttons that link out to a business’ traditional website. These changes are the biggest made to Pages since 2012. They build on Facebook’s recent announcement of new messaging capabilities for businesses and badges for companies that respond quickly. Today’s updates could make Facebook Pages a utility, not just a presence for businesses. Andrew Chau, the co-founder of the Boba Guys cafe, tells me he started the business’ online presence with a Facebook Page not a website because that’s where it could get “the most eyeballs”. He says he tells people to ‘Check us out on Facebook’ rather than ‘Download our app’ because “they aren’t going to do that”. People don’t necessarily want a whole app just for their local tea shop. The strategy is similar to WeChat’s platform for businesses in China. Rather than having to build an app, get people to download it, and then get them to use it, WeChat lets businesses create “official accounts” that users can easily follow and buy from. The average boutique owner or plumber shouldn’t have to learn how to build an app. Now they don’t.
• Yahoo may have to pay taxes on Alibaba spinoff: Yahoo is reconsidering its plan to spin off its $23 billion stake in Alibaba after federal tax authorities declined to rule in advance on whether the transaction would mean huge capital gains taxes for Yahoo or its shareholders. Yahoo disclosed in a securities filing on Tuesday that the Internal Revenue Service told the company on Sept. 2 that it would not provide any guidance about the tax liability related to the spinoff ahead of the deal. The Internet company said that its own tax advisers still believed the spinoff of its 15 percent stake in Alibaba, a leading Chinese e-commerce company, would be tax-free, in part because it would be bundling a small-business division with the Alibaba stock into a new company called Aabaco Holdings. However, Yahoo said its board was now considering its options in light of the I.R.S. decision. Analysts say Yahoo’s options could include restructuring the spinoff or selling all or part of its 15 percent stake in Alibaba. Yahoo shareholders have been eagerly awaiting the spinoff, which analysts say accounts for far more of Yahoo’s stock price than its core advertising business. The Alibaba spinoff was intended to be a reward to Yahoo’s long-suffering shareholders. “It’s a big setback for Mayer,” said Eric Jackson, founder of the investment fund Ironfire Capital, who has been agitating for Yahoo to do more to unlock the value of its assets. “This was going to be the one feather in her cap, and now it’s seemingly not going to happen.” If Yahoo proceeds without the I.R.S. opinion, it may ultimately have to defend its move in court. An I.R.S. auditor, reviewing the company’s books several years down the road, could declare that the spinoff was taxable. Yahoo would probably go to court to challenge the decision, and Mr. Willens said the company would most likely prevail. Analysts have estimated that the company would owe about $9 billion in taxes if the transaction were fully taxable. In structuring the spinoff, Yahoo proposed to transfer that liability to Aabaco. So in theory, Ms. Mayer could proceed with the spinoff and focus on running Yahoo, leaving Aabaco shareholders to bear the risk of an audit.

• Alibaba’s $141 Billion Slide Boosts Tencent to Biggest in Asia: Alibaba surrendered the title of Asia’s largest Internet company to Tencent Holdings Ltd., capping a 10-month slide for the e-commerce giant that wiped $140.7 billion from its market value. The shares of Alibaba fell 4.7 percent to $60.91 at the close in New York on Tuesday, making the online marketplace worth $153 billion. That’s below Tencent’s value for the first time since billionaire Jack Ma oversaw Alibaba’s record-breaking initial public offering in September 2014. Alibaba’s reliance on consumer spending in China, where it gets 83 percent of its revenue, leaves it vulnerable to the domestic slowdown. Tencent is adding pressure by buying Hollywood content for its video platform, investing in cloud computing and on-demand mobile services, while forging an e-commerce alliance with JD.com. China may have lent its shares a hand. Last month, the government cut rates for the fifth time since November and resumed intervening in equities, seeking to arrest a stock market rout that wiped out trillions of dollars in value. That’s helped prop up stocks in neighboring Hong Kong. Tencent posted record quarterly profit in August. By comparison, Alibaba trailed analysts’ revenue forecasts in two of the past four quarters, and its sales grew at the slowest pace in at least three years. Tencent is capitalizing on the more than 1 billion users of WeChat and QQ. Billionaire Chairman Ma Huateng is finding new ways to make money through advertising, payment services and health care through the apps. Tencent earns more than half its revenue from games, and in April invested $126 million in San Francisco-based Glu Mobile Inc. to add a portfolio of action and role-playing games for smartphones.

• Alibaba lowers second-quarter gross merchandise volume estimates. Alibaba said on Tuesday it expected second-quarter gross merchandise volume (GMV) to be lower than its initial estimates due to weaker consumer spending in China. The company's shares reversed course and slipped as much as 3.1 percent to $61.91 in late afternoon trading. They had earlier gained as much as 4.5 percent. Alibaba said it now expects GMV to be lower in mid-single digits on a percentage basis from its earlier estimates. Up to Friday's close, the company's shares had fallen about 39 percent this year.

• Restaurant of the Future? Service With an Impersonal Touch There’s a new quinoa restaurant in San Francisco — yes, quinoa restaurants are a thing in San Francisco, so that’s not what’s noteworthy. At this restaurant, customers order, pay and receive their food and never interact with a person. The restaurant, Eatsa, the first outlet in a company with national ambitions, is almost fully automated. There are no waiters or even an order taker behind a counter. There is no counter. There are unseen people helping to prepare the food, but there are plans to fully automate that process, too, if it can be done less expensively than employing people. For optimists, it’s a way to make restaurant-going more efficient and less expensive. For pessimists, it’s the latest example of how machines are stealing people’s jobs. Either way, it’s like heaven for misanthropes, or those who are in too much of a hurry to chat with a server. The quinoa — stir-fried, with arugula, parsnips and red curry — tasted quite good. Whether a restaurant that employs few people is good for the economy is another question. Restaurants, especially fast-food restaurants, have traditionally been a place where low-skilled workers can find employment. Most of the workers are not paid much, though in San Francisco employers of a certain size must pay health benefits and in 2018 a minimum wage of $15. Mr. Friedberg said that was not the reason his team automated so many roles. “Technology allows us to completely rethink how people get their food,” he said. Automation is transforming every industry. Business owners look to substitute machines for human labor. It happened to blue-collar workers in factories and white-collar workers in banks and even law firms. With self-driving vehicles, it may happen in the taxi and trucking industries. Robots and artificial intelligence machines are expected to transform health care. Automation, in rudimentary forms, is already part of many restaurants. Reservations are made online, orders arrive at the kitchen electronically, and bills are paid with a swipe on an iPad. Chains like Chili’s and airport restaurants use tablet computers for ordering and paying, to speed the process and cut personnel costs. It might be a harbinger of a future in which eating out no longer involves waiters. Restaurants with servers could become the novelty, reserved for occasions when you want more ambience and hands-on attention than Eatsa’s “food delivery system.”

• Netflix May Be Setting Its Sights on Four More Asian Markets: Netflix will enter Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea early next year, according to a press release that was posted in Chinese on its website and taken down. The online offering will include movies, TV shows and content suitable for children, according to the statement. Additional details on pricing and programs will be announced later, the statement said. The company didn’t respond to requests for comment. Netflix, based in Los Gatos, California, is racing to complete a global expansion by the end of next year. The company’s growth prospects have made the stock the top performer in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index this year (The stock has risen 95 percent this year), with subscribers exceeding 65 million in 50 countries. Still, the shares have pulled back in recent weeks, in part due to concern over increased competition for viewer’s dollars. Time Warner’s HBO, Hulu and Amazon.com have all boosted their online offerings this year, while Apple is considering its own video streaming service. Netflix introduced service in Japan Sept. 2, starting at $5.40 a month.

• TiVo revenue beats estimates on subscriptions rise: Digital video recorder maker TiVo Inc reported a better-than-expected rise in quarterly revenue, helped by higher subscriptions. The company's total subscriptions rose about 26 percent to more than 6 million in the second quarter ended July 31. Net revenue rose to $119.5 million from $111.9 million. Revenue from Tivo's services and software and technology businesses rose about 14 percent to $99.1 million, while analysts had expected $96 million.  The stock was flat in extended trading on Tuesday. TiVo's set-top boxes are in high demand from cable users as they also allow access to online video services such as Netflix Inc, Hulu and Google Inc's YouTube. Tivo sells subscriptions directly to customers with its video recorders and also licenses its technology to cable TV operators that rent recorders to subscribers. The company, whose clients include DirecTV, is trying to partner with more cable TV operators to grow its business. Tivo sells its products through cable TV partners such as Virgin Media in the UK, ONO in Spain and Com Hem AB in Sweden. 

• How will autonomous cars deal with insurance liabilities? By shifting them toward manufacturers, says a study: Hacker attacks or faulty software could shift the burden of legal and regulatory liability toward makers of self-driving cars and away from customers, experts say, forcing regulators and insurers to develop new models. Autonomous cars have the potential to reduce the rate of traffic accidents as sensors and software give a car faster and better reflexes to prevent a collision. However, a greater level of automation increases the need for cyber security and sophisticated software, experts said. "Although accident rates will theoretically fall, new risks will come with autonomous vehicles," said Domenico Savarese, Group head of Proposition Development and Telematics at Zurich Insurance. "What should be done in the case of a faulty software algorithm? Should manufacturers be required to monitor vehicles post-sale in the case of a malfunction or a hacker attack?" Savarese asked. While established models for assigning liability - such as holding the owner responsible for what the car does - will still be relevant, the onus may shift toward manufacturers. Greater automation may also change consumer behavior and affect insurance costs if drivers become less vigilant and less practiced in their ability to avert an accident. "Could a manufacturer become liable if a distracted driver causes an accident while relying on autopilot? It's too early to tell," Savarese said, adding that increased liability would unlikely deter carmakers since customers were demanding more self-driving functions. Software and connected cars are creating new opportunities for insurance companies to customize policies to clients. "You could pay for how much you drive, or get a lower premium based on how well you drive," Savarese said, adding that these policies will only be made possible if the client allows the insurer to monitor them. Without driver consent, the insurer will have no right to spy on the driver, not even for exceeding the speed limit. If customers buy in to the idea of lower premiums in exchange for higher monitoring, they can opt to have some sort of black box device installed in their car or via their smartphone.

• Okta Is Now a Unicorn After $75 Million Funding Round. Okta, the startup that helps companies manage their sign-in information for hundreds of cloud services and business software applications, has landed a $75 million round of funding at an implied valuation of $1.2 billion. The investment is coming from existing investors, including the venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital. Total capital raised is now $230 million. It has been about 15 months since Okta last raised money. Last year it took a $75 million round led by Sequoia that valued the company at about $600 million. Sequoia is a significant investor, having also led Okta’s D round in 2013 and its C round in 2012. Okta is also notable for being Andreessen Horowitz’s first investment in the cloud software area back in 2010 when the firm led its A round. Since then the company has expanded into new lines of business, including helping companies manage their mobile devices.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, August 19

Foxconn, Alibaba, others invest $500M in Snapdeal; eBay pares stake: Online marketplace Snapdeal raised $500 million in fresh funding led by iPhone manufacturer Foxconn, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and existing investor SoftBank. Its other existing investors Temasek, BlackRock, Myriad and PremjiInvest also participated in this round, as per a press statement. Separately, e-commerce giant eBay said it has sold a portion of its holding in Snapdeal, 18 months after leading a $134 million funding round in the Gurgaon-based company. Snapdeal will use the money to expand geographical reach and enhance services in a bid to better compete with well-funded rivals such as US-headquartered Amazon and Bangalore-based Flipkart. The announcement confirms a previous report that said Snapdeal has raised $500 million, citing sources. With the latest funding, Alibaba is now backing two companies (Snapdeal and Paytm) who are directly slugging it out for supremacy in India’s consumer internet space.

Upstarts Raid Giants for Talent in Silicon Valley: The unicorns, a class of hot start-ups valued at $1 billion or more, are all aggressively pursuing the best and brightest minds in Silicon Valley with promises of talked-about workplaces and eye-popping payouts. Amid a general scramble for talent, Google, the Internet search company, has undergone specific raids from unicorns for engineers who specialize in crucial technologies like mapping. In particular, Uber — the largest unicorn, with a valuation of more than $50 billion — has plundered Google’s mapping unit over the last 12 months, aiming to bolster its own map research. Airbnb, the popular short-term rental start-up, has gone on a more general hiring spree, poaching more than 100 workers. While the unicorns typically pick off small groups of engineers at a time, making little impression on a large company’s total employee numbers, the poaching attacks are often aimed at siphoning off the best talent in strategic technologies. That can sting the likes of a Google, where executives have said one skilled engineer can be worth many times the average. To snag employees from large rivals, unicorns have a simple recruiting pitch: They are on a path to success, as illustrated by their rising valuations. Many offer generous equity packages of restricted stock units that can later translate to big paydays for employees if the unicorn goes public or is sold — a lure that neither Google nor any other public tech company can dangle. Also, the unicorns say they are far more fleet-footed and cutting-edge than large organizations.

Alibaba Cash-Burning Buybacks Make Internet Bonds China’s Worst: China’s Internet bonds are lagging behind as disappointing earnings and plans for buybacks to shore up slumping shares fuel concern finances will deteriorate. Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, announced a $4 billion share repurchase last week, while Baidu, its most-popular search engine, unveiled a $1 billion plan in July. Their bonds have contributed to a 0.4 percent loss on technology notes this quarter, the worst sector in a Bank of America Merrill Lynch investment-grade dollar note index for China that gained 0.4 percent. That’s a turnaround after Baidu’s 2012 debut in global debt markets gave it a self-proclaimed “war chest” and Alibaba’s $8 billion sale in 2014 became Asia’s biggest corporate dollar bond offering. The companies’ shares have slumped at least 9 percent this quarter as authorities tighten controls on Web content and crack down on fake goods online. “Companies such as Baidu and Alibaba came out with weaker results, and have announced cash-burning buybacks or acquisitions, which triggered a sell-off,” said Anthony Leung, a credit analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc. in Hong Kong, said. “In addition, regular negative headlines such as the sale of counterfeit goods, have hurt their bonds.”

Lenovo Joins Smartphone Compatriots for ’Make in India’: Lenovo started making smartphones in India, becoming the largest Chinese company to produce mobile devices there after the government raised import taxes. Lenovo will use contract manufacturer Flex’s factory outside the southeastern city of Chennai for its Lenovo and Motorola brands, Amar Babu, chairman of Lenovo India, said Tuesday in a phone interview. The brands will have a combined annual capacity of 6 million units, Lenovo said in a statement. Foxconn Technology Group this year began producing smartphones in India for China’s Xiaomi and OnePlus after the Indian government raised taxes on some foreign-made goods to attract investment in manufacturing. Lenovo’s announcement marks the largest Chinese name yet to be lured by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make in India campaign as competitors vie for a share of the world’s third-largest smartphone market. “Output from the plants is focused mainly on serving the Indian market,” Babu said. Lenovo has no immediate plans to develop phones specifically for India, he said. Lenovo considered adding smartphone manufacturing to its own personal-computer plant in Puducherry in the southeast before deciding to outsource to Flex’s existing factory in Sriperumbudur, Babu said.

Airbnb partners with China Broadband, Sequoia to expand in China: Online home-rental marketplace Airbnb Inc said on Tuesday it was partnering with investment firms China Broadband Capital and Sequoia China to expand into the Chinese market and find a chief executive for its operations in the country. The company, which was recently reported to have completed a $1.5 billion private funding round, said in a blog post it was also working with a larger group of investors, including Horizon Ventures, GGV Capital and China-based Hillhouse Capital. Airbnb, which matches people wishing to rent out all or part of their homes to temporary guests, has grown quickly and is valued at more than $20 billion. Airbnb said the number of outbound Chinese travelers using its service grew 700 percent in the past year. China Broadband and Sequoia China will help it customize technology for the Chinese market and establish a "localized presence" in the country, it added.

Twitter to accelerate push for content partnerships in Asia: Twitter said on Tuesday it plans to accelerate its push for content partnerships in Asia Pacific and the Middle East. It has appointed a Singapore-based executive, Rishi Jaitly, to boost teams in major markets such as Australia, India, and Japan as well as to expand into Greater China and Southeast Asia, the company said in a statement. Jaitly was previously Twitter's market director for India and Southeast Asia. Twitter has been aggressively expanding its capabilities to carry pictures, video and interactive content.

Kik Takes $50 Million Investment From WeChat Parent Company Tencent, Hits $1 Billion Valuation: Kik Takes $50 Million Investment From WeChat Parent Company Tencent, Hits $1 Billion Valuation. The app has 240 million registered users and claims that 40 percent of American teenagers are actively on Kik. The deal doesn’t mean the two apps are planning to integrate, but they will have a strategic partnership moving forward, according to Kik co-founder Chris Best. That means sharing things like data and app information, he added. He also said that Kik won’t be targeting China anytime soon (seems obvious now given WeChat’s foothold there) but plans to use the money to grow the company’s employee base.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, August 7

InMobi ties up with Amazon and Paytm for India launch of discovery-led mobile commerce platform: SoftBank-backed mobile ad technology company InMobi Pte Ltd has joined hands with Amazon India, mobile wallet Paytm and others for the India launch of Miip, its new platform for discovery-led mobile commerce. Miip, which has an animated green monkey as mascot, engages users by suggesting products to buy across apps. It was launched in the US three weeks ago. InMobi, which competes with Facebook and Google for a pie of burgeoning mobile advertising market, will launch Miip in China on August 18. Naveen Tewari, founder and CEO of InMobi said Miip will aid “serendipitous discovery” of products across thousands of mobile apps. “Today merchants have tough time getting users to discover and explore their products. Miip will create personalised shopping experiences to enable discovery of products from more merchants,” he said. The company has forged a partnership with Amazon.in to initiate a pilot on the Miip platform. Kishore Thotta, head of digital marketing, Amazon India said platforms such as InMobi’s Miip will facilitate cross-app shopping experiences. Miip will facilitate seamless payment and checkouts within the discovery sessions through the “Buy with Paytm” button. Miip will soon be launched in beta version with several partners across e-commerce and app developers such as Magzter, Moneyview, Nestaway, Shopclues, Swiggy, Urban Ladder, Vozpop, Wooplr and Zimmber.

Practo raises $90M from China’s Tencent, Sofina, Google Capital, Yuri Milner, others: Practo, a web-based clinic management software developer and medicare listings provider, has raised $90 million in Series C funding led by Chinese media and technology conglomerate Tencent Holdings. Marquee institutional investors such as Sofina, Sequoia India, Google Capital, Altimeter Capital, Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital Global Equities and Russian investor Yuri Milner also put money in this round, as per a press statement. Practo will use the money to expand product lines, acquire more startups and enhance headcount. “We are hard at work building a single health app that helps people live healthier by making better healthcare decisions for themselves and their loved ones. We are excited to partner with some of the best investors on the planet. Our global partners will give us the edge to continue building global healthcare products that our users love,” said Shashank ND, founder and CEO of Practo. A few months ago, Practo had raised $30 million in Series B round from Sequoia India and Matrix Partners. Three years ago, it had raised $4.6 million from Sequoia Capital in Series A funding. Recently, Practo acquired product outsourcing firm Genii Technologies Pvt Ltd for its capabilities in building bespoke e-commerce portals and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms. Practo offers services like helping patients find relevant doctors online, compare them and schedule appointments. It also sells PractoRay under a SaaS model for primary clinics, which enables doctors to schedule and manage patient records. Practo already lists over 8,000 hospitals on its platform and will expand this to over 20,000 by end of this year. Recently, it launched a new feature that allows users to find diagnostic labs in their vicinity. It competes with the likes of Lybrate, HelpingDoc, Praxify and AllizHealth.

Tesla Plunges 9% as Musk Grapples With SUV’s Second-Row Seats: Elon Musk can’t make an SUV without seats. Tesla’s chief executive officer dialed back his forecast for 2015 vehicle deliveries, saying that getting the new sport utility vehicle’s middle-row seats just right is proving thornier than expected. The added threat of not having enough of other interior parts puts the original sales plan at risk, he said. “Our biggest challenges are with the second-row seat,” Musk said Wednesday during a conference call with analysts. “It’s an amazing seat, a sculptural work of art, but a very tricky thing to get right.” He added that some interior trim components could become roadblocks, but the so-called falcon-wing doors weren’t going to be a problem. Assembly snags on the Model X, Tesla Motors Inc.’s first SUV, could also slow output of the Model S sedan, Musk said. So now the company may deliver 50,000 to 55,000 autos in 2015, down from an initial target of 55,000. Tesla shares fell 8.9 percent to $246.13 at the close Thursday after plunging as much as 13 percent for the biggest intraday decline in 21 months. While lowering the bar for this year and next, Musk said he remains “confident” that Tesla will produce about half a million cars in 2020. He’s said that’s when investors should be able to expect the company to become profitable. Musk pointed out Tesla made 600 cars annually five years ago. “Now we can produce 600 cars in three days,” he said. As production of the SUV increases, the company will become free cash-flow positive, probably near the end of this year and “certainly” for the first quarter of 2016, Chief Financial Officer Deepak Ahuja said. Tesla has drawn down $50 million of a $750 million credit line, and left open the possibility of going to Wall Street for additional money.

Apple Music attracts more than 11 million trial members: Apple said on Thursday its new music streaming service has attracted more than 11 million members during its free trial period, a response that music industry experts called respectable but not overwhelming. Apple Music rolled out with a three-month free trial period on June 30. Nearly 2 million people opted for the free trial family plan, which will cost $14.99 a month for up to six family members, the company said. The service costs $9.99 a month for individuals. Apple’s iTunes Store helped revitalize the music industry a decade ago, but digital downloads have slumped in recent years amid a shift toward streaming. Unlike popular streaming services from rivals such as Spotify, Apple’s offering does not include a free on-demand tier, a decision praised by some in the music industry. Apple shares were down 4 cents at $114.84 in early afternoon. Based on typical conversion rates in the industry, it would be impressive if Apple convinced 20 percent of the trial members to become paying subscribers after the free trial ends, he added. Spotify has more than 20 million paid subscribers worldwide, the company has told Reuters.

HTC Plummets to Decade Low on Loss Forecast Five Times Estimates: HTC Corp. plunged by the daily limit after its forecast for a quarterly loss five times greater than estimates spurred analysts to slash their valuations of the stock. Shares dropped 10 percent to NT$63 in Taipei on Friday, heading for their lowest price in more than a decade. The smartphone maker’s third-quarter loss will be NT$5.51 to NT$5.85 per share, compared with expectations for a loss of NT$1.17 per share. Its sales forecast given Thursday is as much as 48 percent below estimates. HTC plans to cut staff, reduce spending and slim down its product catalog as cheaper phones from Huawei Technologies Co. and competition from Samsung Electronics Co. further erode its market share. Founder, Chairwoman and Chief Executive Officer Cher Wang has stated she won’t consider mergers, even as the company fell off the global list of top 10 phonemakers. Sales this quarter will be NT$19 billion ($600 million) to NT$22 billion, the company said, compared with estimates for NT$36.8 billion. Revenue at the bottom end of that range would be the lowest in a decade when figures were reported at the parent level. HTC will change its product strategy to produce fewer models over longer time intervals while focusing on a greater share of industry profits instead of shipments, Chief Financial Officer Chang Chialin said Thursday. Cost reductions will start this quarter, with the result of those cuts being shown in the first quarter, he said.

Nvidia's gaming, auto chips drive surprise rise in revenue; Shares rise 10%: Nvidia reported a surprise rise in second-quarter revenue and gave a better-than-expected revenue forecast for the current quarter, helped by strong demand for its graphic chips used in gaming and cars. The company's shares rose nearly 10 percent in extended trading on Thursday. Nvidia's revenue increased 4.5 percent in the quarter ended July 26 to $1.15 billion , while analysts on average were expecting revenue to decrease about 8 percent. Nvidia gets a majority of its revenue from its graphic chips made for personal computers, and there were fears that the fall in PC sales would hurt Nvidia just like it has Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. But, Nvidia said gaming revenue rose 59 percent, helped by strong sales of its popular GeForce series of gaming chips. Nvidia has also been increasing its focus on making chips that allows people to play graphics-heavy games over the internet and chips used in a car's dashboard display and in self-driving cars. Automotive revenue rose 76 percent in the quarter and accounted for only 6.2 percent of total revenue. The company said 8 million cars on the road were using its chips and that it was working with more than 50 companies for its DRIVE chip for self-driving cars. However, revenue in Nvidia's enterprise business fell 14 percent. The business, which makes chips used for software such as AutoCAD, accounted for 16.2 percent of total revenue.

Onager's Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday May 28

• Here is an audio (MP3) version of this snippet. Experimental.

• Mary Meeker's 2015 Report is Out, and Calls Out that India Tech is at an Inflection Point: Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker’s yearly Internet Trends report is the ultimate compilation of essential tech statistics. Here is her 2015 report, which  calls out that India could be at a tipping point. India's Internet penetration in 2014 was where China was in 2008 and the U.S. was in 1996. If India's curve follows the same pattern, get ready for big things in the next five years. One thing India is lacking is the catalyst companies that will lead its Internet revolution.

• Nielsen to measure digital ads in partnership with Tencent: Nielsen announced on Wednesday that it is partnering with Tencent Holdings to measure its digital audience in a move that could direct more ad dollars from companies in the United States to China's biggest social network. Nielsen said it is launching its Digital Ad Ratings, which tracks unique users, reach and frequency of a digital ad across computers, tablets and smartphones for the first time in China. Comscore, which offers a similar service and competes with Nielsen, said it is already available in China. The online gaming company Tencent, which also operates the popular mobile messaging app WeChat with 500 million monthly active users, has been making a big push to increase its advertising revenue especially through mobile. Nielsen will measure an ad campaign in a combination of surveys, consisting of 46,000 Chinese consumers, and aggregated, anonymous data from Tencent's hundreds of millions of active users. Tencent, which has a market value of $190 billion and reported first-quarter online advertising revenue of $438.4 million competes with Alibaba and Baidu.

• Its a Small World: Ola-owned TaxiForSure integrates Alibaba-investee Paytm wallet as cashless payment option, joining its arch-rival Uber: TaxiForSure, has tied up with Alibaba-backed online payments platform Paytm. The move will allow users of TaxiForSure to go cashless and pay through Paytm’s pre-paid wallet, the company said in a statement. Customers can link their debit card or bank account via a Paytm wallet or recharge their Paytm wallet and use it to pay for their rides. In March, cab hiring startup Ola had acquired TaxiForSure in what largely a stock transaction. Interestingly, Ola also has a prepaid wallet called Ola Money. Last November, on-demand car service Uber, Ola's arch-rival in India's ride-hailing space had joined hands with Paytm.

• Google and Apple Adjust Their Strategies on Mobile Payments: The battle for mobile software dominance revolves around two companies: Apple and Google. Now both giants are also going head-to-head in mobile payments, as they prepare to push deeper into digital wallets. Google is set to unveil plans at its annual developer conference on Thursday for an overhaul of its mobile payment products. Changes include a service called Android Pay that will let merchants accept credit card payments from inside their mobile apps and can be integrated with loyalty programs at retailers, the people said. Google Wallet, a mobile commerce app, will also be reintroduced as a peer-to-peer payments app that consumers can use to send money to each other directly from their debit accounts, they said. Apple is preparing to announce details about enhancements to Apple Pay at its software conference next month. Those include a rewards program for the mobile wallet service. The moves are the latest advances in mobile payments as several players jockey for an edge. With more consumers willing to make purchases using smartphones, companies are rushing to take the lead in the market, spurring eBay’s PayPal to heavily market a suite of mobile apps, while start-ups like Square and Stripe expand their payments processing software to small and midsize businesses. The stakes are also high for Apple and Google, which are entering mobile payments later than others in the industry. For Apple, mobile payments tie people more directly to its main product, the iPhone. For Google, payments are a hook to reel people into its ecosystem of services and another way to gain insight about consumers. The challenge for Apple and Google, along with rivals, is that the mobile wallet is generally a technology in search of a problem. Cash and credit cards are easy to use and accepted broadly worldwide. As a result, the mobile wallet is typically more of a supplementary service than a replacement. Nonetheless, mobile payments are growing quickly. Forrester Research predicts they will balloon to $142 billion by 2019 in the United States, almost tripling from $52 billion in 2014. Still, Google and Apple offer something that few others can: Hardware, software and an insatiable desire to win. “Google and Apple have deep pockets and the appetite to invest,” said Sucharita Mulpuru of Forrester Research. “They may create something that is a lasting disruption.”

• Despite Its Dominance, Analysts See A Murky Road Ahead for Android: Android is now not just the globe’s most popular smartphone operating system but the most popular operating system of any kind. More than a billion Android devices were sold in 2014, a c cording to the research firm Gartner. That’s about five times the number of Apple iOS devices sold, and about three times the number of Windows machines sold. Yet all is not well on planet Android. On the eve of Google IO, the company’s annual developer conference that starts Thursday, where Android will once again be a primary topic of discussion, cracks are emerging in Google’s hold over the operating system. Google’s version of Android faces increasing competition from hungry rivals, including upstart smartphone makers in developing countries that are pushing their own heavily modified take on the software. There are also new threats from Apple, which has said that its recent record number of iPhone sales came, in part, thanks to people switching from Android. Hanging over these concerns is the question of the bottom line. Despite surging sales, profits in the Android smartphone business declined 44 percent in 2014, according to one estimate. Over the holidays last year, according to the research firm Strategy Analytics, Apple vacuumed up nearly 90 percent of the profits in the smartphone business. The stark numbers prompted a troubling question for Android and for Google: How will the search company — or anyone else, for that matter — ever make much money from Android? Google faces several major Android-related headaches. First, while Google makes most of its revenue from advertising, Android has so far been an ad dud compared with Apple’s iOS. iOS users tend to have more money and spend a lot more time on their phones (and are, thus, more valuable to advertisers). Because Google pays billions to Apple to make its search engine the default search provider for iOS devices, the company collects much more from ads placed on Apple devices than from ads on Android devices. A recent analysis by Goldman Sachs estimated that Google collected about $11.8 billion on mobile search ads in 2014, with about 75 percent coming from ads on iPhones and iPads. A brighter spot for Google is the revenue it collects from sales via Android’s app store, called Google Play. For years, Android apps were a backwater, but sales have picked up lately. In 2014, Google Play sold about $10 billion in apps, of which Google kept about $3 billion (the rest was paid out to developers). Apple makes more from its App Store. Sales there exceeded $14 billion in 2014, and rising iPhone sales in China have led to a growing app haul for Apple. Still, Google’s app revenue is becoming an increasingly meaningful piece of its overall business, and it is also growing rapidly. But how long Google can expect Play to keep paying remains an open question, thanks to the second Android-related headache. Google’s strategy of giving Android to phone makers free has led to a surge of new entrants in the phone business, several of which sell high-quality phones for cut-rate prices. Among those is Xiaomi, a Chinese start-up making phones that have become some of the most popular devices in China. Because Xiaomi and others don’t make much of a profit by selling phones, they’re all looking for other ways to make money — and for many, the obvious business is in apps offering mail, messaging and other services that compete with Google’s own moneymaking apps. Android has always been a tricky strategy; now, after finding huge success, it seems only to be getting even trickier.

• Twitter Is Giving Advertisers More User Data In The Hope That They Spend More: Twitter is hoping to help marketers better understand their Twitter audience by adding a tool that will give them deeper user behavior around organic tweets. The audience insights dashboard tool adds some similar insights as the Facebook advertising platform with aggregate information on user demographics, interests, and purchasing behavior as well as what television shows users watch and their mobile usage. These new insights are expected to help advertisers identify a more relevant audience for upcoming campaigns on the platform. Will these new insights help boost advertising on Twitter? The company needs it right now. It had slower than expected growth in advertising sales this last quarter and even die-hard fans and early investors think the company needs some help. Early investor Chris Sacca recently scribed a blog post warning Twitter that he would soon be sharing a few thoughts on what the company needs to do now. Offering more profound insights about organic user behavior may be an answer to some of this frustration and may help to lure brands to spend more ad dollars on the platform. The audience insights tool is now available to all Twitter advertisers and analytics users. Twitter-specific information can be accessed within the U.S., with plans to roll this out more broadly over the next few months.

• Cisco Predics that in 5 years, 80 percent of Internet Traffic will be online video: We already know that Netflix accounts for one-third of Internet traffic at peak hours. Toss in YouTube, and that figure rises to roughly half of all bandwidth consumed. But even that's small potatoes compared with what's coming. In five years, 80 percent of the entire world's Internet consumption will be dominated by video. That number will be even higher in the United States, approaching 85 percent. That's according to the latest projections from Cisco, which publishes an annual study peering into the near future of the Web. The newest report, out Wednesday, predicts that by 2019, the Internet will have become more or less a big video pipe. Part of the growth will come from adding new people to the Internet — for the first time, over half the world's population will be digitally connected. But individual Internet users are also expected to consume more video over time, and at a higher quality, which will put tremendous new burdens on the world's Internet infrastructure. When you see the Internet as a huge distribution channel for video, it puts virtually everything that tech and communications companies are doing into perspective. Telecom firms like Verizon are racing to expand their cellular networks so that they can deliver video over LTE. Cable companies are fleshing out their public WiFi hotspots so users can watch videos outside their homes. Content providers like HBO and CBS are putting their programming on the Internet so that customers don't have to be tethered to their television sets. Implicit in this idea is that mobile devices will be the primary way users will access all this video. And researchers agree on that point. Five years ago, Americans were spending less than an hour a day on mobile devices. Today, it's more like three hours a day, accounting for more than half of the time we spend consuming digital media in general, according to the latest in an annual report released Wednesday by Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker.

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.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, May 6

• Ahead of Earnings, Alibaba's Shares are at Post-IPO Low, Even as Rivals JD, Tencent have Surged: After Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. raised a record $25 billion last year, founder Jack Ma said the Chinese e-commerce company faced the danger of high expectations. He might be right. About $70 billion of market value has evaporated since Ma made that statement in November as investors worry about slowing growth. Alibaba’s dominance at home as a marketplace for buyers and sellers of goods is being undermined by a Chinese economy projected to grow at the slowest pace since 1990 and a consumer shift to mobile shopping that crimps advertising revenue. While investors have punished Alibaba, an index of U.S.- traded Chinese companies has jumped by 17 percent this year. Rival e-commerce operators have also surged with JD.com Inc. rising 46 percent in New York and Tencent Holdings Ltd. gaining 40 percent in Hong Kong through Tuesday. The two companies have joined forces to compete against Alibaba. Tencent is trying to drive the 1 billion users of its WeChat and QQ chat apps to JD.com, which recently started a service to speed imports to Chinese buyers. As JD.com, China’s second-biggest e-commerce company, “ups its game,” said Mark Tanner, founder of China Skinny, a Shanghai-based research and marketing agency, Alibaba’s previous growth “seems unsustainable in the medium term.” Ma’s push outside China also has yet to gain traction -- its presence in the U.S. and much of Europe remains negligible. Results due Thursday are expected to show that the pace of Alibaba’s revenue expansion fell below the average of the previous seven quarters. Shares of Alibaba closed Tuesday at $79.54 in New York, 33 percent below their November peak and the lowest since the Hangzhou-based company sold stock at $68 apiece in its initial public offering in September. Alibaba currently gets less than 5 percent of its revenue from outside China, Ma said in March on a company Twitter account. Alibaba’s sales probably rose 41 percent in the fourth quarter to 16.9 billion yuan ($2.7 billion), according to the average of 23 estimates compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with an average of about 50 percent during the past seven quarters. The company’s strategy of expanding in under-served regions of China and overseas is driving up marketing costs as more consumers shop on mobile devices, where ads typically generate less revenue than those on desktop computers. Operating income will probably shrink 18 percent to 4.5 billion yuan, according to the estimates.

• Brand Safety and Twitter's Porn Problem: Twitter Scrambles for an Ad Fix as Nielsen's Promoted Tweets Show Up in Porn Feeds TV company pulled its campaign today. Twitter has a porn problem, and it caused one brand to temporarily halt a campaign today. Nielsen, the television and digital data company, pulled the plug on its Promoted Tweets after they appeared near adult content on the site. Nielsen's promos showed up on Twitter profile pages called "Daily Dick Pictures" and "Homemade Porn." Ads are not supposed to appear on a profile page if X-rated content is posted there, and a bug was to blame, a source familiar with Twitter's technology said. "As Twitter works to resolve this issue, we have temporarily suspended our campaign," a Nielsen spokesman told Adweek. Nielsen was not alone, either. Marketers' promos from Duane Reade, NBCUniversal and Gatorade also showed up in feeds of pornographic photos and videos. Brand safety is an issue across the digital advertising ecosystem, where it is difficult to police every website and social media post. Twitter rivals like YouTube and Facebook also have dealt with racy or offensive content that concerned advertisers. Twitter is in a particularly tough position—it has to monitor 300 million active accounts filled with user-generated content—and its troubles with not-safe-for-work material have been raised before. The San Francisco tech company has been trying to clean up its site—not just accounts that share NSFW pictures, but also those that support terrorism or harass other users. It recently introduced a quality filter that removes abusive or offensive tweets from a user's timeline. But just last week, Robert Peck, a SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst, wrote a report warning that Twitter ads were appearing near pornography and that brands would pull back on spending if the problem became more widely known. Peck estimated there could be as many as 10 million Twitter accounts dedicated to sharing pornography and that Twitter needs to do a better job of blocking them.

• Aftermath of Secret's Shutdown: Google Ventures Managing Partner Criticizes Founders for 'Taking Money Off the Table': For many in Silicon Valley, the rapid rise and precipitous fall of Secret, the prominent start-up that recently closed its doors, will most likely serve as a cautionary tale of how not to run a company. For Google Ventures, one of Secret’s earliest backers, it will also be a reminder of the type of company not to invest in. The product of two former Google employees, David Byttow and Chrys Bader, Secret attracted intense media interest early in its life. The app let users anonymously share “secrets” to their network of close friends and friends of friends, an activity that quickly caught on among founders, investors and the media of Silicon Valley. It also helped that Secret took some early rounds of funding from Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, two big venture capital firms. After the flurry of attention and just a few months later, Secret opted to raise another round of financing, this time seeking $25 million. Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures, did not think it was a good idea and the company did not participate. “We advised them against it,” Mr. Maris said in an interview, referring to Secret’s leaders. “We told them they didn’t need the money. And raising that much money that soon, it was going to be impossible to meet the expectations in the future.” The discussion could be considered a case of life imitating art, or perhaps vice versa: In a recent episode of Silicon Valley, the satirical HBO series, a young start-up founder is offered millions of dollars from multiple venture capital firms at high valuations. Ultimately, the founder is advised to instead accept a lower offer, in order to make future funding rounds more achievable and growth targets reasonable. That is not what the founders of Secret chose to do. The company completed its $25 million financing led by Index Ventures and Redpoint Ventures, along with a variety of individual angel investors. In that round, the two founders each wanted to take $3 million off the table for themselves, a practice that is commonplace for more mature companies, but less so for very young start-ups. Not joining the $25 million round proved to be a wise choice for Google Ventures. Downloads of Secret declined over 2014, according to App Annie, an app analytics service. Secret redesigned its entire app to look like a near-perfect clone of Yik Yak, a competing service, but traffic did not improve. Many employees, including Mr. Bader, left the company. Last week, Mr. Byttow said he was shutting down his company, and would return the remainder of the money to the venture capital firms. Neither Mr. Byttow nor Mr. Bader have said if that includes the $6 million the two of them took off the table and deposited into their bank accounts.

• In 2014 Jabong’s GMV grew 2.5x to Rs1320Cr; Ended Year with INR 289 Crore Cash; Lost INR 454 Crore on EBITDA Basis: Rocket Internet-incubated lifestyle e-tailer Jabong.com more than doubled its gross merchandise value (GMV) to Rs 1,320.6 crore during the calender year ended December 31, 2014. The firm’s GMV captures value of total transactions, excluding taxes and shipping costs but including value of paid vouchers and coupons. The firm had ended 2013 with GMV of Rs 511.4 crore, data pulled from its latest annual statistics show. The data is net of returns and cancellations. Jabong shipped 8.7 million orders last year of which 5.9 million transactions represented products sold by Jabong while another 2.8 million orders or close to one in three orders were through its marketplace. This means the firm handled on an average 23,835 orders a day last year as compared to 16,164 in 2013. The company’s net revenues (which captures the sales by the firm as against GMV which includes sales by third party vendors too, for which the company just gets a listing fee) grew 2.3x to Rs 811.4 crore last year. Meanwhile, its loss at an operating level as captured by EBITDA (adjusted for share based compensation) rose to Rs 454 crore as against Rs 236 crore in 2013. This means, for every Re 1 worth of sales it books directly (not covering third party vendors), it is losing around 56 paisa. This is still an improvement over the previous year when it was booking operating loss of over two thirds (68.5 per cent) of whatever it sold. The firm did see its cash position dwindle as a result ending 2014 with Rs 289.4 crore as against Rs 853.2 crore the previous year.

• Home Depot Aiming to Put Apple Pay in Its 2,000 Stores: Home Depot Inc. has the goal of offering Apple Inc.’s mobile-payment platform at its more than 2,000 stores, which would make it the largest retailer yet to accept Apple Pay. Customers already were able to use Apple Pay at some of Home Depot’s stores despite there not being an agreement. The world’s largest home-improvement retailer could accept mobile payments at those locations because its checkout terminals have near-field communication readers. Those devices have now been turned off for the past few weeks during an upgrade of its point-of-sale system, Holmes said. That led to some inaccurate reports that Home Depot had dropped Apple Pay. If it pushes ahead with the plan, Home Depot would join chains like Macy’s Inc. and Whole Foods Market Inc. in embracing Apple Pay at stores. Many other retailers are betting on a mobile-payment option from the Merchant Customer Exchange, which was founded in 2012 by companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp. That offering, CurrentC, is still being developed.

• 3-D Printing Is Saving the Italian Artisan: Italy’s craftsmen turn to a new tool in their competition with cheap products from China. Northeast Italy’s industrial heartland stretches roughly from Milan to Venice, along the floodplains of the Po River all the way to the Adriatic. Like much of the rest of the country, however, the region has fallen on hard times. Italy’s craftsmen have been undermined by competition from China and other parts of Asia. Since the beginning of the global economic crisis, the northeast’s industrial sector has shed about 135,000 jobs—some 17 percent of its total workforce. Techniques such as the 3D printing used by Pomini and Armani have helped turn northeastern Italy into an unlikely hothouse of innovation. Last year growth in the region was positive for the first time since 2007, at 0.5 percent. Exports rose by 3.5 percent in 2014 and are expected to keep climbing. In the province of Trento, for instance, the public and private sectors together invest some 2 percent of gross domestic product in research and development. At the Centro Moda Canossa—a trade school in Trento for children age 14 to 18 specializing in fashion design and tailoring—the faculty recently added a class in which students incorporate 3D printing, laser cutting, and microcontroller chips into their designs. “You can’t offer a job from the past. Nobody will come,” says Michele Bommassar, 36, the school’s vice director. “You have to offer the jobs of the future.” He points to a student project, a purse with a laser-cut pattern on its flap and an interior that lights up when it’s opened: “It’s beautiful, but we believe it is also necessary. The alternative is to be eaten by others.” At their best, these technologies inject elements of the digital economy into the physical world, allowing a galaxy of small companies to compete with multinationals, in much the same way homemade YouTube videos hold their own against traditional video production. The advent of rapid prototyping and other innovations means “you can compensate for your disadvantages with variety, customization, and a rapid response to what the market is demanding,” says Paolo Collini, a business professor and the dean of the University of Trento. Or, as Armani puts it: “If something doesn’t work, you simply stop producing. You haven’t filled a warehouse. For a designer, it’s a dream. You can take more risks.”

• Salesforce shares spike on report of Microsoft evaluating bid: Shares of Salesforce.com Inc (CRM.N) jumped as much as 6.4 percent on Tuesday after a Bloomberg report that Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) was evaluating a bid for the cloud software provider. Salesforce shares rose from $71.4 to $75.82 in about a minute late Tuesday afternoon, after which trading was temporarily halted. The stock closed 1.6 percent higher at $72.75. Microsoft shares closed down 1.3 percent at $47.60. Microsoft is evaluating a bid after Salesforce was approached by another potential buyer, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Microsoft is not in talks with Salesforce, and no deal is imminent, the report said. Bloomberg had reported last week that Salesforce was working with financial advisers to help it field takeover offers after being approached by a potential buyer. The news sent the company's shares up as much as 17.3 percent to an all-time high of $78.46 last Wednesday.