Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, December 8

• Alphabet, the company formerly known as Google, revealed a new name for the company’s Life Sciences division: Verily. Alphabet made the branding announcement with a video and a company website that went live on Monday. In it, Verily laid out a multidisciplinary approach to health and longevity, describing disease as a “continuum” that will be fought with experts from different fields and divisions working on hardware such as medical devices, software that might use algorithms to look for health patterns, as well as clinical studies like the Baseline Study of health and disease. The new name for the business is part of Google’s transition to a holding company structure under the parent entity dubbed Alphabet. For those keeping track of Alphabet’s soup of operating companies, Verily is the division that was the Life Sciences unit of Google’s X lab. Life Sciences “graduated” from Google X shortly after Google announced the Alphabet structure. Verily means “truth” or “truly” and the name, according to the spokeswoman, is meant to underscore the company’s mission to”reveal a true picture of health and disease.” Background: For years, Google has been entering new businesses, but struggling to recreate the success it enjoys in search and advertising. In August, Google announced that it would create a new org structure where its traditional businesses (search, advertising, YouTube, maps) would continue to be called Google, while all other businesses would become separate companies. The parent of all of these companies would be called Alphabet. The idea is that the new businesses would get more room to grow and innovate like startups, while the traditional businesses would get higher stock market valuations because of their incredible profitability and size. 

• Can’t Put Down Your Device? That’s by Design: Digital life keeps us hooked with an infinite entertainment stream as its default setting. Tech companies often set it up that way. There’s Facebook beckoning with its bottomless news feed. There’s Netflix autoplaying the next episode in a TV series 10 seconds after the previous one ends. There’s Tinder encouraging us to keep swiping in search of the next potential paramour. And then there are the constant notices and reminders — a friend liked your photo or tweet; a colleague wants to connect with you on LinkedIn; an Evite awaits your response — which automatically induce feelings of social obligation. You damn yourself to distraction if you respond, and to fear of missing out if you don’t. Tech companies tend to present these feedback loops as consumer conveniences. A new Intel TV ad, for instance, shows a young girl in the back of a car growing sad because the laptop on which she was watching a singalong video suddenly runs out of power. The company’s new battery-preserving processor, though, ultimately saves the day, “so you never have to stop watching.” T-Mobile has just introduced BingeOn, a feature that offers subscribers on certain plans unlimited high-speed access to popular streaming video channels. There’s even an industry term for the experts who continually test and tweak apps and sites to better hook consumers, keep them coming back and persuade them to stay longer: growth hackers. 

• Verizon Would Explore Yahoo Deal If It Made Sense, CFO Says: Verizon would explore a possible acquisition of Yahoo! if a deal made sense, Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said. Shammo, speaking at an investor conference in New York Monday, said that while it still wasn’t clear what Yahoo’s board has planned for the tech company, Verizon would take a look if it were to be offered up for sale. Yahoo directors met last week to discuss the viability of spinning off its stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and whether to seek a buyer for Yahoo’s Web businesses. Verizon acquired AOL for $4.4 billion earlier this year as part of a push into mobile video advertising. Yahoo owns online sports sites, financial and general news and advertising technology including BrightRoll, which Verizon might find attractive at the right price. Impediments to a sale of Yahoo are the fate of its stake in Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce giant, and the tax implications of a sale of that unit. 

• Dropbox Shuts Down E-Mail and Photo Apps as It Gets Back to Businesses: The cloud storage company is increasing its focus on corporate customers as it tries to develop a sustainable business. Cloud storage provider Dropbox is killing off two applications it introduced to much fanfare, including a photo-sharing app released last year. The San Francisco company has placed more focus recently on creating tools companies are willing to pay for, while these apps were designed with everyday consumers in mind. The photo app, called Carousel, offered to automatically back up photos stored on a phone and display them alongside images already stored in a Dropbox account. The other app, an e-mail and task manager called Mailbox, came through an acquisition Dropbox made in 2013. The company said in a statement that features from each app will make their way into other Dropbox services. After achieving a valuation of $10 billion in a financing round last year, Dropbox is under pressure to increase its revenue and eventually go public or sell itself. Fidelity Investments and BlackRock wrote down the stakes of their Dropbox investments this year. Dropbox has tried to straddle two missions in recent years: to build a product beloved by consumers and to create a service that satisfies businesses' unique needs. The former strategy, which includes these apps, has fallen somewhat out of favor since the company brought in Chief Operating Officer Dennis Woodside from Google last year. Both Carousel and Mailbox competed unsuccessfully with much more popular services from Google and Apple. Mailbox will shut down on Feb. 26, 2016, and Carousel on March 31, 2016. 

• Airbnb Officially Confirms Gargantuan $1.5 Billion Funding Round in SEC Filing:  Home rental service and unofficial sharing economy mascot Airbnb has made its $1.5 billion funding round official in an SEC document today. The Wall Street Journal first reported news of the equity offering back in June, writing that it set the company’s value at more than $25 billion. The round makes Airbnb the third-most valuable privately held tech company in the world, after Uber (worth $62.5 billion) and the Chinese phone maker Xiaomi (valued at around $45 billion). Airbnb’s lead investors in this round were reportedly General Atlantic, Hillhouse Capital Group and Tiger Global Management, which together composed a third of the Airbnb shares sold. Airbnb is raising giant sums like this and putting off an IPO because the startup — like other highly-valued darlings of Silicon Valley — wants to put its resources into emerging markets around the world, especially China. The company is also busy putting out political fires in its more well-saturated markets like San Francisco and New York City, and is in the process of building a (likely expensive) global political organizing operation to protect its revenue streams. Onstage at the Code Conference earlier this year, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said that he thinks an IPO is still a couple years away.