Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday December 2

• Yahoo shares spike 6% on reports board to weigh selling core business, Marissa Mayer's future role: WSJ. The board of Web giant Yahoo is set to discuss the company's future, and that of high-profile Chief Executive Marissa Mayer, when it meets this week, The Wall Street Journal reported late on Tuesday. People familiar with the matter told the newspaper the board was expected to discuss during meetings from Wednesday through Friday whether to proceed with a plan to spin off more than $30 billion in shares of Alibaba or find a buyer for its core business of web properties, or both. Yahoo's core business, which includes popular services like Yahoo Mail and its news and sports sites, could attract private equity firms, media and telecom companies or firms like Softbank  analysts have said in the past. The news comes as Mayer faces growing pressure over the company's performance. Mayer came to Yahoo after a long stint at Google. The company's shares were up more than 6 percent in extended trading.

• Forget China — Google Has to Fight Off Alibaba on Mobile in India: Should Google return some services in mainland China, as many expect it to do soon, it will have to go head to head with China’s Internet giants. In the meantime, Google is squaring off against one of them, Alibaba, in India, Google’s largest growth market. The Information published a solid look at mobile habits across India, courtesy of data from mobile startup Quettra. Some of the figures aren’t surprising. Facebook dominates: Indians love the social site and really love Facebook’s WhatsApp — it has 55 million users monthly hours spent, blowing away other messaging apps. Google, though, has a solid lead in utilities and video apps, thanks to YouTube. A potentially troubling sign for the search giant is the race on mobile browsers. The UC browser, which Alibaba acquired last year, is beating Google’s Chrome in India, with over five million more monthly hours of use. Alibaba’s stripped-down browser takes fourth place. Android dominates India. But Google is still concerned with getting the millions there coming online with smartphones to take their first steps on Google’s service, particularly since Facebook is making a similar push. A mobile browser is, for now, one key thing Google has that its U.S. rival does not. But getting mobile users to use services isn’t the hard problem in India. It’s covering their data costs, which are often prohibitively high. Hence Google’s recent push on building lighter, even offline versions of its products. On Monday, Google unveiled an update to the data-saving mode for mobile Chrome that will roll out first in Indonesia and India.

• Zuckerberg Vows to Daughter He’ll Donate 99% of His Facebook Shares: Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and chief executive of Facebook, announced on Tuesday that he and his wife would give 99 percent of their Facebook shares “during our lives” — holdings currently worth more than $45 billion — to charitable purposes. The pledge was made in an open letter to their newborn daughter, Max, who was born about a week ago. Mr. Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, said they were forming a new organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, to manage the money, through an unusual limited liability corporate structure. “Our initial areas of focus will be personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities,” they wrote. Mr. Zuckerberg’s charitable plans are the latest indication of a growing interest in philanthropy among Silicon Valley’s young billionaires, who unlike previous generations of business tycoons, appear eager to spread their wealth while they are still young. Mr. Zuckerberg is 31, and Dr. Chan is 30. Yet they are entering largely uncharted waters with a charity effort of such scale. They have not yet detailed how the money will be spent and the pace in which the money will be given out indicates they plan to take their time.

• Amazon gadget sales more than triple over Thanksgiving weekend: Amazon.com Inc said sales of its electronic gadgets more than tripled over the Thanksgiving weekend from last year, with the Fire tablet the top-selling product. Sales of the 7-inch tablet more than tripled, while the Fire TV set-top box sold six times more than last year, the company said, without providing the number of units sold.