Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, September 26

• Snapchat’s camcorder goggles are creepy cool and kind of brilliant: Snapchat’s first hardware product is a pair of $130 sunglasses that shoot first-person bursts of circular, wide-angle video. The Spectacles, as they’re called, are designed to make it easy to record what you’re actually seeing, in the moment, without having to awkwardly fish your giant smartphone out of your pocket and hold it in front of your face. The resulting recording is intended to be more lifelike, too.the last big camera-goggles launch, Google Glass, went about as poorly as possible. Glass, a too-serious attempt to put a computer on your face, looked ridiculous in a bad-taste, cyborg way. It introduced a creepy privacy violation — a face-mounted camera that you, as a bystander, couldn’t control — with poor explanation. Its early adopters, “Explorers” who spent $1,500 for the privilege, were derided as “Glassholes,” widely mocked, and sometimes abused. The whole thing came across as a poorly planned embarrassment. Spiegel is obviously trying to avoid these problems. Strategically, though, Spectacles are potentially brilliant. If Spectacles can intercept the smartphone camera and become the creative device that people use for any decent amount of recording — in what seems to be a proprietary format, with a custom-designed distribution network in Snapchat — that’s a pretty awesome position to be in.

• Snapchat, Known for Ephemera, Proves Its Staying Power With Videos: “Snapchat is the company that will figure out how to move TV viewers to mobile,” said Hemant Taneja, a Snapchat investor and managing director at the venture firm General Catalyst Partners. “YouTube and others have worked hard to bring video to mobile devices, but Snapchat is the first to crack how users behave on mobile.” Since introducing Discover in January 2015, Snapchat has become a web of highly edited video content — whether made by users, celebrities or media companies like Buzzfeed and CNN. That, in turn, has caught the attention of advertisers who want to reach Snapchat’s growing audience, which, the company says, includes 41 percent of Americans ages 18 to 34. By comparison, the company says that the average television network in the United States reaches about 6 percent of the same demographic. Now, Snapchat is preparing to deliver more original programming. Popular NBC shows including “Saturday Night Live” and “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” have agreed to create programming for Snapchat, and “The Voice” ran a five-part series made just for the app. E News now has a weekly Snapchat-only pop-culture program called “The Rundown.” Television ad dollars would “flood into online” if online ads could prove they were as effective as television ads, said Joe Marchese, president of advertising products for the Fox Networks Group. For Mr. Marchese, that means the ad takes up the full screen, probably plays with the sound on and is viewed in its entirety. While advertisers do not go so far as to say that Snapchat video ads are equivalent to television ads, they note that watching content on Snapchat mimics, in some crucial ways, the experience of watching traditional television. Videos play with the sound on. They take up the full screen. They tell a narrative story. Users flip between them like they do TV channels.

• Marc Andreessen suddenly deletes all his tweets, goes on Twitter break: he Twittersphere was just a little bit quieter this morning after Marc Andreessen, father of the Tweetstorm, vacated the platform last night. While there’s no clear answer from him or others as to why he decided to take a break, Andreessen is not the first popular Silicon Valley figure to abruptly leave the service.Earlier this summer, Sam Altman, President of the Y Combinator Group, left citing community issues on the Twitter platform. He argued that the social network “rewards negativity and snark,” and that he felt “worse after using Twitter.” Of course, even Altman couldn’t resist the urge to come back to Twitter after a brief absence. Given Andreessen described his actions as a “break,” it will likely end much in the same way with an eventual return. Twitter as a platform has increasingly come under fire for its dismissive approach to the toxic culture permitting from some of the site’s insensitive and trolling users, though Andreessen isn’t usually one to back away from divisive conversations.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, September 20, 2016

• Facebook just bought a small hardware startup called Nascent Objects: Facebook has acquired Nascent Objects, a small Bay Area startup that offers what the company calls a “modular electronics platform” — essentially a software program to help expedite the process for building physical gadgets, including 3-D-printed hardware. Nascent Objects will join Facebook’s Building 8, the company’s new top-secret hardware lab run byformer Xoogler Regina Dugan, who used to run Google’s advanced technology and products team that did things like 3-D mapping and modular smartphones.he “modular” element is interesting. The idea of a modular smartphone where you can easily add or remove different components like a camera or battery or storage has been kicked around for a while now but has never taken off. It’s unclear what Facebook wants to build, but Nascent Objects specializes in modular gadgets. The other key seems to be expediting the time it takes to prototype hardware projects, which is also why Facebook recently built a new hardware lab on its Menlo Park, Calif., campus.

• Ride-hailing app Grab raises $750 million in funding led by SoftBank: Southeast Asian ride-hailing firm Grab said it raised $750 million in a funding round led by investor SoftBank Group, adding that it would continue expanding in the region and also significantly invest in mobile payments capabilities. Southeast Asia is fast becoming a key battleground for ride-hailing firms thanks to a burgeoning middle class as well as a youthful, Internet-savvy demographic. Grab's announcement comes a few weeks after Uber sold its China operations to bigger domestic rival Didi and analysts have said Uber may focus its efforts and money elsewhere, such as in Southeast Asia.

• Twitter to lay off less than 20 employees at India center: source: Twitter Inc said on Monday it would lay off some employees and halt engineering work at one of its development centers in India's technology hub Bengaluru. The layoffs will impact less than 20 employees at the development center, according to a source familiar with the matter. The employees were part of ZipDial, an Indian mobile communications startup bought by Twitter last year, the source said."Over the past 18 months, we have incorporated the technology and talent of our ZipDial acquisition across our company," said a company spokesperson. Twitter said it remained committed to India as a strategic market and would continue to maintain a presence in the city. The company had 3,860 employees globally as of June 2016. However, it did not disclose the number of employees it had in India.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, September 7

• After a quiet summer, Twitter’s board will take a hard look at what comes next: Twitter’s quiet summer may soon be coming to an end. The social communication company’s board of directors is set to meet this Thursday in San Francisco, and there are plenty of things to discuss. That includes, said sources, its fate as a standalone company. That’s no surprise, since Twitter has been the subject of numerous takeover and acquisition rumors over the last few months, each one sending the stock up as investors hold out hope that Twitter will find a buyer. There are the big corporate names that might take another close look at Twitter, such as Google (there’s an unusual scenario one source mentioned in which it becomes part of some Alphabet media spinoff), Apple and even media mogul Rupert Murdoch, either via 21st Century Fox or News Corp. Other possible bidders include private equity firms that may want to take the company private, where it can solve some of its issues out of the public eye. But finding a buyer won’t be easy, given the Twitter’s estimated cost. Using the same multiple LinkedIn got from Microsoft in its recent $26 billion acquisition deal, a Twitter buyer would have to fork over about $18 billion. That’s a steep price tag for a company that has had persistent issues with growth and also one that is still losing money each quarter.

• Postmates is raising at least $100 million to fuel its on-demand ambitions: We’re hearing from sources that Postmates, which is among a few companies that are seen as operating in the difficult on-demand space, is raising at least $100 million in a round led by Founders Fund. Sources stressed that the round has not closed, and that things may change over time. Despite the challenges of working in an on-demand economy — which can sometimes lead to punishing gross margins and high operational costs — we’ve heard that Postmates is actually in okay shape. Some leaked financial documents earlier obtained by TechCrunch dated last year highlighted gross margins of around 20%. Postmates’ CEO Bastian Lehmann has said before that the company is on track to hit profitability in 2017 — which, at the time we reviewed the leaked documents, we also heard was on track.The company is operating in an area of steep competition with the likes of DoorDash, which recently raised $127 million in a down round. That moment was somewhat of a microcosm of the financing environment at the time: DoorDash sought a valuation of $1 billion, but inevitably had to settle for something lower. However, in Postmates’ situation, we hear that this round is not a down round. The company last raised $80 million at a round that valued it at nearly $500 million. Obviously this is good news for Postmates.

• A look at three players in the 3D printing world: Carbon is backed by notable investors, including Google, Autodesk and Sequoia Capital as the company managed to raise $141 million to date. Their debut printer, the M1, is priced at $40,000 per year with a minimum three-year term — a subscription-based model that is quite new to the 3D printing industry. After a decade’s worth of research and development, and $25 million in funding from Autodesk and Catalyst, XJet revealed its technology at RAPID 2016 in May. The company now has seven machines operating in its Rehovot, Israel HQ, but is yet to announce an official launch date and its first product. Once on the market, XJet could potentially disrupt the production of short-runs of complex metal parts in major areas of production.Offering an end-to-end solution for $155,000, HP’s machine is priced rather competitively. Currently there’s only one available material (nylon), but the company is planning to roll out more materials in the coming months, showing vast potential for future development.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, August 31

• EU hits Apple with $14.5 billion Irish tax demand: The European Commission ordered Apple Inc to pay Ireland unpaid taxes of up to 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) on Tuesday as it ruled the firm had received illegal state aid. Apple and Dublin said the U.S. company's tax treatment was in line with Irish and European Union law and they would appeal the ruling, which is part of a drive against what the EU says are sweetheart tax deals that usually smaller states in the bloc offer multinational companies to lure jobs and investment. Analysts said the size of the claim underlined the Commission's aggressive stance, but since each case involves different circumstances and tax rules, lawyers said it was hard to see if further big claims were any more or less likely. Apple, which had more than $200 billion in cash and readily marketable securities at the end of June, is likely to see the case drag out for years in EU and possibly Irish courts. Apple warned investors in a July regulatory filing that the Commission's investigation could lead to "material" liability for further tax payments, but that it could not estimate the impact. On Tuesday the company said it expects to place "some amount of cash" in an escrow account. Tax experts say the European Commission faces a tough battle to convince courts to back up its stand. While the EU has found that certain tax regulations are anti-competitive, it has never before ruled whether countries have applied tax regulations fairly in the way it has with Apple, Starbucks and others. As a result, some lawyers and accountants said they doubted Apple would end up paying back any tax.

• Twitter is finally paying its best users to create videos: Twitter wants the kind of video creators YouTube has — and the massive audiences that come with them. To make this dream a reality, the company is pulling a page from YouTube’s playbook: It’s going to sell ads alongside creator videos and share that ad revenue with the people making the content. And Twitter is offering very appealing terms. Unlike YouTube, which gives 55 percent of the money to creators and keeps 45 percent, Twitter is using the same revenue split it already offers other Amplify video partners, like the NFL: 70 percent to the content creator and 30 percent back to Twitter, according to a person familiar with the arrangement. Of course, Twitter needs to offer an appealing revenue split like this. It’s nowhere close to the video destination YouTube and even Facebook have become, and it’s late to the game when it comes to paying creators. The network’s high-profile stars have wanted a revenue split for some time — it’s been a point of contention for the company’s stable of “Vine stars,” many of whom have left for places like YouTube where their videos actually make money.

• A few dozen Nest Labs employees just headed to Google; here’s why: Nest Labs, the maker of smart thermostats and smoke detectors, is parting ways with a few dozen employees who work on its Internet of Things platform. According to a Fortunereport that we’ve independently confirmed, those employees are joining Google per a restructuring. Both companies are subsidiaries of parent company Alphabet. The move would seem to make sense. Like Nest, Google has delved into the business of the connected home, including with its OnHub wireless router and Google Home, a portable speaker that’s powered by voice assistance technology and will take direct aim at Amazon’s popular Echo product once it ships later this year. Nest’s thermometers and cameras promise to communicate with Google Home. Nest employs roughly 1,000 people, including in engineering, product marketing and product management. Though its platform team was responsible for building out Nest’s APIs (so Nest products can communicate with other devices), as well as Nest’s Weave protocol (which allows Nest devices to communicate with each other), Nest will continue to build and develop software around its app, site and other services.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, August 9

• India ride-hailing firm Ola sideswiped as Uber, Didi team up in China: Didi Chuxing's acquisition of Uber's China business last week reshapes the landscape in Asia's growing ride-hailing sector, and leaves India's Ola more vulnerable to attack by Uber in its $12 billion home market. Four months ago, Ola executives met with Didi hoping the Chinese firm would invest fresh capital to help it fight Uber Technologies Inc which, with its deeper pockets, has made rapid inroads into India. They were told Didi wanted first to sort out its own challenges in China, said a person with direct knowledge of Ola's plans. Didi and Uber have raised and spent billions of dollars in a discount slugfest to win drivers, passengers and market share in China. Didi, now worth around $35 billion, last year invested about $30 million in Ola, which is also backed by Japan's SoftBank Group, and the two are allies in an anti-Uber group that also includes U.S.-based Lyft and Southeast Asia-focused Grab. "This (Didi/Uber China) deal changes the dynamics of how they (Didi) will invest in India," said the person, who didn't want to be named because the discussions were private. If Didi invests more in Ola, it's effectively betting against Uber, its new partner in China, the person said. It's not clear whether Didi would provide equity or debt to Ola, which has raised around $1.3 billion in funding and is valued at over $5 billion. SoftBank Capital, Ola's key investor, faces its own financial issues and is selling assets to raise cash and reduce debt, which may pose another fundraising challenge for Ola, which was aiming to raise another $1 billion this year.After the Didi deal, Uber is even more focused on India, which it has previously called its No. 2 priority overseas market, doubling down on resources, staffing and technology deployed there, said two people familiar with Uber's plans, one of whom is based in the United States.

• Twitter Seeks to Sublease Part of San Francisco Headquarters: Twitter Inc. is offering about a quarter of the space at its San Francisco headquarters complex for sublease, adding to a growing amount of excess offices available in the city as the technology industry cools. About 78,800 square feet (7,320 square meters) is listed for sublease on the seventh floor of 1355 Market St., a renovated 1930s furniture mart, and 104,850 square feet is available along three floors in an adjacent building at One Tenth St., according to marketing materials from Cresa, a commercial real estate firm.Subleasing is becoming more prevalent in San Francisco as venture-capital investments decline and tech firms slow their hiring from a breakneck pace. While the city’s overall office market remains strong, extra space is a warning sign that some companies overestimated their growth rate and are being forced to scale back. An increase in subleasing predated commercial real estate downturns following the 2008 financial crisis and the dot-com bust in the late 1990s.

• Walmart was the only bidder in $3 billion Jet.com acquisition: When news first broke of Walmart’s interest in acquiring Jet.com, the $3 billion price tag was a surprise to many. Why would Walmart pay such a premium for a startup that was unprofitable and just a year old? One hypothesis was that Walmart may have been competing against other bidders for Jet — possibly Alibaba or even Google. Turns out that was not the case, Jet CEO Marc Lore told Recode in an interview Monday afternoon. “This was about trust between Doug and I,” Lore said in reference to Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, noting that the conversations between the two sides began in the spring. “It never occurred to me to go out and get another offer, quite honestly,” he added.  As part of the deal, Lore will take over as head of Walmart.com in addition to Jet, as Recode first reportedSunday evening. Neil Ashe, Walmart’s CEO of global e-commerce, will depart at the end of Walmart’s fiscal year. In a conference call with reporters, McMillon outlined why Walmart found Jet so valuable. It was a combination of the speed of the shopping site’s growth (a $1 billion annualized sales volume run rate within eight months of launch); the expertise of the exec team led by Lore that is joining Walmart in the deal; and the proprietary pricing and back-end technology that is expected to eventually be used in some capacity on Walmart.com.

• LendingClub turmoil takes toll as company posts widening losses: LendingClub Corp on Monday reported its largest quarterly loss in a year as it struggles to bring banks back to its online lending platform following the departure of its chief executive and a scandal involving altered loan documents. LendingClub, which matches borrowers and lenders via an online marketplace, reported a second-quarter loss of $81.4 million, or 21 cents per share, compared to a loss of $4.1 million, or 1 cent per share, a year ago. The company also continued its executive shakeup, with the resignation of Chief Financial Officer Carrie Dolan. Her departure is the first high-profile exit since the departure of Renaud Laplanche, the company's founder, as chief executive on May 9.The second-quarter earnings report follows a tumultuous period for LendingClub, once considered the standard bearer in a new generation of online lenders but which has been pummeled by revelations of lending improprieties, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation, the departure of loan investors and layoffs of 179 employees. "The good thing is (the second quarter) is now behind us," said Scott Sanborn, who took over as president and CEO in June. "We have accomplished quite a bit since the events of May 9." LendingClub's shares were down more than 2 percent at about $4.68 in after-hours trading. That puts the company's market cap at about $1.8 billion, about one-third its market value of about $5.4 billion when it went public in December 2014 in an offering priced at $15 a share.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, July 27

• Apple sells more iPhones than expected, shares jump after hours despite revenue drop: Apple Inc (AAPL.O) sold more iPhones than Wall Street expected in the third quarter and estimated its revenue in the current period would top many analysts' targets, soothing fears that demand for the company's most important product had hit a wall. Its shares rose 7 percent in after-hours trading. The world's most valuable publicly traded company said it sold 40.4 million iPhones in the third quarter, down 15 percent from the year-ago quarter but slightly more than the average analyst forecast of 40.02 million, according to research firm FactSet StreetAccount. IPhone sales dropped for the second straight quarter, pushing down Apple's total revenue 14.6 percent in the fiscal third quarter, ended June 25. Demand for Apple's phones has waned in China, partly because of economic uncertainty there, and has also slowed in more mature markets as people tend to hold on to their phones for longer. The sales slump has stoked concerns about whether the tech leader can continue to deliver profits at the level Wall Street has come to expect. "China was a major letdown," said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "Samsung and Huawei are much more competitive now than a year ago and the Chinese economy is not doing well at all." Apple's services business, which includes the App Store, Apple Pay, iCloud and other services, generated nearly $6 billion in revenue, up 18.9 percent from the previous year. As iPhone sales level off, Apple is attempting to use such services to wring more revenue out of its existing base of users. The business emerged as Apple’s second largest after the iPhone for the first time in the second quarter, eclipsing gadgets such as the iPad and the Mac. That shift bodes well for Apple because gross margins on services are better than the average for the rest of the company, Maestri said.

• Twitter still has revenue problems, and its stock is down big: Twitter reported Q2 earnings on Tuesday and investors aren’t happy. The key issue is likely Twitter’s Q3 guidance. The company says it is targeting $590 million to $610 million in revenue next quarter. Early analyst estimates pegged that number at $678 million, according to Yahoo Finance. So that’s a big discrepancy.The stock was immediately down more than 10 percent on the news and seems to be hovering there.So here’s Twitter’s dilemma: CEO Jack Dorsey has effectively been in charge of Twitter for the past year, and it’s clear that the company’s growth problem is still a problem. On top of that, Twitter has now missed revenue estimates two quarters in a row, and significantly cut its Q3 guidance. So there’s a clear revenue problem to go along with the growth problem. Not good. To state the obvious, this kind of production (or lack thereof) doesn’t help Dorsey’s case for running two companies (remember, he also runs Square). It also puts pressure on the board to consider broader options for the company, namely selling. Twitter is in the very beginning stages of trying to transition its business to look more like TV, but it doesn’t have a lot of runway left.

• $1 Billion for Dollar Shave Club: Why Every Company Should Worry: Unilever is paying $1 billion for Dollar Shave Club, a five-year-old start-up that sells razors and other personal products for men. Every other company should be afraid, very afraid. The deal anecdotally shows that no company is safe from the creative destruction brought by technological change. The very nature of a company is fundamentally changing, becoming smaller and leaner with far fewer employees. Dollar Shave Club was a phenom in the men’s grooming industry. The online business was founded in 2011 by Mark Levine and Michael Dubin to combat the high cost of razors. The idea was rather simple. Instead of paying $10 or $20 a month at a store for disposable razors, a Dollar Shave Club subscriber could go online and set up a regular order to be shipped to his home monthly at a fraction of the retail cost. The experiment was a brave one. Until that time, Gillette dominated the razor business and was in an arms race with itself to add yet more blades and other features to its razors. Gillette was so dominant in advertising and shelf space that Procter & Gamble paid $57 billion for the company in 2005. Everything changed in 2012, when Mr. Dubin’s comedic free ad posted on YouTube. Within 24 hours, the new business had more than 12,000 orders, more than it could handle. The ad went on to get over 20 million views and rocket Dollar Shave Club to over $240 million in revenue. The wealth will be spread among a few. Dollar Shave Club has over three million subscribers but only about 190 employees. Its razors were made in South Korea by Dorco. Distribution was initially handled in-house but eventually was contracted to a third-party company in Kentucky. What remained was a terrific design, marketing and customer service shop; and a business that was easily expandable to meet demand and that had a good niche with men who do not like to shop. These super-successful companies with few employees should worry an America struggling with inequality. That is the way things roll these days. It used to be that if you wanted to sell razors, you needed a factory, a distribution center, a sales force, a research and development team and a marketing budget. Keeping all of these functions under one roof lowered transaction costs and made operations more efficient. In part this was because of communication structures — having telephone and mail together was a necessity. But the internet, mass transportation and globalization destroy everything. If you do not believe this change is about brand, experience and disruption, know that you can buy razors directly from Dorco, presumably the same brands sold by Dollar Shave Club.

• Flipkart-owned Myntra acquires Jabong for $70 mn in all-cash deal: Flipkart-owned Myntra today said it has acquired Jabong from Global Fashion Group for USD 70 million. Myntra, which itself was acquired by Flipkart in 2014 in an estimated Rs 2,000 crore deal, will have access to a combined base of 15 million monthly active users.Jabong has been in the market for a sell-off and was in discussion with companies including Future Group, Snapdeal and Aditya Birla-owned Abof among others. Jabong was founded in 2012. In September 2014, its investor, Rocket Internet merged Jabong with four other online fashion retailers in Latin America, Russia, the Middle East, South-east Asia and Australia to create Global Fashion Group (GFG). Swedish investment firm Kinnevik also owns a large stake in Jabong's parent Global Fashion Group. While Jabong has managed to reduce losses by reducing discounts, both Kinnevik and Rocket Internet seem unwilling to infuse fresh capital and are believed to be keen to exit.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, July 12

• The non-gamer’s guide to playing Pokemon Go: Pokemon Go is a full-blown phenomenon, with millions of downloads and excitement only growing after players got through their first weekend of being real-life Pokemon trainers. The game is heavy on fun but light on explanations -- particularly if you're so excited to start playing that you blitz through the opening tutorial. So maybe you've downloaded it, fired it up and then gotten, well, completely lost. If you're completely mystified by how this game actually works, here are some basics to get you out there and catching Pokemon in no time.Once you download the app, you'll be asked to sign in. You can sign in using an existing Google account. Or, if you're not so keen to connect your Pokemon identity to your Google identity, then you can also sign up with the Pokemon Trainer Club, which is an account with the Pokemon Co. From there, you design your character and pick your first Pokemon. Then you can get going! And you will have to actually get going. The whole selling point of the game is to walk around the real world to find the cute little critters. This not only encourages you to explore your own city, but also -- gasp! -- gets you outside and around other people. In fact, this is not really a game you can play while stationary. Sometimes Pokemon will come to you, but more often than not you have to go to them.

• Twitter Falls After Analysts Downgrade Stock on Slow Growth View: Twitter Inc. slipped after analysts at two firms downgraded the stock, citing a lack of confidence in the company’s direction and ability to capitalize on new products. "What is Twitter? Quite frankly, we don’t believe that question has been answered," said James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. in a note. "Barring any changes, Twitter was, is and will continue as a niche product." He downgraded the stock to the equivalent of hold from buy. Robert Peck, an analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey also lowered his rating on the stock to the equivalent of hold from buy. “User growth and engagement for Twitter continue to be challenged, and we believe that increasing monetization can only go so far with limited new product introductions increasing competition (Snapchat!) and a challenging advertising background,” Peck said in a note.The stock fell 2.6 percent to $17.61 at 10:16 a.m. in New York. The shares have declined about 50 percent over the past year, valuing the company at about $12.4 billion. Many analysts see the company as an inevitable takeover target some day, though not anytime soon. “It’s surely an upside risk to our new rating, but at this time we expect Twitter will have to navigate as a standalone company,” Cakmak said.

• The SEC is investigating whether Tesla should have told its investors about a fatal crash: The Securities Exchange Commission is opening an investigation into Tesla to determine whether the company should have told shareholders earlier about a fatal crash related to its autonomous driving tech, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Joshua Brown was killed on May 7 when his Tesla, operating in Autopilot mode, drove into a tractor-trailer that that was crossing the highway. Autopilot is a semi-autonomous driving technology that’s a much more sophisticated version of cruise control. Weeks later, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into the accident to determine whether the technology worked as expected. This SEC probe, on the other hand, is not about the technology; it’s about whether, under securities law, Tesla should have told its investors about the accident and when. A Tesla spokesperson said the company had not received any communication from the SEC as yet.) The results of the SEC probe will set a precedent for the auto industry as more automakers roll out their own versions of Autopilot. The 2017 Mercedes Benz E class will be equipped with semi-autonomous technology called Drive Pilot; Volvo’s XC90 already has semi-autonomous technology called Pilot Assist; and General Motor’s Super Cruise technology is expected to become available in the 2017 Cadillac CT6. Automakers typically don’t disclose to investors every single accident in which their vehicles are involved. If, however, the SEC determines that Tesla should have disclosed this accident to its investors, that may all change.

• Bezos Beats Buffett as Amazon Market Value Tops Berkshire: Amazon.com Inc., Jeff Bezos’s online retailer, moved past Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. to become one of the world’s five largest companies by market value on Monday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Amazon rose as high as $356.5 billion in the first two hours of trading. The company surpassed Berkshire on the day before Prime Day, an annual promotion.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, June 15

• Uber Sets Sights on Leveraged Loans for Even More Money: Uber has raised more than $14 billion using all sorts of creative funding sources. Now it may add something new to the list: the leveraged loan market. The ride-hailing start-up is looking to issue as much as $2 billion in securities to investors, said a person briefed on the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are managing the process, said the person, adding that the deal has not begun yet and may still fall apart.By tapping leveraged loans, Uber is adding to its trove of billions made up of many types of securities, which the company has been spending as it expands worldwide. Uber has raised equity from traditional venture capital sources, strategic corporate investors and private equity. This month, the company said that it had raised $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Uber has also raised billions in convertible debt, which can be exchanged for equity at a future date. Uber has redefined private fund-raising, drawing hundreds of millions in new cash or debt at a rapid pace of once every few months. The company needs financing as it now operates in at least 69 countries and is fighting an expensive battle in China against a rival, Didi Chuxing, which is also raising money to expand. Leveraged loans are rarely used among start-ups. A leveraged loan is a security issued to a company that has a lot of debt on its books already, and thus is perceived by investors as being a higher risk. The loans are typically used for leveraged buyouts and are seldom seen in Silicon Valley. Uber has been able to tap less traditional funding sources because investors think its size and scale make it a safer bet than other Silicon Valley companies. Uber’s valuation of $62.5 billion — making it the highest valued venture-backed start-up in the world — would not change with this new investment. Leveraged loans also allow Uber to raise money without diluting the holdings of its many equity investors — some of which have been through more than a dozen rounds of financing.

• Twitter has invested in music streaming service SoundCloud: Two years ago Twitter thought about buying SoundCloud, but ended up walking away from the music service. Now Twitter has bought a piece of SoundCloud instead. Twitter has invested around $70 million in the music service, as part of a round that should end up in the $100 million-range, according to sources familiar with the deal. The round is expected to value SoundCloud at about $700 million — the same value that investors placed on the company in 2014, when it raised $60 million; since then it has also raised a debt round. It’s unclear whether the Twitter investment is part of a strategic partnership, but that would make sense: Twitter might view via an integration with SoundCloud as a way to increase growth and engagement, and SoundCloud may look at Twitter as a way to promote its newly launched subscription service, which is crucial to the company’s plans. And both companies could use some help. Twitter has been punished by Wall Street for its inability to add users at a rapid clip; SoundCloud’s flat valuation indicates that investors are also worried about its own growth prospects.

• Alibaba Tries to Shore Up Investors’ Confidence: The Alibaba Group of China has disappointed investors since its record-breaking American stock listing nearly two years ago, as volatile financial results and regulatory run-ins have driven the price of its shares down almost to where they began. Now the e-commerce giant is trying to reassure. For the first time, Alibaba on Tuesday offered investors financial guidance for the coming year, saying that it expected revenue growth to accelerate from last year’s pace. At a meeting at its Hangzhou headquarters, Alibaba cited strength in its core business, despite China’s slowing economic growth, as well as benefits from new ventures that have raised eyebrows among some investors The forecast comes as Alibaba seeks to demonstrate that its strategy, which has long focused on growth, is good for business. In China, Alibaba operates online sales platforms that connect consumers with mom-and-pop stores, as well as with global brands like Burberry and Zara. It has been showing sales growth on its platforms using a measure called gross merchandise volume, a yardstick for transactions across its platforms. Alibaba said on Tuesday that it would de-emphasize that figure, saying it would no longer report it quarterly. It will continue to report an annual figure, and offered a target for 2020.

• India's Space Program Takes On Elon Musk: India’s space agency will launch a record 22 satellites on a single rocket as it tries to ease a global backlog and demonstrate the ability to compete with commercial spaceflight companies run by billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.Satellites from the U.S., India, Canada and Germany will enter orbit after a scheduled June 20 liftoff from the Sriharikota barrier island along the southeast coast, the agency’s chairman, A.S. Kiran Kumar, said in an interview in Bengaluru.The 22 machines being launched next week include an Earth observation satellite to capture light invisible to the naked eye. It is the biggest single launch by India, trailing Russia’s 33 in 2014 and NASA’s 29 the year before. India last month successfully launched a scale model of a reusable spacecraft, a project that in time could pit the nation against Bezos and Musk in the race to make access to space cheaper and easier. The country also injected a probe into Mars’ atmosphere in 2014 for just $74 million, about 11 percent of the cost of the U.S.’s Maven probe.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, June 14

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

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

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

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

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

Daily Tech Snippet: 3 June 2016

• Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage: Snapchat has 150 million people using the service each day, said people familiar with the matter. That makes the four-year-old messaging app more popular than Twitter Inc. by daily active users. Snapchat has been growing quickly, boosted by its popularity among young people. The app had 110 million daily users in December, said the people, who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak about the numbers. Twitter, which was founded in 2006, has less than 140 million users interacting with the service daily, according to an average of analysts’ estimates surveyed by Bloomberg. The short-messaging service was once the largest social network after Facebook Inc. but has since been surpassed by Facebook’s other apps, including Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. Twitter has 310 million monthly active users, according to its most recent earnings report. The company doesn’t disclose how many of those people check in daily, but in the third quarter, it said about 44 percent of monthly users are active each day in the service’s top 20 markets. Twitter Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto said at the time that the percentage had been stable but that “we’ll be sure to disclose” if there was a significant change. The company hasn’t given an update since then. This implies a daily active user count of 136 million. Snapchat has made communicating more of a game by letting people send annotated selfies and short videos. It has allowed people to use its imaging software to swap faces in a photo, transform themselves into puppies, and barf rainbows. (In March, Facebook said it acquired the startup behind an app called Masquerade, which offers similar photo-manipulation tools.) Snapchat encourages people to visit the app frequently with features such as the "Snapstreak," which counts the number of consecutive days they’ve been communicating with their closest friends. Snapchat’s other content, such as news and Live Stories, disappear after 24 hours.

• The incredibly brilliant way people are now paying for things in Asia: When Apple first rolled out Apple Pay in 2014, it was billed as a simpler way to buy goods and services. You take your phone out, tap it to the credit card reader, and off you go. Seems convenient, right?  But some consumers in Asia think there's an even better way to pay. In recent years, millions of people have grown accustomed to using messaging apps to communicate. Some of these apps now support person-to-person digital cash transfers. So the next step is pretty logical: Asian retailers have begun using these same messaging platforms to sell everything from clothing to hamburgers to train tickets. And as a consumer, you never have to leave the app to pay. On the surface, this alternative sounds a lot like Apple Pay (or Samsung Pay, or Android Pay, etc.). But conducting real-life and online transactions through messaging apps stands to change retail like none of these other services have. What we're seeing in Asia is the rise of mobile payments that run primarily on software, not hardware as we've tried to implement here in the United States. And that simple distinction may be the key to everything from accelerating the spread of mobile payments to unlocking deep, digital interactions with customers in brick-and-mortar stores to democratizing e-commerce away from giant online businesses like Amazon.To buy a meal with WeChat, which in China goes by the name Weixin, customers simply pull up a QR code in the app that's connected to their credit card or other financial account. Once the cashier scans the code, that's it — no further action is needed. Retailers in China will typically offerdiscounts to WeChat users as an incentive to pay with the app.

• No Uber IPO in Sight After $3.5 Billion From Saudi Arabia: Once upon a time, Silicon Valley startups raised money from venture capitalists and then, with some luck and a promising business, held an IPO to cash in and expand. Uber has no need for such traditions. The San Francisco-based company, founded in 2009 and valued at $62.5 billion, has now raised $11 billion as it spends heavily to expand globally and battle well-funded rivals such as Lyft Inc. and China’s Didi. The ride-hailing company’s latest infusion of cash -- a record $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund -- means Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick has the finances to continue avoiding a listing of his company any time soon. "I’m going to make sure it happens as late as possible," he told CNBC earlier this year. The money from Saudi Arabia is a new wrinkle in the shifting way the world’s largest technology startups are being funded. The $3.5 billion raised by Uber Technologies Inc. this week is far larger than what most companies are able raise when they hold public offerings: Twitter Inc. netted $1.82 billion during its 2013 IPO and First Data Corp. raised $2.56 billion in the largest technology IPO of the past 12 months. In 2004, Google raised $1.67 billion during its stock-market debut.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, May 30

• China to open e-commerce, other sectors to foreign investment: newspaper: China will lift restrictions to investments by foreign firms in a range of service industry sectors, including e-commerce, logistics, accounting and auditing, the China Securities News quoted commerce minister Gao Hucheng as saying. Gao said China would also promote the orderly opening of other service fields including finance, education, culture and health care, the report published on Saturday said without elaborating or giving a time-frame. China's trade in services would exceed $1 trillion by 2020, the minister predicted. The Ministry of Commerce has previously said the value of China's services trade was expected to exceed $750 billion this year.

• Thiel-Gawker Fight Raises Concerns About Press Freedom: The story of Gawker versus Hulk Hogan — or, perhaps more accurately, Peter Thiel — has some asking whether press freedom in the United States is in peril if a scorned billionaire can help deliver a crippling blow to a media company. But since Mr. Thiel spoke to The New York Times on Wednesday about his reasons for funding the lawsuit against Gawker, the debate surrounding the dispute has expanded to encompass ideological battles in media, technology and politics. A variety of observers, including other billionaires and figures involved in GamerGate, have entered into the fray to address themes like Mr. Thiel’s political motivations, and the wider issue of Silicon Valley power players and their involvement with the news media. Several journalists felt that Mr. Thiel’s political views and connection withDonald J. Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, could be worrisome based on Mr. Trump’s previous comments about changing libel laws to make it easier to sue media outlets.

• Twitter's retreat from 'Buy' buttons puts its payments partner Stripe in an awkward spot: In September, payments startup Stripe trumpeted a new product that would allow retailers to sell goods directly in social networking and content apps. The biggest partner app Stripe launched with was Twitter, whose 'Buy' buttons allowed users to buy items directly from a tweet. But just a month later, Twitter disbanded the team working on 'Buy' buttons, as Recode reported on Thursday, and shifted its focus on commerce to other initiatives. The 'Buy' button technology still exists, and retailers can still use Stripe's new product, Relay, to sell products on Twitter. But the perception that Stripe's biggest partner no longer considers it a priority doesn't look good. You could imagine the challenge convincing potential retail partners that they should invest in a program whose biggest platform partner no longer appears to be interested. The idea behind Relay is that people will increasingly want to purchase items online wherever they discover them, even if it's not on a shopping site or app. And as people spend more of their online time on Twitter and other social apps, they should have the option to complete transactions quickly without leaving those apps, the thinking goes, rather than getting redirected to another site that may be difficult to navigate on a mobile phone. In addition to Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook have also bought into this thinking to some degree. Each has introduced 'Buy' buttons, with varying levels of investment. But neither one of them currently works with Stripe on the Relay product. The open question for Stripe is whether retailers and users will show real interest in Twitter's Buy buttons without the company promoting them — and, if not, whether Stripe can find another big-name app to replace Twitter as the anchor partner.

• Amazon built a tool that puts Alexa in your browser: Amazon's Alexa personal assistant is super useful in the Echo and lot of fun to use. But if you don't have an Echo or can't buy one because you're outside of the US, it can be hard to appreciate Alexa's skill set. In light of this, Amazon has created a web app that lets you play with Alexa right in your browser. You can access the web app at echosim.io and it lets you ask Alexa all kinds of questions. What it doesn't let you experience is the always listening nature of the Echo device and its far field microphone array — you have to click and hold a button on the site before you speak to it. (That makes it closer to the experience you get with the Amazon Tap than the Echo itself.) The real purpose of this simulator is to let international devs see what Alexa is capable of, since Amazon doesn't yet the Echo or other Alexa devices outside of the US. Amazon says it was inspired by a project from a hackathon last year. Still, it's open to anyone with an Amazon account, so fire it up and start pelting Alexa with questions.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, April 27

• Apple's nine-year iPhone juggernaut stops with first sales decline since 2003: Apple on Tuesday posted its first-ever decline in iPhone sales and its first revenue drop in 13 years as the company credited with inventing the smartphone struggles with an increasingly saturated market. The company's sales dropped by more than a quarter in China, its most important market after the United States, and it also forecast another disappointing quarter for global revenues. Its shares fell about 8 percent, dropping below $100 for the first time since February. A hike in Apple's share buyback and dividend as well as bumper revenue from services failed to mollify investors. While Apple executives had predicted iPhone sales would decline this quarter, they must reassure investors that the drop represents a momentary roadblock, rather than a permanent shift for the product that fueled its meteoric rise. After years of blockbuster sales, many investors fear the iPhone has reached saturation, spelling the end for Apple's exponential growth. Apple Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri told Reuters that the success of the iPhone 6 a year earlier had set a difficult bar to beat in the second quarter. "The iPhone 6 is an anomaly," he said. He pointed to the services division, which includes Apple Music and the App Store, as a bright spot. Its revenue grew 20 percent to $6 billion and surpassed iMac and iPad sales. Apple forecast third-quarter revenue of $41 billion to $43 billion, short of the Wall Street consensus of $47.3 billion. The drop in after-hours shares wipes out roughly $46 billion in market capitalization, roughly the value of heavy equipment maker Caterpillar. In reaction to Apple's results, shares of its suppliers Skyworks Solutions, Qorvo, Broadcom  and NXP Semiconductors all fell 2 percent or more on Tuesday.

• Twitter stock plunges as earnings miss estimates: Twitter disappointed investors yet again with first-quarter results that showed stagnant revenue growth as the microblogging service struggles to grab new users amid efforts to improve its complicated interface with several new features. Twitter shares plunged 13.6 percent to $15.34 in late trade on Tuesday after reporting lower-than-expected revenue, hurt by weaker than expected spending by big advertisers, and providing a current-quarter revenue forecast well below analysts' expectations. Twitter's user base grew modestly to 310 million monthly active users in the quarter ended March 31 from 305 million in the fourth quarter, above analysts' expectations. But investors were let down by the revenue miss since outlining a turnaround plan. First-quarter revenue rose 36 percent from a year earlier to $594.5 million, but widely missed the average analyst estimate of $607.8 million. Its net loss narrowed to $79.7.million, or 12 cents per share, from $162.4 million, or 25 cents per share, a year earlier. "It's obvious Twitter is having trouble," said Arvind Bhatia, analyst with CRT Capital. "It's not growing anywhere close to where people expected a while back."

• Alibaba Financial Affiliate Raises $4.5 Billion: The Alibaba Group of China has become a colossus in the global Internet world, with a market value of nearly $200 billion. Now its online payment affiliate is aiming for  similarly lofty financial goal: becoming one of the most valuable privately held technology companies in the world. The affiliate, known as the Ant Financial Services Group, said on Tuesday that it had raised $4.5 billion from investors. The private financing round suggests that the company is now valued at about $60 billion — or more than $10 billion over the market value of PayPal Holdings, its closest analogue. Ant Financial may not be as well known in the West as Silicon Valley darlings like Uber Technologies, which was most recently valued at about $62.5 billion. But Ant Financial — whose controlling shareholder isAlibaba’s billionaire founder, Jack Ma — has become an online power in its own right. It is one of the biggest electronic payment companies in the world by virtue of Alipay, a payment service that is commonly used in China. It is also one of the most prominent symbols of strength in China’s private sector, particularly in the field of online payments. Slow-moving state-run banks and an initial absence of regulation have allowed privately run companies to weave themselves into everyday life. Ant Financial now encompasses not only online payments, but also low-risk money market funds and a wallet app that enables easy payment from smartphones around China. Chinese consumers use Alipay to shop online, transfer money to one another, hail taxis, buy movie tickets and even invest their spare change. A money-market fund affiliated with Ant Financial was once one of the world’s largest. According to the announcement on Tuesday, Alipay has more than 450 million users, or more than double the number PayPal has. Such is the power of the company that its latest financing was led by some of China’s biggest state-controlled banks, including arms of the China Construction Bank and China Life Insurance. That indicates the level of government support that the company enjoys in a country where much of the economy is still state-directed. Ant Financial’s previous fund-raising round, which was held last year, included China’s national social security fund and an arm of the China Development Bank. In a move that could further endear the company to Chinese officials, Mr. Ma has said he hopes to take Ant Financial public in China. Still, if Ant Financial follows through on the plan, it would be one of the biggest initial public offerings since that of Alibaba itself, which raisednearly $22 billion in 2014 in the biggest public offering on record.

• EBay Forecast Beats Estimates as Traffic Efforts Pay Off: EBay projected sales on its marketplace for the second quarter and full year that will meet or exceed analysts’ estimates, suggesting efforts to boost traffic, such as using barcode scanning and a more searchable catalog, are gaining traction. Since separating from PayPal last year, Chief Executive Officer Devin Wenig has been under pressure to reverse sluggish growth at EBay in the face of competition from Amazon.com Inc., which continues to woo shoppers with fast delivery, and after Google changed its search algorithm in a way that hurt EBay traffic. The shares rose 2.1 percent to $24.98 in extended trading after the results were announced. They ended the day at $24.49, up 1.1 percent, and are down 11 percent so far this year. Revenue in the second quarter will be $2.14 billion to $2.19 billion EBay said in a statement Tuesday. The average analyst estimate was for $2.14 billion. For the full year, EBay said it expects revenue of $8.6 billion to $8.8 billion, compared with analysts’ estimates of $8.73 billion. Profit, excluding certain items, will be 40 cents to 42 cents a share in the current quarter, EBay said Tuesday, compared with analysts’ estimates of 44 cents. EBay’s Gross Merchandise Volume -- the total value of goods sold on the marketplace -- of $20.5 billion in the quarter was up 1 percent from a year earlier.

• As tide turns against chip industry, Samsung forges ahead of rivals: Gloom may be settling over much of the world's semiconductor industry but Samsung is expected to cope better than most due to its strong technological edge, enabling it to boost market share for some key products and possibly even lift revenue. A plunge in PC sales and slower growth for smartphones globally has hit the sector hard, prompting Intel Corp to say this month it would cut up to 12,000 jobs. Qualcomm has said fiscal third-quarter chip shipments could fall as much as 22 percent, while SK Hynix Inc on Tuesday reported a 65 percent slide in quarterly operating income - its weakest result in three years. Samsung, which reports its first-quarter earnings on Thursday, is also hurting. Chip profits - which accounted for just under half of its overall 2015 operating income - are widely expected to fall, with some analysts predicting a drop of more than 10 percent in January-March from a year earlier. But if its rivals are getting pummeled, the South Korean tech giant is merely bruised and is in many ways benefiting as clients shift towards premium power-conserving DRAM chips for smartphones, as well as solid-state drives for data storage using 3D NAND chips. "The technological gap between Samsung and its competitors in fields such as DRAM and NAND has been widening lately, which helps the company avoid the rate of profit decline seen at other firms," said Song Myung-sub, an analyst at HI Investment & Securities. Even with a first-quarter drop of around 10 percent, Samsung's chip operating profit is expected to be nearly five times that of SK Hynix. The world's No. 2 chipmaker also happens to run the world's biggest smartphone business, giving it a captive customer for its chips that none of its rivals have.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, April 8th

• Amazon May Violate India’s New Rules on Foreign E-Commerce: For Amazon, no country is more important to its global growth ambitions than India, the second-most-populous nation in the world behind China, where online shopping is in its infancy and growing explosively. But Amazon’s India plans just ran into a hitch. Late last month, the Indian government issued additional rules governing foreign ownership of e-commerce companies operating in the country. The government added regulations related to pricing and the sourcing of sales on sites that Amazon and several rivals appear to violate. What is more, the new policy was effective immediately, giving Amazon and others no time to comply.India essentially bars companies with substantial foreign ownership from operating retail outlets that sell from their own inventories of goods. Although American multinationals like Amazon, Walmart and Apple have sought to overturn or soften those restrictions, the government has made few changes. To work around the restrictions, Amazon and competitors billed themselves as e-commerce marketplaces, eBay-like websites that matched buyers with independent sellers. Amazon owns no inventory of its own in India, though it handles the warehousing and delivery of goods for many of its independent sellers, a model it also employs in the United States. Last week, Indian regulators confirmed that online marketplaces, which had operated in a gray era, are legal. But they added a rule saying that no single seller can account for more than 25 percent of sales on such an e-commerce marketplace. It also limited the influence that online marketplaces can exert over the prices set by their sellers. The new regulations appear to make Amazon’s dependence on one large seller on its site, Cloudtail, illegal, according to industry officials and analysts. While Amazon says it has more than 80,000 sellers on its India site, Cloudtail is estimated to account for 40 percent to 50 percent of the site’s sales, according to Mr. Meena of Forrester. The parent company of Cloudtail is a partnership between Catamaran Ventures, the investment firm of the Indian business magnate, N.R. Narayana Murthy, and Amazon, which owns 49 percent. India’s leading e-commerce company, Flipkart, also works closely with an affiliated large seller and faces a similar problem.

• US Startup Funding Deals Fall to Lowest Level in Four Years - Different Story in India and China: Venture capitalists made fewer bets in the U.S. last quarter, while putting a larger proportion of their money into the most mature private companies, according to research firm PitchBook Data. The findings show that venture investors are trying to play it safe by backing proven businesses, making it more difficult for newer startups to find capital. Last quarter had the fewest number of venture deals in four years. Funding rounds dropped 12 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2015, when startup funding began to slow. Investments totaled $17.7 billion in the first quarter of 2016, about flat with the prior period. More than half of that went to late-stage companies. Private investors are expressing skepticism as startup valuations have skyrocketed. Mutual fund companies have written down the value of their stakes in numerous technology companies since last year. Startups are staying private longer, leaving fewer options for shareholders to cash out. No tech company went public last quarter, and many of those that did in 2015 have gotten off to a rocky start. In other countries, there's plenty of money to go around. Venture capital investments in China and India surged in the first quarter, jumping about 50 percent.

• Alibaba Gives Shelter in Debt Storm as China Internet Bonds Gain: China’s Internet giants are providing a haven for bond investors fleeing mounting default risks among the nation’s state-owned enterprises. Investors are snapping up bonds from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Baidu Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., a bright spot in an economy growing at the slowest pace in a quarter-century. The rising demand also reflects a broader shift in China’s economy away from smokestack industries toward private-sector services such as e-commerce, online finance and entertainment. Creditors have grown wary of state-backed firms after Moody’s Investors Service cut its outlook on 38 of them along with the government in March. Dollar bonds from Internet firms have returned 4.2 percent this year, the nation’s best-performing sector, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch indexes. Alibaba’s securities due 2034 have gained 9 percent since Dec. 31, while 2025 notes of Baidu and Tencent both returned more than 6 percent. Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce company, has cashed in by raising $4 billion from loan bankers and Tencent, operator of China’s most popular messaging services, borrowed $2.45 billion in December.

• Morgan Stanley Paints Bleak Outlook for Twitter on Few New Users: Morgan Stanley analysts came down hard on Twitter Inc., lowering their forecasts for the social media company’s stock price, on projected slower growth in new users, revenue and earnings. “Engagement and new user trends remain troubling,” the analysts, led by Brian Nowak, said in a note to clients Thursday. Morgan Stanley cut its price target on Twitter to $16 from $18 and reduced its projection for 2017 earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization by 13 percent to $769 million. The firm reduced its 2017 revenue forecast by 6 percent to to $3.23 billion.

• Mashable Fires News Staff, Replaces Executives as Part of Pivot to Video Infotainment: Last week, the digital publication Mashable said that it had raised $15 million in a funding round led by Turner and that it would be using the money to “co-develop” content for TBS and TNT. Today, the other shoe dropped. The company announced that it is replacing its chief content and revenue officers — Jim Roberts and Seth Rogin — and firing a large portion of its editorial staff. Additionally, Mashable is pivoting from hard news coverage; it will focus on producing lots more video about “digital culture.” According to Politico and a Mashable editor, 30 people were laid off.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, April 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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