Techmeme: Google Writes Check to Acquire Payments Technology Company TxVia (Tricia Duryee/AllThingsD)

April 3, 2012, 8:15 AM

Top News

Dan Balaban / NFC Times:

Google Wallet Co-Founding Engineer Departs Google for Square — Google Wallet co-founding engineer Rob von Behren has left the Web giant for payments startup Square, following former colleague Jonathan Wall in departing the Web giant. — Von Behren disclosed the move today in his LinkedIn profile …

More: Betabeat, TechCrunch, CNET, PhoneArena, parislemon, VentureBeat, GigaOM, The Verge, Business Insider, The Next Web and MobilePaymentsToday.com News. Thanks:@hornokplease

Douglas MacMillan / Bloomberg:

Square Hires Tesla Executive Amid Effort to Double Staff

More: WebProNews

John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:

iPhone Outselling All Other Smartphones Combined at Sprint and AT&T — Led by the 4S, Apple's iPhone line continues to rack up strong sales at AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. So strong that some believe it's likely the top-selling phone at all three of those carriers.

More: iDownloadBlog.com, CNET, PC Magazine, Phones Review, SlashGear, Android and Me, PhoneArena, Gotta Be Mobile, 9to5Mac, VentureBeat, Forbes, iDownloadBlog.com, Investor's Business Daily, Tech Trader Daily, The Mac Observer, Softpedia News, BGR and AppleInsider

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Pinterest Co-Founder Paul Sciarra Is Now EIR At Andreessen Horowitz — More developments for Pinterest co-founder Paul Sciarra, who we reported yesterday was leaving Pinterest as Ben Silbermann officially took helm as CEO. Sciarra is going VC and joining Andreessen Horowitz as entrepreneur-in-residence.

More: Oh, How Pinteresting!, Startup Grind and Total Pinterest. Thanks:@ingridlunden

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

Pinterest Co-Founder Paul Sciarra Leaves, Ben Silbermann Officially Takes On CEO Role

More: Business Insider, paidContent, Total Pinterest, WebProNews, SocialTimes, Betabeat, VentureBeat and Pulse2 Technology …. Tweets: @semil

Mike Davidson / mikeindustries.com:

What the Betamax Case Teaches Us About Readability — The Betamax SL6500! I totally had this model!!! — Several really smart people in our industry are arguing very publicly right now about a company called Readability and how great and/or evil their service is.

More: Anil Dash, Daring Fireball, Daring Fireball, The Brooks Review and ReadWriteWeb

Harry McCracken / Techland:

25 Years of IBM's OS/2: The Strange Days and Surprising Afterlife of a Legendary Operating System — Big Blue's next-generation operating system was supposed to change everything. It didn't. But it's also never quite gone away. — The July 1987 issue of PC World magazine featured a centerfold (!) of Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.

More: Gizmodo, Open Source Blog, The Verge, TechPinions, Errata Security, ShortFormBlog and Slashdot

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

‘Air Display’ Updated to Support HiDPI OS X Mode on New iPad — Last month, we noted that Avatron had announced forthcoming support for the new iPad in its Air Display software that allows users to add an iOS device as a wireless external monitor for their Mac.

More: MacStories, SlashGear, TUAW, CNET, PadGadget and 9to5Mac

Tricia Duryee / AllThingsD:

Google Writes Check to Acquire Payments Technology Company TxVia — In an effort to regain some momentum in mobile payments technology, Google has acquired TxVia, a payments technology company. — In a blog post, Google disclosed the purchase but did not reveal the terms.

More: CNET, Google Commerce, InfoWorld, The Verge, Android Phone Fans and 9to5Google

Ben Popper / VentureBeat:

With stock price tumbling, shareholder lawyers see Groupon as juicy target — UPDATE: Groupon's share price is now down more than 15 percent for the day. — Groupon's stock has been falling since it revealed on Friday that it was revising its first quarter earnings to reflect a larger than expected loss.

More: Marketing Pilgrim, Deal Journal, GigaOM and WebProNews

Wall Street Journal:

SEC Probes Groupon

More: The Register, CNET, Guardian, SiliconBeat and Business Insider

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

How Does Y Combinator Scale Y Combinator? — The startups that presented at Y Combinator's Demo Day last week were remarkable in their own right, but perhaps the most striking thing was the sheer number of them. — With 66 companies and 180 founders in this season's batch …

Jordan Kahn / 9to5Mac:

XRY's two-minute iPhone passcode exploit debunked — Late last month we reported Swedish security firm Micro Systemation claimed its XRY application was capable of cracking an iOS device's passcode, logging keystrokes, and accessing data like GPS, call logs, contacts, and messages.

More: The Verge and iClarified

Frances Robinson / Dow Jones Newswires:

EU Opens Investigations Into Motorola Mobility Holdings On Patents — BRUSSELS (Dow Jones)—The European Union's antitrust watchdog has opened two investigations into the way Motorola Mobility Inc. (MMI) licenses patents following complaints from Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT), the European Commission said Tuesday.

More: BBC, London Calling Blog, EU Press Room, Associated Press, FOSS Patents, SlashGear and The Next Web

Aoife White / Bloomberg:

TripAdvisor Files Antitrust Complaint Against Google With EU — TripAdvisor Inc. (TRIP) filed an antitrust complaint against Google Inc. (GOOG) with European Union regulators, adding a second complaint against the world's largest search- engine operator by online travel companies.

More: Fast Company, Tnooz and The Next Web

Joe Schneider / Bloomberg:

Google Ads in Australia Searches Misleading, Court Says — Google Inc. (GOOG), the world's largest Web-search provider, misled Australian consumers in 2007 by including paid advertisements from competitors in search results for businesses, an appeal court ruled.

More: The Verge, PC World, Reuters, The Register, ACCC, sbs.com.au, SlashGear, News24, The Age, The Next Web, NEWS.com.au and iTnews.com.au

David Meyer / GigaOM:

Earlybird's $100m will fund Berlin's ‘antisocial’ movement — A common complaint in Berlin that the scene has plenty of hype but not enough in the way of local investment. Well, here comes something big. — Earlybird, the VC that moved all its operations to the city last year in response …

More: TechCrunch, VatorNews, VentureBeat and The Next Web

Rachel King / CNET:

Oracle and Google will go to trial — It's on: Google and Oracle are set to go to trial two weeks from today now that a last-ditch attempt at a settlement has failed. — Last week, Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal asked both parties to give settlement talks another chance, with a decision required by April 9.

More: Inquirer, AllThingsD, Ars Technica, VentureBeat and Engadget

Andrew Webster / The Verge:

1940 US Census becoming fully searchable online through volunteer effort — Today the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) released images of the 1940 Census, and a project is already underway to ensure that the information becomes easily available to anyone who wants to know a bit more about the Great Depression.

More: Guardian, Examiner, CNET, Mashable!, Digital Trends, Business Wire, WebProNews, Forbes, 1940 Census, CNET and Slashdot

Stuart Dredge / Guardian:

Angry Birds animated TV series to premiere in Autumn 2012 — 52 weekly episodes will be distributed ‘on all possible devices’ says head of animation Nick Dorra. By Stuart Dredge — Rovio Mobile is launching a series of 52 shortform animations for its Angry Birds in Autumn, but has ruled out a movie until after 2014.

More: SlashGear, PhoneArena, BBC, Digital Trends, Daily Mail, NEWS.com.au, VG247, FierceMobileContent, Appolicious Advisor, GamesIndustry International, NBC Bay Area, Joystiq, Telegraph, Phones Review, Shoemoney, ArcticStartup, The Register and VentureBeat

Sarah Lacy / PandoDaily:

The “D” in Action: Yahoo Layoffs Coming Wednesday, International to Be Hit Hard — As Kara Swisher reported last week, big staff cuts are coming to Yahoo this week. We've heard the hard decisions are already in process, with the hammer coming down Wednesday in the US and Thursday overseas.

More: Business Insider, Key Performance Indicators, Business Insider and Dice Blog Network

Colleen Taylor / TechCrunch:

Found Makes Searching For Files Anywhere Super Simple (And Really Slick) — As much as many companies want to think that they are your one-stop-shop for data storage, the reality is that you probably have files spread across a handful of different places. Your home machine, one or two Gmail inboxes …

More: bub.blicio.us, The Next Web, CNET, VentureBeat, ReadWriteWeb and AllThingsD

Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:

MPAA Warns of Megaupload ‘Relaunch’ If Servers Are Transferred — Giving Megaupload back data would constitute a violation of studio rights, says a legal filing by the MPAA today — The MPAA is objecting to the transfer of Megaupload data, saying in a court filing today that it could pave …

More: CNET, Electronista and Gizmodo

Shara Tibken / Wall Street Journal:

Company's Most Common Tablet Mistakes — As companies flock to the devices, they're learning a lot from their mistakes — American Airlines was an early adopter of tablet computers. As a result, it learned a lot about how best to use tablets—and where it could go wrong.

More: AllThingsD

Edgar Alvarez / Engadget:

NOOK for iPad now with Retina content, improved highlighting features — Better late than never, right? Only a couple of weeks after its rival Kindle, the NOOK app is finally ready to join the new iPad's pixel-packed party. While the main feature is obviously its Retina display compatibility …

More: GadgeTell, The Verge, Gotta Be Mobile and The Toybox Blog

Juliette Garside / Guardian:

Apple's Chinese iPhone plants employ forced interns, claim campaigners — Students told to man production lines at Foxconn if they want to graduate, says Hong Kong-based nonprofit — Apple's factories in China are employing tens of thousands of students, some of them on forced internships …

More: PC World, TPM IdeaLab, PhoneArena, Forbes and TechWeekEurope UK

Nick Clayton / Tech Europe:

Belgian Company Trials Facebook, Twitter-Based Payment System — Right back since the early days of the web, companies such as IBM and Compaq have tried to develop micro payment systems which would allow transactions of as little as a few cents. All have foundered.

More: Reuters and AllTwitter

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