Techmeme: A first look at the Beats Music website, with plenty of leaked screenshots (Janko Roettgers/Gigaom)

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January 14, 2014, 9:45 AM

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Google:

Google to acquire Tony Fadell's smart home startup Nest Labs for $3.2 billion in cash — Google to Acquire Nest — Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has entered into an agreement to buy Nest Labs, Inc. for $3.2 billion in cash. — Nest's mission is to reinvent unloved …

More: New York Times, The Verge, Fortune, Marketing Land, Forbes, Forbes, TechCrunch, The Switch, ZDNet, Gizmodo, Ars Technica, TechCrunch, BetaNews, DailyFinance.com, Engadget, NYT Bits, Lightspeed Venture Partners, TechCrunch, iPhone, Zatz Not Funny!, John Battelle's Search Blog, Search Engine Roundtable, CNET, Valleywag, Businessweek, Business Insider, Mashable, Softpedia News, The Droid Guy, Ubergizmo, Wired.co.uk, Gizmodo UK, SiliconANGLE, aNewDomain, Pocket-lint, SlashGear, 9to5Google, Mercury News, Digits, Computerworld, Android Central, ScreenwerkScreenwerk, CNET, Business Insider, eWeek, San Francisco Chronicle, Larry Page, Martin Varsavsky, ReadWrite, iDownloadBlog.com, PandoDaily, Quartz, The Daily Beast, Apple News aus Cupertino, Los Angeles Times, Daily Dot, Windows Phone Central, ITworld.com, GSMArena Blog, The Technology Chronicles, pocketnow.com, Wired, Guardian, iMore, CNNMoney.com, Macgasm, Mercury News, CITEworld, 9to5Mac, bizjournals, TechSpot, the rajam report, NEWS.com.au, Geek.com, Betabeat, Phandroid and The Register

Tweets: @nest, @benedictevans, @mikeisaac, @levie, @cdixon, @danprimack, @danprimack, @cdixon, @naveen, @nickbilton, @samir, @levynews, @ryan, @getwired, @jwherrman, @fmanjoo, @dcurtis, @pkafka, @fromedome, @hunterwalk, @panzer, @markgurman, @jgilliam, @mattbuchanan, @pmarca, @piercedavid, @pakman, @rabois, @zpower, @peterrojas, @ryanlawler, @om, @samfbiddle, @markmilian, @jank0, @sundarpichai and @ihnatko

Liz Gannes / Re/code:

Google was the only serious bidder for Nest, Apple not in the mix — Google Acquires Smart-Home Device Maker Nest for $3.2 Billion — Google has acquired Nest Labs, the company founded by Apple iPod creator Tony Fadell, for $3.2 billion. The smart-home startup makes an innovative digital thermostat, as well as a smoke detector.

Katie Fehrenbacher / Gigaom:

The winners and losers in Google's acquisition of Nest — The designer who helped create the iPhone at Apple is now officially going to be part of Apple's arch rival: Google. That's right, on Monday afternoon Google and Nest announced that the search engine giant plans to spend $3.2 billion acquiring …

More: StrictlyVC, bizjournals and Business Insider. Tweets: @etamba

Tony Fadell / Nest:

Nest CEO: Nest will retain its own distinct brand identity, Google is a rocket ship for growth — Welcome home. — This is a momentous day for me, for Matt and for all of the Nest family. This afternoon, we announced that we will be acquired by Google.

More: Re/code, USA Today, Gigaom, Inquirer, Lastest ITProPortal news, Forbes, The Information, Mashable and Droid Life. Tweets: @sfly

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:

Google's Nest acquisition is about having the ability to do consumer hardware right — On Google's Acquisition of Nest — Tony Fadell, in an interview today with Om Malik, on why Nest sold to Google: … Consider Fadell's record with the iPod at Apple.

More: PandoDaily

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Nest Says Customer Data From Devices Will Only Be Used For Nest Products And Services

More: Nest, The Verge, BGR and Wired

Tweets: @mattrosoff, @reckless, @fmanjoo and @dannysullivan

Thanks:@mjburnsy

Stacey Higginbotham / Gigaom:

When Google closes the Nest deal, privacy issues for the internet of things will hit the big time

More: SiliconANGLE, Network World, Gigaom Research, TIME and Forbes

Horace Dediu / asymco.com:

In 2013 the number of Windows PCs sold was only 1.18 times the number of Apple devices sold — When Apple reached parity with Windows — In 2013 there were 18.8 times more Windows PCs sold than Macs. This is a reduction in the Windows advantage from about 19.8x in 2012.

More: 9to5Mac, TUAW, Electronista, Daring Fireball, Fortune and MacDailyNews. Tweets: @alex

@twitter:

We're now rolling out a refreshed http://twitter.com reflecting the look & feel of our iOS & Android apps. pic.twitter.com/Mb6qjjP8Dm

More: VatorNews, The Next Web, iPhone, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, memeburn, Softpedia News, BetaNews, iPhone Hacks, Android Beat, SlashGear, GSMArena Blog, The Verge and Engadget

Diane Bartz / Reuters:

U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear shopping cart case between Newegg and patent troll Soverain — U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear Internet shopping patent case — (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday it would not take on an Internet technology patent case that pitted …

More: TechEye, Bloomberg, SlashGear and IPWatchdog.com

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Yandex Adds Facebook Posts And Big Data To Its Search Results In Russia, Other Home Markets — Yandex and Facebook had a notable run-in last year when a team of developers from the Russian search giant created a social search app called Wonder, which Facebook promptly blocked, leading to it shutting down.

More: Yandex.Company, Search Engine Land, The Next Web, Quartz, Yandex.Company, ITAR-TASS, VentureBeat, Reuters, SlashGear, Softpedia News and Gigaom

Nate Raymond / Reuters:

Apple loses bid to block antitrust monitorship — (Reuters) - Apple Inc lost a bid on Monday to block an antitrust monitor appointed after a judge's finding that the company conspired to fix e-book prices. — At a hearing, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan denied Apple's request …

More: Gigaom, Inquirer, The Register, Bloomberg, Cult of Mac, ZDNet, The Mac Observer, GeekWire, Electronista, AppleInsider, MacRumors, BGR, The Verge, iPhone Hacks, iPhone in Canada Blog and 9to5Mac

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Motorola Assist now lets you receive and reply to text messages completely hands-free with your voice — Motorola today updated its Motorola Assistant app with new hands-free texting features. You can download the new version now directly from Google Play. — The full changelog is as follows:

More: Softpedia News, TechnoBuffalo and Android Central

Marcus Adolfsson / CrackBerry.com:

BlackBerry CEO John Chen: You can be an iPhone or Android customer, and also a BlackBerry customer — CrackBerry's exclusive CES 2014 interview with BlackBerry CEO, John Chen

More: WMPoweruser, ZDNet, Windows Phone Central, My Nokia Blog, iMore, Ubergizmo, BetaNews, PhoneArena, BGR and GSMArena Blog

Devon Maloney / Wired:

The Hacker Who Cracked the Code in Iron Man and The Social Network — British programmer John Graham-Cumming recently noticed something unusual as he watched the movie Elysium: a piece of code that he recognized, flashing across the monitors as the film's characters interacted with a futuristic computer.

More: Co.Labs

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

AOL Sells Winamp And Shoutcast For $5-10M To Radionomy, Takes 12% Stake In Belgian Digital Audio Company — Returning from the brink of death, music services Winamp and Shoutcast are now officially with a new owner: Digital audio business Radionomy has acquired the both media player and radio platform from AOL.

More: Tech.eu, The Verge, The Next Web and Softpedia News. See also Mediagazer

Nick Hide / CNET:

Moto X hits UK and Europe in February for £380, 429 euros — Motorola is bringing its flagship Android phone to Britain, France and Germany next month. — LONDON — Motorola is bringing its flagship Android phone to Europe. The Moto X will go on sale in the UK …

Kyle VanHemert / Wired:

Why Her Will Dominate UI Design Even More Than Minority Report — A few weeks into the making of Her, Spike Jonze's new flick about romance in the age of artificial intelligence, the director had something of a breakthrough. After poring over the work of Ray Kurzweil and other futurists trying …

Steven Levy / Wired:

I Spent Two Hours Talking With the NSA's Bigwigs. Here's What Has Them Mad — My expectations were low when I asked the National Security Agency to cooperate with my story on the impact of Edward Snowden's leaks on the tech industry. During the 1990s, I had been working on a book, Crypto …

Tweets: @liberationtech, @samoltman, @dannyyadron, @jwherrman and @abrams

Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:

Startup Institute Comes To London & Berlin — Pay To Learn How To Become Startup Employee Material — Ok, this is a new concept to me. Already running in Boston, New York and Chicago, Startup Institute — which calls itself a “career accelerator” — is expanding to London and Berlin …

More: The Next Web, Guardian and Tech.eu. Tweets: @ktrae

Jeff John Roberts / Gigaom:

Google's patent rank shoots up as company stakes out wearable tech — Google received nearly 2,000 patents in 2013, which is a significant jump from previous years and reflects the company's determination, as it moves into new fields of technology, to avoid the sort of legal exposure it has faced for years in the smartphone market.

More: AppleInsider, eWeek, Bloomberg, Financial Times, ValueWalk, The Register and Pulse 2.0. Tweets: @scottkgraham

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