Techmeme
May 18, 2016, 10:30 PM

Top News

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Google announces Allo, a messaging app with smart replies to image and text messages, Google Assistant, Incognito mode, available this summer for iOS, Android  —  Google is announcing a new messaging app today.  It's called Allo and its main feature is a Google assistant that's built right in.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Google announces Google Home, an always-listening small speaker to compete with Amazon Echo, coming out later this year, price unknown  —  For the past year and a half, the tech world has been recovering from Amazon's surprise announcement of the Echo.  Now, Google is finally doing what everybody wanted it to do: release a competitor.
Norm Jouppi / Google Cloud Platform Blog:
Google announces it has built a Tensor Processing Unit, a custom ASIC specifically for machine learning and tailored for TensorFlow  —  Posted by Norm Jouppi, Distinguished Hardware Engineer, Google  —  Machine learning provides the underlying oomph to many of Google's most-loved applications.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Google announces Duo, a one-on-one HD video-calling app, coming to iOS and Android later this summer  —  Some have criticised Google for falling behind when it comes to social networking and new communications services, but the company is how working hard to catch up.
Matthew Lynley / TechCrunch:
Google unveils Google Assistant, a conversational virtual assistant that's a big upgrade to Google Now  —  Google today said it was unveiling a virtual assistant tool at its annual Google I/O developer conference in Mountain View called Google Assistant.  —  This appears to be similar …
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Google unveils Android Instant Apps that launch immediately, no installation required, also works on some older versions of Android  —  Google today unveiled Android Instant Apps, a new project the company is experimenting with that offers users a subset of an existing app.
Stephen Hall / 9to5Google:
Android apps and the Google Play Store are coming to Chrome OS  —  It looks like there's a little tidbit of information that might have been originally planned for the keynote (pulled because of time restraints, maybe?).  According to a session description now on the Google I/O website …
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
117M LinkedIn user emails and passwords from 2012 hack offered for sale on dark web marketplace; LinkedIn is contacting affected users  —  A LinkedIn hack from back in 2012 is still causing problems for its users.  The company announced this morning that another data set from the hack …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Daydream is Google's VR platform, for new Android N phones only, which offers Android VR Mode, a full ecosystem that optimizes phone performance for VR  —  Following months of speculation, Google is diving deeper into virtual reality.  Today at its I/O keynote, the company announced Daydream …
Ben Popper / The Verge:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google turns Firebase into a unified platform for developers, with analytics, new notification system, and more; a free plan is now available  —  Google offers a plethora of cloud services that mobile developers can use to power their apps.  With Firebase, which it acquired in 2014 …
Valentina Palladino / Ars Technica:
Fitbit acquires “wearable payment assets” from Coin including key personnel and IP; Coin products to no longer be sold; existing Coin 2.0 cards will still work  —  “No plans” for integration into products in 2016, but 2017 is a whole new year.  —  Fitbit devices are known …
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
iOS 9.3.2 update bricking some 9.7-inch iPad Pro devices with “Error 56” message, Apple looking into the issue  —  iOS 9.3.2 is causing problems for some 9.7-inch iPad Pro owners, with multiple MacRumors readers and Twitter users reporting issues shortly after installing the update over the air.
Nokia Corporation:
Nokia-branded phones and tablets returning to market as HMD Global acquires rights to Nokia brand and IP to sell new devices made by Foxconn's FIH Mobile  —  Espoo, Finland - Nokia has announced plans that will see the Nokia brand return to the mobile phone and tablet markets on a global basis.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Ken Yeung / VentureBeat:
Google Photos passes 200M monthly active users, up from 100M users last October  —  Google's photo app appears to be a hit: CEO Sundar Pichai said today that the Photos service now has 200 million active users every month.  —  The company announced the news during its annual I/O developer conference.

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