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February 4, 2019, 9:00 PM
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| Alphabet: |
Alphabet Q4: revenue of $39.3B, up 22% YoY, net income of $8.9B, CPC down 29%, and paid clicks on Google properties up 66% YoY; stock down 3% — MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - February 4, 2019 - Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) today announced financial results for the quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2018.
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Business Insider, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Android Authority, GeekWire, The Verge, AdExchanger, ABC News, ZDNet, Business Insider, CNBC, Investor's Business Daily, and Mashable
Tweets: @levynews, @lamonicabuzz, @martyswant, @fredericl, @lexnfx, @backlon, and @lexnfx
| Sara Salinas / CNBC: |
Alphabet's traffic acquisition costs hit $7.44B for Q4, up from $6.58B in Q3, and ad revenue grew 20% YoY to $32.6B, amid competition from rivals like Amazon — - Traffic acquisition costs as a percent of advertising revenue came in at 23 percent, matching analyst estimates and falling right in line with previous quarters.| Abner Li / 9to5Google: |
Alphabet's “Other Bets”, which includes Waymo, Verily, Fiber and others, had Q4 revenue of $154M, with operating losses rising to $1.3B, up from $732M in Q3 — Alphabet today announced its Q4 2018 earnings to wrap up the last fiscal year. Including the busy holiday season … | Mark Zuckerberg: |
On Facebook's 15th anniversary, Zuckerberg says it will spend more on safety and security in 2019 than it had revenue at its IPO, pans critics' “negative” focus — Fifteen years ago today, I launched the first version of the Facebook website from my college dorm.
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Wired, New York Times, Recode, Business Insider, Gizmodo, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Mashable, CNET, and Boing Boing
Tweets: @rmac18, @sheeraf, @anandwrites, @anandwrites, @sarahfrier, @lfdodds, @bernstein, @sheeraf, @facebook, @alexhern, @sarahfrier, @dseetharaman, @carnage4life, @rmac18, @alexstamos, and @hshaban
| Vox: |
Tweets: @antirobust, @thatguybg, @seanilling, @alexstamos, @ezraklein, @antoniogm, @ambi24, @mattyglesias, @moskov, @pessimism, @mikhlin, @chadfelixg, @haleyoverland, and @karaswisher
| Lauren Feiner / CNBC: |
Slack says it has submitted a confidential draft filing to go public with the SEC — Slack confidentially filed to go public, according to a press release published Monday. — Slack is one of a number of tech IPOs expected in 2019, including Uber, Lyft and Airbnb. — Here is the full release from Slack:
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Bloomberg, TechCrunch, Slack, SiliconANGLE, Business Insider, Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Forbes, PYMNTS.com, GeekWire, VentureBeat, Geek News Central, Neowin, Fortune, Mashable, Axios, CNET, and Slashdot
Tweets: @wsj, @40deuce, @t_blom, @ashleyfeinberg, and @kidney_boy
| Joe Rossignol / MacRumors: |
Apple's iOS 12.2 beta has a new Motion & Orientation Access toggle in Privacy settings, off by default, that limits gyroscope and accelerometer access in Safari — Last month, Apple released iOS 12.2 in beta with several new features, including the Apple News app in Canada …
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Digiday, 9to5Mac, SlashGear, Apple Must, Cult of Mac, Softpedia News, AppleInsider, and The Mac Observer
Tweets: @petersontee and @krausefx
| Alex Hern / The Guardian: |
After the death of a British teen, Instagram head announces plans to debut “sensitivity screens” to blur images of self-harm unless users click to reveal them — Facebook-owned app promises changes to better shield users from self-harm images — Instagram will introduce …
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Telegraph, Fortune, BBC, BGR, Engadget, The Hill, TechCrunch, The Verge, and Boing Boing
Tweets: @tamaleaver and @matthfield
| Erik Schatzker / Bloomberg: |
How a US-based manufacturer of an “indestructible” smartphone screen helped FBI in its Huawei sting after the Chinese giant allegedly tried to steal its secrets — The sample looked like an ordinary piece of glass, 4 inches square and transparent on both sides.
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The Register, Mashable, Business Wire, Engadget, BGR, CNBC, Gizmodo, Android Authority, and CNET
Tweets: @paulmozur, @niubi, @waltmossberg, @bw, @b_fung, and @davidjoachim
| Alex Heath / Cheddar: |
Sources: Facebook hires the team behind Chainspace, a startup building tech for decentralized “smart contracts”, its first blockchain acquisition — Facebook has made its first acquisition in the blockchain space. — The social network has quietly hired the team behind Chainspace …
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The Block, CoinDesk, CryptoGlobe, CryptoSlate, BREAKERMAG, and Cointelegraph
| Janko Roettgers / Variety: |
HoloLens co-inventor Avi-Bar-Zeev left Apple in Jan. after joining in Jun. 2016 and working on the company's rumored AR/VR headset expected to launch in 2020 — AR/VR pioneer and Hololens co-inventor Avi Bar-Zeev left Apple last month, Variety has learned.
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MacRumors, Engadget, MSPoweruser, iPhone Hacks, Neowin, Cult of Mac, 9to5Mac, and Road to VR. Thanks:@jank0
| Dieter Bohn / The Verge: |
Google announces Live Transcribe, a near-real time transcriber, and Sound Amplifier; both are Pixel 3 accessibility features and available as apps on Play store — It's also releasing a Sound Amplifier feature — both only on Android — Google is announcing two new features for Android phones today …
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The Keyword, Google AI Blog, Android Police, Android Authority, CNET, Pocket-lint, Thurrott, WinBuzzer, VentureBeat, 9to5Google, PhoneArena, TechCrunch, SlashGear, Droid Life, Engadget, Axios, and Lifehacker. Tweets: @googleeurope
| Bloomberg: |
In a Russian filing, Apple says it stores user data including names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers on Russian servers to comply with a local law — - User information limited to customer names and contact details — Apple made similar agreement in China last year for iCloud
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Foreign Policy, AppleInsider, VentureBeat, CNET, and Softpedia News
Tweets: @foreignpolicy, @foreignpolicy, @business, and @lena_popina
| Abner Li / 9to5Google: |
Instant Tethering, launched in 2017 to let Chrome OS easily share a Pixel's cell connection, is coming to dozens of non-Google Chrome OS and Android devices — Google introduced Instant Tethering in 2017 to let Chrome OS devices automatically share an Android phone's cellular connection.
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The Keyword, CNET, The Verge, ZDNet, TechCrunch, TechSpot, Engadget, Droid Life, Android Police, About Chromebooks, XDA Developers, Chrome Unboxed, VentureBeat, Thurrott, and Android Authority. Tweets: @ohmdee
| Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: |
Microsoft acquires DataSense, a data management platform used by schools across the US, and the team behind it from BrightBytes for an undisclosed sum — One of Microsoft's oldest and biggest verticals for its Azure cloud business has been education, and today it announced an acquisition …
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Microsoft EDU, BrightBytes, ZDNet, GeekWire, EdSurge, Xconomy, VentureBeat, and MSPoweruser
| Jeff John Roberts / Fortune: |
Crypto exchange Kraken acquires British trading startup Crypto Facilities in a deal worth at least $100M, says it is raising $100M from its largest customers — The cryptocurrency exchange Kraken says it has paid “nine figures” to acquire Crypto Facilities, a British trading firm that specializes in derivatives.
More:
Kraken Blog, CoinDesk, The Block, Financial Post, SludgeFeed, FinSMEs, Ethereum World News, CryptoSlate, NewsBTC, NullTX, Bitsonline, TechCrunch, and CryptoGlobe. Tweets: @jonnymoetrades. Thanks:@jeffjohnroberts
| Paul Tassi / Forbes: |
EDM artist Marshmello held two in-game concerts in Fortnite this weekend, with the first reportedly having 10M+ concurrent players watching — I'm still trying to process just how cool yesterday's live Marshmello concert in Fortnite was, and I found myself wondering just how many people were actually “in attendance,” so to speak.
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New World Notes, Tubefilter, KnowTechie, Pocket Gamer.biz, destructoid, and VG247
Tweets: @geoffkeighley, @marshmellomusic, @alex, @djskee, @marshmellomusic, @geoffkeighley, @djriddler, and @geoffkeighley
| Chris Pearce / Mozilla Hacks: |
Beginning with the upcoming release of Firefox 66, Firefox for Android and desktop will block auto-playing audio and video by default — Isn't it annoying when you click on a link or open a new browser tab and audible video or audio starts playing automatically?
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TechCrunch, Engadget, BleepingComputer, The Verge, SlashGear, Gizmodo, MSPoweruser, KnowTechie, and ZDNet. Tweets: @chrisnahr
| Jessica Guynn / USA Today: |
Filing: Amazon names Rosalind Brewer, Starbucks' COO and board director, to its all-white board, making her its second black director and the first since 2009 — SAN FRANCISCO — Amazon.com has named its first black director after facing growing pressure to diversify the all-white board overseeing … | Pradeep / MSPoweruser: |
TomTom expands its partnership with Microsoft to bring its location data to mapping services across Microsoft including Bing, Cortana, and Windows — Back in 2016, TomTom first announced a partnership with Microsoft to bring enterprise-grade location-based services to Azure, based on TomTom's maps, traffic and navigation software.
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SiliconANGLE, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure Cloud …, Direct2DellEMC, ZDNet, Neowin, and Thurrott
| Julia Fioretti / Reuters: |
Tencent-backed Maoyan Entertainment, China's biggest movie-ticketing platform by sales, fell 1.1% in its Hong Kong debut after raising $250M in its IPO — HONG KONG (Reuters) - Tencent-backed Maoyan Entertainment, China's biggest movie-ticketing platform by sales, fell 1.1 percent …
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TechCrunch, South China Morning Post, Variety, and Tech in Asia
| BBC: |
UK police seize 60+ devices suspected of being used in attacks by Webstresser, a now-shuttered DDoS service, and plans action against 400+ Webstresser customers — UK police have seized more than 60 computers and other gadgets suspected of being used to carry out web attacks.
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Europol, Threatpost, Infosecurity Magazine, OCCRP, SC Media, Naked Security, TechNadu, Verdict, ComputerWeekly.com, Forbes, BleepingComputer, and ZDNet
| Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica: |
US court overturns FCC's attempt to deny tribal residents broadband subsidies, says FCC failed to provide evidence and ignored harm of limiting broadband access — Court: FCC failed to provide evidence and ignored harm to broadband access. — A federal appeals court has overturned Ajit Pai's attempt …
More:
Gizmodo, The Register, Engadget, and Boing Boing
Tweets: @samthielman, @karlbode, @urocklive1, and @efffalcon
| Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: |
EU report: tech firms are now assessing 89% of flagged content within 24 hours and 72% of such illegal hate speech is removed, up from 40% and 28% in 2016 — In its latest monitoring report of a voluntary Code of Conduct on illegal hate speech, which platforms including Facebook …
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EU Press Room, Computer Business Review, CNET, New Europe, and MIT Technology Review. Tweets: @danbraun79
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