Techmeme
February 7, 2019, 2:55 PM

Top News

BBC:
Germany orders Facebook to stop combining data from WhatsApp, Instagram, and third-party sites with data in user's main Facebook account, without user's consent  —  Germany's competition authority has told Facebook it can only continue gathering so much data about users from beyond its app and website if it gets individuals' consent.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Twitter reports Q4 revenue of $909M, up 24% YoY, ad revenue of $791M, up 23% YoY, net income of $244M, and MAUs of 321M, down by 9M YoY; stock is down 9%+  —  After strong results from Facebook and Snap this quarter, all eyes were on Twitter to see if the other big, publicly listed social network could deliver a hat trick of growth.
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
Sources: Apple has moved its modem engineering unit to its in-house hardware technology group led by Johny Srouji, Apple's SVP of hardware technologies  —  Apple Inc has moved its modem chip engineering effort into its in-house hardware technology group from its supply chain unit …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Apple releases iOS 12.1.4 to fix Group FaceTime security flaw  —  Update your devices right now  —  Apple is releasing iOS 12.1.4 today to fix a security flaw in the company's Group FaceTime feature.  Discovered last week, the bug allowed anyone to call a phone or Mac and listen in before the other person picked up.
Jason Hiner / CNET:
Google Fiber to shut down in Louisville on April 15 after an experimental “nanotrenching” technique to deploy fiber in trenches only two inches deep, failed  —  Google's trick to more rapidly and cheaply deploy its super-speedy Google Fiber project has hit a wall …
Victoria Song / Gizmodo:
Microsoft introduces background blur feature to Skype, which uses AI to detect the user's hair, hands, and arms, and blur distracting objects in the background  —  Slobs of the world, don't work too hard KonMari-ing your apartment or office ahead of your next important Skype call.
Joseph Cox / Motherboard:
Leaked documents show around 250 bounty hunters and related businesses had access to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint customer location data for at least five years  —  In January, Motherboard revealed that AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint were selling their customers' real-time location data …
Olivia Zaleski / Bloomberg:
Sources: on-demand delivery startup Postmates has confidentially filed an IPO and could be valued at more than $1.85B  —  - Company could be valued at more than $1.85 billion in IPO  — Postmates working with JPMorgan and Bank of America on listing  —  Postmates Inc. has filed …
Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:
Microsoft joins Google, Facebook, and Arm as a member of the OpenChain Project, which aims to standardize open-source software licensing  —  Microsoft Corp. wants to support more standardization of open-source software licensing, so today it's putting its weight behind the OpenChain Project as its latest platinum member.
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Gong.io raises $40M Series B led by Battery Ventures, to enhance CRM tools with its natural language processing tech  —  With traditional CRM tools, sales people add basic details about the companies to the database, then a few notes about their interactions.
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:
Cluno, which lets users lease a car for an all-inclusive monthly fee, raises $28M Series B to invest in its app and develop an API for car dealers  —  Cluno, the Munich startup providing what it calls a “car subscription” service, has raised $28 million in Series B funding.
More: FinSMEs.  Thanks:@sohear
Anna Hensel / VentureBeat:
Facebook says 90M+ small businesses use its products which have 7M advertisers, and it will soon allow businesses to respond to Instagram messages from Facebook  —  Facebook took another step today towards unifying its family of apps by announcing that businesses will now be able to receive …
More: The Verge

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Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
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James Vincent / The Verge: