Techmeme
November 2, 2019, 5:55 AM

Top News

Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Google to acquire Fitbit at $7.35 per share in cash, valuing the company at about $2.1B  —  - The acquisition pits Alphabet against fellow tech giant Apple in the wearable fitness tracking space.  —  Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks on stage during the annual Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, May 8, 2018.
More: Fitbit, Inc., The Keyword, New York Times, The Keyword, VentureBeat, Windows Central, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Android Central, Mashable, AnandTech, TechCrunch, Tech.co, The Register, Phandroid, TalkAndroid.com, Michael Tsai, Ars Technica, The Daily Caller, TechSpot, Techaeris, MacRumors, WebProNews, Bloomberg, AppleInsider, Vox, BetaNews, ExtremeTech, New York Times, Newser, OnMSFT.com, CNET, Digital Trends, Variety, Daring Fireball, Coinspeaker, GeekWire, KnowTechie, WinBuzzer, Crunchbase News, Neowin, Gizchina, Silicon Republic, Pocketnow, Voicebot.ai, ZDNet, Cult of Mac, Search Engine Land, Droid Life, Tom's Guide, iDownloadBlog.com, Thurrott, AndroidGuys, Business Insider, XDA Developers, Macworld, Firstpost Tech, iPhone Hacks, Android Authority, Fast Company, Technology Personalized, Android Police, VentureBeat, 9to5Google, PYMNTS.com, Memeburn, Axios, Computer Business Review, The Daily Dot, and iPhone in Canada Blog
David Ruddock / Android Police:
Google's Fitbit acquisition feels like a top-down decision of executives who found enough yes men to agree to the delusion that Fitbit can revive Wear OS  —  Google announced today that it would purchase Fitbit, the ailing manufacturer of fitness-focused wearables and smartwatches, for $2.1 billion.
Alex Heath / The Information:
Source: Facebook held talks to acquire Fitbit but wanted to pay roughly half of the $2.1B that Google eventually agreed to pay  —  Before Google reached a $2.1 billion deal to buy Fitbit, announced on Friday, Facebook held talks to acquire the smartwatch maker, according to two people familiar with the situation.
Swati Khandelwal / The Hacker News:
Google releases patch for a Chrome zero-day vulnerability being used in the wild that allows hackers to escape sandbox protections via malicious websites  —  Attention readers, if you are using Chrome on your Windows, Mac, and Linux computers, you need to update your web browsing software immediately …
Reuters:
Sources: CFIUS has launched a review of ByteDance's 2017 acquisition of Musical.ly, as TikTok didn't seek clearance from CFIUS during the acquisition  —  NEW YORK/BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government has launched a national security review of TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance …
Kyle Orland / Ars Technica:
Elizabeth Schulze / CNBC:
Russia's “sovereign internet” law, which aims to enable disconnecting the country's internet from the rest of the world, went into effect on Friday  —  - The law tightens Moscow's control over the country's internet infrastructure and aims to provide a way for Russia to disconnect its networks from the rest of the world.
Monica Nickelsburg / GeekWire:
Satya Nadella says Microsoft won Pentagon's JEDI contract by focusing on customer's needs and company's unique tech capabilities, and staying out of politics  —  Microsoft's surprise victory last week in a protracted competition to build the Pentagon's war cloud has some critics asking whether politics played any role in the outcome.
Ryan Christoffel / MacStories:
Adobe updates its Creative Cloud iOS app with 1,300 free fonts that can now be used by any iOS 13 app supporting custom fonts API  —  Today Adobe released an update to its Creative Cloud app on iPhone and iPad which introduced a set of thousands of fonts that can now be installed …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
From MCP to billing: Updates that accelerate hiring  —  TL;DRConnect your favorite AI tools to Zoho Recruit with Zoho Recruit MCP.Catch up on conversations faster with Zia email summaries.Review candidate context instantly …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Training Data:
Inside Zipline's Autonomous System: 140M Miles, Zero Incidents
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Invest Like the Best:
Jeremy Giffon - The Billion Dollar PDF
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Big Technology Podcast:
Who Wins The AI Superapp Battle?, Apple's Consumer AI Victory, World Cup Automation Mistake
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Hard Fork:
Fable Ban Reversed + Dr. Dana Suskind on Parenting With A.I. + Prediction Market Drama
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Blitzy's Brian Elliott: Cursor And Claude Code Are Looking At Your Enterprise Code 'Through A Straw'
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:55 AM ET, November 2, 2019.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Julia Carrie Wong / The Guardian:
Alex Sherman / CNBC:

Earlier Picks

Josh O'Kane / Globe and Mail:
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
BBC:
Washington Post:
Johana Bhuiyan / Los Angeles Times: