Techmeme
January 20, 2014, 3:40 PM

Top News

Nick Summers / The Next Web:
Nest CEO Tony Fadell vows to make any privacy policy changes transparent and opt-in  —  Following last week's Google acquisition, Nest chief executive Tony Fadell has vowed to make any alterations to its privacy policy opt-in, and to be transparent about such changes to all of its users.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
HP brings back Windows 7 ‘by popular demand’  —  HP really wants people to buy a Windows 7 PC instead of a Windows 8 machine.  The PC maker has been emailing customers over the weekend noting that “Windows 7 is back.”  A new promotion, designed to entice people to select Windows 7 over Windows 8 …
David Meyer / Gigaom:
Fon pulls in $14M as it partners with Qualcomm and Facebook  —  The crowdsourced Wi-Fi network Fon is about to find its way into a whole lot more routers, as Qualcomm and others have plowed $14 million into the Spanish company.  Qualcomm in particular will bake Fon functionality into its Atheros wireless chipsets.
Luke Edwards / Pocket-lint:
Samsung Galaxy S5 new UI leaks again looking like an attractive Google Now  —  Samsung's refreshed UI looks almost certain now.  Yet more photos have leaked online at the same time as the Galaxy S5 rumour mill gets up to speed.  —  We're expecting to see the new Samsung UI unveiled …
Michael Mace / Mobile Opportunity:
After Nest acquisition, Google looks more like a conglomerate than a unified product company  —  Google the Conglomerate: After Nest, No Industry is Safe  —  I've spent many hours trying to puzzle out Google's product plans.  What's the logic behind Google Drive, how does Motorola fit in a software company, and on and on (link).
More: Monday NoteTweets: @cdixon and @cdixon
Laura He / MarketWatch:
Weibo user count declined 9% to 281M in 2013 amidst mobile messaging growth, speech crackdown  —  China's Twitter is bleeding users  —  While Facebook FB struggles with declining traffic among U.S. teens, China's most popular social-media channel — a group of Twitter-like microblog services …
Ginny Marvin / Search Engine Land:
Google Remarketing Ads Found To Violate Canadian Privacy Law; To Revamp Ad Review System By June  —  Google has agreed to several concessions after an investigation by Canada's Office of the Privacy Commissioner found Google in violation of Canada's privacy rights for the use of sensitive health history in remarketing campaigns.
Rolfe Winkler / Digits:
Google removes “Add to Feedly” and “Tweet This Page” extensions after they were paid to show adware  —  Google Removes Two Chrome Extensions Amid Ad Uproar  —  Google removed two Chrome browser extensions from its web store after it was discovered the software included code …

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