Techmeme: GrubHub Seamless Files Confidentially for Initial Public Offering (Wall Street Journal)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

February 20, 2014, 5:55 PM

Top News

Jessi Hempel / Fortune:

Google offered to buy WhatsApp for $10 billion — Facebook is buying WhatsApp for $19 billion, but it wasn't the only suitor. — My colleague Dan Primack has written a smart post on the numbers that weren't in the press release Facebook (FB) issued announcing it will acquire messaging service WhatsApp.

Amir Efrati / The Information:

Google Was Willing to Beat Facebook's $19B Offer for WhatsApp — Last week, Google CEO Larry Page met with WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum in a last-ditch effort to prevent the rapidly growing messaging app from selling itself to Facebook, according to three people involved in the deal.

More: Re/code, TechHive, The Switch, Business Insider, Guardian, Engadget, Computerworld and Mobile Marketing Watch

Tweets: @pkafka, @ericnewcomer and @amir

Thanks:@ericnewcomer

Liz Gannes / Re/code:

Before Facebook Deal, WhatsApp Was Helping BuzzFeed and Shazam Go Viral With New Platform Tools — Unlike mobile messaging competitors like Line and WeChat, WhatsApp has taken a resolute stance against becoming a platform that distributes games and other apps.

More: Nieman Journalism Lab, Quartz, Valleywag and Gawker

Tweets: @buzzfeedben, @mattbuchanan and @lheron

See also Mediagazer

Adam Bryant / New York Times:

Satya Nadella, Chief of Microsoft, on His New Role — This interview with Satya Nadella, the new chief executive of Microsoft, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. — Q. What leadership lessons have you learned from your predecessor, Steve Ballmer?

More: Gigaom, Quartz, Digits, The Verge, Business Insider and WinBeta. Thanks:@petewootton

Tom Warren / The Verge:

More Cortana details: Siri/Google Now-like virtual assistant to replace Bing search feature in Windows Phone 8.1 — Apple has Siri, and Microsoft is about to get Cortana — Microsoft has been in a state of “shut up and ship” with Windows Phone for more than a year now.

More: Gizmodo, Engadget, TechCrunch, WebProNews, SlashGear and TechnoBuffalo

Tim Culpan / Bloomberg:

HTC to preview Qualcomm-based smartwatch to carriers next week, will not demo publicly — HTC Said to Plan Smartwatch Preview Amid Declining Market Share — HTC Corp. (2498), the Taiwanese smartphone maker struggling with sliding sales, plans to demonstrate the first of three wearable devices next week …

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Google Launches Project Tango Smartphone To Experiment With Computer Vision And 3D Sensors — Google today announced Project Tango, an Android-based prototype 5″ phone and developer kit with advanced 3D sensors out of its Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) hardware skunkworks group.

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Groupon Skyrockets After Hours On Q4 Beat With Revenue Of $768.4M, EPS Of $0.04 [Update: Following Enthusiasm, Investors Turn Sour] — Update 1: Investors bid Groupon massively higher following a better than expected financial performance. However, a mere 10 minutes after pushing Groupon up nearly 15 percent, the tone turned.

More: Business Wire, Re/code, Tech Trader Daily and ValueWalk

Devindra Hardawar / VentureBeat:

Online bank Simple acquired by Spain's BBVA for $117M — will focus on international growth — Nobody expected this Spanish banking acquisition. — Simple, the online bank devoted to offering a more humane alternative to traditional banking, announced today that it's being acquired …

More: Simple Blog, TechCrunch, The Verge, PR Newswire, Webrazzi, Gizmodo, The Next Web, Oregonian, Mashable and Android Community. Tweets: @marshallk

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

Fleksy's Predictive Touch Keyboard with Gestures Now Available to All iOS Developers — Back in December, Fleksy announced a toolkit to allow iOS developers to incorporate the company's popular predictive and gesture-based keyboard into their apps. The initial testing period involved …

More: 9to5Mac, The Next Web, TechCrunch, Engadget, Ars Technica, Gigaom, iPhone in Canada Blog and MacStories

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

Meg Whitman buys more time as HP beats earnings estimates — Caption: Hewlett-Packard chief executive Meg Whitman — Hewlett-Packard reported earnings that beat Wall Street's earnings expectations. — Analysts had expected a big drop in quarterly revenue, but HP exceeded estimates on both profits and revenues.

More: Mercury News and Bloomberg

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Acompli Raises $7.3M Series A From Redpoint & Others To Fix Mobile Email — Acompli, a company building a mobile email application which functions as an all-in-one productivity app for iPhone, has raised $7.3 million in Series A funding - a sizable investment that points to the scale of the problem the startup is aiming to solve.

More: Re/code, Acompli, VentureBeat, Gigaom, CITEworld and Gigaom Research. Thanks:@peter_farago

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Adobe releases emergency Flash update amid new zero-day drive-by attacks — Adobe has released an emergency update for its widely used Flash Player to combat active attacks that exploit a previously unknown security bug that hackers are actively exploiting to surreptitiously install malware on end-user computers.

More: FireEye Blog, helpx.adobe.com, The Register, 9to5Mac, Digital Trends and PC World

Tim Bray / ongoing:

Tim Bray leaving Google, cites requirement that he end working remotely from Vancouver — Leaving Google — As of March 17th I'll be an ex-employee. It's an amicable separation in the face of irreconcilable differences: I wouldn't move to California and Google wouldn't open a Vancouver office.

More: Re/code and 9to5Google. Tweets: @theromit, @jyarow, @jeresig, @timbray, @qthrul and @dhh

Diane Bartz / Reuters:

U.S. takes steps to bolster patent system, cut frivolous lawsuits — (Reuters) - The White House announced steps on Thursday designed to reduce frivolous patent lawsuits by trying to make it easier to identify who owns patents and by updating review processes to ensure that fewer weak patents are granted.

More: ZDNet, The White House, PC World, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Politico, Yahoo Global Public Policy, Wall Street Journal and Verizon Public Policy

Samit Sarkar / Polygon:

Xbox One Media Remote coming in early March for $24.99 (update) — The Xbox One Media Remote, a standard-looking remote control for Microsoft's latest gaming console, will be available in all Xbox One markets worldwide in early March, the company announced today. — In the U.S., it will retail for $24.99.

More: Xbox Wire, Xbox Live's Major Nelson, The Verge, Gizmodo, WebProNews, Joystiq, Softpedia News, VG247 and CNET

Jon Southurst / CoinDesk:

Bitcoin Price Hits $135 on Mt. Gox Following Office Move and Verification Demand — Updates and rumors related to Mt. Gox this week include: a possible company relocation, a requirement for users to hold verified accounts to withdraw bitcoins and a fall in Gox's listed price of bitcoin.

More: Computerworld, Investing.com, ValueWalk, PFhub.com ™, newsBTC, MoneyBeat, Business Insider, Bitcoin Magazine, International Business Times and TechCrunch

Wall Street Journal:

GrubHub Seamless Files Confidentially for Initial Public Offering — IPO Could Launch In First Half Of 2014 — GrubHub Seamless Inc., the online restaurant menu and takeout-ordering service, has made a confidential filing for an initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter.

More: TechCrunch, The Next Web, ValueWalk, Pulse 2.0, Forbes and Mashable

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:

Dell joins alliance to bring wireless charging to laptops — Wireless charging for laptops is now in the works at one of the top competing standards. The Alliance for Wireless Power has just added Dell as one of its members, and it's announcing today a new wireless charging initiative …

More: PC World, Re/code, rezence.com, Engadget, SlashGear and Ubergizmo

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.

Cape:

Most carriers track everything. Cape doesn't. — Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more. Switch today and get 29% off for life.

Zoho:

Do you need a Zoho Partner? Here's why working with one can benefit you. — Zoho offers over 60 applications, each one built for a unique use case. From sales and marketing to finance, HR, and customer support …

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.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:

Open Model Wars + Claire Stapleton's Dishy Google Memoir + Substack's Slop Fight

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.

Great Chat:

Tech's short-term era

A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.

Subscribe to Great Chat.

Access:

Meet the most AI-pilled CEO on Earth

A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.

Subscribe to Access.

The Upstarts Podcast:

Basis's Matt Harpe: Why AI Won't Replace Accountants — It'll Make Them Richer

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.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

Lucas Shaw on Warner Bros' Limbo, Netflix's Anxiety, and Hollywood's Sort-of Comeback

Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.

Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.

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.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:55 PM ET, February 20, 2014.

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.