Techmeme: More Cortana details: Siri/Google Now-like virtual assistant to replace Bing search feature in Windows Phone 8.1 (Tom Warren/The Verge)

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February 20, 2014, 4:30 PM

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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.

More: Gigaom, AppleInsider, CNET, Tech Trader Daily, The Verge, TechnoBuffalo, BGR, Gigaom Research, iPhone in Canada Blog, The Droid Guy, TechSpot, Business Cloud News, Business Insider, DailyTech, WebProNews, VentureBeat, Softpedia News and SlashGear

Tweets: @charlesarthur and @mims

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, The Switch, Guardian, Computerworld, Engadget and Mobile Marketing Watch

Tweets: @pkafka, @ericnewcomer and @amir

Thanks:@ericnewcomer

Parmy Olson / Forbes:

Jan Koum's rag-to-riches tale, which ended with him signing the WhatsApp deal on the door of his former welfare office — Exclusive: The Rags-To-Riches Tale Of How Jan Koum Built WhatsApp Into Facebook's New $19 Billion Baby — Jan Koum picked a meaningful spot to sign the $19 billion deal …

Benedict Evans:

WhatsApp's acquisition illustrates most of the key trends in consumer tech today — Whatsapp and $19bn — Facebook just bought WhatsApp, paying $16bn in cash and stock and $3bn in RSUs. WhatsApp has 450m active users, of which 72% are active every day. It has just 32 engineers.

More: Daring Fireball and Global by Design. Tweets: @fredwilson and @stevenlevy

Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:

WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton's tweets show he tried unsuccessfully to work at Facebook and Twitter in 2009

More: Examiner, BGR, Guardian, Forbes and Slate. Tweets: @paulg

Jim Goetz / Sequoia Capital:

WhatsApp in numbers: 450M active users, 32 engineers, $0 in marketing, and only $1/year to use

More: CNN, ABC News, PandoDaily, Reuters, Bloomberg, Washington Post, Re/code, Business Insider, ParisLemon, Deadline.com, Telegraph, Guardian, MoneyBeat, ExtremeTech, HBR.org, Global Nerdy, DealBook, Tech in Asia, TechCrunch, Softpedia News and Forrester Blogs

Tweets: @jimgoetz, @mikeisaac, @sriramk and @panzer

Sarah Lacy / PandoDaily:

WhatsApp processes 500M images/day compared to Snapchat's 400M, Facebooks's 350M, and Instagram's 55M

More: Gigaom, Reuters, MoneyBeat, Pretzel Logic, Guardian and the Econsultancy blog

Zachary M. Seward / Quartz:

WhatsApp's anti-ad philosophy is really a broad new vision for mobile

More: DealBook, USA Today, New Yorker, Computerworld, The Information, Valleywag and Marketing Pilgrim. Tweets: @gulayozkan

David Rowan / Wired.co.uk:

WhatsApp: The inside story

More: BBC, Mashable, Forbes, Cult of Mac, Business Insider and Re/code. Tweets: @irowan

Amanda Lefebvre / Office Blogs:

Office Web Apps rebranded as Office Online at Office.com — Introducing Office Online at Office.com — Today, you'll notice something new about Office.com and Office Web Apps-now officially called Office Online. An online version of the Office you know and trust has been available for quite a while …

Om Malik / Gigaom:

Om Malik leaves day-to-day operations at GigaOm, becomes full partner at True Ventures, site raises $8M more — Now that Gigaom is all grown up, it's time for the next chapter — It's a new year (although it's well underway) and I'm excited to talk about the new phase at Gigaom.

More: TechCrunch, Daring Fireball, Om Malik and True Ventures

Tweets: @raanan, @alexia, @hblodget and @nitashatiku

See also Mediagazer

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

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.

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 …

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

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

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

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

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Groupon Skyrockets After Hours On Q4 Beat With Revenue Of $768.4M, EPS Of $0.04 — Today after the close Groupon reported its financial performance, including non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.04 per share on revenue of $768.4 million. In the sequentially preceding quarter …

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

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, The Register, 9to5Mac, helpx.adobe.com and PC World

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

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: @qthrul, @jeresig, @dhh, @timbray, @jyarow and @theromit

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.

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

James Temple / Re/code:

Max Levchin's Glow to let businesses help employees fund fertility treatments — Glow Targets Businesses, but Will They Take a Shine to It? — Glow, which launched an app last summer designed to help couples conceive, has lined up partnerships with Domo, Eventbrite and Evernote as it attempts to …

More: Business Wire, The Next Web, VatorNews, SiliconANGLE, PandoDaily and Fortune

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

How One Scammer Manipulated Apple's Top Charts To Earn Tens Of Thousands Daily Using A $10 GameSalad Template — Something fishy has been going on with Apple's App Store top charts. No, I'm not talking about “Flappy Bird” (well, maybe that too), but rather how on earth two different developers used …

More: Business Insider, Computerworld, iPhone in Canada Blog, 9to5Mac and iPhone Hacks

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: Quartz, Fortune and Gawker. See also Mediagazer

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