Techmeme
March 26, 2014, 1:35 AM

Top News

Facebook:
Facebook to acquire Oculus VR for approximately $2 billion  —  Facebook to Acquire Oculus  —  Acquisition positions Facebook to accelerate Oculus' growth in gaming, communications and new social experiences  —  Facebook today announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Oculus VR …
Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook:
Oculus will operate independently within Facebook, focusing first on gaming, and later becoming a new communication platform  —  I'm excited to announce that we've agreed to acquire Oculus VR, the leader in virtual reality technology.  —  Our mission is to make the world more open and connected.
Markus Persson / notch.net:
Mojang's talks with Oculus to bring Minecraft to its VR canceled, Notch doesn't trust Facebook  —  Virtual Reality is going to change the world  —  It's amazing.  You strap on some gear, and then you're inside whatever world you want.  It showed up in books, it showed up in movies, and everyone dreamed about it.
Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:
Facebook's $2B Oculus Deal Happened Over The Last Five Days  —  Facebook's deal to buy Oculus VR for $2 billion happened relatively quickly and the negotiations were hammered out over the last five days during the industry's Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, according to sources familiar with the deal.
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Zuckerberg: Microsoft and Sony are no match for Facebook and Oculus  —  Mark Zuckerberg.  (Photo by Robert Scoble via Flickr.)  —  The jaw-dropper of the day in the tech industry, you've probably heard, was Facebook's announcement that it will spend $2 billion to acquire Oculus, the maker of the virtual-reality headset Oculus Rift.
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Interview: Oculus founder says Facebook deal will make virtual reality cheaper and better  —  One year ago, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey told me that his virtual reality headset company had no intention to sell.  He said that the team had agreed, for the time being, to stay independent …
More: UbergizmoTweets: @backlon
Wall Street Journal:
Kickstarter provided Oculus with a smart option for funding: $2.4M raised for 0% equity  —  Aug. 1, 2012: When Oculus Asked for Donations  —  On Aug. 1, 2012, a fledgling company called Oculus took to crowdfunding site Kickstarter to raise money to get its virtual reality headset off the ground.
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google Announces Massive Price Drops For Its Cloud Computing Services And Storage, Introduces Sustained-Use Discounts  —  At its Cloud Platform event in San Francisco today, Google announced a number of massive price drops for virtually all of its cloud-computing services.
Rob Wile / Business Insider:
David Pierce / The Verge:
HTC One (M8) review: a gorgeous, fast, long-lasting phone with a weak, inconsistent camera  —  The new HTC One review  —  The best or nothing  —  My first car was a 1997 Saturn SL1, a tiny black box with headlights that were too close together and a 0-60 time in the neighborhood of three and a half hours.
Matt Jarzemsky / Wall Street Journal:
‘Candy Crush’ Maker Prices IPO at $22.50  —  Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Videogame Maker Hasn't Raised IPO Size  —  With the shares of videogame maker King Digital Entertainment PLC set to begin trading Wednesday, the central question facing investors is whether the company can pull off another blockbuster like “Candy Crush Saga.”
David Yanofsky / Quartz:
Eight years later, 22% of the links at the Million Dollar Homepage point to dead pages  —  The Million Dollar Homepage still exists, but 22% of it has rotted away  —  Pixels closer to the top and left sold first milliondollarhomepage.com  —  Before Kickstarter and Indiegogo …
Liz Gannes / Re/code:
Google General Counsel to Arrington Allegation: We Don't Snoop on Gmail to Find Leakers  —  In an unusual move, Google is responding directly to former TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington's allegation that it accessed his Gmail account to root out his source for a major story.
Tweets: @dangillmor
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Nvidia unveils next-generation graphics processor with 3D memory  —  Above: Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang with a Pascal chip  —  Nvidia chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang unveiled his company's latest graphics-processor architecture, code-named Pascal, that will put a “supercomputer in the space of two credit cards.”

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