Techmeme: VCs say net neutrality proposal hurts startups that need fast connections or lots of bandwidth (David Talbot/MIT Technology Review)

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May 7, 2014, 9:10 PM

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John Paczkowski / Re/code:

Apple's worldwide communications VP Katie Cotton retiring after nearly two decades at the company — Code/red: Apple PR Impresario Katie Cotton to Retire — Katie Cotton, Communications VP Who Helped Shape Apple's Story, Retiring — Big news out of Apple today.

Stacey Higginbotham / Gigaom:

Amazon, Netflix and tech giants defend net neutrality in letter to FCC — In a rare public stand for the internet retailer, Amazon has come out against the Federal Communications Commission's purported plan to bifurcate the internet into faster and slow lanes as part of its new network neutrality rules.

More: The Verge, FCC.gov, The Next Web, BetaNews, PC World, GeekWire, 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, Business Insider, iMore, Engadget, NationalJournal.com and New York Times. Tweets: @ronwyden. See also Mediagazer

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Marissa Mayer Explains Why Yahoo Is Undervalued — On stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt New York, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer pushed against the narrative that Yahoo is worth nothing. The company has a market capitalization in the tens of billions, but it's been pointed out that if you add …

More: Associated Press, VentureBeat, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Business Insider, TechCrunch, Re/code, Business Insider, Tech Trader Daily and CNET News

Tweets: @delrey and @dmac1

Timothy Hay / Wall Street Journal:

Google Ventures Leads $130M Round For Big Data Medical Software Company Flatiron Health — Google Ventures has made its largest medical software investment yet, providing the bulk of a $130 million financing for Flatiron Health Inc., which aggregates cancer-patient data from a wide variety …

Thanks:@mkakav

Clare O'Connor / Forbes:

Jeff Bezos quietly attacks the $7.2 trillion B2B wholesale market with AmazonSupply — Amazon's Wholesale Slaughter: Jeff Bezos' $8 Trillion B2B Bet — In recent months global Internet retail behemoth Amazon.com has green-lit six new original TV shows, announced an online streaming deal …

More: Business Insider

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

To Battle Yelp, Google Buys Appetas, A Website Builder For Restaurants — Google today made one more acquisition that points to its interest in building up its relationship with local businesses, and particularly in the restaurant vertical to compete better against the likes of Yelp.

More: Appetas, Wall Street Journal, SlashGear, GeekWire, 9to5Google, ZDNet, Engadget, The Next Web and WebProNews

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Layer Raises $14.5M From Homebrew, Jerry Yang To Be The Communications Platform For Mobile And Web Apps — Communications platform for mobile and web apps and Disrupt SF 2013 winner Layer has raised $14.5 million in Series A funding from Homebrew, AME Cloud Ventures (Jerry Yang's investment vehicle) …

Neil MacFarquhar / New York Times:

Russia Quietly Tightens Reins on Web With ‘Bloggers Law’ — MOSCOW — Russia has taken another major step toward restricting its once freewheeling Internet, as President Vladimir V. Putin quietly signed a new law requiring popular online voices to register with the government, a measure that lawyers …

More: Reporters Without Borders, The Verge, TechPresident, theWHIR.com, VentureBeat, ANIMAL, Mashable, Bloggers Blog, Daily Dot and Gawker. Tweets: @seancostigan. See also Mediagazer

Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:

SAP Fires Cloud Chief Shawn Price and Realigns Company — SAP has fired the head of its cloud business unit Shawn Price, sources familiar with the move tell Re/code, in what appears to be a significant strategic realignment of the German business software giant.

More: Forbes and Business Insider

Jay Yarow / Business Insider:

Shares in mobile ad network Millennial Media drop over 40% in after-hours trading following worse than expected earnings — A Once-Hot Mobile Ad Network Is Crashing After Horrible Earnings — This is an eye-popper: Millennial Media is down 45% in after-hours trading following an earnings report that was worse than expected.

More: Tech Trader Daily and Millennial Media

Spencer Ackerman / Guardian:

USA Freedom Act unanimously clears House Judiciary Committee — Surveillance reform bill designed to prevent collection of US phone data in bulk and is first to proceed onto the House floor — Six months after it was written to restrain the National Security Agency's sweeping domestic surveillance …

George Avalos / Mercury News:

LinkedIn eyes major expansion in Mountain View that could add 10,000 workers — MOUNTAIN VIEW — LinkedIn and a developer have submitted proposals to city officials for multiple office buildings in Mountain View where the technology giant could employ at least 10,000 new workers, according to proposals submitted to city officials.

More: Business Insider

Wilson Rothman / Wall Street Journal:

US Navy-Issue ‘NeRD’ E-Reader Has No Ports or Wi-Fi, But Is Full of Books … The latest twist on the e-reader is a device headed for sailors on U.S. Navy vessels. The Navy eReader Device, aka NeRD, will come pre-loaded with hundreds of books, and it had better, because it has no ports, no card readers and no Wi-Fi connectivity.

More: The Verge, Gizmodo, Geekosystem, Geek.com, NBC News, Engadget, Fox News and Findaway World

Barb Darrow / Gigaom:

Google snaps up Stackdriver and its cloud analysis expertise — Another small, smart Boston-area startup has been acquired by a Silicon Valley superpower. Google is buying Stackdriver, which specializes in monitoring and honing cloud workload performance.

More: Google Cloud Platform Blog, TechCrunch, Xconomy, VentureBeat, Wall Street Journal, ZDNet and BetaBoston

Roberto Baldwin / The Next Web:

Andy Baio crowdfunds $30,000 in 90 minutes to relaunch community event site Upcoming — Serial co-founder Andy Baio re-introduced Upcoming, the collaborative events site. Purchased by Yahoo in 2005 and shutdown last year, Baio is relaunching the site via Kickstarter.

More: Cult of Mac, Daring Fireball, Turnstyle, Waxy.org and Crowdfund Insider

Tweets: @waxpancake, @waxpancake and @waxpancake

John Cook / GeekWire:

Zillow posts record Q1 revenue of $66.2M, but net loss grows as ad spending increases — Zillow continues to invest heavily in its brand — part of an attempt to become the dominant player in online real estate. But that investment is coming with a cost for the Seattle company.

More: Tech Trader Daily, TechCrunch and Zillow, Inc.

Nitasha Tiku / Valleywag:

Whisper CEO Crashes and Burns Over Questions About Gwyneth Paltrow — Michael Arrington is a man who would prefer to keep the things people whisper about him out of the public eye. So the blogging-capitalist, whose “conflicts of interests” run longer than his resume (literally) …

More: Business Insider and TechCrunch. Tweets: @michaelheywire, @akovacs, @arrington and @nitashatiku

Bob Rosin / Official LinkedIn Blog:

LinkedIn partners with Evernote to scan business cards, will shut down its CardMunch app — Evernote + LinkedIn: Powering Professional Relationships — Business cards are one of the many ways people initiate professional relationships, so it is important to us that our members can quickly …

More: Evernote Blog, The Next Web, TechCrunch, The Verge, Engadget, App Advice, 9to5Mac, SlashGear, Geeky Gadgets, TechHive, VentureBreak, VentureBeat, The Technology Chronicles, CITEworld, Fast Company, ZDNet, Softpedia News and WebProNews. Tweets: @calebgarling

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

SEC Publishes Laundry List Of Bitcoin Risks, Cites Governmental Regulation As A Potential Headache — The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) doesn't appear to be bitcoin's biggest fan. Today, the government agency published a long list of potential risks that bitcoin presents, and it's quite the document.

More: Office of Investor Education …, PandoDaily, ABC News, Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Businessweek, MarketWatch, CoinDesk, Electronista, The Verge and NDTV Profit

United Nations:

UN telecom agency predicts 3B Internet users, 2.3B mobile broadband subscriptions by end of 2014 — Internet well on way to 3 billion users, UN telecom agency reports — Releasing new statistics today, the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) announced that by end 2014 …

More: The Verge, DailyTech, CircleID, Los Angeles Times, It's a Gadget, Global Nerdy, dailywireless.org, Daily Dot, TechSpot, ZDNet, Geeky Gadgets, CircleID, International … and Trakin' the india …

Writankar Mukherjee / The Times Of India:

Apple reportedly stops selling the iPhone 4 in India less than three months after relaunch — Apple withdraws iPhone 4 from Indian market — KOLKATA: Less than four months after relaunching iPhone 4, Apple decided to once again withdraw its only phone below Rs 20,000 …

More: TechCrunch, 9to5Mac, InvestorPlace, Softpedia News, iMore, Cult of Mac, Electronista and BGR

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Tech Stocks Crumble As The Market Demands What They Can't Deliver — It's a nasty day for technology companies in the public markets, as aging giants like AOL are falling right alongside upstarts with larger market caps like Twitter and Groupon that are popping negative. — Forget your IPO window.

More: Seeking Alpha, Bloomberg, Business Insider, MarketWatch, Tech Trader Daily, Forbes, Associated Press and Valleywag. Tweets: @jyarow

Matthew Lynley / BuzzFeed:

Pinterest designer Jason Wilson on how the company built Guided Search — How Pinterest Developed Its New Search Engine — Jason Wilson, Pinterest's lead designer, tells BuzzFeed in an interview how the social network's visual search engine was born. — SAN FRANCISCO — As a student …

Thanks:@mattlynley

Nicole Lee / Engadget:

TuneIn tries reinventing itself as a social network for audio — What do you do to improve a service with over 50 million active users? Why, totally revamp it of course. It sounds crazy, but that's exactly what TuneIn, an audio service that lets you listen to podcasts and radio stations from around the world, did.

More: VentureBeat, Gigaom and Re/code. See also Mediagazer

TechCrunch:

Restaurant Reservation Service LaFourchette Gobbled Up By TripAdvisor For ~$140M — European restaurant reservation service LaFourchette — the so-called OpenTable of France — has entered into agreement to be acquired by NASDAQ-listed travel site TripAdvisor, with whom it already had a partnership.

More: PR Newswire, GlobalPost, Webrazzi, PE Hub Blog, bizjournals and Tnooz. Tweets: @joshconstine

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