Techmeme
May 19, 2014, 9:15 AM

Top News

Todd Spangler / Variety:
YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion: Sources  —  Deal would be biggest ever for YouTube  —  Google's YouTube has reached a deal to buy Twitch, a popular videogame-streaming company, for more than $1 billion, according to sources familiar with the pact.
The Verge:
Twitch chooses Google over Microsoft amid multiple buyout offers  —  Video game streaming startup believes YouTube is its best bet for mainstream success  —  YouTube is indeed close to securing a $1 billion buyout of live streaming service Twitch, and will have fended off multiple suitors including Microsoft …
Eric Johnson / Re/code:
Why a YouTube-Twitch Marriage Makes Sense  —  Google may or may not be buying Twitch for a big pile of money.  —  Okay.  So what is Twitch, and why would Google want to buy it?  —  Twitch is a fast-growing service that lets people - mostly men — watch livestreams of other people — mostly men — playing videogames.
More: The Verge and Ubergizmo.  Tweets: @ccheever, @pkafka and @panzer
AT&T:
AT&T agrees to acquire DirecTV in stock-and-cash deal for $95 per share  —  AT&T to Acquire DIRECTV  — Creates Content Distribution Leader Across Mobile, Video & Broadband Platforms  — The premier pay TV brand with the best content relationships now poised to deliver video to multiple screens …
Laura Hazard Owen / Gigaom:
As Amazon's fight with book publisher Hachette continues, criticism from authors and others grows  —  It's been a week since it became clear that Amazon is delaying shipments of publisher Hachette's print titles, likely due to a fight over terms.  As Amazon continues to ship many Hachette print titles …
Quentin Hardy / New York Times:
IndoorAtlas publicly maps a building's interior for free, charges $99/month to keep it private  —  Mapping Our Interiors  —  Sure, that's your office cubicle.  Your corner store.  Maybe even the layout of your furniture in your living room.  But that doesn't mean that soon we won't all be peering at it, too.
More: Internet2Go.  Tweets: @randydeutsch
Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:
In Letter to Obama, Cisco CEO Complains About NSA Allegations  —  Warning of an erosion of confidence in the products of the U.S. technology industry, John Chambers, the CEO of networking giant Cisco Systems, has asked President Obama to intervene to curtail the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency.
Ernesto / TorrentFreak:
Encrypted Internet Traffic Surges in a Year, Research Shows  —  Over the years we have been following various reports on Internet traffic changes, mostly focusing on file-sharing traffic.  —  A new report published by Sandvine this morning sheds light on the most recent developments.
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:
Shazam Pulls The Plug On UK Spotify Users  —  Just over a week ago, Shazam updated the free version of its mobile apps for iOS and Android so that users in the UK (and Germany, Mexico and Brazil, as it happens) could now open and play tracks that have been identified and ‘tagged’ by the app, in music streaming service Deezer.

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.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
The 90-day recognition cliff: Why praise programs fade, and what keeps them alive  —  Recognition programs often start with enthusiasm.  Employees participate, managers share shoutouts, and teams have a new way to celebrate achievements.
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.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
SAP CEO: AI Won't Kill Software, But It Will Change Your Job — With Christian Klein
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
David Ellison's Paramount-Warner Empire & The Fight That Comes Next
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.
Sources:
Factory CEO on why AGI is already here
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Invest Like the Best:
Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Lenny's Podcast:
The grief, loneliness, and burnout sweeping through the tech industry right now | Molly Graham
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Great Chat:
Doomers at Dreamforce
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:15 AM ET, May 19, 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.

More News

Earlier Picks

Dante D'Orazio / The Verge: