Techmeme
July 1, 2014, 10:45 PM

Top News

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
Google acquires music streaming service Songza for undisclosed amount, will keep product intact for now  —  Google Buys Songza  —  Google has acquired music streaming service Songza after weeks of speculation around a potential buyout.  —  Songza uses information about the user and context …
Ben Sisario / New York Times:
Source: Google paid more than $39M for Songza  —  Google Buys Songza, a Playlist Service for Any Occasion  —  In a sign of growing consolidation in the digital music business, Google announced on Tuesday that it had bought Songza, a three-year-old app that competes with Pandora and others …
Amy Schatz / Re/code:
FTC says T-Mobile made hundreds of millions on crammed text message charges; T-Mobile says accusations are “unfounded and without merit”  —  FTC Alleges T-Mobile Made Millions From Allegedly Bogus Text Message Charges  —  T-Mobile made hundreds of millions of dollars …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Dropbox Buys E-Commerce A/B Testing Service Predictive Edge, Shuts It Down  —  Dropbox has made another acquisition: Predictive Edge, a company that had built a way to personalise e-commerce offerings, along with dynamic pricing, for marketers to send out to users and run A/B tests around them.
Matt Thomlinson / TechNet Blogs:
Microsoft strengthens encryption for Outlook.com and OneDrive, opens Redmond Transparency Center to let governments review source code  —  Advancing our encryption and transparency efforts  —  Vice President, Trustworthy Computing Security, Microsoft  —  In December, we announced …
Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
Tinder CEO's Internal Memo Claims Harrassment Complaint Is Inaccurate  —  TechCrunch has obtained an internal memo sent from Tinder CEO Sean Rad to employees in the wake of a new lawsuit waged against the company.  The lawsuit focuses on the relationship between Whitney Wolfe …
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Amazon sues former employee for taking Google cloud job, in new test of non-compete deals  —  Amazon is suing a former Amazon Web Services strategic partnerships manager, Zoltan Szabadi, alleging that his new job at Google Cloud Platform violates the terms of a non-compete agreement that he signed when he originally joined Amazon.
More: CNET, 9to5Google and Business Insider.  Tweets: @adamnash
Mike Kaplinskiy / Vine blog:
Vine introduces ‘loop count’ popularity indicator, updates home and activity feeds  —  Introducing Loop Counts  —  Starting today, you'll see loop counts on Vines in our iOS and Android mobile apps and on the web.  Loop counts indicate how many times people have looped a video …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Amazon Launches Its Most Affordable EC2 Instances Yet, But There's A Caveat  —  Amazon today launched its most affordable instances for its EC2 cloud computing service yet.  Starting at just $0.013 per hour ($9.50 per month) for on-demand access (reserved instances are even cheaper) …
Sam Byford / The Verge:
VAIO computers return after Sony sells the brand  —  The new VAIO Corporation is here  —  The iconic VAIO PC brand has been resurrected today, following Sony's sale of the struggling business to investment fund Japan Industrial Partners.  At the time, Sony said it planned to concentrate …
Kevin C. Tofel / Gigaom:
Lumia 635 with LTE comes to US through T-Mobile, Metro PCS for as little as $99  —  Microsoft's newest Lumia smartphone with LTE arrives in the U.S. later this month.  The Lumia 635 can be had from T-Mobile for zero down and $7 a month while MetroPCS customers get special promotional pricing of $99 for the Windows Phone 8.1 handset.
Kara Swisher / Re/code:
Twitter names ex-Goldman banker Anthony Noto CFO, Mike Gupta now Head of Strategic Investments  —  Twitter CFO Steps Down and Is Replaced By Banker Who Took Company Public  —  Twitter said in a filing today that it's CFO Mike Gupta was shifting his job to become an SVP of strategic investments.
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
Android Wear review: Fast notifications, accurate voice commands, but still feels like a beta  —  Android Wear software review: Smartwatch software that doesn't suck  —  Google wearables: take two.  —  Believe it or not, Google has been a leader in the wearables space for some time with Google Glass.
Jay Yarow / Business Insider:
Tumblr “shadow CEO” Derek Gottfrid is out according to internal email from David Karp  —  One The Most Important People At Tumblr — Derek Gottfrid — Is Out Of The Company  —  A key Tumblr employee is out of the company.  —  Derek Gottfrid, who joined from the New York Times in 2010 …
Richard Padilla / MacRumors:
Apple Launches 2014 ‘Back to School’ Promotion with Apple Store Gift Cards Up to $100  —  As indicated yesterday, Apple today launched its annual Back to School promotion offering qualified educational purchasers an Apple Store gift card of $100 with the purchase of a new Mac or a $50 gift card with the purchase of an iPad or iPhone.
Jason Del Rey / Re/code:
eBay Confirms Shutdown of Small-Business E-Commerce Software Products  —  eBay announced on Tuesday that it would be shutting down its Magento Go and ProStores small-business e-commerce products in early 2015.  The closure of these offerings, which Re/code first reported last week …

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 10:45 PM ET, July 1, 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

Jeff John Roberts / Gigaom:

Earlier Picks

David Meyer / Gigaom:
Robert McMillan / Wired: