Techmeme
September 18, 2014, 9:50 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Larry Ellison steps down as Oracle CEO, appointed CTO, chairman; Mark Hurd and Safra Catz now co-CEOs  —  Oracle's Ellison Steps Down as CEO, Replaced by Hurd and Catz  —  Oracle Corp.'s Larry Ellison stepped down as chief executive officer of the software maker he founded …
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Microsoft cuts 747 employees in Washington state, 2,100 worldwide; closing Silicon Valley research lab  —  Microsoft to close Microsoft Research lab in Silicon Valley  —  Summary: Microsoft Research's Silicon Valley, with about 50 employees, is one of the casualties of Microsoft's latest round of 2,100 job cuts.
Tim Cook / Apple:
Tim Cook's letter on privacy takes aim at Google's business model, noting Apple doesn't monetize its users' personal information  —  A message from Tim Cook about Apple's commitment to your privacy.  —  At Apple, your trust means everything to us.  That's why we respect your privacy …
Erich Owens / Facebook:
Facebook to place posts about trending topics and posts with fresh engagement higher in News Feed  —  News Feed FYI: Showing More Timely Stories from Friends and Pages  —  Our goal with News Feed is to show everyone the right content at the right time so they don't miss the stories that are important to them.
Craig Timberg / Washington Post:
Newest Androids will join iPhones in offering default encryption, blocking police  —  The next generation of Google's Android operating system, due for release next month, will encrypt data by default for the first time, the company said Thursday, raising yet another barrier to police gaining access …
John Cook / GeekWire:
SAP buying Concur Technologies for $8.3 billion  —  SAP is buying Bellevue-based Concur Technologies in deal valued at $8.3 billion, a 20 percent premium over the Sept. 17th closing price.  Founded in 1993, Concur successfully transformed itself into a software-as-a-service company …
Kelly Hodgkins / MacRumors:
iOS 8 Keyboards Climb to Top of App Store Charts  —  With yesterday's launch of iOS 8, devices running the new operating system are now able to install third-party keyboards that work on a systemwide basis.  Most of the major keyboard makers were ready for the launch, introducing iOS 8 versions …
Adam Lashinsky / Fortune:
Uber's financing program connects auto lenders and drivers who want to purchase cars  —  Uber banks on world domination  —  The story line about Uber these days usually involves a fight: Uber scuffling with German regulators, who banned one of its car services nationwide …
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Home Depot: 56M Cards Impacted, Malware Contained  —  Home Depot said today that cyber criminals armed with custom-built malware stole an estimated 56 million debit and credit card numbers from its customers between April and September 2014.  That disclosure officially makes the incident the largest retail card breach on record.
Andrew Allemann / Domain Name Wire:
Amazon pays $4.6M for top level domain name “.buy”, outbidding Google  —  Wow: Amazon.com buys .Buy for $4.6 million, .Tech sells for $6.8 million  —  Amazon.com paid $4.6 million to win rights to .buy top level domain name, but that wasn't the most expensive TLD auction on Wednesday.
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
iOS 8 Adoption Off To A Slower Start Than iOS 7, Say Multiple Usage Trackers  —  The iOS 8 installation spike is high, but lower than it was for iOS 7 last year, according to numbers from a variety of mobile OS usage monitoring platforms.  Chitika, Tapjoy, Mixpanel and Appsee all show adoption numbers that …
Drew FitzGerald / Wall Street Journal:
Apple Relied on Its Own Network for Part of the iOS 8 Upgrade  —  The roll-out of Apple 's new mobile-operating system Wednesday was the first time the company used its proprietary data distribution infrastructure, also called a content-delivery network, for such a large-scale deployment.
Gina Hall / The Wrap:
Former owner of MySpace, Brad Greenspan, sues NewsCorp, Google, and IAC, alleging collusion in 2005 sale  —  Google, NewsCorp Slapped With Lawsuit Over MySpace Sale  —  Brad Greenspan claims MySpace should have been valued at $32 billion at the time of the 2005 sale, instead of $580 million
Peter Kafka / Re/code:
YouTube will spend millions to fund and promote new shows from popular creators  —  YouTube Takes Out Checkbook Again, Pays Its Stars to Make Videos  —  The world's biggest video site is paying people to make videos.  Again.  —  YouTube is planning to invest millions in some of its biggest stars …
Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:
Meet Wonder.fm: We Are Hunted's co-founder is back with a new music discovery site  —  Stephen Phillips co-founded We Are Hunted and led Twitter's music efforts.  Now he's back with a new music discovery site.  —  We Are Hunted fans, take notice: The co-founder of the once-popular music discovery service …
Thanks:@jank0

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Chris Welch / The Verge: