Apple crossed over the line to become a TRILLION dollar company. Will they stay at level or dip down? When will Microsoft or Amazon join them in the Trillion Dollar Club?
Google is rumored to be creating a censored search engine for China. Upon the news being released, several Google employees expressed their disdain for the project.
With Jan Koum gone, Facebook is finally monetizing WhatsApp. Will the platform continue to thrive under Facebook or fail due to competition from Signal and other messaging clients?
Acquisitions
- GE Puts Digital Assets on the Block
The Boston-based company has hired an investment bank to run an auction for the operations, which produced $500 million or more in revenue last year and lost money, according to people familiar with the matter.
Though proceeds of a sale aren’t expected to mean much for a company with a market value of more than $100 billion, the move to unload the operations is symbolic of a dramatic reversal of fortune at GE, which has stumbled badly after a series of missteps.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ge-puts-digital-assets-on-the-block-1532972822?ns=prod/accounts-wsj
- Cisco is buying Duo Security for $2.35B in cash
Duo Security was founded in 2010 by Dug Song and Jonathan Oberheide and went on to raise $121.M through several rounds of funding. The company has 700 employees with offices throughout the United States and in London, though the company has remained headquartered in Ann Arbor.
Co-founder and CEO Dug Song will continue leading Duo as its General Manager and will join Cisco’s Networking and Security business led by EVP and GM David Goeckeler. Cisco in a statement said they value Michigan’s “resources, rich talent pool, and infrastructure,” and remain committed to Duo’s investment and presence in the Great Lakes State.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/02/cisco-is-buying-duo-security-for-2-35b-in-cash/
- Logitech is buying Blue Microphones
Logitech today announced its intention to acquire Blue Microphones, the hardware company behind popular podcasting microphones like the Yeti and Snowball. It’s a pretty logical acquisition, as far as these things go — Logitech already operates in the audio space, with speakers and gaming headsets.
The acquisition of Blue would add an important dimension to that category and help the company take on a rapidly expanding space. Blue’s best known products aren’t high-end, exactly, but they’ve become the go-to choice for upstart podcasters looking to get in on the ground floor in the medium.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/30/logitech-is-buying-blue-microphones/
- DocuSign acquires SpringCM for $220M to continue evolution beyond electronic signatures
DocuSign says the acquisition will help its growth beyond its bread and butter work in electronic signatures to modernizing what it calls the System of Agreement. That includes everything from preparing, signing, executing, and managing agreements.
“DocuSign pioneered the e-signature category, and has built a strong SaaS business around that capability. We’ve also started to offer solutions that connect and automate the entire agreement lifecycle,” DocuSign CEO Dan Springer said in a statement. “We’ve done this with Spring CM as a partner across hundreds of joint commercial and enterprise customers. And we have many more DocuSign customers asking us to provide these capabilities natively as part of our platform. That’s why we believe today’s announcement makes such great business sense.”
Artificial Intelligence
- ‘The discourse is unhinged’: how the media gets AI alarmingly wrong
According to Lipton, in recent years broader interest in topics like “machine learning” and “deep learning” has led to a deluge of this type of opportunistic journalism, which misrepresents research for the purpose of generating retweets and clicks – he calls it the “AI misinformation epidemic”. A growing number of researchers working in the field share Lipton’s frustration, and worry that the inaccurate and speculative stories about AI, like the Facebook story, will create unrealistic expectations for the field, which could ultimately threaten future progress and the responsible application of new technologies.
Exaggerated claims in the press about the intelligence of computers is not unique to our time, and in fact goes back to the very origins of computing itself.
Software/SaaS
- Facebook is making its first serious move to monetize WhatsApp
WhatsApp has rolled out three new ways for customers to connect quickly with businesses: a shortcut button to immediately start a conversation, the ability to have businesses send you information like a boarding pass on WhatsApp, and real-time support, the company said today.
At the same time, Facebook will now display ads of businesses that link out to WhatsApp. That means that businesses can purchase ads that lead people directly to an already loaded chat with the business on WhatsApp, and they can start talking from there. Businesses can respond to customers for free if they answer within 24 hours but Facebook will charge them for any response after 24 hours. It looks to be another way for Facebook to cash in on its many apps.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/1/17636418/facebook-whatsapp-ads-monetize
- Amazon reportedly plans to end its reliance on Oracle — but Oracle says Amazon bought $60 million of its tech just a year ago
“We don’t believe that Amazon Web Services has any database technology that comes close to the capabilities of the Oracle database. That’s why our biggest competitors like Salesforce.com, SAP, and Amazon continue to rely on the Oracle database to run their business,” she said.
The conflict between Amazon and Oracle has intensified in recent years: Amazon Web Services, the largest player in the cloud market, is attacking Oracle’s core business with tools designed to steal customers away. Oracle, for its part, has made the cloud a big strategic focus for the company, as it works to get a leg up on Amazon.
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-oracle-databases-reliance-2018-8
Other
- Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal
The project – code-named Dragonfly – has been underway since spring of last year, and accelerated following a December 2017 meeting between Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and a top Chinese government official, according to internal Google documents and people familiar with the plans.
Teams of programmers and engineers at Google have created a custom Android app, different versions of which have been named “Maotai” and “Longfei.” The app has already been demonstrated to the Chinese government; the finalized version could be launched in the next six to nine months, pending approval from Chinese officials.
https://theintercept.com/2018/08/01/google-china-search-engine-censorship/
- Apple is now a $1 trillion company
Apple hit the $1 trillion mark early this morning when its stock crossed $207.05 per share at 11:48am ET (the stock has since dropped back down slightly). Given the volatile nature of the market, however, it’s possible Apple may not stay a $1 trillion company for very long, or it could bounce back and forth over the $1 trillion mark in the coming days. It technically also isn’t the first to hit $1 trillion, either — PetroChina briefly reached $1 trillion back in 2007, although the stock soon fell below that mark.
Photo: Ronaldo De Oliveira