Business

Tony Fadell’s blog post on Google acquisition of Nest

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Tony Fadell:

This decision wasn’t made on a whim – Google has been in the mix in some way or another for about three years of our almost four-year history. In fact, my first meeting with Google as a Nester was before we’d launched. At the 2011 TED Conference, Erik Charlton and I huddled in a corner with Sergey Brin to show him a video and an early model of the Nest Learning Thermostat – he instantly got what we were doing and so did the rest of the Google team when we showed them. In May 2011, Google Ventures led our Series B round of financing, and in 2012, Series C. Time and time again, Googlers have shown themselves to be incredibly like-minded, supportive and as big of dreamers as we are. I know that joining Google will be an easy transition because we’re partnering with a company that gets what we do and who we are at Nest –and wants us to stay that way.

Best of luck. Continue making great products, you’ll be successful.

Court rules Yelp must ID negative reviewers, no constitutional protection

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This is a big deal.

In a decision that could reshape the rules for online consumer reviews, a Virginia court has ruled that the popular website Yelp must turn over the names of seven reviewers who anonymously criticized a prominent local carpet cleaning business.

The case revolves around negative feedback against Virginia-based Hadeed Carpet Cleaning. The owner, Joe Hadeed, said the users leaving bad reviews were not real customers of the cleaning service — something that would violate Yelp’s terms of service. His attorneys issued a subpoena demanding the names of seven anonymous reviewers, and a judge in Alexandria ruled that Yelp had to comply.

Origins of the dial tone

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The dial tone is another example of something that will disappear with the next generation. I found this interesting, though.

What the Aereo Supreme Court case means for the future of TV

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The US Supreme Court will consider an appeal of a lawsuit brought by the four major US broadcast networks against Aereo, Inc.. Aereo uses antennae to capture the local broadcast signals of the major networks, then places the recorded programs on-line.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to consider a lawsuit brought by the nation’s largest TV broadcasters against Aereo, the upstart streaming video service, lays the foundation for a landmark verdict that could have important implications for Internet streaming, cloud computing, and the future of the TV industry itself. Aereo has infuriated the major broadcasters because the two-year-old startup pays nothing to pick up their free, over-the-air TV signals, which it then sends to its customers over the Internet.

Aereo, which launched in February 2012 after raising more than $20 million from media mogul Barry Diller’s Internet conglomerate IAC, uses thousands of tiny, dime-sized antennas to pick up free, over-the-air TV signals, which it sends to customers via the Internet for $8 to $12 per month. Aereo’s users technically lease the tiny antennas, which are housed in nearby “antenna farms.” In New York, Aereo’s antennas are located in a warehouse in Brooklyn with a direct line of sight to the Empire State Building, the city’s tallest broadcast transmission tower.

Shortly after it launched, Aereo was sued by the major broadcasting titans, including NBC, FOX, ABC and CBS. The broadcasters say that Aereo’s service amounts to blatant theft, because the company doesn’t pay retransmission fees. Federal courts in New York and Boston, however, have thus far agreed with Aereo’s argument that it is transmitting “private performances” to individual users over their own leased antennas, not copyright-protected “public performances.”

Here’s Aereo’s side of the story.

Gaming the App Store with $999 app pricing

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This seems too crazy to be true.

It all begins with an otherwise unremarkable app suddenly skyrocketing in price, oftentimes all the way to the App Store’s limit of $999.99. The developer, or whoever is orchestrating the scam, wires a massive amount of money — Grachov used $10,000 as an example — to a second party. That individual then purchases 10 copies of the app, exhausting the available funds and indirectly paying $7,000 of the original deposit back to the developer. Apple takes their 30% as usual.

The frustrating battle to control the internet of things

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As home automation creeps into the mainstream, most products are still designed to solve individual problems, without an overarching control layer. There are lots of terrific one-off products, but they don’t play together. There’s no standard to which they all adhere.

China reverses game console ban

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China implemented the video game ban in 2000. This, potentially, is a huge opportunity for the game industry.

Apple vs Amazon vs Google, told in 9 bar charts

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These nine bar charts lay out the stock fundamentals for Apple, Amazon, and Google. Any analyst that follows these companies surely is familiar with all of these. They tell a strong story. Certainly not definitive, but hard to ignore.

Zappos reorganizing with flatter “holarchy”

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Always interesting to see successful companies experiment with new methods of organization. As companies grow in size, the lines of communication grow more complex. The hierarchical tree structure is the most commonly adopted solution, but it brings in a host of problems of its own.

iOS 7 now installed on 78% of active Apple devices

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Last Friday, we posted a link to a graphic that detailed the process HTC goes through to vet new versions of Android. The multi-company hoops that need leaping, as well as the incredible number of devices that need to be tested, are both barriers to adoption of new Android revs and contributors to fragmentation.

Apple has announced their latest adoption rates for iOS 7. 78% is a huge number.

Krugman on Bitcoin

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Interesting take on the economics behind Bitcoin. At the heart is a quote from this article:

Underpinning the value of gold is that if all else fails you can use it to make pretty things. Underpinning the value of the dollar is a combination of (a) the fact that you can use them to pay your taxes to the U.S. government, and (b) that the Federal Reserve is a potential dollar sink and has promised to buy them back and extinguish them if their real value starts to sink at (much) more than 2%/year (yes, I know).

Overstock.com to start accepting BitCoin

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This move gives just the slightest appearance of legitimacy to BitCoin. Interesting move on the part of Overstock.com. But perhaps this is all just PR and signifies nothing. Personally, I won’t be trading in my ready cash for BitCoin anytime soon.

Making use of eBook reading data

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As you buy and read eBooks, your eBook device collects data on your reading habits. Do you tend to buy lots of books and only finish a small percentage? Do you stick with a single author? Do you binge-read?

Steve Jobs calls an audible and does a little dance

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This is a great story, via MG Siegler, who was there when it happened.

Jonathan Mann is a pretty talented musician and publisher of the “Song a Day” YouTube channel. MG Siegler is, among other things, a writer for TechCrunch. This story takes place in the summer of 2010, in the midst of Antennagate.

Background on the Target credit and debit card breach

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If you’ve used your debit or credit card at Target between November 27 and December 15, read this article. The most important takeaway:

Debit card holders: call your bank immediately. Debit card users should be especially vigilant. Credit card users won’t be out of pocket if they suffer fraud and contest the charges, but the opposite is true for debit card holders since fraudulent transactions may take their bank balance to zero.

Accordingly, Velasquez recommended that any debit card users who might have been Target breach victims immediately contact their card issuers and ask for advice. “Tell them you’re a victim of the Target breach,” she said. To help combat fraud, different institutions offer different options, such as putting passwords on accounts or changing PIN codes. “But alerting your specific financial institution is really the way to go, because they all have different rules,” she said.

Huge Target data breach

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If you’ve shopped at Target between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15, chances are good this applies to you. Yeesh.

Microsoft blogs progress of CEO search

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In a rare blog post, John W. Thompson, a member of Microsoft’s board of directors and chair of the board’s search committee, updated the world on the progress of Microsoft’s CEO search.

San Francisco rolls out 3 miles of free Wi-Fi along Market Street

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This is a pretty big deal.

“A quarter of a million people traverse Market Street every day, from all walks of life,” Mayor Ed Lee said of the new Wi-Fi service. “Now they can access information, find out when their next bus is coming, or peruse local job listings, all for free. This is a significant first step in my vision of connectivity for our city.”

The new telemarketing robot who swears she’s not a robot

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This is comedy gold. A telemarketer called a Times reported trying to get him to sign up for health insurance. He sniffs out that she appears to be software driven (as opposed to a human reading from a complex script) and sets out to prove this.

AT&T CEO calls for end to subsidized smartphone model

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Seems like this era might be coming to an end.

Speaking at an investor conference in New York City on Tuesday, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said that with smartphone penetration at over 75 percent and soon reaching 90 percent, wireless operators need to work harder to get customers to use more of the network rather than simply getting on the network.

SolarCity uses Tesla batteries to bring solar to the masses

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SolarCity has an interesting business model. For years, they’ve provided the solar panels for free and charged you for the power you use. Since they charge less for the solar power than you’d pay the power company, it’s a good deal for you.

Now SolarCity is adding free batteries to the mix.