latest
Google reportedly spends $100 million on avatars to take on TikTok
Does YouTube Shorts need a Bitmoji-like?
Google may be ailing in ad revenue right now and pushing harder on hardware, but it's also seemingly not against spending nine digits to buy an AI-powered imaging company focused on making avatars. That's reportedly what's just happened, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Nova Launcher has been acquired by analytics company Branch
Hopefully, this isn’t the end of an era for Android launchers
Nova Launcher is easily among the best Android launchers for power users and personalization enthusiasts alike. The app’s developers recently pulled the wraps off the Nova Launcher 8.0 beta with its redesigned settings menu and Material You dynamic theming. But now we're asking new questions about the project's future, as we get word that Nova Launcher and its associated app, Sesame Universal Search, have been acquired by Branch, a mobile links and analytics company.
YouTube bought another TikTok-type thing
SimSim a short-form video app that lets you rave about the froyo from down the street, subscribe for a discount code, thanks guys
A casual observer might believe that YouTube is a site all about cats, or video game highlights, or anti-vaccine rants, or possibly just a repository of late night talk show bits. But no: the true purpose, as with almost all of Google's products, is to sell you stuff. To that end, YouTube is acquiring a smaller, weaker video site that's all about selling you stuff, albeit in a more direct way.
EA tests the limits of good taste, purchases Glu Mobile for $2.1 billion
Bigger pipeline, bigger revenues
Read update
Perhaps Electronic Arts figured it was about time to start milking the cash cow that is mobile gaming: it has announced its intent to buy publisher Glu Mobile, known for its freemium all-encompassing titles like "Kim Kardashian: Hollywood," "Cooking Dash," and 2013's "Frontline Commando: D-Day," for $2.1 billion — a 36% premium on its market capitalization up to today.
The FTC is looking into Google's acquisitions over the last decade
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google are all under the microscope
The FTC has decided to look into some past acquisitions made by Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft, going back to 2010, asking them now to provide information that wasn't previously required under existing anti-trust regulations. The Commission claims it wants to deepen its understanding of these sorts of smaller acquisitions to better determine if they could be preventing competition in previously unanticipated ways, though it doesn't currently claim any of the companies involved were engaging in anti-competitive behavior.
"Pokémon Go" developer Niantic Labs has sure been keeping itself busy. The company has announced that it's acquired Seismic Games, developer of "Blade Runner: Revelations" and "Marvel Strikeforce." The studio employs veterans of some big names in gaming like EA and Activision.
Flickr announced yesterday that it's entered into an agreement to be acquired from Oath Inc. by photo-sharing and image hosting platform SmugMug. Flickr currently has no plans to change its service following the acquisition.
MoviePass has acquired Moviefone in a deal between the two services' parent companies, according to a press release. Moviefone got its start in the pre-internet days of 1989, providing information about movies and their showtimes via a toll-free phone number. The dial-in service was shuttered in 2014, but Moviefone has continued to provide showtime and ticket services via its mobile app and website.
Google has acquired Tenor, one of the big players in the GIF game. In a blog post, Google said that Tenor will continue to operate as a separate brand while Google invests "in their technology and relationships with content and API partners."
When it comes to online automation platforms, IFTTT is the name most people know and trust. It's a little limited, though. We've covered Stringify a few times, citing it as a more powerful alternative that can plug into IFTTT. The company apparently caught the eye of Comcast recently, which just had to have it. So, Comcast owns Stringify now.
Rumors began to percolate early this month that Google and HTC were on the verge of agreeing to a deal that would let Google take over the struggling smartphone maker. Now that rumor is sounding all but inevitable as HTC has halted trading of its shares on the Taiwan Stock Exchange pending a major announcement. However, the acquisition may not be as complete as the Moto deal in 2011.
As AT&T continues to push for approval of its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, the company's leadership has released details of how the new mega-corporation would be structured. The plan calls for the new AT&T to split into independent arms, one handling media and the other doing telecom. This may appease regulators, but things aren't changing at the top.
Read update
It's hard for a startup to get into the competitive world of smartphones, but Nextbit made a go of things for a while. The Robin was a good phone, but the company was acquired by Razer early this year. Nothing much has changed since then, but now the Nextbit community site has been taken offline. It simply redirects to the Razer home page.
Plex wants to be the hub for all your content, but right now you mostly have to download that content separately and store it on your Plex server. The company has just acquired Watchup, a streaming news service that could make Plex a more robust platform. This isn't Plex's first foray into true live streaming, but it's certainly the biggest.
It's rare to see a new maker come out with a smartphone that's actually competent, but that's what Nextbit did with the Robin in 2015. It wasn't a perfect phone, but it was neat and stylish. There's been no word on what Nextbit's next move was after the Robin, and now we know why. Nextbit has been acquired by Razer. Yes, the maker of all those gamer-oriented keyboards and mice (and other things). The financials of the deal are not available at this time.
Atlassian and Trello might not be household names, but they're increasingly big players in the tech sector. Trello runs a popular project management platform, and Atlassian makes a variety of business/developement software and services. Now, Atlassian has bought Trello for a healthy $425 million. If you're keeping score, that's 0.425 Instagrams.
Google pushed back the release of Android Wear 2.0 a few months ago, which is currently expected to debut in early 2017. There's been a great deal of uncertainty about the future of the platform, but Google isn't giving up. In fact, it just acquired a company (founded by former Googlers) that created a smartwatch OS. It's called Cronologics—or rather it was. The company is being absorbed entirely by the Android Wear team.
After a previous deal fell through, Opera has reached an agreement to sell the mobile and desktop browser portion of its business to a group of Chinese companies for an estimated $600 million. Opera will retain its advertising business in a bid to avoid a long regulatory holdup.
Look at your smartphone. Odds are very, very good that it's running a chip with ARM-designed components, or at least the ARM instruction set. UK-based ARM Holdings has become an integral part of mobile computing, and Japan's SoftBank wants a piece of that. The companies announced today that SoftBank will acquire ARM Holdings for about $32 billion.