Twitter, long the subject of acquisition speculation, is expected to start fielding bids this week, a process set off by an approach from Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff, who sees the company as a data-rich "unpolished jewel." Twitter's sale price could top $20 billion, and Google and Disney may also make offers.
[Monica Langley | Wall Street Journal]
Google's hardware event unfolded as expected, with the introduction of a pair of Pixel phones; Google Home, its Amazon Echo rival; the Daydream View, a fabric VR headset; Google Wifi, a multi-point network system; and an upgraded Chromecast streaming dongle. But the key feature across most of these products is Google's artificial intelligence software.
[Ina Fried and April Glaser | Recode]
At the request of a U.S. intelligence agency, Yahoo secretly built a custom software tool that scanned the contents of all incoming email of hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts, searching for specific information sought by the agency. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter and Facebook all said they had never built similar tools.
[Joseph Menn | Reuters]
Ad-tech firm Criteo is spending $250 million on HookLogic, a startup that helps consumer brands place ads on e-commerce sites.
[Jason Del Rey | Recode]
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner has joined the speaker lineup for Recode's Code Enterprise conference Nov. 14 and 15 in San Francisco, where he'll talk about how the company is faring after the Microsoft acquisition. The conference will focus on how work is changing, and other speakers include Taskrabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot; California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom; Google cloud leader Diane Greene; and Slack’s April Underwood and Noah Weiss. Register here.
[Johana Bhuiyan and Kara Swisher | Recode]
