Salesforce's Mark Benioff has been making the case for an acquisition.
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 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 for the 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]
Pinterest
Pinterest has hired its first CFO: Twitter exec Todd Morgenfeld
By Kurt Wagner
But that doesn’t mean it is planning an IPO.
Podcasts
Why are valuable startups called ‘unicorns’?
By Eric Johnson
Venture capitalist Aileen Lee, who coined the term ‘unicorn,’ explains on the latest episode of Recode Decode.
Voices
Do these Taylor Swift photos make my app look fat?
By Peter Reinhardt
Apps are getting bigger — developers are loading them up with images, fonts, video, SDKs and more. But you don’t often hear about the impact of app size on installs and usage.
Voices
Consumer technology companies want a stake in enterprise
By Jan Dawson
After a decade of tech going from the consumer world into the enterprise, we’re now seeing it going back the other way.
Podcasts
Full transcript: Niantic CEO John Hanke talks Pokémon Go on Recode Decode
By Eric Johnson
“[We have] mixed feelings about people looking at their screen when we're trying to lead them out into the park.”
A grand façade
From Limelight 3d Projection Mapping, "Interconnection," the winning entry in this year's iMapp Bucharest international Video Mapping Competition — a stunning video display projected across the façade of the Romanian Parliament building before an audience of 40,000.