Month: June 2017

It’s official: Verizon owns Yahoo! Marissa Mayer resigns

Dan Uff June 13, 2017 0

Verizon Communications Inc. today completed its acquisition of the operating business of Yahoo! Inc.

Verizon has combined these assets with its existing AOL business to create a new subsidiary, Oath, a diverse house of more than 50 media and technology brands that engages more than a billion people around the world.

The Oath portfolio includes HuffPost, Yahoo Sports, AOL.com, MAKERS, Tumblr, BUILD Studios, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Mail and more, with a mission to build brands people love.

Marni Walden, Verizon president of Media and Telematics, said in a statement, “The close of this transaction represents a critical step in growing the global scale needed for our digital media company. The combined set of assets across Verizon and Oath, from VR to AI, 5G to IoT, from content partnerships to originals, will create exciting new ways to captivate audiences across the globe.”

Tim Armstrong, former CEO of AOL, is now CEO of Oath, which is part of Verizon’s Media and Telematics organization. He has been leading integration planning teams since the Yahoo transaction was announced in July 2016, and Oath begins operation today as a global leader in digital and mobile. See www.oath.com for further information.

Armstrong said in a statement, “We’re building the future of brands using powerful technology, trusted content and differentiated data. We have dominating consumer brands in news, sports, finance, tech, and entertainment and lifestyle coupled with our market leading advertising technology platforms. Now that the deal is closed, we are excited to set our focus on being the best company for consumer media, and the best partner to our advertising, content and publisher partners.”

Armstrong is also leading efforts to continue to build the industry’s most advanced and open advertising technology solutions, with brands such as ONE by AOL and BrightRoll that span across mobile, video, search, native and programmatic ads.

Given the inherent changes to Marissa Mayer’s role with Yahoo resulting from the closing of the transaction, Mayer has chosen to resign from Yahoo. Verizon wishes Mayer well in her future endeavors.

Read more in the full article here.

Announcement on This Web Site

Dan Uff June 13, 2017 1

If you experience some problems with this web site today, we're in the process of adding some behind the scene features to make sure that this site is online for years to come.

These problems may crop up now and then for the next 48-72 hours.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

Q: Why aren’t we covering iOS 11 and MacOS High Sierra? A: Read on….

Dan Uff June 12, 2017 0

We have had a few questions as to why we are not covering what's new and upcoming with the recently announced iOS 11 and High Sierra. The short answer is -> WE CAN'T.

Unlike other media outlets, the company that owns this web site is an official beta test site for Apple and other companies. For us to cover such information would violate any NDA (Non-disclosure agreement) with those companies.

We also feel that since the software in question is still in beta, that we would be misleading our readers by reporting on features that may not be there in the final version of the software.

Well, now you know :-)

Amazon Exec: Alexa and Siri SHOULD be able to talk to each other

Dan Uff June 10, 2017 2

“Alexa and Siri, rival voice assistants on Amazon’s Echo and Apple’s iPhone, don’t directly communicate with one another. But the Amazon executive in charge of Alexa and the Amazon Echo said he’d welcome the idea,” Edward C. Baig reports for USA Today. “‘You should be able to tell ‘Alexa, ask Siri X,” said David Limp, senior vice president of devices at Amazon.”

“‘If Apple or Google want to come calling, my phone number is out there, they can call… I don’t know if I can envision it but I hope that will happen on behalf of customers,’ Limp told a group of journalists at the Wired Business Conference Wednesday in New York,” Baig reports.

“Limp has a strong interest in Apple’s entry into the voice-activated, artificially-intelligent infused speaker space,” Baig reports. “Apple’s $349 Siri-controlled HomePod speaker announced Monday is in direct competition with Amazon’s best-seller Echo… Does Limp think HomePod poses a competitive challenge to Amazon? ‘From our standpoint, it’s a little different philosophically,’ Limp says. Noting HomePod’s ‘premium’ price, Limp points out that that you can place eight of the company’s best-selling Echo Dots in a home for the same price as one new Apple speaker, at least when purchasing the Dots in a three-pack.”

Read more in the full article here.