Google might be closing purchase of HTC assets to boost hardware efforts

Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Looks like Google might be thinking about getting back in the hardware business. This time, it’s being reported that Google is closing a deal with HTC to acquire the Taiwanese company’s hardware engineering assets, focusing on mobile. HTC is reportedly holding a town hall meeting on Thursday and if there’s truth to that, they might be discussing this deal. Not much is known at this point about which parts of HTC’s business Google plans to acquire. The Verge speculates they might leave the HTC brand for the company’s Vive and virtual reality business to use. As Evan Blass tweets, HTC is retaining its brand.

HTC has announced it was temporarily halting trading of its shares on the Taiwan stock exchange tomorrow because of the release of “material information,” which signals the announcement of something big.

Source: Bloomberg

Google reportedly wanted to buy Snap for US$30 billion

While it isn’t the first time it’s happened, it seems Facebook wasn’t the only one after Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc. Google reportedly wanted a piece of the incredibly popular pie and tried to buy the company for US$30 billion. According to Business Insider, Google verbally talked about the acquisition of Snapchat with the company’s CEO Evan Spiegel. Snap is denying that formal discussions happened. Google also won’t comment on the story. According to the report though, the offer was supposedly still on the table since the company’s IPO early on in March.

Whether or not there’s truth to this, Spiegel is known to like being in charge of his own company, especially with a product he started himself. It would’ve benefited Snapchat on the marketing side if they took the deal and Snapchat would’ve helped Google develop its AR technology. But in the meantime, Snap and Google do work close together. Google’s investment arm put money on Snapchat after it went public. While Snap is considered one of Google Cloud’s biggest customers and they promise to spend US$2 billion on Google’s cloud platform.

Source: GSMArena + 9to5Google

Whirlpool hopes to make meal planning an easier affair with Yummly acquisition

Whirlpool wants to make your kitchen an even smarter place with its latest announcement. The kitchen and home appliance maker is set to acquire Yummly, a digital platform for personalized recipes and other cooking resources. The deal is expected to be finalized sometime this month and Yummly will serve as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Whirlpool. What the sale could bring to the table for Whirlpool is help simplify meal planning for its users, among other things.

According to Brett Dibkey, vice president of Integrated Business Units for Whirlpool Corporation, “Yummly brings an outstanding platform on which to begin building our digital product offering.” Kitchen appliances aren’t as smart as some of our other gadgets so we definitely welcome tech improvements.

Source: Digital Trends

Mozilla buys ‘read-it-later’ service Pocket

Mozilla, the team behind the Firefox web browser, has made its first acquisition. The company has bought Pocket, a read-it-later service, for an undisclosed amount. Pocket will operate as an independent subsidiary of Mozilla and is said to help bring the company to more mobile devices. It’s not exactly clear how that will help but Pocket does bring with it 10 million monthly active users and new potential businesses for Mozilla, such as advertising, analytics for publishers, and premium subscription service. The acquisition is like a homecoming for Pocket as it started out as a Firefox add-on.

Pocket previously rejected an offer from Evernote after it became apparent to them that their service would just be a feature inside the bigger company’s app. But it seems with Mozilla, they can remain a standalone service. According to Mozilla, over time Pocket can help them with its “content graph” initiative, which is the company’s effort to create a recommendation engine for the web and baked into the browser.

Source: Pocket + The Verge