Alphabet

In this week’s top stories: Google’s upcoming standalone Android VR headset, OnePlus 3 leaks, Galaxy Note 6 gets a release date, and we take a look at official accessories for the Galaxy S7 Edge, new apps, & much more. Head below for the usual roundup of links to all this week’s most shared stories and video.

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Google parent company Alphabet has once again surpassed Apple in terms of value based on market capitalization. CNBC points out that Alphabet (GOOG) saw its market cap around $498.56 billion during trading today, while Apple (AAPL) saw its market cap down around $496.69 billion.

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Google is planning on tapping into its Project Tango technology to offer superior interior 3D mapping of buildings and a new revenue stream through virtual reality apps using the platform, Bloomberg reports.

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In this week’s top stories: The best Android phones you can buy (May 2016 edition), we go hands-on with CyanogenMod on the Honor 5X, the latest Android phone leaks, and we show you how to enable YouTube’s new Material reDesign on the web.

Head below for all of the handy links to this week’s most shared stories and videos.

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Talking Schmidt fans have something to look forward to later this month: the Alphabet executive chairman and former Google CEO is set to speak at the first Startup Fest in Amsterdam on May 24th. Eric Schmidt is among several big name keynote speakers, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Uber founder Travis Kalanick, and Airbnb CTO Nathan Blecharczyk. Google is among the list of sponsors for the first Startup Fest as well.

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Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt recently attended what many call “Burning Man for the 1%” with a handful of fellow tech and entrepreneur colleagues (via The Guardian). The festival is called Further Future and covers 49 acres of land right outside of Las Vegas. While Burning Man hides its lavishness, Further Future touts that it offers “unabashed luxury.”

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In this week’s top Google stories: new Android device news surrounding the Galaxy Note 6, the death of the Nexus 9, Huawei’s upcoming P9 flagship, and more. And we went hands-on with LeEco’s new Snapdragon 820-powered Le Max2 w/ 6GB of RAM, the BlackBerry PRIV running Android Marshmallow, and the Oppo F1 Plus in this week’s top videos.

In addition, HP and Google launched the impressive new Chromebook 13, and a handful of notable Google and Android app updates arrived as well as news of a completely overhauled design for Instagram in testing.

Head below for all of the quick links to this weeks top stories, videos and more. 

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Every year, Larry Page and Sergey Brin write a Founders’ Letter to inform stockholders of recent developments and their vision for the future. For 2016, Page had recently-anointed Google CEO Sundar Pichai write the letter as a majority of ‘bets’ are under his purview. The letter focuses on six main areas.

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In this week’s top stories, new Android phone leaks, Alphabet announces its Q1 2016 earnings, we go hands-on with the Oppo F1 Plus, LG G5 and much more. Head below for the quick links to all of this week’s top shared posts:

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Re/code today reports that Silicon Valley icon and longtime Google advisor Bill “The Coach” Campbell has passed away at age 75 after a long battle with cancer. The unfortunate news comes from “many prominent tech players,” following earlier unconfirmed reports. Campbell was a mentor to many tech leaders, including Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, and Jeff Bezos.

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Earlier this month it was reported that Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs wanted to build a city from the ground up to test its ideas before rolling them out on a more wide scale basis. Now, The Information reports that Sidewalk is moving forward with this plan, codenamed “Project Sidewalk.”

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There has been quite a bit of press surrounding the behind-the-scenes aspect of Alphabet companies over recent weeks, mainly centered around Nest and Tony Fadell. Earlier today, it was reported that Fadell appeared at Google’s all-hands meeting two-weeks ago to address the stream of negative press. In addition to Fadell defending Nest, Re/code now reports that executive Sergey Brin also defended the company’s life science unit, Verily, at the meeting.

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Following a number of recent controversies surrounding smart-home accessory maker Nest, Recode reports that CEO Tony Fadell defended the company while addressing the reports at a recent Google meeting.

First acquired by Google, Nest is now under Alphabet, the same parent company as Google following a restructuring last year.

At the weekly Google meeting, Fadell reportedly addressed recent reports of troubles on the Nest team that followed comments from Dropcam’s former CEO Greg Duffy regarding Fadell’s brash management style. Those comments led to a public response from Fadell and a number of mainstream media outlets picking up the story, while a report last week from Recode added that the company was under-performing financially and that its future at Google could be in jeopardy.

Here’s an excerpt from Fadell’s talk with Googlers addressing the reports:

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The major US record labels are still unhappy with the current state of their deals for YouTube royalties, leading the industry’s trade group to file a complaint as contracts with the streaming service are set to expire this year. Recode spoke with head of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) Cary Sherman who represents the labels and explained why the music industry thinks the deals and negotiations with YouTube are unfair and hurting the industry and artists.

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Nest has now said that it wants to ‘help’ owners of Revolv home hubs after it announced on Monday that it would be completely disabling the devices, turning them into a useless hunk of plastic.

Nest last night tweeted an invitation to owners to email them in order to find “the best solution” to the situation …

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Alphabet is known for aiming for the moon with a lot of its efforts, and its Sidewalk Labs initiative appears to be no different. Sidewalk Labs has been around for about a year now and aims to improve WiFi availability and traffic in cities, but it looks like its plans don’t stop there. Sidewalk CEO Dan Doctoroff hinted that the company may be looking to build a city from scratch while speaking in New York at an event held by The Information.

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Recent reports have painted a dire picture for Nest, with executives reportedly leaving, funding potentially on the verge of being cut, and much more. Now, a supposed Nest engineer has taken to Reddit to voice some frustrations. The engineer, who didn’t disclose his or her name, says that the company is “on deathwatch” thanks to “dire” sale and growth figures and no new innovation since the acquisition occurred.

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Revolv, a home automation device company, has announced that it will be officially be shutting down next month. Alphabet’s Nest Labs purchased Revolv back in 2014 and the duo had worked toward bettering out the Works with Nest platform since then. After the acquisition, Revolv’s products continued to function as expected, but today’s shutdown announces that neither the hub or app will be functional any longer after May 15th.

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Google/Alphabet published its self-driving car report for March over the weekend, and besides of course the latest numbers (including the number of cars in each city, the total number of autonomous and manual driven miles, etc.), there are also some new details on the system the company uses to map the cars’ surroundings, and mention of a mundane accident that happened in Austin, Texas involving one of the company’s Lexus vehicles…

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