Yahoo Acquires Aviate

From Greg

The latest winner of the buy us lottery is Aviate. Yahoo is buying the mobile interface developer.

From Yahoo

Yahoo today announced the acquisition of Aviate, a company that shares its vision for simple and intelligent mobile experiences. The Aviate team created a product that changes the way people interact with their Android devices, by making them smarter and more in context with the user's daily habits. Aviate auto-categorizes apps on the Android phone and intelligently gathers them into "spaces." By using signals to understand a person's context — such as WIFI, GPS, Accelerometer, or Time — Aviate automatically surfaces information at the moment it is useful. So whether a user is just waking up, driving, at work or out for the night, Aviate learns their digital habits and helps anticipate the information and apps they need.

Yahoo plans to make the Aviate technology a central part of its Android based experiences in 2014 and beyond and will continue to develop the product. Aviate, currently in private beta, is available to the first 25,000 people who download the app in the Google Play store and use code "YAHOO".

Checkout Aviate HERE

Examples of Aviate's work on designing operating systems:

 

 

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Google acquired Bitspin

The Verge reports
Google has reportedly acquired Bitspin, the Swiss company best known for its beautifully designed Android alarm clock app Timely. Bitspin announced the move this week in a blog post, seeking to assure users that the acquisition won't mean Timely is winding down anytime soon: "For new and existing users, Timely will continue to work as it always has," the Bitspin team's blog post reads. That's good news for those Timely fans like The Verge's Dan Seifert who found the app's "clean design and fun animations make it a joy to use." And given Google's precedent for acquiring and killing off or neglecting beloved services, the assurance of continued operations is certainly a welcome one. Timely is available for free on Google Play, with in-app purchases for new themes, games and additional features.

engadget reports
Bitspin is probably most well known for its swish Timely alarm app on Android, and it seems that Google likes how the Swiss team is doing it, because it's just acquired them. "For new and existing users, Timely will continue to work like it always has," noted the Bitspin team in their announcement post, adding that it will continue to "build new products." The more immediate news, however, is that the premium version of the app, sans banner ads, has gone free in the process. If you like the sound of a Swiss-made (digital) alarm clock, you can give it a try right here.

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• Download Timely Alarm Clock Premium v1.2.5 APK
• Android developers blog highlights "Beautiful Design Winter 2013 Collection" on Google Play

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CFIUS Should Deny Acquisition Of Yahoo By Alibaba and DST

Yahoo may be fielding an acquisition offer by China's Alibaba Group, which is flush with new cash from Russian investment company DST Global. This isn't necessarily because Yahoo is such a wonderful asset. Microsoft raided the only thing valuable about the company a few years ago - its search engineers. Yahoo holds value for Alibaba because Yahoo owns a part of the Chinese company and Alibaba Group Chairman and CEO Jack Ma wants those shares back according to analyst Muzhi Li (Mizuho Securities). Still, this is an interesting problem from a national security perspective. Lots of U.S. federal and state government employees use free email services like Yahoo (ex-Governor Sara Palin being the most visible), as do government officials from other countries such as India. Foreign ownership of Yahoo, particularly where China and Russia are involved, makes access to those email accounts a national security matter for the U.S.

I've already documented DST-Global's many links to the Russian government. When it comes to Chinese companies, certain rules apply; the most important one being that a company must "stay within the good graces of Beijing to retain its permissions to do business". In general, here's the situation for Chinese IT companies according to Taia Global's China experts:

All Chinese IT companies are required to comply with Internet regulations and will provide user information on demand by the Chinese government.  The regulatory framework is designed for self regulation and censorship by Internet service providers and subscribers, rather than government monitoring on a daily basis.  While this collaborative arrangement may work generally and many Western analysts take this design at face value, Taia Global's analysts believe that the Chinese government still retains its own formidable monitoring capability in addition to cooperation from providers.  In this framework, national security and social stability are paramount, and the Ministry of Public Security and local Public Security Bureaus have the authority to investigate and enforce laws.  Other responsible government entities are:  the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; the State Council Information Office; The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television; and the General Administration of Press and Publications, Ministry of Commerce. 

So while apologists for Chinese companies like to argue that they are just another employee-owned company engaging in the global free market, the reality is more complex than that. CFIUS should take note and act to stop any foreign acquisition of Yahoo; particularly one involving Chinese and Russian companies.

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