Top of the Order:
Where are the Robots?: It looks like Alphabet’s robots are moving to Japan.
On Friday, Alphabet, the parent company of Mountain View-based Google, said it has agreed to sell Boston Dynamics, its robotics company, to Japanese internet and technology giant SoftBank. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
SoftBank has a track record of developing robots and robotic technologies, and the company said it would use Boston Dynamics’ technology to build up its efforts in the robotics industry.
For Alphabet, selling off Boston Dynamics wasn’t a surprise, but it had been a long time coming. Reports saying that Alphabet was looking for a buyer for Boston Dynamics first surfaced in early 2016, as the company was said to have determined making robots that could be successfully marketed just wasn’t likely to pay off in the coming years.
Talk surrounding Boston Dynamics had quieted down in recent months, as Alphabet put more emphasis on Waymo, its self-driving car technology business, as well as traditional Google businesses such as digital advertising, the Android operating system and Google’s Pixel smartphones.
Middle Innings:
Unless…: That word, “unless,” may end up being the word of the year for Uber Chief Executive Travis Kalanick. A newly leaked Uber document, written by Kalanick to Uber employees in 2013, laid out the ground rules, if you will, for a big company shindig in Miami that year. In typical Uber fashion, Kalanick’s bro-speak told company employees what to do with everything from talking to the press (“DO NOT TALK TO THE PRESS”– Kalanick’s capitalization) to a $200 fine for vomiting in public.
But, the highlight of the note was Kalanick’s rules for how Uber employees should, or shouldn’t, have sex with one another. “Do not have sex with another employee unless…” began Kalanick’s instructions.
And for $480 Million, You Get: Nineteen percent of Pandora, and three seats on the Oakland internet-radio company’s board of directors. That’s what satellite radio leader Sirius XM is getting for its $480 million investment in Pandora, which was announced Friday. The deal puts to rest more than a year’s worth of rumors and speculation that Pandora was possibly going to sell itself. And it also gives Sirius, and its majority owner, Liberty Media, a very big voice in Pandora’s future direction.
Bottom of the Lineup:
And in Conclusion: Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook took the day off Friday to do something a little different than run the world’s most-valuable publicly traded company. Cook delivered the commencement address at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, in a speech heavy with quotes from historical figures as well as Apple co-founder and legend Steve Jobs, Cook challenged the members of MIT’s Class of 2017 to determine how they would go forward and use their educations to “serve humanity.”
Quote of the Day: “Drones are fun until someone flies one into high-voltage power lines, causing 1600 people in my neighborhood to lose power.” — Google software engineer Adrienne Porter Felt, who tweeted those comments Friday after a drone crashed in Mountain View Thursday evening. The crash was seen as the cause of why those 1,600 PG&E customers Felt mentioned lost electrical power for as much as three hours.
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