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Slack Prepping for its IPO in 2019; Hired Goldman Sachs as its Lead Underwriter

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Slack, the business chat and direct message provider company, has announced that it is going to become public in the coming year, and has hired investment bank Goldman Sachs as the lead underwriter for its highly anticipated IPO.

In September this year, there were already reports making rounds about the company preparing for its debut in the stock market in the early quarter of 2019, with an expected valuation of the company well in excess of the $7.1 billion.

Slack
Image Source: mybroadband.co

The company had reported a total of 8 million daily active users in August this year, that is double the number of users it had in the summer last year. In the same month, the company had a funding round of $427 million, led by Dragoneer Investment Group and General Atlantic. The company’s major investors include SoftBank Group’s Vision Fund, Dragoneer Investment Group, General Atlantic, T. Rowe Price Associates, Wellington Management, Baillie Gifford, and Sands Capital, etc.

Slack, which is based in San Francisco and Vancouver, is one of the Silicon Valley companies valued over $1 billion, which is now hoping to fetch a valuation of over $10 billion in its IPO. Slack is one of the business messaging service provider, that is in a competitive race with Microsoft’s Teams, Alphabet’s Google Hangouts Chat and Cisco’s Webex Teams and its users are increasing by a rapid rate.

Last month, Slack’s co-founder and CEO, Stewart Butterfield told Fortune, “The company had no specific timeline for an IPO. We’ve been on a path to public company readiness for several years now, and we’re continuing on that path.”

2018, had a total of 188 companies went public on the U.S. exchanges, more than the number of companies last year, including 40 tech companies like Dropbox, Zuora, Uber, Lyft, and DocuSign. Other companies that are also planning for their IPO include Airbnb, Lyft, Uber, Palantir and Stripe, etc. Among which, Lyft already filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission, on Thursday, for its planned IPO ahead of other companies.

Mozilla & Qualcomm to Launch a Native Firefox version for Windows 10 on ARM

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On Thursday, the two tech giants, Mozilla and Qualcomm, announced that the two are working together on a native version of Firefox for Windows 10. Mozilla stated that it is going to develop a new version of Mozilla Firefox, compatible with the Snapdragon-powered Windows computers on ARM. The browser will be a 64-bit version of Firefox that will provide high-performance and better connectivity.

firefox
Image Source: cnbeta.com

Usually, Microsoft uses a number of emulation techniques to run the Windows 10 application on ARM-based machines, among which, the native apps run faster than the other. Mozilla has kept that in mind and has specifically designed the Firefox run on an ARM machine. Firefox will use individual cores to run every tab, and Qualcomm will provide an adequate amount of it for those tabs.

Senior Director of Firefox Product at Mozilla, Marissa Morris, said, “Mozilla is excited to be collaborating with Qualcomm and optimizing Firefox. We can’t wait to see Firefox delivering blazing fast experiences for the always on, always connected, multi-core Snapdragon computer platform with Windows 10.”

On the other hand, Qualcomm also announced its brand-new processor, the Snapdragon 8cx. The ‘X’ in the 8cx stands for ‘extreme’. The processor is specially designed for the Windows’ always-connected laptops and 2-in-1 convertible Pcs. It is a 7nm chip, the biggest of all chips, Qualcomm has ever made for a laptop or a PC. The chip will provide better performance, better battery life as well as better cellular connectivity, i.e. up to 2Gbps. The chip is specifically developed for the Window Pcs and is the first one of its kind.

Microsoft had just made the announcement of completely shutting down the Edge browser. Now with the improved Mozilla Firefox, there will be only two competitors left in the field, Firefox and Safari. Although Microsoft is also working upon its chromium browser with Google, Mozilla’s new browser may arrive sooner.

Google Shutting Down Allo; Now will Experiment with Rich Communication Services

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A few days ago, the news regarding the shutting down of Google Hangouts was circulating all over the internet, that later Google had denied completely. Now, again there is news that Google will soon shut down its two years old messaging app Allo.

allo
Image source: arstechnica.net

Allo is a Google Assistant empowered app, that was launched as a competitor for Apple’s iMessage, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and other chat applications. The device is built for both Android and iOS devices, enabled with end-to-end encryption. Google had launched Allo two years ago, as its another messaging app experiment, that too failed.

The vice president of Chrome, Comms, and Photos (at Google), Anil Sabharwal, said in a statement, “Google noted that Allo as a whole has not achieved the level of traction we’d hoped for.”

The app was facing some problems with its functionalities, so in April month this year, Google stopped investing over Allo and put a pause on its development and marketing work. The company now is entirely focusing on the Android Messages instead, and the Allo team has also been implanted to work on the same.

On the other hand, Verizon has come with its new messaging app RCS (Rich Communication Services), a combination of the best features of Facebook Messenger, iMessage, and WhatsApp, as one platform. Verizon has initially launched the app on the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL. The company is planning to replace the ages-old SMS (Short Message Service) by its new RCS app. Google has worked hard to get its own android chat, but it seems that now it is going to work with its competitor’s app, i.e. RCS.

And for Allo, it is already down for many users and will be discontinued by the March month next year.

Microsoft Edge will be Soon Replaced by a Chromium-powered Web Browser

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Microsoft-Edge
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Three years ago, the software giant Microsoft introduced its Edge browser, in order to replace its own old Internet Explorer and also, give a competition to the Chromium Browser from Google. Though the design and appearance of the browser had an impressive impact on its user, its browser engine (EdgeHTML) could not match the level of the Chromium-based browsers.

Now, after three years, Microsoft has given up on the Edge browser, and currently, it is working on a new chromium based browser that is codenamed Anaheim. The Edge browser was developed in 2015, especially for the users of Windows 10, and also, as an alternative to Chrome, Firefox, and other. But now, the new Anaheim browser is going to replace the Edge browser as it has been facing some compatibility issues, and has brought Microsoft under a lot of businesses and consumers pressure for the improvements.

The new browser from Microsoft will use the browser engine Blink from Google, which is used to interpret the website coding to display it on the screen. As soon as the browser is launched successfully, the developers will be more happy, as the testing work will be reduced to an extent. Microsoft had tried hard to encourage Windows users to adopt Edge as their default browser, but failed most of the time, because of the availability of more popular browsers like Chrome and Firefox.

Maybe because of the popularity of Google Chrome, Microsoft has decided to develop its new browser on the same Chromium technology. There have been no official comments on the matter from Microsoft. But considering the reports from the Windows Central, it is estimated that Microsft will announce the browser in the coming week, and it may be out in the early half of next year.

Google Announced its Best of 2018 List; PUBG Selected the Best Game 2018

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The year is about to end, and Google, following the ritual of selecting best of the year, has published a list of its best apps of 2018, in various categories, including “Most Entertaining” and “Hidden Gems”. There are millions of apps and other content available on the Play Store, and along with apps, the list of bests includes the best movies, TV shows, and books, etc.

Google on the basis of various factors selected the top five among every category and named the best of all. Google, also, first time also added a Fan Favorite category, a user poll, from where the users could support their favourite apps in various categories. On the basis of the voting, Google Pay won the User’s Choice App of 2018 and Google selected Drops as the Best App of 2018.

Google-Play-Best-Of-2018-Awards
Image Source: 9to5google.com

The best app also included other subcategories, and among those categories, Tik Tok became the Most Entertaining App 2018. Unfold won the Hidden Gems of 2018, and Home Workout – No Equipment was named the Best Self-Improvement App 2018. Otter Voice Notes became the Best Daily Helper 2018.

The other main category was the Best Game 2018, and it also had various sub-categories, i.e. Best Game, User’s Choice Game, Best Casual, Most Innovative, Most Competitive and Best Indie. PUBG Mobile won the Best Game 2018 from both User’s Choice and Google. The Best Casual 2018 won by Ludo King, Battlelands Royale named the Most Innovative 2018, Real Cricket 18 won the Most Competitive 2018, and Alto’s Odyssey named the Best Indie 2018.

Black Panther was selected as the Best Movie of 2018 on Play Store, and the top five list includes the following:

  • Black Panther
  • Avengers: Infinity War
  • Thor: Ragnarok
  • Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
  • Deadpool 2

Google’s top five TV shows of 2018 are:

  • The Walking Dead
  • Riverdale
  • The Big Bang Theory
  • The Flash
  • PAW Patrol

The top five eBooks of 2018 selected by Google:

  • Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff
  • The Outsider by Stephen King
  • Fear by Bob Woodward
  • 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson
  • Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis

In the category of best Audiobooks of 2018, the following win the race of top 5:

  • 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson
  • Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis
  • Fear by Bob Woodward
  • Becoming by Michelle Obama
  • The Outsider by Stephen King

YouTube Stories Feature Now Available for the Creators with Subscribers More than 10K

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Stories have been famous for not only Snapchat (that originated it first), but also for other social media platforms like Instagram, Whats app, Facebook and even LinkedIn. Now YouTube has also adopted the same feature for its user to make it more interactive and help them with promotions.

YouTube
Image Source: YouTube

The feature is a similar version of the Stories feature of other social media apps, but with a few changes. This feature is available only for the creators having at least 10000 subscribers. Also, the stories on YouTube last for a week i.e. seven days, unlike for Instagram, What’s App and Facebook, on which the story lasts only for 24 hours. Even the stories posted on YouTube can be seen by the people who haven’t subscribed the particular YouTube channel.

YouTube is one of the biggest platforms for marketing and content sharing and has become the widest stage for the influencers to connect with people, globally. The stories feature is going to help creators, influencers and brands, with sizable followers, for better exposure of their content on the platform.

The stories are located on the right sidebar, with the “Up Next” tab, on the right side for the desktop users and below the video, for the mobile users. The video length for the YouTube Stories is set to be 30 seconds, at max, and can be assembled into a playlist. People can also comment on those stories and interact with the creator. The main goal of those stories is channel promotion and day-to-day community engagement.

The feature was rebranded as the “YouTube Stories” at the Vidcon, last year, and was available only for some selected YouTubers. YouTube had been testing the feature for the other users, for past one year, and had announced that it would become available for them by the end of 2018. The stories feature has been the biggest influencing vigour for mainly Instagram and Facebook, and now it will also help the marketers to endorse their services directly on YouTube at a bigger level.