Google on Monday announced it is killing Google Checkout, its online payment processing service, on November 20, 2013. The company is offering merchants a six-month warning to figure out where to go next.

Google officially replaced Checkout with Wallet back in September 2011. The company has been building out the successor recently, and now claims the new platform “enables merchants to meet the demands of a multi-screen world where consumers shop in-stores, at their desks and on their mobile devices.”

Google is giving its users the following information to before the aforementioned kill date, depending on which camp they fall into:

• Merchants without their own payment processing will need to transition to a third-party alternative solution within six months.
• US merchants with payment processing can apply for Google Wallet Instant Buy.
• Merchants selling through Google-hosted marketplaces (such as Google Play, Chrome Web Store, and Offers Marketplace) will be unaffected.

For those in the first group, Google is not offering a replacement processing solution for physical goods and services. The company has, however, partnered with Braintree, Shopify, and Freshbooks; neither of these are ideal as they all still require a transition, but at least Google has negotiated discounted migration options for its Checkout users.

“We recognize this transition may be difficult; it impacts you and your business,” Google says. “We’re committed to helping you with a smooth transition. While we are unable to offer a direct replacement for Google Checkout, we are continuing to invest in a variety of exciting new payments products to meet real world needs for both buyers and sellers.”

Those who find themselves in the second group should know about both the Google Wallet API and the Instant Buy Android API. While the former has been around for a while and works for mobile sites, the latter was just launched last week at Google I/O 2013 and lets developers integrate payment features into Android apps.

Those in the last group will continue to be supported. Google plans to automatically transition them to the Google Wallet Merchant Center in the next few weeks.

Google has been doing quite a bit of spring cleaning recently, though this particular axing appears to have been delayed and slightly more thought out. The company likely wanted to get some of its alternatives together and give users a lot of time to transition. Both of those are critical when it comes to people’s livelihoods.

See also – Google to shut down Calendar features, Google Sync, Google Calendar Sync, Issue Tracker Data API, and Punchd and Google to axe Google Reader on July 1 as part of larger round of app closures

Top Image Credit: Dimitris Petridis

After taking over much of the weekend’s news cycle with its acquisition of Tumblr, Yahoo has more to share: the firm has announced that Flickr has been completely redesigned, featuring high-resolution images and a massive 1 terabyte of free storage for all users. In addition, Yahoo shared that it is releasing a new Android app, mirroring the company’s latest iPhone app.

Speaking at Yahoo’s press event, CEO Marissa Mayer stated that “we want to make Flickr awesome again.” Three ideas, apparently, went into this change: the utilization of full-resolution imagery, availability across devices, and the ability to store every photo a user could possibly take.

Here’s the new profile design for Flickr users on the Web:

Here’s the individual photo view, which fills out the entire screen.

Here’s the new search page design:

During the talk, Yahoo also announced that its NY-based team will soon move into a four-story office space near Times Square. That in mind, Mayer has clarified that Tumblr will not be moving into Yahoo’s offices. A number of important figures in the NY tech scene attended the event today, including NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg and NYC CTO Rachel Haot.

AllThingsD first broke the news of sale talks between Yahoo and Tumblr, as well as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. For more on the acquisition, head here.

Seamless and GrubHub, two of the largest online food delivery services in the US, have officially announced “the signing of a definitive agreement” to merge into a combined company.

This news, which confirms earlier reports that the two companies were in talks, follows more than nine years of heavy competition. If the deal goes through, GrubHub founder Matt Maloney will take the reins of the new company and current Seamless CEO Jonathan Zabusky will serve as president.

As for what the new firm will be called, the official release states that “the combined organization’s name and marketing brands are expected to be determined following regulatory approval.” Given that “Seamless” — once called SeamlessWeb during the dot com boom — is a confusingly ambiguous name for a site that enables food ordering, it wouldn’t surprise us if revisions were made.

New stats were also shared in the announcement, including that the two companies facilitated approximately $875 million in gross food sales to local businesses. This apparently resulted in over $100 million in combined revenue.

In the announcement, both companies claim that merging will lead to “accelerated innovation” and “enhanced financial flexibility.” The latter statement may be true, but considering the companies’ relationship up until now — they historically fought aggressively for the same customers — we’re betting a sudden decline in competition won’t help customers in the long-run. As stated above, the merger is still subject to regulatory approval.

As for what’s left of the competitive food delivery space, companies like Delivery.com, Eat24 and the decentralized Ordr.in remain.

Image credit: AFP/Getty Images

It’s done, ladies and gentlemen.

As expected, Yahoo this morning announced its acquisition of blogging phenomenon Tumblr. The Internet giant has bought the six-year old New York company for “approximately $1.1 billion”, substantially all of which will be paid in cash.

The news is in line with earlier reports from AllThingsD, which first broke the news of sale talks between both parties, as well as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Amusingly, the press release says:

“Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business.”

Founder David Karp will remain at the helm as Tumblr’s CEO.

He’ll also be worth a heck of a lot more.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer even took to Tumblr to repeat the promise of ‘not screwing up’ the marriage. Time will tell; as for the deal, it is expected to close in the second half of this year.

First ever acquisition announced by animated gif :) @yahoo is acquiring @tumblr. finance.yahoo.com/news/yahoo-acq…#keepcalmandcarryon

— marissamayer (@marissamayer) May 20, 2013

As for Karp’s blog post on the matter, you can find it here. Don’t read it if you’re uncomfortable with the F-word. That would be ‘fuck’ by the way.

Meanwhile, Yahoo moved its corporate blog over to Tumblr. A great sign.

That’s the gist of the news, folks, although here are some interesting stats and figures from the press release while you make up your mind whether this is a brilliant or idiotic move, or somewhere in between.

With more than 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,000 signups every day, Tumblr is one of the fastest-growing media networks in the world. Tumblr sees 900 posts per second (!) and 24 billion minutes spent on site each month.

On mobile, more than half of Tumblr’s users are using the mobile app and do an average of 7 sessions per day. Its tremendous popularity and engagement among creators, curators and audiences of all ages brings a significant new community of users to the Yahoo! network.

The combination of Tumblr+Yahoo! is expected to grow Yahoo!’s audience by 50 percent to more than a billion monthly visitors, and to grow traffic by approximately 20 percent.

The deal offers unique opportunities for both companies. Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love.

In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!’s media network and search experiences.

The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance the user experience.

Top Image Credit: Yahoo! Blog

Payvia, a mobile and online payments company that allows consumers to pay via their mobile phone through direct carrier billing, has acquired Mogreet, a company that specializes in mobile video, text and rich media messaging engagement solutions.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Payvia argues that the purchase of Mogreet will allow it to create an end-to-end solution that marries mobile payments, user targeting and mobile marketing at scale, on a directly-connected carrier platform.

Payvia will integrate Mogreet’s cloud-based video and rich messaging technology into its mobile payments platform.

The company’s CEO, Darcy Wedd, said in a statement:

“Our mobile payments offer resonates strongly with the market because it is built on our proprietary carrier connected technology that gives us a unique ability to understand consumer mobile usage.

Our clients have told us they also need a simpler way to link targeted mobile transactions to their marketing campaigns. By integrating Mogreet’s solutions on our platform we answer that need.”

Payvia says it operates engages with 120 million mobile users to process billions of mobile messages on an annual basis. The company also asserts that it has paid out more than $2 billion in global mobile commerce revenues to merchants and developers worldwide.

Mogreet’s mobile marketing solutions are, in turn, said to be used by “thousands of marketers, retailers, small businesses and developers” including brands like Cox Media Group and Gamefly.

The full Mogreet team will join payvia, with Mogreet founder and CEO James Citron serving as payvia’s CMO.

Founded in 2006, Mogreet was backed by $14 million from DFJ Frontier, Ascend Venture Group, Black Diamond Ventures and Spyglass Ventures, among others.

Payvia, meanwhile, is part of the m-Qube group of companies and has raised funding from investors such as Silver Lake Sumeru, Montgomery & Co, and Trinity Ventures.

Image credit: Thinkstock

Editor’s note: Robert Scoble, Startup Liaison Officer at Rackspace, is working on a book with Shel Israel about the how sensors, wearable computers, and other technologies will change our future, titled “Age of Context.” That got them invited to visit SRI International, Silicon Valley’s most important lab. This is where tons of companies and technologies have been born, from Siri to Nuance to the Internet itself.

What is the future going to look like? One way is to get a tour of the best research lab in the world. Out of these buildings have come the Internet (it was one of the first two nodes on the Internet), the Mouse, Nuance, HDTV, and Apple’s Siri.

In other words, what they are working on here for mostly military or large companies will affect our future as they commercialize the technology developed here. The work at SRI isn’t about just technology, either, they have extensive research going on in life sciences and in one of the videos of this tour you see a new cancer detection system.

Anyway, let’s dive into the videos and see what we can learn:

This team found a way to identify cancer cells in a drop of blood. Could this technique have saved Steve Jobs’ life? It’s very possible. Hear more about this new discovery in the video, or visit the website to learn more about what SRI is doing.

How good can something like Google Glass become? Here is part of our tour of SRI, the famous Silicon Valley research lab that brought us the Internet, mouse, Nuance, HDTV, Siri, robotic surgeries, and much more. In this video you’ll see binoculars that can tag, track, buildings and people as well as play war games where we see virtual people on the ground, along with vehicles. Really amazing. Read more about it on the SRI website.

Here you see SRI is inventing a new way to work, called “Bright.” It watches you at every step of the way. Helps you work by watching how you work. Learn more on the work being done at SRI.

Here we see the latest in face detection and what it might be used for (better speaker training, for instance).

Here you see how CubeSat’s, or low-cost satellites, which are small and can fit into ballast spaces on rockets, are changing the types of science that can be done from space.

App.net, the Twitter-style platform launched with great ideological pomp last August following a successful crowdfunding campaign, has hit 100,000 registered users today.

Founder Dalton Caldwell has confirmed the milestone with us, and coincidentally, it looks like a giveaway of 500 accounts via The Next Web’s Facebook page helped push it to 100,000.

Launched at a time when there was significant discontent amongst developers regarding Twitter’s treatment of its third-party ecosystem, App.net emerged with the intention of being developer-friendly, with the promise of not ‘selling out’ thanks to a subscription fee charged to each user.

By September 2012, the platform had hit 20,000 users, although just 250 of them accounted for half the posts published, indicating a high level of drop-off after users signed up. Since then, growth has slowed, although Caldwell and his team have continued to add features, including private messaging and 10GB of storage for each user. This month it launched the Passport iOS app, designed to introduce users to its many third-party apps.

Growth spurts have occured during App.net’s first nine months, such as when Tapbots, the company behind the much-loved Tweetbot Twitter client for iOS launched a version for App.net, demonstrating the power of a great mobile client. More recently, a limited, free tier was introduced, reigniting interest in the platform. Recently, promotions with publishers such as ZDNet and today’s with The Next Web have provided additional boosts.

While 100,000 is a definite milestone of note, the question remains of just how big App.net can grow when users beyond the developer and geek community seem content with Twitter, for all its flaws.

Now, who’s hot, who not?
Tell me who rock, who sell out in the stores?

(RIP, Biggie)

Soon, perhaps, MessageMe in the App Store or on Google Play – even though the app is utterly gratis. Wait, that makes no sense.

Alright, down to business then: LittleInc Labs, the company behind the very young but already quite popular messaging app for iOS and Android smartphones, MessageMe, has secured $10 million in funding according to a regulatory filing.

MessageMe made its public debut in March 2013, entering a market with a plethora of competitors inarguably late, but managed to clock 1 million downloads after a week anyway.

The company behind the messaging app scored a seed funding round to the tune of $1.9 million around the same time, from big-name investors like Andreessen Horowitz, True Ventures, Google Ventures, SV Angel, First Round Capital, Social+Capital Partnership and Resolut.vc.

Now, this filing suggests it’s adding another $10 million to its coffers. We’ve contacted the company for confirmation and to see which investors chipped in for this round.

Even though there are a lot of free messaging apps out there, from WhatsApp to Kik, Viber, Line and Kakao Talk (not to mention iMessage, Google Hangouts, BBM and Skype), the game is far from over.

With two financing rounds in quick succession, LittleInc Labs shows that it has big plans for MessageMe, and that it’s been able to back its ambition with the numbers and vision needed to convince investors to break out their wallets. It will be very interesting to see what happens next.

Also read:

Mobile messaging apps: The threat to Facebook and other social networks

Social app monetization kicks in as App Store revenue jumps 87% year-over-year: Report

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Omaha, Nebraska. Though you’d be forgiven for not knowing that there was a hotbed of technology and entrepreneurship happening in America’s heartland, when a conference as important as Big Omaha hits its fifth year, you can rest assured that the world that considers Nebraska to be nothing more than a flyover state has started to pay attention. For me, it was my third consecutive year attending the conference, and my second year of getting to dig deep into what’s happening in the Silicon Prairie. Though it’s taken me a few days to process things, it’s now time to tell the story.

Three years ago, I found Omaha and the Silicon Prairie region in general faced a number of problems. A large geographic area was likely the most difficult one to overcome, but a lack of Super-Angel and lower-level VC interest was also causing issues with some companies. Things were starting to look up, but there were still huge challenges to overcome. If I may be so bold, I’ll quote myself:

“Omaha is a lot like my home city of Nashville. It’s strong, independent and stubborn in these factors. Yet both Omaha and Nashville need to understand that relationships are necessary, and more so than just relationships within the confines of city limits.”

In the past few years, a couple of organizations have made some big changes in Omaha. Nebraska Angels is an important catalyst to these changes, focusing on keeping the funnel of money pointed at local businesses. Omaha’s Chamber of Commerce has continued its push toward offering benefits to entrepreneurs who open companies within the city. But perhaps more important than any of these factors is a simple building, and what’s happening inside of it.

The Mastercraft was a furniture factory, located in the Northern area of downtown Omaha. After sitting abandoned and dilapidated for a number of years, the building was purchased by Robert Grinnell, who had the idea to turn it into an office, meeting and events space with a common central corridor that ran the length of the three blocks that the building occupies. A few months into the process, it is now a buzzing hub of startup activity in the city, and plans to expand its use continue to be put in motion on a daily basis.

The Mastercraft is the missing link inside of Omaha. Akin to what Des Moines, Iowa has done with Startup City Des Moines, The Mastercraft serves as a centralized location for the entrepreneurial ventures within Omaha. As anyone on The Valley, Boulder or any other technology hub will no doubt tell you, putting a group of entrepreneurs into the same physical space is important for the growth of the culture.

I was fortunate enough to have the chance to meet with a couple of companies while I was in the area, and you’ll hear more about both of them in the coming days. But what’s important to note is that they’re doing things that are far-reaching for Omaha, which traditionally finds its startup companies in financial services. While one of the companies, PaySAFE, is securing high-dollar transactions via escrow services on demand, another is providing a safe haven for kids and their grandparents to have online communication.

Blogglebeans is a much more refined, ready-for-the-world product than you might think that you’ll find coming out of a small office in Omaha, Nebraska. Bootstrapped, of a sort, it was founded by Betsy Perez and Sara Hanlon to scratch their own itch when it came to the interactions of their children online. The two have secured a rather brilliant animator, and have designed a site that’s engaging, incredibly safe and readily monetized.

But PaySAFE and Blogglebeans aren’t alone in their journey. I also had the chance to catch up with Megan Hunt, perhaps better known by her online moniker of Lasertron. She and her co-founder Sarah Lorsung Tvrdik are successfully reinventing the way that people buy clothes with their startup Hello Holiday. Hunt’s continued appreciation of her hometown gives a nod back to something that she’s been preaching for years — Omaha has given her every break that she needs in her career:

Omaha’s startups are not without their challenges, but that’s true for any location. Though it’s safe to say that there are provisions being made in Nebraska that you’ll never see in The Valley or New York. The latest of these is a gigabit Internet connection that’s coming to the city via CenturyLink, a local Internet service provider.  Initially slated to service 48,000 residents, CenturyLink will research the viability of the product before rolling it out en masse.

Omaha and the Silicon Prairie area wouldn’t be where it is today, however, if it weren’t for the efforts of many. Somewhat at the heart of this is the Silicon Prairie News team, the creators of the Big Omaha, Big Kansas City and Thinc Iowa conferences, as well as the Silicon Prairie News website. Spearheaded by local entrepreneurs Jeff Slobotski and Dusty Davidson, SPN has been determined to bring attention to the trials and successes of entrepreneurs in the fly-over states of Nebraska, Kansas and Iowa.

I asked a question last year of filmmaker Sally Nelson Barrett last year — How do you make lightning strike four times? But the SPN crew has managed to do just that, and now the fifth year has somehow overshadowed every one before it. Sally’s work with Malone & Co. has documented the success of Big Omaha since the first speaker took the stage in 2009, and somehow the conference only seems to get better with age.

The speakers this year were a bit older (and wiser?) than what we saw in 2012. Marc Ecko returned, after first speaking in 2012. Graphicly’s Micah Baldwin was there as well. Crowd favorite Ben Milne of Dwolla gave a frank discussion on life and 500 Startups’ Dave McClure…well…let’s just say that Dave probably learned more from Big Omaha than anyone else this year. In all, the lineup was dynamic, inspirational and most importantly, incredibly real.

There is a pulse that beats in the Silicon Prairie, and those who come to Big Omaha (or any of the other SPN conferences) seem to leave forever changed. I say this without any bit of hyperbole — Big Omaha is a life-altering experience. Watching the faces of my friends who attended for the first time this year, it was made evident once again that there’s something incredibly special about what happens during these few days in Nebraska.

You see, Big Omaha isn’t the conference that you attend when you want to start a company. Big Omaha is the conference that you attend when you want to get better at life. It’s stubborn. It’s driven. It’s inspiring and it’s challenging. Five years in, it’s still the most important conference you’ve never been to, and I hope for your sake that you’ll change that fact in 2014.

Image credit:

The Mastercraft — Silicon Prairie News

Today following its yearly I/O developer keynote, Google has announced that Google TV is moving to Android Jelly Bean (version 4.2.2) and the latest version of Chrome (26). Google says existing Google TVs will “start to receive updates in the coming months.”

For manufacturers, Google says it is “refactoring” it’s update cycle so “partners can update to future versions of Android in a matter of weeks rather than months.” This will clearly make the platform more attractive to developers — it needs all the help it can get. The same goes for Chrome, which will now be updated every six weeks on Google TV, just like it is on other platforms.

Google was quick to point out that developers will now be able to “build TV experiences using the latest Android APIs, including the NDK.” Additionally, Chrome for Google TV is receiving “support for hardware-based content protection, enabling developers to provide premium TV content in HD within their web apps. ”

As for upcoming hardware, Google remained rather vague, and simply said “we expect to see new [Google TV] devices launched later this year.”

Google TV has gone through a curious evolution since launching back in October 2010, but throughout this time, the general mission of bringing Web-based entertainment (like Netflix, YouTube) and Google search technology to your television has remained unchanged.

Logitech’s Revue was the first Google TV device announced, but the launch ended up being a complete and utter flop. In fact, Logitech even went as far as admitting that the Revue ”was a big mistake.” Nevertheless, new iterations of Google TV have since been released, the latest being the Asus Qube and Netgear’s NeoTV Prime — both announced earlier this year.

Google arrived early to the connected TV game, along with companies like Boxee and Roku, but the space is now more competitive than ever: the Apple TV continues to sell extremely well, Microsoft’s next Xbox is said to offer more general entertainment features, Amazon is reportedly planing to release a set-top box for video streaming, and then there’s the Samsung Smart TV and the Smart TV Alliance, which includes LG, Toshiba and Panasonic.

Right now, Google is surely hoping its third generation of devices fares better than its first, but this space is clearly only getting more crowded. What’s worse is that Google appears to be moving Google TV to hobby status, which won’t be very encouraging for curious developers or consumers.

Image credit: Adam Berry/Stringer/Getty Images