Paul Sawers / The Next Web: Skift seals a $1.1m seed round led by Lerer Ventures to grow its travel intelligence and news platform  —  Skift has raised a healthy $1.1 million seed round, as the travel intelligence and news startup looks to take on new hires and develop its myriad of tools and services.
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John Paczkowski / AllThingsD: Apple's E-Book Argument: Deals With Publishers Improved Competition  —  The United States Department of Justice has described Apple's defense against allegations that it conspired to illegally fix e-book prices “unconvincing” and “untethered from both precedent and logic.”
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Tom Bergin / Reuters: Amazon UK pays $3.7 million tax on $6.5 billion sales  —  (Reuters) - Amazon.com's main UK unit paid taxes of $3.7 million on its 2012 income, despite group UK sales of $6.5 billion (4 billion pounds), its accounts published on Wednesday showed.  —  The company received 2.5 million pounds in government grants during the year.
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Guardian: Amazon faces new questions over tax  —  Exclusive: Guardian investigation shows key role of British-based staff in pushing tax rulebook to its limits  —  MPs are ready to haul Amazon back to parliament to answer new questions about its tax status in Britain after a Guardian investigation's findings suggest …
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Stephen Lawson / PC World: Cisco cites data-center, wireless for quarterly revenue increase  —  Data-center and wireless sales led growth at Cisco Systems in its fiscal third quarter, as it saw customers spending more in the U.S. and developing countries but reported continuing weakness in Southern Europe.
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Anna Palmer / Politico: Apple target of Senate hearing on offshore taxes  —  Tech firm Apple is the target of a Senate hearing next week investigating offshore tax practices.  —  Apple CEO Tim Cook is expected to testify at the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation's hearing Tuesday, POLITICO has learned.
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Rip Empson / TechCrunch: Georgia Tech Teams Up With Udacity, AT&T To Offer $6K Master's Degree In Computer Science, Entirely Online  —  If there was any question as to Sebastian Thrun and Udacity's resolve to re-imagine higher education in a more affordable, accessible virtual classroom — or their ability to actually …
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Sue Marek / FierceWireless: AT&T's Stephenson: Content players will subsidize consumer's data  —  Just days after reports circulated that ESPN was in talks with a Tier 1 wireless operator about potentially subsidizing consumer access to the company's content via mobile, AT&T (NYSE:T) Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson told investors …
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Alex Williams / TechCrunch: Google Cloud Platform Opens To General Availability With 3 Million Applications, New Pricing And PHP  —  Google announced today at I/O that it made Google Cloud Platform generally available, marking a milestone for the cloud community and the real arrival of a giant to contend with Amazon Web Services …
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Nick Bilton / NYT Bits: Leaping to Conclusions on a Pilot's Speculation  —  An article on the Bloomberg News Web site on Wednesday noted an airline pilot's claim that an iPhone could interfere with a plane's compasses during takeoff and landing.  —  But the report cited in the article isn't based on scientific research.
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Dieter Bohn / The Verge: Google Maps for desktop: hands-on with the world's most-advanced web app  —  Google I/O this year has a stronger developer focus than in years past, which meant that consumer-facing products sometimes didn't get much airtime during the keynote.  That's certainly the case for the new version of Google Maps …
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Eric Slivka / MacRumors: Apple's App Store Reaches 50 Billion Downloads, Now on Pace for 20 Billion Apps Per Year  —  Apple's App Store today reached 50 billion downloads since its inception in 2008, and along with the milestone comes the end of the company's “50 Billion App Countdown” promotion launched thirteen days ago.
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Janko Roettgers / GigaOM: Google TV will receive Android 4.2.2 update as well as latest version of Chrome  —  Google TV will finally be upgraded from Android 3.2 aka Honeycomb when it receives the next major system update later this year.  The new version will be based on Android 4.2.2.
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nmawston / Strategy Analytics: Samsung Captures 95 Percent Share of Global Android Smartphone Profits in Q1 2013  —  According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies (WSS) service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013.
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Tom Warren / The Verge: Google demands Microsoft removes YouTube Windows Phone app, cites lack of ads  —  Microsoft updated its own YouTube application for Windows Phone just over a week ago and Google isn't impressed.  The Verge has obtained a copy of a cease and desist letter that Google has sent to Microsoft recently …
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Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch: YouTube Expands Live Access To All Partners In Good Standing With 1,000 Subscribers Or More  —  YouTube's live offering took a big step forward today, with the announcement that access to the feature will soon be available to a huge number of its partners.  While YouTube Live was previously …
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Emil Protalinski / The Next Web: Google Search for Android gets reminders, upcoming content, real-time public transit updates, and more  —  Google on Wednesday announced an update to its Google Search app for Android, adding new features such as reminders, upcoming content, and real-time public transit.  You can grab the new update now from Google Play.
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Travis Green / Google Commerce: Send money to friends with Gmail and Google Wallet  —  Paying back your friends is now as simple as sending an email, whether you're chipping in for lunch or reimbursing your roommate for your share of the rent.  —  Google Wallet is now integrated with Gmail, so you can quickly …
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Lauren Goode / AllThingsD: Google Chrome: 750 Million Active Users, Synchronized Web and Mobile Browsing  —  Chrome, Google's homegrown Web browser, has seen a pretty big uptick in users in recent months.  And, increasingly, those users are coming from mobile.  —  That was the gist of the Chrome-focused presentation given …
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John Cook / GeekWire: Apptio raises $45 million at a hefty valuation, plans to accelerate ‘on all fronts’  —  Apptio is not playing small ball.  —  Just 14 months after raising a $50 million venture round, Bellevue-based Apptio is back with a little more cash in its pocket.  The company, which offers …
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Matthew Panzarino / The Next Web: Google CEO Larry Page speaks at I/O about competition and negativity in innovation  —  “I was really lucky growing up,” said Google CEO Larry Page at the I/O conference today.  “My dad was really interested in technology.  One time we drove across the country to go to a robotics conference …
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Hugo Barra / Official Android Blog: Android@I/O: Just press Play  —  As our developer audience knows, Android is more than simply a phone or tablet.  It's a platform, an ecosystem, and an opportunity for developers around the world to build exciting services and apps that reach millions of people every day.
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Google LatLong: Meet the new Google Maps: A map for every person and place  —  What if we told you that during your lifetime, Google could create millions of custom maps...each one just for you?  —  In the past, such a notion would have been unbelievable: a map was just a map, and you got the same one for New York City …
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Drew Olanoff / TechCrunch: Google Introduces Conversational Search For The Desktop With “Hotwording,” Prompting It With “OK Google”  —  Today, Google announced that its conversational search that is available for its Android and iOS apps would be coming to the desktop within the Chrome browser.
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Amit Singhal / Inside Search: A multi-screen and conversational search experience  —  Search has always been about giving you the best answers quickly, regardless of what device you use.  At Google I/O today, we gave an update on where we are in building the search engine of the future—a search engine that can answer your questions …
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