Re/wind: Tech's Solid Earnings Week, From Bad to Worse at Yahoo and More

Google, Amazon and Microsoft had very, very positive earnings reports for Wall Street. Yahoo, on the other hand, is still dealing with the exit of a number of key executives and declining revenues.

Here are the headlines that powered Re/code this past week:

1. Alphabet (the erstwhile Google), Microsoft and Amazon all beat Wall Street expectations, with the latter company even turning a surprise profit. All three have big gains in their cloud computing business to thank.
2. Under Sundar Pichai, Google’s leadership looks a lot different. Pichai’s new cadre of executives — including Android chief Hiroshi Lockheimer and sales SVP Philipp Schindler — aren’t just the usual obsessively hardworking and technically brilliant bunch. They’re actually nicer. Or, as one former exec put it, “All the assholes have left.”
3. Things are not going well at Yahoo. The company missed on earnings, with 17 cents per share of net income, down from 52 cents a share a year ago. Yahoo also announced a search deal with Google, but the wheels could still come off that one because of antitrust issues. Marissa Mayer said the spinoff of Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba likely won’t happen until January. She also said that the spate of executive departures (at least a dozen) this year were the result of careful planning, which is more of a plea to Wall Street than a statement of fact.
4. On Monday, Amazon PR boss and former Obama administration spokesman Jay Carney posted a letter on Medium slamming the New York Times for its head-turning Amazon exposé from earlier this year. Medium, which wants to become the place where companies wage their PR battles, conspicuously turned off reader comments on Carney’s post.
5. Amazon also launched two-hour delivery in San Francisco, Calif., and San Antonio, Texas, this past week, which is actually a good thing for delivery startups. More and more non-Amazon retailers are forced to compete by adding faster delivery options, which is a big opportunity for companies like Deliv, Postmates and Uber.
6. Jack Dorsey is giving $200 million worth of his own Twitter stock back to the company equity pool, an effort to signal his confidence in the company. Dorsey is worth at least $2 billion.
7. On this week’s episode of the Re/code Decode podcast, Peter Kafka talks with Betaworks CEO John Borthwick about the future of stuff showing up on your phone, Twitter’s struggles, Facebook’s power and much, much more. Also: Lauren Goode discusses TV streaming boxes, and Kurt Wagner unpacks the DraftKings-FanDuel controversy.
8. There is a history of Google employees who live on the Google campus, either in cars, trucks, RVs or available office/lounge space. We assembled stories of Googlers on campus, who are probably saving a lot of money but not having a lot of sex.
9. When Square filed to go public, we learned that its disastrous deal with Starbucks was a big money loser for the payments-processing company. No longer: J.P. Morgan is stepping in to take Square’s place.
10. Kickstarters and politicians both have to a raise a lot of money. Here is a list of the Kickstarters that have been raising money better than 2016 candidates. They include robot arms, headphones that use skull vibrations and something called the “Pickle Pipe.”

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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