Android isn’t winning and Facebook’s IPO flop: top stories you should read

Android. Yahoo. Tumblr. Facebook. Google. Some of the biggest names in tech are well documented, but there are still stories to be told. Like, what really happened around the time of Facebook’s less-than-stellar IPO? Is Android really ‘winning’? What happened to get Yahoo! to this point? Where did the ideas that spawned Tumblr come from? How (and why) did Google kill off Google Talk and Google+ Messenger to create Hangouts?

Intrigued? The answers lie in the articles included in this installment of our round up of some of the top tech stories on the web.

Facebook, one year later: what really happened in the biggest IPO flop ever

After the dust had settled on Facebook’s hyped IPO, who was left with the money? The share price all but flatlined, but why? The Atlantic uses plain English and careful narrative to explain what went on behind the scenes on Wall Street — how institutional investors and preferred clients bet against Facebook stock or avoided it altogether, aware of a recent amendment where Facebook had admitted its mobile problem would impact projected ad revenue. While the inquiries into what went wrong continue months later, investors without a “friend at a multi-billion dollar institution” lost a lifetime’s worth of cash.

Android’s market share is literally a joke

Despite all the hype about its colossal share of the smartphone market, is Android really winning? Perhaps not, if winning = making money. Take, for example, the whole debate surrounding Android and iOS. Apple is selling more iThings, but has less marketshare, because Android is dominating the market with devices by every manufacturer at every price point. But if Apple is making more money from its small corner of the marketshare pie chart, is it really ‘losing’ the smartphone wars?

Turnaround: Marissa Mayer’s first 300 days as Yahoo’s CEO

Since ex-Googler Marissa Mayer headed over to Yahoo!, the beleaguered internet giant has been getting a lot of positive press with everything from its revitalised corporate culture to the Flickr make over. With the freshly announced Tumblr acquisition, it’s making headlines again — but how did it get to this point? The Next Web takes a long-term look at the previous CEOs, the moves Mayer has made and the problems that still remain to be faced.

Exclusive: Inside Hangouts, Google’s big fix for its messaging mess

From Gtalk to Hangouts in Google+, Google has been in the messaging game for years. But for all that, it admits that it hasn’t served its users very well, with fragmented services over various Gproducts. Newly launched Hangouts aims to change all that, replacing Google Talk, Google+ Messenger and Google+ Hangouts with a cross-platform solution that aims to keep you connected on your phone, desktop and tablet. But what’s the story behind the app — and why did it take so long to create?

The real origins of Tumblr

Tumblr may have just successfully sold the tumblelog concept for more than a billion — but they didn’t invent it. This article tells the story of the teenage German programmer/blogger and the current Twitter engineer who inspired the creators of Tumblr, and how the blogging form evolved.