Your Weekend Tech Digest: Facebook ventures into real estate advertising, Snap stock tumbles in Q2

By Tian DuBelko

We round up the trending stories every week so you can catch up on the top tech news. This week, Google’s CEO canceled an all-hands diversity meeting, Facebook took its first steps in real estate advertising, Snap posted over $400 in losses in Q2, and Samsung released its own web browser. Get your weekly recap here, then head over to our blog for more stories.

Google cancels diversity meeting due to leaks

On Thursday afternoon, Google CEO Sundar Pichai canceled an all all-hands town hall meeting. The meeting had been scheduled to address the recent diversity controversy that has surrounded the company after a Google engineer wrote a manifesto that argued a gender gap at Google exists because of biological differences between men and women, not because of sexism. The meeting was canceled after Pichai found out that several employees had been harassed online after some of the proposed questions were leaked. Despite this cancellation, Google will pick another venue to discuss diversity problems.

Facebook ventures into real estate advertising

With its “Dynamic Ads for Real Estate,” Facebook has officially launched its first ad product aimed at residential real estate brokerages. The product will allow real estate professionals to directly advertise to Facebook and Instagram users who have already searched for properties on their website. This product directly competes with Seattle-based Zillow, a site that allows brokers and agents to advertise to prospective home buyers and sellers. If this product is effective, it could propel Facebook to compete with other residential real estate juggernauts.

Snap stock sinks in Q2 with $443M net loss

More bad news for Snap investors as the Snapchat parent posted a net loss of $443 million. In just its second quarter as a public company, Snap’s stock tumbled 14%, with nearly 4X the $116 million in Q2 2016. The marketing and sales expenses have ballooned despite Snap’s aggressive courting of advertisers and partners. Rivaling apps such as WhatsApp and Instagram stories, which offer similar features to Snapchat, have seemed to sap some of the app’s luster.

Samsung releases its own mobile browser

Mostly known for its Android smartphones, Samsung is on the verge of releasing its own mobile browser. Though it’s still being tested, Samsung plans on releasing the browser worldwide on Google’s Play Store. The Samsung browser is based on Chromium, the open-source project powering Chrome, but has made it clear that they aren’t just copying Chrome. Clearly, Samsung still has ambitions to conquer the software front, and this new browser is evidence of that.

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