THE NEWS WRAP: Google says it has no grand plan to lock down Android

While Google has taken its Android operating system into new places, like cars, watches and TVs, it’s also limiting the degree to which hardware makers can tinker with core parts of that software, Recode reports.

Google vice president of engineering Hiroshi Lockheimer says Google the company doesn’t have a grand plan to lock down Android.

“It’s not some Google-way-or-the-highway kind of thing,” he says.

Pinterest to dwarf Twitter, Facebook

Social media platform Pinterest could be on its way to becoming an advertising giant that will dwarf Twitter and Facebook, Forbes reports.

The platform isn’t yet five years old, women make up over 80% of its users, and its user base is projected to go over 40 million this year. Fifty percent of new signups come from international users.

While advertising is currently Pinterest’s only source of revenue, Forbes speculates that it only requires the tiniest leap to imagine a scenario where the startup acts as a middleman for the hundreds of thousands of retailers already showcasing their products on the platform.

The company sees an opportunity in an open-ended form of search as discovery. Pinterest product head Tim Kendall says figuring out how to do that right “is the biggest opportunity in the last 10 or 20 years for online business”.

Snapchat ads

Disappearing message app Snapchat rolled out its first ads over the weekend.

The ads appeared in the ‘recent updates’ section of the app. One of the first ads was a trailer for the movie Ouija, a horror film that will be released in the United States on October 24.

Overnight

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 263.17 to 16,380.41. The Australian dollar is currently trading at US88 cents.