Square And Google Were Not In Acquisition Talks

The WSJ is reporting tonight that payments company Square was in acquisition talks with Google. We’re hearing from multiple sources close to both companies that these talks did not in fact take place in any serious capacity.

Co-founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Square has raised over $300 million in funding from top tier investors like Khosla, Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins; and is valued in the billions.

But payments, especially at the point of sale, is a tough industry to reign supreme and the company has faced a number of speedbumps and challenges. Most recently, Square just secured a line of credit around $200 million, after putting IPO plans on hold. The WSJ story describes this $200 million line of credit as “more than $100 million.”

We heard from one source that Square was actually shopping itself around, and met with M&A executives from number of companies in the process, including Don Harrison at Google.

The WSJ is also reporting that the company was in talks with PayPal and Apple. We’ve heard that the latter would be more likely to seal the deal with Square than Google, given Dorsey’s deep-seated admiration for all things Apple.

The Information’s Jessica Lessin recently reported that Google did consider Square as a potential M&A target. But none of the meetings the payments company had with Google amounted to actual acquisition talks, we’re told, just “a two minute meet and greet.”

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Square denied that it was in acquisition talks with Google, as they did to the WSJ before it published its story.

Square Releases Spanish Version Of POS App To Support Latino Businesses

Square is releasing its point of sale app, Register, in Spanish, in an effort to onboard more Latino businesses. The company says Square Register, dashboard reports and analytics, online market, and mobile products are now localized in Spanish across the U.S.

Square is also going on a national tour to connect with Latino sellers and their communities in Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Latino-owned businesses comprise 22.4% of Florida businesses, 20.7% of Texas businesses and 16.5% of California businesses, according to the company.

While an IPO is reportedly on hold, onboarding more businesses appears to be one of Square’s major goals right now.

The payments company has been actively exploring ways to bring on businesses, both large and small, onto the platform. We heard Square has been debuting more custom pricing deals for medium- to large-sized businesses with more payments volume, and ramping up sales hiring. Square has also started offering cash advances to merchants.

Appealing to Latino businesses is a smart tactic–and outreach strategy will be key in whether the company can bring a meaningful amount of this segment of merchants online.

Round vs square smartwatch designs

When the Moto 360 was unveiled a couple of days ago, pretty much everyone fell in love with Motorola's sophisticated round watch design. The teaser images were beautiful, that spinning GIF was mesmerizing and well, the thing just looked sexy and classy. The old-fashioned skin made the smartwatch look like anything but a smartwatch, especially because it wasn't a chunky square brick. So what does a round watch face offer compared to a square design?

With the Moto 360 you now have a decision to make: round or square smartwatch? / © AndroidPIT/Motorola/LG

I have to admit, when I saw the Moto 360 my first response was that a round face was an awful display format for a smartwatch. Sure, the Google demo video made it look pretty great, and it is definitely impressive to look at, but what about all that wasted space in the corners that a square watch can take advantage of? When I saw the LG G Watch I thought ''that's it!'' because all I really want from a smartwatch is an unassuming slab of display. But there's pros and cons to both options, which we'll lay out for you below.

The LG G Watch uses the same display format we've seen on pretty much every other smartwatch so far. / © LG

Square face

It goes without saying that the Android platform was designed for a rectangular format. Taking a rectangle and squeezing it into a square hardly takes much imagination where design is concerned, but the square format manages to take advantage of as much screen real estate as possible, and is familiar based on what we're already used to with our smartphones and tablets. Icons can be neatly stacked and notifications and messages are easy to read. But with this familiarity comes a certain sense of boredom.

There's no shortage of square-display smartwatches already on the market. / © AndroidPIT/WearIT/Pebble/Intel

Right now there's not too much going on in terms of excitement or wow factor on a square format smartwatch. Square is basically what we've seen from day one, if you ignore the various fitness bands and the new Gear Fit with a curved AMOLED display. As far as watches go though, square has pretty much become the standard format and while it clearly works for obvious reasons, there doesn't seem to be too much innovation going on for the format. At least not yet. Add to this the fact that pretty much every square format smartwatch sticks out like crazy as a smartwatch – they always make me think of calculator watches from the 80s.

360 degrees of classical beauty, the Moto 360 looks pretty fantastic. / © Motorola

Round face

Clearly the engineers at Motorola decided it was time to think outside the box, seeing that the box is square, and come up with something entirely original. So they decided on the bold move of making their first smartwatch with a round design, and the initial response seems to be that consumers can't wait to get their hands on it. Beyond the novelty factor, the Moto 360 design is the first edge-to-edge smartwatch we've seen too, making the interface pretty much everything. The display looks expansive rather than cramped and a circular watch, especially with ''real-world'' skins could easily pass as the modern timepiece Motorola are so keen on.

It's nice to have that ''open'' feeling, but how will apps be optimized for a round format? / © Enrico Ros

A circular format offers up some pretty interesting possibilities too, some tied to convenience, like using a gyroscope to rotate the display to a workable orientation no matter which way you have the watch held, and others just on an interface level – all of a sudden the opportunity to animate traditional watch functions appear. I for one love the circular loading animation demoed in the developer preview video when a message is sent. I was also happy to realize that the Moto 360 format doesn't lose the corners, but extends beyond those corners – if you look closely at the pictures you'll see that the Moto 360 display seems capable of swallowing up the G Watch's screen.

A circular watch face suddenly lets a smartwatch look like a normal watch. / © Motorola

But there's also some issues. If the face is capable of being rotated on a software level, what happens with the flat bezel on the bottom, which most likely houses the various sensors? We're also going to need a new pixel measuring standard for circular devices and it seems likely that many developers will simply expand their square-format apps outwards for a round design, which will hardly be optimizing the space available. The alternative is that square format apps will simply become cropped versions of the round app. And notifications and messages are always going to be centered, which means there's likely to be that wasted space issue anyway. It will probably take some time for the full impact and possibilities of the round format to be felt by users, but there's pros and cons to every new development.

There are still smartwatch display formats open for development. / © SamMobile

What comes next?

Whichever format you prefer, the simple fact remains that with Android Wear, Google has pretty much colonized the wearable space. It seems pretty unlikely that the Tizen horizon will arrive anytime soon, especially when you consider that Samsung was listed as an Android Wear partner in the various press releases, and it will be very hard for smaller forked versions of Android to compete against the Google juggernaut now that it has set its focus on the wearable world. I can't wait to see what incredible new applications appear to take advantage of the new platform (that are not simple ports from standard Android) and especially for the new round format, which I think, ultimately, has more room for innovation.

Which style display do you prefer? What possibilities can you imagine for a round format?

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