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Alphabet's investment arm, Google Capital, has quietly made an investment in Snapchat parent company, Snap Inc. 

The investment was only revealed after Google Capital rebranded itself to CapitalG on Friday and added the Snapchat logo to its portfolio page. Business Insider confirmed that it is a portfolio company of the growth equity arm of Alphabet. Snap Inc did not immediately respond to comment. 

The two companies have had a cozy relationship. In 2013, it was rumored that Google once tried to buy Snapchat for $4 billion after it turned down a Facebook acquisition. To this day, Snapchat remains one of the largest users of Google's cloud infrastructure, although it's recently brought a data center specialist in house. 

Before it renamed itself to Snap Inc in September, Snapchat had most recently raised $1.81 billion in a May 2016 round of funding. That funding round valued the company around $20 billion. 

Courtesy of BusinessInsider

Robert Epstein, a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California and the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, warns us of a insidious and pervasive new form of mind control: search results.

That’s right, search results. And not just any search results: Google search results. Since 2013 Epstein and colleagues have conducted a number of experiments in the US and India to determine whether search results can impact people’s political opinions.

Epstein points out that about 50 percent of our clicks go to the top two items on the first page of results, and more than 90 percent of our clicks go to the 10 items listed. And of course Google, which dominates the search business, decides which of the billions of web pages to include in our search results, and it decides how to rank them.

But surely, Epstein thought, a top search result would have only a small impact on a person’s political choices. Not so! To Epstein’s surpri

The numbers are astounding, and hopefully help to create perspective on the scale of technology and business.  In just 10 seconds, close to 225,000 GB of data is transferred, with over 500,000 posts on Facebook, 57,000 tweets, 46,000 searches on Google, and 2 million messages sent on WhatsApp. 

There is no question that the most profound factor affecting modern life is the ability to replicate and store data at almost no cost. This revolution in information has provided us with a wealth of benefits and possibilities for an incredibly low marginal price.

At zero cost, we can connect to a global store of all human knowledge. New apps with impressive features can cost less than a dollar, and our monthly Netflix subscriptions hardly register on our credit card statements. Meanwhile, we share our thoughts about the world with our friends and family at no cost through social networks, email, or other means of communications. This hasn’t been possible throughout human existence, and it is onl

Google certainly looks to be dominating the mobile playing field.  Good for Google or does this just open the door to fresh startups and current disruptors to look to take market share?  (more below)

Some key questions to be answered in this area include:

• How fast has mobile app usage been growing?
• How often are people using apps on each device?
• What percentage of time are consumers spending on their top apps?
• How do iOS users differ from Android users demographically and behaviorally?
• Which mobile app content categories are we spending most of our time consuming?
• How do the top apps compare in different age segments?

Download the full report at Comscore

Other than Google, few digital companies have the ability to reach an entire populace, which classically could only be found on TV.  If Facebook’s plan works, it could lure in tons of ad revenue as marketers shift their focus from television to digital.

“Avoid saying anything negative about YouTube – leave the impression of the user experience up to them” Facebook tells its adtech partners in a leaked, confidential deck that teaches them to sell Facebook’s video ads. The 32-page document details Facebook’s plan to beat television with reach and YouTube with targeting, and spills the beans about an overhaul to video insights slated for Q1 2014.

Facebook slams other digital properties, stating  ”A lot of time is spent by people on mobile with Google properties, YouTube, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Twitter and Pinterest…And more total time is spent on mobile on Facebook and Instagram than all of those combined.” It’s that scale, the ability to reach hundreds of millions of people quickly, tha