San Francisco Chronicle Business & Technology News - Spoken Edition

Emanuel “Manny” Luhn, who owned a chain of Bay Area stores known to generations of children for the assortment of hard-to-find toys before the business was whittled down to one location, Jeffrey’s Toys, has died. He was 93. Luhn died of heart failure Oct. 23 at his Danville home, said son Jeffrey Luhn, for whom the store was named.

Google has purchased the former site of LinkedIn’s Mountain View headquarters for $1 billion in the largest Bay Area real estate sale in 2018. The search giant on Monday confirmed it bought the 12-building Britannia Shoreline Technology Park, totaling 795,663 square feet. Google declined to comment further. The deal caps a year of seemingly boundless growth and investment for Google and the rest of the tech industry, with vast digital profits fueling concrete acquisitions.

Trade wars may be heating up, but the Port of Oakland is seeing a cool opportunity to ship more meat. The port, a major shipping hub for agricultural products, is expecting to boost beef, pork and poultry exports with a massive refrigerated storage facility called Cool Port Oakland. The $91 million depot is expected to lower costs and thereby draw more shippers. The Port of Oakland saw a 43 percent increase in meat exports to Asia from October 2015 to October 2018.

Most brokerage firms have found a subtle way to squeeze money out of their customers. The trick: switching their sweep accounts from higher-yielding money market mutual funds to lower-yielding bank accounts. Sweep accounts are the places within a brokerage account where cash from dividends, interest, stock sales and other transactions accumulates. When investors buy stock or other securities, it comes out of the sweep account automatically.

Welcome back to Tech Chronicle. If you lean in a little, you’ll find subscribing is the right option. I warned you about Sheryl Sandberg Facebook is drawing scads of negative press. Executives are bailing. And questions are arising about the company’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg. My only question: Is this 2018, or 2008? When Mark Zuckerberg hired Sandberg away from Google to be his No.

They’re not exactly doorbuster deals, but Bay Area home sellers are cutting their asking prices at the highest rate in years. October is typically a big month for price reductions, as sellers try to close deals before the market slows way down between Thanksgiving and early February. But the number and percentage of homes with a price cut surged last month to their highest level for the month of October since at least 2012 in the Bay Area and 2011 statewide.

Earnings AgilentAgilent Technologies on Monday reported fiscal fourth-quarter profit of $195 million. The Santa Clara company said that its earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, came to 81 cents per share. The results beat Wall Street expectations of 73 cents per share. The scientific instrument maker posted revenue of $1.29 billion in the period, which also beat Street forecasts. For the year, Agilent reported profit of $316 million, or 97 cents per share. Revenue was reported as $4.

Google Home Hub Cnet rating: 4.5 stars out of 5 The good: The touchscreen is responsive and works well in combination with Google assistant, whether you ask for help on a recipe or to check what’s on your calendar. Pictures and videos look particularly crisp thanks to an ambient light sensor that adapts the screen brightness and warmth to match the room. A control panel screen makes it easy to organize and control your smart home devices.

Shared electric scooters are disappearing from city streets in high numbers as thieves target the portable vehicles. “In the first two weeks, we lost 200 vehicles to theft, which was just shocking,” said Michael Keating, CEO and founder of San Francisco’s Scoot Networks. “People were grabbing them all the time. We realized that if we kept losing them at that rate, we wouldn’t have any left.

Many people expecting a bigger refund thanks to the federal tax cut that took effect this year may be in for an unpleasant surprise when they file their 2018 taxes.

Ride rewards San Francisco ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft are introducing loyalty programs similar to airline frequent-flier miles. Uber Rewards started Wednesday in nine areas — including San Diego, New York, Washington and Miami — and will spread nationwide during the next six months. Riders get points for money spent on Uber rides or food deliveries. For every 500 points, they get $5 to be used for rides or deliveries. Other rewards will come with more points.

A matter of taste The European Union’s highest court hasn’t fallen under the spell of Dutch witches’ cheese. The European Court of Justice said Tuesday that “the taste of a food product cannot be identified with precision of objectivity” and ruled that it is “not eligible for copyright protection.

David Ojserkis trekked to his job at Williams-Sonoma in San Francisco on Monday sporting an accessory that’s in high demand: a respirator. He shared a selfie to Instagram, captioning the photo: “The new ‘normal’ for walking to work.” As firefighters make gains on the Butte County wildfire, people in the Bay Area continued early in the week to deal with poor air quality caused by smoke drifting in from the Paradise inferno.

Two California cities popular with tourists could be on the verge of banning vacation-home rentals in residential neighborhoods. Ballot measures to phase out short-term rentals are narrowly ahead in South Lake Tahoe and well ahead in Pacific Grove. Both towns have seen a surge in vacation rentals since the advent of do-it-yourself rental sites such as VRBO.com and Airbnb.

Mountain View voters passed a business tax on Tuesday that will largely affect its hometown tech giant and biggest employer, Google. Nearly 70 percent of voters backed Measure P, which implements a per-employee business license tax that ranges between $5 to $150 per worker, rising with the size of the company. Businesses will also pay a flat fee of $75 a year.