Right now, plenty of people use Redfin and Zillow, two of Seattle’s more prominent tech companies, to find homes. But what if the companies actually wanted to buy your home? The real estate tech giants have both launched new programs to buy and sell private homes, and there’s an interesting reason behind the trend.
Plus, Amazon’s new Fire TV Cube wants to make Alexa the center of your media setup. The device acts like a voice remote control for a number of streaming services along with old-school cable. And Microsoft made one of its biggest acquisitions ever this week, pointing towards its need to win back the trust of developers.
Listen to this episode of the Week In Geek in the player below or subscribe to the GeekWire Podcast in your favorite podcast app to hear every episode.
This week’s stories:
- Zillow and Redfin execs explain why they jumped into buying and selling houses directly
- An inside look at Zillow’s first home purchase: How the real estate media giant will buy and sell houses
- Amazon’s new Fire TV Cube aims to make Alexa the ultimate remote control
- Microsoft agrees to buy GitHub for $7.5B, vows to let popular coding site operate independently
- Why would Microsoft want GitHub? Developers, developers, developers ― and the cloud
