Verizon is trying to reduce Yahoo’s purchase price by about $1 billion, The New York Post reports. Of course, “The request comes on the heels of the web giant getting bludgeoned by bad news in the past few days,” it writes. What’s more, AOL head Tim Armstrong is getting “cold feet” over the deal, a source tells The Post.

Samsung just agreed to buy AI startup Viv, which was founded by the same three engineers who created Siri. “Viv has been billed as a more extensible, powerful version of Siri,” TechCrunch reports. “Viv will continue to operate as an independent company that will provide services to Samsung and its platforms.”  

Amazon is now offering domestic Prime subscribers access to “over a thousand” Kindle books, comics, magazines, and more. “With Prime Reading, those paying for Amazon’s $99 annual subscription can access a selection of reading material through their Kindle or Kindle Fire, as well as through the Kindle app for Android and iOS,” Venture Beat reports.

Yahoo just relaunched its flagship mobile application, which is now named Yahoo Newsroom. “The goal with the new app is to compete with the many sources where people get their news today -- ranging from standalone apps like Apple News to social media sites like Facebook,” TechCrunch writes. “Similar to Apple News and some other aggregators, Yahoo Newsroom aims to offer a personalized experience.”

More than 45,000 developers are now using the Microsoft Bot Framework, Venture Beat reports, citing new comments from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “This makes it one of the most popular ways to create a bot, in part because of its versatility,” VB notes. “The Microsoft Bot Framework allows bots and machine learning programs to be created not only for Skype but also for Facebook Messenger, Kik, and other chat platforms.”

Messaging app Telegram is launching a “bot-powered gaming platform” in what TechCrunch describes as “a bid to try to drive more engagement via addictive new features.” To be clear, “While devs building for Telegram’s open platform could already make text-based bot games for the app … the new API seeks to step up the stickiness by enabling more visually appealing games to live inside chats on the platform.”