Axios

Snapchat will now provide advertisers the ability to use offline data to market to its 150 million daily active users.

How? The social media giant is teaming with the Oracle Data Cloud, formerly called Datalogix, to provide advertisers data about users' offline purchasing history to hyper-target ad campaigns. According to AdWeek, STX Entertainment, Kia, Honda, and The Honest Company will all be testing the new capability.

Why? In the past, Snapchat received backlash for giving advertisers minimal ability to custom-target its users, which hindered their ability to compete with the likes of Google and Facebook in winning advertising contracts. A 2015 eMarketer report cites a 'Social Advertising Effectiveness Scorecard' where industry executives rate leading platforms in their ability to market users through advertising. Snapchat received a C- for "ad targeting effectiveness" and D+ for "ad measurement and analytics effectiveness."

Under pressure: The Oracle partnership is newsy given that 18 months ago, Snapchat founder and CEO Evan Spiegel vowed not to be "creepy" in how the tech giant utilized users' offline data to retarget them. However, that was a year and a half ago, when the company was valued $6 billion less than what it is now and before it was exploring an IPO, forcing them to demonstrate advertising appeal to investors.

Our take: Spiegel's right that overlaying offline user-data affects user experience, but Snapchat can't compete with other platforms to win over high-end ad contracts, particularly for retail campaigns, without doing so. As we noted earlier this month Snapchat users are four times less likely to use the app for e-commerce than Instagram, which recently rolled out commerce-driven ad features for their stories feature that rivals Snapchat. According to AdWeek, STX Entertainment's test campaign with Snapchat using offline purchasing data is meant to drive ticket sales specifically.

Once again, Twitter shows that providing app developers with tools is not its favorite job. The company announced on Wednesday that it's selling off its Fabric suite of tools to Google.

Most of the tools in the Fabric suite are part of the deal, though it's unclear what will happen to Digits, which lets users of third-party apps log in using their phone numbers, after the transition. A Google spokesman declined to share more details.

As Wall Street gets to know Snap and its CEO Evan Spiegel, Silicon Valley can't stop talking about the upcoming IPO, which The Information broke last fall. I haven't seen this level of pre-IPO buzz since the 2012 Facebook offering.

The new policy, per an AP report:

• Will keep Americans' information for up to five years if it hasn't been reviewed
• Pares down which employees can access this information and sets up a system to monitor who looks at information and why

Context: As the CIA uses more and more technology to gather intel, it's increasingly inadvertently collecting Americans' data. Until today, some of these policies hadn't been updated since 1982. This left the CIA to gather info in bulk without a lot of accountability.

Between the lines: CIA General Counsel Caroline Krass said the changes have been in the pipeline for years. Trump has said he hopes to enhance U.S. surveillance to knock out terrorism. These extra protections come two days before he settles into the Oval Office as POTUS.

Starship Technologies's self-driving delivery robots are coming to D.C. and Redwood City, Calif., the company said on Wednesday. Starship has partnered with delivery startups DoorDash and Postmates for these test programs, which will be available in select parts of the cities.

Lyft's newest pitch: carpooling

Company co-founder and president John Zimmer penned a blog post arguing for infrastructure that would encourage carpooling as a way of solving traffic in the U.S.

Between the lines: It's not too hard to see that Zimmer's pitch is a direct ad for Lyft Line, his company's carpooling service.

• Case in point: He suggests that smart carpool lanes be free for cars with three or more passengers—exactly the minimum of people in a car when two riders are matched.

We don't know exactly when Snap plans to go public, but here's how the timeline would play out if the Los Angeles-based company pushed its pedal to the metal and there were no speed-bumps:

This week: Analyst day, which is when it meets with investment bank analysts for the first timer. They'll see the financials and give feedback that will help drive how many shares the company plans to offer, and at what price.

Next week: The company could file its public S-1 document with the Securities and Exchange Commission (it already has filed a confidential version, per the 2012 JOBS Act).

The Federal Trade Commission is suing Qualcomm, saying the company abused its dominant position as a supplier of key cell phone parts to force device makers into unfair licensing deals.

The most salacious allegation: The company forced Apple to exclusively use its chips if it wanted to get a better deal on Qualcomm's patent licenses.

Qualcomm licenses patents that are essential to building modern mobile phones and also builds chips for those devices. The federal government charges that they used their power in each business to maintain their leverage in the other.