Crunch Hype

Carbonite, the online backup and recovery company based in Boston, announced late yesterday that it will be acquiring Webroot, an endpoint security vendor, for $618.5 million in cash. The company believes that by combining its cloud backup service with Webroot’s endpoint security tools, it will give customers a more complete solution. Webroot’s history actually predates the […]

Amazon’s decision to open HQ2 in New York City has been a controversial decision since day one. The company has been championing the estimated 25,000 jobs the move could bring to the metropolitan area, while citizens and local government officials have balked at promised tax breaks and the added strain on housing and an aging infrastructure. […]

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here: 1. Jeff Bezos accuses National Enquirer of blackmailing him — and publishes the details himself Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says he is […]

Pivots can be the making of a startup, helping teams refocus on a good idea when previous things haven’t worked. But sometimes, they are just one more step on a difficult track. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Adero — an Amazon-backed maker of Bluetooth-enabled tracking tags that until last December was known as TrackR — is laying […]

In the past year, more than 63,000 people took 625,000 rides on JUMP bikes in San Francisco, JUMP announced today. Each JUMP bike in San Francisco saw an average of seven rides per bike per day compared to the docked-bike industry average of one to two per day. JUMP initially launched 250 bikes at the […]

Micah Rosenbloom Contributor Micah Rosenbloom is a venture partner at Founder Collective. More posts by this contributor Business school grads and quants are winning the battle to create the next P&G Startups need to respect the laws of retail physics Unlike 2000 and 2008, everyone in the startup world is expecting a crash to come […]

Just in time for the Grammy Awards, Apple has unveiled three new ads for Apple Music, featuring new singles from Ariana Grande, Khalid and Florida Georgia Line. In each video, the musicians have been transformed in Memoji (the human-style Animoji variant that was announced last year), which lip synch to their latest songs. The ads probably […]

It’s that time of the week again when Megan Rose Dickey and I talk about the good and could-be-better tech companies. This week, we talked about Instacart getting caught shorting its shoppers out of dough they rightfully deserved. Of course, the company apologized for its “misguided” approach. Which at least sounds better than apologizing for getting caught […]

Rebag, an online resale marketplace for luxury handbags, is getting another infusion of capital as it prepares to expand its offline retail operations. The company this week announced $25 million in Series C funding, in a round led by private equity firm Novator, with participation from existing investors, General Catalyst and FJ Labs. The round brings Rebag’s […]

Regal Healthcare Capital Partners backs Extend Fertility with $15 million to help the egg-freezing service expand to new markets.

It’s the morning after the night before for AMI. And what a night it was. The company is officially in damage control mode after it released a short statement defending its communication and behavior with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who published evidence of blackmail that used leaked messages and nude photos of the billionaire that AMI had […]

While it’s true that it’s going to take some time before most of us will actually be able to enjoy the benefits of 5G, that doesn’t mean you can’t sit back and enjoy the fireworks right now. AT&T’s adoption of the “5G Evolution” label has already been controversial among industry followers and fellow carriers alike, […]

Opera became the first browser-maker to bundle a VPN with its service, and now that effort is expanding to mobile. The company announced today that its Android browser app will begin offering a free VPN. The feature will be rolled out to beta users on a gradual basis. The VPN is free and unlimited, and it […]

Hello, and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week Kate Clark and I sat down to get through the biggest news in the venture and startup world. This is our regular episode of the week after a shot focused on the Slack IPO, and an […]

Security researchers have found thousands of exposed internet-connected industrial refrigerators that can be easily remotely instructed to defrost. More than 7,000 vulnerable temperature controlled systems, manufactured by U.K.-based firm Resource Data Management, are accessible from the internet and can be controlled by simply plugging in its default password found in documentation on the company’s website, […]

Spotify will take a harder stance on ad blockers in its updated terms of service. In an email to users today, the streaming music and podcast platform said its new user guidelines “mak[e] it clear that all types of ad blockers, bots and fraudulent streaming activities are not permitted.” Accounts that use ad blockers in […]

Dixa, a Copenhagen-based startup that offers a platform to help companies provide better and more consistent customer service across multiple channels, has raised $14 million in Series funding. The round is led by Project A Ventures, with participation from early investor SEED Capital. Founded in 2015 by Jacob Vous Petersen and Mads Fosselius, Dixa is […]

NASA has released the final view taken by Kepler in September, shortly before the space telescope was retired after nearly a decade of unprecedented discoveries about the universe beyond our solar system. “It bookends the moment of intense excitement nine and a half years earlier when the spacecraft first opened its eye to the skies […]

Encryption is an important part of the whole securing-your-data package, but it's easy to underestimate the amount of complexity it adds to any service or device. One part of that is the amount of processing encryption takes — an amount that could be impractical on small or low-end devices. Google wants to change that with a highly efficient new method called Adiantum.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says he is being blackmailed with nude selfies by AMI, owner of the National Enquirer and reportedly protector of the President's reputation, over claims the publisher has acted as a political operative. The events feel almost as if they have been arranged by cosmic forces as a microcosm of the "tech elite vs. the President" narrative.

Ticketing app Gametime is taking its last-minute approach about as far as it can go, with the launch of a new feature called LastCall. This allows users to purchase tickets through Gametime until 90 minutes after an event has started. Why would you want to do that? Well, prices usually drop precipitously after the event […]

If you can’t beat or join them… force feed ’em? That appears to be Instagram’s latest strategy for IGTV, which is now being shoved right into Instagram’s main feed, the company announced today. Instagram says that it will now add one-minute IGTV previews to the feed, making it “even easier” to discover and watch content […]

Our concepts of intellectual property protection will need to evolve, if not require invention of new concepts, to enable transition to autonomous vehicles.

Apple is telling app developers to remove or properly disclose their use of analytics code that allows them to record how a user interacts with their iPhone apps — or face removal from the app store, TechCrunch can confirm. In an email, an Apple spokesperson said: “Protecting user privacy is paramount in the Apple ecosystem. Our […]

It's amazing, and yet should surprise no one, that this country's elected representatives can be either so cynical or so ignorant that two decades into the net neutrality debate, the basics still elude them. Today's hearing in the House saw Members of Congress airing musty arguments and grandstanding generically as if they had just been informed of the internet this week.

Holding company IAC just released its fourth quarter earnings report, which includes positive numbers for Dotdash, the rebranded company formerly known as About.com — revenue increased 32 percent in the quarter (to $40.2 million), and it was up 44 percent (to $131 million) for the fiscal year. This comes after big layoff announcements from BuzzFeed, […]

In light of a recent tragedy, Instagram is updating the way it handles pictures depicting self-harm. Instagram and Facebook announced changes to their policies around content depicting cutting and other forms of self-harm in dual blog posts Thursday. The changes come about in light of the suicide of a 14-year-old girl named Molly Russell, a U.K. […]

T-Mobile doesn’t want to compete with other carriers or teleco’s by developing its own “skinny bundle” of streaming TV channels, the company said today on its earnings call with investors, noting the market was already oversaturated on that front. Instead, the mobile operator’s strategy will focus on helping customers pick and choose which paid TV […]

Netflix today is launching a new feature on iOS devices that will help make it easier to watch its shows when you’re offline. The “smart downloads” feature, as it’s called, will automatically delete a downloaded episode after you’ve finished watching, then download the next one – but only when you’re connected to Wi-Fi. The idea […]

Apple has said it will compensate the teenager who first found a security bug in Group FaceTime that allowed users to eavesdrop before a call was picked up. The bug was initially reported to Apple by 14-year-old Grant Thompson and his mother, but the family struggled getting in contact the company before the bug was discovered elsewhere and […]

Woody Allen filed a $68 million suit with the Southern District of New York today over a four-picture deal with Amazon. The suit arrives as Allen’s latest film, “A Rainy Day in New York” has been set in limbo, months after release. The film, which stars Selena Gomez, Elle Fanning and Jude Law, among others, […]

Insulin pills have long been a kind of Holy Grail for people living with diabetes. A research team at MIT believes it may have taken an important step toward that dream with a new blueberry-sized capsule made of compressed insulin. Once ingested, water dissolves a disk of sugar, using a spring to release a tiny […]

Earlier this week, Slack announced that it has filed the paperwork to go public at some point later this year. The big question is, will the company exit into the public markets as expected, or will one of the technology giants swoop in at the last minute with buckets of cash and take them off […]

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here: 1. Instacart CEO apologizes for tipping debacle On the heels of a recently filed class-action lawsuit over wages and tips, as well […]

To better measure aptitude of applicants, online career marketplace Hired has acquired Py, which helps companies like Opendoor and Niantic identify talent with app-based interactive courses on Python, iOS development and more. As part of the deal, Hired will launch a new feature called Hired Assessments, leveraging tools from the Py platform, as well as […]

The Raspberry Pi Foundation just unveiled a brand new project — an actual store. If you live in Cambridge in the U.K., you can now buy a bunch of sweet Raspberry Pis to tinker and develop some cool stuff. The Raspberry Pi has always been about making coding more accessible. And a physical retail space […]

That nasty FaceTime bug is now a thing of the past. You can now download and update your iPhone and iPad to re-enable Group FaceTime again. iOS 12.1.4 is a bug fix release and doesn’t contain any new feature other than this one. Shortly after people found out that you could eavesdrop on somebody’s microphone […]

LG’s never been much on waiting for a big show to announce its latest offering. Mobile World Congress is still weeks away, and the company just dropped what’s likely to be the biggest new feature of its upcoming flagship, the G8 ThinQ. Clunky naming conventions aside, the handset once again finds LG focusing its efforts […]

Foot Locker, the mostly mall-bound retailer of mass market sneakers, has invested $100 million in the sneaker marketplace and retailer of primarily rare and exclusive high-end athletic and lifestyle shoes, GOAT Group. The companies said that the investment would eventually lead to Foot Locker and Goat Group combining their efforts across their digital and physical […]

Google today announced that it is open sourcing ClusterFuzz, a scalable fuzzing tool that can run on clusters with over 25,000 machines. The company has long used the tool internally and if you’ve paid particular attention to Google’s fuzzing efforts (and you have, right?), then this may all seem a bit familiar. That’s because Google […]

The Green New Deal has landed. Proposed by the rising star of the Democratic Party, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Senator Edward Markey, a longtime advocate for decarbonization in both the House and the Senate, the sweeping proposal is a grand vision for what a progressive push to rebuild American institutions for the 21st century looks […]

Airbnb has hired Fred Reid, the founding CEO of Virgin America, as its global head of transportation.

Just over two months out, and our third TC Sessions: Robotics + AI event is shaping up to be another good one. We’ve already announced Anca Dragan, Alexei Efros, Hany Farid, Melonee Wise, Peter Barrett and Rana el Kaliouby. We’ve got some great demos planned for the event, as well — you can still get […]

Illumio has raised $65 million in its latest round of funding led by J.P. Morgan Asset Management, the security startup has confirmed. The news comes just weeks after the company was expected to announce a $50 million Series E round, but was delayed after a late addition pushed the figure up. The datacenter monitoring and […]

Tony Haile, who previously led analytics company Chartbeat, is trying to rethink the business model for news at his new startup Scroll. Now he’s adding aggregation and curation to the mix with the acquisition of Nuzzel. Scroll is still an invite-only product, but Haile explained the idea succinctly: “We deliver this amazing, clean, ad-free experience, […]

WeWork is diving more aggressively into software sales. Just six months after spending $100 million in cash on Teem, a Salt Lake City-based office management startup, the company has acquired Euclid, a data platform that tracks the identity and behavior of people in the physical world. WeWork isn’t saying what it’s paying for the nine-year-old, […]

Christopher Gavigan, sitting in a crisp white shirt inside a small TechCrunch conference room, radiates energy, even in a late-day interview just hours before he’s scheduled to fly home from San Francisco to L.A. We’re meeting to talk about Prima, a new startup that Gavigan began developing seven months ago with two cofounders. One of […]

Substack started out by providing individual writers and publishers with a set of tools enabling them to charge a subscription fee for their newsletters. Now it’s giving them the ability to do the same thing with podcasts. In fact, Morgan Creek Digital Assets founder Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano is already using the platform to introduce a daily […]

The tech industry has been called on to share data with public sector researchers so the mental health and psychosocial impacts of their service on vulnerable users can be better understood, and also to contribute to funding the necessary independent research over the next ten years. The UK’s chief medical officers have made the call […]

By now, most of us should be familiar with the concept of the tailored news feed. Right now my Facebook feed (yes, I’m still there, alas) has been messed up because I’ve clicked on too many posts about Brexit, but I digress. My point is that content has long since fallen to the tyranny of […]