Crunch Hype

Samsung’s Malaysian arm has some explaining to do. The company, in an effort to show off the Galaxy A8 Star’s amazing photo retouching abilities, used a cleverly shot portrait, modified it and then ostensibly passed it off as one taken by the A8. The trouble began when Serbian photographer Dunja Djudjic noticed someone had bought […]

A study of Google search results by anti-tracking rival DuckDuckGo has suggested that escaping the so-called ‘filter bubble’ of personalized online searches is a perniciously hard problem for the put upon Internet consumer who just wants to carve out a little unbiased space online, free from the suggestive taint of algorithmic fingers. DDG reckons it’s […]

This week, Qualcomm is hosting press and analysts on Maui for its annual Snapdragon Summit. Sadly, we’re not there, but a couple of weeks ago, Qualcomm gave us a preview of the news. There’ll be three days of news and the company decided to start with a focus on 5G, as well as a preview […]

Who rules the roost in the business world is very much in flux. We see it on a daily basis, with the mantle of “most valuable company” being passed between Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, depending on the day. Another interesting data point that highlights some of the jockeying for dominance behind the scenes: For the first […]

As the fight against climate change heats up, Cove.Tool is looking to help tackle carbon emissions one building at a time. The Atlanta-based startup provides an automated big-data platform that helps architects, engineers and contractors identify the most cost-effective ways to make buildings compliant with energy efficiency requirements. After raising an initial round earlier this […]

Hulu will top 23 million subscribers by year-end, according to comments made by Hulu CEO Randy Freer speaking at Business Insider’s Ignition conference this morning. While Freer didn’t state the number outright, he said that the business will have added more subscribers in the second half of 2018 than it did in the first. Based […]

Kleiner Perkins-backed Nurx provides birth control, emergency contraception, the HIV prevention medication PrEP and an at-home HPV testing kit.

The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission has approved new rules designed to provide a minimum hourly wage of $17.22 (after expenses) for drivers who work with app-based services like Uber, Lyft, Via and Juno. Fast Company reports that the rules try to deliver that wage by requiring drivers be paid according to a […]

Uber Eats has effectively invented its own native ad unit. Uber confirmed to TechCrunch that a test quietly running in markets around India allows restaurants to bundle several food items together and sell them at a discounted price in exchange for promoted placement by Uber Eats in a featured section of local “Specials”. In some […]

Flutter, Google’s toolkit for building cross-platform applications, hit version 1.0 today. Traditionally, the project always focused on iOS and Android apps, but as the company announced today, it’s now looking at bringing Flutter to the web, too. That project, currently called Hummingbird, is essentially an experimental web-based implementation of the Flutter runtime. “From the beginning, […]

Facebook was in the news a bit more than they would have preferred in 2018, but the company’s leadership will be taking to the stage to talk about its next product evolutions for consumers and developers. The social media giant has just announced its dates for its annual developer conference — Facebook will be returning to […]

Flutter, Google’s UI toolkit for building mobile Android and iOS applications, hit its version 1.0 release today. In addition, Google also today announced a set of new third-party integrations with the likes of Square and others, as well as a couple of new features that make it easier to integrate Flutter with existing applications. The […]

I dig on my employer Oath, and then Tencent Music notes and a major loss for the NYC ecosystem and what it means for open source. TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. This is a rough draft of something new – provide your feedback directly to the author (Danny at danny@techcrunch.com) if you like […]

Samsung announced yesterday that it’s set to bring a 5G phone to market in the first half of next year, name-checking Verizon in the promise. This morning, however, AT&T was quick to note that it will also be getting its hand on the still-unnamed handset in the first half of 2019. The carrier issued a […]

YouTube on Monday announced a significant change to its mobile app – it will now autoplay videos by default when users are browsing the app’s home page, aka the “Home” tab. Fortunately, the videos will not autoplay with the sound enabled, the company says. Instead, the feature is meant to give users a preview of […]

Microsoft and Docker today announced a new joint open-source project, the Cloud Native Application Bundle (CNAB), that aims to make the lifecycle management of cloud-native applications easier. At its core, the CNAB is nothing but a specification that allows developers to declare how an application should be packaged and run. With this, developers can define their resources […]

Microsoft Edge has failed to capture the public’s attention since launching back in 2015, so you can’t really blame the company for switching tacks. According to new reports that first surfaced in Windows Central, the browser isn’t not long for this world. Microsoft could announce its replacement as early as this week. As for what’s […]

More evidence has emerged that the e-scooter sharing market faces a bumpy ride, as news circulates that authorities in Madrid have revoked licenses for all three operators in the city. Lime, Wind and Voi, are being given a maximum of 72 hours to remove scooters from the city’s streets, whilst I understand it follows a […]

FortressIQ, a startup that wants to bring a new kind of artificial intelligence to process automation called imitation learning, emerged from stealth this morning and announced it has raised $12 million. The Series A investment came entirely from a single venture capital firm, Light Speed Venture Partners. Today’s funding comes on top of $4 million […]

Walmart this morning announced a new plan to help its retail store customers complete their purchases — even if the items they want aren’t available on the store’s shelves. The retailer says it will arm its sales associates with a new in-store app that will allow them to assist shoppers by helping them find and […]

Fortnite-maker Epic Games is capping off their insanely successful 2018 with an even more ambitious product launch: a desktop games store built to take on Valve’s Steam Store. The store, which is “launching soon” on PC and Mac, is going to be an attractive proposition to game developers with a revenue split that leaves them […]

Back in March we first caught wind that Bose is dabbling in augmented reality, with the launch of a new wearable SDK. Seems the headphone maker is ready to bring that technology to market, launching its first headset next month. Don’t let the AR name fool you. Frames are actually “audio augmented reality,” as one […]

EBay this morning announced it’s expanding the capabilities of its eBay Authenticate service — its luxury goods verification program — to now include luxury jewelry. Timed to coincide with the launch, eBay is also listing more than 45,000 luxury jewelry items for sale, including both diamonds and other gemstones that have been verified by professional […]

Fivetran, a startup that builds automated data pipelines between data repositories and cloud data warehouses and analytics tools, announced a $15 million Series A investment led by Matrix Partners. Fivetran helps move data from source repositories like Salesforce and NetSuite to data warehouses like Snowflake or analytics tools like Looker. Company CEO and co-founder George […]

2018 was a big year for Reddit . The company executed an almost comically overdue redesign, continued to clean up toxic communities and promoted new features that are pushing the company towards new areas of growth. The company’s engagement has climbed as well, with a 22 percent YoY increase in gross interactions be that a […]

Changes are afoot at Techstars NYC. Over the summer, Alex Iskold announced that he would be leaving his role as the program’s managing director, and other staff members are departing as well. Now Techstars says Jenny Fielding is taking charge of the program. Fielding is already a Techstars veteran, having run a number of its industry-focused […]

It’s been a whirlwind few months for Forethought, a startup with a new way of looking at enterprise search that relies on artificial intelligence. In September, the company took home the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield trophy in San Francisco, and today it announced a $9 million Series A investment. It’s pretty easy to connect to the […]

Two and a half years after launch, Pokémon GO is at last getting player-versus-player battling. If you’ve already had your fun with GO and moved on, that headline is probably all you need to know — it’s either enough to re-spark your interest, or not. But if you’re still polishing up that Pokédex, hatchin’ eggs, […]

TechCrunch’s Verizon-owned parent, Oath, an ad tech division made from the merging of AOL and Yahoo, has agreed to pay around $5 million to settle charges that it violated a federal children’s privacy law. The penalty is said to be the largest ever issued under COPPA. The New York Times reported the story yesterday, saying the […]

Iliad, the telecom company behind Free, just unveiled a new Freebox at a press conference in its office. This is somewhat significant news for French startups as French billionaire Xavier Niel is also a startup investor through Kima Ventures, the owner of Station F and the creator of a school called 42. When Free unveiled […]

This holiday season, Facebook is hoping you’ll use a relatively little-known feature to share your gift ideas. With collections, users can already save Facebook content — whether it’s a post, an ad, a video in Facebook Watch or a listing on the Marketplace. Now the company says that you’ll be able to share these collections […]

Wing, the drone delivery X project that “graduated” into full company status under the Alphabet umbrella this past July, is taking flight in Europe. Today, it announced that it will start a new pilot in Finland beginning in the spring of 2019 in Helsinki, delivering goods and packages of up to 1.5 kilograms (about 3.3 […]

Lawyers behind a UK class-action style compensation litigation against Google for privacy violations have filed an appeal against a recent High Court ruling blocking the proceeding. In October Mr Justice Warby ruled the case could not proceed on legal grounds, finding the claimants had not demonstrated a basis for bringing a compensation claim. The case relates to the […]

Audi, the Germany luxury automaker under VW Group, said Tuesday it will invest 14 billion euros ($15.95 billion) over the next five years on future transportation technologies such as electric mobility, autonomous driving and digital services. These investments, made through 2023, will include spending on property, factories and equipment as well as research and development. […]

​Mixcloud​, the audio streaming platform that is popular for long-form content, such as radio shows and DJ sets, has launched a “fan-to-creator” subscription service in a bid to find new ways of monetizing and ensuring both artists and curators get paid. Dubbed “​Mixcloud Select,” the new feature lets listeners subscribe to a Select creator’s channel […]

BIOS, a neural engineering startup originally based out of Cambridge, U.K. and now with an additional newly opened R&D office in Montreal, Canada, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding. The company is developing a “neural interface” that combines advances in hardware, big data, and machine learning/AI, which it’s hoped can be used to develop […]

A top-level reshuffle is sending shockwaves across one of China’s biggest online video businesses. Yang Weidong has stepped down as the president of Alibaba’s video streaming unit Youku, the ecommerce operator’s digital media and entertainment business group confirmed to TechCrunch on Tuesday. Yang is understood to be assisting the police with an investigation into “an […]

For the fourth year in a year, the global venture firm Atomico has produced a “State of European Tech Report” and the again this year, there’s plenty for the firm — and Europe broadly — to crow about. According to the report, total investment in European startups reached $23 billion this year. That’s one-fourth the […]

Zopa, the U.K. peer-to-peer lending company that wants to become a bank, has been awarded a bank license by the U.K.’s financial regulators, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA). The company wants to expand beyond P2P loans and investments to offer things liked savings accounts and credit cards. Technically, however, this […]

French startup Agricool is raising another $28 million round of funding (€25 million). The company is working on containers to grow fruits and vegetables in urban areas, starting with strawberries. Bpifrance, Danone Manifesto Ventures, Marbeuf Capital, Solomon Hykes and other business angels participated in today’s funding round. Some existing investors also participated, such as daphni, […]

TechCrunch will soon be returning to Africa to hold its Startup Battlefield competition dedicated to the African continent. The event, in Lagos, Nigeria, on December 11, will showcase the launch of 15 of the hottest startups in Africa onstage for the first time. We’ll also be joined by some of the leading investment firms in the […]

Apple today announced its Best of 2018 selections – its annual, editorial list of what it considers the best content across its App Store and iTunes, along with its top charts of the most downloaded apps and games fo the year. As in other years, Apple selected a “best” app and game for each platform, […]

Tencent Music Entertainment’s initial public offering is back in motion, two months after the company reportedly postponed it amid a global selloff. In a regulatory filing today, the company, China’s largest streaming music service, said it plans to offer 82 million American depositary shares (ADS), representing 164 million Class A ordinary shares, for between $13 […]

Quora said today that a security breach may have compromised data from about 100 million users. In an email sent to users today and a blog post by CEO Adam D’Angelo, the company said a “malicious third party” gained unauthorized access to Quora’s systems on Friday. Its internal security teams and a “leading digital forensics […]

If you’re the proud owner of a Pixel handset you, like 9to5Google, may have spotted this already. The call screening transcripts feature, first noted back in November, are starting to arrive for Pixel users, Google confirmed with TechCrunch. Making good on the “end of year” promise, the offering has been rolling out for a few […]

But get your 'Friends' marathon in while you still can -- the slapstick sitcom may be gone from Netflix for good in 2020.

It’s going to take more than a bunch of posies to make up for this one. The Canadian branch of 1-800-FLOWERS revealed in a filing with the California attorney general’s office that malware on its website had siphoned off customers’ credit cards over a four-year period. Four years. Let that sink in. The company said […]

Bringing Apple Music to Android tablets probably wasn’t Apple’s biggest priority, but three years after launching support for Android phones, the bigger screens are getting some love. The update, first spotted by 9to5mac, is only available to Google Group beta testers for now, but should soon be rolling out widely when the 2.7 update goes […]

Apple CEO Tim Cook didn’t mince words when he took to the stage to accept the Anti-Defamation League’s first Courage Against Hate Award at an event in New York City today. The executive used the keynote to address a wide range of issues, from anti-Semitism to LGBTQ rights — in many cases framing them in […]

Last Friday, Marriott sent out millions of emails warning of a massive data breach — some 500 million guest reservations had been stolen from its Starwood database. One problem: the email sender’s domain didn’t look like it came from Marriott at all. Marriott sent its notification email from “email-marriott.com,” which is registered to a third […]