Crunch Hype

Behold the Google Home Mickey. It’s an official collaboration with Google and Disney that OtterBox is selling for $20. The base props up Google’s best-selling smart speaker and gives it iconic mouse ears and red suspenders in the process. It also helps the Mini project by propping it up at an angle. Oh, and the […]

When we last met with Salto the jumping robot it was bopping around like a crazed grasshopper. Now researchers have added targeting systems to the little creature, allowing it to maintain a constant hop while controlling exactly when and where Salto lands. Called “deadbeat foot placement hopping control” the Salto can now watch a surface […]

With its latest consumer hardware products, Google’s prices are undercutting Apple, Samsung, and Amazon. The search giant just unveiled its latest flagship smartphone, tablet, and smart home device and all available at prices well below their direct competitors. Where Apple and Samsung are pushing prices of its latest products even higher, Google is seemingly happy […]

So you need a new phone do ya? Well, as is the case each year, there are some hot new pieces of metal and glass out there from Apple and Google, and to make sense of how they stack up against each other we’ve got some fine comparison details here for you. This was an […]

Workplace, the version of Facebook tailored to enterprises that has over 30,000 organizations as paying customers, is ramping up the service today with a rush of new features to help it competes with the likes of Slack and Microsoft’s Teams. The additions are being announced at a new, standalone conference called Flow — the first […]

Workplace, Facebook’s communications platform for enterprises, is launching its own version of Safety Check today. Safety Check itself is obviously not a new feature. Indeed, Facebook has now activated this tool, which lets you report your status during a crisis, thousands of times. For business users, though, Facebook is now offering a number of new […]

While the rumors and leaks didn’t leave much to the imagination ahead of today’s event, I will admit to being a bit surprised by the shape Google’s Home Hub actually took. The renders didn’t do justice to the actual product. For starters, the seven inch screen splits the difference between the Echo Show and Spot […]

So many new unicorns valued at $1 billion-plus, countless $100 million venture financings, an explosion of giant funds — it’s no surprise 2018 is shaping up to be a banner year for venture capital investment in U.S.-based companies. There are more than 2.5 months remaining in 2018 and already U.S. companies have raised $84.1 billion — more […]

Of all the fascinating apps to be found out in the wild I’m especially enamored of Final Draft. It’s an app dedicated to writing and developing screenplays and it has stood the test of time, going through 11 iterations to reach this latest version, the pinnacle of screenwriting warez. While most of us are content […]

A government watchdog has said the Department of Defense has not done enough to protect critical weapons systems from cyberattacks. The new report out of the Government Accountability Office on Tuesday said that the Pentagon has “not made weapon cybersecurity a priority,” and, although there have been some improvements over the years, the department’s “nascent […]

Google unveiled a number of new products Tuesday at its big hardware event, including the Google Home Hub and Google Pixel Slate. But the Pixel 3, the company’s new smartphone, was the real star. The Pixel 3, which is available in two sizes and starts at $799, comes in three colors and has a rear […]

The war for the countertop has begun. Google, Amazon, and Facebook all revealed their new smart displays this month. Each hopes to become the center of your internet of things-equipped home and a window to your loved ones. The $149 Google Home Hub is cheap and privacy-safe smart home controller. The $229 Amazon Echo Show […]

Making A Murderer is coming back to Netflix on October 18. In 2015, Netflix released the 10-episode docuseries Making A Murderer, created by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos. The picture looked at the mystery surrounding the murder of Teresa Halbach. Steven Avery, a Manitowoc County man charged with the murder in 2007, was wrongfully convicted […]

French President Emmanuel Macron came to France’s ginormous startup campus Station F to talk to the French tech community. The event is organized by La French Tech, the government initiative to promote and foster the startup community in France. Station F director Roxanne Varza first took the stage to introduce the event. She announced that […]

With the Pixel 2, Google introduced one of the best smartphone cameras ever made. It’s fitting then that the Pixel 3 builds on an already pretty perfect camera, adding some bells and whistles sure to please mobile photographers rather than messing with a good thing. On paper, the Pixel 3’s camera doesn’t look much different than […]

Try before you buy is the new name of the game. With items costing upwards of $100, people want to know what they’re getting themselves into before they commit to a costly gizmo — at least that’s what Google is betting on right now. Aligned with Google’s Made by Google event, the company is partnering […]

Lyft has hired Anthony Foxx, who served as President Barack Obama’s transportation secretary from 2013 to 2017, to lead its policy efforts, Bloomberg’s Eric Newcomer first reported. Foxx, who was formerly the mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, is officially the chief policy officer and senior advisor to Lyft’s founders, Lyft President John Zimmer and Lyft […]

Google’s next-generation Chromecast device launched today – something that came as no surprise, given that Best Buy accidentally sold one to an in-store customer last month. The new streaming dongle doesn’t represent a significant update from the prior version. It’s still a round puck attached to a cable and costs $35, but now it supports […]

“So you think you know,” Google teased via Twitter in the lead up today’s event. “Tune in tomorrow to see for yourself.” Turns out we were right. We basically knew everything there was to know in the lead up to today’s event, Pixel 3 and otherwise. Honestly there wasn’t really a heck of a lot […]

Spinnaker is an open source continuous delivery (CD) platform from Netflix and Google, though it now also has the backing of other major software companies. Spinnaker 1.0 launched last July, so it’s not the newest kid on the block, but the service is slowly but surely gaining momentum now, with users that include Target, Adobe, […]

At a special event in New York City, Google announced some of its latest, flagship hardware devices. During the hour-long press conference Google executives and product managers took the wraps off the company’s latest products and explained their features. Chief among the lot is the Pixel 3, Google’s latest flagship Android device. Like the Pixel […]

Google Lens, the technology that combines the smartphone camera’s ability to see the world around you with A.I. technology, is coming to the Pixel 3 camera, Google announced this morning. That means you’ll be able to point your phone’s camera at something – like a movie poster to get local theater listings, or even look […]

There’s a new wrinkle in the Bloomberg’s ongoing but controversial series on alleged hardware hacks affecting U.S. tech giants — despite heavy skepticism after the named companies rebuffed the allegations and critics poked holes in the reporting. Bloomberg’s new report out Tuesday said that a U.S. telecom discovered that hardware it used in its datacenters was “manipulated” […]

What’s that you say, friend? Haven’t had enough Google news for the day? Have no fear. Here’s a little extra from the folks at General Electric. The company announced this afternoon that its C by GE bulbs are the first to carry Made for Google certification. That means the bulbs will work with Google Home […]

Is Google finally taking consumers’ privacy concerns to heart? Today, the search and Android giant took the wraps off its $149 Home Hub, a new screen-based smart home device that lets you interact with Google services like Google Photos and connected smart home devices. It’s Google’s answer to the Amazon Echo Show and Facebook’s new […]

If you’d like to be sure you’re the only one posting elaborately staged yet casual selfies to your Instagram feed, there’s now a powerful new option to help you keep your account safe. In late September, Instagram announced that it would be adding non SMS-based two-factor authentication to the app. Instagram confirmed to TechCrunch that […]

Google today announced that its Pixel phones will soon get support for Smart Compose in Gmail. Smart Compose automatically finishes your sentences for you as you type, based on what Google knows about how you and others write similar sentences. Smart Compose can also auto-complete addresses for you. Google first launched this feature with its […]

This is the Pixel Slate. Announced today among a flurry of hardware at the Made By Google event in New York, the product joins the Pixel Book as Google’s flagship Chrome OS products. The device looks pretty much exactly like the leaks lead us to believe — it’s a premium slate with a keyboard cover […]

A few days ago, Facebook quietly introduced a “Lite” version of its Facebook app for iOS devices, but only in a single market, Turkey. The app had been previously available only on Android. Today, the company is following suit with a launch of Messenger Lite on iOS, again just in Turkey. The launch was first […]

This is Google’s Echo Show competitor, the Home Hub. We knew it was coming, via an avalanche of leaks and now, moments before the event has officially kicked off, here it is in all of its glory by way of the full leaked product video (again spotted by 9 to 5 Google). The product is […]

There are no surprises in the world of consumer electronics. We’ve already seen the Pixel 3 from every conceivable angle, both in video and still. And now, mere minutes before today’s event is set to kickoff, Verizon (the company that owns the company that owns TechCrunch, mind) has gone ahead and confirmed the thing on […]

The Wing's newest co-working space is equipped with a lactation room, a library, a cafe and a conference room named for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

Google is launching its Pixel Stand today, a new wireless charging accessory for your Pixel phone that lets you dock your phone and — as you’ve probably guessed — sit your phone upright next to your bed or on your kitchen counter. That way, you can use it hands-free, similar to the new Google Assistant-powered […]

Bullet Messenger, a fast-rising Chinese messaging upstart that’s gunning to take on local behemoth, WeChat, has been pulled from the iOS App Store owing to what its owners couch as a copyright complaint. Reuters reported the development earlier, saying Bullet’s owner, Beijing-based Kuairu Technology, claimed in a social media posting that the app had been taken down […]

Each October, Google throws one big “Made by Google” event to show off all of the new gadgets it’s been working on for months. Today is that day. The event will start at 8 AM Pacific (11 AM in New York, 4 PM in London, and 11 PM in China), and you can tune in […]

Just a day after Google decided to drop out of the Pentagon’s massive $10 billion, 10-year JEDI cloud contract bidding, Microsoft announced increased support services for government clients. In a long blog post, the company laid out its government focused cloud services. While today’s announcement is not directly related to JEDI per se, the timing […]

Shipwell, a startup pitching a marketplace for domestic ground shipping and fleet and cargo management services for freight trucking companies, has raised $10 million in a new round of funding. A booming American economy coupled with failing infrastructure and a low-margin business reluctant to adopt new technologies have put stress on domestic logistics companies in the […]

Soon, you might be walking across the border through a shipping container. Yes, you read that right. You’re off the flight, seven hours later, exhausted and hungry, and cranky from being hurtled at your destination at more than half the speed of sound. You grab your bag from overhead, stumble through the bright lights of […]

Marshall speakers stand out. That’s why I dig them. From the company’s headphones to its speakers, the audio is warm and full just like the classic design suggests. The company today is announcing revisions across its lines. The new versions of the Action ($249), Stanmore ($349) and Woburn Bluetooth ($499) speakers now feature Bluetooth 5.0, […]

Large e-commerce businesses have systems in place to fight online fraud, but smaller sellers with their own storefronts don’t always have the same advantages. Today, e-commerce platform Shopify is aiming to change that with its rollout of Fraud Protect for Shopify Payments. The service is initially available in the U.S. The company had announced its plans […]

Just ahead of today’s Google’s hardware event, the company has quietly rolled out an update to its Google Photos application which introduces a new, automated way of organizing and sharing photos: Live Albums. According to the app’s “What’s New” description, Live Albums appear to be a spin-off from partner sharing, introduced last year. But instead […]

Netlify wants to revolutionize the way developers build websites, abstracting away the web server and breaking web sites into microservices, making the process more like building a mobile application than a traditional website. Today, the company announced a $30M Series B investment to help continue to build on that vision. Kleiner Perkins led the round. […]

The father of the World Wide Web has a new venture-funded business called inrupt -- emerging from stealth today.

Microsoft’s Powerpoint today has over 1 billion installs, 500 million users, and some 95 percent market share, making it the most ubiquitous presentation software in the world. But that doesn’t make it the most loved. Now, a new startup out of Berlin called Pitch is emerging from stealth with plans to challenge it, by making what CEO […]

Instagram and its users do benefit from the app’s ownership by Facebook, which invests tons in new artificial intelligence technologies. Now that AI could help keep Instagram more tolerable for humans. Today Instagram announced a new set of antii-cyberbullying features. Most importantly, it can now use machine learning to optically scan photos posted to the […]

SoundCloud moves painfully slow for a tech company, and no one feels that pain more than musicians who are popular on the site but don’t get paid. 10 years since SoundCloud first launched, and four years since it opened an invite-only program allowing just the very biggest artists to earn a cut of the ad […]

Upskill has been working on a platform to support augmented and mixed reality for almost as long as most people have been aware of the concept. It began developing an agnostic AR/MR platform way back in 2010. Google Glass didn’t even appear until two years later. Today, the company announced the early release of Skylight […]

Falling somewhere between a boutique hotel experience and an Airbnb, The Guild is launching today with $9 million in funding led by Maveron with participation from Convivialite Ventures and Corigin Ventures to provide travelers with tech-driven hospitality. The startup is also officially expanding into Miami, Cincinnati and Denver. Based in Austin, The Guild has a […]

Matt Lerner, who has for the last few years effectively been 500 Startups’ main person in London, is reducing his role at the Silicon Valley-based VC fund and accelerator to pursue a new business of his own. He’s officially scaling back to a part-time position of Venture Partner to launch “growth coaching” company Heretix. The […]

It’s been less than six months since Adobe acquired commerce platform Magento for $1.68 billion and today, at Magento’s annual conference, the company announced the first set of integrations that bring the analytics and personalization features of Adobe’s Experience Cloud to Magento’s Commerce Cloud. In many ways, the acquisition of Magento helps Adobe close the […]