Daily Crunch - Google's founders step back

TechCrunch Newsletter

Wednesday, December 04, 2019 • By Anthony Ha

Happy Wednesday It’s the end of an era at Google, Plex launches a free movie streaming service and Toyota backs an autonomous shuttle startup. Here’s your Daily Crunch for December 4, 2019.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is taking over as CEO of Alphabet Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced that Google CEO Sundar Pichai will be replacing Page as the CEO of parent company Alphabet. In addition, Brin is stepping down from his role as Alphabet's president. Rather than framing this as a departure, the pair suggested that they've "never been ones to hold on to management roles when we think there's a better way to run the company" and that they remain "deeply committed to Google and Alphabet for the long term, and will remain actively involved as Board members, shareholders and co-founders." Read more Image Credits: Alex Wong / Getty Images

Tips for success from San Francisco-based business owners Sponsored by Zadarma Thinking of starting your own business? These founders have some advice that'll help you navigate your way to success. Remember, businesses are built on relationships and communication, and Zadarma has you covered with their free VoIP and CRM solutions. Read more

Plex launches a free, ad-supported streaming service in over 200 countries Although there are plenty of similar offerings on the market, what makes Plex's new streaming service unique is its broad availability — unlike many competitors, Plex has structured its deals in order to stream content outside the United States. Read more

Toyota leads $50M investment in autonomous shuttle startup May Mobility May Mobility has 25 autonomous low-speed shuttles spread out between Detroit; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Providence, Rhode Island. As part of the deal, Toyota has picked the startup as one of its "autonomous driving providers for future open platforms.” Read more Image Credits: May Mobility

Progressive VCs and private equity are using tech and analytics to revolutionize investing HOF Capital’s David Teten says private equity and venture capital investors are copying their counterparts in the hedge fund world by trying to automate more of their jobs. (Extra Crunch membership required.) Read more

Kustomer raises $60M for its omnichannel-based CRM platform The New York-based company has been on a growth tear and has raised more than $161 million in the last 18 months. CEO Brad Birnbaum said the valuation is now "definitely above $500 million," but he declined to be more specific. Read more Image Credits: Warchi / Getty Images

Instagram still doesn't age-check kids. That must change. Josh Constine argues that user growth at all costs is no longer acceptable: It's time for Instagram to step up and assume responsibility for protecting children, even if that means excluding them. In fact, after this post was published, Instagram announced that it would in fact require birth dates from all new users. Read more

Reddit's monthly active user base grew 30% to reach 430M in 2019 The most-upvoted post this year referenced Reddit's fundraise from China's Tencent, which led Reddit's $300 million Series D. Users were concerned at the time the investment would lead to Chinese censorship, leading them to flood the site with images that would be forbidden in China. Read more

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Newest Jobs from Crunchboard Information Security Technologist at Human Rights Watch (New York, USA) Global Salesforce Solutions Assessment Consultant at Room to Read (San Francisco, CA, USA) Solutions Architect-Java at Pacific Life (Lynchburg, VA, USA) Technical Support Analyst II at Earthjustice (New York, NY or Philadelphia, PA) Full Stack/Mobile Developer - Larky at Larky (Ann Arbor, MI, USA) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.

View this email online in your browser Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell My Personal Information | Terms of Service | Unsubscribe © 2019 Verizon Media. All rights reserved. 110 5th St, San Francisco, CA 94103

Daily Crunch - Cyber Monday is bigger than ever

TechCrunch Newsletter

Tuesday, December 03, 2019 • By Anthony Ha

Happy Tuesday The holiday shopping season starts with a bang, the DHS proposes an expansion of facial recognition scans and Facebook is doing more to prevent discriminatory ad targeting. Here’s your Daily Crunch for December 3, 2019.

Cyber Monday totalled $9.2B in US online sales, smartphones accounted for a record $3B Cyber Monday — the final day of the extended Thanksgiving weekend that traditionally kicks off holiday season spending — broke another e-commerce record: U.S. shoppers racked up a total of $9.2 billion in online sales, according to figures from Adobe. That said, there is an undercurrent of sluggishness. Following the pattern set during Thanksgiving and Black Friday, Adobe had predicted that spending would reach $9.4 billion — so the actual total fell a bit short. Read more Image Credits: Klaus Vedfelt / Getty Images

Build and deploy models faster with MLOps Sponsored by Microsoft Azure AI has proven extremely tough for organizations to scale. Accelerate time to market and foster team collaboration with MLOps—DevOps for machine learning. Read more

DHS wants to expand airport face recognition scans to include US citizens In a filing, the department has proposed that all travelers — not just foreign nationals or visitors — will have to complete a facial recognition check before they are allowed to enter the U.S., and also to leave the country. Read more

Facebook expands its efforts against ad discrimination Under the terms of a settlement with the ACLU and other civil rights groups earlier this year, Facebook has been taking steps to prevent discriminatory ad targeting. Today, it’s expanding the enforcement of these rules beyond Facebook Ad Manager to encompass every other place where someone might buy ads on Facebook. Read more Image Credits: Getty Images

AWS launches Braket, its quantum computing service Amazon isn’t building its own quantum computer. Instead, it's partnering with D-Wave, IonQ and Rigetti and making their systems available through its cloud. Read more

Twitter launches a Privacy Center to centralize its data protection efforts The Twitter Privacy Center will host information about Twitter's initiatives, announcements and new privacy products, as well as other communication about security incidents. The company says it wanted to create a centralized resource so it would be easier to find all the information about Twitter's work in this area. Read more

Why Notion is staying small as its valuation gets bigger We interview Akshay Kothari, COO of work tools startup Notion, in which he discusses the company’s philosophy of staying small — as well as challenges to this strategy as competitors raise massive sums. (Extra Crunch membership required.) Read more

Marvel's new 'Black Widow' trailer teases the spy thriller Natasha Romanoff deserves It’s kind of crazy that we’re only getting a “Black Widow” movie now, but at least the cast — David Harbour! Florence Pugh! Rachel Weisz!! — looks amazing. Read more

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Newest Jobs from Crunchboard Information Security Technologist at Human Rights Watch (New York, USA) Global Salesforce Solutions Assessment Consultant at Room to Read (San Francisco, CA, USA) Solutions Architect-Java at Pacific Life (Lynchburg, VA, USA) Technical Support Analyst II at Earthjustice (New York, NY or Philadelphia, PA) Full Stack/Mobile Developer - Larky at Larky (Ann Arbor, MI, USA) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.

View this email online in your browser Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell My Personal Information | Terms of Service | Unsubscribe © 2019 Verizon Media. All rights reserved. 110 5th St, San Francisco, CA 94103

Daily Crunch - Facebook announces photo transfer tool

TechCrunch Newsletter

Monday, December 02, 2019 • By Anthony Ha

Happy Monday Your photos are about to break free from Facebook, YouTube’s CEO tries to defend the company’s policies on misinformation and Ikea has some thoughts on Martian furniture. Here’s your Daily Crunch for December 2, 2019.

Facebook launches a photo portability tool, starting in Ireland Facebook says it will make it easier for users to get their photos off the social network and onto another service — a step toward addressing the concerns of lawmakers and antitrust regulators. The company is starting off with a way for users in Ireland to move pictures into Google Photos via encrypted transfer, but it says the feature will be available worldwide in the first half of 2020 and will eventually include integrations with additional services. Read more

An LG Stylo V offer that makes spirits bright Sponsored by Verizon Make the holidays even happier with this LG Stylo V deal. Even better: it comes with the network more people rely on. Read more

In '60 Minutes' appearance, YouTube's CEO offers a master class in moral equivalency YouTube’s Susan Wojcicki told “60 Minutes” reporter Lesley Stahl that the company has drawn a line at taking down videos that cause "harm," as opposed to videos that might spread merely hatred and disinformation. In response, Connie Loizos argues that the distinction is, in a word, laughable. Read more

Ikea is helping to redesign simulated Mars habitats Ikea has been working with an Earth-based research facility that is meant to mimic what a Mars habitat would be like. Originally, Ikea sent a designer to the station to seek inspiration for creating functional furniture for small apartments — but it quickly became a two-way street, which could mean the Swedish home furnishing company has a say in how future human colonists live on other planets. Read more

Accel closes new $550M fund for India This is a significant amount of capital for Accel's efforts in the country, where it began investing 15 years ago and has deployed roughly $1 billion through all its previous funds. Read more

Here's the math behind Telsa's dumb Cybertruck vs F-150 tow test During the unveiling of the Cybertruck, Tesla included a butt-to-butt pull-off. Besides being a silly test, this particular demo was flawed in multiple ways, giving the Tesla a major advantage. Read more Image Credits: Kirsten Korosec

Will the future of work be ethical? Founder perspectives Following up on Greg Epstein’s column about whether the future of work will be ethical, we’ve published a number of other perspectives on the topic — including this one, in which he speaks to Andrea Thomaz of Diligent Robotics and Prayag Narula of LeadGenius. (Extra Crunch membership required.) Read more

This week's TechCrunch podcasts This week’s Equity looks at Cocoon, a Y Combinator-backed startup that wants to help users stay in touch with close friends. (Also: I was relieved that even though Alex Wilhelm is leaving his role at Crunchbase, he’ll be sticking around to co-host the podcast.) And we’ve got a Thanksgiving edition of Original Content that focuses on what we’re thankful for in the streaming world. Read more

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Newest Jobs from Crunchboard Global Salesforce Solutions Assessment Consultant at Room to Read (San Francisco, CA, USA) Solutions Architect-Java at Pacific Life (Lynchburg, VA, USA) Technical Support Analyst II at Earthjustice (New York, NY or Philadelphia, PA) Full Stack/Mobile Developer - Larky at Larky (Ann Arbor, MI, USA) DevSecOps Engineer at Brivo Systems LLC (Bethesda, MD, USA) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.

View this email online in your browser Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell My Personal Information | Terms of Service | Unsubscribe © 2019 Verizon Media. All rights reserved. 110 5th St, San Francisco, CA 94103