If you own your home, how much do you pay for property taxes? Does it seem like too much? If you disagree with how much you’re paying in property taxes, you can appeal the assessment. Most people don’t, though — perhaps because they are unaware they can, or because they just don’t have the time […]
According to CNBC there are two suitors rivaling Uber for purchase of U.S. food delivery company Grubhub: Just Eat Takeaway (the union of Just Eat and Takeaway) and Delivery Hero. Both are European companies perhaps looking for a major entry to the United States market. Just Eat Takeaway is based in the U.K. and Holland, […]
Instacart announced today that it is changing its tip policy to protect its growing shopper network from tip-baiting. Tip-baiting, a grotesque tactic, is when customers bait shoppers with a big tip and then reduce the tip to zero after they receive their groceries. It emerged as Instacart’s demand skyrocketed due to the pandemic and people […]
A startup called Portobel is working to help food producers shift their businesses so they can support direct-to-consumer deliveries. Portobel is backed by Heroic Ventures and led by Ranjith Kumaran, founder or co-founder of file-sharing company Hightail (acquired by OpenText) and loyalty startup PunchTab (acquired by Walmart Labs). Kumaran told me that he and his co-founders […]
Last year, Google launched the beta of Currents, which was essentially a rebrand of Google+ for G Suite users, since Google+ for consumers went to meet its maker in April 2019. While Google+ was meant to be an all-purpose social network, the idea behind Currents is more akin to what Microsoft is doing with Yammer […]
Alexis Ohanian, the founder and former CEO of Reddit, stepped down from his position on the company’s board Friday as the U.S. roils with nationwide protests against police brutality after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, an unarmed black man. Ohanian is calling on the company he founded to fill his position with a black board […]
The Square Off robotic chess board was already a great device for these times. The system makes it possible to play a solo game using 20 different degrees of difficulty or challenge someone remotely through chess.com. I met with the Mumbai-based startup a couple of CESes ago, and was quite impressed with the execution. Now, […]
As the United States sees its second week of large-scale protests against police brutality, it’s painfully clear that the country’s racial divide requires significant short- and long-term action. But most of these calls for change gloss over the role Silicon Valley can and should play in mending the racial divide.
Silver Lake is doubling down its bet on India’s Reliance Jio Platforms. The U.S. private equity firm said Friday it is buying an additional stake worth $600 million in the top Indian telecom operator, which has now raised $12.2 billion in less than two months at the height of a global pandemic. The Menlo Park-headquartered […]
One of the earliest disruptions created by the novel coronavirus manifested in the form of event cancellations. Some of the world’s biggest tech conferences, like F8 and Google NEXT, got postponed and others turned to digital options to still connect. Even Disrupt is going digital this year. It is an unprecedented time for the events […]
Twitter sees record downloads, Signal adds a new face-blurring feature and Facebook rethinks its approach to government-backed media. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 5, 2020. 1. Twitter has a record-breaking week as users looked for news of protests and COVID-19 Civil unrest due to the nationwide George Floyd protests drove Twitter to a record […]
Contracts for a number of coronavirus data deals that the U.K. government inked in haste with U.S. tech giants, including Google and Palantir, plus a U.K.-based AI firm called Faculty, have been published today by openDemocracy and law firm Foxglove — which had threatened legal action for withholding the information. Concerns had been raised about […]
When Larry Liu moved to the U.S. in 2003, one of the first challenges he experienced was the lack of Chinese ingredients available in local groceries. A native of Hubei, a Chinese province famous for its freshwater fish and lotus-inspired dishes, Liu got by with a limited supply found at local Asian groceries in the […]
Our tech giants can jointly pull off the largest pivot in Silicon Valley history to start the American Service Corps. This lofty idea may sound impractical, but it is within their reach.
There’s a decent chance buying music is the furthest thing from your mind right now, and I can’t say I blame you. Here in the States, 108,000 people are dead due to COVID-19, and protests against the killing of George Floyd raged on for an eighth night. Neither of these society-shaping events are set to […]
Whether or not you feel that this SaaS player was worth the revenue multiple its original, $8 billion valuation dictated, the message was clear: the IPO window is open.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week, however, the Equity crew (Danny, Natasha, Chris, and Alex) agreed it felt silly to drum up false enthusiasm for funding rounds and startups. Instead, we talked about a more critical topic: systemic racism in the United […]
Slack and Amazon announced a big integration late yesterday afternoon. As part of the deal, Slack will use Amazon Chime for its call feature, while reiterating its commitment to use AWS as its preferred cloud provider to run its infrastructure. At the same time, Amazon has agreed to offer Slack as an option for all […]
