Tag Archives: TechCrunch

Internet giant Google announced today that it has made the first investment from its Africa Investment Fund in Ugandan super app SafeBoda. The undisclosed investment comes two months after Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced the tech giant’s intentions to commit $1 billion over the next five years in “tech-led initiatives”, which includes a $50 million Africa Investment Fund targeted at early- and growth-stage startups on the continent. He made this known at the Google for Africa… Source link

A team at Google is today launching a new service called Qaya, which will allow creators to easily set up new web storefronts where they can sell their products and services directly to their audiences. The project is the latest to emerge from Google’s in-house project incubator, Area 120, which was recently a part of a broader reorganization at the company that elevated its status after many of its earlier projects exited to different parts of Google, including its Cloud, Search,… Source link

In its latest move to placate European competition regulators, Google has offered a set of commitments to France’s antitrust watchdog — in the hopes of settling a costly (for it) intervention over legally mandated payments for displaying snippets of news publishers’ content. Back in July, France’s Autorité de la Concurrence slapped the tech giant with a fine of half a billion euros over a series of suspected breaches in how it negotiated with news publishers to remunerate them… Source link

The U.K.’s antitrust watchdog has given the clearest signal yet that interventions under an upcoming reform of the country’s competition rules will target tech giants Apple and Google — including their duopolistic command of the mobile market, via iOS and Android; their respective app stores; and the browsers and services bundled with mobile devices running their OSes. So it could mean good news for third-party developers trying to get oxygen for alternatives to dominant Apple and… Source link

Open has acquired consumer neo-banking startup Finin for $10 million as the Bangalore-based, Google-backed business-focused neobanking platform looks to broaden its offerings and deepen relationships with banks. The deal involves both cash and stock, the two said. Launched in 2019, Finin is among the first consumer-focused neobanking startups in India. The startup, which had raised about $1 million from Unicorn India Ventures and others, will see key executives… Source link

After months of nasty contract disputes, Roku this morning announced it’s come to an agreement with Google which will allow it to continue to carry both YouTube and YouTube TV on its platform. Roku declined to share the specifics of the deal terms, beyond saying it’s a multi-year extension that covers both services. For Roku and Google customers, however, that means they don’t know which party won the battle or what that means for Google’s access to Roku’s user data. During… Source link

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7… Source link

Google today announced the winners of its “Best of 2021” app awards, which highlight both the company’s and users’ picks for the best apps and games from the past year. This year, Google is expanding its awards lineup to include apps and games on tablets, Wear OS and Google TV, it says. Its U.S. winners included meditation app Balance as its app of the year and top game Pokémon UNITE. Meanwhile, Paramount+ and Garena Free Fire MAX won the user’s choice awards. In 2020, the… Source link

Apple and Google have been fined €10 million apiece by Italy’s competition and market authority (AGCM) which has found they did not provide their users with clear enough information on commercial uses of their data — in violation of the country’s consumer code. The regulator also accuses the pair of deploying “aggressive” practices to push users to accept the commercial processing. Apple and Google were both contacted for a response to the ACGM’s sanction. Both said they… Source link

As part of an ongoing antitrust investigation into Google’s Privacy Sandbox by the UK’s competition regulator, the adtech giant has agreed to an expanded set of commitments related to oversight of its planned migration away from tracking cookies, the regulator announced today. Google has also put out its own blog post on the revisions — which it says are intended to “underline our commitment to ensuring that the changes we make in Chrome will apply in the same way to Google’s… Source link