Tag Archives: TechCrunch

Four search engine rivals to Google have called on European Union lawmakers to address the tech giant’s continued dominance of the market by setting rules for search engine preference menus, arguing that the tech giant’s ability to set damaging defaults is continuing to limit how easily consumers can switch to a non-Google alternatives. In an open letter today, the non-tracking search engines DuckDuckGo and Qwant, along with tech-for-good focused Lilo and tree-planting… Source link

Google plans to invest up to $50 million in African early and growth-stage startups via its Africa Investment Fund, ramping up efforts to support more businesses on the continent. Google made known its plans today in a virtual event where CEO Sundar Pichai announced the tech giant’s intentions to commit $1 billion over the next five years in tech-led initiatives in Africa. These initiatives range from improved connectivity via Google’s subsea cable Equiano to investments in small… Source link

The developing world represents the best chance of growth for large internet companies, and today one of the very biggest set out its strategy for how it plans to tackle that. Google said that it would be investing $1 billion to support “digital transformation” across Africa. This will include landing a subsea cable into the continent to enable faster internet speeds, low-interest loans for small businesses, equity investments into African startups, skills… Source link

Byteboard, a service designed to replace the pre-onsite technical interview part of a company’s hiring process with a web-based alternative, will be spinning out of Google, TechCrunch learned and Google confirmed. The product was originally incubated as part of the company’s internal R&D lab known as Area 120, where it’s been led by CEO Sargun Kaur. With this move, Byteboard will be the first Area 120 project to exit Google and become its own standalone company. But Google notes… Source link

Google is making a change to its search results with the goal of improving the media literacy of online users. The company is expanding the capabilities of its “About this Result” feature, launched earlier this year, to also now include information about the source itself, including its description from Wikipedia and what the site says about itself, as well as news, reviews, and other context that can help people better evaluate unfamiliar or new sources. It will also point users to… Source link

Google has updates for a handful of tools aimed at helping people use Maps for more, or get on them in the first place. The company is improving wildfire tracking, expanding a tool for calculating tree canopy cover in cities, and further automating virtual address creation with Plus Codes. The wildfires will be of the most immediate use to most users, since the once rare disaster has evolved into its own recurring season. Google put out a wildfire tracking tool last year for people… Source link

Australia’s competition watchdog is the latest to push for legal powers to curb Google’s dominance in the adtech sector. It has made the call as it published its final report on an inquiry examining competition concerns in the digital advertising sector. In the report, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) concludes that new regulatory solutions are needed to address Google’s dominance and competition to the adtech sector — “for the benefit of businesses… Source link

Ashish Bhatia Contributor Facebook recently announced its highly anticipated wearable sunglasses that can record video from a user’s perspective. Despite many of our legitimately squeamish reactions to this new product, one of Facebook’s decisions in this launch is likely to make it a success where Google Glass failed. Taking a page from the business school curriculum, Facebook leveraged an effectual approach to its launch by partnering with… Source link

When it comes to online calendars and calendar apps, services like Google Calendar and Outlook from Microsoft rule the roost with hundreds of millions of users globally. Now another company is hoping to ruffle some feathers with its own move into the space. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Yahoo is working on called Day, a new standalone calendar app. Sources tell us the company has recruited Jeremy Le Van — who had co-founded another calendaring app, Sunrise, and eventually… Source link

Google on Thursday filed a writ petition in the Delhi High Court against the Competition Commission of India following the leak of a damning confidential report detailing the watchdog’s interim fact-finding in an antitrust probe. The report, which Google has yet to formally receive or review, said the American giant had abused the dominant position of Android in India to illegally hurt competitors in the world’s second-largest internet market. The Indian… Source link