Google announced its new messaging app Allo at its I/O developers conference today, and it looks pretty cool. It’s a feature-rich interface with graphics and doodles, and it works with Google Assistant to make suggestions and schedule plans. Allo even has an option for users to s … | Continue reading
As Google announced at its I/O developer conference today, the company recently started building its own specialized chips to expedite the machine learning algorithms. These so-called Tensor Processing Units (TPU) are custom-built chips that Google has now been using in its own d … | Continue reading
Many tech companies in Silicon Valley like to blame the lack of diversity on what they call the pipeline. Their argument is that there are simply not enough qualified female and/or underrepresented minorities qualified to fill these high-tech roles. The U.S. Equal Employment Oppo … | Continue reading
Like a number of other bits and bobs announced at Google I/O thus far, there are still some important questions left unanswered about the Mi Box, but here’s what we do know about Xiaomi’s forthcoming set top box. It’s sleek, it’s small, and it’s apparently won the Chinese phone m … | Continue reading
Disrupt NY 2016 was full of fascinating panels on everything from dating apps to cybersecurity. Weren’t able to catch every second? The TechCrunch social media team has compiled the best of the best from the event. Enjoy! Read More | Continue reading
Tesla — with a significant chunk contributed by Elon Musk — is selling around $2 billion worth of stock in an equity offering in order to accelerate production of the Model 3, according to a regulatory filing filed today. The company is selling 6.8 million shares in the stock off … | Continue reading
As the co-founder of a “142-proof” software development agency in the Silicon Valley catering to pre- and post-money companies, I’ve observed quite a bit of variance when it comes to the development process. The capabilities range wildly, from hack-and-slash “oh shit commits” all … | Continue reading
What’s worse than asking the Internet at large to name your product? Telling them it has to start with N. Let’s just take a moment to appreciate the stupefying magnitude of Google’s naivete here. Read More | Continue reading
In seemingly bizarre news out of the porn industry, PornHub is launching a new fitness system (wearable + workout videos) called BangFit. As its name suggests, it helps you bang to get fit. Here’s how it works: Users can join the game at this website, which will allow users to th … | Continue reading
A year ago, privately held online lenders like Prosper, SoFi, and Avant looked all but certain to go public at the same, if not higher, than the unicorn valuations than their venture investors have assigned them. The market they are chasing is enormous: The U.S. consumer lending … | Continue reading
After announcing the expansion of Android Pay in the U.K. earlier today, Google also made a few additional announcements around its mobile payments service at its I/O developer conference today.Pali Bhat, Google’s senior director of product management for Android Pay, told me tha … | Continue reading
Google is launching a major update to its Play developer services today that should make life a little bit easier for Android developers. With 65 billion app installs in 2015, Google obviously knows a little bit about what its developers want; with this update, the company is foc … | Continue reading
The amount of Google Cardboard app downloads has doubled in just the past four months. Today, onstage at I/O, Google’s head of VR, Clay Bavor, announced that the company had seen downloads on the Google Cardboard platform from the Google Play store grow to 50 million from just 25 … | Continue reading
Google is updating its Android Studio developer environment with a whole slew of upgrades under the hood that’ll make it faster. The company unveiled the new tool at its Google I/O developer conference in Mountain View. Making the developer experience easier is critical to compan … | Continue reading
Mobile apps often provide a better user experience than browser-based web apps, but you first have to find them, download them, and then try not to forget you installed them. Now, Google wants us to rethink what mobile apps are and how we interact with them. Instant Apps, a new A … | Continue reading
Google offers a plethora of cloud services that mobile developers can use to power their apps. With Firebase, which it acquired in 2014, it already offered developers a dedicated platform and SDK for building mobile apps; today it is greatly expanding this service by launching a … | Continue reading
In what’s become the Google I/O defining moment, the company kicked off the 2012 event with a series of skydivers, bikers, and climbers to debut the hot newness that was Project Glass (hindsight, etc.). Two years later, Google went all Oprah on everyone and sent I/O attendees hom … | Continue reading
Google’s Android Wear smartwatch platform launched more than two years ago and it’s now supported by more than a dozen brands and runs on more than 100 watch designs. Today, the company took the wraps off version 2.0 of Android Wear, the biggest update of the platform yet. Google … | Continue reading
How big is the Android app ecosystem? Google gave an update on this today at its Google I/O Developer conference, when VP of Engineering Dave Burke announced 65 billion installs from Google Play over the past year.“There were 65 billion installs in the last year alone. And I’m ju … | Continue reading
Highway1 is a rare breed of accelerator that has realized that the people who most need help are the folks who are doing the startups thing with hardware products. Uniquely positioned in the final-version-is-final world of hardware startups, the companies passing through the acce … | Continue reading
You get to choose the name of Google’s next Android release. Traditionally, every Android release is named after something sweet: Marshmallow, Lollipop, KitKat, Jelly Bean, etc. Previews are always named after the next letter in the alphabet at first (N, in the case of the latest … | Continue reading
We don’t know if Google will launch its own virtual reality headset at its I/O developer conference this year, but Android N, the next version of the company’s mobile operating system, will feature a special mode for VR apps. Read More | Continue reading
As expected, Google made Android N, the next version of its mobile operating system, a cornerstone of its I/O keynote today. With Android N, Google moved to a very different release cycle compared to previous releases. While I/O is usually the place for Google to share a first lo … | Continue reading
Some have criticised Google for falling behind when it comes to social networking and new communications services, but the company is how working hard to catch up. Today, the company announced a new video calling app called Duo — a high-definition app for Android and iOS devices. … | Continue reading
Today at I/O, Google took the wraps off its latest foray into the world of communications: the company announced Allo, a smart messaging app supercharged with machine learning and Google’s new Google Assistant service (its answer to Amazon’s Alexa), giving users the ability not j … | Continue reading
At its annual I/O developer conference, Google today unveiled a new hardware device and competitor to Amazon Echo, a portable speaker powered by voice assistance technology called Google Home. The device was widely rumored to have been in development under the codename “Chirp,” a … | Continue reading
Google today said it was unveiling a virtual assistant tool at its annual developer conference in Mountain View. This appears to be similar to what Google Now can do already, but it appears to be an upgraded verison of it. You can ask a question for an answer, and follow up with … | Continue reading
Last May, Lee Hnetinka shut down his on-demand delivery service WunWun, which was a direct a competitor to Postmates, and then sold the company’s assets to Alfred, a TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2014 Battlefield alum. Fast forward to today and Hnetinka has teamed up with JustVacay found … | Continue reading
Netflix wants you to know how fast your internet connection is, and has today launched a new website, Fast.com, that will give you that information. Basically, it’s a simplified speed test website that only focuses on download speed – as this is the metric that determines your vi … | Continue reading
It’s no secret that Reddit isn’t the best place on the Internet. In fact, its name has become synonymous with hate speech, racism, sexism and other terrible things. So, maybe getting let go from Reddit was a blessing in disguise for Dan McComas, the former SVP of product at Reddi … | Continue reading
SwiftKey, the smart keyboard app maker acquired by Microsoft for $250 million earlier this year, is now testing its next product, a predictive keyboard app called Swiftmoji. As you may have guessed by the name, this new app focuses on helping you quickly find and type the appropr … | Continue reading
When people think about rocket ships and space exploration, they often imagine traveling across the Milky Way, landing on mysterious planets and even meeting alien life forms. In reality, humans’ drive to get off Planet Earth has led to tremendous technological advances in our mu … | Continue reading
A LinkedIn hack from back in 2012 is still causing problems for its users. The company announced this morning that another data set from the hack, which contains over 100 million LinkedIn members’ emails and passwords, has now been released. In response to this new data dump, Lin … | Continue reading
When it comes to startups trying to scale across Europe one thing is abundantly clear: although the market of over 500 million citizens in the European Union is far great than the US’s 323 million European startups are hobbled by fragmentation in jurisdictions, legislation and la … | Continue reading
FitBit’s future plans clearly extend well beyond simple fitness tracking, as evidenced by products like the Blaze, which leans much more heavily into smartwatch territory than before. And then there’s this. The company announced this morning that it’s picked up assets from mobile … | Continue reading
Glu Mobile, the maker of games like “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood”, “Deer Hunter”, and “Diner Dash”, is today unveiling another celebrity-branded game. This time, we’re taking a caricatured look into the life and times of pop queen Britney Spears with “Britney Spears: American Dream … | Continue reading
An app being made by DeepMind, the Google-owned AI company, working in collaboration with the NHS Royal Free Trust in London and being used to help identify hospital patients who might be at risk of acute kidney disease (AKI) is not currently in use, TechCrunch has learned. Read … | Continue reading
And we’re back for yet another developer conference extravaganza. Google is kicking off its annual I/O developer conference today. The conference starts at 10 a.m. Pacific Time (1 p.m. on the East Cost, 6 p.m. in London, 7 p.m. Central European Time) and you can watch the live st … | Continue reading
Microsoft is selling the feature phone business it acquired from Nokia back in 2013 to a subsidiary of Chinese manufacturer Foxconn for $350 million, it announced today. At the same time former owner Nokia said it has inked a deal to license its brand to HMD Global, a new Finnish … | Continue reading
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said during the company’s annual shareholder meeting Tuesday that it wants to open more physical bookstores and add additional services to Amazon Prime. Read More | Continue reading
Uber has suspended its motorbike taxi service in Bangkok, the first city where it launched UberMoto just three months ago, following orders from the government. GrabBike, the service operated by Uber’s Southeast Asia rival Grab which launched in Bangkok last August, remains activ … | Continue reading
Ahead of Google’s annual I/O event kicking off later today in Mountain View, the company is unveiling its latest developments for Android Pay. The mobile wallet for Android-powered smartphones is opening for business in the UK — its first market outside the U.S. (where it launche … | Continue reading
Google wants the South Korean government to ease laws on map data that have curtailed the number of features Google Maps can offer there. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company talked to officials before a closed-door government meeting today. Read More | Continue reading
It’s Google I/O Keynote day! It’s the day Google finally shows off just about everything they’ve been working on in secret for the past few months. And we’re there live! Read More | Continue reading
Apple is increasing its focus on India after announcing plans to open its first developer center in the country. The new ‘iOS App Design and Development Accelerator’ will be located Bengaluru and is scheduled to open in early 2017. Read More | Continue reading
They also talked a big game. When SoFi raised a whopping $1 billion from Softbank last year, CEO Michael Cagney told Bloomberg: “I’m looking at over $1 trillion of market cap from the banks, and I think it’s all vulnerable. Fast forward to today, and it’s online lenders who sudde … | Continue reading
To anyone familiar with doing business in Europe, it really is no surprise that the European Data Protection Supervisor and the European Commission — Referred to as the Article 29 Working Party — rejected the EU/US Privacy Shield data transfer agreement. Europeans believe persona … | Continue reading