Google is facing another competition investigation, according to the Financial Post. The Canadian Competition Bureau has informed Mountain View of its plans to launch a formal investigation of its Canadian operations. It has not yet requested any information or documents from Google but has informed the search giant of its intention to launch a probe. → Read More
BlackBerry last week posted better than expected quarterly results, but it’s not out of the woods yet. Now Canada is stepping in to help. Today, Export Development Canada, the Canadian export credit agency, announced that it has provided a €200 million ($256 million) working capital facility to Telefonica, one of the world’s biggest mobile operators, to procure BlackBerry smartphones, services… → Read More
We know that Google’s Street View team has been making its technology smaller and more mobile, especially when it comes to people snapping images for Google Maps. Today, the team has shared some imagery from Canada’s Arctic territory of Nunavut. The difference is that, unlike with the Grand Canyon, the person carrying the Trekker on their back wasn’t a Google employee. It was a… → Read More
Communitech Hyperdrive, a newer Waterloo-based incubator program that graduated its first cohort of startups last year, today unveiled the second class of companies that will be able to take advantage of its more than $30 million in available funding and network of entrepreneurs and mentors. The list includes some standouts who have already made a bit of a name for themselves, as well as companies… → Read More
Whitby, Ontario-based 360incentives announced a new funding round of $7.65 million today, led by OMERS Ventures and including Klass Capital and Round 13 Capital. This is the four-year old company’s first announced funding, and it’s a significant sum that 360incentives will put towards “further develop[ment]” of their platform and tech, as well as new market expansion, chief investor OMERS says. → Read More
Amazon today announced that its membership program Amazon Prime is now available in Canada, offering customers free two-day shipping for an annual fee of CAD $79.00 and one-day shipping at $3.99 per item. Amazon Instant Video and Kindle ebook lending, which are both major benefits to the U.S. version of the service, are not being included with the deal, despite similar pricing. In the U.S., it’s… → Read More
Groupnotes, a Canadian startup with a team spread across Hamilton and Toronto, Ontario, was crowned the overall winner of Startup Weekend’s Global Startup Battle today. The international contest is all about launching a startup in just 54 hours, which the Groupnotes team managed with gusto, even signing on a number of customers willing to pay for early beta access before going hands on with an… → Read More
One of the things that really excited me about coming to TechCrunch is that I have the freedom to explore companies in a deeper, more meaningful, way. I’ve worked for quite a few startups and the people who make things tend to interest me more than what they actually make, sometimes.
Along that line of thinking, I visited the Square folks today and had a great conversation about their stance on… → Read More
Wayne Plimmer, a retiree living in Sechelt, British Columbia, filed a class action lawsuit against Google last week. In it, he and his attorney allege that Google’s Gmail service “intercepts, obtains and uses personal information it collections from emails sent to Gmail users.” → Read More
Stripe announced today that it is expanding its service to Canada, marking its first launch outside of the U.S. and the first step in a larger strategy of broad international availability. The Canadian launch should make quite a splash, because the online payments space is dominated by long-established incumbents here like Moneris, and at least as primed for the kind of shake-up that Stripe has… → Read More
Ever since Apple launched its voice-driven personal assistant Siri, a slew of clones have appeared on the scene. Most of these, however, clearly show that Siri was the result of a massive research project that isn’t easy to replicate. Maluuba, which is launching at TechCrunch Disrupt today, is the closest thing I’ve seen to a viable Siri competitor on Android. In many ways, Maluuba is actually… → Read More
Startup accelerators have been taking off in Canada of late, with FounderFuel and Year One Labs opening their doors in Montreal, Extreme Startups off and running in Toronto, and last year, Vancouver got its very own accelerator in GrowLab.
GrowLab, which officially launched last May, has been off to a good start in Vancouver, launching 5 companies since its program began. And, today, the… → Read More
In the U.S., 61% of all households currently have WiFi networks installed at home. According to data from Strategy Analytics, this means the U.S. is ahead of countries like Spain (57.1%), Mexico (31.5%) and India (2.5%). At the same time, though, this only puts the U.S. somewhere in the lower half of WiFi adoption among developed nations. In countries like South Korea (80.3%), the UK (73.3%) and… → Read More
Once upon a time RIM was the shining star of Canada. Hailing from the Great White North, BlackBerry phones were the country’s dominant smartphone. But times have changed and RIM has not changed with them. That’s a recipe for failure and it seems that based on data compiled by IDC and Bloomberg, Apple shipped more phones in Canada last year than RIM. → Read More
Bandwidth caps. We all love ‘em. Wait, no, we hate ‘em. Sorry. But even as AT&T gears up to impose bandwidth caps on its DSL subscribers, it should be pointed out that it’s hardly the only ISP that does so. You might even say that other countries have it worse. → Read More
Netflix may be forced to pay additional fees in order stay in business in Canada. The country’s Radio-Television Commission, the same entity responsible for that usage-based billing scare, is being pressured by traditional media companies (the likes of Rogers and Bell, of course) to levy the same local content production fee on Netflix that they have to pay. Needless to say, this really isn’t a… → Read More
“Please note that we have identified an issue that may cause Internet usage shown on the site to be overstated in some cases. In order to ensure we provide reliable information to all our clients, the usage tracker will be unavailable while we resolve the issue. We apologize for the inconvenience.” And Bell Canada wonders why so many people hated the idea of usage-based billing → Read More
Canada’s Internet innovation-killing usage-based billing scheme may already be dead in the water. The Toronto Star says the decision has been made to reverse the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s plan to implement the controversial billing method, which would have led to a situation where people there could have expected to pay up to CDN$2.35 per gigabyte. The CRTC… → Read More
O, Canada, what have you done? The country’s Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the CRTC, has passed sweeping new regulations that will force Internet Service Providers to switch to so-called usage-based billing—metered pricing, in less flowery language. That means ISPs there will charge customers by the gigabyte for Internet access, and that’s on top of a flat service… → Read More
According to Moblicity CEO, Dave Dobbin, everyone’s favourite Gingerbread totin’ handset — The Samsung Nexus S — will be released through the company’s AWS brand come March. If you care not for AWS, then you’ll be happy to hear that Doctor Dobbs also said that Bell, Telus, and Rogers will also carry the hot new handset.
Jump on through the break for a video of Dave himself dropping the news. → Read More
According to a recent comScore report, Canada has beaten out the US, the UK, France, and everyone else in the world in various metrics relating to broadband and internet use. While the conspicuous absence of the likes of Sweden, a perennial leader in these categories, fills me with suspicion, the numbers are still fun, and slightly surprising.
One statistic calculated to both please and terrify… → Read More
Canada is testing the water for modular river turbines. The project, led by Renewable Energy Research, received $5.5 million in funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada and the government of Quebec. RER will install two turbines in the St. Lawrence River. → Read More
Here’s a candidate for the Canadian parent of the year award. Police in Richmond B.C. are looking for a couple that used their kids to load up on over $3000 worth of Blu-ray and DVD discs from Future Shop. The estimate is that the couple took between 80 to 100 movies. → Read More
Apparently it’s illegal in Canada to copy music from a CD you bought to an iPod (or whatever). It’s simply not allowed, even if you’re not breaking any DRM in the process. (In the U.S., it’s illegal to copy a DVD to your computer’s hard drive because you have to circumvent the copy protection in the process.) Solution? Some sort of levy, which would ensure that “artists” make money even though… → Read More
A new law in Ontario, Canada has banned the use of handheld devices while driving. This includes cellphones, GPS devices, MP3 players, etc. Slight problem: the law is broad enough that you can construe it to include doing things like changing the radio station or reaching for a cup of coffee. → Read More
You know what Canada looks like? It looks like the best part of town – where everyone is cool and gets drunk all the time without hangovers and where you used to go to raves when you were like 16 and now when you go back the rave places have grown up with you and become chocolate shops and classic book stores – but it looks like that all over the country. → Read More
Charlie Sobcov, an eight grader from Canada fell in love with birds on a trip to Costa Rica four years ago. He learned about decreasing bird populations due to global warming and another killer: windows. He found out that 500 million birds are killed by impact with windows annually in the US, Canada and Mexico. → Read More
The good ‘ol United States of America is going to employ Predator drones on the US Canada border within a few days. The unmanned arial drones have been used for years on the southern Mexican border, but they are now needed to keep a watchful eye on Canadians seeing that the US has a booming jobs market. After all, we need to keep Canadians from defecting as it’s common knowledge that… → Read More
We spend most of our time searching for the ultimate convergence devices and I truly believe that I’ve found the one to beat. It’s the Pomegranate NS08 from Nova Scotia, of all places. The millimeters-thin touchscreen phone handles voice, web browsing, and e-mail with ease but also tackles tough tasks that no phone to date has attempted. → Read More
I have to say, as interesting a phone as the E71 is, I’m not sure a three year contract is something I’d be willing to agree to. I mean, who does anything for three years? Well, laying out only $50 for all the capabilities of the E71 — full HTML browsing, GPS, tons of stuff available for the S60 OS — is a pretty good deal if you’re already into that Symbian thing. Of… → Read More
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