April 2014
Beats Pill XL Review: A Great Bluetooth Speaker That Plays Nice With Others
There are so many Bluetooth speakers, you could easily be mistaken for feeling like you’re drowning in them. So what does it take for a company trying to sell a…
How Google Can Leverage Facebook’s Biggest Weakness
When Google launched Plus, it was clear they just wanted users to move their sharing over from Facebook. Google+ didn’t give users a new way to interact, they just copied…
Culture In Silicon Valley
When I arrived in San Francisco from New York at the beginning of the end of that first glorious Internet era in April 1999, I had in my mind’s eye…
Amazon’s Smartphone May Come With A Special Data Plan Called ‘Prime Data’
The Amazon Phone is almost certainly on its way, but the details surrounding its features and selling points are still somewhat unclear. Multiple sources have revealed to us and other…
Content Recognition Tech Company Enswers Receives $2M From Samsung Ventures
Enswers, a Seoul-based content recognition tech company that recently launched in the U.S., has received $2 million in funding from Samsung Ventures. Enswers has provided automatic content recognition for Samsung…
Google Wants To Bring Its Wi-Fi Networks To Google Fiber Cities
Google is looking at ways to bring its Wi-Fi networks to cities where it offers Google Fiber, the high-speed Internet service it offers selected metro areas in the U.S., starting…
Getting Ready To Disrupt
Wow, it’s been a while since I posted here on TechCrunch. Some of you may remember me as the founder of this site. Later I was fired by Arianna Huffington…
A Word With The Creator Of The Autoblow 2
In another crowdfunding first, a former lawyer has decided to go the Adam & Eve route and create what one would euphemistically call an onahole. The product, called the Autoblow 2,…
Google Is Preparing To Pay A Huge Fine For Tax Noncompliance In France
France’s equivalent of the IRS (Direction générale des finances) has been investigating Google for tax noncompliance. With only €138 million of revenue reported in France in 2011, something wasn’t right.…
Netflix Arrives On Cable Providers’ TiVo DVRs In The U.S. For The First Time
Keep your friends, close, but your enemies closer – that might be the mantra running through the heads of cable execs at Atlantic Broadband, Grande Communications and RCN, U.S. regional…
Microsoft’s $7.2BN+ Acquisition Of Nokia’s Devices Business Is Now Complete
Microsoft’s $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia’s devices and services business has been completed. Nokia confirmed the completed transaction in a press release, noting that it has “completed the sale of…
Sina.com Punished For Pornographic Content By China’s Government
The Chinese government has fined Sina.com and made arrests in connection with an investigation that alleges the site facilitated the distribution of pornographic content. Though China has a well-established history…
Pinterest Launches Exploration-Focused Guided Search And Reveals Custom Categories For Mobile
Today Pinterest announced two new mobile products: Guided Search to lead you on chains of explorations, and a third one that will be unveiled in a few minutes, and Custom…
Pinterest Hits 30 Billion Total Pins, Up 50% In 6 Months
Tonight at an event in the company’s San Francisco headquarters, Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann announced that users had contributed more than 30 billion Pins since being founded, a number that…
Stewart Butterfield’s Slack Raised $43M Million In New Funding
Slack, a collaboration platform founded by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, is raising $30 million-plus in new funding, we’ve learned. (Update: the company confirmed the day after we published our scoop…
Mozilla Names Firefox OS Co-Founder Andreas Gal As Its New CTO
When Mozilla named JavaScript inventor Brendan Eich as its new (and short-lived) CEO, it left the CTO position Eich previously occupied unfilled. Today, Mozilla announced that Andreas Gal will become…
Storyful’s Verification Tech Could Stop Fake News From Spreading On Facebook
Twitter is the king of real time news, but people’s eagerness to retweet juicy stories sometimes outweighs their willingness to verify the facts, leading them to parrot misinformation. That’s why…
Marcus Nelson, who co-founded and served as CEO of social media startup Addvocate, said that he’s no longer at the company. Nelson doesn’t offer any details about the reasons for…
Automattic Buys Scroll Kit, A Code-Free Website Builder That Once Got Legal Heat From The NYT
WordPress maker Automattic’s acquisition spree to build out its platform continues apace. Today comes news that it has acquired Scroll Kit, a New York-based startup that had developed a platform…
Today, Google’s Vic Gundotra announced that he would be leaving the company after eight years. The first obvious question is where this leaves Google+, Gundotra’s baby and primary project for…
Warburg Pincus Buys Compensation Software Service PayScale For Up To $100 Million
Making its fourth acquisition of a technology company in fewer than three weeks, private equity investment firm Warburg Pincus is announcing that it has bought compensation software services vendor PayScale…
Domino’s Launches Its Pizza Ordering App For iPad With 3D Custom Pizza Builder
Domino’s Pizza has revamped its menu and turned around its financials over the last few years, during which time it also started to offer mobile ordering. Next Monday, the pizza…
The FyreTV Porn Streamer Maker Is Suing Amazon For Trademark Infringement
Remember the FyreTV? Probably not, but it was a media streamer, much like Amazon’s new FireTV streamer, that was released in 2008. Unlike Amazon’s FireTV, however, the FyreTV streams porn…
Amazon Beats Street In Q1 With Net Sales Up 23% To $19.74B, $0.23 EPS
Amazon today reported its results for the company’s first financial quarter of 2014. Amazon reported net sales up 23 percent to $19.74 billion compared to $25.59 billion last quarter and…
Apple, Google, Intel And Adobe Settle Antitrust Lawsuit Over No-Hire Agreement
Four of Silicon Valley’s largest tech companies have settled an antitrust lawsuit brought against them over a shared no-hire agreement that prevented poaching employees from one company by another. The…
Microsoft’s FQ3 Earnings Beat With Revenue Of $20.40B, EPS Of $0.68, Surface Top Line Of $500 Million
This afternoon Microsoft published its fiscal third quarter 2014 financial results, with revenue of $20.40 billion, and earnings per share of $0.68. Analysts had expected the company to report $20.39 billion…
The Stalactite 3D Printer Uses A Projector To Produce High Quality Objects
The Stalactite, like the Form 1 before it, is a resin-based, light-cured 3D printing system that “extrudes” objects out of a bath of liquid. Unlike the Form 1’s large laser,…
Hulu Plus Launches Remote Control Feature To Connect With Game Consoles
Hulu just added a new feature to its mobile apps that will enable users to control the videos streaming on their game consoles from their phones or tablets.
We’ve Got To Embrace It, Man
First, understand that as an employee of AOL, I’m slightly embarrassed but far more amused by our “digital prophet,” David Shing AKA Shingy AKA Miley Scissorhands. His efforts on our…
FTC Issues Blistering Rebuke Of States Limiting Tesla’s Direct Consumer Sales
Update: The FTC reached out to TechCrunch to emphasize that the blog post in question was written by individual members of itself, and doesn’t necessarily represent the views of the…
