YuMe Adds Another $10 Million From WestSummit Capital
Online video advertising startup YuMe has picked up another $10 million in financing from WestSummit Capital, closing out a $22 million strategic round that was originally announced last November. The round was led by Samsung Ventures and also included Translink Capital.
YuMe founder Jayant Kadambi confirmed the raise, and told me by email that the funding will be used primarily to expand into more connected devices. YuMe provides a platform for delivering ads against online videos, but has recently been adding... Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 12:12pm
New York Hardware Buffs Weigh In On China, Embracing Niches, And How To Start Making Things
Earlier this morning, our own John Biggs was joined on stage by a handful of New York-based makers who have made a name for themselves by building physical things (or in one case, building something that builds other things). Biggs kicked off the panel with a simple question: — can we bring manufacturing back?
Bre Pettis, CEO of Makerbot Industries, has two shifts of workers putting together all of his Makerbots in Brooklyn, and had a bit of advice for hardware creators looking to shift production to China. He recommended that until makers need to produce runs of 50,000-100,000 units, they’re much better off keeping the production process in the United States.... Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 11:58am
Amazon Partners With Paramount, Brings Hundreds More Movies To Prime Instant Video Service
Amazon is continuing to grow its collection of streaming video titles at Amazon Prime Instant Video, and is today announcing another new agreement with Paramount Pictures bringing "hundreds" of new movies to the service. This deal isn't as large as March's partnership with Discovery, which saw some 3,000 new titles added, but it does introduce what are arguably more big-name movies. Included in the deal are titles like Mission: Impossible 3, Braveheart, Forrest Gump, Mean Girls, Nacho Libre and Clueless, to name a few, and Amazon... Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 11:35am
WhosHere Launches Anonymous Video Chat
As evidenced by the success of Chatroulette, people get a kick out of seeing each other (anonymously) on video. Taking that to heart, WhosHere - an app that has allowed countless people to meet and greet each other in meatspace - has launched a video chat service that lets folks connect when and where they want. Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 11:30am
Retro Beer Company Churchkey, A New Tech Investor Darling, Will Expand To San Francisco Next Month
Beer may or may not be the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about TechCrunch Disrupt, but today, CrunchFund's MG Siegler took the stage at our New York conference to talk to Churchkey's founders: Adrian Grenier, who is well-known for his role in the TV series Entourage, Justin Hawkins and Ryan Sowards. Churchkey, which was founded in 2010 and is based in the Pacific Northwest with offices in the beer-loving cities of Seattle, Wash. and Portland, Ore., recently attracted a number of tech... Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 11:29am
Rovio’s FB App, Angry Birds Friends, Flies Out Of Beta With Tournament Mode, New Levels & More
Well, well, well. As if you couldn't get your fix of sling-shotting irascible fowl on every other mobile and social platform known to man, Rovio announced this morning that Angry Birds for Facebook (officially known as Angry Birds Friends) has finally done flown the coop and left the warm nest of its beta. Avian double-speak aside, what does that mean exactly?
It means that, having gone through the requisite user testing, tweaking, and multi-billion-dollar IPO-ing, Rovio's Facebook app is ready... Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 11:11am
U.S. Launches Digital Roadmap To Open Up Government Data And Court Developers
There's all sorts of data that the government has, but very little of it is actually accessible by developers. But the U.S. Government is trying to change that: Wednesday at TechCrunch Disrupt, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park and Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel announced a new initiative within the government to open up data that was previously locked up in government documents and arcane backend systems. That will allow developers to create new applications and services based on that data.
With the launch of the new digital road map, the U.S. government is hoping to increase the way that users can access data in many different ways. It's also designed to decrease inefficiency in... Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 11:07am
Qwiki Launches A Publishing Platform For ABC News And Others
Qwiki, the startup that won Disrupt in 2010, is announcing a new platform today for bloggers and other online publishers.
The company's initial product basically assembled a multimedia "story" around Wikipedia articles, with images, videos, maps, and more. But the vision was bigger — to present a new kind of information experience. Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 11:05am
Mint.com App Update: Now Split Transactions
Mint.com iOS users now have the ability to create and (more importantly) edit budgets directly on their iPad/iPhone. Previously, editing functionality was only available at the main Mint website. Additionally, users can also split transactions, giving them a better more granular look at their financial picture.
The main thrust of this update includes:
Create and edit a budget while out and about: Set up budgets from your iPad or iPhone and edit them — wherever and whenever you want. Also, the new budget slider lets you set more realistic budgets in increments for more... Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 10:59am
ZocDoc CEO Cyrus Massoumi’s Advice To Startups: Stay Lean, Don’t Listen To The Nay-Sayers & Hire The Right People
This morning at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012, Chris Dixon, co-founder and partner at Founder’s Collective (and co-founder of SiteAdvisor and Hunch, acquired by McAfee and eBay, respectively), sat down with ZocDoc CEO Cyrus Massoumi to talk about ZocDoc's road to success. The company, for those unfamiliar, is a professional booking platform for doctors. Users go online to search, find and book a doctor, dentist or other health care professional, and can even make same-day appointments thanks to ZocDoc's real-time access to doctors' schedules.
Although ZocDoc has now raised $95 million in... Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 10:58am
Startup Alley Is Doin’ It, And Doin’ It, And Doin’ It Well
Every time I think TC Disrupt's Startup Alley can't get any better, it does. TC Europe Editor Mike Butcher and I ventured into the chaos, accosted at every turn by startups from across the world. We even had a startup, iLiftOff, fly all the way in from Mumbai on a 21-hour flight.
It's almost a shame that we can't have all the Startup Alley companies in the Battlefield, but at the same time, the beauty of the alley is that we can talk to them for far longer than six minutes. And we often do. Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 10:34am
Rubicon Project Acquires Mobsmith To Expand Into Mobile Ads
Online advertising company Rubicon Project just announced that it's getting into the mobile market by acquiring a startup called Mobsmith.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed in the initial announcement. I've asked Rubicon for more details and will update if I hear back. Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 10:04am
Target Rolls Out Shopkick Integration Nationwide
shopkick, the location-based shopping app backed by Greylock and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is having its biggest rollout yet — Target says it's making the service available in its stores nationwide.
Target was already announced as a shopkick partner, but until now, it was limited to testing integration in seven cities. Now, thanks to what the company says were "rave reviews," it's expanding its shopkick integration to all of its 1,764 stores in the United States, making it the largest shopkick retailer. Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 10:00am
McAfee: Mobile Malware Explodes, Increases 1,200% In Q1 2012
Security and anti-spam firm McAfee today reported that it saw a massive uptick in mobile malware last quarter. Mobile malware has "exploded," the company said (PDF), "with a significant increase on Android devices. In addition, McAfee also found a slight increase in malware targeting the Mac, but the report notes that this trend was not "extreme." Despite the increase in mobile and Mac malware, as well as password-stealing Trojans, the good news in today's report is that... Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 9:50am
Welcome To Hardware Alley At TechCrunch Disrupt NYC!
For the past two days, web companies and mobile apps have peppered our Startup Alley here at Disrupt NYC, but today we're doing something a little different. Those startups have cleared out for Disrupt's first ever Hardware Alley, where we turn the spotlight onto some wonderful hardware projects.
There's plenty of great stuff on display here today, and all these devices run the gamut -- the folks from MakerBot Industries have set up shop here, as well as the makers of the MicroStylus. Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 9:44am
Today’s Google Doodle Is An Awesome, Playable Moog Synthesizer
While we don't make a habit out of covering every iteration of the Google Doodle, today's version is especially awesome. The doodle is celebrating the birth date of Dr. Robert Moog, the inventor of the electronic analog Moog Synthesizer. The what?, you may ask. The synthesizer was an instrument Moog created in the mid-1960's, which took the music world by storm, and was picked up by artists like The Beatles, The Doors, Stevie Wonder, Kraftwerk, and others. It transformed how people thought about electronic music. Instead of producing a "synthetic" sound, as previous synthesizers did, the Moog version created a richer, organic sound. Today, some 50 years... Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 9:20am
Former Twitter CTO Greg Pass Becomes Founding Entrepreneurial Officer For Cornell’s NYC Tech Campus
In its latest move to get top technical students to New York and started on new projects, the city's Cornell campus has named a top technologist to a new position. Greg Pass, the former CTO of Twitter and previously the co-founder of search startup Summize, is now its Founding Entrepreneurial Officer.
I'll be getting the details on what the hire means when I talk with Dan Huttenlocher, Cornell's dean for the new campus, later today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York... Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 9:19am
Social Media Marketer Vitrue Has Been Bought By Oracle For $300 Million
TechCrunch has discovered and confirmed that software giant Oracle has bought social marketing platform Vitrue for $300 million. [Update: A press release has confirmed the buy at an undisclosed price, though we know it to be $300 million.] As if Oracle didn't offer enough products and services already, the acquisition will give it a strong Facebook marketing platform to offer its enterprise clients.
Vitrue had taken $33 million in funding over the years and grown to become... Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 9:00am
BodyMedia Raises $12 Million Funding Round Led By Comcast Ventures
BodyMedia, one of the growing number of companies that offers wearable body sensors, just announced that it has raised a $12 million funding round led by Comcast Ventures. The company's products, including its BodyMedia FIT on-body monitoring system, currently focuses on tracking users' activity level, but the company plans to use the money raised in this round to focus on products related to chronic diseases like diabetes, as well as remote elder care and sleep disorders. BodyMedia is a new investment for Comcast Ventures.... Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 9:00am
TechCrunch Disrupt NYC LIVE: Day Three! #TCDisrupt
Hundreds have entered. But only one will walk away with the coveted Disrupt Cup. Who will it be? Stick around to find out but in the meantime we've got a rockstar lineup on our final day, including a sit down with a handful of local maker types, Chi-Hua Chien and a Hollywood star.
If you're just joining us be sure to check out previous coverage of the show here.
Here's what's on tap for today: Read more...
TechCrunch, Today, 8:55am
Wishpond Launches Mall360 To Bring Your Local Shopping Mall Online
Like Milo before it, Wishpond launched in late 2010 to build a local search engine that aggregates realtime inventory and product listings from brick and mortar retail stores -- from big chains to mom and pop shops. The startup has since focused its efforts on developing social commerce solutions for retailers, launching tools like Social Store, which allows any... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 9:34pm
Machinima Gets $35M In Funding, Led By Google
After weeks of speculation, online video distributor Machinima announced Monday that it has closed a $35 million funding round led by Google, which also included existing investors Redpoint Ventures and MK Capital. The new financing comes as Google's YouTube has been investing heavily in bringing in all sorts of new original programming.
The Machinima network is the largest single page view generator for YouTube, with more than 1.6 billion video views in the month of April. And YouTube is an invaluable partner for Machinima, as it is the company's primary distribution and monetization platform. With the funding, Machinima says it will invest in content and global sales, as... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 7:16pm
Disrupt NYC Day 1: Your Startup Battlefield Companies
Our very first day of Disrupt NYC is over and the conference started off with a bang. We had memorable chats, dove into fashion for a bit, hung out with the Startup Alley companies and witnessed 15 startups launch their products in our first day of the Startup Battlefield.
Even though we will have brand-new companies launching tomorrow while fighting for the ultimate prize of $50,000 and the Disrupt Cup, we wanted to take a moment to highlight all that we saw today. There were some brilliant companies, so be sure to check all of them out below. The Internet was buzzing with positive words about each. This is going to be a tough battle. Which... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 7:12pm
Babelverse Is Out To Democratize Translation
Babelverse won the opportunity to appear at TechCrunch Disrupt from the Startup Alley and with little notice ended up giving a slick pitch. Essentially this is a solution for universal speech translation, powered by a global community of human interpreters: it means anyone can be an interpreter. We covered its launch back in January but here's a quick rundown.
Machine translation, as we know, is not reliable. So what we're looking here is a marketplace for translation.
People practice to interpret and... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 6:21pm
Sprint’s EVO 4G LTE Has Cleared U.S. Customs, Pre-Orders To Be Filled As Early As May 24
Sprint's launch plans for the HTC EVO 4G LTE were ruined last week when shipments of their shiny new Android handset were held up by United States Customs, but we're hearing that they may been hitting doorsteps and store shelves sooner than expected.
According to Sprint, the devices are now currently sitting safely in Sprint's warehouses and are expected to start trickling out into the world "on or around May 24." Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 6:19pm
Tagbrand Gives Fashionistas An App To Check-In Their Brands
"All people wear clothes!" declared one of Tagbrand's founders on stage at Disrupt today. That's true, but let's review.
DailyBooth was (is still perhaps?) a phenomenon for a time as people became accustomed to sharing their daily lives in a more quirky manner than mere video can afford. (Ok, OK, it's a bunch of teenagers sharing their zits, but work with me here, people). Now Tagbrand wants to apply that model to fashion, but with a tagging twist.
The model is simple enough. Take and upload photos of what branded clothes you are wearing and tag them. Effectively, it's a photo check-in for brands, or 'Foursquare for fashion', if you... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 6:00pm
Stevie Turns Your Social Feeds Into TV Shows
We spend more and more time on social networks, but sometimes it can feel like work. I mean, scrolling through your news feed isn't work work, but it's not quite as easy as vegging out on your couch and watching TV.
That's where a new startup called Stevie comes in, with a website launching today at Disrupt, along with mobile apps that function as remote controls. Stevie looks at content shared in your social network feeds and elsewhere on the Web, and it assembles that content into TV shows that you can watch, shows with names like The Comedy Strip, Music Non-Stop, and Celeb TV. Naturally, the shows incorporate video content that your... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 5:47pm
StyleSaint Wants To Turn Virtual Fashion Tear Sheets Into Custom Apparel
As we covered earlier today, the fashion vertical in tech has exploded, with myriad unique companies clamoring to take a bite out of Amazon's lunch, and a chunk out of the trillion dollar apparel industry. One of the most unique premises I've seen thus far is StyleSaint, a startup which at first glance seems like a Pinterest for fashion, but with a unique real-life twist.
To use StyleSaint in its current form, log in with Facebook or Twitter and create an account, once logged on, you can chose from... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 5:35pm
Led By Former Microsofties, GitHub Brings The Party To Enterprise With New Windows Client
GitHub, the source code hosting and collaboration service, has been growing like gangbusters. The site now has over 1.6 million registered developers, hosting over 2.8 million repositories on everything from jQuery and Ruby on Rails to node.js and Redis. At the outset, Github was just a side project, a tool to make developers' lives easier (its first slogan: "Git hosting: No longer a pain in the ass.") Github is still a boot-strapped operation, but as both its user base and its own hacker collective (now at 73 strong) have grown, there has been an increasing demand for tools that fall outside... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 5:33pm
Punch! Launches A Platform For Building Interactive iPad Apps, Sans Developers
It's a familiar story in the tech world: A company wants to build a consumer product, finds that the necessary tools aren't available, creates its own tools, then realizes it has created a broader platform.
David Bennahum offers some examples: Zip2. Vignette. TypePad. And yes, his startup Punch!, where Bennahum is co-founder and CEO, and which is launching its publishing platform at Disrupt. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 5:24pm
The Power Of Disrupt: gTar Raises $30,000 On Kickstarter In Two Hours
Incident took the stage this afternoon at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC and debuted the gTar. It's safe to say that they are already a major contender for the Disrupt Cup.
The startup wowed the crowd with their iPhone-powered teaching guitar. The judges loved it. The crowd loved. And most importantly, fans turned to the startup's Kickstarter campaign where funding took off like a rocket. Prior to hitting the stage, the gTar had raised just a touch above $10,000. Now, almost exactly two hours after their Disrupt debut, their Kickstarter funding (a.k.a. pre-orders) is north of $42,000 and rising fast. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 5:20pm
Digital Video Consolidation: Avail-TVN Picks Up $100M From Carlyle, Buys UK’s On Demand Group For $27M
A double-whammy in the digital video space today: Avail-TVN, a video services provider that works with companies like NBC, Univision, and brands like Mattel, has announced that it has picked up $100 million in financing led by the Carlyle Group, and it is using those funds to make an acquisition outside of the U.S., buying rival video service provider On Demand Group in the UK from its existing owner, SeaChange International, for $27 million. Avail-TVN says that the deal will make it the largest provider of... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 5:14pm
KurbKarma: A Social Network, And App, To Find Parking Where And When You Need It
We have all been there: you are in your car, you need to park, and you cannot, no matter how much you try, find a space. You see cars pulling away, but it's too far for you to get there before another car swoops in. You see people walking and you trail them, hoping they're heading to a vehicle. It's a frustrating state of affairs, but a new startup, KurbKarma, is launching today at TC Disrupt New York to try to solve it.
“Parking where and when you need it” is the basic idea here: you have people who have spaces they are about to leave; and you have people who need spaces. The app ( Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 4:46pm
Open Garden Lets You Crowdsource Your Mobile Connectivity
What if you couldn't just share your Internet connection with the few WiFi devices tethered to your phone or hotspot, but with pretty much everybody around you? Open Garden, which is launching at Disrupt today, lets you create a mesh network that ties together all the Open Garden-enabled devices around you into one large network that then automatically shares Internet access and bandwidth between all of these devices. Basically, Open Garden wants to become a crowd-sourcing platform for mobile bandwidth. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 4:35pm
CallApp Uses Social Data To Build A Smarter Smartphone Contact Book
One of my least favorite moments of the day comes when my iPhone rings and the number isn't in my contact book. Is it an important call from an entrepreneur? A random PR person pitching me? Or just a telemarketer? I won't know until I pick up.
CallApp, a startup launching today at Disrupt, wants to eliminate those awkward moments, for starters. It's creating what CEO and co-founder Oded Volovitz calls a "universal social contact book." It's drawing data from social networks and other data sources to give users more context about phone calls and other communication. The data also comes from CallApp users — users can edit CallApp listings, and if they can... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 4:23pm
Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, And Others Will Share Wi-Fi Hot Spots
Imagine for a moment that you are sitting in your front yard in a lawn chair, sipping lemonade while attempting to read the latest news on your WiFi-only iPad. You're just out of range of your WiFi signal. Your neighbor's signal is super strong, but that selfish hooligan didn't leave it wide open for you to leach onto. Wouldn't you love to be able to use a portion of his spectrum anyway while away from your own?
Well, you still can't, however... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 4:19pm
K3 Server Is Making Enterprise Application Integrations More Efficient, Reduces Work By Half
How is data moved between systems? In the enterprise environment, point-to-point application interfaces are either handled with expensive and cumbersome utilities or, more likely, with custom code...and frankly, a lot of manual labor. BroadPeak Partners has a better idea. The company is today introducing its application known as K3 Server, a system that aims to disrupt the traditional enterprise interface market by making it easier for I.T. to build, and for end users to tweak, the way code is handled, transformed, reconciled, mapped and enriched as it moves in between systems. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 4:09pm
Major Steal: King.com Poaches Talent Behind EA’s Sims Social To Lead New London Studio
King.com, the European-casual-gaming-company-that-could, is cementing its ascendance on the Facebook platform by poaching one of the key producers responsible for EA's Sims Social and opening a new game development studio in London. The company just hired Catharina Mallet away from EA to lead the new studio, which should have 40 people by year-end (with her departure first being noted by Business Insider last week).
King.com, which started in Sweden and Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 4:00pm
UberConference Aims To Fix Crappy Conference Calls
We all hate conference calls -- having to dial in, manually enter a room code and sometimes having to enter a passcode on top of that. Once you've actually logged in, there's a whole lot of talking on top of one another, and a lot of re-introducing yourself so that everyone knows who's talking at any given time. UberConference, which was created by Firespotter Labs and is being launched as part of the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt, hopes to fix all that by providing a visual interface to all others on the call.
Audio conferencing is not just a pain in the ass, but it's also a huge business -- a $3 billion business -- that's mostly controlled by big... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 3:57pm
At TechCrunch Disrupt, Startup Alley Is Where the Shootouts Happen
Well folks, while you may think all the action is on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, the flip side of the coin is the enormous amount of buzz, energy and networking that happens in Startup Alley. Today there are 44 companies exhibiting in the Alley itself, not to mention the 20+ companies in the Israeli pavilion which makes its second appearance at Disrupt. We'll have another brand new 47 companies in Startup Alley tomorrow. You can check out all the companies today... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 3:45pm
Imgur Partners With Brisk And “Scumbag Steve” For Meme-ified Ads
Imgur has built a massive audience for the sometimes amusing, sometimes adorable images and memes that it hosts. Now it faces another challenge: Making money.
With 2 billion monthly page views, advertising seems like an obvious business plan. The problem, says CEO Alan Schaaf, is that "the Imgur audience has always hated ads." So yes, the company runs a banner ad on each page, but the audience probably sees it as a necessary evil. They probably won't be happy with a second ad, Schaaf says, so a different approach was needed. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 12:04pm
Fab.com Has 4.5M Members, CEO Wants To Work With Pinterest (But Doesn’t Actually Use It)
Fab.com CEO Jason Goldberg took the stage today at Disrupt, he laid out a grand vision for the site. He noted that it has been just under a year since the site launched, and it already has 4.5 million members.
"That's not an e-commerce site, that's a movement," he said. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 11:18am
Venture Capitalist Michael Moritz Says He’s Stepping Back From Sequoia Because Of Illness
In very sad news, Mike Moritz, who has led top-tier venture firm Sequoia Capital through the very beginnings of the web until now, is stepping back because of an incurable disease. His firm has backed many of the home runs of the last two decades including Google, PayPal and Yahoo.
In a letter to limited partners this morning, he wrote, "We have always tried to be straightforward with you and, in that spirit, I need to share something. Unfortunately, I have been diagnosed with a rare medical condition which can be managed but is incurable." Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 11:14am
About.me Releases Public API, SDK At Disrupt, Now Integrates With Reputation, Smarterer, Forkly, Kred And Showyou
About.Me is set to get a bit more social. The AOL-owned property just released a public API and SDK into the wild in partnership with Reputation.com, Smarterer, Forkly, Kred and Showyou. While the online profile site already worked with most popular social platforms, today's announcement is huge for both about.me and their legions of users. Plus, for attendees of Disrupt NYC this week, the company is celebrating the news by having a professional photographer on hand to help create free killer profile pics.
Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. About.me collects a user's various online identifies and puts them in a single (and beautiful) location. Think of it a splash page for your identity online. Instead... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 11:00am
Google Missed The Boat On Buying Twitter. “Hasn’t Been Interested Since They Committed To Google+” -Fred Wilson
Google got the chance to buy Twitter, but the search giant passed, says Michael Arrington. "Google hasn’t been interested in buying Twitter since they committed themselves to Google+” says Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures founder and former Twitter board member, in his fireside chat this morning with Arrington at the TechCrunch Disrupt New York conference. Now Google+ is widely seen as a ghost town, and not buying Twitter could be a mistake that haunts Mountain View for years to come.
Wilson has one of the most Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 10:45am
EU Gives Google A Last Chance To Avoid Antitrust Charges
In late 2010, the European Commission launched an investigation into allegations that Google was abusing its dominant position in the search engine market. Today, Joaquín Almunia, the vice president of the European Commission responsible for competition policy, sent a letter to Google chairman Eric Schmidt with an update about its finding. The Commission, writes Almunia, identified four specific concerns that Google needs to address quickly to avoid a lengthy (and potentially very costly) antitrust process. In the letter to Schmidt,... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 10:30am
TechCrunch Disrupt NYC LIVE: Day One! #TCDisrupt
After months of prepping, countless run-throughs and all nighters, it's time to get this party started. Welcome to TechCrunch Disrupt New York City 2012. I have a feeling this is going to be the best one to date.
Follow the team's coverage here. If you're unable to attend don't worry, you can join the conversation on Twitter by following #TCDisrupt.
So here's how the day breaks down: Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 10:30am
StatCounter: Google Chrome Pushes Past Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (Again)
Well, it's official. Or at least it's official if you believe in StatCounter's data. Google's Chrome web browser has overtaken Microsoft's Internet Explorer. For real this time. Maybe. The stat-counting firm compiled data for the week of May 14th through May 20th, showing that Chrome had a market share of 32.76%, compared with IE's 31.94%. This isn't the first time that Chrome has gotten ahead, however. And the race itself is close - perhaps too close... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 10:09am
Disruptive Retail Trend Continues As Urbanara Secures €3.5m From TA Venture
Lately we've seen the rise of e-commerce and online retailer stertups disrupting the relationship between distributors and the consumer. Etsy comes to mind of course. Meanwhile, Made.com in the UK is leading the charge, and lately Llustre (also UK) has hit on a model of re-connecting designers with consumers.
That trend continues today as Urbanara, an online retailer for "high quality home textiles and home wares" supplied direct from the people who make them, secures a significant funding round. TA Venture, together with a group of international investors, including... Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 10:03am
Motorola Mobility Says $12.5B Google Deal To Close Tuesday Or Wednesday. Layoffs Coming?
Google has reached the final regulatory hurdle to its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, with China approving the transaction over the weekend, and today Motorola Mobility filed an 8-K form that notes that it will close in the next two business days.
So what happens next? A “listening tour,” a source tells us, with new management visiting the whole of the operation, “seeing what everyone does, then making decisions.” One decision that may be close at hand has to do with headcount: we have heard that there will be layoffs coming imminently. Read more...
TechCrunch, May 21, 9:59am