Media

Like countless other industries, mobile phone sales got hit hard in 2020. The industry hit a 10.5% decline for the year, as COVID-19 first decimated the supply and later consumer demand for devices. It was the latest in a rough couple of years for manufacturers, but 2020 hit significantly harder th

Beam has raised a $9.5 million Series A round. The company is working on a new web browser that completely rethinks the way you start a web session and browse the web. The startup is founded by Dom Leca and Sébastien Métrot. Dom Leca previously worked on Sparrow, an email app with an opinionated

TikTok this morning announced a new feature that aims to combat the spread of misinformation on its platform. In addition to removing videos that are identified to be spreading false information, as verified by fact-checking partners, the company says it will now also flag videos where fact checks

Grocery delivery startup Good Eggs is announcing that it has raised $100 million in new funding, and that it’s planning to launch in Southern California in either the summer or fall of this year. Parts of this story might sound familiar to readers familiar with Good Eggs — when the startup

Facebook spent more time than usual talking about their success with VR in their quarterly earnings call, taking time to note developer success and their own wins peddling their latest Quest 2 VR headset. One of the VR platform’s remaining quirks is a general lack of third-party support for a

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced today that Amazon will be required to pay $61.7 million to settle charges that it withheld some customer tips from its Amazon Flex drivers over a two and a half year period. According to the complaint against Amazon and its subsidiary Amazon Logistics, th

There are some additions to the technewss team that I’m happy to announce. First, Kirsten Korosec, who has been with us for more than two years, was promoted to Transportation Editor. Kirsten has done amazing work, helping to elevate our foothold in the transportation space and making our Mo

Uber today announced plans to acquire alcohol delivery service Drizly. The approximately $1.1 billion deal includes stock and cash and is expected to close in the first half of the year. The plan will build Drizly's marketplace directly into the Uber Eats app, though the company notes that it w

If you were itching to launch an email newsletter via Twitter following its acquisition of the Dutch newsletter platform Revue last month, you’ll have to wait a bit longer for a fully featured integration. But Twitter has quietly added a newsletter link to its web app — pointing users o

Google rethinks its gaming strategy, Microsoft rolls out its quantum computing platform and UiPath is now valued at $35 billion. This is your Daily Crunch for February 1, 2021. The big story: Google shutters internal game studios When Google announced its Stadia cloud platform, it a

When Google originally announced Stadia, its cloud gaming service, the company also announced a first-party game studio. Stadia Games and Entertainment was supposed to release exclusive titles for the new platform. And yet, Google has changed its mind and is now shutting down its internal game stud

Every sport has its practice drills and exercises to help players hone skills between games. Why would esports be any different? Gwoop, a startup out of Minnesota, wants to be the place where gamers go to train between matches. They’re building up a collection of free browser-based training t

Following its $16 million Series B last fall, event discovery network IRL is launching a new website that adds more social features around events, including profiles, chats and the ability to join group events, among other things. With the changes, users will also be able to receive personalized ev

Last fall, Amazon introduced a new biometric device, Amazon One, that allowed customers to pay at Amazon Go stores using their palm. Today, the company says the device is being rolled out to additional Amazon stores in Seattle — an expansion that will make the system available across eight to