Media

Google News Showcase visitors will soon be able to read select paywalled articles at no extra charge. That’s one of several announcements that the search giant made today about News Showcase, the program where it pays publishers (with $1 billion committed initially) to license their content f

Spotify is today launching its 2020 Wrapped personalized experience — the company’s popular year-end review of users’ favorite artists, songs, genres and podcasts. This year, however, Spotify is making a few changes. For starters, Wrapped will be exclusively available on mobile fo

Apple today released its highly anticipated annual list of the best apps and games of 2020. As in previous years, App Store editors selected the winners based on factors like the app’s quality, creative design, usability and use of Apple technology, among other things. The “Best of 2020

People are getting frustrated that Stories are everywhere now, but Google Maps is keeping it old school. Instead of adding tiny circles to the top of the app’s screen, Google Maps is introducing its own news feed. Technically, Google calls its new feature the “Community Feed,” as

IT security software company Ivanti has acquired two security companies: Enterprise mobile security firm MobileIron and corporate virtual network provider Pulse Secure. In a statement on Tuesday, Ivanti said it bought MobileIron for $872 million in stock — with 91% of the shareholders voting in f

Google today introduced a new mobile management and security solution, Android Enterprise Essentials, which, despite its name, is actually aimed at small to medium-sized businesses. The company explains this solution leverages Google’s experience in building Android Enterprise device manageme

Many U.S. consumers spent this year’s Black Friday sales event shopping from home on mobile devices. That led to first-time installs of mobile shopping apps in the U.S. to break a new record for single-day installs on Black Friday 2020, according to a report from Sensor Tower. The firm estima

A Facebook-funded body that the tech giant set up to distance itself from tricky and potentially reputation-damaging content moderation decisions has announced the first bundle of cases it will consider. In a press release on its website the Facebook Oversight Board (FOB) says it sifted through mor

Qualcomm kicked off an all-virtual version of its annual summit this morning by announcing the launch of the the Snapdragon 888 platform. The chipmaker is clearly saving some key information for later in the virtual event, because it has yet to reveal a ton about its next SoC. We do, however, have

The Libra Association, a consortium created by Facebook to support its Libra cryptocurrency efforts, announced this morning that it has a new name — the Diem Association — and made some key hires ahead of its launch. This is just the latest course correction since the Libra project was announce

WhatsApp is finally upping its wallpapers and stickers game, delivering some much-awaited aesthetics updates to the popular app that more than 2 billion people use. The instant messaging service said on Tuesday that it will now allow users to set custom wallpapers for different chats in a bid to ma

Continuing its annual tradition, Google today announced its Best of 2020 awards — the company’s list of the best apps, games, movies and books for the year. Not surprisingly, the top apps picked by both Google Play users and editors reflect the stressful year that 2020 has been, with a

Facebook makes a billion-dollar acquisition, we learn more about Twitter’s Clubhouse-style feature and Moderna applies for emergency authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine. This is your Daily Crunch for November 30, 2020. The big story: Facebook acquires Kustomer for $1B Kusto

A French administration in charge of consumer rights and fraud has investigated Wish, the mobile e-commerce platform that recently filed to go public. While the company generated $1.9 billion in revenue in 2019, the French administration believes Wish could be selling products, such as sneakers and