“The OA” is ending after two seasons on Netflix . The series premiered in December 2016 with eight “chapters” that veered pretty far from traditional TV storytelling — the opening credits didn’t roll until nearly the end of the first episode, and episode length varied from 30 minutes to one hour and 10 minutes. Then,…
Wear OS’s struggles have not been the result of a lack of trying from all parties. Google’s been trying in earnest to break into the wearables game for several years, and in spite of some high profile hardware partners, the company has failed to make a dent. At this point it’s honestly tough to get…
Fever, a startup that uses proprietary algorithms to help companies plan events, announced today that it has raised $35 million led by Rakuten Capital, the investment arm of Japanese internet giant Rakuten . Other investors in the round, which brings Fever’s total raised to $70 million, included Atresmedia, Accel and Michael Zeisser, the former chairman…
Users reported issues with Instagram and Facebook Sunday morning. [Update as of 12:45 p.m. pacific] Facebook says the outage affecting its apps has been resolved. “Earlier today some people may have had trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps due to a networking issue. We have resolved the issue and are fully back up, we apologize…
Roblox is big. Bigger than Minecraft big. The massively multiple online title has been around since 2006, but the game has been achieving a crazy amount of momentum of late. On Friday, it announced via blog post that it’s grown past 100 million monthly active users, pushing past Minecraft, which is currently in the (still…
Tesla is resurrecting a popular benefit that CEO Elon Musk once called “unsustainable” as it attempts to boost sales of its more expensive electric vehicles. Tesla announced Saturday that all new Model S sedans and Model X SUVs will come with free unlimited access to its network of electric vehicle chargers known as superchargers. The…
Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about SoftBank’s second Vision Fund. Before that, I noted some challenges plaguing mental health tech startups. Remember, you can…
Starting early next year Google will present Android users in Europe with a search engine choice screen when handsets bundle its own search service by default. In a blog post announcing the latest change to flow from the European Union’s record-breaking $5 billion antitrust enforcement against Android last year, when the Commission found Google had…
Grab popcorn. As internet fights go, this one deserves your full attention — because the fight is over your attention. Your eyeballs and the creepy ads that trade data on you to try to swivel ’em. In the blue corner, the Internet Advertising Association’s CEO, Randall Rothenberg, who has been taking to Twitter increasingly loudly…
In an era of massive data breaches, most recently the Capital One fiasco, the risk of a cyberattack and the costly consequences are the top existential threat to corporations big and small. At TechCrunch’s first-ever enterprise-focused event (p.s. early-bird sales end August 9), that topic will be front and center throughout the day. That’s why…
