Year: 2018

When Google Cloud brought Diane Greene on board at the end of 2015, one of her goals was to expand the division’s partnership network, an approach she found worked quite well when she was running VMware in the early 2000s. It appears to be working at Google too.

This week at Google Next, the company’s annual cloud conference, they announced the partner program had grown significantly since the beginning of last year. “Since the start of 2017, we’ve increased the number of technology partners by 10x and we’ve more than doubled our team supporting these partners,” Google’s Nan Boden and Nina Harding wrote in a blog post on partner program progress.

Google is partnering with a variety of large enterprise vendors from Cisco to SAP to NetApp to Diane Greene’s old company, VMware. In addition, they are also working with the traditional systems integrators like Accenture, Deloitte, KPMG and others.

All of this is enabling Google Cloud customers to work through familiar channels while helping Google to build out its cloud business and gain more traction in the enterprise. Partners in general help customers work with a platform like Google Cloud more easily by providing integrations that might not otherwise exist.

One thing Google has going for it, especially on the G Suite side of the house, which includes Gmail, Docs, Drive and Calendar, is sheer numbers with millions of users. It benefits the partner to work with a company like Google Cloud to help all their common users, and perhaps attract new ones, and it benefits Google because it makes their cloud services all the more valuable to the customer.

The company sees Software as a Service in particular as a key area for growth and they announced out a new partnership program this week with access to more Google personnel and marketing funding to help encourage more interaction with SaaS partners on the platform. They already have multiple agreements in place with popular SaaS vendors including Salesforce, Box, MongoDB, Zenoss, Elastic, RedisLabs, JFrog, BetterCloud, DialPad, and many others

Cloud computing has always been different from traditional enterprise computing because cooperation has always been the watch word. Even companies like Salesforce and DialPad and Cisco and SAP that could be competing with Google on some levels see the benefits of working with them (and other cloud providers). It’s what their customers want, and cooperation when it makes sense, benefits all parties involved.

Google was already worth more than $800 billion and, while well short of Apple, is now jumping into that batch of companies that are on their way to being a $1 trillion company.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, substantially outperformed market expectations in its second quarter by bringing in $32.66 billion. That’s a 26 percent increase year-over-year, and, perhaps more significantly, it’s a faster rate of increase than it saw in the same quarter last year. The company’s second-quarter revenue in 2017 was a 21 percent jump from that in 2016. It’s a bit of a handful, but either way it shows that Alphabet still continues to — unsurprisingly — print money off its advertising business even as its cost-per-click (one of the metrics that indicates the value of its advertisements) continues to decline.

Following the report, Alphabet shares jumped an additional 5 percent, making its valuation about neck-and-neck with Amazon — though, again, well short of Apple. But it wasn’t that long ago that Apple hit a $900 billion market cap and we started talking about it being a contender to hit $1 trillion. Google’s advertising business continues to be healthy and growing. While it’s getting slapped with a massive fine by the EU, this doesn’t seem to bother Wall Street all that much as it sees Alphabet as a company that will continue to grow over time.

Google’s “other revenue,” which includes its very increasingly important cloud efforts, rose substantially to $4.43 billion. But comparing the growth patterns, Google’s advertising revenue grew around 24 percent, while Google’s other revenue grew around 37 percent year-over-year. This isn’t so dissimilar from the patterns you’ll see with Amazon, where its core business continues to grow but its AWS growth appears to be increasingly contributing to its growth and performance. It’s still a slice-of-a-slice of its advertising revenue, but it does represent some substantial upside.

That’s going to be critical going forward as Google tries to convince investors that it’s not just an advertising company, but also a services company, with a set of hardware, and a platform company beyond even that. As Google continues to capture developers with its deep-learning framework TensorFlow, and lock them into its own ecosystem with hardware like the TPU geared toward deep learning, it’ll continue to see a lot of momentum as deep learning tools proliferate across the entire technology industry. Indeed, TensorFlow is increasingly killing off a lot of the complexity that goes into complicated machine learning problems, and it’s going to be a strong lure to get companies onto its cloud platform.

That EU fine also got its own line item in Google’s earnings report, which is kind of interesting in a sort of zeitgeist-y way.

Its other bets — not to be confused with other revenue — that include its other ancillary projects that may or may not pan out and be part of Alphabet’s future business continued to see some improvement by hitting $145 million in revenue in the second quarter this year. Its losses there widened from a loss of $633 million to $732 million.

The Trump Administration is planning a proposal that would seize control away from California regulators and prevent them from enforcing the state’s own emissions standards.

The planned proposal, revealed in a report by Bloomberg, aims to revise standards that are among the strictest in the country. The revision would also impact California’s mandate on electric vehicle sales in the state.

California is the only state allowed to regulate tailpipe emissions under the federal Clean Air Act thanks to a waiver it received in 2009 from the Environmental Protection Agency. Other states can follow the federal regulation or the stricter standards set by the California Air Resources Board, but they can’t set their own.

The EPA and the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are reportedly backing the proposal, each agency providing its own remedy to strip California of its authority. The EPA is expected to propose revoking the Clean Air Act waiver given to California. NHTSA is planning to argue that a 1975 law that enacted the first federal fuel efficiency standards prohibits the state from regulating tailpipe emissions.

California is hardly going to roll over on this proposal. The state is in the midst of hitting aggressive goals as part of a plan approved last year to cut emissions in the state by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030.

The proposal—presuming it sees the light of day—will be the first shot in what is expected to be a long battle in the U.S. courts. While an attack on California’s clean car mandate will cause some uncertainty,  it’s unlikely to derail the influx of electric vehicles poised for release over the next several years by an increasingly long list of automakers that includes Ford, VW, and Porsche.

Netgear home security spinoff Arlo just added another key hardware piece to its growing portfolio of connected devices. The Arlo Audio Doorbell is a kind of Ring/Nest (to which it bears a pretty striking resemblance) competitor that sends calls to the home owner’s smartphone every time someone buzzes the door. Visitors can either talk to the user or leave a voicemail message.

The product, which runs on two of AA batteries (getting around a year of use, according to the company) or can be wired directly into the house’s electrical system.

Interestingly, unlike much of the competition, Arlo didn’t build camera functionality directly into the doorbell. That’s likely, in part, a cost cutting measure. It also gives users some flexibility. If that do want that funtionality, they can pair it with one of the company’s numerous cameras.

It can also be paired with the new Smart Chime accessory, offering a more traditional doorbell experience. You can install as many of those as you want around your gigantic, cavernous home. Both new products arrive in the fall. No price has been announced, but the product should sell pretty briskly, given how successful the rest of the company’s line has proven, thus far. 

Musical.ly has begun redirecting users of its Live.ly app, which it decided to kill off last month, to a competing app called LiveMe. Existing Live.ly users are being pointed to LiveMe through an in-app message, it says. While it’s a fairly common industry practice for companies to direct users to similar apps or services when a product of theirs is being sunsetted, in this case, Musical.ly’s decision to close down Live.ly and send users to LiveMe was actually a contractually obligated part of Musical.ly’s nearly $1 billion acquisition by Chinese technology company Bytedance last year.

A clause in Bytedance’s agreement to acquire Musical.ly stated that, if the deal went through, Musical.ly would have to close Live.ly within six months, according to a source with knowledge of the deal.

The agreement also said that Live.ly would have to point users to LiveMe for at least 30 days following its closure, we learned, when verifying the information.

The issue at hand was a competing investment – right around the time of the Musical.ly acquisition, Bytedance had also put $50 million into the live-streaming app LiveMe. Apparently, it didn’t want to operate two rival properties.

Clearly, this request was not a deal-breaker for Musical.ly – in fact, it’s integrating Live.ly’s feature set into its own app. That means it will still be something of a competitor to LiveMe, though now no longer a direct one. Musical.ly’s main app, after all, is not known today for its live streaming, but rather for lip syncing videos that are recorded and edited using the app’s included visual effects and editing tools.

In addition, Live.ly had not been able to attract the viewership numbers that Musical.ly had. The company said, when confirming Live.ly’s closure last month, the majority of live stream views were taking place in Musical.ly itself, not in its spinoff.

That said, Live.ly had a fair number of users. Though nowhere near as big as Musical.ly’s 200+ million registered users or 60 million actives, its live stream app had 26 million installs, around 70 percent in the U.S., according to Sensor Tower’s data.

But LiveMe is bigger – it has more than 60 million users and has paid out over $30 million to its broadcasters through its direct virtual gifting program, the company claims.

LiveMe is also not the only app operated by the company. Other LiveMe portfolio apps include the social short video app Cheez, and mobile gaming and esports live streaming app Fluxr. To date, it has raised a total of $110 million.

Live.ly isn’t only redirecting users to LiveMe, however. In its own announcement about the news today, it shows a screenshot that’s pointing Live.ly users to Twitter’s Periscope, for instance. The message also notes that the Live.ly domain name is for sale, and provides an email for sales inquiries.

Musical.ly hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment.

Meet the Travel Backpack 45L. It’s Peak Design’s latest creation and the company just launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring it to life. This product marks the eighth Kickstarter campaign for Peak Design — all of which have been wildly successful.

Peak Design turned to Kickstarter in 2014 to launch the first generation of its Capture camera clip. Over 5,200 people pledged support to bring that product to life. Since then, Peak Design used Kickstarter to launch several camera straps and mounts and, most notably, the Everyday Backpack, Tote and Sling, which saw pledges from 26,000 people for over $6 million. Peak Design collected over $15 million in pledges through its seven previous Kickstarter campaigns and is now the most active crowdfunded company — miss you, Pebble.

Crowdfunding is deeply lodged into the Peak Design’s ethos, the company tells me. For one, Peak Design feels crowdfunding helps with the costs associated with bringing new products to market. The company offers pre-sale discounts through Kickstarter campaigns, which covers the costs of the product and lets the company use the extra to develop the next product. Second, Peak Design says it leverages the two-way communication Kickstarter provides to tweak product design, clean up messaging and ensure a high-level customer experience.

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The $299 Travel Backpack 45L is the company’s largest bag to date and is designed with a traveler in mind. The bag is constructed from 400D weather nylon and the inside is coated to provide additional water resistance. The bag has compression and expansion straps to let it grow or shrink as needed. A bevy of lockable zippers and access points seem to be positioned in a smart way around the bag.

TechCrunch loves Peak Design’s Everyday Backpack. Several of us use it as our everyday bag. Both sizes can handle a 15-inch MacBook Pro and they have the right mix of storage and access. I trust this new bag was designed with a similar level of competency.

Along with the backpack, Peak Design also released a series of packing cubes, each designed to address a different travel need. These are sold separately from the Travel Backpack and start at $29.95. There are six different types: standard packing cubes, a toiletry bag, an electronic bag, a camera bag, a shoe pouch, and a rain cover that’s made out of 200D rip-stop nylon.

What’s Peak Design Founder and CEO Peter Dering’s favorite part of the new bag?

“The entire back panel,” he says. “Not only does it beautifully conceal all the straps, it’s also got a beautiful grab handle that, for some reason I don’t understand, just makes you feel like a badass when you use it. It kind of feels like when Neo grabs that bag of guns in the Matrix, only my bag is full of drones, mirrorless cameras, and underwear. We’re all in agreement that any character Keanu Reeves plays is an aspirational character, right?”

I guess he’s right.

The $299 Travel Backpack 45L and packing cubes are available for pre-order on Kickstarter now and the company expects them to be in major retailers by the holiday season.

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Bag design with Peak Design

Alexa is finally getting an equalizer feature, letting users adjust EQ settings with commands like “Alexa, decrease the treble.” It’s nice feature that I’m honestly a bit surprised the company didn’t introduce a while back. After it rolls out over the next couple of days, you’ll be able to satisfyingly tell your Echo, “Alexa, turn up the bass.”

The full features are only coming to the U.S. for the time being, making it possible to adjust different bands between -6 db and 6 db on the standard Echo, the Dot, Plus, Show and Echo Spot.

The company is also offering up the feature for developers and has provided it to third-party speaker manufacturers, for use on products like the Polk Command Bar and Sonos Beam. That, at least, is part of the company’s push to get Alexa on as many non-Echo devices as possible, as it looks to compete with premium smart speakers like Apple’s HomePod and the Google Home Max.

Last year, Amazon was rumored to be working on a HomePod competitor of its own. That eventually semi-materialized with the release of the second-gen Echo. The device offered a more premium design and improved audio, but wasn’t the high-end speaker some were anticipating. At the very least, this new feature offers a bit more customization —  and, perhaps, lays the groundwork for a truly premium Echo offering.

Sonos today took the next step in its initial public offering price, setting a range for the shares it intends to sell that will help calibrate the final amount of money – and valuation — that it will have when it begins its trading debut.

This isn’t the final, final step in the IPO process as this is usually done to test the waters and figure out the exact appetite for the company’s shares when it goes public. Sonos is offering 5,555,555 (a wonderful palindrome of a number) shares, where it will raise as much as $105 million if it prices on the upper end of its range and sells them at $19 per share. The official range is between $17 and $19, but this can go up and down throughout the process — with a drop-off signaling a lack of interest or skepticism, and an increased range a sign of heavy demand. Companies will sometimes lowball their range, though we won’t find out for a little bit where everything lands.

Insiders are also selling 8,333,333 million shares in this initial public offering. Including that, the IPO could end up raising around $250 at the middle of that $17 to $19 range that it’s estimating including the shares sold by existing stockholders. The proceeds from those shares sold by stockholders aren’t going to end up in Sonos’ hands, so the company itself is only going to net around that $105 million at the top end of its range. There’s also an over-allotment, typically called a greenshoe, that consists of shares sold by Sonos and existing stockholders. That could add a total of $15 million and $22.5 million respectively at a price of $18 in the middle of that range.

The company is offering some preliminary estimates for its second quarter, saying it generated between $206.4 million and $208.4 million in revenue with a net loss of between $29 million and $27.1 million (this is probably because the final accounting isn’t finished up as we’re just about entering the front end for earnings season for major companies). The company said it sold between 880,000 and 890,000 products as an estimated range in the second quarter this year, up from 796,000 products in the second quarter last year.

Sonos is nicely positioned as a third-party option in an ecosystem that’s getting increasingly crowded by proprietary speakers from the larger companies that own voice assistants like the Echo, HomePod, and Google Home. But Sonos has been around for a considerable amount of time and has clearly built up a significant following to ensure that it could find itself operating as an independent public company. In its fiscal 2017 year, Sonos said it brought in nearly $1 billion in revenue, an increase of 10% year-over-year. The initial filing indicated that the company had sold a total of 19 million products in 6.9 million households, with customers listening to 70 hours of content each month.

This is basically the next step in the process as the company continues its march toward making its debut, and we’ll get more details soon enough as to whether or not investors are interested in a publicly-traded company that’s known for its speakers.

Synchronize your Apple watches and lock on to the fact that you have just three days — 72 hours — to save yourself up to $1,200 on passes to Disrupt San Francisco 2018. Our biggest, boldest Disrupt takes place at Moscone Center West on September 5-7, and you’re running short on time to get the best possible price. Our early-bird pricing detonates at midnight PST on July 25, so stop procrastinating and go buy your pass to the best tech startup show going. Get your ticket today.

We can list all sorts of reasons for you to go, and believe us, we will. But consider what one of your peers — Luke Heron, an early-stage founder and CEO of TestCard.com — thinks about the Disrupt experience.

“I’m a serial proselytizer when it comes to TechCrunch events. If you’re a startup founder or an entrepreneur, attending Disrupt is a no-brainer.”

Heron also took advantage of CrunchMatch, our free, curated business match-making service that helps connect founders with investors who share similar business goals.

“We used the CrunchMatch platform to schedule a bunch of meetings on our second day of the show. We met with six or seven VCs and, by and large, they were very positive meetings.”

If you’re an investor specializing in early-stage startups, Disrupt SF 2018 is an essential event. You’ll see an incredible cohort of pre-Series A companies go head-to-head in Startup Battlefield, where they’ll vie for $100,000 in non-equity cash and life-changing investor love.

Here’s what early-stage investor Michael Kocan of Trend Discovery had to say about his Disrupt experience.

“I get the most value at the intersection of CrunchMatch and Startup Battlefield. If I see an interesting company present on stage, I use CrunchMatch to quickly schedule a meeting with them for later that day. It makes vetting deals extremely efficient.”

Founders, investors, marketers and job-seekers alike will find more than 1,200 startups exhibiting in Startup Alley. That’s prime real estate for discovering a new partner, finding a job, engaging in creative networking or possibly even finding a unicorn-in-the-rough. Regardless of your motives, the depth and breadth of technology and talent on display is worth your serious time and attention.

On top of all that, Disrupt SF 2018 offers more than 40 presentations from world-class speakers and rising stars, interactive workshops and Q&A Sessions, our Virtual Hackathon and the always-raucous TechCrunch After Party.

We’d love for you to join us at Disrupt San Francisco 2018 on September 5-7. And why not get the best price you can? July 25 will be here in a flash, so save some cash and buy your tickets now.