Author: azeeadmin

Last month’s Gimlet was a watershed moment for podcasting. Spotify acquired the network for a reported $230 million, in a pricey bid to get serious about the format. But what of all the folks employed by Gimlet?

It’s tough to know how these deals will shake out for those not involved in the closed door deal making. As such, the team is looking to get out in front of things by unionizing with the Writers Guild of America, as the network transitions from small media startup to part of a much larger tech giant.

The team has launched a new Gimlet Union Twitter feed, outlining the team’s asks.

“Gimlet is no longer the small, scrappy operation memorably documented on the first season of StartUp,” it writes in an open letter. “Our union is an expression of passion for what we do, and a proactive effort to work with management to shape the future of the company. It’s important for us to solidify the things that make Gimlet a great place to work, and to address whatever issues may arise.”

Among the asks are employee input into decision making, clear contractor policies and more transparent job descriptions. It’s fair to not that a lot of these things have the tendency to be a bit murkier at the launch of a startup. More straightforward work policies should be achievable under the umbrella of the larger organization.

For the love of robots, don’t miss your chance to save $100 on admission to TechCrunch Sessions: Robotics + AI. Our annual, day-long event goes deep on all things related to robotics and artificial intelligence, and you’ll hear from the greatest tech and investment minds and makers. Danger, Will Robinson, danger! The early-bird price — and the $100 savings — disappears in only two days, so buy your ticket right now.

Last year, more than 1,000 people attended our robo-fest, which makes it a prime opportunity for networking. This year, we’re adding CrunchMatch — TechCrunch’s free business match-making service — into the mix. This handy tool simplifies the networking process by helping you find and connect with the right people based on specific mutual criteria, goals and interests.

We’ve prepared an outstanding lineup of interviews, panel discussions, demos and workshops, and we still have a few more surprises to add over the next few weeks. Check out the event agenda and keep checking back for updates. In the meantime, here’s a taste to wet your proverbial whistle.

Founders might wish they could read investors’ minds, but we have the next best thing. A TechCrunch editor will moderate an all-star robotics and AI investor panel with Peter Barrett (Playground Global), Helen Liang (FoundersX Ventures), Andy Wheeler (GV) and Hidetaka Aoki (Global Brain). Even better, the panel will take audience questions, too.

Human-robot interaction has come a long way from Issac Asimov’s short story, “Robbie.” HRI incorporates just about every aspect of AI and robotics, and we’re thrilled to host a panel discussion on this challenging topic featuring Anca Dragan (UC Berkeley’s Interact Lab), Rana el Kaliouby(Affectiva) and Matt Willis (SoftBank Robotics). Learn where HRI stands today and where it will lead tomorrow.

Building a tech startup ain’t easy, as you well know. But building a robotics startup, well, let’s just say it’s not for the faint-hearted. We’ve tapped several brave hearts to share their lessons learned. You’ll hear from Melonee Wise, CEO of Fetch Robotics (funds raised: $48 million), Manish Kothari, president of SRI Ventures and Nima Keivan, CTO and co-founder of Canvas Technology (funds raised: $15 million).

TechCrunch Sessions: Robotics + AI takes place April 18, at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. If you love saving money as much as you love robots, buy your early-bird ticket now. That bird disappears — along with your $100 — in just two days.

For the love of robots, don’t miss your chance to save $100 on admission to TechCrunch Sessions: Robotics + AI. Our annual, day-long event goes deep on all things related to robotics and artificial intelligence, and you’ll hear from the greatest tech and investment minds and makers. Danger, Will Robinson, danger! The early-bird price — and the $100 savings — disappears in only two days, so buy your ticket right now.

Last year, more than 1,000 people attended our robo-fest, which makes it a prime opportunity for networking. This year, we’re adding CrunchMatch — TechCrunch’s free business match-making service — into the mix. This handy tool simplifies the networking process by helping you find and connect with the right people based on specific mutual criteria, goals and interests.

We’ve prepared an outstanding lineup of interviews, panel discussions, demos and workshops, and we still have a few more surprises to add over the next few weeks. Check out the event agenda and keep checking back for updates. In the meantime, here’s a taste to wet your proverbial whistle.

Founders might wish they could read investors’ minds, but we have the next best thing. A TechCrunch editor will moderate an all-star robotics and AI investor panel with Peter Barrett (Playground Global), Helen Liang (FoundersX Ventures), Andy Wheeler (GV) and Hidetaka Aoki (Global Brain). Even better, the panel will take audience questions, too.

Human-robot interaction has come a long way from Issac Asimov’s short story, “Robbie.” HRI incorporates just about every aspect of AI and robotics, and we’re thrilled to host a panel discussion on this challenging topic featuring Anca Dragan (UC Berkeley’s Interact Lab), Rana el Kaliouby(Affectiva) and Matt Willis (SoftBank Robotics). Learn where HRI stands today and where it will lead tomorrow.

Building a tech startup ain’t easy, as you well know. But building a robotics startup, well, let’s just say it’s not for the faint-hearted. We’ve tapped several brave hearts to share their lessons learned. You’ll hear from Melonee Wise, CEO of Fetch Robotics (funds raised: $48 million), Manish Kothari, president of SRI Ventures and Nima Keivan, CTO and co-founder of Canvas Technology (funds raised: $15 million).

TechCrunch Sessions: Robotics + AI takes place April 18, at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. If you love saving money as much as you love robots, buy your early-bird ticket now. That bird disappears — along with your $100 — in just two days.

Wattpad is further expanding into Asia with a new partnership and undisclosed strategic investment from Times Bridge, the global investment arm of the Times Group in India. The deal aims to help the storytelling community establish a larger presence in the country where it already counts over 2.6 million monthly users who have shared more than 4 million stories to date, it says.

Similar to its recent partnership with entertainment partner Huayi Brothers Korea, the deal with Times Bridge is also focused on turning more Wattpad stories into books, TV shows, movies, and other digital projects in the region.

This is an area where Wattpad has found some success. In the U.S., one of the stories on its platform became the Netflix teen hit “The Kissing Booth,” and other stories have become projects at Hulu, AwesomenessTV, eOne, Sony, SYFY, iflix, Universal Cable Productions (NBCU), and elsewhere. The company also just launched its own books division to better capitalize on bringing its online stories to print.

India has been a more recent focus for Wattpad, following its  $51 million raise from Tencent. Soon after, the company appointed its first Head of Asia for Wattpad Studios, Dexter Ong. And it also recently hired its first GM of India, Devashish Sharma, who has been working with local partners to turn its stories into movies, TV, digital and print in the region.

“Millions of Indian readers and writers have already found a home Wattpad,” said Sharma, in a statement. “Times Bridge and The Times Group have an unmatched media and entertainment portfolio, and connections with some of India’s most-respected authors and cultural figures. We’re excited to work together to create new opportunities for Indian storytellers,” he added.

Today, Wattpad’s app supports a number of local languages including Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Assamese, Marathi, and Oriya.

To find the stories that become popular, Wattpad relies on a combination of human curation and technology – the latter with its Story DNA machine learning system that helps to identify the standouts by deconstructing things like sentence structure, word use, grammar and other factors that contribute to popularity.

“We’re thrilled to work with Times Bridge expand our footprint in the region and create more opportunities for India’s rich literary community to tell their stories, reaching new audiences in India and around the world,” said Wattpad co-founder and CEO Allen Lau, in a statement.

Wattpad didn’t disclose Times Group’s investment. The firm has previously partnered with other tech companies in India, and has investments in Uber, Airbnb, Coursera, Houzz, MUBI, Smule, and others.

Newly released documents reveal Immigration and Customs Enforcement is tracking and targeting immigrants through a massive license plate reader database supplied with data from local police departments — in some cases violating sanctuary laws.

The documents, obtained by a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and released Tuesday, reveal the vehicle surveillance system collects over a hundred million license plates a month from some of the largest cities in the U.S., including New York and Los Angeles, both of which are covered under laws limiting police cooperation with immigration agencies.

More than 9,000 ICE agents have access to the database, run by Vigilant Solutions, feeding some six billion vehicle detection records into Thomson Reuters’ investigative platform LEARN, which police departments can buy access to.

“The public has a right to know when a government agency — especially an immoral and rogue agency such as ICE — is exploiting a mass surveillance database that is a threat to the privacy and safety of drivers across the United States,” said Vasudha Talla, staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, in an email to TechCrunch.

Talla, who sued ICE to release the documents, said the government “should not have unfettered access to information that reveals where we live, where we work, and our private habits.” Critics have noted several high-profile cases of police misusing and improperly accessing license plate data.

Automatic license plate readers (ALPR) scan and detect license plates, along with the time, date and location from thousands of cameras installed across the country to spot criminals and fugitives with warrants out for their arrest. The ACLU previously called it one of the new and emerging forms of mass surveillance in the United States. Companies like Vigilant feed data collected from ALPR cameras into databases accessible to law enforcement and federal agencies, which the ACLU accused ICE of using to find and deport immigrants.

ICE has a “hot list” of more than 1,100 license plates of suspects, felons, or other subjects of interest, according to the documents released. Plates on the hot list trigger an alert to ICE agent that the vehicle has been spotted, including where and when.

“Hot lists are just one method by which ICE agents can track drivers with this system,” said Talla.

A spokesperson for ICE did not comment by our deadline on how many hot list detections led to deportations or removals from the U.S. Spokespeople for Thomson Reuters and Vigilant Solutions also did not comment.

It’s the third effort by ICE to secure access to the database in the past five years, after earlier attempts in 2014 over privacy concerns and 2015 over price negotiations failed. The agency rushed to secure the contract before a planned hike in cost by Thomson Reuters towards the end of 2017.

ICE spent $6.1 million on its latest contract in February 2018, gaining access to 80 law enforcement agencies covering almost two-thirds of the U.S. population. To allay fears of potential misuse, the agency was required to pass a revised privacy impact assessment explaining how ICE can and cannot use the license plate data. In one released email to an NPR reporter, ICE said agents “can only access data” uploaded by police departments if they elect to share through the system.

But the ACLU found emails of ICE agents directly contacting local law enforcement officers to ask for license plate search data, circumventing the database.

Over a years-long effort, one ICE agent — whose name was redacted by the government — sent several requests to a La Habra police detective by email for asking for license plate data.

La Habra is one of 169 police departments in California, and is one of dozens of departments known to use ALPR. But the city’s police department is not on Vigilant’s list of law enforcement partners that supply license plate data to ICE, the documents show.

We asked Jerry Price, chief of police at La Habra Police Department, if turning over records to ICE was in violation of California’s sanctuary status but would not comment.

“By going to local police informally, ICE is able to access locally collected driver location data without having to ask for formal access to the local system through the LEARN network, which could trigger local oversight or concern,” said Talla.

Other police departments were named as partners that actively feed data into the ICE-accessible database, like Upland, Merced, and Union City — three cities in California, which in 2018 passed state-wide laws that offer sanctuary to immigrants who might be in the country illegally or otherwise subject to deportation by ICE. The laws prohibit law enforcement in the state from sharing of license plate data with federal agencies, said Talla.

When reached, Union City police department chief Victor Derting did not comment. Spokespeople for Upland and Merced police departments did not respond to a request for comment.

The ACLU called on the immediate end to the license plate information sharing.

The documents also revealed how ICE initially considered trying to keep the database a secret, arguing that disclosing the capability would “almost immediately diminish its effectiveness as a law enforcement tool.”

Amid a controversial and questionable national emergency declared by the Trump administration, ICE remains a divisive agency more than ever. Last year, 19 of the top ICE investigators that investigate serious criminal cases, like drug smuggling and sex trafficking rings, called on the government to distance their work from ICE’s enforcement and removal operations unit, which investigates immigration violations and handles deportations.

In January, TechCrunch revealed dozens of ALPR cameras are still exposed on the internet — many of which are accessible without a password.

Newly released documents reveal Immigration and Customs Enforcement is tracking and targeting immigrants through a massive license plate reader database supplied with data from local police departments — in some cases violating sanctuary laws.

The documents, obtained by a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and released Tuesday, reveal the vehicle surveillance system collects over a hundred million license plates a month from some of the largest cities in the U.S., including New York and Los Angeles, both of which are covered under laws limiting police cooperation with immigration agencies.

More than 9,000 ICE agents have access to the database, run by Vigilant Solutions, feeding some six billion vehicle detection records into Thomson Reuters’ investigative platform LEARN, which police departments can buy access to.

“The public has a right to know when a government agency — especially an immoral and rogue agency such as ICE — is exploiting a mass surveillance database that is a threat to the privacy and safety of drivers across the United States,” said Vasudha Talla, staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, in an email to TechCrunch.

Talla, who sued ICE to release the documents, said the government “should not have unfettered access to information that reveals where we live, where we work, and our private habits.” Critics have noted several high-profile cases of police misusing and improperly accessing license plate data.

Automatic license plate readers (ALPR) scan and detect license plates, along with the time, date and location from thousands of cameras installed across the country to spot criminals and fugitives with warrants out for their arrest. The ACLU previously called it one of the new and emerging forms of mass surveillance in the United States. Companies like Vigilant feed data collected from ALPR cameras into databases accessible to law enforcement and federal agencies, which the ACLU accused ICE of using to find and deport immigrants.

ICE has a “hot list” of more than 1,100 license plates of suspects, felons, or other subjects of interest, according to the documents released. Plates on the hot list trigger an alert to ICE agent that the vehicle has been spotted, including where and when.

“Hot lists are just one method by which ICE agents can track drivers with this system,” said Talla.

A spokesperson for ICE did not comment by our deadline on how many hot list detections led to deportations or removals from the U.S. Spokespeople for Thomson Reuters and Vigilant Solutions also did not comment.

It’s the third effort by ICE to secure access to the database in the past five years, after earlier attempts in 2014 over privacy concerns and 2015 over price negotiations failed. The agency rushed to secure the contract before a planned hike in cost by Thomson Reuters towards the end of 2017.

ICE spent $6.1 million on its latest contract in February 2018, gaining access to 80 law enforcement agencies covering almost two-thirds of the U.S. population. To allay fears of potential misuse, the agency was required to pass a revised privacy impact assessment explaining how ICE can and cannot use the license plate data. In one released email to an NPR reporter, ICE said agents “can only access data” uploaded by police departments if they elect to share through the system.

But the ACLU found emails of ICE agents directly contacting local law enforcement officers to ask for license plate search data, circumventing the database.

Over a years-long effort, one ICE agent — whose name was redacted by the government — sent several requests to a La Habra police detective by email for asking for license plate data.

La Habra is one of 169 police departments in California, and is one of dozens of departments known to use ALPR. But the city’s police department is not on Vigilant’s list of law enforcement partners that supply license plate data to ICE, the documents show.

We asked Jerry Price, chief of police at La Habra Police Department, if turning over records to ICE was in violation of California’s sanctuary status but would not comment.

“By going to local police informally, ICE is able to access locally collected driver location data without having to ask for formal access to the local system through the LEARN network, which could trigger local oversight or concern,” said Talla.

Other police departments were named as partners that actively feed data into the ICE-accessible database, like Upland, Merced, and Union City — three cities in California, which in 2018 passed state-wide laws that offer sanctuary to immigrants who might be in the country illegally or otherwise subject to deportation by ICE. The laws prohibit law enforcement in the state from sharing of license plate data with federal agencies, said Talla.

When reached, Union City police department chief Victor Derting did not comment. Spokespeople for Upland and Merced police departments did not respond to a request for comment.

The ACLU called on the immediate end to the license plate information sharing.

The documents also revealed how ICE initially considered trying to keep the database a secret, arguing that disclosing the capability would “almost immediately diminish its effectiveness as a law enforcement tool.”

Amid a controversial and questionable national emergency declared by the Trump administration, ICE remains a divisive agency more than ever. Last year, 19 of the top ICE investigators that investigate serious criminal cases, like drug smuggling and sex trafficking rings, called on the government to distance their work from ICE’s enforcement and removal operations unit, which investigates immigration violations and handles deportations.

In January, TechCrunch revealed dozens of ALPR cameras are still exposed on the internet — many of which are accessible without a password.

Newly released documents reveal Immigration and Customs Enforcement is tracking and targeting immigrants through a massive license plate reader database supplied with data from local police departments — in some cases violating sanctuary laws.

The documents, obtained by a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and released Tuesday, reveal the vehicle surveillance system collects over a hundred million license plates a month from some of the largest cities in the U.S., including New York and Los Angeles, both of which are covered under laws limiting police cooperation with immigration agencies.

More than 9,000 ICE agents have access to the database, run by Vigilant Solutions, feeding some six billion vehicle detection records into Thomson Reuters’ investigative platform LEARN, which police departments can buy access to.

“The public has a right to know when a government agency — especially an immoral and rogue agency such as ICE — is exploiting a mass surveillance database that is a threat to the privacy and safety of drivers across the United States,” said Vasudha Talla, staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, in an email to TechCrunch.

Talla, who sued ICE to release the documents, said the government “should not have unfettered access to information that reveals where we live, where we work, and our private habits.” Critics have noted several high-profile cases of police misusing and improperly accessing license plate data.

Automatic license plate readers (ALPR) scan and detect license plates, along with the time, date and location from thousands of cameras installed across the country to spot criminals and fugitives with warrants out for their arrest. The ACLU previously called it one of the new and emerging forms of mass surveillance in the United States. Companies like Vigilant feed data collected from ALPR cameras into databases accessible to law enforcement and federal agencies, which the ACLU accused ICE of using to find and deport immigrants.

ICE has a “hot list” of more than 1,100 license plates of suspects, felons, or other subjects of interest, according to the documents released. Plates on the hot list trigger an alert to ICE agent that the vehicle has been spotted, including where and when.

“Hot lists are just one method by which ICE agents can track drivers with this system,” said Talla.

A spokesperson for ICE did not comment by our deadline on how many hot list detections led to deportations or removals from the U.S. Spokespeople for Thomson Reuters and Vigilant Solutions also did not comment.

It’s the third effort by ICE to secure access to the database in the past five years, after earlier attempts in 2014 over privacy concerns and 2015 over price negotiations failed. The agency rushed to secure the contract before a planned hike in cost by Thomson Reuters towards the end of 2017.

ICE spent $6.1 million on its latest contract in February 2018, gaining access to 80 law enforcement agencies covering almost two-thirds of the U.S. population. To allay fears of potential misuse, the agency was required to pass a revised privacy impact assessment explaining how ICE can and cannot use the license plate data. In one released email to an NPR reporter, ICE said agents “can only access data” uploaded by police departments if they elect to share through the system.

But the ACLU found emails of ICE agents directly contacting local law enforcement officers to ask for license plate search data, circumventing the database.

Over a years-long effort, one ICE agent — whose name was redacted by the government — sent several requests to a La Habra police detective by email for asking for license plate data.

La Habra is one of 169 police departments in California, and is one of dozens of departments known to use ALPR. But the city’s police department is not on Vigilant’s list of law enforcement partners that supply license plate data to ICE, the documents show.

We asked Jerry Price, chief of police at La Habra Police Department, if turning over records to ICE was in violation of California’s sanctuary status but would not comment.

“By going to local police informally, ICE is able to access locally collected driver location data without having to ask for formal access to the local system through the LEARN network, which could trigger local oversight or concern,” said Talla.

Other police departments were named as partners that actively feed data into the ICE-accessible database, like Upland, Merced, and Union City — three cities in California, which in 2018 passed state-wide laws that offer sanctuary to immigrants who might be in the country illegally or otherwise subject to deportation by ICE. The laws prohibit law enforcement in the state from sharing of license plate data with federal agencies, said Talla.

When reached, Union City police department chief Victor Derting did not comment. Spokespeople for Upland and Merced police departments did not respond to a request for comment.

The ACLU called on the immediate end to the license plate information sharing.

The documents also revealed how ICE initially considered trying to keep the database a secret, arguing that disclosing the capability would “almost immediately diminish its effectiveness as a law enforcement tool.”

Amid a controversial and questionable national emergency declared by the Trump administration, ICE remains a divisive agency more than ever. Last year, 19 of the top ICE investigators that investigate serious criminal cases, like drug smuggling and sex trafficking rings, called on the government to distance their work from ICE’s enforcement and removal operations unit, which investigates immigration violations and handles deportations.

In January, TechCrunch revealed dozens of ALPR cameras are still exposed on the internet — many of which are accessible without a password.

Automation Hero, formerly SalesHero, has secured $14.5 million in new funding led by Atomico, with participation by Baidu Ventures and Cherry Ventures. As part of the deal, Atomico principle Ben Blume will join the company’s board of directors.

The automation startup launched in 2017 as SalesHero, giving sales orgs a simple way to automate back office processes like filing an expense report or updating the CRM. It does this through an AI assistant called Robin — “Batman and Robin, it worked with the superhero theme, and it’s gender neutral,” cofounder and CEO Stefan Groschupf explained — that can be configured to go through the regular workflow and take care of repetitive tasks.

“We brought computers into the workplace because we believed they could make us more productive,” said Groschupf. “But in many companies, people spend a lot of time entering data and doing painful manual processes to make these machines happy.”

The idea was to give salespeople more time to actually do their job, which is selling to clients. If all the administrative and repetitive ‘paperwork’ is done by a computer, human employees can become more productive and efficient at skilled tasks.

By weaving together click robots, Automation Hero users can build out their own workflows through a no-code interface, tying together a wide variety of both structured and unstructured data sources. Those workflows are then presented in the inbox each morning by Robin, the AI assistant, and are executed as soon as the user gives the go ahead.

After launch, the team realized that other types of organizations, beyond sales departments, were building out automations. Insurance firms, in particular, were using the software to automate some of the repetitive tasks involved with filing and assessing claims.

This led to today’s rebrand to Automation Hero.

Groschupf said that by automating the process of filling out a single closing form, it saved one insurance firm’s 430 sales reps 18.46 years per year.

Automation Hero has now raised a total of $19 million.

“We’re really excited with Atomico to bring on a great VC and good people,” said Groschupf. “I’ve raised capital before and I’ve worked with some of the more questionable VCs, as it turns out. We’re super excited we’ve found an investor that really bakes important things, like a diversity policy and a family leave policy, right into the company’s investment agreement.”

Though he didn’t confirm, it’s likely that Groschupf is referring to KPCB, which has run into its fair share of controversy over the past few years and was an investor in Groschupf’s previous startup, Datameer.

Automation Hero, formerly SalesHero, has secured $14.5 million in new funding led by Atomico, with participation by Baidu Ventures and Cherry Ventures. As part of the deal, Atomico principle Ben Blume will join the company’s board of directors.

The automation startup launched in 2017 as SalesHero, giving sales orgs a simple way to automate back office processes like filing an expense report or updating the CRM. It does this through an AI assistant called Robin — “Batman and Robin, it worked with the superhero theme, and it’s gender neutral,” cofounder and CEO Stefan Groschupf explained — that can be configured to go through the regular workflow and take care of repetitive tasks.

“We brought computers into the workplace because we believed they could make us more productive,” said Groschupf. “But in many companies, people spend a lot of time entering data and doing painful manual processes to make these machines happy.”

The idea was to give salespeople more time to actually do their job, which is selling to clients. If all the administrative and repetitive ‘paperwork’ is done by a computer, human employees can become more productive and efficient at skilled tasks.

By weaving together click robots, Automation Hero users can build out their own workflows through a no-code interface, tying together a wide variety of both structured and unstructured data sources. Those workflows are then presented in the inbox each morning by Robin, the AI assistant, and are executed as soon as the user gives the go ahead.

After launch, the team realized that other types of organizations, beyond sales departments, were building out automations. Insurance firms, in particular, were using the software to automate some of the repetitive tasks involved with filing and assessing claims.

This led to today’s rebrand to Automation Hero.

Groschupf said that by automating the process of filling out a single closing form, it saved one insurance firm’s 430 sales reps 18.46 years per year.

Automation Hero has now raised a total of $19 million.

“We’re really excited with Atomico to bring on a great VC and good people,” said Groschupf. “I’ve raised capital before and I’ve worked with some of the more questionable VCs, as it turns out. We’re super excited we’ve found an investor that really bakes important things, like a diversity policy and a family leave policy, right into the company’s investment agreement.”

Though he didn’t confirm, it’s likely that Groschupf is referring to KPCB, which has run into its fair share of controversy over the past few years and was an investor in Groschupf’s previous startup, Datameer.

In an update to the chromium engine, which underpins Google’s popular Chrome browser, the search giant has quietly updated the lists of default search engines it offers per market — expanding the choice of search product users can pick from in markets around the world.

Most notably it’s expanded search engine lists to include pro-privacy rivals in more than 60 markets globally.

The changes, which appear to have been pushed out with the Chromium 73 stable release yesterday, come at a time when Google is facing rising privacy and antitrust scrutiny and accusations of market distorting behavior at home and abroad.

Many governments are now actively questioning how competition policy needs to be updated to rein in platform power and help smaller technology innovators get out from under the tech giant shadow.

But in a note about the changes to chromium’s default search engine lists on an Github instance, Google software engineer Orin Jaworski merely writes that the list of search engine references per country is being “completely replaced based on new usage statistics” from “recently collected data”.

Their choices appear to loosely line up with top four marketshare.

The greatest beneficiary of the update appears to be pro-privacy Google rival, DuckDuckGo, which is now being offered as an option in more than 60 markets, per the Github instance.

Previously DDG was not offered as an option at all.

Another pro-privacy search rivals, French search engine Qwant, has also been added as a new option — though only in its home market, France.

Whereas DDG has been added in Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brunei, Bolivia, Brazil, Belize, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Germany, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Faroe Islands, Finland, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, India, Iceland, Italy, Jamaica, Kuwait, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Moldova, Macedonia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Paraguay, Romania, Serbia, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, El Salvador, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa, Switzerland, UK, Uruguay, US and Venezuela.

“We’re glad that Google has recognized the importance of offering consumers a private search option,” DuckDuckGo founder Gabe Weinberg told us when approached for comment about the change.

DDG has been growing steadily for years — and has also recently taken outside investment to scale its efforts to capitalize on growing international appetite for pro-privacy products.

Interestingly, the chromium Github instance is dated December 2018 which appears to be around about the time when Google (finally) passed the Duck.com domain to DuckDuckGo, after holding onto the domain and pointing it to Google.com for years.

We asked Google for comment on the timing of the changes to search engine options in chromium. At the time of writing the search giant had not responded.

We’ve also reached out to Qwant for comment on being added as an option in its home market.