Author: azeeadmin

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here:

1. Netflix will raise prices for US subscribers, with its most popular plan going up to $13 per month

For the most popular plan (which includes high-definition streaming for up to two devices simultaneously), the price will increase from $10.99 to $12.99 per month. Meanwhile, the one-device plan will go up to $8.99 per month, while the four-device plan goes to $15.99.

It seemed inevitable that Netflix would have to raise prices to fund its continually growing bill for original content. At the same time, companies like Disney, AT&T/WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal all plan to launch competing services, which probably means they’ll be less interested in licensing their content to Netflix, and will charge a heftier fee when they do.

2. German court tosses Qualcomm’s latest iPhone patent suit

The chipmaker had argued Intel -powered iPhones infringed a transistor switch patent it holds. But in an initial verbal decision the court disagreed. Qualcomm has said it will appeal.

3. Turns out the science saying screen time is bad isn’t science

The paper, by Oxford scientists Amy Orben and Andrew Przybylski, amounts to a sort of king-sized meta-analysis of studies that come to some conclusion about the relationship between technology and well-being among young people. Their concern was that the large data sets and statistical methods employed by researchers allowed for anomalies or false positives to be claimed as significant conclusions.

4. 23andMe updates its ancestry reports, but they’re still not perfect

Starting today, customers will be able to see more granular ancestry results from more than 1,000 regions, as well as 33 population-specific pages about cultural information.

5. Facebook says it will invest $300M in local news

The company says the investments will go into two broad areas — supporting journalists and newsrooms in the newsgathering process, and helping them build sustainable business models.

6. Pandora launches a personalized voice assistant on iOS and Android

The feature will allow you to not only control music playback with commands to play a specific artist, album, radio or playlist, but will also be capable of delivering results customized to you when responding to vague commands.

7. TikTok is giving China a video chat alternative to WeChat

ByteDance, the world’s most-valued startup, just launched a new social media product under its Douyin brand in what many people see as a serious attempt to challenge WeChat.

We’re looking for the best lawyers who are working with startups today, and we’d like your recommendations.

Right now, it’s hard to find the sort of attorney who can help you see around corners as a young company, negotiate tricky situations, and connect you to other legal experts when you need to go deep on a topic.

Help us by filling out this two-minute survey.

If you’re like me, you’ve spent hours researching online, working your network for word-of-mouth recommendations, and going through a trial-and-error process. TechCrunch is trying to save you time and money here by publishing a list of lawyers who other founders have had great experiences with.

Since we began the project last month, we’ve already heard from nearly 600 founders and early startup leaders about lawyers they recommend, across booming local startup scenes and top Silicon Valley companies. We’ve also gotten great feedback about lawyers who people work with through the new generation of online legal services, like Atrium and UpCounsel, so please tell us about your experiences if you’ve gone that route.

So far, it feels like we’re solving a real problem. But we know there are many more stories to hear — and lawyers who should be on the list — so we want your recommendations, too.

If you’re a lawyer reading this, please note that we strongly encourage you to share this survey with your clients. We’ve found that when they’ve had good experiences, they are more than happy to give you a strong recommendation.

Any questions? Email me at eldon@techcrunch.com. This project is part of a new thing TechCrunch is working on, that we’ll have more to share about soon.

Madrona Venture Group has long been one of the premier early-stage venture firms in the Pacific Northwest and in recent years, it has done a good job of recruiting former industry executives. In recent years, those included the former Microsoft developer tools chief S. Somasegar, now a managing director, and former Windows and Xbox exec Terry Myerson, currently a venture partner. In 2017, the firm also announced that former King Digital and Clearwire CFO Hope Cochran had joined its venture partner ranks and today Madrona announced that Cochran is now joining its team of managing directors.

During her time as a venture partner at Madrona, Cochran led the firm’s investment in the female-forward co-working startup The Riveter. She is also the first woman Managing Director at Madrona.

“I have to say that I’ve often been the only female at every executive table I’ve been at,” she told me. “It’s a pretty normal situation for me. I’m happy to be that person. I think with that role comes great responsibility, so I have worked hard throughout my whole career to help mentor women in the organization. I try and really pay particular attention to all levels of the organization and where there is a drop-off.”

Like many executives who join venture firms, Cochran didn’t arrive with a lot of preconceived notions about VC. Indeed, she told me that she only started developing her investment philosophy once she joined the firm. “I don’t know that I came in with some concrete themes. I came in with the desire to be helpful, meaning to help the existing portfolio and if I found things that were interesting, to be able to have the opportunity to work with them.”

In her new role, Cochran will be responsible for investing out of Madrona’s latest $300 million fund. Given her background, it’s no surprise that she expects to gravitate toward B2B and FinTech companies, though. She also noted that while King Digital was obviously a gaming company, internally the team often looked at it more as a data company. “You’re data is everything,” she explained and noted that she loves working with companies that make it eaiser to use all the data that companies now generate.

It’s worth noting that Cochran also sits on the board of three public companies (MongoDB, NewRelic and Hasbro) and has also worked with Madrona portfolio companies like Smartsheet, Rover, Gawkbox and Matcherino as they plan their way forward.

“I have now done the CFO role at various large and small companies about five different times and it just felt like I was ready for a new perspective on companies in a different role,” she said when I asked her why she was interested in working with a venture firm.

“As investors, we seek to attract the best entrepreneurs and the best company-building team that are eager to roll up their sleeves to help companies when they need us,” the Madrona team wrote in today’s announcement. “Having an investment team that is diverse in terms of experience, expertise, company background, gender, age, culture, and points of view enables us to build better companies faster.   We are excited to have Hope on board and look forward to years of investing and working with companies from day one for the long run including all the key decision moments along the journey.”

In addition to Cochran’s new role, Madrona also today announced that Troy Cichos has been promoted from CFO and administrative partner to COO and partner, while former fund administrator Jennifer Chambers is now an administrative partner and Ted Kummert has taken on the role of the firm’s chief product officer in residence, in addition to his previous role as venture partner.

DuckDuckGo has a new, unlikely partner in search: Apple.

The privacy-focused search engine that promises to never track its users said Tuesday it’s now using data provided by Apple Maps to power its map-based search results. Although DuckDuckGo had provided limited mapping results for a while using data from open-source service OpenStreetMap, it never scaled its features to those of its search engine rivals, notably Google and Bing.

Now, DuckDuckGo will return addresses, businesses, geographical locations, and nearby places using Apple Maps by default. (When we tested, directions and transit times open up in Apple Maps on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad — but on non-Apple devices, the directions defaults to and opens in Bing.)

In using Apple’s mapping data, DuckDuckGo will become one of the biggest users of Apple Maps to date, six months after Apple said it would open up Apple Maps, long only available on Macs, iPhones and iPads, to the web.

“We’re excited to work closely with Apple to set a new standard of trust online, and we hope you’ll enjoy this update,” said the search engine in a blog post.

DuckDuckGo in the Tor browser, using the new Apple Maps feature. (Screenshot: TechCrunch)

In reality, the partnership isn’t that unsurprising at all.

Apple faced flak for ditching Google Maps in iOS and rushing its overhauled Maps service out to the market, prompting a rare mea culpa from chief executive Tim Cook, apologizing for the disastrous rollout. At its most recent Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Apple promised a do-over, offering reliability and stability — but more importantly, privacy.

Where Google tracks everything you do, where you go and what you search for, Apple has long said it doesn’t want to know. Any data that Apple collects is anonymous, said Eddy Cue, Apple internet software and services chief, in an interview with TechCrunch last year. “We specifically don’t collect data, even from point A to point B,” said Cue. By anonymizing the data, Apple doesn’t know where you came from or where you went, or even who took the trip.

DuckDuckGo finally brings a much-needed feature to the search engine, while keeping true to its privacy-focused roots as a non-tracking search rival to Google.

“At DuckDuckGo, we believe getting the privacy you deserve online should be as simple as closing the blinds,” the company said. “Naturally, our strict privacy policy of not collecting or sharing any personal information extends to this integration.”

“You are still anonymous when you perform map and address-related searches on DuckDuckGo,” the search engine said.

In a separate note, DuckDuckGo said users can turn on their location for better “nearby” search results, but promises to not store the data or use it for any purposes. “Even if you opt-in to sharing a more accurate location, your searches will still be completely anonymous,” said DuckDuckGo.

“We do not send any personally identifiable information such as IP address to Apple or other third parties,” the company said.

DuckDuckGo processes 30 million daily searches, up by more than 50 percent year-over-year, the company said last year.

If you haven’t snagged a ticket to the 2nd Annual TechCrunch Winter Party on February 8, listen up and listen good. We just released the third round of our first-come-first-serve tickets, and the first two batches sold like proverbial hotcakes. Buy your ticket while you still can, because you don’t want to miss out on a ton of fun and opportunity.

The festivities take place at Galvanize in San Francisco, a multi-level venue that’s roomy enough for nearly 1,000 of the Valley’s finest founders, investors, developers, marketers and makers to get comfy and celebrate the spirit of this remarkable startup community. Plus, you’ll nosh on plenty of yummy appetizers and enjoy top-notch cocktails.

It’s a convivial environment to talk, network and connect — or reconnect — with like-minded people. You never know who you’ll meet and what opportunities a chance encounter might produce.

It’s also an opportunity to check out interesting early-stage startups showing their stuff at the demo tables. Hold on a minute — you might own an early-stage startup, so why not buy a demo table and place your baby smack dab in front of a highly influential audience? Genius! The $1,500 price tag buys your table and three tickets to the party.

Here’s the lowdown on logistics:

• When: Friday, February 8, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
• Where: Galvanize, 44 Tehama St., San Francisco, CA 94105
• Ticket price: $85

TechCrunch parties always include a big dose of fun, games and prizes. Who doesn’t love prizes? Along with spectacularly sweet swag, you might win tickets to Disrupt San Francisco 2019.

Tickets to the TechCrunch Winter Party at Galvanize are available right now, but who knows for how long? Go buy a ticket now and join us at Galvanize for a night of fabulous fun and awesome opportunity.

Amazon is giving its Fire TV Stick an upgrade. The company announced today it will now ship the Fire TV Stick with the new version of the Alexa Voice Remote launched last fall. The remote allows users to control other devices besides their Fire TV, thanks to its support for both Bluetooth and multi-directional infrared. However, the upgraded remote won’t impact the Fire TV Stick’s price, which remains $39.99.

The new Alexa remote was arrived alongside the $49.99 Fire TV Stick 4K in October. It’s capable of controlling the TV, soundbar and other AV equipment, and can do things like switch inputs or tune to a channel on your cable box. As a standalone purchase for older Amazon Fire TV devices, the remote was retailing yesterday for $29.99. But today, Amazon is slashing the price by 50 percent, it says.

The voice remote also includes the ability to speak to Alexa with a press of a button, which can help you find shows and movies, control smart home devices, get the news and weather, stream music and more.

Amazon notes the inclusion of the next-gen remote makes the Fire TV Stick the only streaming media player under $40 that includes a remote capable of controlling other AV equipment besides the TV. This could be a selling point for Fire TV Stick versus Roku, whose high-end voice remotes are focused on controlling power and volume on TVs, or its own Roku wireless speakers.

At CES this year, Amazon said its Fire TV platform as a whole had now topped over 30 million active users, which seemed to put it just ahead of Roku’s 27 million. By swapping in a better remote with the flagship Fire TV Stick device, Amazon is looking to solidify its lead gained by steep discounts on its devices over Black Friday and the larger 2018 holiday shopping season.

The updated Fire TV Stick will also be the first to ship with Amazon’s just launched, free streaming service IMDb Freedive included. Announced at CES, the service offers a range of free, ad-supported movies and TV shows – a challenge to its rival’s service, The Roku Channel. It will come to other Fire TV devices by way of a software update.

The Fire TV Stick with the new Alexa Voice Remote goes on pre-order today for $39.99 (or £39.99 in the U.K.), and will be available in a bundle with the Echo Dot for $69.98.

23andMe, co-founded by CEO Anne Wojcicki, has deployed its latest update, featuring interactive ancestry details, cultural insights about food, art, language, and the option to order a physical ancestry book. Starting today, customers will be able to see more granular ancestry results from more than 1,000 regions, as well as 33 population-specific pages about cultural information.

Before this update, 23andMe simply said I was 12 percent Brtish and Irish. Now, it’s able to break down where in the U.K. my ancestors likely lived. 23andMe, however, was not able to detect more granular data in Ireland.

It was also unable to detect additional evidence in Nigeria, where 23andMe says 25.2 percent of my ancestry comes from. That’s likely because, even though 23andMe has made efforts to grow the number of African and African-American people in its dataset, it’s still lacking. Though, it’s worth noting no ancestry service has it all.

“The odds of receiving more granular results from a particular region (in your particular case, Ireland or Nigeria) depends on how much Nigerian DNA someone has and how many individuals are in the 23andMe reference dataset,” 23andMeAncestry Group Product Manager Robin Smith told TechCrunch. “The reference dataset is continuously growing, and customers should be seeing even more refined ancestry results later in the year.”

Generally speaking, customers who share exact matches between their DNA and reference individuals from a particular region could potentially see granularity in regions of Anambra, Edo, Imo, Lagos and Ogun State in Nigeria, 23andMe spokesperson Christine Pai told TechCrunch.

It’s worth noting Ancestry says I have just 1 percent of my DNA comes from Nigeria and that the bulk of my African ancestry comes from Cameroon and Congo. But when I first signed up for Ancestry, the company said 39 percent of my ancestry came from Nigeria. This is all to say that these tools are imperfect and always subject to change. And, depending on where the bulk of your ancestry comes from, it may change dramatically.

“I’m not surprised you’ll get different results from different companies,” Dr. Jennifer Raff, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kansas told TechCrunch back in September. “They have their own proprietary info based on those samples. If one of them has lots of individuals from a particular region and the other company does not, you’re more likely to show up as having ancestry from that region whereas if the other company doesn’t have that data represented in their database, it’s going to show up as a different population.”

This is problematic, given many people turn to these DNA testing tools to figure out more about who they are and where they come from. I’ll keep this brief, but I was pretty frustrated when I went from thinking I was very Nigerian (39 percent, according to Ancestry) to barely Nigerian (about one percent, also according to Ancestry) to then again a fair amount of Nigerian (25 percent, according to 23andme).

“This is a problem and it’s one we need to educate people about — that your genetic ancestry is not your identity,” Dr. Raff said. “Also, those numbers really reflect what is in their database, and what’s in the database is largely reflective of genetic variations we see in present-day populations. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s reflecting your actual ancestors.”

I asked Dr. Raff if DNA testing is just a load of crock, but she said it’s not.

“It’s not complete bullshit but there’s also a lot of uncertainty there,” she said. “We [humans] like definitive answers. We’re trying to use this as a tool for exploring our past. We like to have definite answers when we’re doing these explorations, but unfortunately, it’s not there yet.”

But that’s not entirely the fault of 23andMe and Ancestry. In order to be as accurate as humanly possible, these companies would need to sequence every person on the planet. That’s not currently feasible, so in the meantime, Ancestry points to its confidence levels.

“We take this pretty seriously and we do want people to understand what is something they can put money in the bank on, and what they should take with a grain of salt,” Ancestry Chief Scientific Officer Catherine Ball told TechCrunch back in September.

She added that Ancestry tries to be transparent about confidence levels. And, in Africa specifically, “it’s one of our most exciting opportunities and greatest challenge” due to the enormous amount of genetic diversity on the continent.

Additional reporting by Sarah Buhr.

To compete in a world of on-demand everything right to your door led by the likes of Amazon and Uber, traditional physical retailers and those working with them have been looking for an edge by providing efficient, tech-fuelled delivery services of their own.

Now, a startup that has built a platform to enable last-mile logistics and other delivery features for these businesses has announced a round of funding to fuel its growth. Bringg, which works with the likes of Walmart and McDonalds, as well third-party delivery businesses like DoorDash, to optimise and manage logistics and other aspects of the delivery process, has raised $25 million to expand its business.

A typical example of what Bringg provides to its retail customers is the Spark delivery operation that Walmart launched late last year: it gives the company the ability to optimize driver schedules, automatically dispatch orders, allow drivers to communicate their availability and in turn communicate to drivers by way of smart alerts to make sure deliveries are picked up, queued and delivered on time.  Other services that Bringg can offer to customers include helping them run click-and-collect schemes, manage “crowdsourced” fleets, and returns.

Amazon has set the bar high when it comes to setting customer expectations by providing a service that can deliver anything you want in a faster time than it would take for you to go out and buy it. Across various markets it sells food, or clothing, books, streamed films and thousands of other products this way, by way of its Prime subscription service.

A number of startups have emerged to help businesses that are not Amazon and Uber better compete against them and that proposition.

They include companies like FiveStars to help build loyalty programs; Deliverr (yes, it has chosen to follow the same naming convention…) to help with fulfilment and distribution; OrderGroove to build tools to encourage repeat buying; Deliv to provide businesses with a network of people to run same-day deliveries; and Tookan, which directly competes with Bringg for delivery logistics management.

And there are more in existence and likely coming down the pike, since every company both worries on Amazon encroaching on their business, but also, more simply, will try to provide what their customers want.

The reason investors are interested specifically in Bringg — which is co-headquartered in Chicago and Tel Aviv — is in part because of its extensive customer list but also because of its focus on the lucrative market of logistics, which is widely credited as at the core of why Amazon does so well. (Economies of scale is another, which is where being a big retailer like Walmart or McDonalds, or an aggregating platform like DoorDash, comes in.)

“Bringg [is] a pioneering company that’s providing crucial capabilities to leading organizations looking to connect logistics data across different silos and optimize their last mile of delivery,” said Matthew Cowan, Partner at Next47, in a statement. “With the global logistics market predicted to grow to $15.5 trillion by 2023 and the ‘Amazon effect’ drastically changing customer expectations, Bringg has a massive opportunity to fundamentally transform the logistics industry by enabling seamless automation, greater data transparency, and a more collaborative mental outlook.”

Amazon has created a logistics powerhouse to run its delivery service, and the idea is that now other retailers can, using Bringg, have the same kind of tools at their disposal, letting them not just manage the logistics for a delivery service, but help companies track and manage goods and drivers, and specifically to do so even when they are not providing the delivery services themselves.

This is key: many companies will never want to build and operate their own fleet of delivery people and vehicles to bring things to customers; but they will instead work with the likes of DoorDash or Deliv or Postmates to do this. (Even Amazon doesn’t deliver all of Amazon’s packages, but it still handles the logistics.) This will help those people also continue to manage their products and delivery within that third-party service.

“This new investment enables Bringg to level the playing field in the age of Amazon by enabling large retailers, grocery chains, consumer goods companies, restaurant chains and logistics firms to provide their customers with what they expect from their deliveries, based on the optimized business models required to win in today’s challenging market,” said Guy Bloch, CEO at Bringg, in a statement. “We are on a mission to equip enterprises with the technology platform they need to orchestrate successful delivery operations, providing their management and logistics teams with the visibility and control they need to not only survive but thrive in this exciting new landscape.”

Bringg is already active in 50 markets and the plan will be to take that to more with this Series C, which comes from Siemens’ VC Next47, Salesforce Ventures, Aleph VC, OG Ventures, Cambridge Capital, Coca-Cola, Ituran and Pereg Ventures.

Bringg is not disclosing its valuation with this round although we are trying to find out. It’s raised $53 million to date.

The number of U.S. households without a traditional cable or satellite TV subscription that instead receive broadcast stations using a digital antenna has jumped by nearly 50 percent over the past 8 years to reach 16 million homes, according to a new report from Nielsen. Today, 14 percent of all U.S. TV households are watching television over the air, it found.

The measurement firm says there are basically two camps among this group of cord cutters.

One, which tends to consist of older viewers with a median age of 55, exclusively watches TV via their antenna – they don’t subscribe to any streaming service.

This group, totalling 6.6 million homes, tends to be more diverse and have a smaller median income – which makes sense. For them, cord cutting may be more of a cost-saving tool, rather than a way to combine free content with other paid services to create a personalized TV experience.

The other group, totalling 9.4 million homes, has at least one subscription video service, like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video, for example. They tend to be younger, with a median age of 36 – as well as more affluent, and more device-connected, says Nielsen.

Because they’re spending more time on devices doing other things – perhaps gaming or using social networks – they consume less traditional media. That impacts the time spent watching TV.

The group of cord cutters watching over-the-air TV who don’t have access to a subscription video service watches over 6 hours per day. That’s 2 hours more than those with a subscription service, the study found.

The group using subscription services are more active on social media, too, likely as a result of their age and their numerous devices. They spend an hour per day, on average, using social media – 17 minutes more than the group without subscription video.

But both groups tend to watch the majority of “TV” content on their television. Despite the increased use of devices like smartphones and tablets, it seems that TV viewing continues to largely take place on the big screen.

Also of note, there’s a small but growing subgroup among the cord cutters who have subscription services who additionally have access to a virtual provider. These are the streaming services offering live TV – like YouTube TV, Hulu with Live TV, PlayStation Vue, or Sling TV. This group has grown to over 1.3 million homes as May 2018, Nielsen claims. (Keep in mind Nielsen’s numbers are counting TV households in the U.S., not individual user accounts to these services.)

The full report dug deeper into this third segment, and found they tend to be 56% more likely to have a college degree, 19% more likely to have children, and 95% more likely to have an internet connected device, compared with an average home. They also watch slightly more TV than the other “plus SVOD (subscription video on demand)” group at 3 hours, 27 minutes per day, compared with 3 hours, 22 minutes, Nielsen says.

Even your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man needs a vacation. Between all of the mild-mannered studenting and Avenger-style world saving (not mention what transpired during Infinity War), Peter Parker could clearly use a break.

The first trailer for July’s Far From Home finds Parker going Griswold, for a little European vacation, sans-suit (and Lindsey Buckingham soundtrack). But a surprise visit from Howling Commando Nick Fury, naturally, turns things on their head [implied record scratch sound effect].

This time, Spider-Man does battle with a suitably emo Jake Jake Gyllenhaal as the globe-headed Mysterio, with help from some new suits — including what appears to be an homage to Steve Ditko’s original underarm webbing.

Far From Home has a tough act to follow after the absurdly wonderful Spider-Verse — not to mention some explaining to do following the events of the last Avengers. Though we should be up to speed by the time it rolls around. Endgame is due out in April, with the new Spider-Man arriving on July 5.