Google has lit the news canon at its annual India event which takes place in New Delhi today. The company just introduced a subtle new AI-powered feature for its Google Go search app: website reading. You can bet this is the first of many product announcements to come out today.
The U.S. firm introduced Google Go — which is essentially a data-light search app for emerging markets — last year, and this new feature is designed to increase its appeal across India, particularly for non-English audiences.
A quick refresher: Hindi and English are the official national languages of India, but its billion-plus population is hugely diverse with more than 20 other languages recognized. The majority of those living in urban India are comfortable with English, but companies are increasingly aware that they need to cater to other tongues in order to offer even basic online services to the rest (majority) of the country.
Google isn’t alone in adopting this approach — it is actually a relative laggard — but now it is trying to help translate the web with this new Google Go feature.
Google said the addition can make website reading just like watching TV or listening to the radio. The feature reads out text in one of 28 supported languages whilst highlighting each word on the page as it goes. The firm said it uses AI to seek out the most important information on a web page, and also to play it back in each language.
There are obvious use cases for activities that pull attention away from reading, such as cooking, but more widely the feature is seen as part of Google Go’s general approach to making information more accessible to those who are relatively inexperienced when it comes to using the internet.
“The new feature is inspired by user research in India, where we heard from people how important it is to understand information effortlessly. Especially for people coming online for the first time, consuming long-form text on a small device can be difficult and time-consuming. With this new feature, you can just press play and follow along,” the company wrote in a statement.
It added that it is looking into ways to add the feature to other Google apps in the future, so stayed tuned.
Google wants to make the transition back into civilian life smoother for U.S. military veterans by adding tools that help them find jobs or promote their businesses.
One new feature is an initiative of Grow with Google, the company’s career development program. It helps veterans discover job openings relevant to the skills they learned while serving by entering the phrase “jobs for veterans” into Google’s search engine along with their military job codes. Employers and job boards can also enable the feature on their own sites by using Google’s Cloud Talent Solution, a machine-learning based job search platform.
In a Google announcement, Matthew Hudson, a Google Cloud program manager and former Air Force civil engineer who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, wrote that veterans often miss out on opportunities because “there isn’t a common language that helps recruiters match a veteran’s experience with the need for their skills and leadership in civilian jobs. As a result, 1 in 3 veterans—of the roughly 250,000 service members who transition out of the military each year—end up taking jobs well below their skill level.”
For veterans who founded, own or lead a business, Google has added a new attribute to help identify them on Google My Business, Google Maps and mobile search listings. In a blog post, Google data scientist and former U.S. Army staff sergeant Sean O’Keefe wrote that more than 2.5 million businesses in the U.S. are majority-owned by veterans. The “Veteran-Led” attribute badge will appear on Google business listings alongside other attributes like “Has Wifi” or “Family Friendly.”
The company also said Google.org, its charity initiative, will grant $2.5 million to the United Service Organizations (USO) to provide IT training, career support and Google Support Professional Certification, a course designed to prepare people for entry-level IT support jobs.
Following last week’s suspension of 284 accounts for “engaging in coordinated manipulation,” Twitter announced today that it’s kicked an additional 486 accounts off the platform for the same reason, bringing the total to 770 accounts.
While many of the accounts removed last week appeared to originate from Iran, Twitter said this time that about 100 of the latest batch to be suspended claimed to be in the United States. Many of these were less than a year old and shared “divisive commentary.” These 100 accounts tweeted a total of 867 times and had 1,268 followers between them.
Since our initial suspensions last Tuesday, we have continued our investigation, further building our understanding of these networks. In addition, we suspended an additional 486 accounts for violating the policies outlined last week. This brings the total suspended to 770.
As examples of the “divisive commentary” tweeted, Twitter shared screenshots from several suspended accounts that showed anti-Trump rhetoric, counter to the conservative narrative that the platform unfairly targets Republican accounts.
Fewer than 100 of the 770 suspended accounts claimed to be located in the U.S. and many of these were sharing divisive social commentary. On average, these 100 Tweeted 867 times, were followed by 1, 268 accounts, and were less than a year old. Examples below. pic.twitter.com/LQhbvFjxSo
Twitter also said that the suspended accounts included one advertiser that spent $30 on Twitter ads last year, but added those ads did not target the U.S. and that the billing address was outside of Iran.
“As with prior investigations, we are committed to engaging with other companies and relevant law enforcement entities. Our goal is to assist investigations into these activities and where possible, we will provide the public with transparency and context on our efforts,” Twitter said on its Safety account.
After years of accusations that it doesn’t enforce its own policies about bullying, bots and other abuses, Twitter has taken a much harder line on problematic accounts in the past few months. Despite stalling user growth, especially in the United States, Twitter has been aggressively suspending accounts, including ones that were created by users to evade prior suspensions.
Twitter announced a drop of one million monthly users in the second quarter, causing investors to panic even though it posted a $100 million profit. In its earnings call, Twitter said that its efforts don’t impact user numbers because many of the “tens of millions” of removed accounts were too new or had been inactive for more than a month and were therefore not counted in active user numbers. The company did admit, however, that it’s anti-spam measures had caused it to lose three million monthly active users.
Whatever its impact on user numbers, Twitter’s anti-abuse measures may help it save face during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on September 5. Executives from Twitter, Facebook and Google are expected to be grilled by Sen. Mark Warner and other politicians about the use of their platforms by other countries to influence U.S. politics.
Byton, the new China-based automaker founded by former BMW and Infiniti executives, has produced the first 10 prototypes of its tech-centric all-electric SUV and some of them will be in the U.S. before the end of the year, company president and co-founder Daniel Kirchert told TechCrunch.
Byton plans to produce another 100 prototypes of the SUV, which the automaker calls the M Byte, by the end of 2018, Kirchert said in recent interview during Monterey Car Week. Some of these vehicles will be shipped to the U.S., where self-driving vehicle technology startup Aurora will take over.
Aurora, a startup founded by self-driving tech stars Chris Urmson, Sterling Anderson, and Drew Bagnell, will begin testing its Level 4 autonomous driving systems on the Byton SUV prototype before the end of 2018, according to Kirchert. The two companies announced a partnership in January at the big tech trade show CES.
Byton will continue with its own tests such as vehicle reliability and cold-weather testing at its Nanjing prototype manufacturing plant. The plant is built on the site of Byton’s future factory, which is already under construction.
The prototype production milestone comes on the heels of $500 million in fresh funding that was announced in June. The Series B round included investors FAW Group, Tus-Holdings and CATL, which TechCrunch has learned will supply Byton with batteries.
A production version of the M Byte is targeted for the end of 2019, with the first vehicles to be sold in China. Sales will then move to the U.S. and Europe in mid-2020, Kirchert said.
Back when Byton first revealed its SUV concept at CES this January, founders Kirchert and CEO Carsten Breitfeld said it was close to what the final production version would look like. It’s about 80% complete, Kirchert said recently, adding that the prototype has modest changes from the concept, including a slight changes to the height and headlights as well as improvements to the door latches.
The rest, including a massive touchscreen that takes up the entire dashboard, is largely unchanged. the M Byte also has another touchscreen on the steering wheel and a variety of “smart” connected features that lets customers use hand gestures and voice commands via Amazon’s Alexa assistant to control aspects of the car. The vehicle also monitors the driver’s heart rate, weight, oxygen saturation, or blood pressure.
The SUV, which Byton likes to call an SIV or or “smart intuitive vehicle, will come in a base model featuring a 70-kilowatt-hour battery pack that can travel 250 miles on a single charge. A pricier version with a 90-kwH pack will be able to travel about 325 miles on a single charge.
The M Byte SUV will not come equipped with a Level 4 system, a designation by SAE International that means the car takes over all of the driving in certain conditions. Instead, it will have come out with Level 2 capabilities, which means the vehicle has combined automated features such as steering and acceleration, but still requires the human driver to remain and ultimately responsible.
Kirchert explained that the company is using its SUV prototypes to ensure a Level 4 self-driving system, can be properly integrated in future vehicles such as the K Byte, a new concept from Byton that was on display Sunday at Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. The sedan will be the second vehicle in Byton’s portfolio and is expected to have a global market launch.
This is one of the largest transactions in e-commerce and in the internet space globally, with Walmart deploying US$16 billion to obtain an approximate 77 percent shareholding at closing. As part of this transaction, my company, Naspers, exited fully, selling our 11.18 percent stake for $2.2 billion.
In addition to the obvious financial success — a 3.6x or $1.6 billion absolute return in six years — being part of one of the greatest success stories of the Indian and global e-commerce market led to countless insights for Naspers.
Our journey with Flipkart will help us to further shape how we partner with entrepreneurs to build leading technology companies in the future.
I was fortunate enough to have had a front-row seat at Flipkart for the past six years, leading our various investment rounds and being Naspers’ appointed board director. Here are some of the key lessons that I will remember moving forward.
Pursue big market opportunities and solve big problems
E-commerce is a global trend that manifests in every market around the world. The potential of Indian e-commerce is beyond any doubt, with a total retail market of more than $500 billion. Before Flipkart, Indian e-commerce customers were repeatedly disappointed by mediocre selection, low product quality, little flexibility in payment options and a lengthy delivery experience.
Flipkart was the first player to solve these issues at scale, opening up the marketplace to more categories (starting with media and then rapidly expanding into electronics, lifestyle, etc.), offering warehouse services, and introducing its own courier network, Ekart, that ensured customer delight and cash on delivery. Other players eventually offered similar services, but Flipkart was the pioneer.
Market leadership is key to sustainable success, even in e-commerce, which tends to have “winner takes most” as opposed to “winner takes all” characteristics. Leaders enjoy attention from sellers, buyers, as well as existing and prospective employees. They continue to innovate while laggards are trying to catch up. Throughout our six-year journey with Flipkart, the company was in a market leadership position against strong competition from global and local online players.
Given the rapid growth of the Indian e-commerce market, Flipkart had to scale its tech platforms while also scaling its business model and organization. This is hard to do, and we’ve seen many businesses fail to scale. Flipkart was not one of them.
As a market leader and pioneer in the Indian e-commerce market, Flipkart had to sail unchartered waters. Experimenting while increasing in scale carried significant risk for the organization and had consequences for the market — Flipkart made many bold decisions over the years. Many of these worked out beautifully, such as acquiring Myntra in May 2014 to obtain a strong position in the strategic fashion and apparel category, or establishing Big Billion Day as the marquee sales event of the year.
There were others that did not work out, like trialing app-only shopping, but these failures never deterred the team from taking chances and changing course if needed, while always capturing the lessons. In the end, the app-only move allowed the company to become mobile-centric and a clear innovation leader in this area.
Think globally, but act locally
Flipkart is focused on the Indian market, but the competitive battle for sellers, buyers and talent is fought globally. The team adopted global best practices like Big Billion Day, which was inspired by ideas from the U.S., China and Romania.
They also measure success based on KPIs constantly drawing comparison with global market leaders. Most importantly though, Flipkart always innovated for the local market, taking local tastes into account (as serviced by the multitude of private label brands at Flipkart and Myntra), as well as bandwidth and affordability constraints on the customer side, leading to super-light mobile sites and apps, as well as various trade-in and financing programs.
Play the long game
Despite multi-billion-dollar trading volumes, the current e-commerce market in India is still mostly driven by affluent metro city dwellers in places like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. This is not dissimilar to what we’ve seen in other countries around the world at a similar development stage as e-commerce in India.
However, to really unlock the potential of Indian e-commerce, one has to reach the hundreds of millions of customers that live in tier-two or -three cities, or in the countryside.
This will require a very unique approach in terms of selection, price points and delivery and payment mechanisms. Flipkart management spends a considerable amount of time strategizing about these challenges.
The common thread in all of these lessons is that you need to have strong, inspiring leaders who come from the local market and have the vision and desire to scale their platforms responsibly and skillfully. Whether it was Binny and Sachin as co-founders of the business, or Kalyan, Ananth and Sameer in leading the respective Flipkart, Myntra and PhonePe business units, without these leaders it would have not been possible for Flipkart to grow to what it is today. I’m very grateful for my time with Flipkart and wish the team and Walmart all the best in continuing this incredible journey… a journey made in India.
What if facial recognition could determine your ancestry without the need for 23andme? Come see Kairos show off this feat of artificial intelligence at TechCrunch Disrupt SF next week. We’ll follow up the demo with a fireside chat investigating Kairos’ commitment to not be evil. “Facial recognition-powered government surveillance is an extraordinary invasion of the privacy of all citizens — and a slippery slope to losing control of our identities altogether” CEO Brian Brackeen wrote in a TechCrunch guest post in June.
Founded six years ago, Kairos has been steadily building facial recog to combat bank fraud, secure enterprise software with biometrics, and to create smart contracts so only the right person can collect on a cryptocurrency transaction. Now it’s running a token sale to fund the next stages of its tech development.
But facial recognition is only helpful if it’s exceedingly accurate. That’s what we’ll be testing on stage at Disrupt. “If people take a selfie, it tells them what percentages of different races they are” Brackeen says. That’s a bold claim.
It’s also somewhat worrying. That tech in the wrong hands could power racial discrimination. Even if it’s illegal for businesses to do so, that won’t necessarily stop them if they can make an extra buck or be a jerk to people they hate. Signing pledges and making promises might not be enough.
What can developers making problematic tech do to guarantee it’s not misused? Who should oversee these ethical questions? And are startups any more accountable than giant corporations? Come to Disrupt or watch on the livestream as we get you the answers.
Reaching event organizers to help them sell tickets isn’t cheap. Eventbrite — the 12-year-old, San Francisco-based ticketing company that announced plans last week to go public and sell $200 million worth of shares on the NYSE — has been losing money since 2016, posting losses of $40.4 million in 2016, $38.5 million for 2017 and $15.6 million so far this year.
Now the company is trying to make up for some of those losses by announcing a new pricing scheme. Today, it sent customers a note explaining that for those using its “Essentials” package (unlike its “Professional” package, whose bells and whistles include customer support, customer questions for attendees and more), reduced prices are coming for many of its customers. Specifically, payment processing fees are dropping from 3 percent to 2.5 percent. Fees for ticket are falling from .99 cents to .70 cents.
The moves don’t really mean that Eventbrite is charging less. In fact, instead of charging one percent of every ticket price as a service fee, Eventbrite will now take a 2 percent cut, which should add up for organizers that use the service for bigger events. It’s also removing a service fee cap of $19.99 that it used to institute no matter how much an event organizer was charging.
Asked about the pricing changes, a spokesperson sent us a fairly bland statement: “At Eventbrite we have always been committed to enabling event creators to deliver a diverse range of live experiences by offering a superior product at a fair price. The changes we announced today will mean lower ticket fees for the vast majority of our creators, and the millions of people that attend the events they plan, promote and produce each year. We succeed when our creators succeed and this change is indicative of a focus on ensuring we make the best decisions for the majority of our customers.”
It isn’t surprising that Eventbrite is looking for ways to fight rising acquisition costs owing to the competition it faces from all corners. In addition to platforms for smaller get-togethers like Paperless Post and competition for bigger events like Ticketmaster (which owns Live Nation), Eventbrite acknowledged in its S-1 filing that it could face competition from large internet companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter, too.
Eventbrite had reportedly filed confidentially for an IPO back in July. As noted on TechCrunch’s “Equity” podcast last week by Susan Mac Cormac, a partner at the global law firm Morrison Foerster, companies often file confidentially first if they are exploring other options, including, most notably, M&A.
“These unicorns,” says Mac Cormac, “it’s difficult for them to go public because they have such a huge valuation to begin with that M&A is often a better option. You don’t want to go out and have your stock fall 30, 40, 50 percent as sometimes happens.”
Partly through acquisitions, Eventbrite saw its revenue rise from $133 million in 2016 to $201 million last year. Last year, for example, Eventbrite acquired Ticketfly, a ticketing company that focused largely on the live entertainment industry and which had sold to the streaming music company Pandora in 2015 for a reported $335 million but Eventbrite was able to nab last year at the discounted price of $200 million.
Eventbrite has also made a broader international push in recent years, acquiring Ticketea, one of Spain’s leading ticketing providers, back in April, and acquiring Amsterdam-based Ticketscript back in January of last year. And those deals followed roughly half a dozen others.
Over the years, the company has raised roughly $330 million from investors, according to Crunchbase. Its biggest shareholders, shows its S-1, are Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital and T. Rowe Price. Collectively, the three entities own roughly half of Eventbrite’s pre-IPO shares.
It’s no surprise that political discourse in America is divided — especially online. And last week in MIT Technology Review, data visualization company Graphika brought those divides to life with 3D, colored depictions of the kind of filter bubbles found on Twitter in the U.S.
Co-written by Graphika’s CEO John Kelly and the company’s research director Camille François, the graphics imagine Twitter users as colored orbs (larger or smaller depending on their follower sizes) and groups them depending on who follows whom.
The authors told TechCrunch that to create these particular data visualizations they used data from about 13,500 of the best connected accounts following members of Congress and national-level official political party accounts. Other starting places, such as singular states or grassroots parties, also illustrated these looming national echo chambers the authors said.
The visuals help bring into stark realization some predictable trends. For example, there is essentially zero crossover in followers between extreme Trump supporters and people who are extremely anti-Trump. The progressive movement is strongest in its connections between Democrats and left-wing journalists, but has some connections on the conservative sphere, as well.
Progressive Data
One interesting point that the graphic does bring into focus is that, despite our preconceptions of either the entire left or the entire right representing a singular ideology, in fact it’s primarily accounts on the far edge of these groups who do most of the talking. The authors point out that for some of these accounts, the high and identical numbers of tweets point toward a bot instead of an actual user.
This kind of polarization is exactly what makes it possible for bad outside actors (like Russia) to influence political discourse and action in a social sphere. Instead of targeting the middle of the spectrum — where users are generally quieter and generally less strictly partisan in their views — these actors can engage with polarized communities, gain their trust and introduce new or exacerbating ideologies.
“It’s the digital equivalent of moving to an isolated and tight-knit community, using its own language quirks and catering to its obsessions, running for mayor, and then using that position to influence national politics,” the authors write.
If these data point to anything, it’s that it’s time we begin to value listening over talking.
“The extremes are screaming while the center whispers,” the authors told TechCrunch.
It’s human nature to want to confirm your beliefs with those who agree with you, especially in times of uncertainty or fear. However, by retreating to echo chambers that are being infiltrated with bad actors we’re doing nobody a favor, least of all our selves.
Toyota is investing $500 million into Uber. Under the agreement, Toyota vehicles will be equipped with Uber’s self-driving technology, an unnamed source familiar with the deal told TechCrunch.
The investment was first reported by the WSJ. TechCrunch confirmed the Toyota-Uber agreement with a source familiar with the deal. Uber declined to comment on the deal.
Unlike Uber’s partnership with Volvo, the ride-hailing company will not own these vehicles, according to the source. It’s unclear if Toyota will operate these autonomous vehicles or if another third-party, such as a fleet operator, will.
Toyota already has a relationship with Uber, albeit not as closely as under this new arrangement. Toyota announced at CES in January that it is working with Amazon, ride-hailing companies Uber and Didi, automaker Mazda, and Pizza Hut to develop an electric autonomous shuttle that can be used to deliver people or the packages. The business alliances were created to focus on the development of the new e-Palette Concept Vehicle in the near term.
Toyota also has a research arm, the Toyota Research Institute that is based in California. TRI debuted its first generation autonomous vehicle in March 2017. It’s Platform 2.1 vehicle, revealed just a few months later, features light ranging and detection radar developed by Silicon Valley startup Luminar.
Toyota (and by extension TRI) have a different deployment strategy for autonomous vehicles than its competitors. The company has previously said it plans to take a dual approach to autonomy that it calls “Guardian” and “Chauffeur,” both of which use the same technology stack.
Toyota’s idea is to develop fully autonomous cars to serve an aging population and the disabled as well as work on technology for regular production cars that could switch between assisted and full autonomy. This “guardian” technology would operate silently in the background.
In Facebook’s latesthighprofiledeparture, corporate communications lead Rachel Whetstone will leave for a top PR role at Netflix. Whetstone joined Facebook about a year ago after leaving a similar position running communications at Uber during some of the company’s most fraught days. Prior to Uber, Whetstone worked for Google as its SVP of communications and public policy.
Facebook confirmed Whetstone’s departure, which was first reported by Recode. “It’s been amazing to be able to learn from one of the best over this last year,” FB Comms VP Caryn Marooney said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “We are grateful for what Rachel has brought to our team and we know she will have continued success at Netflix”.
Whetstone won’t be leaving Facebook for another few months still as the company prepares for the transition. After her departure, Caryn Marooney will return to leading Facebook’s global communications team, a role she shared during Whetstone’s time with the company.
In a separate statement today, Netflix welcomed its new hire. “Rachel is a proven communications leader and a strong addition to the Netflix team,” said Netflix CEO Reed Hastings in a statement. “Her deep knowledge and international expertise will be invaluable as we bring Netflix and its expanding lineup of original content to an increasingly global audience.”
At Netflix, Whetstone will replace former PR head Jonathan Friedland who created his own PR crisis at the company earlier this summer when he was fired for his use of a racial slur.
