Category: UNCATEGORIZED

This week Koan, a startup that provides objectives-and-key-results (OKR) and status-tracking software, announced that it has raised an additional $1 million, added a free tier to its service, and acquired a design firm that it has worked with.

Koan, which raised $3 million in Seed funding last October, was co-founded by Matt Tucker, who previously co-founded Jive. Jive focused on enterprise social networking, went public in 2011 and later sold itself in 2017 for an all-cash deal worth $462 million.

The OKR-focused startup competes in a somewhat crowded space. The goals-tracking software market saw a wave of venture funding over the last year, including Ally’s $15 million Series B, Gtmhub’s Series A, WorkBoard’s Series C, among others.

For more on what OKRs are and how they work, I’ve written a bit of an explainer here.

Koan’s software is built around a single core philosophy, Tucker told TechCrunch in an interview, namely that small, positive actions done repeatedly will amount to a big impact in time.

In that vein, while Koan offers the OKR tools you’d imagine, it also has a check-in feature that helps individuals to report their performance and progress in a manner that is aggregated across teams to provide a clear picture of how individuals across teams are feeling about any particular KR. If individual workers keep updating their progress, the company’s picture of how it is progressing towards goals will sharpen.

Growth plans

Koan is pursuing a growth strategy called product-led growth, also known as product-led selling. OpenView Partners defines the go-to-market method as follows: “[A]n end user-focused growth model that relies on the product itself as the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion and expansion.”

Via a Koan deck that TechCrunch reviewed, here how individual reports of progress against a KR can be viewed in its software.

It’s cheap, and if it works, very effective.

Software products that entice individuals to sign up, who then invite colleagues aboard can benefit from product-led growth strategies. The method has proven popular with collaboration-focused software, so it could make sense for Koan; if one team at a company uses the startup’s software, its use could spread to other teams. That would mean more revenue for Koan.

So to juice the number of folks using its product in hopes of it spreading widely, Koan is adding a free tier to its service. In marketing-speak, the startup wants to widen the top of its funnel.

If the move works, Koan could progress from Seed maturity to Series A preparedness. Its new capital will help in the same effort, with the new funds earmarked to help it staff up on the engineering side of its business and to help “accelerate [its] product led growth,” in the words of its CEO.

BMNT put the new monies into the company.

And to top its news dump off, Koan has purchased Horrible Design Co, which it has worked with. Horrible has traditionally helped small startups with product and design related projects.

The OKR space is red-hot, and competitive. Some startups charge, others don’t, some have a freemium model. Koan has now cast its lot in with the third category. Let’s see if the 2021 planning cycle can help the company snag new users as its CEO hopes, and drive the revenue growth that its new investor expects.

I’ve had Apple’s AirPod Max headphones for less than 24 hours, so there is no way I would attempt to write a review of any sort. But I do have some of those oh so popular these days “first impressions” to share. Mostly on build quality, but I’ll throw a few first listen thoughts at you too.

These are thoughts that I have now that may change or get reinforced as I continue to evaluate them over the next week or so. So consider the below a sort of draft review that I’m publishing my early notes on. A ‘proto review’.

First, they’re gorgeous. The earcups are beautiful. The band is incredibly sturdy. The netting feels like a high-end piece of furniture. The stems are insane, with a precision pull out mechanism that acts like a hand-crafted car piston. 

The netting, the ear pads, the clever (though now somewhat common) magnetic centering and clasp. The tuck and roll of the earcup covers providing an invisible seam as they attach to the body. The single piece of aluminum each of the ear cups is made of. How high quality is the build here? Like, this shouldn’t ship for $550 high. Judging from execution alone, the AirPod Max feels like it should be more expensive if anything. 

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There is a tradeoff here that I feel I must mention even in this early review, though: These things are heavy. If you do not like heavy headphones, do not buy the AirPod Max. They are intense, definitely demand being listened to while sitting essentially straight up or leaning back (if you’re actively walking around the house picking up kid’s clothes and toys from the floor, for instance, they tend to want to shift forward from their own weight). These clock in at 386g — over 100g heavier than a pair of Beats over ears. If you have very high end headphones, you may be expecting this kind of weight, most people I think will not be. More on this as I keep using them and trying out adjustments.

There is also a distinct dearth of articulation present here. The piston-style extruding earcups are clever and have wow factor, but there is a limited spring back style articulation of the cup itself which means no folding them inward on themselves like the Bose QCII or Sony MX headphones are capable of. Hence that case I guess.

The controls are fine so far, the crown feels almost exactly like an Apple Watch crown, with maybe slightly more tension. The Siri functions work totally fine, either with a long press of the crown or a ‘Hey Siri’. The earcups have precision detection of position so you can pause by simply lifting one cup.

Taking the headphones off and setting them down turns them off, there is no power button. This feels super natural and nicely Apple-ey. Just put them on to use and take them off to stop.

They charge from any power brick though none is included. Apple says that you’ll get 1.5 hours for 5 minutes of charging but there is no overall fast charge. It’s basically two hours with any USB brick no matter the wattage.

The lack of an included 3.5mm cable means that you have to add $35 to the price to get to a place where you’re comparing these with a Bose or Sony option for seat-back systems on planes and general capability. Speaking of travel…

The lack of real folding options on these, the material in the netting and the pretty definitive ‘one way’ these are meant to articulate means that I do not see these being a regular travel companion for me, on initial pass. Oh, and the case is just as ridiculous as it looks. Sorry. The construction here is just as dodgy as the MagSafe Duo. It feels cheap, and like it will dirty easily, not exactly what you want from a ‘travel case’. And it looks like a butt.

The sound is impressive. Don’t worry about this being in the Beats region of a bass-heavy crowd pleaser. Though there is plenty of low end, this is a more nuanced affair, with crisp delivery across the spectrum. I’ve watched movies, listened to music and had phone conversations, all sounded great. The spatial audio feature, for one, is greatly improved by the larger drivers and enclosed environment. Audio panning and positioning from Atmos content is very cleverly done and if you’re watching from an iOS device it really does feel like you’re in a large sound environment with a strong center positioning at the screen. They feel like you’re listening in a room with no headphones on at all, it is really beyond impressive.

Ok, that’s it for now, more as I continue to check them out. Shortly: super high quality, very heavy, sound solid so far.

For those of you interested, I will test latency with a corded setup but I haven’t been able to yet.

In government, there’s rare bipartisan consensus on taking down Big Tech .

Capping a 16-month investigation, a Democratic-controlled House committee recently identified Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google as monopolies that snuff out competition and innovation, equating the Big Four to oil barons and railroad tycoons of the late 19th century.

Only days later, the Trump administration sued Google to stop it from “unlawfully maintaining monopolies” by seeking court orders that could include its breakup.

And yesterday, in separate but coordinated lawsuits, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 attorneys generals from blue and red states alike sued Facebook to undo its “predatory” and “illegal” acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. When President-elect Joe Biden takes office next month, his administration is widely expected to proceed with both federal antitrust cases against Google and Facebook.

Big Tech, both parties agree, has become too big for our good.

The typical American doesn’t always see it the same way. Their assessment changes based on how the issue is framed.

When we at The Harris Poll asked directly whether Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are monopolies that limit competition and innovation, American adults overwhelmingly side with the House Judiciary Committee’s findings. Most also say Google should be broken up, with nearly half saying dismantling Facebook would also encourage innovation and protect consumers. Go get ‘em trust-busters, they seem to cheer.

But when asked broadly about categories of digital services the Big Four lead in — web search, e-commerce, streaming services or social media — Americans just as overwhelmingly tell us their favorite providers are not monopolies at all.

In the view of most Americans, there’s abundant competition and choice throughout the digital marketplace. Lowercase big tech, the majority says, promotes innovation and boosts the nation’s standing around the world. Big, in other words, doesn’t automatically mean bad.

Most Americans, of course, are not antitrust lawyers or macroeconomists expert at detecting monopolies and quantifying their market impact. They view Big Tech primarily as consumers, making judgments based on their own experiences and feelings rather than court-admissible data. As consumers, Americans generally see technology as a positive, based on our research.

In our survey of 2,069 representative adults in the U.S., almost two-thirds say that every day they use a search engine like Google and go to social media like Facebook. At least once a week, almost half shop on Amazon or another online general store and two-thirds stream video through apps such as Google’s YouTube, Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video.

The COVID-19 pandemic has only increased their loyalty. Cooped-up day after day, half of American adults say they’re streaming more video than they did a year ago, for instance, while a third is shopping more online. If consumers are feeling abused by Big Tech — and more than half do say big tech companies fail to always do right by their customers — they’re not riled up enough to click elsewhere.

American consumers also don’t feel like captives without options. Google’s market share in internet search on mobile devices is 94%, which probably fits anyone’s definition of a monopoly. Yet even though 55% of Americans agree that Google has too much power and should be severed from YouTube and Gmail, four of five say there are adequate alternatives.

Nearly twice as many survey respondents, in fact, say there are too many choices for search engines (19%) than too few (11%). Americans judge the markets for social media, video and audio streaming, e-commerce and other digital services like Apple Pay and Google Pay as similarly competitive.

Despite Big Tech’s market dominance, American consumers don’t think these companies are hurting their rivals, either. Though three-quarters of Americans see Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook as monopolies, four of five people say tech giants promote innovation in their industries and two-thirds say these companies promote competition and enhance the nation’s global reputation.

College grads and those 45 years old and up are slightly more likely to see Big Tech as a driver of innovation and competition, though all demographic groups share these high opinions.

Because I’m also not an antitrust lawyer or macroeconomist, I’m in no position to say whether the bipartisan legal crusade against Big Tech is warranted. But based on our polling, I can offer insights on how Americans will react to the Justice Department’s antitrust case against Google as it goes to trial and other actions Congress or regulators may take to reduce Big Tech’s dominance.

When we separate Americans’ narrow take on individual companies from their perceptions of the digital realms consumers inhabit daily, we see little reason for the federal government to blow up Big Tech. Another cautionary finding: Barely half of the representative American adults in our poll even think regulators and lawmakers are the right groups to determine whether a company is too big.

If these companies eventually are downsized, though, the typical American consumer probably won’t mourn for the Not-Quite-As-Big Tech that results, as long as their trusted apps, search engines, shopping sites, streaming services and social media sites are still freely — and, in their minds, abundantly—available.

Planet FWD, the climate-friendly food startup founded by Zume co-founder Julia Collins, is today launching its first product, Moonshot Snacks. The climate-friendly snack is carbon neutral, organic, kosher, plant-based, non GMO and has no sugar added.

The crackers come in three flavors: sourdough sea salt rosemary garlic and tomato basil. A box of crackers costs $5.99.

Planet FWD is also announcing an additional $2.5 million in funding led by Emerson Collective, Concrete Rose, MCJ Collective and Arlan Hamilton, as well as existing investors, including BBG Ventures, January Ventures,  and Kapor Capital among others. This is on top of the $2.7 million the startup announced earlier this year.

What’s unique about Planet FWD’s Moonshot Snacks is that it uses ingredients from farmers that use regenerative agriculture practices. Regenerative agriculture is a farming technique that aims to reverse the effects of climate change by capturing carbon in soil and aboveground biomass, which ultimately increases biodiversity, enriches soils and improves watersheds.

“We want to engage customers and show them they have the power to address climate change just with the way they eat,” Collins told TechCrunch. “We can use our food choices as a way to promote better farm management practices and company practices that can help decarbonize the environment.”

Ideally, Planet FWD will be able to show there’s consumer demand for climate-friendly products, Collins said. From there, she hopes that would encourage more farmers to implement these regenerative agriculture practices.

Unlike organic foods, where those specific farms are relatively well-known and identified, that can’t be said for regenerative agriculture. This is where the software element of Planet FWD comes in.

Additionally, Planet FWD is alpha testing a carbon impact assessment. So, if a brand wanted to determine what its current greenhouse gas impact is for its products, the tool could breakdown where it comes from — whether that’s the packaging, the ingredients, the distribution, etc. From there, the tool would recommend how to reduce the product’s greenhouse gas impact.

“Frankly, I think it’s a privilege to be alive and aware during this time where this is this window of opportunity to address climate change,” Collins said. “We can’t stop it. We can’t reverse it. But we can address it so it’s still possible for people to live on this planet. But the window is closing.”

Moonshot Snacks begins shipping today via its website. On December 16, it will be available via plastic-free grocery store Zero and will have a more traditional retail launch next year.

Planet FWD will create other products down the line, like cookies and chips. But first and foremost, the company’s roadmap is driven by the supply chain and understanding where there are opportunities to convert farms to regenerative practices.

“Through its sustainable and climate-friendly ingredient platform, Planet FWD is building a movement of more climate-conscious farmers and producers who can lead us toward a better, more sustainable future,” Fern Mandelbaum, Managing Director at Emerson Collective, said in a statement. “Through Julia’s inclusive leadership and passion, Planet FWD is helping create a new standard for the food industry and its role in being part of climate solutions.”

Nobody likes dealing with taxes — until the system works in your favor. In many countries, startups can receive tax credits for their R&D work and related employee cost, but as with all things bureaucracy, that’s often a slow and onerous task. Boast.ai aims to make this process far easier, by using a mix of AI and tax experts. The company, which currently has about 1,000 customers, today announced that it has raised a $23 million Series A round led by Radian Capital.

Launched in 2012 by co-founders Alex Popa (CEO) and Lloyed Lobo (president), Boast focuses on helping companies — and especially startups — in the U.S. and Canada claim their R&D tax credits.

“Globally, over $200 billion has been given in R&D incentives to fund businesses, not only in the U.S. and Canada, but the U.K., Australia, France, New Zealand, Ireland give out these incentives,” Lobo explained. “But there’s huge red tape. It’s a cumbersome process. You got to dive in and figure out work that qualifies and what doesn’t. Then you’ve got to file it with your taxes. Then if the government audits you, it’s like a long, laborious process.”

Image Credits: Boast.ai

After working on a few other startup ideas, the co-founders decided to go all-in on Boast. And in the process of working on other ideas, they also realized that AI wasn’t going to be able to do it all, but that it was getting good enough to augment humans to make a complex process like dealing with R&D tax credits scalable.

“The way I think to bootstrap a company is three things,” Lobo explained. “One, customers are looking for an outcome. Get them that outcome in the fastest, cheapest way possible. Two, when you’re doing that, you may have to do a lot of manual work. Figure out what those manual touch points are and then build the workflow to automate that. And once you have those two things, then you’ll have enough data to start working on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Those are the key learnings that we learned the hard way.”

So after doing some of that manual work, Boast can now automatically pull in data using tech tools like JIRA and GitHub and a company’s financial tools like QuickBooks and (soon) ADP. It then uses its algorithms to cluster this data, figure out how much time employees spend on projects that would qualify for a tax credit and automate the tax filing process. Throughout the process — and to interact with the government if necessary — the company keeps humans in the loop.

“So all our [customer success] team is engineers,” Lobo noted. “Because if you don’t have engineers they can’t inform the decision-making process. They help figure out if there are any loose ends and then they deal with the audits, communicating with the government and whatnot. That’s how we’re able to effectively get SaaS-like margins or more.”

Ideally, a tool like Boast pays for itself and the company says it has secured more than $150 million in R&D tax credits since launch. Currently, it’s also doubling growth year over year, and that’s what made the founders decide to raise outside money for the first time. That funding will go toward increasing the sales team (which is currently only four people strong) and improving the platform, but Lobo was clear that he doesn’t want to be too aggressive. The goal, he said, is not to have to raise again until Boast can hit the $30 to $50 million revenue mark.

Once fully implemented, Boast also effectively becomes a system of record for all R&D and engineering data. And indeed, that’s the company’s overall vision, with the tax credits being somewhat of a Trojan horse to get to this point. By the middle of next year, the team plans to offer a new product around R&D-based financing, Lobo tells me.

Over the years, the Boast team also focused on not just growing its customer base but also the overall startup ecosystem in the markets in which it operates, with a special focus on Canada. The Boast team, for example, is also the team behind the popular annual Traction conference in Vancouver, Canada (Disclosure: I’ve moderated sessions at the event since its inception). A thriving startup ecosystem creates a larger client base for Boast, too, after all — and coincidently, the team met its investors at the event, too.

LeafLink is today announcing it raised a $40 million Series C financing round, led by Founders Fund with participation from Thrive Capital, Nosara Capital, and Lerer Hippeau. This round of financing brings the total amount raised by the company to over $90 million.

This financing round is Founder Fund’s largest technology investment in the cannabis space.

Since its founding in 2015 LeafLink has become a significant player in legal cannabis. With a 130 employees and operating in 27 markets, the company says it has 32% of the U.S. wholesale cannabis market, resulting in an annualized gross merchandise value of over $3 billion. LeafLink sees the Series C in helping grow the business through new processes and services.

“This fundraising round is monumental for a technology company like LeafLink as we continue to define a space that shows no signs of slowing down,” said Ryan G. Smith, Co-founder, and CEO of LeafLink, said in a released statement. “We’re honored to partner with Founders Fund as we scale our marketplace technology across the growing cannabis industry. Our eyes are set on bringing efficiency and innovation to the supply chain, and we’re excited for cannabis to serve as a model for more legacy industries in the future.”

Right now, LeafLink serves as a critical service for the cannabis market by connecting retailers with suppliers and providing supply chain liquidity through its e-commerce marketplace. With the additional $40m, the company expects to expand its offering with new brands and retailers and expand into the new markets opened up by the 2020 election.

“The U.S. appears to be on a path to full federal legalization over the next few years,” said Founders Fund partner Napoleon Ta. “We believe we’ll start to see some massive success stories in the cannabis space as regulations change and that LeafLink will be one of the winners.”

In a statement to TechCrunch, Ta says LeafLink is a tech-enabled wholesale marketplace connecting thousands of wholesalers and retail buyers. He sees the investment as a great opportunity to work with a company he and Founders Fund see has the potential to bring an entire industry onto one platform.

“We invested in LeafLink because the team is merging best practices from e-commerce marketplaces with B2B technology to streamline an entire industry’s supply chain and operations,” said Ta. “We’re excited to make our largest investment in the cannabis space to date in LeafLink.”

Only a few months after announcing its $15 million Series A round, Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity firm Hunters today announced that it has received additional growth funding from Snowflake Ventures. With this, Snowflake’s venture arm joins existing investors M12 and U.S. Venture Partners, which led the Series A round, as well as YL Ventures, Blumberg Captial and Okta Ventures.

The fact that Snowflake Ventures is investing in the company is maybe no surprise, given that Snowflake was one of Hunters’ first customers and its design partner for its threat-hunting service. Hunters provides enterprises with the tools to automate the threat-hunting process, something that has traditionally been a manual task. With the data it gathers from an enterprises’ networking and security tools, Hunters can then detect stealth attacks against the company’s infrastructure and data estate.

“Snowflake and Hunters share the same vision of empowering organizations to fully mobilize their data in a secure way,” Snowflake’s Head of Corporate Development Stefan Williams said. “Snowflake’s Data Cloud coupled with Hunters’ breakthrough technology in security operations, empowers joint customers with best-in-class automated threat detection at cloud-scale.”

It’s worth noting that Snowflake Ventures only launched a month ago. The fund’s goal is to foster innovation “through investing in growth-stage companies that demonstrate a commitment to mobilizing data, provide value to our customers, and expand opportunities for the Data Cloud.” Its first investment was in machine-learning platform DataRobot.

Aira is the company behind one of the most exciting wireless power innovations, and now this technology could be headed into vehicles. The wireless power company just announced a strategic investment from Motherson, a Tier 1 global auto parts supplier.

Aira’s technology allows companies to build a better wireless charger. Instead of a wireless charger that forces users to use a specific location, Aira’s technology allows users to place their device anywhere on the surface. It’s the magic behind the curtain of Nomad’s Base Station Pro and fulfills the promise of Apple’s canceled AirPower charging station.

“Motherson is one of the world’s largest and most forward-thinking automotive suppliers, and we share a common goal of enhancing the wireless charging experience and value proposition for vehicles,” said Jake Slatnick, Aira’s co-founder and CEO. “Motherson’s expertise and relationships will greatly accelerate our efforts to provide validated and certified wireless charging modules for vehicles worldwide.”

Through this new deal, Motherson and Aira will develop, manufacture, and supply automotive-grade charging modules. What cars will have this technology? At this point, it’s unclear if there are any automakers signed on to integrate these modules into their vehicles.

Air’s solution would be a welcomed upgrade to the charging pads currently found throughout the auto industry. Like their desktop counterparts, the pads found in today’s vehicles require the user to place their device in a specific location. Keeping the device on this pad is even more tricky as the vehicle moves around. Some manufacturers have taken to building clips into their design to keep the phone in place. Aira’s technology would allow for a larger pad and imprecise placement that should be better suited for in-car use.

“Our core mission is to find, support, and deploy the best technology solutions to global automakers and Tier 1 suppliers,” explained Edward Saenz de Viteri, Global Director of Business Development at Motherson Innovations. “We believe that FreePower represents the best-in-class Qi solution for in-vehicle wireless charging. It has already been deployed successfully in consumer devices, and its benefits for automotive are even more compelling. We look forward to making Aira’s free-position technology a global standard for in-vehicle wireless charging.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Facebook’s bad week just got worse: It’s being investigated in Germany for linking usage of its VR product, Oculus, to having a Facebook account.

The tech giant raised the hackles of the VR community this summer when it announced it would be merging users of the latest Oculus kit onto a single Facebook account — and would end support for existing Oculus account users by 2023.

New users were immediately required to have a Facebook account in order to log in and access content for the virtual reality kit.

In August Facebook also announced that it was changing the name of the VR business it acquired back in 2014 for around $2BN — and had allowed to operate separately — to “Facebook Reality Labs“, signalling the assimilation of Oculus into its wider social empire.

(Related: The last of Oculus’ original co-founders left the company last year.)

In recent years Facebook has been pushing to add a ‘social layer’ to the VR platform — but the heavy-handed requirement for Oculus users to have a Facebook account has not proved popular with gamers.

Now antitrust authorities are taking an interest in the move.

Germany’s Federal Cartel Office (aka, the Bundeskartellamt) said today that it’s instigated abuse proceedings against Facebook to examine the linkage between Oculus VR products and its eponymous social network.

In a statement, its president, Andreas Mundt, said: In the future, the use of the new Oculus glasses requires the user to also have a Facebook account. Linking virtual reality products and the group’s social network in this way could constitute a prohibited abuse of dominance by Facebook. With its social network Facebook holds a dominant position in Germany and is also already an important player in the emerging but growing VR (virtual reality) market. We intend to examine whether and to what extent this tying arrangement will affect competition in both areas of activity.

The FCO has another ‘abuse of dominance proceeding’ ongoing against Facebook — related to how it combines user data for ad profiling in a privacy-hostile way the authority contends is an abuse of its market dominance.

That case is seen as highly innovative in how it combines privacy and antitrust concerns so is being closely watched.

The latest FCO proceeding against Facebook comes at an awkward time for the tech giant, which has been hit with a massive antitrust lawsuit from 46 U.S. States — which accuse it of suppressing competition through monopolistic business practices.

As antitrust regulators have stepped up their scrutiny of Zuckerberg’s empire in recent years Facebook has responded by announcing a plan to consolidate its messaging products onto a single technical backend, as well as adding Facebook branding to its acquisitions — in an apparent bid to make it harder for competition regulators to order a break up.

Facebook’s PR has sought to cloak the move by claiming it will increase user privacy.

Yet the states’ antitrust case against the company includes filings that show an executive discussing using moments of perceived increased competition for Facebook as an opportunity to decrease Facebook user privacy.

So, uh, awkward….

Reached for comment on the FCO Oculus proceeding, a Facebook spokesperson sent us this statement: “While Oculus devices are not currently available for sale in Germany, we will cooperate fully with the Bundeskartellamt and are confident we can demonstrate that there is no basis to the investigation.”

The tech giant has used a series of legal tactics to block the FCO’s order against ‘superprofiling’ users.

Last year Facebook successfully applied to block the order banning it from combining user data. However Germany’s Federal Court of Justice reversed the decision of the Higher Regional Court — confirming the FCO’s decision. Although the hearing on the main proceeding is still pending at the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court — currently scheduled for March 26, 2021 (after being postponed from a date in November).

Facebook responded to the Federal Court of Justice ruling by filing another emergency appeal against the FCO’s order — succeeding for a second time in blocking the order against combining user data.

The FCO says it does not have a route to appeal this preliminary block on points of law — meaning it’s had to lodge a complaint with the Federal Court of Justice, which it did on December 2.

In a statement, Mundt criticized Facebook for resorting to “legal remedies” to block the order which he said is delaying relief for consumers and competitors against Facebook’s abusive practices.

“The fact that Facebook has resorted to various legal remedies is not surprising in view of the significance which our proceedings have for the group’s business model. Nevertheless, the resulting delay in proceedings is of course regrettable for competition and consumers,” he said.

“This is the second time that the Higher Regional Court has preliminarily granted an emergency appeal filed by Facebook. The deadline imposed on Facebook for implementing our demands has again been suspended. As in our view the reasons for this are not sustainable, we have immediately filed a complaint with the Federal Court of Justice. We want the clock to be ticking again for Facebook.”

Facebook using courts to block attempts to hold its business model accountable for violating regional laws is par for the course in Europe.

The tech giant has recently succeeded in blocking a preliminary order from Ireland’s Data Protection Commission to suspend personal data transfers to the US by applying for a judicial review of the regulator’s process, for example.

It also sought to block Irish courts from referring the Schrems II case, which underpins that decision, to the CJEU in the first place — though it did not succeed.

In public remarks in September, Facebook VP Nick Clegg claimed it’s taking that legal action not to defend its own business model but to “try to send a signal that this is a really big issue for the whole European economy, for all small and large companies that rely on data transfers” — which he suggested would be “absolutely disastrous” for the EU as a whole.

More than one billion people in India today have a mobile connection, thanks in part to the proliferation of low-cost Android smartphones and the world’s cheapest mobile data plans in recent years.

This scale was unimaginable just three decades ago, when India had fewer than 2.5 million telephones in the country. One of the earliest and most pivotal efforts that expanded the reach of telephones in the country took place in the late 1980s.

That was when the Indian government backed the idea of setting up telephone booths, or public call offices, across cities and towns. No longer did people need to buy expensive telephones, or pay exorbitant fees and bills. A person could just walk to a nearby mom and pop store, place a call for a couple of cents and move on.

On Wednesday, India’s cabinet approved a proposal that seeks to replicate the decades old strategy — and its success — with democratizing Wi-Fi in the world’s second largest internet market.

India’s IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the government will launch PM WANI (Prime Minister Wi-Fi Access Network Interface) to “unleash a massive network in the country.”

The neighborhood stores that served as public call offices could now be public data offices, he said. To make the program a success, the government will not charge any license or registration fee, he said.

These public data offices will work in tandem with public data aggregators that are tasked to collaborate with small and large telecom companies to utilize their optical fibre network.

The program will “create millions of inter-operable Wi-Fi hotspots in the country and democratise content distribution and broadband access to millions at affordable rates,” said R.S. Sharma, former chairman of Indian telecom regulator TRAI. He likened the program to UPI, a payments infrastructure built by retail banks, which has become the most popular way Indians pay digitally today.

Hundreds of millions of people came online in India for the first time in the last decade. But just as many are still unconnected. The new program from the Indian government, in part, aims to bridge this gap.

“This is expected to be more business friendly and in line with efforts for ease of doing business.COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated delivery of stable and high speed Broadband Internet (data) services to an increasingly large number of subscribers in the country including areas which do not have 4G mobile coverage. This can be achieved by deployment of Public Wi-Fi,” the cabinet said in a statement. “Further, the proliferation of public Wi-Fi will not only create employment but also enhance disposable incomes in the hands of small and medium entrepreneurs and boost the GDP of the country,” it added.

Wednesday’s announcement is the latest effort to bring more people online in India. Global giants Google and Facebook, both of which are counting on emerging markets such as India to sustain their growth, have previously attempted to make internet access more affordable in the country. While Facebook’s marquee effort, Free Basics, was banned in the country over net neutrality violation charges, Google voluntarily shut down its free Wi-Fi program at 400 railway stations this year.

As mobile data prices got cheaper in many markets, including India, Google Station was no longer necessary, Caesar Sengupta, VP of Payments and Next Billion Users at Google, said at the time.

Jayanth Kolla, chief analyst and founder of consulting firm Convergence Catalyst, told TechCrunch that the Indian government should have launched this program seven to eight years ago.

He said the launch of Jio Platforms, which has become the largest telecom operator in India in just four years thanks to its cutrate mobile data tariffs, solved much of the challenges that PM WANI seeks to address.