Google pilots a search feature that aggregates short-form videos from TikTok and Instagram

Google is testing a new feature that will surface Instagram and TikTok videos in their own dedicated carousel in the Google app for mobile devices — a move that could help the company retain users in search of social video entertainment from fully leaving Google’s platform. The feature itself expands on a test launched earlier this year, where Google had first introduced a carousel of “Short Videos” within Google Discover  — the personalized feed found in the Google mobile app and to the left of the home screen on some Android devices.

To be clear, this “Short Videos” carousel is different from Google’s Stories, which rolled out in October 2020 to the Google Search app for iOS and Android. Those “Stories” — previously known as “AMP Stories” — consist of short-form video content created by Google’s online publishing partners like Forbes, USA Today, Vice, Now This, Bustle, Thrillist and others.

Meanwhile, the “Short Videos” carousel had been focused on aggregating social video from other platforms, including Google’s own short-form video project Tangi, Indian TikTok competitor Trell, as well as Google’s own video platform, YouTube — which has also been experimenting with short-form content as of late.

The expansion to include Instagram and TikTok content in this carousel was first reported by Search Engine Roundtable (via Brian Freiesleben’s tweet). They were able to access the feature by searching for “packers” in the Google app then scrolling down the page.

We were able to replicate this, as well. (See below image.)

Image Credits: screenshot of Google search results

We found the Short Videos carousel appears when you scroll past the Google Knowledge Base box for the Green Bay Packers, followed by the the scores, Top Stories, Twitter results, Top Results, Images, Videos and other content, like a listing of the players, standings and more.

Both Instagram and TikTok videos were available in the Short Videos row. When clicked, you’re taken to the web version of the social platform — not the native mobile app, even if it’s installed on your device. The end result is that Google users are more likely to remain on Google, as all it takes is a tap on the back arrow to return to the search results after watching the video.

Google has been indexing video content for years and partnered with Twitter on 2015 to index search results. It’s not clear to what extent it has any formal relationship with Facebook/Instagram or TikTok, however. (If those companies comment, we’ll update.)

Google declined to formally comment or further detail its plans, but a company spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch the feature was currently being piloted on mobile devices. They clarified that means it’s a limited, early-stage feature. In other words, you won’t find the video carousel on every search query just yet. But over time, as Google scales the product, it could become an interesting tool for indexing and surfacing top video content from social media — unless, of course, the platforms choose to block Google from doing so.

The feature is currently available in a limited way on the Google app for mobile devices and on the mobile web, the company said.

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Samsung hasn’t announced the Galaxy S21 yet, but you can already reserve one

For obvious reasons, many of us are spending the final week of 2020 looking forward. Samsung is hoping some folks are looking far enough ahead to reserve a spot in line for its still-unannounced Galaxy S21 handset (not an official name, mind, but probably a safe guess).

If you’re on the Samsung Mobile mailing list, you may well have received an email, compelling you to “Get ready to jump to the next Galaxy.” The link takes you to a reservation page that offers up some perks for getting in early on the company’s new flagship, including credits on other Samsung products like Galaxy earbuds.

The company recently noted that it would have more information in January — be it at CES or, more likely, a standalone event. That bucks trends a bit, which have found the company introducing its latest Galaxy S devices closer to Mobile World Congress (the S20 — pictured above — was announced February 11). Of course, MWC has been delayed until late June next year and nothing is really normal besides.

Samsung’s Galaxy S20 Ultra is a lot of phone for a lot of money

As I noted in a recent piece, 2020 was the roughest in a series of rough years for the smartphone industry, so why not get those pre-orders started a little early? And hey, not everyone got what they wanted for the holiday. Why not treat yourself to a new phone?

Image Credits: Winfuture

The good news is we know a lot about the unannounced phone. Samsung’s never been great at keeping things under wraps and we’re already starting to see some key details leaking out a few weeks ahead of the expected official unveil. Surprisingly, camera specs look to more or less be in line with the last model, after the company promised some big imaging strides in 2021. Perhaps those updates will arrive more in the form of software, instead of straight hardware bumps.

Specs from Winfuture point to — naturally — the Snapdragon 888 in the U.S., with the Exynos 2100 chip in other locales. The S21 sports a 6.2-inch display and 4000 mAh battery, where as the Plus upgrades things to 6.7 inches and 4,800 mAh, per the leak.

Samsung is expected to make everything official on January 14.

2021 holds even more Samsung foldables

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How Niantic evolved Pokémon GO for the year no one could go anywhere

Pokémon GO was created to encourage players to explore the world while coordinating impromptu large group gatherings — activities we’ve all been encouraged to avoid since the pandemic began.

And yet, analysts estimate that 2020 was Pokémon GO’s highest-earning year yet.

By twisting some knobs and tweaking variables, Pokémon GO became much easier to play without leaving the house.

Niantic’s approach to 2020 was full of carefully considered changes, and I’ve highlighted many of their key decisions below.

Consider this something of an addendum to the Niantic EC-1 I wrote last year, where I outlined things like the company’s beginnings as a side project within Google, how Pokémon Go began as an April Fools’ joke and the company’s aim to build the platform that powers the AR headsets of the future.

Hit the brakes

On a press call outlining an update Niantic shipped in November, the company put it on no uncertain terms: the roadmap they’d followed over the last ten-or-so months was not the one they started the year with. Their original roadmap included a handful of new features that have yet to see the light of day. They declined to say what those features were of course (presumably because they still hope to launch them once the world is less broken) — but they just didn’t make sense to release right now.

Instead, as any potential end date for the pandemic slipped further into the horizon, the team refocused in Q1 2020 on figuring out ways to adapt what already worked and adjust existing gameplay to let players do more while going out less.

Turning the dials

As its name indicates, GO was never meant to be played while sitting at home. John Hanke’s initial vision for Niantic was focused around finding ways to get people outside and playing together; from its very first prototype, Niantic had players running around a city to take over its virtual equivalent block by block. They’d spent nearly a decade building up a database of real-world locations that would act as in-game points meant to encourage exploration and wandering. Years of development effort went into turning Pokémon GO into more and more of a social game, requiring teamwork and sometimes even flash mob-like meetups for its biggest challenges.

Now it all needed to work from the player’s couch.

The earliest changes were those that were easiest for Niantic to make on-the-fly, but they had dramatic impacts on the way the game actually works.

Some of the changes:

• Doubling the players “radius” for interacting with in-game gyms, landmarks that players can temporarily take over for their in-game team, earning occupants a bit of in-game currency based on how long they maintain control. This change let more gym battles happen from the couch.
• Increasing spawn points, generally upping the number of Pokémon you could find at home dramatically.
• Increasing “incense” effectiveness, which allowed players to use a premium item to encourage even more Pokémon to pop up at home. Niantic phased this change out in October, then quietly reintroduced it in late November. Incense would also last twice as long, making it cheaper for players to use.
• Allowing steps taken indoors (read: on treadmills) to count toward in-game distance challenges.
• Players would no longer need to walk long distances to earn entry into the online player-versus-player battle system.
• Your “buddy” Pokémon (a specially designated Pokémon that you can level up Tamagotchi-style for bonus perks) would now bring you more gifts of items you’d need to play. Pre-pandemic, getting these items meant wandering to the nearby “Pokéstop” landmarks.

By twisting some knobs and tweaking variables, Pokémon GO became much easier to play without leaving the house — but, importantly, these changes avoided anything that might break the game while being just as easy to reverse once it became safe to do so.

GO Fest goes virtual

Like this, just … online. Image Credits: Greg Kumparak

Thrown by Niantic every year since 2017, GO Fest is meant to be an ultra-concentrated version of the Pokémon GO experience. Thousands of players cram into one park, coming together to tackle challenges and capture previously unreleased Pokémon.

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Not even 5G could rescue smartphone sales in 2020

This was going to be the year of 5G. It was going to be the year the next-generation wireless technology helped reverse some troubling macro trends for the industry — or at the very least helped stem the bleeding some.

But the best laid plans, and all that. With about a week left in the year, I think it’s pretty safe to say that 2020 didn’t wind up the way the vast majority of us had hoped. It’s a list that certainly includes the lion’s share of smartphone makers. Look no further than a recent report published by Gartner to answer the question of just how bad 2020 was for smartphone sales.

Gartner: Q3 smartphone sales down 5.7% to 366M, slicing COVID-19 declines in Q1, Q2

It was so bad that a 5.7% global decline year-over-year for the third quarter constituted good news. In a normal year, that wouldn’t qualify as good news for too many industries outside of wax cylinder and asbestos sales. But there are few standards by which 2020 was a normal year, so now we’ll take some respite in the fact that a 5.7% drop was a considerably less pronounced drop than the ~20% we saw in Qs 1 and 2.

Smartphone sales declined again in Q2, surprising no one

Smartphone sales expected to drop 2.5% globally this year

Some context before we get into the whys here. A thing that’s important to note up front is that mobile wasn’t one of those industries where everything was smooth sailing before everything got upended by a pandemic. In 2019 I wrote a not insignificant number of stories with headlines like “Smartphone sales expected to drop 2.5% globally this year” and “Smartphone sales declined again in Q2, surprising no one.” And even those stories were a continuation of trends from a year prior.

The reasons for the decline should be pretty familiar by now. For one thing, premium handsets got expensive, routinely topping out over $1,000. Related to that, phones have gotten good. Good news for consumers doesn’t necessarily translate to good news for manufacturers here, as upgrade cycles have slowed significantly from their traditional every two years (also an artifact of the carrier subscription model). Couple that with economic hardships, and you’ve got a recipe for slowed growth.

5G devices were less than 1% of US smartphone purchases in 2019

This March, I wrote an article titled “5G devices were less than 1% of US smartphone purchases in 2019.” There was, perhaps, a certain level of cognitive dissonance there, after many years of 5G hype. There are myriad factors at play here. First, there just weren’t a ton of different 5G models available in the States by year’s end. Second, network rollout was far from complete. And, of course, there was no 5G iPhone.

I concluded that piece by noting:

Of course, it remains to be seen how COVID-19 will impact sales. It seems safe to assume that, like every aspect of our lives, there will be a notable impact on the number of people buying expensive smartphones. Certainly things like smartphone purchases tend to lessen in importance in the face of something like a global pandemic.

In hindsight, the answer is “a lot.” I’ll be the first to admit that when I wrote those words on March 12, I had absolutely no notion of how bad it was about to get and how long it would last (hello month nine of lockdown). In the earliest days, the big issue globally was on the supply side. Asia (China specifically) was the first place to get hit and the epicenter of manufacturing buckled accordingly. Both China and its manufacturing were remarkably fast to get back online.

In the intervening months, demand has taken a massive hit. Once again, there are a number of reasons for this. For starters, people aren’t leaving their homes as much — and for that reason, the money they’ve allotted to electronics purchases has gone toward things like PCs, as they’ve shifted to a remote work set-up. The other big issue here is simple economics. So many people are out of work and so much has become uncertain that smartphones have once again been elevated to a kind of luxury status.

There are, however, reasons to be hopeful. It seems likely that 5G will eventually help right things — though it’s hard to say when. Likely much of that depends on how soon we’re able to return to “normal” in 2021. But for now, there’s some positive to be seen in early iPhone sales. After Apple went all in on 5G this year, the new handset (perhaps unsurprisingly) topped sales for all other 5G handsets for the month of October, according to analysts.

The company will offer a more complete picture (including the ever-important holiday sales) as part of its earnings report next month. For now, at least, it seems that thing are finally heading in the right direction. That trend will, hopefully, continue as the new year sees a number of Android launches.

Perhaps 2021 will be the year of 5G — because 2020 sure wasn’t.

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Daily Crunch: Telegram prepares to monetize

Telegram will introduce ads, TikTok’s parent company is moving into drug discovery and President Trump continues his battle against Section 230. This is your Daily Crunch for December 23, 2020.

The big story: Telegram prepares to monetize

Telegram founder Pavel Durov said the messaging app will introduce advertising next year on public one-to-many channels. Durov wrote on his Telegram channel the ad platform will be “one that is user-friendly, respects privacy and allows us to cover the costs of server and traffic.”

He also pointed to premium stickers as another way that Telegram could monetize, while emphasizing that existing features will remain free and that he does not support showing ads in private chats.

In addition to discussing the company’s monetization plans, Durov said that Telegram is “approaching” 500 million users.

The tech giants

Nikola’s stock crashes after announcing cancelation of contract with Republic Services for 2,500 garbage trucks — This is the latest deal to unravel for Nikola as it tries to patch up following recent devastating reports.

TikTok parent ByteDance hiring for AI drug discovery team — “We are looking for candidates to join our team and conduct cutting-edge research in drug discovery and manufacturing powered by AI algorithms,” the company said in a job posting.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Chinese autonomous driving startup WeRide bags $200M in funding — The new funding will see WeRide joining hands with Yutong, a 57-year-old company, to make autonomous-driving minibuses and city buses.

Voyager Space Holdings to acquire majority stake in commercial space leader Nanoracks — Nanoracks provided the Bishop Airlock that was installed on the International Space Station.

Honk introduces a real-time, ephemeral messaging app aimed at Gen Z — Instead of sending texts off into the void and hoping for a response, friends on Honk communicate via messages that are shown live as you type.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Dear Sophie: What’s ahead for US immigration in 2021? — Sophie Alcorn weighs in on what’s next for U.S. visas and green cards.

Looking ahead after 2020’s epic M&A spree — This year, four deals involving chip companies totaled over $100 billion on their own.

Heading into 2021: Venture fundraising, liquidity and the everything bubble — Alex Wilhelm’s final column of the year.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Trump vetoes major defense bill, citing Section 230 — President Trump has vetoed the $740 million National Defense Authorization Act, a major bill that allocates military funds each year.

XRP cryptocurrency crashes following announcement of SEC suit against Ripple — The XRP token’s value has declined more than 42% in the past 24 hours.

TaskRabbit is resetting customer passwords after finding ‘suspicious activity’ on its network — The company later confirmed the activity was a credential stuffing attack, where existing sets of exposed or breached usernames and passwords are matched against different websites to access accounts.

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 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

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TechCrunch’s top stories of 2020

As the year comes to a close, some of our editors share their top stories from 2020.

Read more:

• For Seattle’s cop-free protest zone, tech is both a revolutionary asset and disastrous liability
• Uber in talks to sell ATG self-driving unit to Aurora
• Uber sells self-driving unit Uber ATG in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B
• Aurora sends offers to majority of Uber ATG employees, but not the R&D lab
• Uber leads $170M Lime investment, offloads Jump to Lime
• Uber sells air taxi business Elevate to Joby Aviation, shedding its last moonshot
• Uber sells $500M stake in its freight business as the ride-hailing giant works to conserve cash
• COVID-19 blamed as smartphone sales plummet 20% in Q2
• Edtech is surging, and parents have some notes
• SpaceX makes history with successful first human space launch
• SpaceX and NASA successfully launch four astronauts to space for first operational Dragon crew mission
• SpaceX flies its Starship rocket to 40,000 feet, just misses the landing in explosive finale
• SpaceX snags $885M from FCC to serve rural areas with Starlink

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OnePlus’ latest concept phone changes color to ‘breathe’ with the user

Back in January, OnePlus showed off its first concept phone. The aptly (if plainly) named Concept One sported color-shifting glass, giving the effect of an “invisible camera” on the rear of the device. The concept wasn’t particularly useful — if anything it was a fun diversion from boring old phone updates.

From that standpoint, the OnePlus 8T Concept is more of the same. It’s not particularly useful as far as smartphone updates go — and more to the point, there’s absolutely zero guarantee this technology will ever make it onto an actual phone. Once again, the headlining technology has more to do with how the phone looks than how it actually functions.

The big thing here is something called ECMF, or Electronic Color, Material and Finish. Basically it’s a color-changing film that coats the phone. It has metal oxide, which activates when voltage is applied, changing the glass from dark blue to light silver.

Image Credits: OnePlus

OnePlus says, “Our designers took inspiration for these colors from the multi-hued flowing water in the hot springs of Pamukkale, Turkey. Nature has perfected many designs, and by drawing inspiration from Pamukkale and other natural elements, we can craft new interaction experiences that are more natural, intuitive, and effortless.”

As for the utility of such technologies, OnePlus suggests a coat that changes color to notify the user of incoming calls. Weirder still is a future that uses mmWave technology to capture a user’s breathing pattern, “enabling the color to change in sync and effectively making the phone a biofeedback device.”

As far as new phone features, this one is firmly in the “why not” column.

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Unfold launches lightweight, link-centric profiles called Bio Sites

Unfold, the social media startup acquired by Squarespace last year, is launching a new tool for users to share all the links that are important with them.

This is the first step Unfold has taken beyond its story-format authoring tools. Co-founder Andy McCune told me that the team has a bigger vision now — just as Squarespace has become “the all-in-one platform for your web presence,” Unfold aims to become “the all-in-one platform for your social presence.”

“We’re both playing in very saturated spaces with a lot of competitors,” McCune said. “We both stand out because we appeal to the person that cares about design. That’s always been the North Star.”

In the case of the new Bio Sites, he said one of the goals is to help Unfold users — whether they’re individuals or large brands — become less reliant on a single social media platform. After all, he noted that when you build a following on Instagram, you’re building on “borrowed territory,” and “you don’t really own your audience.”

Image Credits: Unfold

By creating a simple profile that highlights the links of your choice, then by linking your Instagram and other social profiles to your Bio Site, you can then point audiences to other channels where you have more control — or at least diversify the platforms that you’re relying on.

McCune and his co-founder Alfonso Cobo aren’t the first ones to think of this idea. For example, Linktree raised funding earlier this year, and there are other startups creating similar products. But Cobo said Bio Sites benefit from Unfold’s design-centric approach, allowing users to create simple profiles that aren’t just functional, but also looks great and reflect their personality.

Cobo also noted that Bio Sites are created from the Unfold native app — it’s launching on Android today, with plans for iOS in January. The feature will be available available to all Unfold users, including free users, but subscribers to the premium Unfold+ and Unfold for Brands tiers get additional features like custom URLs.

“We’re really going to be expanding in the next few weeks with presence and expressibility tools to help users stand out in different ways,” Cobo said. “We’re also very interested in commerce and will be exploring that route in the future, too.”

Squarespace acquires social media authoring startup Unfold

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From India’s richest man to Amazon and 100s of startups: The great rush to win neighborhood stores

After spending more than a decade disrupting the neighborhood stores in the U.S. and several other markets, Amazon and Walmart are employing an unusual strategy in India to face off this competitor: Friending them.

Walmart and Amazon, both of which face restrictions from New Delhi on what all they could do in India, have partnered with tens of thousands of neighborhood stores in the world’s second-largest internet market this year to leverage the vast presence of these mom and pop stores.

In June this year, at the height of the pandemic, Amazon announced “Smart Stores.” Through this India-specific program, for instance, Amazon is providing physical stores with software to maintain a digital log of the inventory they have in the shop and supplying them with a QR code.

When consumers walk to the store and scan this QR code with the Amazon app, they see everything the shop has to offer, in addition to any discounts and past reviews from customers. They can select the items and pay for it using Amazon Pay. Amazon Pay in India supports a range of payments services, including the popular UPI, and debit and credit cards.

The world’s largest e-commerce giant also maintains partnerships that allow it to turn tens of thousands of neighborhood stores as its delivery point for customers — and sometimes even rely on them for inventory.

Amazon partners with thousands of kirana stores all over India as delivery points. It’s good for customers, and it helps the shop owners earn additional income. Got to visit one in Mumbai. Thank you, Amol, for letting me deliver a package. #MSME pic.twitter.com/VpoHUoJOIH

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) January 18, 2020

India has over 60 million small businesses that dot the thousands of cities, towns and villages across the country. These mom and pop stores offer all kinds of items, are family run, and pay low wages and little to no rent.

This has enabled them to operate at an economics that is better than most — if not all — of their digital counterparts, and their scale allows them to offer unmatched fast delivery.

Krishna Shah, a New Delhi-based doctor, on paper is one of the perfect customers of e-commerce services. She lives in an urban city, uses digital payments apps and her earnings put her in the top 5% income level in the country. Yet, when she needed to buy food for her cats and needed it as soon as possible, she realized the major giants would take hours, if not longer. She ended up placing a call to a neighborhood store, which delivered the item within 10 minutes.

That neighborhood store, which employs fewer than half a dozen people, was competing with over a dozen giants and heavily funded startups including Grofers and BigBasket — and it won.

At stake is India’s retail market, which is estimated to be worth $1.3 trillion by 2025, from about $700 billion last year, according to Boston Consulting Group and the Retailers’ Association India. E-commerce, by several estimates, accounts for just 3% of the retail market in the country.

If that figure wasn’t small enough already, consider this: Some of the biggest customers of Flipkart and Amazon are these small retail stores. An executive with direct knowledge of the matter told TechCrunch that during some sales, as high as 40% of all smartphone units are bought by physical stores. The idea is, the executive said, to buy the devices at a discounted price, sit on them for a few days and when Amazon and Flipkart are done with their sales, sell the same phones at their standard prices.

Sujeet Kumar, co-founder of Udaan, a Bangalore-based startup that works with merchants, said that even as smartphones and the internet have reached all corners of India, e-commerce hasn’t been able to disrupt the retail market.

“The problem is that it is very difficult for e-commerce companies to build a supply chain and distribution network that is more efficient than those established by neighborhood stores. These mom and pop stores operate on an insanely different kind of cost economics. E-commerce companies are not able to match it,” he said.

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Gawq wants to burst your ‘echo chamber’ with its smarter news app

A new startup called Gawq wants to tackle the problem of fake news and the “echo chamber” problem created by social media, where our view of the world is shaped by manipulative algorithms and personalized feeds. Through Gawq’s newly launched mobile news app, it aims to present news from a range of sources, while allowing users to filter between news, opinion, paid content, and more, as well as compare sources, check facts, and even review the publication’s content for accuracy.

The idea for Gawq comes from Joshua Dziabiak, co-founder and now board member at the now profitable insurance tech startup The Zebra. Dziabiak stepped down from his day-to-day role this March, and founded Gawq shortly after.

“It started as a passion project and then it transformed into a business,” Dziabiak explains. “I wanted to do something that had a larger social impact. And this idea — this problem — has surfaced and been magnified in really big ways over the past year, especially,” he says.

When news is served up through social media channels, people are presented with their own version of reality, as the algorithms begin to filter out the news that doesn’t engage them and show them more of what does. Over time, this system led some publishers to pursue clicks and outrage with over-the-top, sensational headlines, but it also spawned a network of publications that would slant and bias the news in ways that better connected them with an either right- or left-leaning audience.

As a result, the media environment overall began to center itself around eyeballs and not necessarily news quality, Dziabiak says. While there is still quality journalism being created, it can sometimes be hard to find among all the noise.

“I believe journalists and content creators need a new measure for success. One that is based on the core ethics of journalism, and not the number of clicks or shares,” Dziabiak notes.

Image Credits: Gawq

The Gawq name is meant to be a reminder of how today’s headlines often scream for our attention. But it misses the mark for an app about news accuracy. At its core, Gawq is a news aggregator where you are not meant to “gawk” at headlines, but actually read and consider the news with a more critical eye.

At launch, the app organizes over 150 different top media sources of all types and sizes, including those that lean one way or the other. The publishers cover topics like U.S. and world news, politics, sports, business, tech, entertainment, science, lifestyle news, and more.

Gawq also organizes the day’s news without using any sort of algorithms or personalization engines, but instead by topic. As you read, you click to compare coverage of the story with other sources to get a better idea of how different outlets are writing about the same topic. With a clever red and blue slider bar at the top of the screen, you can drag your finger over to the red side to see the coverage from right-leaning sources, or you can drag it to the blue side to see the more left-leaning coverage.

The company says it uses data from three different nonprofits who audit media — AllSides, Media Bias Fact Check, and Ad Fontes Media —  to determine if sources are “right” or “left.”

Image Credits: Gawq

Just below the slider bar are the related fact checks to the topic at hand, for easy reference.

While Gawq will allow users to toggle some news sources on or off within the app’s settings, it uses language that deters you from doing so by reminding you that it works best when you maintain a “diverse set of media.”

In addition, Gawq introduces a “smart labels” feature to automatically identify and tag non-news — like op-ed’s, sponsored content, or even celeb gossip, if you hate that sort of thing. You can toggle these on or off, too, if you want to hide anything that’s not hard news.

Another nice feature — for the news consumer at least, if not the publisher — is that Gawq loads articles by default into a “reader mode” that strips the ads and distractions that tend to fill the pages on news websites these days. You can still click to view the article on the website, if you prefer.

While much of the above is related to how the news is presented to the reader, Gawq’s bigger bet is that it can create a Wikipedia-like community of news reviewers who will rate stories for adherence to journalistic practices. This is a more ambitious and perhaps overly optimistic endeavour.

On every article, users can click a review button that walks them through a short quiz where they’re asked to rate the story’s balance, the details provided, and whether the headline was clickbait. Users then add a comment and submit their report. This review process was built off the core ethics of journalism as defined by the Society of Professional Journalists, Dziabiak says.

Image Credits: Gawq

Likely, only a minority of Gawq users would rate the stories. But over time and with scale, the reviews could help give outlets an accurate rating on news accuracy and their tendencies towards sensationalism, in the eyes of news consumers. That data may have external value, but for now, Gawq’s business model is “TBD,” Dziabiak admits.

The problem Gawq aims to tackle is a difficult one. And arguably, those who need to widen their worldview will be least likely to download a new app to do so. They’re often passive news consumers who have sat back ingesting news (and often, outrage and lies) from ever-personalized social media feeds. They then click on one favorite news TV channel for everything else. But there is a growing number of people who want a more neutral media landscape, and Gawq can help them find it with how it positions news as right, left or centered when comparing sources.

The startup is currently self-funded and has a small team of engineers, mostly working on a contract basis. Gawq has not ruled out future investment, however.

The app is a free download on iOS and Android.

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PhotoRoom launches background-removal app on Android

French startup PhotoRoom is launching its app on Android today. The company has been working on a utility photography app that lets you remove the background from a photo, swaps it for another background and tweaks your photo.

And it’s been working well on iOS already as the company attended Y Combinator, doubled its annual recurring revenue to $2 million and raised a $1.2 million seed round.

In particular, influencers and people reselling clothes and fashion items have been relying on PhotoRoom . They use their phone as their main creativity platform. Like other professional photography apps, the startup relies on subscriptions to generate revenue ($9.49 per month or $46.99 per year).

PhotoRoom relies on machine learning to identify objects and separate them from the rest of the photo. This way, you can manipulate a specific part of your photo.

Image Credits: PhotoRoom

When the startup raised its seed round after Y Combinator, it chose to raise from Nicolas Wittenborn’s Adjacent fund, Liquid2 Ventures as well as two groups:

• A group of business angels focused on machine learning, such as Yann LeCun (Chief AI Scientist at Facebook), Zehan Wang (Head of Twitter Machine Learning Cortex, co-founder of Magic Poney), Nicolas Pinto (Perceptio founder), etc.
• And another group of business angels focused on mobile subscriptions, such as Holger Seim (Blinkist), Jacob Eiting (RevenueCat), John Bonten (advisor for Calm and Spotify) and Eric Setton (Tango).

With this funding round, the company plans to grow the team from 3 to 8 persons and work on its deep learning algorithm. If you want to learn more about PhotoRoom, feel free to read my take on the product:

PhotoRoom automagically removes background from your photo

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Facebook highlights small businesses as it ramps up Apple criticism

Facebook already made it clear that it isn’t happy about Apple’s upcoming restrictions on app tracking and ad targeting, but the publicity battle entered a new phase today.

Over the summer, Apple announced that beginning in iOS 14, developers will have to ask users for permission in order to use their IDFA identifiers for ad targeting. On one level, it’s simply giving users a choice, but since they’ll have to opt-in to participate, the assumption is that we’ll see a dramatic reduction in app tracking and targeting.

The actual change was delayed until early next year, but in the meantime Facebook suggested that this might mean the end of its Audience Network (which uses Facebook data to target ads on other websites and apps) on iOS.

Then, this morning, Facebook placed print ads in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post declaring that it’s “standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere,” and it published a blog post and website making the same argument.

While it’s easy to see all of this as an attempt to put a more sympathetic face on a PR campaign that’s really just protecting Facebook’s ad business, Dan Levy — the company’s vice president of ads and business products — got on a call with reporters today to argue otherwise.

Image Credits: Facebook

For one thing, he said that with its “diversified” advertising business, Facebook won’t feel the impact as keenly as small businesses, particularly since it already acknowledged potential ad targeting challenges in its most recent earnings report.

“We’ve already been factoring this into our expectations for the business,” he said.

In contrast, Levy said small businesses rely on targeting in order to run efficient advertising campaigns — and because they’ve got small budgets, they need that efficiency. He predicted that if Apple moves forward with its plans, “Small businesses will struggle to stay afloat and many aspiring entrepreneurs may never get off the ground.”

Levy was joined by two small business owners, Monique Wilsondebriano of Charleston Gourmet Burger Company in South Carolina and Hrag Kalebjian of Henry’s House of Coffee in San Francisco. Kalebjian that while business in the coffee shop is down 40% year-over-year, his online sales have tripled, and he credited targeted Facebook campaigns for allowing him to tell personal stories about his family’s love for Armenian coffee.

Wilsondebriano, meanwhile, said that when she and her husband Chevalo started a business selling their homemade burger marinade, “we did not have the option to run radio ads or TV ads, we just didn’t have a budget for that” — and so they turned to Facebook and Instagram. With the marinade now available in 50 states and 17 countries, Wilsondebriano said, “It makes me sad that if this update happens, so many small businesses won’t get that same opportunity that Cheval and I had.”

Levy also suggested that Apple’s bottom line might benefit from the changes — if developers make less money on ads from Facebook and other platforms, they may need to rely more on subscriptions or in-app transactions (with Apple collecting its much-discussed fee), and they might turn to Apple’s own targeted advertising platform.

A number of ad industry groups have taken also issue with Apple’s policy, with SVP Craig Federighi fighting back in a speech criticizing what he called “outlandish” and “false” claims from the adtech industry. In that speech, Federighi said Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature is designed “to empower our users to decide when or if they want to allow an app to track them in a way that could be shared across other companies’ apps or websites.”

Facebook isn’t happy about Apple’s upcoming ad tracking restrictions

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2021 holds even more Samsung foldables

The foldable category got off to a famously rocky start. Fifteen months after the release of the first Galaxy Fold, Samsung has time to work out some of the issues with the original device in a fairly public fashion, given the world the better-received Galaxy Z Flip and Z Fold 2 this year.

Likely due to various stumbles from mobile manufacturers, the form factor has yet to redefine the industry in a meaningful way – but meaningful change takes time. And in case there was any doubt surrounding Samsung’s commitment to foldable displays, Mobile President TM Roh penned a letter on the company’s site, noting an expansion of the portfolio next year.

Whether that means an additional device or something more meaningful remains to be seen, though it does seem to suggest the arrival of at least one more affordable model. Price has certainly been a major hurdle for the adoption of these products. In the letter Roh notes that he/the company will be “sharing more in January” – perhaps an allusion to CES or a standalone Samsung event. Roh adds,

True to our heritage of staying ahead of the curve with trailblazing mobile tech, we’ll be expanding our portfolio of foldables, so this groundbreaking category is more accessible to everyone. And while we’re already known for our revolutionary cameras, we’ll never stop trying to outdo ourselves — so be on the lookout for super-intelligent, pro-grade camera and video capabilities in 2021. We’ve also been paying attention to people’s favorite aspects of the Galaxy Note experience and are excited to add some of its most well-loved features to other devices in our lineup.

Nothing particularly earth-shattering. With the race to 5G devices in the rear-view, the focus is seemingly back on cameras, in addition to folding screens. More after the holidays, no doubt.

Samsung’s new Galaxy Fold arrives September 18 for $2,000

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MTG acquires mobile racing game studio Hutch Games for up to $375 million

Sweden’s MTG is making a significant acquisition in the mobile gaming industry. The company is acquiring Hutch Games, the London-based game studio behind popular mobile racing games such as Rebel Racing, F1 Manager and Top Drives.

The acquisition is an important one for MTG as the company is spending $275 million right away and setting aside another $100 million for performance-based payments.

If you’re not familiar with MTG, you probably know its portfolio companies. Over the past few years, MTG has acquired ESL and DreamHack to become an esports leader.

MTG has also acquired InnoGames and Kongregate for their popular web-based and mobile games. And it sounds like MTG isn’t done just yet, as the company plans to acquire more companies in the near future.

MTG explains why the acquisition makes sense in its announcement. Hutch Games isn’t focused on a single game. It has built a portfolio of successful games, which is always a good sign for future growth.

The game studio has also licensed some well-known brands, such as F1. And MTG believes that F1 Manager, Top Drives and Rebel Racing still have a lot of growth potential. Free-to-play mobile games have become games-as-a-service, so you want to keep them popular over the long run.

When it comes to long-term potential, Hutch Games also has more games in the pipeline for 2021 and 2022. Finally, it’s a cost-effective studio, as most employees are developers.

During the first nine months of 2020, Hutch Games generated $56.3 million in revenue and $13.3 million in earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT). Hutch Games investors included Backed VC, Index Ventures, Initial Capital and angel investor Chris Lee.

As you can see, free-to-play games can be lucrative. That’s why there will be some consolidation in the future. Some companies will use their deep pockets or take advantage of debt to build out big portfolios and the real estate of your home screen, one game at a time.

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Reliance’s Jio Platforms says it will roll out 5G in second half of 2021

Reliance’s Jio Platforms, the largest telecom operator in India, plans to roll out a 5G network in the country in the second half of 2021, top executive Mukesh Ambani announced on Tuesday.

“India is today among the best digitally connected nations in the world. In order to maintain this lead, policy steps are needed to accelerate early rollout of 5G, and to make it affordable and available everywhere. I assure you that Jio will pioneer the 5G revolution in India in the second half of 2021,” said Ambani, who controls Jio Platforms’ parent firm Reliance Industries, at a trade conference.

The announcement comes as a surprise as India has yet to grant spectrum for 5G network to telecom networks in the country. At this moment, it is also unclear when India will begin auctioning the 5G spectrum.

Ambani, who is India’s richest man, said he was hopeful that the rollout of 5G network in India will enable the world’s second-largest internet market to lead what he termed as the fourth industrial revolution. “Jio Platforms, with its family of over 20 startup partners, has built world-class capabilities in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, big data, machine learning, internet of things, blockchain, etc.,” he said.

The telecom operator, which has raised over $20 billion this year from a roster of high-profile investors, including Facebook and Google, said the company is also hopeful that its bouquet of services in education, healthcare, financial services and new commerce categories “once proven in India, will be offered to the rest of the world to address global challenges.”

Google invests $4.5 billion in India’s Reliance Jio Platforms

Gopal Vittal, the chief executive of Airtel (India’s second-largest telecom operator), said the company was hopeful that India would have established a nationwide 5G network in two to three years. He, however, did not share a timeline for when the rollout of 5G on his network would begin. (In a recent earnings call, Vittal had warned that the proposed price of the spectrum of 5G was “very, very expensive” — something that won’t support any kind of business model.)

During his speech, Ambani also urged industry players to rely on locally produced hardware and components. “As the digitalisation of the Indian economy and Indian society picks up speed, the demand for digital hardware will grow enormously. We cannot rely on large-scale imports in this area of critical national need.”

Airtel has previously said that it is open to the idea of collaborating with global firms for components. “Huawei, over the last 10 or 12 years, has become extremely good with their products to a point where I can safely today say their products at least in 3G, 4G that we have experienced is significantly superior to Ericsson and Nokia without a doubt. And I use all three of them,” said Sunil Mittal, the founder of Airtel, at a conference earlier this year. In the same panel, U.S. commerce secretary Wilbur Ross had urged India and other allies of the U.S. to avoid Huawei.

Vittal today also urged that India should adopt the global 5G standard. “There is sometimes talks that India must have its own 5G standard. This is an existential thread which could lock India out of the global ecosystem and slow down the pace of innovation. We could let down our citizens if you allow that to happen.”

On today’s panel, which was attended by Mittal as well as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Ambani said stakeholders also need to think about ways to serve nearly 300 million people who are still on 2G networks in India. “Urgent policy steps are needed to ensure that these underprivileged people have an affordable smartphone, so that they too can benefit from Direct Benefit Transfer into their bank accounts, and actively participate in the Digital Economy,” he added.

Reliance’s fiber-optic business raises $1 billion from ADIA and PIF

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Sunshine Contacts may have given out your home address, even if you’re not using the app

A third-party contacts app you’re not using may be handing out your home address to its users. In November, former Yahoo CEO and Google veteran Marissa Mayer and co-founder Enrique Muñoz Torres introduced their newly rebranded startup Sunshine, and its first product, Sunshine Contacts. The new iOS app offers to organize your address book by handling duplicates and merges using AI technology, as well as fill in some of the missing bits of information by gathering data from the web — like LinkedIn profiles, for example.

But some users were surprised to find they suddenly had home addresses for their contacts, too, including for those who were not already Sunshine users.

TechCrunch reached out to Sunshine to better understand the situation, given the potential privacy concerns.

We understand there are several ways that users may encounter someone’s home address in the Sunshine app. A user may already have the address on file in their phone’s address book, of course, or they may have opted in to allow Sunshine to scan their inbox in order to extract information from email signature lines. This is a feature common to other personal CRM solutions, too, like Evercontact.

In the event that someone had signed an email with their home address included in this field, that data could then be added to their contact card in the Sunshine app. In this case, the contact card is updated in the Sunshine Contacts app, which then syncs with your phone’s address book. But this data is not distributed to any other app users.

Image Credits: Sunshine

The app also augments contact cards with information acquired by other means. For example, it may use the information you do have to complete missing fields — like adding a last name, when you had other data that indicated what someone’s full name is, but hadn’t completed filling out the card. The app may also be able to pull in data from a LinkedIn profile, if available.

For home addresses, Sunshine is using the Whitepages API.

The company confirmed to TechCrunch it’s augmenting contact cards with home addresses under some circumstances, even if that contact is not a Sunshine Contacts user. Sunshine says it doesn’t believe this to be any different from a user going to Google to look for someone’s contact information on the web — it’s just automating the process.

Of course, some would argue when you’re talking about automating the collection of home addresses for hundreds or potentially thousands of users — depending on the size of your personal address book database — it’s a bit different than if you went googling to find your aunt’s address so you can mail a Christmas card or called your old college roommate to find out where to send their birthday gift.

However, Sunshine clarified to TechCrunch that it won’t add the home address except in cases when it determines you have a personal connection to the contact in question.

Here, though, Sunshine enters a gray area where the app and its technology will try to figure out who you know well enough to need a home address.

Before adding the address, Sunshine requires you to have the contact’s phone number on file in your address book, not just their email. That would eliminate some people you only have a loose connection with through work, for instance. And it only updates with the home address if the partner API is able to associate that address with a phone number you have.

Image Credits: Sunshine

In addition, Sunshine says that it’s generally able to understand the type of phone number you have on file — like if it’s a residential or business line, or if it’s a landline or mobile number. (It uses APIs to do this, similar to StrikeIron’s though not that particular one.) It also knows who the phone number belongs to. Using this information and further context, the app tries to determine if a phone number is a personal or a professional number and it will try to understand your relationship with the person who owns that number.

In practice, what this means is that if all the information you had on file for a contact was professional information — where they worked, a job title, a work email and a phone number, perhaps — then that person’s contact card would not be updated to include their home address, too.

And because many people use their personal cell for work, Sunshine won’t consider someone a “personal” relationship just because you have their mobile phone number. For example, if you had only a contact’s name and a cell number, you wouldn’t be able to use the app to get their home address.

The result of all this automated analysis is that Sunshine, in theory, only updates contact cards with home addresses where it’s determined there’s a personal relationship.

This, of course, doesn’t take into account some scenarios like bad exes, stalking or a general desire for privacy. Arguably, there are times when someone may have a lot of personal information for a contact in their address book, but the contact in question would rather not have their home address distributed to that person.

The only way to prevent this, presumably, would be to opt out at the source: Whitepages.com. (Once you have your profile URL from the Whitepages website, you can use this online form to have your information suppressed.)

Image Credits: Sunshine

The way the app functions raises questions about what is truly private information these days.

Sunshine points out that people’s home addresses are not as hidden from the world as they may think, which makes them fair game.

It’s true that our home addresses are often publicly available. Although it’s been years since most of us have had a telephone directory dropped on our doorstep with phone and address listings for people in our city, home addresses today are relatively trivial to find when you know where to look online.

In addition to public records — like voter registration databases — there are web-based people finders, too.

Sunshine’s partner, Whitepages.com, makes visitors pay for its data, but others like TruePeopleSearch.com don’t have the same paywall. With someone’s first and last name and city, its website provides access to someone’s home address, prior addresses, cell phone, age and the names of family members and other close associates. (TruePeopleSearch is not a Sunshine partner, we should clarify.)

Marissa Mayer’s startup launches its first official product, Sunshine Contacts

Even though this data is “public,” it’s uncomfortable to see it casually distributed in an app, as that makes it even easier to get to than before.

Plus, after years of being burned by data breaches and data privacy scandals, people tend to be more protective of their personal information than before. And, had they been asked, many would probably decline to have their home addresses shared with Sunshine’s user base. Generally speaking, people appreciate the courtesy of having someone come ask for a home address, when it’s needed — they may not want an app creeping the web to find it and hand it out.

Sunshine Contacts is in an invite-only beta in the U.S., so the company has time to reconsider how this feature is implemented based on user feedback before it becomes widely available.

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