Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes […]
Categories Amazon
151 posts
A federal judge has denied an attempt by conservative social network Parler to force Amazon to host it on AWS. As expected by most who read Parler’s ramshackle legal arguments, the court found nothing in the lawsuit that could justify intervention, only “faint and factually inaccurate speculation.” In the order, […]
Following Joseph Biden’s swearing in as the 46th president of the United States, Amazon is offering help in the administration’s stated goals for rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine. In a letter provided to TechCrunch, Worldwide Consumer CEO Dave Clark congratulates Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, while promising, “to assist […]
Rivian has raised $2.65 billion as it prepares to begin production this summer of its all-electric pickup truck. The round, which was led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc., also included Fidelity Management and Research Company, Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Coatue and D1 Capital Partners […]
A security flaw in Ring’s Neighbors app was exposing the precise locations and home addresses of users who had posted to the app. Ring, the video doorbell and home security startup acquired by Amazon for $1 billion, launched Neighbors in 2018 as a breakaway feature in its own standalone app. […]
Amazon has begun the process of removing QAnon-related products from its platform. A spokesperson for the company said that the process may take a few days. Any sellers that attempt to evade the company’s systems and list products will be subject to action, including a blanket selling ban across Amazon stores. […]
Embattled social media platform Parler is offline after Apple, Google and Amazon pulled the plug on the site after the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol last week that left five people dead. But while the site is gone (for now), millions of posts published to the site since the […]
A somewhat nebulous, but high-profile and potentially heavily moneyed joint venture is coming to an end: Haven, the JV created by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, is being “disbanded” according to CNBC, three years after its original formation. One of the main reasons is that each partner in the […]
Healthcare startup Color has raised a sizable $167 million in Series D funding round, at a valuation of $1.5 billion post-money, the company announced today. This brings the total raised by Color to $278 million, with its latest large round intended to help it build on a record year of […]
Amazon makes a big podcast acquisition, a Chinese robot maker raises $100 million and we review a robotic cat pillow. This is your Daily Crunch for December 30, 2020. The big story: Amazon acquires Wondery Amazon is the latest company to make a big acquisition in the podcast market — […]