The Browser Company, which makes the Arc browser, has raised $50 million in a round led by Pace Capital at a $550 million valuation, TechCrunch has learned exclusively.
However, in January, the company released the Arc Search app on iOS, focusing on putting AI-powered search at its center.
This is ingrained in the DNA of The Browser Company.
Paul Frazee, who built a decentralized browser called Beaker, said that scaling a browser product is hard as people are set in their way and making them switch is tough.
The Browser Company has a big ambition to build an “internet computer” for users.
The United States Department of Justice this morning filed a lawsuit accusing Apple of monopolistic smartphone practices.
Apple swiftly countered by arguing that — if successful — such a suit would inhibit its ability to compete in the crowded smartphone market.
This lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets.
We believe this lawsuit is wrong on the facts and the law, and we will vigorously defend against it.
At the same time, Apple has also been embroiled in lawsuits from Epic Games, challenging its App Store revenue practices.
A new app from a startup called Cherry is aiming to transform the online shopping experience with its AI assistant that allows users to discover products across the internet using just a screenshot or image.
Cherry helps you find products that you’ve come across while scrolling through social media or have seen in real-life.
“My motivation for creating Cherry stemmed from a personal frustration with the time-consuming process of finding and comparing products online,” Kim told TechCrunch.
Plus, users can also share their search results with their friends or on social media.
“While Google Lens offers general image-based search capabilities, Cherry is specifically tailored for the shopping experience,” Kim said.
Crypto exchange OKX is ceasing services for users in India, it said in an email to customers Thursday, advising them to withdraw their funds by April-end.
The move follows Apple and Google pulling the eponymous app of OKX in the country after an Indian government agency said many crypto exchanges were operating illegally in the South Asian market.
Financial Intelligence Unit, the government agency, named Binance, Kraken, Huobi and Gate.io among apps operating “illegally” in India but hadn’t named OKX in its public statement.
OKX has advised customers in India to close all their active margin positions and withdraw all funds by April 30.
While India-based crypto exchanges continued to require rigorous know-your-customer verifications before onboarding new users, the same hasn’t been true of many global platforms.
Users of the popular site Glassdoor, which lets anyone anonymously sign up to review companies they have worked for, say Glassdoor collected and added their names to their user profiles without their consent.
It also means this information can be obtained by legal process, such as a lawsuit or police demanding access to Glassdoor user data.
As Monica explained, Glassdoor will add a user’s real name (and potentially other information) to the user’s account without their permission if Glassdoor learns it.
As part of the acquisition deal, Glassdoor signed every user up for a Fishbowl account, meaning Glassdoor would have to change its terms of service so that every Glassdoor user could also be verified.
Mackey previously defended an anonymous Glassdoor user in court whose employer tried to unmask and identify their identity.
Mermaid, the open source diagramming and charting tool, has long been popular with developers for its ability to create diagrams using a Markdown-like language.
They were watching ‘The Little Mermaid.’ That’s why I named that eight years ago.”Early on, Mermaid was mostly about flowcharts, but over time Sveidqvist added other diagram types — and the community quickly made it its own, too.
Firestone told me that the cloud version of the open source project had 4 million users last year.
That’s a market Mermaid Chart is looking to address by building easier-to-use tools for this group of users.
“Mermaid Chart is expanding the community by bringing the benefits of Mermaid to all types of business users, leveraging AI as a catalyst.
On Tuesday, digital EVP and competition chief Margrethe Vestager cast doubt on Meta’s privacy fee, telling Reuters: “I think there are many different ways to monetize the services that you provide.
“Consumers should be given time to reflect before making that decision, and not being put under pressure to accept it quickly.”As noted above, consumer protection groups have filed a number of complaints about Meta’s privacy fee — arguing Meta is breaching EU consumer protection and privacy rules.
There’s currently no way for users in the EU to use Facebook or Instagram and not be tracked.
They suggest Meta’s strategy is a blatant attempt to circumvent EU laws by making privacy an unaffordable luxury.
Vestager’s remarks also suggest the Commission already takes the view that Meta’s privacy fee is non-compliant with the DMA.
India-based audio platform Pocket FM has secured $103 million in Series D funding led by Lightspeed Ventures with participation from Stepstone Group.
Pocket FM offers audio series with several short episodes and aim to become the “Netflix for audio” globally.
That means you can’t use the coins you bought on Pocket FM to unlock content Pocket Novel products and vice versa.
Pocket FM also has a limited audiobook vertical where it competes with the likes of Audible with a similar pay-to-unlock strategy.
Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund ADIA has held talks with Pocket FM for a potential mega funding round, TechCrunch reported last week.
The Pokemon Company said it detected hacking attempts against some of its users and reset those user account passwords.
A spokesperson for the company said there was no breach, just a series of hacking attempts against some users.
To protect our customers we have reset some passwords which prompted the message,” said Daniel Benkwitt, a Pokemon Company spokesperson.
The description of the Pokemon account breaches sounds like credential stuffing, where malicious hackers use usernames and passwords stolen from other breaches and reuse them on other sites.
For its part, the Pokemon Company does not allow its users to enable two-factor on their accounts, when TechCrunch checked.
Threads, the Twitter-like app from Instagram, is rolling out its “trending now” feature widely to all users in the U.S.
Trending topics are available on the search page and in the app’s For You Feed.
The feature is somewhat limited, as Threads only display five trending topics at a time, while X shows you multiple.
It’s possible that Threads may be limiting the number of trending topics to prevent issues around safety and spam.
During President Biden’s State of the Union address earlier this month, Threads’ trending topics were dominated by political chatter.
