Google, Cisco and VMware join Microsoft to oppose NSO Group in WhatsApp spyware case
A coalition of companies have filed an amicus brief in support of a legal case brought by WhatsApp against Israeli intelligence firm NSO Group, accusing the company of using an undisclosed vulnerabil
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: F
Facebook relaunches Instagram Lite app, begins test in India
Facebook is working to bring back the Instagram Lite app, months after it shut down the light version offering worldwide. The social conglomerate said on Wednesday that it is testing the revamped Inst
Daily Crunch: FTC and 48 state AGs sue Facebook
Facebook faces big antitrust lawsuits, DoorDash and C3.ai go public and YouTube announces new election misinformation policies. This is your Daily Crunch for December 9, 2020. The big story: FTC and 4
App stores to see 130 billion downloads in 2020 and record consumer spend of $112 billion
Consumers will have downloaded 130 billion apps in 2020 across iOS and Google Play, up 10% year-over-year, according to mobile data and analytics firm App Annie’s year-end forecast. Consumer spe
Facebook adds carts to WhatsApp to make shopping easier
WhatsApp said on Tuesday it is adding a new shopping feature to its app as the Facebook-owned instant messaging service looks to court more merchants and invite a larger portion of its 2 billion user
DealShare raises $21 million to expand its e-commerce platform to 100 Indian cities and towns
DealShare, a startup in India that has built an e-commerce platform for middle and lower-income groups of consumers, said on Tuesday it has raised $21 million in a new financing round as it looks to e
WhatsApp is upping its wallpapers and stickers game
WhatsApp is finally upping its wallpapers and stickers game, delivering some much-awaited aesthetics updates to the popular app that more than 2 billion people use. The instant messaging service said
New forecast pegs TikTok to top 1.2B monthly active users in 2021
TikTok’s upward trajectory is expected to continue in 2021, according to a new forecast from mobile data and analytics firm App Annie, which estimates the short-form video app will surpass the 1
Singapore-based sales productivity platform Nektar raises $2.15 million seed round
Singapore-based Nektar.ai, a productivity platform for sales teams, has raised $2.15 million in seed funding. Founded earlier this year, Nektar has been working in stealth mode with five companies, an
This Week in Apps: Elections’ impact on the app store, new app privacy requirements, iOS 14.2 arrives
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry is as hot as ever, wi
WhatsApp rolls out payments in India
WhatsApp, which began testing its payments service in India with 1 million users in early 2018, has finally started to expand the feature to more users in the world’s second largest internet mar
WhatsApp now lets you post ephemeral messages that disappear after 7 days
Facebook recently announced that WhatsApp passed the whopping milestone of 100 billion messages sent per day, but not everyone wants those chats to stick around forever. Now, Facebook’s wildly p
Bridgefy launches end-to-end encrypted messaging for the app used during protests and disasters
Offline-messaging app Bridgefy — which innovatively uses Bluetooth and Wi-Fi — became known as the go-to app by thousands of protesters around the world to keep communications going even when oppr
WhatsApp is now delivering roughly 100 billion messages a day
WhatsApp, the popular instant messaging app owned by Facebook, is now delivering roughly 100 billion messages a day, the company’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said at the quarterly earnings call
Facebook adds hosting, shopping features and pricing tiers to WhatsApp Business
Facebook has been making a big play to be a go-to partner for small and medium businesses that use the internet to interface with the wider world, and its messaging platform WhatsApp, with some 50 mil
eFounders unveils its next batch of enterprise SaaS startups
Since 2011, European startup studio eFounders has launched 27 companies, with a focus on software-as-a-service companies trying to improve the way we work. Some of them have been quite successful, suc
Brands building for scale should look to hypercultural Latinx consumers
Hypercultural Latinx consumers are different from their mostly white counterparts in the way they vigorously engage with technology, their obsession with being online at all times and their unique sho
Facebook addresses political controversy in India, monetization opportunities, startup investments
At the beginning of the previous decade, Facebook had a tiny presence in India. It had just started to slowly expand its team in the country and was inking deals with telecom operators to make access
Courier raises $10.1M Series A to help developers integrate multichannel notifications
Courier is an API platform with a no-code twist that helps developers add multichannel user notifications to their applications. The company today announced that it has raised a $10.1 million Series A