Month: January 2020

Now that 2020 has started, Uber, DoorDash and Lyft are taking additional steps to undermine a new California law that would help more gig workers qualify as full-time employees. These moves entail product changes, lawsuits and ramped-up efforts to get a ballot initiative in front of voters that would roll back the new legislation.

Let’s start with the most recent development; yesterday, Uber sent a note to users announcing that it’s getting rid of upfront pricing in favor of estimated prices, unless they’re Uber Pool rides.

“Due to a new state law, we are making some changes to help ensure that Uber remains a dependable source of flexible work for California drivers,” Uber wrote in an email to customers. “These changes may take some getting used to, but our goal is to keep Uber available to as many qualified drivers as possible, without restricting the number of drivers who can work at a given time.”

Uber says it also has to discontinue rewards benefits like price protection on a route and flexible cancellations for trips in California. For drivers, that means they won’t see estimated earnings and drivers in surge arteas will no longer see fixed dollar amounts.

“AB5 threatens to restrict or eliminate opportunities for independent workers across a wide spectrum of industries, including trucking, freelance journalism and ridesharing,” an Uber spokesperson told TechCrunch. “As a result of AB5, we’ve made a number of product changes to preserve flexible work for tens of thousands of California drivers. At the same time, we’ve put forward a progressive package of new protections for drivers, including guaranteed minimum earnings and benefits, so voters can choose to truly improve flexible work in November.”

While Uber is essentially saying this is something the company must do, it’s worth noting that this is not some requirement of the new law; this is Uber’s attempt to beef up its case that it’s legally allowed to classify drivers as independent contractors. Since much of the rationale for determining whether or not a worker is an employee comes down to control, removing upfront fares and ditching penalties for rejecting fares could help Uber make a case that its drivers are operating on their own accord.

Source: Tech Crunch

Shares of Chicago-based food delivery service Grubhub are sharply higher in regular trading today after The Wall Street Journal reported that the company has hired external advisers to explore its “strategic” options, inclusive of a possible sale.

Investors, heartened by the news, bid its equity up 17% as of the time of writing, valuing the firm at around $57 per share, or $5.2 billion.

The news comes during a difficult time for the company. Grubhub’s value fell sharply last October after it reported its third-quarter earnings. At the time, the company cited new and rising competition as growth-related difficulties, as well as noting that, in its view, “the supply innovations in online takeout have been played out and annual growth is slowing and returning to a more normal longer-term state.” It expected “low double digit” growth in the future.

Investors dumped its shares after reading the growth warnings, sending Grubhub equity from the high $50s per share to the mid-$30s. Since then, the company’s share price has recovered; with today’s news, Grubhub is effectively back to where it was before the Earnings Report from Hell.

So what?

All this may sound a bit boring, frankly, to regular TechCrunch readers. What do Grubhub’s troubles have to do with startups, private capital and high-growth companies? A lot, as it turns out.

Grubhub competes with a number of startup darlings, including Postmates (trapped in Schrodinger’s Exit at the moment), DoorDash (aggressively valued, under fire for payment practices and theoretically considering a direct listing despite unprofitability) and Uber Eats (a deeply unprofitable portion of Uber’s larger Red Ink empire).

So what happens to Grubhub could impact two unicorns looking to go public, and another post-IPO unicorn looking to shore up its income statement. As CNBC noted following the Grubhub report, “Uber shares also spiked on the news, as investors bet consolidation in the crowded food-delivery industry would help the company.”

Consolidation could assist remaining players squeeze out more margin from their market. More margin means smaller losses. And as smaller losses are hot now in the IPO world, the move could help some yet-private companies get public.

After years of beating each other up, one key player in the on-demand food delivery space is willing to sell, or join up with someone else. That’s big news, given the sheer scale of the venture bet on companies that compete with Grubhub.

Source: Tech Crunch

Twitter has been on a long-term mission to overhaul have people have conversations on its platform, both to make them easier to follow and more engaging without turning toxic. That strategy is taking another big step forward this year, starting in Q1 with a new way for people to control conversations, by giving them four options to “tailor” their replies: anyone can reply, only those who a user follows can reply, only those tagged can reply, or setting a tweet to get no replies at all. (Goodbye, needing to make space for “don’t @me.”)

The plans were unveiled just this morning during CES in Las Vegas, where Twitter has been holding an event for media led by Kayvon Beykpour, VP of product at the company.

“The primary motivation is control,” he said today. “We want to build on the theme of authors getting more control and we’ve thought… that there are many analogs of how people have communications in life.”

(Of course you are unable to silence people from replying to you in person, but that’s another matter.”

The plans were laid out in more detail by Suzanne Xie, head of conversations for the platform, who said the feature builds on something the company launched in 2019, where users can hide replies.

“We thought, well ,what if we could actually put more control into the author’s hands before the fact? Give them really a way to control the conversation space, as they’re actually composing a tweet? So there’s a new project that we’re working on,” she said. “The reason we’re doing this is, if we think about what conversation means on Twitter. Right now, public conversation on Twitter is you tweet something everyone in the world will see and everyone can reply, or you can have a very private conversation in a DM. So there’s an entire spectrum of conversations that we don’t see on Twitter yet.”

Other areas that Twitter discussed at the event included more focus on Topics, which will be expanded and taken global, and with that more work on how people can create and share lists. Its NBA isocam will be used again this year to let users vote on their favorite players, and a similar new version, called the “stancam” will be created on the same principle for entertainment events. On the marketing front it will be building out more analytics and expending Twitter Surveys globally, as well as building a new platform, Launch, for marketers roll out new products and services for advertisers.

We’re going to be talking with the company later this morning and will update this news as we hear more.

Source: Tech Crunch

Aerial passenger drone startup EHang flew its EHang 216 two-seat self-flying taxi fully autonomously in North Carolina last night, a first for the company both in the U.S. and North America. EHang, which is based in Guangzhou, China, has already demonstrated its vehicle in flight at home and in different parts of Europe and Asia, but this is the first time its aircraft has received approval to fly by the FAA, and EHang is now working toward extending that approval to flying with passengers on board, which is a key requirement for EHang’s eventual goals of offering commercial service in the U.S.

This demonstration flight, which took place in Raleigh, included flying North Carolina governor Roy Cooper on board the two-seat aircraft. Eventually, EHang hopes to deploy these for use across a number of different industries, for transportation of both passengers and cargo along autonomous, short-distance routes in and around urban areas.

EHang had a busy 2019, too — the company began trading publicly on the Nasdaq in December. It also revealed plans to begin operating an aerial shuttle service in Guangzhou, with a pilot citywide drone taxi service intended to show off not only its individual autonomous vehicle capabilities, but also how it can deploy and operate multiple EHang aircraft working in concert with one another and with other aircraft sharing the air space over the city.

Toward the end of 2019, EHang actually completed two trial flights of its 216 vehicles flying simultaneously as an early step toward building out that pilot. The company has delivered around 40 of its aircraft to paying customers, too, and if all goes to plan, by next month it will have completed a pilot program with the Civil Aviation Administration of China that will allow it to move on to full approval of the airworthiness of its aircraft for commercial flight in the country.

Source: Tech Crunch

While most of the world agrees that carbon dioxide emissions from human activity are creating a climate crisis, there’s little consensus regarding how to address it.

One of the solutions that’s both the most obvious and, seemingly, the most difficult for the international community to agree on is establishing a market that would put a price on carbon emissions. Making the cost of emissions palpable for industries would encourage companies to curb their polluting activities or pay to offset them.

The holy grail of a global carbon market — or a collection of regional ones — has been on the agenda for climate activists and regulators since the Kyoto Protocols were ratified in 1997, but enacting the policy has proven elusive.

Now, as the results of climate inaction become more apparent, there appears to be some movement on the regulatory front and concurrent activity from early-stage technology investors to make carbon offsets more of a reality.

It’s still early days, but startups like Project Wren, Pachama and Cloverly prove that investors and utilities are willing to take a flyer on companies that are trying to enable carbon offsets for consumers and corporations alike.

These small bets for investors are complemented by the potential for outsized returns given the size and scope that’s possible should these markets actually develop.

After years of languishing in relative obscurity, global carbon markets rebounded with vigor in 2017 and into 2018, according to data from the World Bank.

Countries raised about $44 billion in revenues from carbon pricing in 2018, an increase of $11 billion, with more than half coming from carbon taxes. In 2017, the $33 billion raised by governments from carbon pricing was an increase of 50% over 2016 numbers.

However large that number may seem, it’s dwarfed by the figure required to make any real changes in industry emissions, according to the World Bank. The current pricing schemes that exist cover a small percentage of global emissions at a cost that’s consistent with achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, the latest international treaty around climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. Prices need to rise to between $40 per ton of carbon dioxide and $80 per ton by 2020 and between $50 per ton and $100 per ton by 2030.

Source: Tech Crunch

Following what the company described as years of back-and-forth, Sonos has filed suit against Google for alleged patent infringements related to the company’s smart speakers. Sonos said that Amazon was also infringing on their IP, but that they can only afford to take on one tech titan.

The lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Los Angeles and for the United States International Trade Commission, specifically calls out Google for five alleged patent violations including technologies that allow their speakers to wirelessly communicate and synchronize with each other. Sonos tells The New York Times that both Amazon and Google are currently violating “roughly 100” of its patents.

“Google has been blatantly and knowingly copying our patented technology,” Sonos CEO Patrick Spence said in a statement to the Times. “Despite our repeated and extensive efforts over the last few years, Google has not shown any willingness to work with us on a mutually beneficial solution. We’re left with no choice but to litigate.”

We have reached out to Google and Amazon for comment.

Google and Amazon have both wandered headlong into hardware over the past several years with internet-connected speakers representing one of their most concerted efforts. As the companies have built out their platforms, they have jumped into Sonos territory as they’ve pursued multi-room audio capabilities. The lawsuit complicates the business relationship between Google and Sonos. The Google Assistant is one of the available voice assistants available on Sonos products and allows users to ask questions and control their music libraries with their voice.

The Times report details that there had been quite a bit of back-and-forth between Google and Sonos, and that Sonos has been pushing for Google to pay licensing fees on the tech and that Google’s counters were that Sonos was also using Google IP and that proposed licensing payments weren’t satisfactory to them.

For Google’s part, a company spokesperson highlighted that the companies had been in the midst of negotiations.  “Over the years, we have had numerous ongoing conversations with Sonos about both companies’ IP rights and we are disappointed that Sonos brought these lawsuits instead of continuing negotiations in good faith. We dispute these claims and will defend them vigorously.”

Source: Tech Crunch

It’s a new year, a new decade, and a renewed opportunity to read great non-fiction and fiction that strikes at the heart of the ambition, power, and challenges of technology and its effect on society at large.

That’s why TechCrunch is launching an informal “book club” for our readers, starting next week. The idea is to bring our audience together around an important piece of writing, discuss it, and perhaps learn a thing or two (or just enjoy great writing). This is a beta test — we are going to figure out the logistics a bit along the way (“move fast and read things”).

Late last year, we published three different best-books-of-the-year lists, with recommendations from our own TechCrunch writers, Extra Crunch readers, and leading venture capitalists.

I’m borrowing from Josh Wolfe at Lux Capital to select Exhalations by Ted Chiang as our first book.

As Arman Tabatabai wrote in our overview:

Chiang’s newest work is a collection of science fiction short stories and novelettes that stray away from the speculative dystopian side of the genre. Using common sci-fi motifs such as aliens and AI proliferation, the selected writings instead dial-in on the characters living in these imagined universes as they examine how societal and technological evolutions impact the ethical, philosophical and cognitive aspects of the human psyche and existence.

Exhalations has not only been lauded by the likes of VCs, but was also selected as a top 10 book of the year by The New York Times for 2019.

For next week, we will start slowly and just read the first short story in the collection, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate.” There are nine chapters in Exhalations, some very short, some longer, and we will balance out the reading over the next 4-6 weeks or so.

Each week, we will read a story or two from the book, and I will curate responses from any reader that wants to email me their thoughts about what they just read for a post on Tuesday (email: danny+bookclub@techcrunch.com). TechCrunch has discussion comments available on our posts, so we can continue the conversation there as well.

Join us! And if you have feedback on this concept, feel free to email me at danny@techcrunch.com.

Source: Tech Crunch