Techcrunch blog!: Daily Crunch - Amazon takes action against FedEx

Tuesday, December 17, 2019 • By Anthony Ha

Happy Tuesday

Amazon says FedEx Ground shipping isn’t good enough for Prime, Girlboss gets a new boss and Google fires another employee-activist. Here’s your Daily Crunch for December 17, 2019.

Amazon's third-party merchants are now barred from using FedEx Ground for Prime shipments

Amazon recently told third-party vendors that they are barred from using FedEx's ground delivery services for Prime shipments. The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon told merchants that the ban will last "until the delivery performance of these ship methods improves."

The e-commerce platform will still allow FedEx Ground for non-Prime shipments and FedEx Express, a faster but pricier option, for Prime.

Amazon's third-party merchants are now barred from using FedEx Ground for Prime shipments image

Atlassian Summit 2020 is heading to Las Vegas

New media investment firm Attention Capital acquires Girlboss

Attention Capital is a new outfit that buys, builds and scales media brands. Girlboss, meanwhile, is the female-focused multi-media business founded by Nastygal’s Sophia Amoruso, who will join the firm as a founder partner.

Google has fired another worker-activist

Kathryn Spiers, who worked on the platform security team, was generally tasked with writing code for browser notifications to automatically notify employees about guidelines and company policies. According to Spiers, Google fired her because she created a browser notification to educate her colleagues about their labor rights.

Image Credits: Michael Short/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images

Automated web app testing startup ProdPerfect raises $13M Series A led by Anthos Capital

ProdPerfect automates end-to-end testing for web developers. According to CEO Dan Widing, the product "followed some of the lessons of the product analytics industry to build a tool that lets us quantitatively understand how our customer's live users traverse the customer's web application."

1-800 Contacts buys the at-home eye exam provider 6over6 Vision

Based in Israel, 6over6 Vision previously raised $15 million to commercialize its in-home eye exams based on a combination of machine learning and sensors. The basic eye exams can be performed with nothing more than a smartphone or computer and camera.

Image Credits: Science Photo Library / Getty Images

Instagram hides false content behind warnings, except for politicians

Instagram is expanding its limited fact-checking test in the U.S. and will now work with 45 third-party organizations to assess the truthfulness of photo and video content on its app. One group that's exempt from the fact checking, though, is politicians.