Techcrunch blog!: Daily Crunch

Wednesday, January 15, 2020 • By Anthony Ha

Happy Wednesday

My favorite flight booking site is shutting down, Google brings its security key capabilities to iPhones and Ev Williams’ venture firm raises a new fund. Here’s your Daily Crunch for January 15, 2020.

Four years after being acquired, Hipmunk is shutting down

Founded by Adam J. Goldstein and Reddit co-founder Steve "spez" Huffman, Hipmunk was one of the first well-made "metasearch" travel sites. It scrounged up flights (and hotels/car rentals/etc.) from across myriad services like Expedia, Priceline, etc., presenting all the times and prices in one big, skimmable interface.

Now the Hipmunk team says the website and app are both shutting down. Oh, and we’ve confirmed that Goldstein and Huffman tried to buy the company back from SAP Concur, but that doesn’t seem to have panned out.

Four years after being acquired, Hipmunk is shutting down image

Brex's 2020 predictions for fintech

Google finally brings its security key feature to iPhones

Google said it'll bring the feature to iPhones in an effort to give at-risk users, like journalists and politicians, access to additional account and security safeguards, effectively removing the need to use a physical security key like a Yubico or a Google Titan key.

Obvious Ventures closes an irrationally sized third fund

The firm co-founded by Medium CEO and Twitter co-founder Ev Williams announced that it has closed its third fund, "OV3," at $271,828,182 — a number that the graphing calculator-owning among us may recognize as e, or Euler's number.

Image Credits: NurPhoto / Contributor / Getty Images

Don't be a selfless startup

It might sound strange to describe WeWork or MoviePass as “selfless,” but Danny Crichton argues that despite their failures, they successfully introduced new and popular business models. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

Microsoft and NSA say a security bug affects millions of Windows 10 computers

Microsoft has released a security patch for a dangerous vulnerability affecting hundreds of millions of computers running Windows 10. The bug could allow attackers to spoof legitimate software, potentially making it easier to run malicious software on a vulnerable computer.

Image Credits: Getty Images

Dear Spotify, add rabbits to your pet playlists

Spotify is introducing pet playlists, but Brian Heater has a very important request on behalf of his rabbit, Lucy.

Announcing the agenda for Robotics+AI — March 3 at UC Berkeley

For months we've been recruiting speakers from the ranks of the most innovative founders, top technologists and hard-charging VCs working in robotics and AI, and the speaker line-up will capture the remarkable acceleration across the field in the past year. Also: 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the first use of the word "robot."