Daily Crunch - Google had a good quarter

Thursday, October 29, 2020 • By Anthony Ha

Google releases its latest earnings report, Spotify is getting ready to raise prices and Excel gets friendlier to custom data types. This is your Daily Crunch for October 29, 2020.

The big story: Google had a good quarter

Google’s parent company Alphabet released its third-quarter earnings report this afternoon, coming in well ahead of Wall Street expectations thanks in large part to YouTube, which saw revenue rise to $5.0 billion (compared to $3.8 billion during Q3 2019).

Google Cloud also grew revenue from $2.4 billion last year to $3.44 billion in the most recent quarter. Overall, Alphabet reported revenue of $46.2 billion and earnings per share of $16.40, compared to analyst predictions of $42.88 billion in revenue and EPS of $11.21.

The company’s shares quickly rose 8.5% in after-hours trading.

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Spotify CEO says company will ‘further expand price increases’ — Although the company didn’t detail its plans, CEO Daniel Ek said the hikes will take place in markets that are more mature for Spotify.

Microsoft now lets you bring your own data types to Excel — That means you can have a “customer” data type, for example, bringing in rich customer data from a third-party service into Excel.

Why Apple’s Q4 earnings look different this year — With Apple’s latest iPhone launch running a few weeks behind this year, it missed the window to be included on Q4.

Image Credits: Getty Images

Startups, funding and venture capital

Donut launches Watercooler, an easy way to socialize online with co-workers — The startup also announced that it has raised $12 million in total funding, led by Accel.

One-click housing startup Atmos raises another $4M from Khosla, real estate strategics and TikTok star Josh Richards — According to CEO Nick Donahue, users have started designing the “first dozen homes” on the platform.

Commissary Club wants to help formerly incarcerated people find community — While 70 Million Jobs focuses on helping people with criminal records find jobs, its new network Commissary Club is designed to be a place for folks to find community.

Startups, funding and venture capital image

Image Credits: Mint Images / Getty Images

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

VCs poured capital into European startups in Q3, but early-stage dealmaking appeared to suffer — The VC trends of later and larger continue to change the landscape of private capital.

In the ‘buy now, pay later’ wars, PayPal is primed for dominance — Button’s Stephen Milbank writes that the greatest limitation to buy-now-pay-later adoption is its availability.

Twitter’s API access changes are chasing away third-party developers — On August 12, Twitter launched a complete rebuild of its 2012 API.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch image

Image Credits: xefstock

Everything else

Europe to limit how big tech can push its own services and use third-party data — Commission EVP Margrethe Vestager confirmed that a legislative proposal due in a few weeks will aim to ban what she called “unfair self-preferencing.”

Comcast says Peacock has nearly 22M sign-ups — But it’s not clear how many of them are paid versus free.

Tech optimism…in this economy? — The latest episode of Equity looks at big startup opportunities for the coming decade.