Daily Crunch: DOJ files antitrust suit against Google

Google faces a big antitrust suit, Amazon offers to pay customers for shopping data and we review the iPhone 12. This is your Daily Crunch for October 20, 2020.

The big story: DOJ files antitrust suit against Google

The suit accuses Google of “unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising in the United States.” It’s co-signed by 11 states, all with Republican attorneys general — Texas, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana and South Carolina.

Google called the U.S. Department of Justice’s case “deeply flawed” and offered a platform-by-platform argument that it doesn’t actually have unfair market dominance. For example, it attributed its popularity in search to a superior product, rather than anti-competitive practices.

Meanwhile, Wall Street investors don’t seem to be particularly alarmed by the suit.

The tech giants

Amazon launches a program to pay consumers for their data on non-Amazon purchases — The Amazon Shopper Panel program asks users to send in 10 receipts per month for any purchases made at non-Amazon retailers.

Snap shares explode after blowing past earnings expectations — The company delivered $679 million in reported revenue, smashing past Wall Street expectations.

Review: iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro, two gems, one jewel — Both of these phones offer solid value, but two challengers wait in the wings.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Perch raises $123.5M to grow its stable of D2C brands that sell on Amazon — Perch acquires D2C businesses and products that are already selling on Amazon, then continues to operate and grow them.

Gowalla is being resurrected as an augmented reality social app — The startup was an ambitious consumer social app that excited Silicon Valley investors but ultimately floundered in its quest to take on Foursquare.

Synthetaic raises $3.5M to train AI with synthetic data — It’s already working with Save the Elephants to track animal populations, as well as with the University of Michigan to classify brain tumors.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Seven investors discuss augmented reality and VR startup opportunities in 2020 — “It’s still early, but it’s no longer too early.”

As startups accelerate in record Q3, Europe and Asia rack up huge VC results — Investment outside North America just had its best quarter in years.

Now may be the best time to become a full-stack developer — Talos Digital’s Sergio Granada has thoughts about this buzzy job title.

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

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.