Technology

Grin, the Mexico City-based electric scooter company backed by Y Combinator, is merging with São Paulo-based Ride to further the companyexpansion across Latin America. This comes shortly after Grin raised a ~$45 million Series A round.

Currently, Grin only operates in Mexico City, but it has plans to expand to other cities throughout Latin America. The merger with Ride, which already operates in São Paulo, will enable Grin to do this as early as next week, Grin co-founder Sergio Romo told TechCrunch.

As part of the merger, Ride will operate under the Grin brand in Brazil and the Ride team will be in charge of all of Grinoperations in Brazil. Ride is currently the only shared electric scooter operator in all of Brazil, but that will soon change when Yellow deploys its scooters. Last month, Yellow raised a $63 million Series A round for its bike- and scooter-share company.

Grin has also partnered with Colombia-based Rappi, an on-demand delivery startup that raised $200 million back in August. This partnership, which will enable Rappi customers to unlock Grin scooters through the Rappi app, will help boost Grinexpansion across Latin America, Romo said.

While LATAM is a huge market, Grin ultimately envisions operating itspick-up and drop-off scooter model worldwide.

&We definitely want to be global,& Romo said. &Idon&t think you can become a ten-billion-dollarcompany if you don&t go global. I think LATAM might actually be the best market — therehuge density and a huge market combined with Europe. And who knows, we might pop up in an American city soon if we do a good job. But this is definitely in our heads. This is engineered to be a global play.&

Californiamuch-anticipated net neutrality rules, which were signed into law last month, are being put on ice until a challenge to the FCC own rules at the federal level is resolved. Itunfortunate, but logical — if the FCC rules are undone or modified, the necessity and legality of Californiawill also be affected.

As you likely remember, the FCC repealed 2015net neutrality rules at the end of 2017 and implemented a new, much weaker set that more or less puts broadband providers on the honor system when it comes to indiscriminate handling of your data in transit.

California responded by writing its own law establishing similar (and in some ways expanded) consumer protections. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who spearheaded the federal effort to overturn the old rules, was not amused; he called Californiarules &radical,& &anti-consumer,& &illegal& and &burdensome.&

So it was no surprise when, just hours after California governor Jerry Brown signed the bill into law, the FCC filed a lawsuit challenging it.

But the FCC is dealing with a challenge of its own: a lawsuit from a dozen or so internet advocacy companies including Mozilla, Vimeo, Public Knowledge, Etsy and others, alleging all manner of procedural and factual problems with the new federal rules.

If this suit succeeds and the FCCnew net neutrality rules are rolled back or substantially altered (for instance, the court may find that some section or another is illegal or unenforceable), this could bear on the basis for the agencyown lawsuit against California. Yes, ita bit confusing, and thatwhy the stateattorney general, Xavier Becerra, decided it might be best to wait and not litigate a suit that may be mooted a few months from now.

&We are committed to a free and open Internet for Californians,& AG Becerra said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. &Every step we take, every action we launch is intended to put us in the best position to preserve net neutrality for the 40 million people of our state. We are fighting the Trump Administrationattempt to repeal net neutrality in the D.C. Circuit Court and we will vigorously defend Californiaown net neutrality law.&

Senator Scott Wiener (D-CA) explained in a separate statement that he regrets but understands the necessity of this measure.

&Of course, I very much want to see Californianet neutrality law go into effect immediately, in order to protect access to the internet,& he said. &Yet, I also understand and support the Attorney Generalrationale for allowing the DC Circuit appeal to be resolved before we move forward to defend our net neutrality law in court. After the DC Circuit appeal is resolved, the litigation relating to Californianet neutrality law will then move forward.&

Ajit Pai also issued a statement on the matter, saying he was pleased California was staying implementation of &its onerous Internet regulations.&

&This substantial concession reflects the strength of the case made by the United States earlier this month,& he continued. &It also demonstrates, contrary to the claims of the lawsupporters, that there is no urgent problem that these regulations are needed to address.&

Although the rationale for this delay is understandable, itunfortunate that California residents will have to wait months or longer for the protections they supported while this case plays out.

(Updated with statement from California AG Becerra.)

Snapchat is launching its first Mac and Windows software that takes over your webcam and brings its augmented reality effects to other video streaming and calling services. Snap Camera can be selected as a camera output in OBS Skype, YouTube, Google Hangouts, Skype, Zoom and more, plus browser-based apps like Facebook Live so you can browse through SnapchatLens Explorer to try on AR face filters. And through its easily equipped new Twitch extension, streamers can trigger different masks with hotkeys.

You can download the Mac and Windowsversions of Snap Camera now. Users can use Lens Explorer to preview effects and see who made them, Star their favorites for easy access and access a tab of your recently used Lenses.

Despite Snap Inc.troubles following yesterdayQ3 earnings announcement that revealed it&d lost 2 million users, causing its share price to hit a new low, Snapchat Camera isn&t about stoking growth. You won&t even have to log in to Snapchat to use it. Instead the goal is to drive more attention to its community AR Lens platform so more developers and creators will make their own effects. &We&re going down the path of providing more distribution channels [for Community Lens creators] and surfacing their work,& Snaphead of AR EitanPilipskitells me. The desktop camera could win Lens creators more attention, and Snapchat connects to the most talented ones to brands for sponsorship deals.

Snapchat first came to the desktop in January with its first embeddable content, designed for newsrooms that wanted to show off citizen journalism on their sites. But now Snapchat content creation is escaping the mobile medium.

Strangely, Snap Camera has no interface of its own. Really, it should have a Photo Booth-style app so you can record photos and videos of yourself with your webcam and share them wherever. &We don&t want to compete in that space. We just want to bring Community Lenses to whatever apps people are using,&Pilipski explains. One major app that won&t support Snap Camera is AppleFaceTime. Why &Idon&t know. Apple didn&t comment on that. Believe me we tried,& says Pilipski.

Because there¬ evena facility to collect the impressions& and users don&t have to log in, Snap won&t be able to add Camera users to its daily active user count. With that number falling from 191 million in Q1 to 188 million in Q2 to 186 million in Q3 as it announced yesterday, Snap really does need more ways to keep people from straying to Instagram Stories. It will have to hope that when video chat users see their friends or family using Snap Cameralenses, it will remind them to fire up Snapchat more often. And Lenses could go viral if they show in a Twitch celebritystream.

The Twitch extension comes amidst more announcements at todayTwitchCon event, including the reveal of Squad Streaming and a karaoke Twitch Sings game for the serviceaverage of 1 million concurrent viewers and half-million daily streamers.

The Snap camera equips Twitch broadcasters with extra features. They&ll have access to game-themed lenses forLeague of Legends, PlayerUnknownBattlegrounds, World of Warcraft and Overwatch. Viewers will see the QR Snapcode for the Lens on the screen, which they can scan with Snapchat to try the mask on themselves for virality. Streamers get a button that lets viewers subscribe to them, and can set up a &bonus& lens that shows up as a thank you when someone follows them. And with hotkeys, streamers can trigger different lenses, like an angry one for when they lose a game or victory lenses for if they manage to beat all the other Fortnite addicts.

More than 250,000 Community Lenses have been submitted through SnapchatLens Studio since it launched in December, and they&ve been viewed over 1 billion times. Snapchat realized it couldn&t dream up every crazy way people could use AR. Out-Lensing Instagram is critical to Snapchatbusiness strategy. The more people that use SnapchatAR features, the more the company can charge businesses to promote Sponsored Lenses. With the user count shrinking, Snap needs to show its business is growing to salvage its share price and pull in the outside investment or acquisition it will likely need to make it to profitability. A desktop presence could not only make Snapchat more ubiquitous, but get it in front of older users and advertisers who might be a little scared of its mobile app.