Not every business information story has a happy ending. Crowd-sourced company data collector Owler was just bought by media-monitoring firm Meltwater for $24.5 million in cash and equity. Owler had raised $30.8 million in funding, according to Crunchbase.
Business software information company G2 has raised a $157 million Series D, bringing total funding to $257 million and valuation to $1.1 billion. While best known for its crowd-sourced reviews, the company also helps companies buy and manage their software and offers marketing solutions to software sellers.
I know you’ve already heard the news, but still feel obligated to report that Google has announced it will support third-party cookies in Chrome until the end of 2023, more than a year longer than expected. They nobly cite concern for “the business models of many web publishers” but protecting their own revenue and data-gathering seems a more plausible motivation. They’re also grounding FLoC, their much-criticized cohort-based targeting alternative, until further notice.
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.