The Daily Crunch 09/30/16

The future is cloudy for Google (good) and virtual reality (less good). All that and more in The Daily Crunch for September 30, 2016. And if you're looking for a way to lose weight, Andreessen suggests dropping the Twitter 50.

1. Google's forecast is Cloud

Google has unified its cloud-based products under a new Google Cloud brand, and also running Google Apps for Work (which now live within Google Cloud) as G Suite. It took me about 5 hours or so yesterday to figure out that G Suite is a play on C Suite, but the Cloud product re-org, under Diane Greene, is a super smart move and one that should help Google better position its combined offerings.

2. State of VR

What is going on with VR? It's not an easy question to answer, and you'll hear that it's either the best, blue sky opportunity out there or the worst, stupidest misplacement of resources ever, depending on who you ask. Lucas takes a nice look at the state of the industry as a whole, and comes out with a more balanced perspective then you'll likely see most places. Meanwhile, John's swimming in gravy with the HTC Vive.

3. You probably won't be able to afford the first self-driving cars

Surprising no one, it looks like the first self-driving cars will be reserved for the kinds of people who would otherwise just hire chauffeurs anyway. Volvo's CEO shed some more light on the company's plan to launch a self-driving car by 2021, and basically he told people to expect it to be a luxury option on high-end vehicles.

Still, at the other end there's Uber and Ford looking to make it a reality for fleet-based on-demand driving services, so both ends of the market in the U.S. might get access at the same time.

4. Andreessen feels the Twitter relief

Twitter is a wonderful thing for me, as a journalist, to have access to – but it's also a heavy burden, and likely more so for people who are tied into it but not reliant on it for their job. Marc Andreessen may represent an edge case, since he's a very wealthy VC, but when I hear the guy say that he feels "50 pounds lighter" without Twitter (he went off the service for a break just recently), I can't help but think that I recognize those feels.

5. WhatsApp getting more scrutiny over inevitable FB data sharing

Europeans are not going along quietly with WhatsApp's plans to start sharing data with parent company Facebook. Germany's Hamburg digital privacy agency has ordered FB to stop harvesting WhatsApp user data, for instance, and the sentiment is basically mirrored across European countries. Facebook's approach to data privacy is essentially anathema to the general European perspective on the topic, so this isn't surprising. If FB encounters a permanent reversal here, I bet Jan Koum will privately let out a celebratory 'whoop' wherever he is.

6. HTC goes global with its VR app store

VR apps, there are some? Yes, and Viveport is HTC's destination for them. The storefront is opening globally finally after a slow preview rollout, and that can only be good news in terms of showing people what more they might be able to do with Vive and VR. I'm still highly skeptical about the chances of this taking off, but Daydream and lower-cost VR built right into upcoming Android phones might stand a better chance of precipitating an app boom for VR.

7. Battlefield now has a scholarship fund

Startup Battlefield now has a scholarship component, which doesn't actually mean you have to be in school. Instead, the new grants are available to participants in TechCrunch's Battlefield competition who can demonstrate financial need. It actually quietly debuted at this past Disrupt SF, and five companies qualified and are in the process of receiving funds as a result.