August 2021

The race between Google and Microsoft to place their default search engines in Apple’s iOS and macOS continues to intensify.

According to a note from Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi, Google has significantly increased its payment to Apple for placement as the default search engine on Safari in iOS and macOS. The note was first publication by Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Apple 3.0.

Google is not only the default search engine for the Safari browser on both platforms, but also for Spotlight searches on Mac and Siri search results.

Sacconaghi estimates that Google could pay nearly $ 15 billion in 2021 for the default placement. This is an increase from the roughly $ 10 billion Google paid last year for exclusivity. That’s a huge increase from Google’s $ 3 billion Apple paying in 2017 to be the default search engine on Safari.

Sacconaghi has previously said Google will likely pay Apple larger sums to make sure Microsoft doesn’t outbid. The sum, however, is large enough to amount to around 9% of Apple’s gross profits.

Google was the original default search engine for the iPhone when the device was first launched in 2007. However, in 2012, Bing has become the default search engine for iOS and macOS. This return in 2017.

The investment could prove to be worthwhile for Google and its parent company Alphabet. While companies like Waymo and Google Cloud have yet to generate a profit, the company’s advertising business remains strong. In July, Google reported record quarterly revenues and profits, fueled by increased ad spend.

By remaining the default search engine, Google benefits from mobile ad placement on searches and visited websites. But Google faces stiff competition from Microsoft’s Bing, both for placement as the default search engine and in the courtroom.

Sacconaghi noted that regulatory risks, which could force Apple to remove Google as the default search engine, could pose a risk to both companies.

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Israel’s Build.security policy definition and enforcement platform to be acquired by research firm Elastic, the US-based company announcement Monday. The acquisition is expected to be completed in Elastic’s second fiscal quarter.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

The Build.security team will be the basis for Elastic’s growing presence in Israel and an R&D center the company is set to establish in Te Aviv. Amit Kanfer, co-founder and CEO of Build.security, will be the site manager for the region.

Formerly known as Elasticsearch, Elastic was co-founded in 2012 by Israeli entrepreneur Shay Banon as a free, open search and analytics solution. The company has developed Elastic Stac which includes Elastic search, Kibana, Beats and Logstash, as well as other software systems that allow users to search and analyze data.

Elastic has acquired Build.security, a company specializing in the management of security policies for applications founded last year. The company is built on the Open Policy Agent (OPA), a general-purpose, open-source policy engine that enables unified, contextual policy enforcement. Enterprise technology provides developers with the building blocks they need to build and manage authorization control best practices on large-scale enterprise applications, while reducing security vulnerabilities. OPA is a graduate project of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF.)

Elastic and Build.security intend to develop the ability to manage OPA policies in Kibana, enforce OPA policies through the Elastic agent, and store the results of OPA policy executions in Elasticsearch using Elastic Common Schema (ECS), the companies said.

Initial integration with Build.security will focus on the Kubernetes admission controller, enabling security and compliance at deployment time, and will continue with build policies scanning cloud configuration files. Elastic said users will be able to “move to the left” and strengthen the security of their cloud native applications earlier in application lifecycles with this integration.

“For years, Elastic has provided millions of developers with powerful, free, and open technology,” Kanfer said. “We are excited to partner with Elastic to deliver on the promise of a free and open policy management platform for cloud native environments, from code to cloud to runtime.

“Since the inception of Elastic Security, we have launched a vision of what Limitless XDR should be: the ability of customers to prevent, detect and respond to threats in real time, all on a single platform. To do this, we brought SIEM together to detect threats and endpoint security to protect and resolve issues on all endpoints, including in the cloud, ”added Banon. “We are excited to partner with Build.security to bring open policy management to Elastic Security and invest in Open Policy Agent and its large and emerging community.

The other day I wanted to read what the British papers had to say about the India-England test match. I asked google, then asked again, and guess what? The first two pages of search results gave me links to Indian media reports. I modified the search to include “British Media” and then got a few relevant links.

Every day I read three national English language newspapers (physical copy). I also read a daily newspaper in Marathi and scan an online financial newspaper. So you could say that I have a reasonably well balanced national and regional perspective on news. When it is necessary to have a global perspective, I search online for the opinions of the international media – in this case the British media since this was a test match with England.

Sports channel coverage already gives me international perspectives on cricket – it’s fantastic to listen to Sunil Gavaskar, Shaun Pollock, Michael Holding, Sanjay Manjrekar and Harsha Bhogle.

But, I didn’t get the search results I wanted until I specifically searched for UK newspapers by name. I started to wonder if Google had decided that I should read Indian media news only.

Which would mean I would have the dubious benefit of not having access to the world on my phone while living in an age where technology can give me access to hundreds of global media links every second.

I changed my default search engine to Yahoo and: The first page was full of links to Yahoo News and Yahoo Cricket News. No real media in the first search results!

When I changed the query to include ‘UK Media’ it finally gave me some relevant links. Bing as the default engine provided similar results to Yahoo.

So I went back to Google and tried the exercise with other queries. Giant panda. Lasagna. Biryani. Dubai Biryani. English Premier League. Giant panda and lasagna aside, it was a frustrating exercise. (Earlier this week I researched Afghanistan as the situation quickly evolved there and got links to media outlets based in India, although what I wanted was reports on Afghanistan ).

So when it comes to news, search engines seem to prioritize location media and among them there seems to be some sort of additional prioritization.

If I want to read English Premier League news, stats and match reports, I would expect the search results to provide links to English media sites (like in England). I wouldn’t expect links to Indian media; just as I don’t expect links to European or American media opinions if I ask “Indian Hockey”.

The source of my annoyance was the expertise and the plurality / diversity of points of view. Why was I suddenly getting local / regional results first?

I queried “Google Search Results” and then started reading the search documentation… it’s fascinating and pretty transparent.

To quote some of the documentation from Google:

“To give you the most useful information, search algorithms look at many factors, including your query words, page relevance and usability, source expertise, and your location and settings. The weight applied to each factor will vary depending on the nature of your query – for example, freshness of content plays a more important role in answers to questions on hot topics than in dictionary definitions.

The expertise of the sources is an important factor, but also the location, which seems to take precedence. Why am I spending so much time reading the documentation? Because something has changed in my online search experience and I don’t have access to more than one side of an event. I read match reports in the local media, but I also want to take advantage of test match reports written by someone who understands Test Cricket, knows the players and knows how to value the importance of each round. Like Mike Atherton, a great cricketer and sports writer. Like Jonathan Liew, a well-decorated sports journalist who has this incredible knack for getting in the game. (Liew’s pragmatic and ironic build-up of Pujara’s 45s on day 3 of the second test was just great).

What I am saying is that I would like reports on UN events from UN sources and European news from European sources and Singapore technology news from Singapore technology sources etc. in more from the local perspective on these reports.

If technology platforms make it difficult for me to achieve a wider range of results beyond location, especially for news and information from elsewhere, I risk developing a one-dimensional perspective of the world. based on a regime of non-information from non-source experts.

So it stands to reason that elsewhere in the world people from other nations are watching Indian and Indian events and Indian news from a similar one-dimensional regime of non-Indian news sources. There is something wrong with such geographic prioritization of news and information, as it widens the chasm between people and nations. But that’s for another day.

For now, I will be enjoying the victory of the Indian cricket team over England in the second test. What a fierce and scintillating match!

If you’ve ever searched for a pair of shoes and advertisements for those same shoes appear on every site you’ve visited in the past month or so, you’ve seen the heinous side of online tracking. Enter DuckDuckGo: a search engine that is committed to not tracking you and keeping your search activity anonymous.

There are other private browsers, such as Courageous, which block trackers and third-party cookies that monitor your activity when you search the web. But DuckDuckGo – which recently had a heavy advertising campaign – sees itself as a direct competitor of Google search, with a mobile application and extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and other browsers.

After major incidents like the Cambridge Analytica scandal, people have become more aware of the amount of personal information available to tech companies and advertisers – and they refuse to be tracked when they can, because Apple iOS 14.5 allows you to do. Although it does not track users, DuckDuckGo’s app has been downloaded over 50 million times in the last year alone – more than any other year combined since its launch 13 years ago.

Here’s what you need to know about DuckDuckGo and how it works to secure your searches.

What is DuckDuckGo?

DuckDuckGo is a search engine that offers a mobile browser app and a desktop extension, both designed to let you browse the internet without businesses gobbling up your personal data. It promises to keep your searches private, anonymous, and has built-in tracking blocking, so the sites you visit have a harder time collecting information about you.

Read more: Best VPNs of 2021

How does DuckDuckGo work?

For starters, DuckDuckGo doesn’t track searches done through its browser extension or mobile app. Other browsers, including Chrome, allow you to use private or private browsing windows that don’t track your search history, but their default windows do. (It is the base of everything “embarrassing search historyjoke.) Instead of navigating you to a different version of its app, DuckDuckGo never tracks your search history.

Searches done through DuckDuckGo also automatically connect you to encrypted versions of websites where possible, making it harder for anyone to see what you’re watching online. This is another scenario where both options (encrypted and unencrypted) exist on other search engines, but the default is not always the privacy-friendly option. DuckDuckGo takes the extra steps of manually navigating to encrypted connections.

DuckDuckGo is also actively blocking external trackers to follow you online. For a more detailed explanation of DuckDuckGo’s privacy features, see DuckDuckGo blog.

How is DuckDuckGo different from Google Search? What about Incognito mode and private browsing?

DuckDuckGo essentially takes the opposite approach compared to other big tech companies like Google and Facebook, which have traditionally made money by targeting ads based on your browsing history and your personal data. While Google has said it will stop this practice, the platform is still collecting a ton of data about you, including Your location and research activity – yes, even in private browsing mode.

Private browsing mode simply deletes from your computer the information relating to your browsing session: your history, cookies and all the information you have entered in the fields. In particular, it does this only after you have finished your session by closing all your tabs. So if you leave your private browsing tabs open for hours or days, that information will keep piling up. And anyway, Google can save your searches – and businesses, Internet service providers, and governments can still track you across the Internet, even when you’re using incognito mode.

DuckDuckGo is different because it doesn’t store your browsing data at all and blocks trackers while you browse.

If it doesn’t target ads, how does DuckDuckGo make money?

DuckDuckGo always makes money from advertising – it just doesn’t use targeted ads. The search engine shows you ads based on the keywords you are looking for, which are not related to your personal data like your browsing or purchase history. Essentially, you’ll only see ads for whatever you’re looking for right now, not the weird product your friend linked you to last week that you can’t live without.

How can I use DuckDuckGo?

On mobile devices, simply open your app store and search for “DuckDuckGo”. You will be able to download the DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser app and use it the same way you would use Chrome or Safari. At the bottom center of your app, you’ll see a fire icon, which you can tap at any time to close all of your tabs and clear all personal data.

On the desktop, go to duckduckgo.com, where you will see a button to add DuckDuckGo to your browser. On Chrome, you will be taken to the Chrome online store page to download the extension for free. On Safari, you will learn how to set DuckDuckGo as the default search engine or manually enable a search using DuckDuckGo.

To learn more about online privacy, see browser privacy settings you need to change right now, how to prevent your iPhone apps from following you, and the best password managers of 2021.

In the engine room that powers its dominant search service, Google recently activated a powerful new tool.

According to the search giant, the new technology – a large-scale AI model known as MUM – could one day transform internet search into a much more sophisticated service, acting as a virtual search assistant as ‘he’s scouring the web for solutions to complex questions.

But company critics warn that this carries a clear risk: It will accelerate a change that has already seen Google provide more direct responses to user queries, putting themselves ahead of other websites to ‘internalize’ search traffic. and keep internet users locked. in a Google universe.

MUM – short for Unified Multitasking Model – is the latest in a series of behind-the-scenes upgrades to the Google search engine that the company says have brought about significant changes in the quality of its results.

These include the introduction ten years ago of a “knowledge graph” which defined the relationship between different concepts, bringing a degree of semantic understanding to research. More recently, Google has sought to apply the latest in deep learning technology to improve search relevance with a tool called RankBrain.

“We believe we are on the next big step,” said Pandu Nayak, Google researcher in charge of MUM.

Google gave the first glimpse of new technology at its annual developer conference in May, although he said little about how the system could be used. In an interview now, Nayak has said that MUM may one day handle many of the “fuzzy information needs” that people have in their day-to-day lives, but which they haven’t yet framed into specific questions they can. to research.

Examples he gives are when parents are wondering how to find a school that is right for their child, or when people first feel the need to start a new fitness program. “They’re trying to figure out, what’s a good fitness routine – one that’s at my level?” he said.

Using today’s search engines, “you really have to convert that into a series of questions that you ask Google to get the information you want,” Nayak said. In the future, he suggests, this cognitive load will be borne by the machine, which will take on what he calls “much more complex and perhaps more realistic user needs.”

He added that eventually, MUM’s applications should extend far beyond research. “We see it as a kind of platform,” he said.

MUM is the latest example of an idea that swept across the field of natural language AI. It uses a technique called transformer, which allows a machine to look at words in context rather than as isolated objects to be matched through massive statistical analysis – a breakthrough that has taken a leap in the “understanding” of the machine. .

The technique was first developed at Google in 2018, but its most spectacular demonstration came with last year’s GPT-3, a system developed by OpenAI that shocked many in the AI ​​world with its ability to generate large blocks of consistent text.

Jordi Ribas, head of engineering and products for Microsoft’s Bing search engine, said it had sparked a “race among all high-tech companies to come out with larger models that better represent language.”

When Microsoft unveiled its Turing language generation model early last year, it claimed it was the largest such system ever built. But GPT-3, unveiled months later, was ten times the size. Google hasn’t released technical details for MUM, but said it was “1,000 times more powerful” than BERT, its first experimental model using transformers.

However, even with this huge leap forward, Google faces a daunting challenge. Search companies have dreamed of answering complex questions for the past 15 years, but found the problem much more difficult than expected, said Sridhar Ramaswamy, former head of Google’s advertising business and today CEO of the research start-up Neeva.

“There is so much variation in anything complicated that we do,” said Ramaswamy. “Trying to get the software to understand these variations and guide us has proven incredibly difficult in practice.”

The first uses MUMs involve behind-the-scenes research tasks such as ranking results, classifying information or extracting answers from text.

The difficulty of objectively measuring the quality of search results makes it difficult to judge the impact of efforts like this, and many experts wonder if other new search technologies have lived up to the hype. Greg Sterling, a seasoned research analyst, said many search users won’t notice much improvement and research for products in particular remains very frustrating.

Research companies, for their part, say internal testing shows that users prefer the results of the most advanced technologies. The ability to extract responses from text has already enabled Bing to offer direct responses to 20% of the queries it receives, according to Ribas.

For most people, the impact of transformers is only likely to be felt if the technology drives more visible changes. For example, Google says MUM’s ability to understand both text and images – with video and audio to be added later – could lead to new ways of searching across different types of media.

Dealing with the more “fuzzy” queries that Nayak has in mind would result in Google gleaning information from a number of different places on the web to present a much more precise answer to each very particular query.

“This consolidates all activity on Google properties,” said Sara Watson, senior analyst at market research group Insider Intelligence. “Everything that appears on this first page [of search results] can be whatever you want. Such a system could cause backlash from web publishers, Watson added.

Google, already watched by regulators around the world, denies that it intends to use MUM to keep more web traffic to itself. “This is not going to become a question answering [system]Nayak insisted. “The content available on the web is rich enough that giving short answers doesn’t make sense. “

He also denied that distilling the results of multiple searches into one result would reduce the amount of traffic Google sends to other websites.

“The better you understand user intent and present users with the information they really want, the more people come back to look for,” he said. The effect will be to “make the pie fat” for everyone.

Advertising on the Search Network, the lifeblood of Google’s business, could face similar questions. Reducing the number of searches required to answer a user’s question can reduce the ad inventory that Google can sell. But, said Watson, “if the query can be more complex and focused, so can the ad. Which does [ads] much higher value and potentially changes the pricing model.

• Google Research is not a public service just because it is popular, the company told a Ohio to research.
• Ohio’s AG said in June that Google prioritizes its own products and needs to be regulated.
• States “don’t have to dictate what information online they want people to see,” Google said.

Google on Friday asked for the dismissal of a trial brought in by the Ohio Attorney General, saying his search engine was not a public service just because it’s popular.

“To say, as Ohio does, that Google search is a ‘public service’ is to say that it is a business that Ohio could acquire, build, own or operate. ‘is absurd, “Google said in its file. “The state could not shoulder such a burden for countless reasons, not the least of which is that it does not have to dictate what information online it wants people to see.”

Ohio AG Dave yost in June for follow-up Google, saying the company’s search function should be regulated as a public service – just like water, electricity and transportation companies.

Google said Friday that the state’s request “has no more legal validity than a request to declare Fox News, the New York Times or Walmart a” public service “because most residents of a particular city prefer to obtain their new or the grocery store from them instead of someone else. ”

Yost had said the company acted anticompetitively by prioritizing its own products, like Google Flights, alongside organic search results. Competitive products should be offered as often as Google’s products, according to the lawsuit.

Google said its results were protected by the First Amendment because they were editorial decisions.

“The state cannot interfere with this protected expression, let alone try to control what Google should and should not include on its results page,” Google said.

The company’s argument was also technical. The mechanics of how Google search results ended up on an Ohioan’s computer were important, the company said. Google cannot be classified as a “common carrier” under Ohio law, in part because it does not carry anyone or anything. Internet service providers move data, the company said.

“Google search doesn’t send a commodity, but is constantly working to provide useful information in response to people’s unique queries,” the company said.

Insider has contacted Google and Yost’s office for comment.

Frinkiac is a search engine exclusively for The Simpsons. It lets you match over three million screenshots with quotes from the iconic show. In 2016, three Simpsons fans came together to create the simple yet unique website named after Springfield’s favorite scientist, Professor Frink.

What makes Frinkiac special is that he is precise and fast at finding Simpsons content, often more so than Google. However, that is not all that Frinkiac is good at. Let’s take a look at its interesting features and technical details.

How does Frinkiac actually work?

All the images available in Frinkiac are indexed using the subtitles of the episodes of The Simpsons. Therefore, you need to search for a screenshot using a quote or term that was said during a particular episode of The Simpsons. You cannot yet search for images using a character name or scene description.

The subtitle of each episode in Frinkiac is broken down into a prefix of at least 2 characters before indexing is performed. For example, “mal” can be a prefix for “illegal” or “ill-gotten”. So the more you type in Frinkiac, the more precise your search results become.

To dig deeper into the technical details, Frinkiac is written in Go. While Google uses AI to understand your searches, Frinkiac finds the screenshots through video analytics. Frinkiac works by analyzing each scene from The Simpsons into 100 sections. It determines the average color of each section, then compares it to the previous scene or frame. Frinkiac only saves a screenshot when there are differences between the current scene and the previous one.

This is how you can move through each episode of The Simpsons frame by frame in Frinkiac. This is also the reason why Frinkiac’s GIFs loop so well. Although GIFs are created in beta mode, Frinkiac’s most interesting feature might be the cleanliness and fluidity of its GIF loops.

Features that make Frinkiac great

Now that you know how Frinkiac works, here are some of the features that make it incredibly fun:

1. Its database covers 17 seasons

Frinkiac features screenshots from 17 seasons of The Simpsons. It also features The Simpsons Movie released in 2007. The idea for Frinkiac originated when the creators encountered a setback – it was surprisingly difficult to find a relevant image for one of the Simpsons scenes on Google.

However, the creators have taken it upon themselves to make sure that no other Simpsons fan experiences the same issue. And that’s why Frinkiac continues to expand every day.

2. It has its own memes and GIF generator

When you search for a term or quote on Frinkiac, it helps you find relevant frames. You can then add your own text to the frames or choose from the available suggestions to create your own memes.

Frinkiac may have been born as a simple image generator site, but over time it has evolved to function as a GIF generator site as well. One of the users thought it would be great if the Simpsons search engine could also create GIFs. Now, Frinkiac allows you to create GIFs that are up to seven seconds long, covering a total of nineteen frames per GIF.

3. Frinkiac is invited to provide comments

If you are unhappy with some features of Frinkiac, or would like to congratulate the creators for a job well done, Frinkiac gives you the opportunity to share your comments anonymously as well as publicly.

For private comments, you can email the team. But if you think your comments need some public reception, you can reach out to the team on social media. In fact, you already know that Frinkiac takes his comments seriously. This is how the site’s GIF generator functionality became available to all of its users.

4. It allows easy downloads

Once you have your meme or GIF ready, you have an extremely simple option to download it. To share a meme, you need to click on the yellow box that has an arrow pointing right at the bottom right of the screen.

For a GIF, the process is the same, except that Open GIF is clearly stated. You can save the image, share it with your friends or just post it on social media afterwards.

5. It allows you to find your old GIFs

If you can’t find the GIF you just made on one of the best Simpsons episodes, you can either create a new one or enter the old URL and find your GIF in Frinkiac.

This is because once you create a GIF on Frinkiac, it stays on the servers forever. Although the cache is cleared every few months, your GIF is always accessible via a unique URL to anyone with the link.

6. Frinkiac allows you to view entire episodes

When you search for a scene on Frinkiac, several relevant images may appear. You pick the one that’s closest to the scene you’ve been looking for and proceed to make a meme or GIF. But what if you can’t find a frame that matches your search?

Frinkiac’s See the episode functionality has you covered. It lets you view the entire episode frame by frame so you can find the screenshot you are looking for.

Each episode of The Simpsons is broken down into a list of scenes. The list is quite comprehensive as it includes not only the quote and screenshot but also the length of each scene. Thus, there is no chance that a screenshot will not appear on the site, unless the episode is not uploaded.

What does Frinkiac have in store for the future?

With interesting additions lined up, Frinkiac has a bright future. While the creators have big plans for Frinkiac’s future, they’ve already started working on improving research using complex parameters like a character name or scene description.

The creators also plan to add a storefront / gallery of user-created images to this Simpsons search engine, while still allowing users to search in different languages. Finally, you will soon have the option to change the font size and style of memes and GIFs you create.

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The global online food delivery services market is expected to reach $ 192.16 billion in 2025, up from $ 126.91 billion in 2021, according to Research and Markets. Companies like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and GrubHub are big, fast-growing companies.

Still, knowing which service serves which restaurant or whether the restaurant had its own delivery service was nearly impossible until FoodBoss, an all-in-one online food and alcohol delivery search engine that includes data from food service companies. The company is the brainchild of Michael DiBenedetto and Liam Hession.

“I entered consulting after business school and like a lot of consultants do; there are late nights and you order food while you are working in an office, ”says DiBenedetto, co-founder and CEO of FoodBoss. While trying to order food, he and his colleagues began to wonder which restaurant was working with which food delivery service. DiBenedetto thought there must be a service like Kayak (the Travel Finder Aggregator) for food delivery, but none existed at the time.

DiBenedetto believed that the idea of ​​developing a food delivery search engine was a simple but compelling foundation for a business. He left the consulting world in 2015 to start working on the food delivery service aggregation app in 2015 and officially founded Chicago-based FoodBoss in 2016 when he connected with his co -Founder and now CTO, Hession to help build the technology behind the app.

The company started early when developing the FoodBoss app and DiBenedetto began to build relationships with the food industry to accept its service. “One thing I will always say is that there is a search engine in every industry except food delivery. There will be companies that want to work with us and gain users. And there are other companies that you might take a little longer to negotiate with, but we are in constant negotiations with all the companies. And we are looking to explore all opportunities to add them ”, says DiBenedetto

One of the challenges he faced was the fact that food delivery is already a low-margin business. Adding new fees to FoodBoss would be a tough sell. “It’s hard to really make a profit, isn’t it?” So you either have to increase the fees for consumers or increase the fees for the restaurants themselves, or the third option I always say is to find a good way to keep the cost of marketing low, ”says DiBenedetto.

Because FoodBoss provides highly trained researchers, restaurants could justify the service by reducing their marketing costs. “Consumers who come to our site are much more likely to complete an order than if that user came from a Google, Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest. We always say that we are partners with restaurants and third-party companies and competitors over other digital advertising channels these companies might work with, ”says DiBenedetto.

As the company began to gain acceptance, DiBenedetto managed to attract private investors, including former McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson of Cleveland Avenue, the Chicago-based venture capital and accelerator fund that invests in food. , beverages and tech companies. “When he arrived it really solidified what we were trying to do because he has the experience, knowledge and background to understand the value of occupants,” says DiBenedetto.

While it’s still early days for the food delivery app industry, FoodBoss is growing nearly 30% month over month, according to DiBenedetto. “We are doing it by traditional means. We advertise on Google, Facebook, Instagram, even offline channels, direct mail, things like that. And one thing our great CMO Jori Ford is able to tell consumers is that we have the full picture. We have multiple delivery companies, as well as direct dining options all in one place, where you can see everything in a concise manner rather than having to travel to multiple locations at once. In addition, according to DiBenedetto, the app drives 30,000 to 40,000 consumers per month to their partners and the average order is also on the rise.

DiBenedetto grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago in a family made up of several generations of entrepreneurs. “My great-grandfather came directly from Italy and started a business. And then my grandfather also started his own business. And then my dad started his own business. My brother started his own business. It’s definitely in the family. I guess there is ‘something in the water’ is the right expression, ”says DiBenedetto. He graduated from the University of Miami and then got his MBA from DePaul University. He started working as a consultant in a health consulting firm upon graduating from college.

DiBenedetto sees a lot of greenfields for the business to grow. The app recently added alcohol delivery to its research service, providing opportunities to increase its revenue through partnerships with alcohol groups, as well as expand into other categories.

“There are opportunities that we have based on our patents, which we can extend to grocery delivery and pickup. But at the same time, you really want to be diligent, focus on delivering and collecting food, and then expand it accordingly, ”concludes DiBenedetto.