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Elon buys Twitter, new App Store rules, gambling ads backlash • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 29, 2022Posted in app stores, Apple, Apps, developers, Google, Mobile, This Week In AppsNo Comments

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly ZebethMedia series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps. This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more. Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters. Musk buys Twitter It’s official, Elon Musk now owns Twitter. In typical Musk fashion, the transition has been nothing but chaotic, with the deal closing just ahead of the deadline set by the Delaware Chancery Court — the court where Musk was planning to try to exit the deal by claiming Twitter had misled him about the number of bots on the platform. (He was really looking to get the price down, of course!) In any event, the Telsa and SpaceX exec now has a new toy and everyone is waiting to see what comes next. Earlier, Musk had hinted at layoffs, then later retracted his statements, saying he wouldn’t fire 75% after all. However, he did immediately clear out the C-suite, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, General Counsel Sean Edgett and Head of Legal, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde — a sign that he’s planning to fill out Twitter’s top ranks with execs who will do his own bidding and not fight for the Twitter of days past. Still, Musk’s talk about a Twitter that’s more permissive of “free speech” doesn’t quite align with his message to advertisers posted shortly after the deal’s close: He promised marketers that Twitter can’t turn into a “free-for-all hellscape.” That’s clearly a tacit acknowledgment on Musk’s part that advertisers don’t want to post their content next to hate speech-filled tweets. And despite Musk’s plans to grow Twitter’s subscription business, around 90% of Twitter’s revenue today comes from advertising. Given what he had to pay to own Twitter, Musk probably doesn’t want to have to pay to keep it running, too. App Store Review Guidelines now give Apple a cut of NFTs, in-app advertising Image Credits: ZebethMedia Along with the launch of iOS 16.1, Apple also introduced new App Store Review Guidelines. Among the major changes were two new rules designed to give Apple a bigger slice of the NFT market and Meta’s core advertising business. The company said apps will be allowed to list, mint, transfer and let users view their own NFTs, but clarified that owning an NFT could not be a shortcut to unlocking any more features in an app. In other words, the ownership of an NFT shouldn’t be a way to route around Apple’s in-app purchases. In addition, Apple said NFT apps can’t display external links or other calls-to-action to purchase NFTs — that can only take place through Apple’s own in-app purchases system, as well. This change is not all that surprising. As the web3 market grows, Apple wanted to find a way to stake its claim on the revenue and transactions that are occuring inside these new apps. Plus, it’s a better consumer experience for NFT marketplace apps to not just function as a showcase for users’ purchases, but as a place where users can actually transact. The other big rule adjustment, however, is a bit more startling. In a bold move, Apple essentially said it deserves a cut of Meta’s ads business as well as any other social app. The new rule around social media apps now states that purchases of “boosts” have to flow through Apple’s in-app purchase system. This could impact any app that sells the ability to boost a post to a wider audience, like Meta (Facebook, Instagram), TikTok, Twitter, dating apps and others. Meta, of course, took significant issue with this change, saying that Apple’s policy undercuts others in the digital economy after Apple had previously said it wouldn’t take a share of developer ad revenue. While Meta isn’t exactly a sympathetic player here, it’s concerning that Apple has decided it can now tax advertising inside iOS apps at the same time it runs its own expanding ads business. That seems like a move regulators will need to look into asap. App Store gambling ads backlash Speaking of Apple’s ads business…The company’s App Store ads platform expanded this week to include new ad slots like the main Today tab and a “You Might Also Like” section at the bottom of individual app listings. The slots are available in all countries as of October 25, except China. The ads have a blue background and an “Ad” label to differentiate them from other listings. Developers, however, were immediately disturbed by the instant deluge of gambling ads that appeared marketed alongside their own, including against kids’ applications and, in at least one case, a gambling addiction recovery app. This was a poor look for Apple. After all, the gambling category itself is already controversial — many developers would rather not share an app marketplace with these often predatory apps in the first place, much less have them advertised alongside their own. Apple at least moved quickly to respond to the backlash by “pausing” gambling ads and a few other categories on App Store product pages, but the company didn’t say how long this pause would last or what it planned to do about the situation in the long term. Spotify accuses Apple of anti-competitive behavior, this

Google’s Nest Wifi Pro is a dead simple way to bring Wi-Fi 6E home • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 28, 2022Posted in Gadgets, Google, Google Nest Wifi Pro, Hardware, nest wifi, Nest Wifi ProNo Comments

A quick caveat up top. This isn’t a review. ZebethMedia does reviews. This isn’t one. There are several reasons for this. First, last week was Disrupt — I was busy on the other side of the country. Second, this week is my COVID week (third round, otherwise self-explanatory w/r/t a limited output). Third, we very rarely review routers here, for a lot of reasons, including resources. Even so, the Nest Wifi Pro is available now, so I’m committing some of my initial impressions to the page, after setting it up and using it for a few days. I hope this is helpful if you’ve been eyeing one since its unveiling earlier month. If you need something a bit more substantial than my doughy brain can offer up at the moment, I completely get it. We’ve got plenty of big reviews planned over the horizon. Let’s start with what the Nest Wifi Pro is an isn’t. It’s “Pro” in the sense of where it fits in the broader Google Wifi line. It’s a home router, one that looks nice and is easy to set up. There are faster and more powerful routers out there. There are routers that are more customizable and flexible. If, however, you’re looking for a router with Wi-Fi 6E that works right out of the box, it’s hard to beat. Image Credits: Brian Heater That’s an important thing to note with products like this. At $199, this is a solid entry into Wi-Fi 6E territory. If you’re looking for a quick boost to your home internet, and the current dusty old router is starting to give up the ghost, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better “just works” system out of the box. I say this with the authority of someone who spent his own hours on the phone with terrible ISP customer support, because of some phantom ghost in the machine of the company routers. Amazing how often the fix is someone flipping a switch on their end. I was long overdue for a wireless upgrade myself, as someone who hosts a lot of podcasts and video livestreams. There are more embarrassing things that can happen to one on a live broadcast, but we won’t get into them here. Suffice it say that a strong and steady internet connection is an important part of doing my job. Another caveat I should mention before we go further is the one I often give while testing smart home-related tech: I live in New York City. That means, among other, better things, that I have a relatively small dwelling area. Specifically, I’m in a one-bedroom. Google clocks the Nest Wifi Pro’s coverage area as 2,200 square feet (4,400 for a two-pack, 6,600 for the three, etc.). One-bedrooms in NYC tend to range from around 600-800 square feet. Image Credits: Brian Heater With that in mind, a single device was plenty. Speeds can fluctuate during the day, but I found mine to be fairly consistent, regardless of how close I was to the router. If you’re on the fence about whether a single device is enough, it should be more than enough for anything below 1,000 square feet. As you push closer to 2,000 square feet, the bundle starts to make more sense. And the upshot to the UX is that it’s easy to add Google mesh routers down the road (though you won’t get those bundle savings). The setup process will prove familiar if you’ve ever set up most smart home products — Google/Nest stuff in particular, for obvious reasons. There’s not much to the device from the user’s perspective (again, this is intentional). The design is arguably even more minimal than its predecessor. It’s taller and slimmer, the matte color replaced with a shiny, plain job. Your mileage on that last bit will vary, but as with other Nest products, this one is designed — above all — to blend in with its surroundings. There are three ports: power and a pair of Ethernet — one for the modem, the other to hardwire a single device. That last bit is a potential limiter, of course, as is the 1Gbps upper limit on the built-in Ethernet (to help keep the system under $200, one imagines). That may or may not be an issue, depending on your specific plan. If you have fiber, for example, you’re going to get bottlenecked. Me, I’m stuck with Spectrum at the moment (I know, I know), so, um, no issue there. But obviously you don’t want a device that sits between you and the wall slowing down your internet speeds. Either way, the service you’re on will determine your ultimate speeds. Image Credits: Brian Heater Download the Google Home app to get started, and you’ll be walked through a straightforward setup process, sped up if you can snap a shot of the QR code on the product’s underside. The paper startup guide included in the box is three basic steps (plug in router, download app, follow on-screen instructions) and two images spread across two small pages. I’m not going to say that’s definitely all you need, but if you don’t run into any hiccups (always a consideration with networking devices), it should be plenty. Nest Wifi was a fine system, and honestly, if you bought one, you likely don’t need to rush out and upgrade. Its combined speed for Wi-Fi 5 topped out at a stated speed of 2.2Gbps versus the Wifi Pro’s 5.4Gbps. Keep in mind, those are both figured combined across the three bands. Let’s just say they are very optimistic figures. Here’s Wi-Fi Alliance CEO Edgar Figueroa from 2020 about the upgrade from Wi-Fi 5: 6 GHz will help address the growing need for Wi-Fi spectrum capacity to ensure Wi-Fi users continue to receive the same great user experience with their devices. Wi-Fi Alliance is introducing Wi-Fi 6E now to ensure the industry aligns on common terminology, allowing Wi-Fi users to identify devices that support 6 GHz operation as the

As overall cloud infrastructure market growth dips to 24%, AWS reports slowdown • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 28, 2022Posted in Amazon, cloud infrastructure market share, Enterprise, Google, Microsoft, Synergy ResearchNo Comments

With the big three — Amazon, Microsoft and Google — reporting earnings this week, we learned that the cloud infrastructure market topped $57 billion for the quarter, up $11 billion over the same period last year. That adds up to 24% growth, according to data from Synergy Research. It might not be the growth we are used to seeing from this market, but at a time of economic instability, it continues to perform remarkably well. Still, it is a step back from the days when we saw growth steadily in the 30s. It’s even down from last quarter when the market grew 29%. So it’s fair to say that growth is slowing in an area that’s seen explosive expansion over the last several years. Synergy chief analyst John Dinsdale attributed this slowdown to several factors. First of all, there’s the law of large numbers, which states that as a market size increases, growth decreases. When you combine that with a strong dollar affecting earnings outside the U.S. and a shrinking market in China, it is having an impact. “It is a strong testament to the benefits of cloud computing that despite two major obstacles to growth, the worldwide market still expanded by 24% from last year. Had exchange rates remained stable and had the Chinese market remained on a more normal path, then the growth rate percentage would have been well into the thirties,” Dinsdale said in a statement. The other news here is that of the big three, Google Cloud was the only one to gain share, up a tick to 11%, as the work that CEO Thomas Kurian is doing to build the business continues to pay dividends. Meanwhile, Amazon held steady as the market leader at 34%, good for around $19 billion for the quarter, with Microsoft in second at 21% with revenue of almost $12 billion. Google’s 11% came in at around $6 billion. But that doesn’t tell the whole story as Amazon’s cloud growth slowed to 27.5% in the quarter, down from 33% growth the prior quarter. As the chart below showing third-quarter data back to 2017 illustrates, the market has grown in leaps and bounds over the five-year period, from just over $10 billion to almost $60 billion. Image Credits: Synergy Research It’s also worth noting that only Google beat analysts’ expectations for cloud revenue, while both AWS and Microsoft came up short of their predictions. The usual caveats apply here around numbers matching publicly reported amounts. Synergy counts public platform, infrastructure and hosted private cloud services in its numbers. Total revenue reported by individual companies may also include other elements, which Synergy doesn’t count. The fact is that in spite of economic headwinds, the market remains surprisingly strong, and while companies may be looking for places to cut, as we wrote back in June, it’s not that easy to reduce cloud spending because it’s fundamental to most businesses these days. Most companies born in the cloud aren’t going to suddenly build a data center, and those in the midst of shifting to the cloud need to keep moving workloads because of all the benefits the cloud brings around business agility. Companies looking to cut spending can and should be looking for waste, but regardless, the cloud market will likely continue to produce decent numbers, even if the economics force down overall revenue and slow growth in the short term. We usually include Canalys data as a means of comparison in these reports, but the data was not available yet at the time we published. As soon as Canalys publishes its data, we will update the article.

India to create committees with veto power over social media content moderation • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 28, 2022Posted in Facebook, Google, Government & Policy, india, meta, TwitterNo Comments

India will set up grievance committees with the veto power to reverse content moderation decisions of social media firms, it said today, moving ahead with a proposal that has rattled Meta, Google and Twitter. The panels, called Grievance Appellate Committee, will be created within three months, it said. In an amendment to the nation’s new IT law that went into effect last year, the Indian government said any individual aggrieved by the social media’s appointed grievance officer may appeal to the Grievance Appellate Committee, which will comprise a chairperson and two whole time members appointed by the government. The Grievance Appellate Committee will have the power to reverse the social media firm’s decision, the government said. “Every order passed by the Grievance Appellate Committee shall be complied with by the intermediary concerned and a report to that effect shall be uploaded on its website,” New Delhi said in a statement. Shortly after India proposed creating such panels, the US-India Business Council (USIBC), part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), both raised concerns about the independence of such committees if the government controlled their formation. Both the firms represent tech giants including Google, Meta and Twitter. (More to follow)

Google filing says EU’s antitrust division is investigating Play Store practices • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in antitrust, Digital Markets Act, Google, Government & Policy, play store, Privacy SandboxNo Comments

A Google regulatory filing appears to have confirmed rumors in recent months that the European Union’s competition division is looking into how it operates its smartphone app store, the Play Store. However ZebethMedia understands that no formal EU investigation into the Play Store has been opened at this stage. The SEC Form 10-Q, filed by Google’s parent Alphabet (and spotted earlier by Reuters), does make mention of “formal” investigations being opened into Google Play’s “business practices” back in May 2022 — by both the European Commission and the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Thing is, the Commission’s procedure on opening a formal competition investigation is to make a public announcement — so the lack of that standard piece of regulatory disclosure suggests any EU investigation is at a more preliminary stage than Google’s citation might imply. The U.K. antitrust regulator’s probe of Google Play is undoubtedly a formal investigation — having been publicly communicated by the CMA back in June — when it said it would probe Google’s rules governing apps’ access to listing on its Play Store, looking at conditions it sets for how users can make in-app payments for certain digital products. While, back in August, Politico reported that the Commission had sent questionnaires probing Play Store billing terms and developer fees — citing two people close to the matter. And potentially suggesting an investigation was underway. Although the EU’s executive declined to comment on its report. A Commission spokeswoman also declined to comment when we asked about the “formal investigation” mentioned in Google’s filing (at the time of writing Google had also not responded to requests about it). But we understand there is no “formal” EU probe into Play as yet — at least not how the EU itself understands the word. This may be because the EU’s competition division is still evaluating responses to enquiries made so far — and/or assessing whether there are grounds for concern. Alternatively, it might have decided it does not have concerns about how Google operates the Play Store. Although developer complaints about app store commissions levied by Google (and Apple) — via the 30% cut that’s typically applied to in-app purchases (a 15% lower rate can initially apply) — haven’t diminished. If anything, complaints have been getting louder — including as a result of moves by the tech giants to expand the types of sales that incur their tax. So lack of competition concern here seems unlikely. Last year, the Commission also charged Apple with an antitrust breach related to the mandatory use of its in-app purchase mechanism imposed on music streaming app developers (specifically) and restrictions on developers preventing them from informing users of alternative, cheaper payment options. So app store T&Cs are certainly on the EU’s radar. More than that: The EU has recently passed legislation that aims, among various proactive provisions, to regulate the fairness of app store conditions. So the existence of that incoming ex ante competition regime seems the most likely explanation for why there’s no formal EU investigation of Google Play today. Where Google is concerned, the Commission has already chalked up several major antitrust enforcements against its business over the last five+ years — with decisions against Google Shopping, Android and AdSense; as well as an ongoing investigation into Google’s adtech stack (plus another looking at an ad arrangement between Google and Facebook). Another consideration here is that EU lawmakers have had a very busy year hammering out consensus on a number of major pieces of digital regulation — including the aforementioned ex ante competition reform (aka, the Digital Markets Act; DMA) which will cast the Commission in a centralized enforcement role overseeing so-called Internet “gatekeepers.” That incoming regime is requiring the Commission to rapidly spin up new divisions to oversee DMA compliance and enforcement — so the EU may be feeling a little stretched on the resources front. But — more importantly — it may also be trying to keep its powder dry. Essentially, the Commission may want to see if the DMA itself can do the job of sorting out app developer gripes — since the regulation has a number of provisions geared toward app stores specifically, including a prohibition on gatekeepers imposing “general conditions, including pricing conditions, that would be unfair or lead to unjustified differentiation [on business users],” for example. The regulation is due to start applying from Spring 2023 so a fresh competition investigation into Google’s app store at this stage could risk duplicating or complicating the enforcement of conditions already baked into EU law. (Although the process of designating gatekeepers and core platform services will need to come before any enforcement — so the real DMA action may not happen before 2024). For its part, Google denies any antitrust wrongdoing anywhere in the world its business practices are being investigated. In the section of its filing rounding up antitrust investigations targeting its business, it writes: “We believe these complaints are without merit and will defend ourselves vigorously.” Its filing also reveals that it intends to seek to appeal to the EU’s highest court after its attempt to overturn the EU’s Android decision was rejected last month. (The CJEU will only hear appeals on a matter of law so it remains to be seen what Google will try to argue.) Privacy Sandbox Also today, the U.K.’s CMA has released its second report on ongoing monitoring of commitments made by Google as it develops a new adtech stack to replace tracking cookies (aka Privacy Sandbox). The regulator said it had found Google to be complying with commitments given so far — and listed its current priorities as: Ensuring Google designs a robust testing framework for its proposed new tools and APIs; continuing to engage with market participants to understand concerns raised by them, challenging Google over its proposed approaches and exploring alternative designs for the Privacy Sandbox tools which might address these issues; and embedding a recently appointed independent technical expert (a company called S-RM) into the

YouTube’s ad revenue is declining, but creator economy experts aren’t worried • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in creator economy, Google, Jellysmack, Social, YouTubeNo Comments

The social platforms that power the creator economy might seem like they’re starting to slip. YouTube’s quarterly ad revenue declined 1.9% year over year, per Google parent company Alphabet’s quarterly earnings report this week. Overall, Alphabet missed analyst estimates, earning $69.1 billion in revenue, about a billion dollars less than expected. For many YouTubers, ad revenue is a significant source of income, with members of YouTube’s Partner Program earning 55% of ad revenue generated on their videos. So, a decline in ad revenue could be cause for alarm. Still, creator economy experts are prepared to weather the storm. Digital services that make their money through advertising have faced intense headwinds in recent quarters. Between the overall macroeconomic downturn, global uncertainty around the war in Ukraine and major changes to Apple’s iPhone software that makes it more difficult for advertisers to track users, social media platforms aren’t posting great numbers. Russia’s invasion has also introduced new policy complexity for social platforms, which have been forced to navigate a delicate geopolitical situation while also serving as essential news gathering platforms over the course of the war. Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Snap and Meta all halted ad sales in Russia, and Russia blocked some of these apps and websites as well to block information about Ukraine. According to Amanda McLoughlin — CEO of Multitude Productions, an independent podcasting company, and longtime online creator — this decline in revenue is expected. “This is a really normal reaction by companies to any type of uncertainty in the world. Advertisers are overcorrecting to the specter of a recession by slashing budgets. If a recession actually hits, we’ll probably see ad spending bounce back faster than you’d expect. Uncertainty is much scarier than reality for companies,” McLoughlin told ZebethMedia. “This just happened in early lockdown; ad spending disappeared in March, April and May of 2020, but rebounded once we settled into the new normal (economically).” Like YouTubers, podcasters leverage advertising to support their creative endeavors. McLoughlin had previously written in the Wall Street Journal that when much of the United States went into lockdown in March 2020, she fretted for the future of her company, as well as her ten friends and collaborators who relied on their podcasts for income. She found that offering fan subscriptions was a more consistent source of income than advertising. “Direct audience support had always been part of the way we made our living, but I was stunned to see a surge in new Patreon supporters during those first few months of the pandemic,” McLoughlin wrote. “Even as so many of us were cutting back on expenses, there were dozens of people making supporting creators a new priority. Those supporters kept us going — and more than a year later, they are still here.” YouTube’s ad revenue stats do not include revenue from subscription services like YouTube Premium and YouTube TV. On YouTube Premium, subscribers can watch videos without ads. But YouTube shares some of the subscription fee with creators to compensate for any lost ad viewership. So, an increase in YouTube Premium subscribers could be a small factor in this decline in ad revenue. Jim Louderback, the former CEO of the YouTube-focused creator conference VidCon, pointed out some reasons for this less-than-stellar report in a LinkedIn post. He wrote, “The rise in short-form swipable viewing, led by TikTok, has eaten into time spent with YouTube’s traditional long-form content. Marketers are shifting dollars from Instagram and YouTube to TikTok — and Shorts isn’t ready yet to significantly arrest that.” YouTube Shorts, the company’s TikTok clone, is poised to give TikTok a run for its money, though. Next year, creators will be able to earn ad revenue on short form YouTube videos, an important step that TikTok has not yet taken. It’s a new way for short form creators to make money, but it’s an opportunity for advertisers as well. A number of creator-focused startups like Spotter, Creative Juice and Jellysmack rely on YouTube ad revenue as part of their own business models, which help expand creator businesses. Jellysmack president Sean Atkins isn’t too concerned about YouTube’s ad revenue decline either. “Cyclical moves in advertising might cause short-term discomfort, but the underlying opportunity for YouTube and creators will have staying power far beyond the near-term economic challenges,” Atkins told ZebethMedia via email. “We’ll also see savvy creators, who have invested in multiple platforms beyond YouTube, finding advantages during this period with diversified revenue streams.” McLoughlin agrees, pointing to this moment as a reminder for creators to never rely too heavily on one platform to pay the bills. “This should be another reminder for creators to diversity your revenue streams and allow your audiences to support you directly,” she said. “People have much better judgement than companies, and your audience will come through when ad dollars don’t.”

Google hit with $113 million fine in India for anti-competitive practices with Play Store policies • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 25, 2022Posted in Android, Apps, Google, Google India, Government & Policy, indiaNo Comments

India’s antitrust watchdog has hit Google with $113 million fine for abusing the dominant position of its app store, the second such penalty on the Android-maker in just as many weeks in the key overseas market. The Competition Commission of India, which opened the investigation in late 2020, said mandating developers to use Google’s own billing system for paid apps and in-app purchases through Play Store “constitutes an imposition of unfair condition” and thus violates provisions of the nation’s Section 4(2)(a)(i) of the Act. The investigation also found: Google is found to be following discriminatory practices by not using GPBS for its own applications i.e., YouTube. This also amount to imposition of discriminatory conditions as well as pricing as YouTube is not paying the service fee as being imposed on other apps covered in the GPBS requirements. Thus, Google is found to be in violation of Section 4(2)(a)(i) and 4(2)(a)(ii) of the Act. Mandatory imposition of GPBS disturbs innovation incentives and the ability of both the payment processors as well as app developers to undertake technical development and innovate and thus, tantamount to limiting technical development in the market for in-app payment processing services. in violation of the provisions of the Act. Thus, Google is found to be in violation of the provisions of Section 4(2)(b)(ii) of the Act. Mandatory imposition of GPBS by Google, also results in denial of market access for payment aggregators as well as app developers, in violation of the provisions of Section 4(2)(c) of the Act. The practices followed by Google results in leveraging its dominance in market for licensable mobile OS and app stores for Android OS, to protect its position in the downstream markets, in violation of the provisions of Section 4(2)(e) of the Act. Different methodologies used by Google to integrate, its own UPI app vis-à-vis other rival UPI apps, with the Play Store results in violation of Sections 4(2)(a)(ii), 4(2)(c) and 4(2)(e) of the Act. India is Google’s largest market by users. The company has poured billions of dollars in the South Asian market over the past decade as it aggressively searched to find major untapped regions worldwide to supercharge its growth. The company reaches nearly all of India’s 600 million internet users. Android commands 97% of the local smartphone market. Google has pledged to invest $10 billion in India over the coming years. It has already invested up to $5.5 billion in the local telecom giants Jio Platforms and Airtel. On Thursday, the competition regulator fined Google $161.9 million for anti-competitive practices related to Android mobile devices and made a series of stringent redressal measures. The watchdog was investigating whether Google had assumed dominant position in five different markets: licensable OS for smartphones, app store, web search services, non-OS specific mobile web browsers and online video hosting platform in India. Google was dominant in all of those relevant markets, the regulator concluded. The antitrust watchdog said that device manufacturers should not be forced to install Google’s bouquet of apps and the search giant should not deny access to its Play Services APIs and monetary and other incentives to vendors. Amazon told the regulator that over half a dozen hardware vendors had indicated that they could not enter into a TV manufacturing relationship with the e-commerce group over fear of retaliation from Google. (More to follow)

Google Pixel 7 Pro’s camera has a fatal, really dumb, totally avoidable flaw • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 25, 2022Posted in Camera phone, Google, Google Pixel, Google Pixel 7 Pro, Hardware, OpinionNo Comments

A lot has been written about how incredible Google Pixel 7 Pro’s camera is. The camera itself gets no beef from me. Last week at ZebethMedia Disrupt, Brian and I were gawking in amazement at how well the 5x optical zoom lens does, for example. We had plenty of opportunities to contrast and compare. During Disrupt, I was shooting with about $6,000 worth of camera equipment and as my files were downloading from my mirrorless camera’s SD cards, I snapped this photo: Photo taken at ZebethMedia Disrupt using the Google Pixel 7 Pro’s 5x optical zoom lens. Image Credits: Haje Kamps / ZebethMedia Granted, my dedicated Sony A7r3 with a 70-200 f/2.8 lens is still capable of taking better photos; a giant hunking piece of glass and a full-frame sensor is hard to beat: Photo taken at ZebethMedia Disrupt with a Sony A7r3 camera and a Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom lens. Image Credits: Haje Kamps / ZebethMedia But let’s be clear — for the purposes of shooting pictures for the web, in good light, the Pixel 7 Pro gives it a pretty serious run for its money, at a fraction of the cost. As soon as I saw the design of the Pixel 7 Pro (and, for that matter, the 7, which has the same stupid gaffe), however, I spotted a pretty fantastically stupid design flaw. That beautiful metal front surrounding the lenses does a great job for marketing purposes. If I point my Pixel 7 Pro at you, there’s no way you’ll mistake it for an iPhone, a Pixel 6 or any other camera on the market. Well done, Google’s industrial designers, for creating an eminently recognizable phone. No doubt, it’ll be a conversation starter for a lot of folks. The problem with adding any light or reflective surfaces, however, is that it becomes exponentially harder to take photos through reflective surfaces: windows, primarily. As a photographer, I wouldn’t generally recommend that you shoot through glass, but let’s be honest; sometimes we’re in a car, on a plane or in a building, and we might want to shoot a time-lapse or a photo or two. It’s a pretty common use case for most photography applications, which makes it all the harder to grok why Google went out of its way to make that experience worse. This really is a Camera Design 101 choice of epic stupidity. Image Credits: Haje Kamps / ZebethMedia I have a number of friends who have vinyl cutters, and the solution is simple: a small strip of matte black vinyl covering up the high-gloss reflective surface on the front of the phone. I might be the only person in the world who cares about this, so it feels silly even to complain, but damn it, Google Pixel is positioning itself as the best camera phone out there, and this is such a fantastically n00b mistake that I’m truly flabbergasted at how the hardware giant could make such a dumb misstep, after getting it right for so long. I imagine there will soon be an aftermarket niche for stickers covering up the chrome, and I hope Google doesn’t made a mistake this silly again in the future.

Building the bridge between Web 2.0 and web3 • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in Column, Crypto, EC Blockchain, EC Column, EC Cryptocurrency, ethereum, Ethereum Merge, Google, Startups, Web 2.0, web3No Comments

Devin Abbott was founder of Deco (acquired by Airbnb) and specializes in design and development tools, React and web3 applications, most recently with The Graph. It’s too early to predict all the implications of the recent Ethereum blockchain Merge, but it definitely addresses the most frequent (and valid) criticism of web3 regarding excessive energy consumption. Critics may still find a new reason to oppose ETH, but my hope is this Merge will lead to something else: A chance for us to also merge what’s best about Web 2.0 with what’s most exciting about web3. There’s seemingly a growing rift in Silicon Valley, with the traditional Web 2.0 industry and the burgeoning web3 ecosystem depicted as being in opposition to each other. And trapped somewhere in the middle are emerging startups. I’m active in all three groups, and I believe most of this controversy is based on wild pronouncements and hype by VCs and other evangelists who are not developers. Incessant celebrity promotions of NFT drops, for instance, have contributed to the impression that web3 as a whole is a Ponzi scheme. In fact, NFTs are only a small part of the web3 ecosystem, and, in my view, not even the most interesting or potentially transformative. While Web 2.0 and web3 may seem incompatible, I believe it’s better to see technologies like blockchain and ETH as potential back-end solutions for scalability challenges that all companies face. In a similar way, web3 advocates should recognize that Web 2.0’s maturity makes it indispensable for many core use cases. Despite web3’s great potential, it’s still much easier to develop a Web 2.0 app simply because the ecosystem is mature and enjoys a large and thriving developer community. Let’s consider a couple examples where each side has something to contribute: From web3: An emerging revolution in open source To capture what’s happening in web3 development now, we have to go back to before the Web 2.0 era. During the dot-com boom, there was quite a lot of buzz over open source, Linux and hot companies like Red Hat. While very few consumers would go on to install Linux as their operating system, this buzz helped contribute to something equally important. In the background, with few people noticing, Linux quickly became the go-to operating system for running the back-end servers of 96.5% of the top million web domains — not to mention the massive Android market.