Google has quietly dropped its appeal in France against an antitrust fine of half a billion euros levied against it last summer for major breaches in how it negotiated to remunerate local news publishers for displaying copyrighted content.

A major reform to European Union rules around digital copyright which was agreed back in 2019 — and transposed into French law soon afterwards — created a new right covering reuse of snippets of news content.

Google responded to the change of law in France by first seeking to evade payment by stopping displaying such snippets in products like its news aggregator. But the country’s antitrust watchdog stepped in in 2020 — suspecting that Google’s unilateral act constituted an abuse of market power and ordering it to pay publishers for the content reuse.

Google then sought to cut deals with French publishers but this quickly led to complaints over how it was negotiating — such as by withholding key info and seeking to press publishers into bundling neighbouring rights payments into licensing terms for a News Showcase product Google had devised — so Google’s actions attracted another intervention by the regulator; and, in July 2021, a $592M penalty for abusive negotiation practices.

The tech giant called the fine “disproportionate” when it filed its appeal against the Autorité de la Concurrence‘s sanction last fall.

However now it’s agreed to withdrawn the appeal. The development comes as the French competition regulator said today that it’s accepting behavioral pledges first offered by Google back in December as it sought to settle the antitrust action — which suggests that Google dropping the appeal forms a part of the full settlement that’s been announced today.

“Google undertakes to withdraw its appeal against the decision not to comply with the injunctions. The fine of 500 million euros imposed by the Autorité on July 12, 2021 therefore becomes final,” L’Autorité wrote in a press release [translated from French with machine translation].

In its own blog post about the settlement, Google doesn’t make mention of withdrawing the appeal — instead, it spins its commitments being accepted as drawing a line under a problematic chapter for its business.

“Today, the Autorité de la Concurrence accepted our commitments, which frame the way in which these negotiations [over reuse of news publishers’ content] will be conducted for the coming years,” wrote Sébastien Missoffe, managing director and VP, Google France. “An independent trustee will be appointed and will be responsible for monitoring the proper execution of the commitments. These commitments illustrate our desire to move forward and to remunerate publishers and press agencies for their neighboring rights.”

What exactly has Google agreed to? The commitments that have been accepted by the French regulator now are a beefed up version of the ones Google initially offered at the end of last year.

The regulator said Google has committed to undertake good faith negotiations with news publishers who request talks over remuneration for their content under the law — applying “transparent, objective and non-discriminatory criteria”.

This includes agreeing to pass key information to publishers in a timely fashion (e.g. the number of impressions and click-through rate of their protected content on Google Search, Google News and Google Discover; plus data relating to Google’s revenues in France); and agreeing to pass to an independent agent relevant additional info that publishers may request (a structure which looks intended to workaround concerns of Google’s confidential info being too directly shared).

The framework commits the tech giant to make a compensation proposal within three months of the start of negotiations with a publisher.

If there is disagreement the framework allows for an arbitration tribunal to determine the amount Google must pay.

Google has explicitly agreed to keep separate terms with publishers to license legally protected content — so not to seek to bundle this type of content licensing into terms of any other Google media product (such as its News Showcase vehicle), as it previously attempted.

L’Autorité also notes that Google has agreed to extend the scope of its commitments to cover publishers it had previously sought to exclude, including press agencies.

Google’s blog post talks up the number of deals it has inked with French publishers in the interim — with the tech giant writing that it has “agreements with more than 150 press publications in France”.

However, as the regulator points out, the terms of the negotiation framework it’s agreed to mean publishers are not bound to any contracts they previously inked with Google — and are instead free to renegotiate terms with the benefit of the new framework in place if they so wish (though existing contracts will apply until replaced by any new deals).

Google has also undertaken not to take what would amount to retaliatory measures against publishers — committing that negotiations do not affect the indexing, classification or presentation of protected content; and do not affect the other economic relations that may exist between Google and press publishers and press agencies, per L’Autorité.

The commitments are now made compulsory for a period of five years — with the possibility of being renewed for a further five years, under the discretion of the regulator.

An approved independent agent will monitor Google’s application and oversee its negotiations with publishers. This (as yet unnamed) agent will have an active role in settling potential disputes by issuing opinions and proposals to the L’Autorité — which Google has agreed to be bound by (although publishers remain free to pursue alternative legal means to settle disputes if they wish).

Commenting in a statement, Benoît Cœuré, president of L’Autorité, said the regulator welcomes — “on the merits” — the commitments made by Google following its intervention and sanction, adding: 

“The combination of these different means of action now makes it possible to create an environment offering greater stability and guarantees of fairness for publishers and press agencies. For the first time in Europe, the commitments made by Google provide a dynamic framework for negotiation and sharing of the information necessary for a transparent assessment of the remuneration of direct and indirect related rights. This framework will improve evaluation methods and facilitate the transmission by Google of the information necessary for them.”

The news reuse issue doesn’t only apply to Google’s French operations; the EU copyright reform will apply across the bloc once all Member States have transposed the regulation into national law — hence the framework agreed in France is likely to form a template for other negotiations with regional news publishers. (Per Google’s blog, the company has inked agreements with over 650 publications so far — albeit, it may face having to redo terms based on what it’s agreed to in France if publishers elsewhere decide they want a better deal.)

Beyond the EU, Google’s licensing negotiations with publishers in Australian are also regulated after the country passed its own news code bargaining law early last year.

While the UK also appears to be considering similar legislation to support publishers as it works on a reboot of domestic competition rules wrapping tech giants. Although there’s no near term prospect of a change after the government delayed bringing legislation forward.

However the UK’s competition watchdog has said it will make full use of its existing powers in the meanwhile — which, in recent years, has included obtaining a set of commitments from Google over how it will remove support for tracking cookies in Chrome and install alternative adtech.

Germany’s competition watchdog, meanwhile, has been investigating Google’s News Showcase licensing product since last summer — following complaints over a planned integration into Google’s general search function look likely to be self-preferencing and/or unfairly disadvantage competing services offered by third parties.

That German FCO probe remains ongoing. But in January Google offered to limit how the News Showcase ‘story panels’ would appear in search results in the market — shortly after the country’s competition watchdog determined it can apply special abuse controls to Google.

The short story of all these antitrust interventions is that Big Tech’s T&Cs are gradually being reshaped by forces outside their control. And — notably — it’s international regulators doing the running at the vanguard of this enforced reboot.

Germany’s competition regulator is looking into possible abuses related to how Google operates its Maps product.

It’s the latest proceeding the Federal Cartel Office (FCO) has opened against Google — with earlier (ongoing) investigations into the tech giant’s News Showcase licensing practices and its data terms. However the Maps proceeding is the first initiated under tougher abuse controls which have applied to Google’s business in Germany since January — when the regulator determined it meets the threshold for an ex ante  competition law reform that’s targeted at digital giants with “paramount significance for competition across markets”.

The determination lowers the bar for regulatory intervention to address potential competition concerns. So, in practice, it means Google may face more FCO proceedings — which are opened and could be concluded more swiftly — than if the special abuse controls did not apply.

Commenting in a statement on the Google Maps proceeding, Andreas Mundt, president of the FCO, said: “We have information to suggest that Google may be restricting the combination of its own map services with third-party map services, for example when it comes to embedding Google Maps location data, the search function or Google Street View into maps not provided by Google.

“Among other aspects, we will now examine whether this practice could allow Google to further expand its position of power regarding certain map services. We will also look into the licensing terms and conditions for the use of Google’s map services in vehicles.”

The FCO added that it will be interviewing customers and competitors of the Google Maps Platform as part of the investigation.

Google was contacted for comment. A spokesperson for the company told us:

Since the special abuse controls begun applying to its business, Google has made changes to how it operates its news licensing product and suggested some others in an apparent bid to settle that FCO probe.

Although, at the time of writing, the proceeding remains open. Back in January the regulator said it would consult on the changes proposed by Google and continue to monitor the company’s negotiations with publishers over licensing terms.

The new reality for Google in Germany is a more responsive oversight regime to competition concerns.

Last month the FCO also concluded that Facebook parent, Meta, falls in scope of the ex ante regime — meaning it too faces extra scrutiny over how it operates in the market.

An FCO proceeding to determine whether iPhone maker Apple should also have the designation is ongoing. But, earlier this month, the regulator announced a probe of Apple’s app privacy framework that it said was based on conduct that “can possibly” be classified as meeting the threshold for the special abuse regime to apply, so the FCO looks keen to avoid wasting time in being able to use the proactive powers.

Germany’s competition regulator has also been testing Amazon’s market power to make the same determination since May 2021. So the ecommerce giant could soon face amplified attention to its German ops, too.

Earlier this year, European Union lawmakers agreed on a major ex ante update to competition rules that’s set to come into force early next year  — bringing in a new regime of up-front operational rules that will apply across the bloc for tech giants which meet the definition of internet ‘gatekeepers’. The EU’s Digital Markets Act is backed up by a regime of major penalties for non-compliance.

The Government of Canada today announced that it is ending use of the app it commissioned based on the COVID-19 exposure alert API developed jointly by Google and Apple as a measure to help combat the spread of the illness. The system is disabled immediate, according to a government alert, which also advises users to delete the COVID Alert app from their devices.

As to why it’s ending the program, the release indicates that it’s tied to a significant drop in PCR testing in the country, which is resulting in very few one-time keys being issued to patients for use in the app, so usage has apparently slowed to a trickle.

Canada implemented the COVID Alert app in July 2020, and Health Canada says that since then it’s been downloaded by 6.9 million people, and provided notifications of exposures on behalf of 57,000 people who tested positive and entered their one-time key into the app.l

The COVID Alert app was developed in part by engineers at Shopify, with security review by BlackBerry, working in collaboration with provincial and federal government resources.

Meanwhile, in Ontario, the health system is seeing record demand — mostly due to spin-off effects from COVID, including staff outages, rather than COVID cases themselves. Wastewater data (the best source of infection info since most at-scale PCR testing programs have been suspended) from Ontario also indicates a rise in COVID cases in the province over the past couple of weeks.

In an effort to kick-start a greater number of Black tech Founders in Europe, last year Google for Startups launched a $2m (£1.5m) grant fund to help tackle the quite obvious and stark racial inequality in the European tech industry. That fund ended up doubling to $4m (£3m) and now 40 Black-led tech starups across Europe will receive grants from the fund.

Each startup will be given $100,000 in non-dilutive cash awards, up to $200,000 in cloud credits and ad support, mentoring by industry execs and connections inside Google’s network.

Prior to the fund’s launch in 2021, less than 0.25% of venture capital (VC) funding went to Black-led startups in the UK. 


British tech startups will make up two-thirds of the 40 companies selected across Europe, and are spread across beauty, fashion, education, construction and food/beverage.

Marta Krupinska, Head of Google for Startups UK: “For the second year in a row we’ve been able to debunk the myth of the ‘pipeline problem’. Europe is home to a wealth of talent from underrepresented backgrounds – we’re so excited to have doubled last year’s fund and partner with 40 fantastic companies, of which two-thirds are based in the UK, and one third is led by women.”

The full list is below (with the descriptions supplied by the startups themselves):

●  Aline (Sweden): Lifelong Learning, quantified and validated for increased productivity in the Information Age. 


●  Automi AI (France): Automi empowers manufacturers to automate much more tasks than ever possible. The platorm uses ML to orchestrate mobile supercomputers that users connect to their workstations and train to peorm repetitive tasks. 


●  Base Plus (UK): Combining data, machine learning and formulation expertise to create precise and personalised skincare. 

    
●  Beazy (Germany): SaaS-enabled marketplace for content production 


●  Bloomful (UK): Delivering a digitally-enabled care pathway for beer gynecological 
health. 


●  Boxx (UK): Combining boxing inspired fitness with smart tech to provide a fun and 
accessible way to workout. 


●  Compare Ethics (UK): A Sustainable Product Intelligence and Compliance platform 
enabling companies to manage, verify, and condently communicate responsible 
product claims at scale. 


●  Deep Meta (UK): Predicting production defects in metals. 


●  Devo (UK): An end-to-end operating system enabling the digital transformation of 
convenience stores. 


●  Eccobell (UK): An ecosystem of on-demand web applications using contactless 
technology to innovate how people access, communicate and interact with each other, 
unrestricted by device. 


●  Ekie (France): Ekie facilitates access to legal services for employees to improve the 
essential balance between their professional and personal lives. 


●  Feniska (Germany): A Berlin based Health-Tech sta-up building IoT products to help 
cat and dog owners track the health of their pets. 


●  FoodLama (UK): Online grocery shopping with preferences, made easy. 


●  Framework (UK): The world’s rst on-demand business school, designed exclusively for 
startups. 


●  Fresh Afrika (France): Fresh Afrika is a Paris-based FoodTech company using the 
blockchain technology to deliver a beer food experience and connect small scale 
farmers in Africa to the world. 


●  GigBridge (UK): A recruitment platform for construction companies to nd and hire 
skilled construction workers. 


●  Goodloans (UK): AI-powered digital lending platform for emerging markets. 


●  Hyndr (Germany): The B2B marketplace for the hydrogen economy. 


●  ID Protect (France): ID Protect is the 3D secure for identity documents, changing the 
game in prevention against fraud and identity theft. 


●  Kuorum (Spain): SaaS for legal and secure online voting 


●  Lenkie (UK): Providing the embedded lending infrastructure to enable online platforms 
to become a source of funding for their business users. 


●  Liquisto (Germany): Liquisto is a data-driven platform of digital solutions for sustainably 
transforming excess industrial inventory into liquidity for manufacturers and new utility 
for end-users of industrial equipment. 


●  Materials Nexus (UK): Accelerating the transition towards net-zero materials. 


●  MoonHub (UK): Viual Reality training plaorm. 


●  Nolea (UK): Solving the healthcare demand-supply mismatch problem with our 
fractional clinician marketplace plaorm. 


●  Owni (UK): A B2B SaaS company that enables fashion retailers and brands to reap the 
benefits of resale and the secondary market through a peer-to-peer resale plaorm 


●  Pace Revenue (UK): Providing real-time, automated decision intelligence, and industry 
leading BI to the hospitality industry. 

                 
●  Propel (Germany): Propel is building multi-layered digital infrastructure to power the Tech Talent Economy. 

●  Propelle (UK): A female focused financial investment plaorm, designed to get women investing more regularly and building wealth. 


●  Reach Industries (UK): A platform that leverages computer vision, voice & ML to accelerate life sciences in labs. 


●  Reframd (Germany): Inclusive eyewear products for a diverse world. 


●  Ruka (UK): The Ruka vision is to become the definitive hair brand for black women 
globally, by building an ecosystem of hair solutions which truly work. 


●  Sojo (UK): A sustainable fashiontech staup centralising & modernising the clothing 
repair and tailoring industry. 


●  SympliFi (UK): A digital lending plaorm that facilitates access to credit to underserved 
micro and SME businesses in developing countries, by making lending borderless. 


●  Tinto (UK): A wellbeing app for pregnant and postnatal mothers. 


●  TRIM-IT (UK): The UK’s rst app-powered mobile barbershops. 


●  VerifyMyAge (UK): Creates safety tech solutions designed to make the internet safer by 
solving compliance and safeguarding problems with age assurance, identity 
authentication and content moderation. 


●  Yuty (UK): An AI driven conscious beauty marketplace. 


●  Yvee (France): Yvee assists companies in the 3 main steps of a hiring process: sourcing, 
skills screening and selection. 


●  Zest (Netherlands): Zest develops soware-driven, personalized lifestyle treatment to 
prevent, control, & reverse chronic conditions such as diabetes without spending more on medications.

Large banks are stepping up their game when it comes to new services and the technology that underpins them, and in many cases they are borrowing straight from the tech world’s playbook: Instead of building in-house, to speed things up, they are tapping third parties that have already found a fix for a tricky problem, integrating their breakthroughs by way of APIs.

In the latest development, a startup called Able has built an engine to speed up the processing of  documents and other data required for commercial loans (typically $100,000 but sometimes up to $100 million in value), which it sells as a service to banks and other lenders. Today, it’s coming out of stealth mode with $20 million in funding and a launch into the wider market.

The Series A is being led by Canapi Ventures — a specialist fintech investor — with participation also from Human Capital, which also led the startup’s seed round. Diego Represas, the CEO of Able who co-founded it with Andrew Hurst, noted that there are also a couple of strategic investors — financial services companies that are already using Able’s tech — but they are not disclosing those names currently.

I write that it is launching into the wider market because although it’s coming out of stealth, Able’s actually been around since 2020, and the customers it’s picked up are already using Able’s technology — which involves RPA, computer vision and other forms of AI to ingest and process data related to loans as part of their evaluation process.

The section of the loan market that it is focusing on is larger commercial endeavors and so are being done at much higher values than the typical small business loan. That also means more parsing of paperwork related to a loan application, a cumbersome process that Able is aiming to reduce by up to 30% on a typical application.

Represas said he came to the idea of fixing this after a meeting up with cousin of his who worked in business finance and told him about the painful process that went on behind the scenes.

Represas and Hurst at the time were engineers at another fintech, Digit, and so Represas’s natural inclination was to think that there was likely already a solution in the market to cut this down.

It turned out that there wasn’t. He couldn’t believe it, he said: business loans are a $6 trillion annual market, but globally banks were spending about $60 billion annually to process those loan applications.

Perhaps the bigger market size has kept a lot of incumbents from wanting to fix what didn’t really seem broken. But we know how this song goes: there are a number of companies now also building to address this, and so perhaps it was just a matter of time before they would get their inefficient stranglehold on business loans disrupted.

“So we dove into solving this problem,” he said.

The company is picking an interesting moment to announce funding and open for business. Inflation is on the rise, and interest rates are getting hiked up in a bid to contain it.

That means it’s a complicated, but potentially interesting, time to be a fintech startup building technology to power commercial loan services for major banks and other large lenders.

On one hand, higher interest rates and the presence of inflation might make getting loans and taking any business leap or risk less attractive; on the other hand, it may be precisely the right time to have a product out there that takes friction out of the process and therefore speeds up the transaction and lowers the costs around it.

Companies, meanwhile, will still be in need of funding to grow, and in some cases you’ll have companies investing in that because their products are breaking through, maybe because of the current state of the market. (As people in tech love to point out, Google and Airbnb after all were both launched during recessions.)

You could say the same for Able. Its own product crosses into a couple of different competitive spaces. There are a number of startups out there already either working directly with businesses, or providing their tech to embed elsewhere to power business loans with new approaches that leverage AI and big data analytics. (Some like Kabbage eventually do get snapped up by incumbents: Amex acquired the SoftBank-backed startup back in 2020 after it struggled hard through the first year of the pandemic.)

Alongside that, there is a wave of companies out there targeting fast-scaling companies and making it easier to secure revolving credit and debt facilities as an alternative to the equity-based funding that they might typically consider. They include the likes of Hum (formerly called Capital) providing services directly to businesses; and Sivo, which provides debt-as-a-service; Clearco and Wayflyer both targeting e-commerce and online businesses; and more.

I should also point out that there is another fintech startup called Able, although it focuses on personal money management and is not connected to this Able at all.

Represas notes that Able’s focus on the tech that is used for processing, but not decision-making or risk-profiling (which Represas told me is just a small aspect of loan approval and not where the pain point is); the fact that it focuses on commercial loans and not SMB loans (too small an opportunity, he said); and that it does not directly interface with borrowers itself but works through banks, all make it distinct from the rest of the pack (why create new channels when those banks already have those deep relationships, was Represas’ rhetorical question to me when I asked why not). All in all, Able is disruptive, but it’s not a threat, to its customers.

And that makes it one to watch.

“Able is a game-changer. Their team is already working with several banks in the Canapi network on use cases that span the entire loan lifecycle,” said Neil Underwood, general partner at Canapi Ventures and president of Live Oak Bank, in a statement. “Able cuts the time and resources needed to process any business loan. Lenders get better economics and a scalable platform for growth. Everyone gets a modern digital experience. It’s a win-win situation for all parties involved.”

When DataStax hired Chet Kapoor as CEO in October 2019, one of the first moves he made was to bring in his old pal Sam Ramji to be chief strategy officer, someone he had worked with for many years and was deeply involved in open source throughout his career. The two had worked together successfully at Apigee, an API company that went public in 2015 before being acquired the following year by Google for $625 million.

Getting the band back together seems to have been a successful approach, as the company announced a $115 million investment on a $1.6 billion valuation today. That’s a 33% premium over a round completed just a year ago, according to the company. This is especially impressive in an economic environment where software valuations are taking a big hit and VC dollars are getting tighter.

Kapoor and Ramji took over a company almost a decade old that was best known for being the commercial company on top of the Apache Cassandra database. The two industry veterans decided it was time to modernize, made a couple of acquisitions including Kesque for streaming. Last year the company introduced Astra, a serverless database built on top of Cassandra and Astra Streaming, based on that Kesque acquisition, which the company introduced in beta last June.

Kapoor was working at Google in 2019, a place he was comfortable, but the allure of building a successful business was still there, and he saw in DataStax, a company that had the potential to get there. He believes the tweaks he and Ramji, and other new executives he brought in, are making to the product line could help them reach $1 billion in revenue at some point down the road.

He also saw a company that checked a lot of key boxes for him. “I looked at a bunch of different companies and big data stacks. If you look at the triangle of number of developers and the skills, Cassandra is right on top…Outside of infrastructure service, the TAM for NoSQL is the fastest growing market out there, a massive market growing really fast. The people are the folks that built Cassandra, and then the last thing was durability – culture and P&L,” Kapoor told me.

He says that to achieve a revenue goal like that, involves some basic principles. “My mission is to serve real time applications with an open data stack that just works.” He believes if his company can achieve that, it can attract customers building their highest growth apps. With that, he can achieve higher revenue, and it can help propel the company forward.

He’s been around long enough to understand that there is a lot of work ahead of him, but building companies on top of open source has proven a viable strategy for many startups.”I think there are many ways to build a really great company. We certainly believe that open source is critical because innovation doesn’t happen in the cathedral. It happens in the bazaar. And so we spent a lot of time with the Apache Cassandra community, the Apache pulsar community…” he said.

While there are still companies using Cassandra in private data centers, the future is in the cloud and he sees offering a serverless database like Astra as another way to grow the business. It offers developers a way to build an application without worrying about about database resources, and is part of making it just work for customers.

So far the approach has been working as the company’s investors see a viable and growing company, giving them the confidence to give DataStax a fist full of dollars at a time when many companies are struggling to get capital.

Today’s round was led by Goldman Sachs growth equity business with participation from RCM Private Markets, EDB Investments Pte. Ltd. along with existing investors Crosslink Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, OnePrime Capital and other unnamed investors.

Google showed the way when it came to the world understanding and valuing the importance of a good search engine to unlock all the information you could find on the internet. The next iteration of that has been vertical search: providing tools to delve into very specific information silos for particular uses.

And in the wave of companies building solutions for that, a New York-based company called AlphaSense, which focuses on providing search tools to query market analysis and business intelligence, has now raised $225 million. Its valuation with this Series D round — $1.7 billion post-money — is double what it was in 2021 (when it raised $180 million in a Series C round). This not only speaks to AlphaSense’s growth, but to the opportunity to address more gaps in vertical, enterprise search.

The funding is being co-led by two investors, the Growth Equity business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management (Goldman Sachs) and Viking Global Investors. Goldman Sachs is both a financial and strategic investor here, Finnish co-founder and CEO Jaakko (Jack) Kokko told me: the firm’s analysts use the platform for research and to post their own reports. The $225 figure also includes a “substantial” debt commitment from BlackRock although AlphaSense does not specify the exact amount.

When we last covered the company in 2019 — a $50 million Series B round — AlphaSense had 1,000 customers. That number has now grown to 3,500, with the last year seeing customer numbers growing by 110% in 2021, with the range of typical uses including companies in the S&P 100 (75% are customers); the Dow 50 (97%); and large asset management firms and banks (70% of all of these in the U.S., the company claims, are users); along with those working within energy, industrials, consumer goods, and technology sectors.

ARR currently stands at $100 million, although Kokko tells me AlphaSense is not yet profitable (nor choosing to be).

Covid-19, if anything, actually served as a boost the startup’s growth. The platform’s typical users — business analysts, strategists, financial planners, investors and others that regularly buy and use market reports and competitive intelligence — not only were still needing to do their work, but they were less likely to be in face-to-face meetings to discuss research with colleagues and clients to source and deliver information.

On top of that, given the lack of visibility into what was around the corner in terms of the pandemic and its impact, research, insights and simply more information were all in more demand than ever. In both of those scenarios, useful search engines to both access and disseminate research became tantamount to being on the ground.

The gap that AlphaSense identified is one that is actually not uncommon in every information silo, but how successfully it is tackled remains the tricky part. In the case of business information, Kokko said that the issue is that it comes from a huge number of sources, and in many different formats, most often delivered in narratives.

“We focus on the search for unstructured information, and we provide structure to it,” he said. Web search intelligence is a problem that is constantly being fed through machine learning algorithms. The more people search on Google, the better Google gets. “But our system has to understand language and land on the right information without the benefit and insights of millions of web searches. None of that exists for private information.”

In other words, our world — or at least, information pertaining to it — is our oyster on the internet, and search engines have been the instrument to shucking it. But the same does not apply to unstructured information when it’s basically private, not uploaded to the internet.

Beyond basic search, given the nature of why people are searching on AlphaSense in the first place, the company’s second product layer comes in the form of how it presents information.

Its algorithms are AI-based and focused around natural language understanding both to extract the meaning and aim of search queries, but also to parse the research itself.

So while AlphaSense does negotiate deals with companies for providing links to their research and making it searchable, Kokko explained that it also takes some of that information into its own hands to present it in ways that digest numerous sources into more concise search results.

This is particularly important when you consider that when, for example, you have a couple of forecasts about the market size for cloud-based security services, you can weigh up the different forecasts and what they do or don’t include, since you will often see different numbers and different KPIs from different analysts,

“We are adding more structure to unstructured data, but we’re also organizing it, providing, for example, heat maps to show who is more or less optimistic about a particular data point,” he said. “If a user asks about an addressable market size, we can provide an answer that looks and takes in all that data.”

Another area where AlphaSense wants to do more, Kokko said, is in internal company search, to help businesses organise and access their own data better. So while its current products might potentially get compared to Wolfram Alpha or LexisNexis, the internal search product would potentially bring it closer to the likes of Elastic or Algolia.

All in all, the opportunities speak to the rationale behind this investment, Goldman Sachs Growth MD Holger Staude told TechCrunch, especially at a time when so many other companies are finding it challenging to raise money.

“AlphaSense is a scaled business growing at an accelerating pace, which we attribute to the strength of the product and the team, as well as the size of the market opportunity. Irrespective of the reset in the broader tech market, we are excited to support high quality companies with strong fundamental unit economics, such as AlphaSense,” he said. “AlphaSense is building a search and intelligence platform for a broad range of users, not just financial services firms. We believe that having access to curated business information will remain a focus for enterprises through the cycle. AlphaSense is well positioned to capture this opportunity.”

The European Union is considering how to respond to a major blow to its antitrust enforcement after a court in Luxembourg sided with chipmaker Qualcomm — which had been appealing a €997 million ($1BN+) fine the EU levied against it back in 2018.

At the time, the bloc’s competition regulator concluded Qualcomm had abused its market position by providing financial incentives to iPhone maker Apple to exclusively use its chips in iPhones and iPads, between 2011 and 2016. However, per the AP, the EU General Court found a number of procedural irregularities in the case and rejected the Commission’s analysis of the conduct it had alleged against the chipmaker.

“While the Commission concluded that the incentive payments had reduced Apple’s incentives to switch to competing suppliers to source LTE chipsets, it is apparent from the Commission decision that Apple had had no technical alternative to Qualcomm’s LTE chipsets for the majority of its requirements,” the news agency reports the court setting out its reasoning for siding with Qualcomm.

Asked for its response to the ruling, a spokeswomen for the EU’s executive told us: “The European Commission takes note of today’s judgement by the General Court that annulled the Commission’s 2018 Decision which found that Qualcomm had abused its dominant position.

“The Commission will carefully study the judgement and its implications and will reflect on possible next steps.”

Qualcomm was also contacted for comment.

The Commission hit the chipmaker with another, smaller antitrust fine back in 2019 — in a separate enforcement related to what it assessed as abusive pricing of baseband chips — which Qualcomm also chose to appeal (a verdict on that appeal remains pending).

Today’s ruling is not the first time the EU’s antitrust enforcement against tech firms has faced being unpicked in court: Just under two years ago the EU’s General Court also found against a Commission decision to fine Apple $15BN for what it had claimed were illegal tax benefits in Ireland, dating back as far as 2003. (Although the EU’s executive went on to appeal in the hopes of overturning Apple’s successful appeal.)

While, back in January, the EU also had a $1.2BN antitrust fine against Intel overturned by the General Court — in a case related to practices by the chipmaker that date back as much as two decades (the penalty itself was handed down in 2009).

However the EU has (so far) had better luck making its antitrust enforcement stick against Google: Back in November 2021 the General Court largely dismissed Google’s appeal against the €2.42BN penalty the Commission handed down in 2017, in relation to anti-competitive practices linked to its product comparison search service, Google Shopping.

A number of other Commission antitrust decisions against Google are still pending appeals decisions. Such as the record-breaking $5BN penalty the EU hit the company with in 2018 for violations linked to how it operates its Android mobile platform.

Later the same year, Google appealed that decision — and its appeal was heard last year — but the court has yet to hand down a verdict.

The 2022 crisis is the third major tech downturn of the internet era, following the dot-com bubble and the Great Recession.

Many experts are dispensing advice to founders on how to weather this storm. While this advice is broadly helpful, we must consider that it’s been approximately 14 years since the last major correction, and few in our industry have actively gone through a full economic cycle. Therefore, it is important to remember that good advice is tailored, specific and, more importantly, contextual.

Each company is unique and faces diverse circumstances. Does a downturn affect every company identically? No. Do some companies have more favorable balance sheets than others? Yes. Are some companies able to raise funds even in difficult circumstances? Absolutely.

The best advice for handling the downturn should be based on the length of your runway and the efficiency of your business. Runway falls into one of three categories:

• Two years or more;
• Between one and two years;
• A year or less.

The corresponding strategy for each would be, respectively, “stay aggressive,” “ruthlessly prioritize,” and “time to trim.”

Editor’s Note: TechCrunch+ has notes from an interview with the author of this letter, Mike Volpi — including the potentially good news it contains for many startups — coming shortly. The following letter was lightly edited and reformatted for our pages.

Great companies are born in difficult times

Great businesses have been built and have flourished through some of the most difficult times. Famously, Google raised capital in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble, grew through the downturn, and was able to distance itself from the competition. Salesforce, founded shortly before the 2001 crisis, survived the storm effectively, even though it almost went out of business in its early days. Most recently, Uber enjoyed a similar rise during the Great Recession.

Turbulence does require a different skill set from founders. Gone are the days of “grow at all costs.” Today’s environment requires subtle and precise control and management of the business. When navigated carefully, these periods can separate the wheat from the chaff.

The first step in navigating through stormy waters is to make a cold, hard assessment of your business:

• How much cash runway do you have?
• Do you have the proverbial product-market fit?
• Is your growth strategy cash-efficient?
• Have you evaluated and prioritized your engineering projects and marketing programs?
• What is your competition doing?

If you have two-plus years of runway, stay aggressive

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

The app industry continues to grow, with 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. App Annie says global spending across iOS and Google Play is up to $135 billion in 2021, and that figure will likely be higher when its annual report, including third-party app stores in China, is released next year. Consumers also downloaded 10 billion more apps this year than in 2020, reaching nearly 140 billion in new installs, it found.

Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that was up 27% year-over-year.

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

WWDC Wrap-up

This week, Apple wrapped up its first in-person WWDC since the pandemic began, and while there were no big surprises — like the first look at Apple’s AR smartglasses, for example — the company did announce a solid lineup of new products, services and software. It introduced new MacBook Airs and Pros, its M2 CPU, updated operating systems, Xcode Cloud and tons more developer tools.

Blurred lines

Image Credits: Apple

One theme that jumped out was how Apple is continuing to blur the lines between its different platforms. In macOS Ventura, it’s turning the System Preferences app into a new System Settings app, which looks just like the Settings app you’d find on the iPhone. Meanwhile, Apple’s new iOS 16 Lock Screen is gaining widgets that are inspired by Apple Watch’s complications — and in fact, developers can use the latest version of WidgetKit to build for both the Lock Screen and Watch using the same code.

M1 iPads running iPadOS 16 can take advantage of external displays and the clever multitasking feature, Stage Manager — one of the more exciting software developments to emerge from the event. Stage Manager offers resizable, floating and overlapping windows, plus a way to organize other apps’ windows off to the left side of the screen. It represents one of the biggest pushes yet to make the iPad more of a replacement for a computer, and less of a big-screened iPhone — hence the increased demand for processing power. But now the question users must ask is whether they need a computer at all, or would an iPad and an extra screen do?

Image Credits: Apple

And though Apple didn’t show off any big new projects in terms of hardware, there were suggestions that it’s working toward an AR future when it announced the new ability to integrate ARKit with its Nearby Interaction framework, allowing developers to build more directionally aware AR-powered apps that seem to lay the groundwork for its rumored AR smartglasses.

Plus, for everyone who still dreams of an Apple Car reveal, Apple instead gifted us an updated version of CarPlay that sees Apple working with automakers to integrate a new version of CarPlay that extends to the vehicle’s entire instrument cluster, instead of just the infotainment system. Hopefully, this is not what the rumors meant by an Apple Car! Of course, it will be years before this is actually available to consumers in their vehicles.

Image Credits: Apple

iOS 16 gets messy updated

As for iOS 16, Apple’s Lock Screen update and personalization features are the stars of the latest release. On the one hand, it’s great to have easier access to glanceable information that doesn’t require you to first unlock your iPhone. The new “Live Activities” will be useful too, as they can telegraph real-time information — like an approaching Uber or the latest sports scores — directly to your Lock Screen. This could minimize the need to launch apps for quick updates.

Access to this new screen real estate could inspire a new category of apps, too — the way that the launch of Home Screen widgets drove new apps like Widgetsmith and Brass to the top charts.

But on the other hand, I have this nagging feeling that the iPhone’s user interface is starting to get a little too messy and overcomplicated, while other parts of the experience are undercooked.

Image Credits: Apple

For starters, you can now customize your iOS 16 Lock Screen with a long press that pops you into a new editor interface where you can pick from Apple’s own photos and live wallpapers or your own images, then select your Lock Screen’s widgets, fonts and colors.

Given this new feature is all about redesigning your iPhone’s main interface, it’s disappointing to see Apple failed to deliver a variety of options for beautiful, built-in wallpapers. By comparison, the latest Android release includes some dozen-plus themed wallpaper collections, each with numerous images, as well as a large collection of animated wallpapers. Apple’s default options are embarrassing by comparison. Live weather and space wallpapers? Emojis? A single Pride rainbow option? Those same bouncing bubbles we’ve had for years? Even the options that are new don’t feel very inspired.

Considering Apple is asking us to think about our iPhone’s interface design with this feature, it missed the chance to blow us away with new imagery as the centerpiece for our custom designs which then coordinate with all the new widgets, fonts and colors as fully fleshed-out themes. (And don’t even get me started on how Apple’s app icons don’t match our new themes!)

Image Credits: Apple

Then there are the notifications that now scroll up from the bottom — but only on the Lock Screen. If your phone is unlocked, you still pull down from the top. Frankly, I’ve never liked that there are two different screens to see based on which side of the iPhone notch you pull down from at the top of the screen. It’s personal preference, of course — but I think Android does this better with its own control center that sits above the notifications, all in one view that’s pulled down from the top.

It’s not that we can’t learn to adapt to all these changes and new gestures; it’s just that it feels like it’s time to simplify these things.

For instance, now that we have Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, it’s probably time to ask if the right-swipe gesture to unlock the “Today View” is something that still needs to exist? It feels like unnecessary clutter at this point. (Sorry Today View fans.)

It’s also much more confusing than it should be to set a different background for your Lock Screen than for the Home Screen, since doing so isn’t a function of the new Lock Screen editor. Instead, you have to return to Settings to adjust the Home Screen’s wallpaper.

In other words, Apple seems to have approached the Lock Screen makeover as if it’s some standalone entity to customize instead of part of a larger iPhone theme and design system. That needs to change. And yes, I am going to point out that by the time the new iOS 16 Lock Screen launches, Android’s theming system and design language Material You will be a year old. You know, the one that lets you personalize the entire Android interface including the lock screen, notifications, settings, widgets, interface elements and even apps. We are not going to talk about how long Android has had widgets.

But yay, new Lock Screen I guess!

Image Credits: Apple

New APIs and developer tools

As for the new developer tools, there were some interesting updates emerging from this year’s WWDC.

Notable new APIs included RoomPlan — to tap into lidar for scanning indoor spaces; WeatherKit — a Dark Sky replacement that offers 500,000 calls/mo free with your Apple developer membership, then pricing that starts at $49.99/mo; LiveText to grab text from photos and paused video frames (video!!!); Focus filters — to show users relevant information based on the Focus mode they’re in; PassKeys to replace passwords with Face ID or Touch ID; ARKit 6, now with 4K video; Metal 3, WidgetKit; App Intents and others.

Image Credits: Apple

What’s great about these tools is that they offer the ability to not just build better apps, but build different types of apps, in some cases. That’s needed, because the App Store doesn’t feel as fresh and exciting as it did in earlier years when we were excited about the concept of running apps on a phone. APIs unlock developer innovation and we’re looking forward to seeing what these new APIs inspire.

Another interesting addition was Developer Mode, which could be laying the groundwork for sideloading if Apple is forced to allow this against its will — though today that’s not the case. Keep an eye on this one.

Image Credits: Apple

There was a lot more from WWDC, including useful updates to Apple’s own apps like being able to unsend messages, schedule emails, pay for purchases later with Apple Pay, track weather natively on iPad, keep up with your medication in the Apple Health app, use the Fitness app without an Apple Watch, better control your smart home and other updates — including little iOS 16 features Apple didn’t even tell us about.

And it teased a forthcoming app, Freeform, that’s an open, collaborative notetaking app that works with Apple Pencil.

One more thing…

But before we go, can we talk about this downright magical new iOS 16 Photo cutout feature? With this new feature, a part of Visual Lookup, you can now isolate the subject of the photo from the background, then copy and paste it into another app or a text. If you’ve ever tried to do this using photo-editing tools, you’re going to be surprised not only how easy this is, but also how well it turns out.

On the Lock Screen, this capability can separate the photo subject from the background of the wallpaper too, which makes for a layered look where the date and time and other elements can be behind the subject but in front of the photo’s background. Apple really undersold this one during the keynote.

You’ve got to try it yourself. This is the best new thing.

Image Credits: Apple

Weekly News

Platforms: Google

• Just ahead of Apple’s WWDC keynote, Google announced its latest Pixel feature drop. The release included Conversation Mode in Sound Amplifier to help the hard of hearing; air quality alerts; support for Nest Doorbell video feeds on the lock screen; a flashlight reminder (when it’s left on); a music and video editing app called Pocket Operator (created in partnership with Teenage Engineering and available for download on the Play Store); and other features.

• Google released Android 13, beta 3 for Pixel devices, and announced Android 13 had reached platform stability. That means the developer APIs and app updates are now final. Android 13 brings a bevy of new features, including more personalization options with themed icons, permission-based changes to push notifications, more granular file system controls, a new photo/video picker, better support for tablets and foldables and much more.
• Google also announced the launch of its initial developer previews for Privacy Sandbox on Android and said it will have more developer previews coming soon, as well as a beta later this year.

E-commerce

Image Credits: Amazon

• Amazon tapped into augmented reality in an attempt to appeal to sneakerheads shopping its site. The retailer announced a new feature called “Virtual Try-On for Shoes” that allows customers to visualize how a pair of new shoes will look on themselves from multiple angles using their mobile phone’s camera and AR technology. Participating brands include New Balance, Adidas, Reebok, Puma, Saucony, Lacoste, Asics and Superga.
• TikTok e-commerce efforts in the U.K., TikTok Shop, are reportedly in turmoil after losing half the staff (20 people) since its October 2021 launch because of a toxic workplace culture, The FT reported.
• In hopes of prompting creator adoption of its short-form Shorts service, YouTube announced its first-ever “Shoppable Shorts Challenge” alongside its second annual YouTube Beauty Festival. The challenge will have creators making videos about Glossier’s Cloud Paint product.

Fintech

• PayPal announced it will begin allowing users to transfer cryptocurrency from their PayPal accounts to other wallets and exchanges. The feature will allow users to move crypto to external crypto addresses, including exchanges and hardware wallets, and send crypto to other PayPal users “in seconds.”
• Investments app Public introduced Public Premium, a new $10/mo membership tier that offers research, data and insights to help inform investment decisions. This includes access to deeper company metrics, research from expert analysts and more . The service is free to members with an account balance of $20,000+.

Social

Image Credits: TikTok

• TikTok rolled out new screen time “take a break” reminders designed to put users in better control of their TikTok usage. In addition its daily screen time limits tool, the new feature will allow users to have the app remind them to take a break from the app during a single session. By default, the tool suggests reminder options of alerts at 10, 20 or 30 minutes, in addition to allowing users to set their own times. The reminders can be snoozed or turned off at any time. The app also added a new screen time dashboard as well as reminders for minors (13-17) to enable TikTok’s screen time tools if they’ve used the app for more than 100 minutes per day.
• Pinterest launched applications for its Creator Fund in the U.K. Accepted creators get to join a five-week program of events, gain access to educational talks and equipment, and get a cash grant of £20,000.
• Twitter said it would give would-be acquirer Elon Musk access to its full firehose after his complaints that it wasn’t sharing data to prove that less than 5% of its service was made up of bots. The news came as a new study reported that Twitter could be around 10% bots and the Texas AG’s office began its own investigation into Twitter bots.
• Instagram expanded its in-app “sensitive content” controls to allow users turn off sensitive content in recommendations throughout the app, including search, Reels, hashtag pages, “accounts you might follow” and in-feed suggested posts, instead of just the Explore tab, as before. The app defines sensitive content as permitted but possibly upsetting content such as posts including violence (like people fighting; graphic violence is banned); posts that promote regulated products (tobacco, vaping, pharmaceuticals, adult products/services); posts that promote or depict cosmetic procedures; posts that attempt to sell products or services based on health-related claims (like supplements); and more.
• Instagram also added a TikTok-like feature that allows users to pin up to three posts to their profile in the app.
• TikTok launched TikTok Avatars, a new feature similar to Snap’s Bitmoji and Apple’s Memoji that lets users customize their appearance, add voice effects and more.

Image Credits: TikTok

• Link-in-bio service Linktree, popular among social media apps users and creators, launched Link Apps. The new feature lets creators embed services from Cameo, OpenSea, PayPal, SoundCloud and others via a new marketplace.
• Facebook is killing off its consumer-facing Portal video-calling device to instead focus on business users. The smart screen device had allowed access to apps like Messenger and WhatsApp and integrated with users’ Facebook accounts. The company is also scaling back plans for AR glasses.

Photos

• Photo editing app maker Picsart launched a new AI-powered image-enhancement tool that improves the overall quality of an image and resolution for printing or sharing online. The tool uses advanced AI models to remove or blur pixelated effects, add pixels and sharpen and restore scenes and objects, including faces. It’s being made available via the app’s API and on iOS, where it’s called “HD Portrait.”

Messaging

• WhatsApp was warned by European regulators it has just one more month to address the remaining concerns around its terms of service and privacy policy updates to clearly inform consumers about the changes. The company is being asked to clarify if it generates revenue from commercial policies related to user data, as well.
• Telegram is launching a subscription service later this month that will offer premium extra, like the ability to view “extra large” documents, media and stickers sent by Premium users, or add premium reactions if they’ve already been pinned to a message.

Streaming & Entertainment

• AT&T removed the HBO Max bundle from its new, premium tier unlimited wireless plan, Unlimited Premium, which replaced Unlimited Elite. The bundle deal had helped drive new subscriptions to the streaming app in prior years.
• Amazon simplified the pricing for its Amazon Kids+ entertainment bundle by making it $4.99/mo for Prime members and $7.99/mo for others. The changes will allow the service to be used for up to four child profiles, which increases the cost for those who had previously only paid for a single child, but decreases the cost for others. The service offers a kid-friendly selection of books, videos, apps and games, among other things.
• At Spotify’s Investor Day, the company reported on the financial health of its business with a big focus on podcasts, noting this area brought in nearly €200 million in 2021 revenue, up 300% from the prior year. The company said its overall gross margin was 28.5%, dragged down by its continued investments in podcasts, but it’s on track to a GM of 30-35%, and that podcasts have 40-50% GM potential, and audiobooks could soon follow suit.

Gaming

Image Credits: Netflix

• Netflix announced a number of new gaming titles during its annual Geeked Week event, some of which are tied to popular Netflix shows, including “The Queen’s Gambit,” “Shadow and Bone,” and “Too Hot To Handle.” The streaming service currently has 22 games available and plans to have 50 titles by the end of this year.
• Tencent is rolling out a new international version of one of the world’s largest mobile games, Honor of Kings, by year-end. The game had racked up $10 billion in worldwide revenue by 2021. The overseas version will be published by Level Infinite for TiMiStudio.
• Game studio HiDef announced it’s teaming up with Snap to develop an off-platform Bitmoji-based dance and music social game that will also leverage Snap’s AR tech. The game will launch in 2023.
• Apple’s new iOS 16 will allow iPhones to support pairing with Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons and Pro Controllers to give users more control while playing mobile games.
• No Man’s Sky is coming to iPad — well, the Apple silicon-powered ones, that is.

Health & Fitness

• Meta rolled out the ability for users to track their Meta Quest fitness stats from VR to their phone. The feature involves the Move app — Meta Quest’s built-in fitness tracker that lets you set goals for how many calories you’ve burned and how many minutes you’ve spent working out in VR. This will now sync to the Oculus Mobile app and Apple’s Health app.

Travel & Transportation

• Delivery company Uber said its food delivery business Uber Eats is launching a new product that will provide shipping of select specialty food items across the continental U.S.; 15 merchants from NY, LA and Miami are involved to start.
• Singaporean taxi operator ComfortDelGro partnered with Alipay+ to allow tourists in Malaysia and South Korea to use their mobile wallet apps (Touch ‘n Go eWallet and Kakao Pay) to pay for cab fare in Singapore.
• Travel app Hopper launched “Leave for Any Reason,” a $30 product that lets customers leave their hotel for any reason and rebook with another hotel of the same star category, with rebooking costs covered by Hopper.
• Traveling to the beach? Don’t forget to download the new shark-spotting app. The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy and New England Aquarium teamed up to encourage consumers to report shark sightings off Cape Cod in Massachusetts through an app called Sharktivity.

Government & Policy

• Wired reports on how Ukrainian civilians are using apps to help the army, which blurs the lines between civilians and soldiers and raises questions related to international humanitarian laws.
• Russian tech giant Yandex removed national borders between Ukraine and Russia from its maps app. Users still see the country names displayed — but lines depicting exact borders between countries like Ukraine and Russia are no longer visible.
• Nasdaq-listed language learning app Duolingo is back in China’s Apple App Store and Android stores nearly a year after its disappearance due to China’s regulatory crackdowns. The company had been told at the time of its removal to strengthen its “content compliance mechanism.”
• The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published its final report on its year-long mobile ecosystem market study. The report found there are substantial concerns about Apple and Google’s market power which require regulatory intervention. Among the concerns are in-app payments and commissions, Apple’s ban on cloud gaming providers and non-WebKit-based browsers on iOS, switching costs between ecosystems, and more.

Funding and M&A

Hourly, an app that helps businesses track hours and payroll for hourly wage workers, raised $27 million in Series A funding led by Glilot Capital Partners. Hourly has around 1,000 customers in California, in areas like construction, home services, accounting and retail.

India fintech CRED raised $140 million in a fourth round of funding led by GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, valuing the startup at $6.4 billion, up from $2.2 billion in April 2021. Among other things, CRED allows users to manage credit cards, check their credit score and earn rewards.

Fintech app Fruitful announced a total of $33 million in equity funding raised across a seed and Series A round over the past 18 months. Emigrant Bank led the company’s $8 million seed round and 8VC led its $25 million Series A. The app will launch this fall to offer consumers financial guidance from experts via a $98/mo subscription service.

Mexico City-based neobank app Klar raised $70 million in Series B funding led by General Atlantic, valuing the startup at $500 million. The company added 1.4 million customers over the past 12 months and more than $100 million worth of loans.

Indonesia cryptocurrency-focused app Pintu raised a $113 million Series B from Intudo Ventures, Lightspeed, Northstar Group and Pantera Capital. The app offers 66 tokens and has more than 4 million installs.

Note-taking app maker Notion announced it’s acquiring the calendar app Cron. Notion already synced with Google Calendar, but this deal suggests the company wants to expand further into the productivity space. Cron had raised $3.5 million in seed funding. Deal terms weren’t disclosed.

Mobile app marketing solution Airship acquired Gummicube, an App Store Optimization service. The deal will see Gummicube’s ASO technology linked to Airship’s App Experience Platform. Terms were not disclosed.

Downloads

Brickit (update)

Image Credits: Brickit

Brickit, the clever mobile app that uses AI to identify which LEGO bricks you own and then suggest projects, rolled out a new version of its app that includes several new features that help people do more with their LEGO collections.

The updated app now includes a Finder feature that will identify the precise location of bricks within a pile of bricks. Its AI and ML capabilities have also been improved, the company says. Brickit’s AI has gotten better at identification, with a success rate as high as 92%, it claims. The app will also use machine learning to help it get better over time. If it gets something wrong, it asks the users to help correct the problem, then uses that information to improve its LEGO brick knowledge. A final new feature may be the best as it makes Brickit not just a tool, but a community. Brickit now lets users submit their own creations to the app which Brickit then transforms into instructions and share with other Brickit users worldwide.

Tweets

Hey, it’s a new HIG!

Good News, weather app devs

Graceful response to being sherlocked

It didn’t have to be this way, Apple…

Want to see something cool?

Wait, what now?

We’re obsessed too, this thing is wild!

The UK’s competition watchdog has published its final report on a comprehensive, year-long mobile ecosystem market study — cementing its view that there are substantial concerns about the market power of Apple and Google which require regulatory intervention.

Back in December, its preliminary report on the market study also identified concerns and discussed potential remedies for tackling lock-in and opening up the pair’s “largely self-contained ecosystems”, such as by making it easier for consumers to switch and reducing barriers for app developers.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)’s 356-page final report goes into greater depth and detail on all fronts, analyzing a smorgasbord of competition concerns attached to how Apple and Google operate their respective, dominant mobile ecosystems, iOS and Android — and digging into topics as varied as Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature; a Google developer revenue-sharing agreement codenamed ‘Project Hug’; and the merits of developing web apps that features a chat with the maker of popular puzzle game, Wordle, to pull out a few highlights — but with the regulator pointing to the pair’s sustained profitability, and profits it assess as “high in absolute terms”, as an indelible, top-line signal that market distortion is afoot.

In a press release accompanying the report, the CMA sums up its conclusions by asserting that Apple and Google “hold all the cards” in the mobile ecosystems market — and that interventions are needed “to give innovators and competitors a fair chance to compete”.

While there’s likely to be a fair degree of déjà vu for industry watchers — given the CMA’s preliminary report last year also flagged some of the same problems and discussed potential remedies — this time the UK regulator is taking action. Albeit, the processes this will entail are not quick so it could be years before it’s in a position to actually intervene and order changes to how the tech giants operate in relation to concerns its report has identified. But, well, the train is now starting to leave the station at least.

Specifically, the CMA is now proposing to open an in-depth probe with two points of focus: One on Apple and Google’s market power in mobile browsers; and another on Apple’s restrictions on cloud gaming through its App Store. (NB: The regulator has a duty to consult before it opens what’s called a market investigation reference, or MIR, relying on its existing competition powers.)

On mobile browsing, the CMA is concerned about Apple’s ban on non WebKit-based browsers on iOS — which it suspects severely limits rival browsers from being able to differentiate vs Apple’s Safari, as well as suggesting the restriction limits Apple’s incentive to further develop its own browser.

The CMA is further worried about how Apple’s ban on non WebKit-based browsers on iOS limits the capabilities of web apps on its platform — hampering their ability to compete with native apps (which Apple of course monetizes via its App Store fees).

Mobile browser defaults also appear to be in scope of the proposed MIR, with the CMA noting that mobile devices typically have either Google’s Chrome or Apple’s Safari pre-installed and set as default at purchase — “giving them a key advantage over other rival browsers”.

On cloud gaming, the CMA says it wants to look into Apple blocking these services on its App Store and how that might be harming consumers, such as if its action is hampering the sector from growing. It further notes that gaming apps are a key source of revenue for the iPhone maker, suggesting the tech could also pose a threat to Apple’s strong position in app distribution.

Its consultation on the proposed MIR will run until July 22.

In parallel, the regulator is also announcing that it’s taking enforcement action against Google in relation to its app store payment practices — where it says it suspects the adtech giant of anti-competitive practices.

This competition law investigation will focus on 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. (NB: The CMA has an open investigation into Apple’s App Store, announced in March last year — so this looks like a mirror action to address Google’s practices but one that’s likely to lag the more advanced investigation into Apple’s mobile app store terms.)

According to its report, the CMA has decided to step up a gear now because mobile developers have been complaining to it in the months since its preliminary report also flagged a grab-bag of competition concerns.

But the regulator is also acting now using its existing powers because it’s essentially being forced to as a result of the UK government’s decision to decelerate a planned ex ante reboot of digital competition rules (which the CMA had previously envisaged as the best vehicle to address antitrust concerns linked to Big Tech market power, including in mobile) — hence its report acknowledging (with quasi regret) “we now understand this [legislation to empower the Digital Markets Unit] will not be in the current parliamentary session (ie within the next year)”, adding: “Based on these developments, we now consider it to be the right time to consult on making a market investigation reference [MIR] into mobile browsers and cloud gaming.”

So the bottom line is that the UK’s competition regulator is having to make do with its current (ex post) competition powers to address substantial and sustained antitrust concerns attached to fast-moving digital giants — because the UK government has failed to prioritize the necessary ex ante reforms.

The CMA’s report acknowledges that European Union regulation could, therefore, end up having a first mover impact on strategic digital market power — since the bloc has already agreed its own ex ante competition reform (the Digital Markets Act; DMA), which is likely to come into force early next year.  So, er, so much for Brexit taking back regulatory control then!

“[T]he DMA will be one starting point for Apple and Google when deciding how to address these international competition concerns, many of which are similar to ours,” the CMA writes in a chapter of the report discussing international developments. “As a result, Apple and Google may make changes to the mobile ecosystem that will address some of the current restrictions on effective competition on a global basis, which could resolve the competition concerns that have been raised in a number of jurisdictions, including the UK.”

One slight potential upside of the UK’s legislative delay on digital competition reform is that the CMA has at least used this interim period to undertake detailed scrutiny of the mobile market — the consequences of which are likely to be long and deep, as the regulator suggests its conclusions will feed future interventions by the DMU, aka the dedicated unit established inside the regulator last year to oversee a “pro-competition” regime in digital markets that’s intended to target the most powerful platforms (but sill lacks the necessary legislation).

“We expect the findings of this market study to be an input into any DMU assessment of whether Apple and Google should be designated with SMS in particular activities,” the CMA writes, making a reference to Strategic Market Status; aka the status in the planned reform that would mean they are in-scope of the future ex ante code of conduct (and also able to be subject to so-called ‘pro-competition interventions’ which are set to be tailored per entity, not one-sized fits all). “The study will also inform the appropriate range and design of potential interventions that the DMU could put in place, were it to find either Apple or Google to have SMS.”

“Our expectation based on the findings in this study and the evidence to date, is that Apple and Google would meet the criteria (as currently outlined in the government’s consultation response) to be found to have SMS in respect of the following activities within their ecosystems; mobile operating systems (and for Apple, together with the mobile device on which it is installed, to the extent these are inextricably linked), native app distribution, and mobile browsers and browser engines. As a result, we expect that the interventions which we have considered in this study would generally be in scope of the new regime,” it adds.

The UK regulator will surely be hoping that time spent waiting for the government to empower the DMU can — eventually — turn into future enforcement gains, i.e. once the DMU is on a proper legal footing, and as a result of it undertaking all this comprehensive market analysis in the meanwhile. (The CMA has previously done a deep dive into the digital advertising market — where it also concluded there are major structural problems with Google but, similarly, opted to wait for the government to legislate.)

But there’s no doubt the government’s decision to kick the reform down the road means tech giants like Apple and Google have bought themselves a lot more time to keep extracting UK rents.

Commenting on the mobile market study in a statement, the CMA’s CEO, Andrea Coscelli, said:

“When it comes to how people use mobile phones, Apple and Google hold all the cards. As good as many of their services and products are, their strong grip on mobile ecosystems allows them to shut out competitors, holding back the British tech sector and limiting choice.

“We all rely on browsers to use the internet on our phones, and the engines that make them work have a huge bearing on what we can see and do. Right now, choice in this space is severely limited and that has real impacts – preventing innovation and reducing competition from web apps. We need to give innovative tech firms, many of which are ambitious start-ups, a fair chance to compete.

“We have always been clear that we will maximise the use of our current tools while we await legislation for the new digital regime. Today’s announcements — alongside the eight cases currently open against major players in the tech industry, ranging from tackling fake reviews to addressing problems in online advertising — are proof of that in action.”

Apple and Google were contacted for a response to the CMA’s findings.

Both tech giants sought to play down the idea that their stewardship of their respective mobile ecosystems has any negative impacts for consumers or other businesses.

Here’s Apple’s statement: 

“We believe in thriving and competitive markets where innovation can flourish. Through the Apple ecosystem we have created a safe and trusted experience users love and a great business opportunity for developers. In the UK alone, the iOS app economy supports hundreds of thousands of jobs and makes it possible for developers big and small to reach customers around the world.

“We respectfully disagree with a number of conclusions reached in the report, which discount our investments in innovation, privacy and user performance — all of which contribute to why users love iPhone and iPad and create a level playing field for small developers to compete on a trusted platform. We will continue to engage constructively with the Competition and Markets Authority to explain how our approach promotes competition and choice, while ensuring consumers’ privacy and security are always protected.”

A Google spokesperson also sent us this statement:

“Android phones offer people and businesses more choice than any other mobile platform. Google Play has been the launchpad for millions of apps, helping developers create global businesses that support a quarter of a million jobs in the UK alone. We regularly review how we can best support developers and have reacted quickly to CMA feedback in the past. We will review the report and continue to engage with the CMA.”

For a hint of what (more) may be to come, finally — if/when the DMU finally gets empowered and a new UK competition regime is up and running — Chapter 8 of the CMA’s report discusses a broad range of potential remedies for addressing competition concerns attached to the Apple-Google mobile duopoly, from making switching ecosystems easier for consumers; to lowering barriers for new OSes; to making interventions to aid native app distribution, or at the level of app store commission, or to support competition between app developers.

The report also touches on a number of potential separation remedies — namely data separation; operational separation; and structural separation — but the CMA sounds wary of going that far, without entirely ruling it out. “Given the significant costs, business disruptions, and risks of unintended consequences associated with these forms of intervention, we consider there are alternatives available with the potential to deliver many of the benefits with significantly lower cost and risks,” it writes on that. 

“In particular, we envisage that at this stage the interventions proposed above to level the playing field between Apple’s and Google’s own apps and third parties, would have the potential to deliver many of the benefits with comparably lower costs,” it goes on, before adding: “However, should Apple and Google act against consumers interests by making it unreasonably difficult for competing apps to successfully enter and expand, then separation could be reconsidered as an alternative which directly addresses their incentives to favour their own businesses.”

Returning to the immediately proposed interventions, if the MIR goes ahead as the CMA is proposing, it will have 18 months from the date the reference is made to conclude the investigation of Apple and Google’s market power in mobile browsers and Apple’s approach to cloud gaming — with the possibility of an extension of a further 6 months in exceptional circumstances. So it could be spending two full years digging into this.

The aim of a market investigation is to consider whether there are features of a market that have an adverse effect on competition (aka AEC).

If the CMA finds there is an AEC, it has a range of (existing) powers to impose its own remedies, such as being able to enforce behavioral requirements or even order the sale of parts of a business, as well as being able to make recommendations to other bodies (such as sectoral regulators or the government) for other appropriate interventions to support improving competition.

But, again, such interventions aren’t likely to deliver overnight results as they can also take time to implement, plus there’s the high possibility that enforcement orders would be appealed. So, again, any UK fix for the Apple-Google duopoly won’t be quick. 

Google today announced a set of new and updated security features for Chrome, almost all of which rely on machine learning (ML) models, as well as a couple of nifty new ML-based features that aim to make browsing the web a bit easier, including a new feature that will suppress notification permission prompts when its algorithm thinks you’re unlikely to accept them.

Starting with the next version of Chrome, Google will introduce a new ML model that will silence many of these notification permission prompts. And the sooner the better. At this point, they have mostly become a nuisance. Even if there are some sites — and those are mostly news sites — that may offer some value in their notifications, I can’t remember the last time I accepted one on purpose. Also, while legitimate sites love to push web notifications to remind readers of their existence, attackers can also use them to send phishing attacks or prompt users to download malware if they get users to give them permission.

“On the one hand, page notifications help deliver updates from sites you care about; on the other hand, notification permission prompts can become a nuisance,” Google admits in its blog post today. The company’s new ML model will now look for prompts that users are likely to ignore and block them automatically. And as a bonus, all of that is happening on your local machine, so none of your browsing data makes it onto Google’s servers.

On the security side, Google today announced that earlier this year, it quietly rolled out an update to the ML model that powers its Safe Browsing service. This new model identifies 2.5x more malicious sites and phishing attacks than the previous model.

Left: What you will see if a phishing attempt is detected – Right: Chrome shows permission requests quietly when the user is unlikely to grant them

As for other new ML-driven features, Chrome is also getting a new language identification model that is better at figuring out what language a given page is in and whether it needs to be translated based on your personal preferences.

Meanwhile, in the near future, Chrome will adjust its toolbar based on your current needs. It’ll learn that you usually share a lot of links in the morning, for example, and highlight the share prompt then, while later in the day, while you are using transit, it’ll show the voice prompt icon because it has learned that you often use this feature then (by the way, did you know that you can long-tap the shortcut in Chrome mobile to manually change it?)

“Our goal is to build a browser that’s genuinely and continuously helpful, and we’re excited about the possibilities that ML provides,” Google explains.

Image Credits: Google