Public travel systems provider Amadeus opened for business way back in 1987 when four airlines wanted to offer a centralized booking system. Today, the company facilitates booking and inventory management for 216 airlines, as well as hotels, trains, airports, online travel companies and even corporations. In short, it covers just about every aspect of travel IT imaginable.

As an IT-heavy company scales, its computing, software and systems requirements change as well. For Amadeus, those pressures came to a head in 2015, when the company realized it needed to move beyond the private cloud it had been running. Embracing a public cloud infrastructure would give the organization greater flexibility to react to customer needs much faster than it could with a homegrown tech stack.

The challenge Amadeus faces isn’t uncommon: Like many companies of its size, it has to pay off massive technical debt, which is the idea that as you make certain technology decisions, you end up pushing modernization down the road, and the “interest” builds up, making it harder to modernize. Eventually, competition and wider market forces pressure you to pay off that debt, and interest, by updating your entire code base, infrastructure and even the way you produce software.

It’s not just giants like Amadeus that face tech debt. Even much smaller companies have to deal with technical debt eventually and come to terms with massive technology changes.

To learn why and how Amadeus has begun such a dramatic change, we spoke with Fredrik Odeen, lead for public cloud transformation and corporate strategy, and Sébastien Pellisé, deputy lead for public cloud transformation. Odeen and Pellisé also explained how the company went about implementing the new processes and tech stack, what the changes mean for the future of the company and what smaller companies can learn from Amadeus.

Why tech debt accumulates

When you launch a company and make key decisions about your technology stack, you probably don’t stop to think about the impact those decisions might have on your company in the future. You want to get the business going, and most early-stage companies don’t have the luxury to consider their tech stack all that carefully.

Over the years, Amadeus slowly began to realize that there was a downside to running its own infrastructure. Its homegrown cloud stack was causing a huge lag in its ability to update its software and systems, react to customer needs and experiment. The company knew that to improve its customer experience, it had to update its systems and how it produced software, or eventually these problems were going to catch up.

The pandemic drove that point home. As the industry suffered from big cut backs in travel, finding ways to operate more efficiently, and reacting to customer needs faster became even more crucial — the company needed to find a way to save money as revenue dried up.

Google is preparing to clear its Play Store of outdated apps. The company warned Android app developers that starting on November 1, 2022, it will hide apps and block their installation to users’ devices if developers haven’t kept up with the latest Android OS releases. Specifically, Google said apps that don’t target an Android API within two years of the latest major Android release version will no longer be able to be discovered or installed by new users whose devices run Android OS versions that are higher than the apps’ target API level.

In short, this means that Android users who are keeping up with the latest software or those who’ve just purchased new Android phones will no longer be able to find or download old, out-of-date apps.

This should not be a significant adjustment for any active developers building for Android, as Google already requires new apps and app updates to target an Android API level within one year of the latest major Android OS version release. And any app updates submitted that also don’t meet this requirement can’t be published on Google Play.

But the change would impact fully abandoned apps or those where the developer is still serving their users but no longer keeps up with the latest Android API updates.

Since the apps aren’t entirely removed from Google Play, this won’t be a direct equivalent to the great App Store purges in years past where Apple pulled down tens of thousands of outdated, abandoned apps. In fact, Google explains that the existing users of the older apps impacted by the new policy will still be able to discover them, re-install them, and use them on any Android OS version the app supports. This is perhaps more consumer-friendly than simply yanking apps off the app store, as Apple had done.

However, Google’s goal was similiar to Apple’s in that outdated apps not only offer a poor expeirence they’re also a potential security risk.

As Google explained in its announcement about the new policy, every Android OS update brings “privacy, security, and user experience improvements.”

“Users with the latest devices or those who are fully caught up on Android updates expect to realize the full potential of all the privacy and security protections Android has to offer. Expanding our target level API requirements will protect users from installing older apps that may not have these protections in place,” the company stated.

While there are ongoing issues with Andorid malware, including recenlty those from Russian state-supported actors engaging in espionage, these malicous programs are not always found in outdated apps. Instead, they often prompt the user to allow it to use the high-level permissions it requires, and the user agrees.

Image Credits: Google

Google notes the “vast majority” of Google Play apps already meet the new requirements and won’t be impacted by the policy change. For other apps, this notification serves to allow reputable developers the time to make the necessary updates.

To aid developers in the transition, Google published a technical guide to help migrate apps to the target API levels, along with Help Center documentation which includes the exact timelines for the changes. It’s also offering developers the ability to request a six month extension if they need more time for their migration through a form that will be availalbe in the Play Console later this year.

Google has been working to tighten up its app marketplace in recent days as regulations take closer aim at the mobile app ecosystem. This month, Google Play’s new billing payments policy also went into effect. The company had announced back in 2020 that developers would need to come into compliance with Google’s policy that requires apps selling digital goods and services to use Google Play’s own billing system. Unless developers were approved for an extension, they’re no longer be able to submit app updates until they’re in compliance as of April 1, 2022, barring any critical security issues. On June 1, 2022, non-compliant apps will be removed from Google Play.

Combined with this semi-purge of outdated apps, the Play Store will likely lose many apps in the months to come.

At its Cloud Data Summit, Google today announced the preview launch of BigLake, a new data lake storage engine that makes it easier for enterprises to analyze the data in their data warehouses and data lakes.

The idea here, at its core, is to take Google’s experience with running and managing its BigQuery data warehouse and extend it to data lakes on Google Cloud Storage, combining the best of data lakes and warehouses into a single service that abstracts away the underlying storage formats and systems.

This data, it’s worth noting, could sit in BigQuery or live on AWS S3 and Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, too. Through BigLake, developers will get access to one uniform storage engine and the ability to query the underlying data stores through a single system without the need to move or duplicate data.

“Managing data across disparate lakes and warehouses creates silos and increases risk and cost, especially when data needs to be moved,” explains Gerrit Kazmaier, VP and GM of Databases, Data Analytics and Business Intelligence at Google Cloud, notes in today’s announcement. “BigLake allows companies to unify their data warehouses and lakes to analyze data without worrying about the underlying storage format or system, which eliminates the need to duplicate or move data from a source and reduces cost and inefficiencies.”

Image Credits: Google

Using policy tags, BigLake allows admins to configure their security policies at the table, row and column level. This includes data stored in Google Cloud Storage, as well as the two supported third-party systems, where BigQuery Omni, Google’s multi-cloud analytics service, enables these security controls. Those security controls then also ensure that only the right data flows into tools like Spark, Presto, Trino and TensorFlow. The service also integrates with Google’s Dataplex tool to provide additional data management capabilities.

Google notes that BigLake will provide fine-grained access controls and that its API will span Google Cloud, as well as file formats like the open column-oriented Apache Parquet and open-source processing engines like Apache Spark.

Image Credits: Google

“The volume of valuable data that organizations have to manage and analyze is growing at an incredible rate,” Google Cloud software engineer Justin Levandoski and product manager Gaurav Saxena explain in today’s announcement. “This data is increasingly distributed across many locations, including data warehouses, data lakes, and NoSQL stores. As an organization’s data gets more complex and proliferates across disparate data environments, silos emerge, creating increased risk and cost, especially when that data needs to be moved. Our customers have made it clear; they need help.”

In addition to BigLake, Google also today announced that Spanner, its globally distributed SQL database, will soon get a new feature called “change streams.” With these, users can easily track any changes to a database in real time, be those inserts, updates or deletes. “This ensures customers always have access to the freshest data as they can easily replicate changes from Spanner to BigQuery for real-time analytics, trigger downstream application behavior using Pub/Sub, or store changes in Google Cloud Storage (GCS) for compliance,” explains Kazmaier.

Google Cloud also today brought Vertex AI Workbench, a tool for managing the entire lifecycle of a data science project, out of beta and into general availability, and launched Connected Sheets for Looker, as well as the ability to access Looker data models in its Data Studio BI tool.

There’s a new alliance in town: the Data Cloud Alliance. Founded by Google Cloud, Accenture, Confluent, Databricks, Dataiku, Deloitte, Elastic, Fivetran, MongoDB, Neo4j, Redis and Starburst, the group’s mission is to “make data more portable and accessible across disparate business systems, platforms, and environments—with a goal of ensuring that access to data is never a barrier to digital transformation.”

Snowflake filed a trademark registration for “Data Cloud Alliance” in 2020, but that registration is now abandoned and the company isn’t part of this new alliance.

The idea here is to make life easier for the members’ customers by working together to provide APIs and integration support to allow for data portability and accessibility between their platforms, no matter whether those are being used on-premises, or on private or public clouds (or a mix of them). The members will also work together to create “new, common industry data models, processes, and platform integrations to increase data portability and reduce complexity associated with data governance and global compliance,” Google notes in its announcement today. Databricks, for example, says it is excited to partner with Google to “foster data sharing based on open standards like [Databrick’s] Delta Lake.”

It’s worth noting that the partners here are mostly not competitors but offer services that complement each other. Many of these companies have also partnered with Google before, with Confluent, Elastic, MongoDB, Neo4j and Redis Labs working with Google to integrate their services with the Google Cloud Platform, for example.

“Data is the common foundation for all digital transformations,” said Gerrit Kazmaier, VP and GM of Databases, Data Analytics and Business Intelligence at Google Cloud. “By committing to open data standards, access, and integration between the most popular data platforms and applications today, we believe we can significantly accelerate business transformations and close the data to value gap.”

The terminal often feels like an afterthought, and there hasn’t been a lot of innovation in this space for a very long time. Warp, which is launching its public beta today and announcing $23 million in funding, is trying to change this by building a new command-line terminal that aims to make developers more productive. For now, the Warp public beta is only available on macOS, but the company promises Windows and Linux versions in the future, too.

As the company announced today, it previously raised a $6 million seed round led by GV, with participation from Neo and BoxGroup. It has now also raised a $17 million Series A round led by Dylan Field, the co-founder and CEO of Figma. Other participants in this (somewhat unusual) entrepreneur-led round include Elad Gil, former LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and Salesforce’s co-founder and co-CEO Marc Benioff.

“I’ve been a developer now, for 20 years,” Warp co-founder and CEO Zach Lloyd, who was previously a principal engineer at Google and the interim CTO for Time, told me. “I’ve always been a terminal user. I’ve always thought it was kind of a weird app, to be honest. […] But it’s an interesting app in the sense that it’s ubiquitous. You walk by any developer’s desk and they’re going to have a terminal open. There are only a couple apps like that: the terminal and the code editor. So I thought it was an interesting leverage point for doing something that would have an impact across all developers. And then, if you can get really good at it you actually get a lot of real productivity gains.”

Image Credits: Warp

Out of the box, Warp works with shells like zsh, fish and bash. In many ways, the user experience feels reminiscent of a modern text editor, with code completion autosuggestions and menus, for example. But there are also features like cursor positioning, the ability to move back through your terminal history command to command and then copy the output with a single click, built-in documentation and more. Those are features that may seem obvious at first but aren’t really available in today’s terminals. Being able to move the cursor wherever you need it shouldn’t be a new thing in terminals in 2022, but it is.

The Warp terminal does, of course, feature standards like tabs, split panes, keyboard shortcuts and built-in SSH support. With Warp, developers can also share their workflows with the rest of their teams.

While at Google, Lloyd worked on Google Docs and he noted that something he took away from that is that anytime you can take an existing desktop app and add collaboration and teamwork on top of it, you can unlock quite a bit of extra productivity.

Image Credits: Warp

It’s maybe no surprise then that collaboration is part of what he hopes will make Warp stand out and be part of the company’s monetization strategy. Currently, the collaboration features mostly center around the ability to easily share commands and their output, as well as workflows, but soon, Warp will also introduce the ability to share.

It’s worth noting that for Warp, the terminal is only the beginning. As Lloyd noted, the company’s mission is to “elevate developer productivity. It’s not to build the best terminal that’s ever existed.” The idea here is to build a platform, with the terminal at the center but also as something akin to a distribution point for doing other things. That may be a code editor, a platform for building apps or for cloud-based development. “But those aren’t the focus to start. I think those are opportunities that open up if we execute really well on Warp,” Lloyd said.

Marc Benioff sure seems to be excited about it. “We are delighted to once again partner with a great entrepreneur, Zach Lloyd,” he said. “Developers will greatly benefit from the genius of Warp.dev.” So is Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, who is working at a new startup in stealth. “I have been using Warp every day at work,” he said in a canned statement. “My favorite thing is the speed: both in terms of how fast it works and also how fast you feel while using it, especially the excellent typeahead and search. Warp brings terminals into the modern day and I can’t wait to see where they take Warp.”

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. Global spending across iOS, Google Play and third-party Android app stores in China grew 19% in 2021 to reach $170 billion. Downloads of apps also grew by 5%, reaching 230 billion in 2021, and mobile ad spend grew 23% year over year to reach $295 billion.

Today’s consumers now spend more time in apps than ever before — even topping the time they spend watching TV, in some cases. The average American watches 3.1 hours of TV per day, for example, but in 2021, they spent 4.1 hours on their mobile device. And they’re not even the world’s heaviest mobile users. In markets like Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea, users surpassed five hours per day in mobile apps in 2021.

Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours, either. They can grow to become huge businesses. In 2021, 233 apps and games generated over $100 million in consumer spend, and 13 topped $1 billion in revenue. This was up 20% from 2020, when 193 apps and games topped $100 million in annual consumer spend, and just eight apps topped $1 billion.

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 suggestions about new apps to try, too.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

Top Stories

Reader apps get new rules

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Apple this week announced it will begin to allow a subset of applications sold on its App Store to link to an external website where users can create or manage their accounts with the app developer. The change to Apple’s App Store Review guidelines only applies to what Apple calls “reader” apps — meaning, apps designed primarily to provide access to some sort of digital content, like magazines, books, audio, music or video. Apple’s plans were first announced last September in the context of the tech giant’s settlement with a Japanese regulator, the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC), and had been set to arrive sometime in early 2022.

The company had earlier said the changes would apply globally to all reader apps on the App Store when they went live, but had not provided an exact launch date.

Specifically, Apple instructs developers to apply for something it calls the External Link Account Entitlement in order to provide this functionality in their own apps. Developers must apply for the entitlement and then be approved in order to make the change.

Apple has been leveraging the use of entitlements whenever it’s been pushed by lawmakers or regulators to update its App Store rules in an area. By doing so, it’s still in compliance with the letter of the law, but it places an additional burden on those developers who want to take advantage of the new options — like dating apps in the Netherlands, which are now permitted by law to use third-party billing, for example. Apple could easily update its App Store rules to document that this sort of new functionality is now permitted in select use cases, but it still wants to exert control over the whole process and ensure developers who don’t meet the requirements slip through the cracks.

It’s disappointing to see Apple continuing to fight so hard against this larger turning of the tide for its app marketplace — even getting itself entangled in expensive lawsuits like the one with Epic Games — instead of having earlier simplified commissions across the board with a sizable — but still manageable — price cut. One has to wonder if Apple could have headed off developers’ and regulators’ concerns by taking a different path from the complicated carve-outs it has proceeded to embrace. The multitrillion-dollar company can afford to make less money from users’ App Store purchases. And it could find a variety of ways to monetize its app developer ecosystem differently in the future. It seems Apple is already looking into bringing payment processing technology in-house in a bid to generate more revenue and reduce reliance on fintech partners. While this effort would impact all parts of Apple’s larger business, it could also help Apple handle the App Store losses that arose from lowered commissions.

Roblox sides with Apple

Image Credits: Roblox

March 31, 2022 was the deadline for the submission of amicus briefs supporting Apple in the Epic appeal. Among the new signers were those from former national security officials, including Vice Admiral Mike McConnell, former DNI and NSA director, and two former CIA directors, Gen. Hayden and John Brennan. The officials agree with Apple’s positioning that its commission structure is fair and allows it to create a “safe and secure ecosystem.” What’s interesting, however, is that Roblox also filed a brief to support Apple’s cause. A platform maker itself, albeit one that hosts online games not mobile apps, it’s likely aware of the impact of app market regulations on its own business.

In particular, Roblox pointed to the need for platforms to set the standards for, review and approve software, user-generated content and apps that appear on platforms. It stressed how Apple’s App Review system benefits all apps in the Apple ecosystem, including its own mobile Roblox app, by providing a level of safety and security. While the company didn’t say Apple should be protected from all antitrust scrutiny, it made a solid argument against removing the platform model entirely.

Wrote Roblox:

None of this is to say that Apple necessarily has it right whereas other platform models have it wrong, or that all decisions Apple might make regarding its App Store platform and related policies are sacrosanct or should be de facto protected from antitrust scrutiny. But the key point is that Apple’s model does provide real benefits to security and privacy. No platform is going to be perfect in its efforts to rid an ecosystem of bad actors, but it is core to Roblox’s beliefs that real, tangible results can be obtained where there is an enhanced focus on safety and security. The evidence at trial did not show that all of these benefits necessarily can be retained while eliminating the platform model that has allowed for them. Roblox’s experience, consistent with the evidence presented here, is that these particular procompetitive aspects of the App Store are real and intertwined with the way Apple structures its platform. The district court was right not to cast them aside as mere “pretext,” and neither should this Court.

Russia’s Instagram clone becomes country’s No. 1 app

Image Credits: Fiesta

Russia in mid-March officially banned Instagram in order to tighten its grip on the country’s citizens’ ability to access uncensored information about the Russia-Ukraine war. But the ban has only resulted in sending another app just like Instagram to No. 1 on the Russian App Store. On March 29 and 30, a Russian app called Fiesta became the top free iPhone app in the country after having first launched on November 25, 2021. The first time it ever charted in the top free apps in the country was on March 26.

There’s not a lot of information about Fiesta, though it appears to be Russian-made. Its website doesn’t offer much information beyond what the app looks like and a form to join the beta. The site also displays photos of the app and links out to Fiesta’s social accounts, including Instagram and Twitter — the latter where it’s never posted. The app greatly resembles Instagram, but it also offers features for finding and joining local events, which differentiates it.

According to Sensor Tower’s preliminary estimates, Fiesta has now seen nearly 200,000 installs to date — most of which occurred this past week. From March 27 to March 30, the app saw around 184,000 installs — or more than 30 times the 6,000 installs it saw in the prior period from March 23 to March 26.

Weekly News

Platforms: Apple

Image Credits: Apple

• Apple launched Apple Business Essentials, designed to help smaller businesses manage devices without necessarily having IT expertise in-house.
• Apple released iOS 15.4.1, iPadOS 15.4.1 and macOS 12.3.1, which includes a fix for battery issues on iPhone and iPad and two zero-days that “may have been actively exploited.”
• Apple is said to be building its own payments technology to reduce its reliance on partners. According to Bloomberg, the project is dubbed “Breakout” in-house and indicates the company’s interest in expanding into fintech beyond Apple Pay, Apple Card and the transactions it processes across the App Store and iTunes.
• Apple’s Senior VP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, responded to a user’s emailasking why there was a delay in receiving iOS software updates automatically. Surprisingly, the exec answered, explaining that Apple incrementally rolls out new iOS updates by “first making them available for those that explicitly seek them out in Settings, and then 1-4 weeks later (after we’ve received feedback on the update) ramp up to rolling out devices with auto-update enabled.” (So, I guess if you want updates sooner, go hit up Settings!)

Platforms: Google

• Google Play’s new billing payments policy began on April 1. The company had announced back in 2020 that developers would need to come into compliance with the policy that requires apps selling digital goods and services to use Google Play’s own billing system. Unless developers were approved for an extension, they will no longer be able to submit app updates until they’re in compliance, barring any critical security issues. On June 1, 2022, non-compliant apps will be removed from Google Play.
• It looks like Google is working on its own AirTag detection features. Google Play Services 22.12.13 includes code referring to “unfamiliar device alerts” and “unfamiliar tag detection notifications.”

E-commerce & Food Delivery

• Rapid delivery firm Jokr launched a new mobile appoffering a personalized experience and automated content curation in order to feature lists of items for users based on past shopping behaviors, locally sourced items from their communities and more.
• Barcelona-based Glovo is running its food and grocery delivery app in Ukraine as a nonprofit. The company has 2,000+ couriers in the war-torn country running groceries, restaurant meals and prescriptions to people in need. Glovo said it decided to reopen in cities after finding some couriers were already donating their time to ad hoc groups that were working to help keep supplies flowing; this way, those couriers can get paid for that work.

Augmented Reality

• Snap announced its annual summit will be held on April 28. Last year, the company introduced its AR Spectacles (AR glasses). This time around, we’re expecting more AR-focused updates for the Snapchat app.

Fintech

• Bengaluru-headquartered Slice, which recently became a unicorn, has plans to introduce UPI payments for its users within a matter of weeks. The startup also appears to be redesigning the app to make the UPI transactions intuitive. The support will put Slice in competition with Walmart-backed PhonePe and Google Pay.
• Robinhood’s stock popped 25% on news of its support for extended trading hours. Previously, the app offered trading from 9 AM ET to 6 PM ET — 30 minutes before the market opened and two hours after its close. The app’s new trading hours are now 7 AM ET to 8 PM ET.

Social

Image Credits: TikTok

• TikTok partnered with GIPHY on a new feature called the TikTok Library, an in-app creator tool that allows users to select content from GIPHY, including GIFs and “GIFs with sound” (short videos). The company plans to add more content to the library over time, including audio, sounds and text templates.
• Twitter added “Professional Accounts.” The feature allows users to convert their accounts to include business information, and provides access to pro tools, like Twitter Shopping and the Ads Ecosystem, including Quick Promote, among other things.
• Twitter dies on iPhone 6. The app abruptly stopped working on older iPhones as the latest version now requires iOS 14 or higher.
• An analysis of Facebook and Instagram’s Reels found that 73% of the top 20 Reels were anonymous and 82% were reposted. Two out of the top 11 were also recycled directly from TikTok.
• A letter signed by 44 attorneys general asked TikTok and Snap to support third-party parental control apps, which would help parents better monitor and manage app usage beyond what built-in controls can do. They noted the apps don’t necessarily allow for control over things like private messaging, nor can parents block certain content from the main feed. (This isn’t entirely true — TikTok offers parents the ability to set a curated feed as the default for younger users and can limit their messaging. Only Snap hasn’t yet launched parental controls.)
• Meta paid a “right of center” digital consulting firm Targeted Victory to orchestrate a campaignagainst TikTok in the U.S., including by placing op-eds in local news outlets, The WaPo reported. Targeted Victory confirmed its involvement, but blasted the reporting on Twitter.
• Instagram is testing a feature that makes it easier for users to support social movements through hashtags. When you search for specific hashtags associated with social movements, you have the option to spread the word about the cause to people in your community or create a fundraiser.
• Pinterest said it will invest an additional $1.2 million in its Creator Fund for underrepresented groups. The investment includes a combination of cash grants, ad credits and other creator resources. It’s separate from the $20 million in Creator Rewards being doled out in the U.S., which pays creators directly for their content.
• TikTok tests a “watch history” feature that would make it easier to find videos you had recently viewed, but forgot to like or save.

Messaging

Image Credits: Instagram

• Instagram upgraded its DM inbox with over a half dozen new features, including the ability to share music previews in DMs, the ability to send a message silently, the ability to see who’s online to chat with, the ability to reply to messages while you browse your feed, a quick send feature for sharing with four friends with a tap, plus a new theme and polls.
• Messenger introduced Slack-like “@everyone” functionality that will notify all participants in a chat about a new message, and other shortcuts like a “/silent” feature, similar to Instagram’s new “@silent” option and more.
• WhatsApp upgraded its voice message functionality with several new features, and announced that people are now sending 7 billion voice messages on the platform daily.
• The Ukrainian government created a chatbot in the Telegram app that allows users to report precise sightings of Russian troop movements. Telegram and secure messaging app Signal have seen their installs increase by 1.7 million between February and March, up 197% from 573,000 in January.

Streaming & Entertainment

Image Credits: Apple

• Apple announced its MLB livestreaming schedule for the 2022 season. The Apple TV+ service will livestream 12 weeks of Friday night doubleheaders and other MLB content, initially for free during the first half of the season — even if users don’t have an Apple TV+ subscription. The livestreams will be available across platforms, wherever Apple’s TV app is available.
• Streaming audio app Clubhouse added a new “protected profile” setting option in response to concerns over the Russia-Ukraine war and the safety of users from those regions connecting online. Since the war began, Clubhouse has become a platform for anti-war Russian civilians to coordinate, but has also been home to Russian propaganda at times.
• YouTube TV finally added support for picture-in-picture viewing on iOS 15 and higher. As for the main YouTube app? That’s still in the works for “the coming months,” the company said.
• YouTube is also working on a plan to ingest RSS feeds to build out a Podcasts homepage on its platform and likely help power podcasts on its streaming music app, YouTube Music.
• China’s second-largest short video company, Kuaishou, reported earnings with Q4 revenue up 35% year-over-year to $3.8 billion, with a roughly $1 billion net loss, and MAUs up 21.5% year-over-year to 578 million. Daily time spent rose 32% to 118.9 minutes.
• TikTok is running a global in-app competition of short-form films for its inaugural #TikTokShortFilm contest, in partnership with the Cannes Film Festival.
• Spotify expanded Blend, its playlist creation feature that originally let two users merge their musical tastes in one playlist. Now the feature supports up to 10 users and even select artists, including BTS and Charli XCX.
• Spotify added COVID-19 content advisories to its app on podcasts that discuss the virus, two months after the Joe Rogan uproar over misinformation.
• Spotify also began testing a new podcast discovery feature that presents clips from episodes in a vertically scrolling, TikTok-like feed where you can click a “+” to add the episodes to your saved list of things to listen to. The feature is based on the company’s acquisition of Podz, a podcast discovery platform with a similar user interface.

Gaming

• Epic Games had earlier announced that all its Fortnite proceeds from March 20 through April 3 are being donated to humanitarian relief efforts in Ukraine. Now the company has revealed via its website its donations have reached $100 million with still a few days to go.
• Pokémon GO ran an April Fool’s prank where Ditto appeared disguised as Pokémon. The game maker also announced it will bring back its Pokémon GO Fest global event on June 4-5.

Health & Fitness

• Yelp expanded restaurant health ratings in partnership with the food-tech startup Hazel Analytics. The app will now provide hygiene data on nearly 700,000 Yelp pages, and lists health inspection info on jurisdictions representing nearly 70% of the U.S. population.

Utilities

• Microsoft’s Phone Link, formerly known as Your Phone, links Android phones with a Windows PC. The tool has now been updated with a new design for Windows 11 and is rolling out to users in China through a new partnership with HONOR.
• Google will add “highly cited” Search labels to point to original reporting, local news stories, press releases and more coming soon in the U.S. on mobile devices, and “in the coming weeks” globally.

Misc.

• Data.ai (formerly App Annie) launched a new product called App IQ, which offers competitive intelligence about app features, from monetization methods to social features, so businesses can identify both competitive threats and partnership opportunities.

Government & Policy

• In its battle with Dutch regulators, Apple has now dropped its requirement to require developers to create a separate app binary in order to take advantage of the new antitrust order that permits third-party payments in dating apps. The regulator had earlier said the requirement was an “unreasonable” demand on Apple’s part. The change means developers can use either the StoreKit External Purchase Entitlement or the StoreKit External Purchase Link Entitlement to sell their services through a payment system other than Apple’s own. Apple’s refusal to meet the antitrust guidelines has seen the company rack up 10 €5 million fines, totaling €50 million to date.
• Also in the Netherlands, Apple is now facing a multibillion-euro lawsuit led by nonprofit Consumer Competition Claims Foundation that alleges Apple is using anti-competitive practices to overcharge consumers and restrict their payment options for in-app purchases. Bloomberg said the suit claims the harms add up to nearly $5.5 billion USD.
• India’s Competition Commission probe found Google Play’s billing guidelines are “unfair and discriminatory,” suggesting that India could be the next market to regulate app stores. The regulator also examined allegations Google used “search manipulation” to push Google Pay.
• The U.S. Dept. of Justice voiced its support for the antitrust bill (the American Innovation and Choice Online Act) targeting Apple, Google and Amazon. In a letter to the bipartisan leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the DoJ said it views “the rise of dominant platforms as presenting a threat to open markets and competition, with risks for consumers, businesses, innovation, resiliency, global competitiveness, and our democracy.”

Security & Privacy

• An FT report said Russia’s Yandex has been sending data harvested from millions of iOS app users to Russia, via the Yandex AppMetrica SDK. The toolkit has been installed in messaging apps, games, location-sharing tools and hundreds of VPN tools, including seven made specifically for Ukrainians.

Funding and M&A

Cairo-based financial super app Khazna raised $38 million in Series A funding, in both debt and equity, led by Quona Capital. The app offers a range of services, including cash advances, BNPL, bill pay, a prepaid debit card and more.

London’s Builder.ai, which offers low-code tools for building apps, raised $100 million in Series C funding led by Insight Partners, bringing its total raise to date to $195 million. The company claims to have increased revenues by 300% over the past year.

Israel-based Kooply, a stealth mode startup, raised $18 million in seed funding led by Microsoft’s M12, TPY Capital and Playtika to build a mobile games development platform. The company aims to soft launch later this year.

India’s Games24x7, which owns and operates multiple mobile games, raised $75 million in a new round led by Malabar Investment. The company, popular for rummy game RummyCircle, claims to have more than 100 million users.

Tweets

Who knew you could magically finger-copy stuff from the iPhone to the iPad?

Google announced a major update to Google Meet today that includes a number of long-requested features and plenty that you didn’t even know you needed. There is a long list here, but the main additions are likely in-meeting reactions to give immediate updates to the Meet companion mode, emoji-based feedback, the ability to use Meet right inside of Docs, Sheets and Slides, as well as a new picture-in-picture mode so you can more easily ignore a meeting and the ability to stream a meeting to YouTube.

Security is another highlight of today’s announcement. Starting in May, Google is rolling out client-side encryption in Meet, which is currently still in beta. With this, users have full control over the encryption keys and the identity provider used to access those keys. Later this year, Google will also introduce option end-to-end encryption for all meetings. Currently, all Meet data is encrypted in transit.

Image Credits: Google

“Since 2020, it’s become increasingly clear that human connection is crucial,” said Dave Citron, Google’s director of product management for Google Meet and Voice in a press briefing ahead of today’s announcement. “We know we need solutions that help people build connections that can bridge the gap between physical spaces and the somewhere else.”

He noted that a lot of these updates today focus on “collaboration equity,” that is, the ability to contribute to meetings regardless of location, role, experience level, language and device preference. One example for this is companion mode, which launched earlier this year and allows users to join a video meeting on a second screen. Now, Google is updating this with personal video tiles for every participant in a hybrid meeting, even if they are in a conference room with other participants. “This update will work towards making those in physical space have the same experience as those who are working remotely,” Citron explained.

Image Credits: Google

Like too many features Google announces these days, these updates will roll out “later this year.” This also means you’ll have to wait until next month to regale your co-workers with emojis during a meeting to “help teams celebrate wins, offer support and share the love,” as a Google spokesperson called it.

Picture-in-picture mode will also roll out next month, while automatic noise cancellation on Google Meet hardware is now rolling out to all users on Meet-enabled Logitech, Acer and Asus hardware.

The ability to stream to YouTube, which most companies will probably use for webinars and similar outward-facing meetings, is coming later this year.

Google also today announced a couple of updates to Spaces, but you’re probably using Slack, so you can find more information about those here.

Image Credits: Google

Google has just announced the next stage of trials of its Privacy Sandbox proposal — focused on ads relevance and measurement.

The Sandbox refers to an evolving — and now very closely overseen — ad targeting tech stack which Google has proposed for replacing tracking cookie based targeted advertising in Chrome by (at the earliest) the second half of 2023 with alternatives which it argues will be better for users’ privacy yet still effective for generating ad revenue.

Writing in a blog post today, Vinay Goel, product director, Privacy Sandbox, Chrome, said: “Starting today, developers can begin testing globally the Topics, FLEDGE, and Attribution Reporting APIs in the Canary version of Chrome.

“We’ll progress to a limited number of Chrome Beta users as soon as possible. Once things are working smoothly in Beta, we’ll make API testing available in the stable version of Chrome to expand testing to more Chrome users.”

The Sandbox proposal is made up of multiple components, such as Topics — Google’s idea for interest-based ad targeting via browser-based tracking of users’ web activity (which replaced FLoCs; the much criticized antecedent Google recently abandoned) — and FLEDGE, Google’s proposal for remarketing and custom audiences without individual-level user tracking.

As well as being complex and acronym-ridden, Google’s Sandbox plan has attracted no shortage of controversy.

Most notably, antitrust regulators in Europe stepped in following complaints from publishers and advertisers who argue that Google’s plan to deprecate tracking cookies will simply entrench its market power.

But after obtaining a number of commitments from Google over how it would develop the Sandbox (including the appointment of a monitoring trustee), the UK’s CMA signed off on letting the project proceed last month — paving the way for continued development and another batch of Sandbox trials to go ahead now. (Although EU regulators are continuing to scrutinize the plan.)

Google said it will also now begin testing updated Privacy Sandbox settings and controls — which it says will allow users to “see and manage the interests associated with them, or turn off the trials entirely”.

Its blog post gives a sample graphic of some of the settings it will be trialing — which show a multi-layered menu structure with a master toggle to turn off (or on) the trials at the top level and, drilling down, a menu for browser-based ad personalization where a user could remove interests assigned to them by Topics-based surveillance of their browsing activity and edit the list of sites from where the system infers interests, as well as two other menus (one related to ad measurement and another for spam and fraud reduction).

Image credits: Google

Notably, Chrome users in the European Union (and a few other regional markets) won’t be opted in to the latest Sandbox origin trials — and will instead only be able to participate if they actively choose to opt in by flipping the toggle to the on position, per Google. That’s likely owing to the legal protections for people’s privacy in the region, under laws such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.

Trials of the now abandoned FLoCs component of Sandbox last year begun outside Europe too.

“During the upcoming origin trial, Chrome plans to test multiple methods for notifying users about the trials depending on region,” a Google spokeswoman told us. “In the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the UK users will be asked to voluntarily participate in the trials by way of opt in.”

“All users will have robust controls, and can opt out of the trials at any point,” the spokeswoman added.

Whether Google’s approach with Sandbox will truly be privacy preserving is one rather salient and yet to be answered question hanging over the proposal.

There is also the wider issue of whether targeting ads based on inferred interests of individuals (by surveilling their browsing locally) won’t simply replicate the predatory and discriminatory targeting that’s all-too-possible with current individual tracking-based adtech. So how much of a privacy reform/reboot Google’s Sandbox will actually be remains to be seen.

Commenting generally on Google’s proposals, Dr. Lukasz Olejnik, an independent privacy researcher and consultant, said its approach to develop “privacy preserving” ad targeting is drawing on earlier years of research. But he agreed the task is challenging.

“Such research is kind of forgotten now but it was the exciting part of privacy research circles 10-7 years ago or so. It is no longer possible to have an academic publication in this space because it seems that academics consider the problem ‘solved’ for many years now. Well, sort of, however ridiculous this sounds.

“But Google is not interested in having a conference paper, they’re actually building the infrastructure, and this is the challenging part because the web is a complex ecosystem. It’s also quite leaky — so the important part is to propose suitable amendments or additions to the crucial parts of the web architecture to make it privacy proof,” he told TechCrunch.

Olejnik also said Google’s trial announcement underlines at least one notable learning since the tech giant kicked off the Sandbox migration effort a couple of years ago.

“The announcement is also evidence that Google learned the hard way of the importance of user control of tests of the kind, so it is now clear that the users will be in control from the very beginning,” he suggested.

In Google’s blog post, Goel ends by writing that the Sandbox proposals have “benefited substantially from the thoughtful feedback of early testers”, adding that: “We’re eager to open up testing for more of our proposals. We’ll continue to gather feedback from the ecosystem and to engage with regulators globally.”

Developers are pointed to Google’s guidance about the Sandbox APIs and for information about how they can participate in the trials.

There were already several hints that YouTube was getting more serious about podcasts, after reports indicated the company hired a podcast executive, Kai Chuk, to lead its efforts in the space and had even begun offering cash to popular podcasters to film their shows. Now, a leaked document has unveiled more about YouTube’s plans in this area, pointing to a future podcasts homepage on YouTube.com and other monetization features.

The details were published by Podnews, which recently got its hands on an 84-page presentation where YouTube described its podcasts roadmap. Here, the company says it will improve podcast ingestion by piloting the ability to pull in podcast RSS feeds. It also noted it plans to centralize podcasts on a new homepage at YouTube.com/podcasts. The URL doesn’t yet work; but it also doesn’t automatically redirect to the YouTube homepage — which is what it does if you put other random words after the slash.

Not surprisingly, Google sees podcasts as a way to expand its advertising business on YouTube. The document suggests YouTube will feature audio ads sold by Google as well as other partners. It mentions the support of “new metrics” designed for audio-first creators and the ability to integrate YouTube data into industry-standard podcast measurement platforms. One page shows brands like Nielsen, Chartable, and Podtrac listed as partners.

The addition of a new “podcasts” vertical to YouTube would be a logical next step for the company.

Over the years, YouTube has highlighted the service’s larger content categories by giving them their own homepages, as it did with YouTube Gaming back in 2015 and with YouTube Fashion (now Fashion & Beauty) in 2019. Plus, YouTube content helps to power Google’s music streaming service, YouTube Music, which competes with other services like Spotify, where podcasts are a competitive advantage.

Spotify has been looking to dominate the podcast advertising market and has made several acquisitions to bring related adtech in-house. As a result, Spotify has since been able to sell its own ads, introduce streaming ad insertion technology, launch its own audio ad marketplace, and is trying out new ad formats. Meanwhile, as a video-centric platform, YouTube has been left out of much of this ad market growth.

Podnews didn’t publish the full document and it’s not clear when the document was first produced or distributed, given references to launches that are listed as coming “in 2022” and the mention of Chartable, a company Spotify acquired last month. YouTube didn’t comment to Podnews, per its article. We’ll update if a comment is provided to us.

Google shared a blog post with Google Workspace customers announcing some good news for all Markdown fans out there. Google Docs can now automatically convert Markdown formatting to rich text.

If you’re not familiar with Markdown, this markup language has become very popular over the past few years if you want to write structured documents — and especially web content. For instance, popular note-taking tools like Notion or Bear support Markdown. Content management systems like WordPress also let you enable Markdown as a way to write new posts.

This new feature for Google Docs is off by default. You have to manually turn it on in the settings first. That’s why I’m writing this post. If you want to enable Markdown support, open a document in Google Docs, head over to the top of the screen, go to ‘Tools’ then ‘Preferences’ and enable ‘Automatically detect Markdown’. After that, you’re good to go. If you can’t see the feature today, that’s normal as the company is rolling out the new feature progressively over the coming days.

Again, don’t expect extensive Markdown support. Google Docs is still a rich text editor and this isn’t going to magically change once you enable the Markdown feature.

Instead, Google Docs will replace common Markdown formatting with rich text. For instance, you can create links with parentheses and brackets like [this](https://techcrunch.com). You can italicize text by surrounding it with the * character.

Google Docs supports different levels of headings, bold, italic, strikethrough and links. Numbered lists and unstructured lists still get automatically formatted like before.

In other words, this new feature complements some keyboard shortcuts. It also makes it easier to copy Markdown content from one app to Google Docs, which can be particularly useful if you use a Markdown editor like Ulysses.

But… that doesn’t work the other way. What’s great about Markdown is that it’s a plain text format that is compatible with multiple apps and services.

For instance, Google Docs should let you natively export the current document as Markdown so that you can quickly copy and paste it anywhere Markdown is supported. I know, there is a plugin for that. But not all companies are comfortable with plugins.

Hey Google, it’s a nice first step, but you have to iterate and offer more Markdown features, please.

The Chrome OS team is launching version 100 of its lightweight operating system today and with that, it’s bringing quite a few interesting changes to the platform. The most obvious one is a new launcher, which is moving from the bottom to the side of the screen and getting a few more new features. The built-in camera app now also lets you save your creations as a GIF and the Chrome OS dictation feature now makes it easier to edit your text. Also new is support for more than 100 additional devices for the newly launched Chrome OS Flex. For developers, Google is launching a redesigned ChromeOS.dev site.

The launcher is likely the first thing users will notice. Mind you, the taskbar itself isn’t moving, we’re just talking about Chrome OS’s equivalent of the Windows Start menu. Google says the idea here is to leave more space for other windows you have open. Users can now organize their apps by name or color (if that’s your thing) or manually arrange them in any order that makes sense to you (or you can be like me and just opt for chaos).

Image Credits: Google

Inside the launcher, Google has updated the search feature, which previously showed a brief preview of the search result. After this update, you’ll get to see quite a bit more information, even before you head into the browser. Shortcuts are also now integrated into this search experience, so you can easily take a screenshot, for example.

Image Credits: Google

As for voice editing, the experience here is what you would expect. You can now say “delete” to delete the last letter, for example, or “move to next character” to move the cursor. Pretty straightforward, to the point where one has to wonder why these features weren’t there before, but definitely a very useful addition for users who rely on dictation.

The GIF creation in the Chromebook Camera explains itself. There is now a new toggle to turn it on and once you’ve done that, you can create a five-second GIF.

Image Credits: Google

Google today announced it will be rolling out improvements to its AI model to make Google Search a safer experience and one that’s better at handling sensitive queries, including those around topics like suicide, sexual assault, substance abuse and domestic violence. It’s also using other AI technologies to improve its ability to remove unwanted explicit or suggestive content from Search results when people aren’t specifically seeking it out.

Currently, when people search for sensitive information — like suicide, abuse or other topics — Google will display the contact information for the relevant national hotlines above its search results. But the company explains that people who are in crisis situations may search in all kinds of ways, and it’s not always obvious to a search engine that they’re in need, even if it would raise flags if a human saw their search queries. With machine learning and the latest improvements to Google’s AI model called MUM (Multitask Unified Model), Google says it will be able to automatically and more accurately detect a wider range of personal crisis searches because of how MUM is able to better understand the intent behind people’s questions and queries.

The company last year introduced its plan to redesign Search using AI technologies at its Search On event, but it hadn’t addressed this specific use case. Instead, Google then had focused on how MUM’s better understanding of user intent could be leveraged to help web searchers unlock deeper insights into the topic they’re researching, and lead users down new search paths. For example, if a user had searched for “acrylic painting,” Google could suggest “things to know” about acrylic painting, like different techniques and styles, tips on how to paint, cleaning tips and more. It also could point users to other queries they may not have thought to search for, like “how to make acrylic paintings with household items.” In this one example, Google said it could identify more than 350 different topics related to acrylic paintings.

In a somewhat similar way, MUM will now be used to help better understand the sort of topics that someone in crisis might search for, which aren’t always as obvious as typing in a direct cry for help.

“…if we can’t accurately recognize that, we can’t code our systems to show the most helpful search results. That’s why using machine learning to understand language is so important,” explained Google in a blog post.

For example, if a user searched for “Sydney suicide hot spots,” Google’s previous systems would understand the query to be one of information-seeking because that’s how the term “hots spots” is often used, including in travel search queries. But MUM understands the query is related to people trying to find a jumping spot for suicide in Sydney and would identify this search as potentialy being from someone in crisis, allowing it to show actionable information like suicide hotlines. Another suicide query that could see improvements from MUM is “most common ways suicide is completed,” which, again, Google would have previously understood only as an information-seeking search.

MUM also better understands longer search queries where the context is obvious to humans, but not necessarily to machines. For instance, a query like “why did he attack me when i said i dont love him” implies a domestic violence situation. But long, natural-language queries have been difficult for Google’s systems without the use of advanced AI.

In addition, Google notes that MUM can transfer its knowledge across the 75 languages it’s been trained on, which helps it to more quickly scale AI improvements like this to worldwide users. That means it will be able to display the actionable information from trusted partners, like local hotlines, for these types of personal crisis searches to a broader audience.

This isn’t the first time MUM had been put to work to help direct Google Searches. MUM had previously been used to improve searches for COVID-19 vaccine information, the company said. In the coming months, Google says it will use MUM to improve its spam protection features and will expand those to languages where it has little training data. Other MUM improvements will roll out soon, as well.

Another area getting a boost from AI technology is Google’s ability to filter explicit content from search results. Even when Google’s SafeSearch filtering technology is turned off, Google still attempts to reduce unwanted explicit content from those searches where finding racy content wasn’t the goal. And today, its algorithms improve on this ability as users conduct hundreds of millions of searches globally.

But the AI technology known as BERT now works to help Google better understand if people were seeking explicit content. The company says, over the past year, BERT has reduced unwanted shocking search results by 30%, based on an analysis conducted by “Search Raters” who measured oversexualized results across random samples of queries for web and image search. The technology has also been particularly effective in reducing explicit content for searches related to “ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender,” which Google says disproportionately impacts women and especially women of color, the analysis found.

Google says the MUM AI improvements will begin to roll out to Serach in the coming weeks.