After Google cut all but three of the projects at its in-house incubator Area 120 and shifted it to work on AI projects across Google, one of the legacy efforts — coincidentally also an AI project — is now officially exiting to Google. Checks, an AI-powered tool to check mobile apps for compliance with various privacy rules and regulations, is moving into Google proper as a privacy product aimed at mobile developers.

Checks originally made its debut in February 2022, although it was in development for some time before that. In its time at Area 120, it became one of the largest projects in the group, co-founders Fergus Hurley and Nia Castelly told me, with 10 people fully dedicated to it and a number of others contributing less formally. The founders’ job titles under Google will now respectively be GM and Legal Lead for Checks.

The amount that Google invested in the project was never disclosed, nor was the “valuation” of the exit to the parent company from the incubator, if the project ever had a price put on it in the first place.

Checks is not disclosing how many customers it has in total but notes that they are in the sectors of gaming, health, nance, education and retail. A sampling includes Miniclip, Rovio, Kongregate, Crayola and Yousician and in total the number of customers represented by its customers is over 3 billion.

Checks is one of those ideas that feels incredibly timely in that it speaks to an issue that’s growing in importance for consumers — who will vote with their feet when they feel that their privacy is in jeopardy. That in turn also puts more pressure on developers to get things right on the privacy front. App publishers these days are faced with a growing array of rules and regulations around data protection and privacy, not just rules like GDPR in Europe and CCPA in California (and the U.S.) set across different countries and jurisdictions, but also by companies that operate platforms, in their own compliance efforts.

When translated into how those regulations impact apps, there are potential issues at the front end, but also the back end, with how apps are coded and information moves from one place to another to consider. It’s spaghetti bowll of issues, with fixes in one area potentially impacting another and making user experience less smooth to boot.

Checks leans on artificial intelligence and machine learning to scan apps and their code to identify areas where there might be violations of privacy and data protection rules, and provides remediation to suggest how to fix it — tasks that would be far more difficult for a team of humans to execute on their own. It’s already integrated with Google’s large language models and what it describes as “app understanding technologies” to power both what it identifies and suggestions for fixing issues.

A dashboard lets users monitor and triage issues in the areas of compliance monitoring, data monitoring and store disclosure support (which is focused specifically on Google Play data safety). With the service also aimed at iOS developers, it’s not clear if it will add Apple App Store data safety at any point into that mix. All of this can be monitored in real time on live apps, as well as when they are still in development.

We have reached out to Google to get an update on the status of the other two projects that were spared all-out closure after Area 120 changed focus. They include video dubbing solution Aloud and an as-yet unnamed consumer product from the team that had previously built a bookmarking app Liist (which got acquired by Google).

As of right now, Liist’s co-founder David Friedl still describes himself on LinkedIn as working on a stealth product at Area 120, and Aloud is still using an Area 120 URL, so it seems that they remain in a holding pattern. (We’ll update this if and when we hear more.)

In the meantime, Area 120 itself is also seeing some revolving doors. Clay Bavor, who was running Area 120 among other things and messaged the big changes to staff in January, was himself out the door just a month later. He has now teamed up with Bret Taylor — another ex-Googler who has an outsized track record that includes being the CTO of Facebook and the co-CEO of Salesforce — to work on a mystery startup.

Checks, the AI-powered data protection project incubated in Area 120, officially ‘exits’ to Google by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

After numerous cases of Bluetooth trackers like Apple’s AirTag being used for stalking or other criminal apps, Apple and Google today released a joint announcement saying they will work together to lead an industry-wide initiative to draft a specification that would alert users in the case of unwanted tracking from Bluetooth devices. The companies said they’re seeking input from other industry participants and advocacy groups in the matter, and noted that other tracker makers like Samsung, Tile, Chipolo, eufy Security, and Pebblebee, have also expressed interest in the draft.

The companies submitted a proposed specification as an Internet-Draft via a standards development organization, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Other interested parties are now being invited to review and comment over the next three months. After this time, Apple and Google will offer feedback and will release a production implementation of the specification by year’s end that will be supported in future versions of iOS and Android, they said

While Apple’s AirTag wasn’t the first Bluetooth tracker on the market to present security concerns around misuse — Tile and others had existed for years — Apple’s ability to integrate AirTag with the 2 billion+ Apple devices globally, including its over 1 billion iPhones, as part of its “Find My” network, made it one of the largest players almost immediately. It also popularized the then-still niche technology of using Bluetooth trackers to find lost items, making the devices for doing so a household name.

Soon, stories began to emerge that AirTags were being used for stalking and other concerns, like car theft. Apple in February 2022 announced it would work to address some of the problems it had created with new features, including new privacy warnings, alerts, and expanded documentation. Hoping to deter misuse, it also said it was actively working with law enforcement on all AirTag-related requests it receives, and confirmed it was able to provide the account details in response to a subpoena or other valid law enforcement request.

Today, the company along with Google, wants to make these safety measures more of a standard, rather than just a feature set. This includes building on the AirTag protections Apple had already released but also, critically, ensuring that users would be able to combat unwanted tracking by offering tools across both iOS and Android platforms. Today, for instance, Apple offers a Tracker Detect app for Android users, but it doesn’t work as well as Apple’s own Find My app because it requires users to actively scan for tags, rather than receive proactive warnings and alerts. The new spec, meanwhile, wants to make unwanted tracking alerts work across any platform.

Various advocacy groups praised the effort in today’s announcement, including the National Network to End Domestic Violence and the Center for Democracy & Technology. The former had been advocating for a universal standard to protect survivors from the misuse of trackers and noted, in a statement, it was ‘encouraged by this progress.” The latter referred to the move as a “welcome step” to prevent the misuse of these devices.

Google and Apple have worked together before on products that benefit their respective customer bases, including with the development of the Covid-19 tracing tool for iOS And Android users in 2020.

“Apple launched AirTag to give users the peace of mind knowing where to find their most important items,” said Ron Huang, Apple’s vice president of Sensing and Connectivity, in a statement. “We built AirTag and the Find My network with a set of proactive features to discourage unwanted tracking — a first in the industry — and we continue to make improvements to help ensure the technology is being used as intended. This new industry specification builds upon the AirTag protections, and through collaboration with Google results in a critical step forward to help combat unwanted tracking across iOS and Android.”

“Bluetooth trackers have created tremendous user benefits, but they also bring the potential of unwanted tracking, which requires industrywide action to solve,” added Dave Burke, Google’s vice president of Engineering for Android. “Android has an unwavering commitment to protecting users, and will continue to develop strong safeguards and collaborate with the industry to help combat the misuse of Bluetooth tracking devices.”

Apple and Google team up on industry spec to make Bluetooth tracking devices, like AirTag, safer by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

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 economy in 2023 hit a few snags, as consumer spending last year dropped for the first time by 2% to $167 billion, according to data.ai’s “State of Mobile” report. However, downloads are continuing to grow, up 11% year-over-year in 2022 to reach 255 billion. Consumers are also spending more time in mobile apps than ever before. On Android devices alone, hours spent in 2022 grew 9%, reaching 4.1 trillion.

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

Top Stories

Bluesky is having a moment

Image Credits: Jose A. Bernat Bacete (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

If anyone was waiting for a winner to emerge among the many Twitter alternatives, current signs are pointing to Bluesky as a possible forerunner in the race. With its invite-only status, native mobile apps and ability to attract the always online, shitposting crowd, the app has been getting buzz this past week as users invited their friends, bringing the network to somewhere around 40,000+ users.

Bluesky today moves quickly, giving posters the dopamine rush of Twitter-level attention at times. People are vying to reach to its “What’s Hot” feed and are arguing about whether or not these pseudo-tweets should be called “posts” or “skeets” — the latter against the wishes of the CEO Jay Graber, who is begging for anything else, even “skoots.”

To what extent she’ll have any sway over the matter remains to be seen. In one viral post, Graber essentially admits the users are now running amok.

Image Credits: Bluesky screenshot

Blueskyers are also creating their own conventions for the site, dubbing the Bluesky “timeline” the “skyline,” for example, and are laughing about Elon Musk’s failures while posting their Bluesky memes.

Much of the crowd is young — ranging from Gen Z to millennial — and some have been known to joke about their plan to bully cringey Gen X’ers or any unwelcome bad actors off the app if they ever dare to join.

This experience, naturally, is not for everyone.

Despite there being a number of journalists on Bluesky, it’s so far not a place where people are sharing their work or having thoughtful discussions about the news of the day. There aren’t many (any?) right-wingers getting into arguments with leftists. There are few legit celebs or high-profile figures on board, beyond folks like Chrissy Teigen and AOC and a few others.

Instead, Bluesky feels like a weird afterparty where everyone is a little too drunk, a little too tired and has lost their filter.

This vibe may not last and neither may its appeal. It remains to be seen.

While “party Twitter” is a fun place to be for a time, it isn’t necessarily a fulfilling meal — just a sugary snack. That could leave some people returning to more robust networks, like Twitter or Mastodon to engage in more thoughtful discussions. And it may turn off some potential Bluesky users who aren’t a fan of the shitposting culture.

For others, however, a place that’s all brouhaha and no baggage may be just what they want.

There are also things the app needs to address before it opens more publicly. For now, it’s lacking many of the features people expect — like the ability to view your past likes, bookmark items, create lists, block users, use hashtags, DM others, perform advanced searches and more. This gives the network a bit of an ephemeral feeling, as posts — or skeets — quickly move down the feed, never to be seen again.

Despite its issues, Bluesky recalls the early days of the social web where trying new apps was actually fun. That’s the nature of its invite-only status, which is keeping the party small with a bouncer at the door.

In the meantime, if you want to join us on Bluesky, give us a follow.

TechCrunch team members on Bluesky include me — Sarah Perez (@sarahp), Amanda Silberling (@ralts), Brian Heater (@bheater), Frederic Lardinois (@fredericl), Romain Dillet (@romain), Matthew Panzarino (@panz), Darrell Etherington (@darrelletherington.com), Ron Miller (@ronmiller), Alex Wilhelm (@alexwilhem), Becca Szkutak (@becca), Ivan Mehta (@methology), Bryce Durbin (@dicebourbon), Henry Pickavet (@pickavet), Miranda Halpern (@mirandahalpern), Morgan Sung (@morgansung), Natasha Mascarenhas (@natashareporter) and Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai (@lorenzofb).

(Those links should work when logged into the web app at staging.bsky.app. We’re all mostly on bsky.social so I didn’t write out that part of these usernames! If you have any unwanted invites, email me the codes, haha, sarahp@techcrunch.com.)  

Currently, Bluesky has 245,000 downloads on iOS, more than half of which came in April, indicating there’s far more demand than there is access for the time being.

Snapchat’s My AI is getting panned

Image Credits: Snap (modified by TechCrunch)

The user reviews for Snapchat’s “My AI” feature are in — and they’re not good.

Launched last week to global users after initially being a subscriber-only addition, Snapchat’s new AI chatbot powered by OpenAI’s GPT technology is now pinned to the top of the app’s Chat tab where users can ask it questions and get instant responses. But following the chatbot’s rollout to Snapchat’s wider community, Snapchat’s app has seen a spike in negative reviews amid a growing number of complaints shared on social media.

Over the past week, Snapchat’s average U.S. App Store review was 1.67, with 75% of reviews being one-star, according to data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower. For comparison, across Q1 2023, the Snapchat average U.S. App Store review was 3.05, with only 35% of reviews being one-star.

The number of daily reviews has also increased by five times over the last week, the firm noted.

Another app data provider, Apptopia, reports a similar trend. Its analysis shows “AI” was the top keyword in Snapchat’s App Store reviews over the past seven days, where it was mentioned 2,973 times. The firm has given the term an “Impact Score” rating of -9.2. This Impact Score is a weighted index that measures the effect a term has on sentiment and ranges from -10 to +10.

Apptopia also said that Snapchat received around 3x more one-star ratings than usual on April 20, 2023. That’s the day after the My AI global release was announced.

Many Snapchat users aren’t thrilled with My AI, which appeared inside their app without warning or their consent. For some, it’s the chatbot’s placement that’s the cause of concern. My AI is pinned to the top of users’ Chat feed inside the app and can’t be unpinned, blocked or removed, as other conversations can be. Many are also pushing back at the fact that removing the My AI from their Chat feed requires a Snapchat+ subscription — effectively forcing them to pay to get their app back to normal.

Other users found the AI creepy, as it seemed to know their location even if they hadn’t explicitly shared it.

In response to the ongoing complaints, Snap published an explainer. It said the AI would have your location data if you were already using Snap Map and if you disabled location sharing, there could be a temporary delay (due to caching, we understand) before the AI would no longer have access to that data. Snap also said it made updates to My AI that clarify when it is aware of a Snapchatter’s location, and when it isn’t. Now, when users open My AI for the first time, they’ll receive a notice explaining that it may use the information they share with Snapchat to personalize its responses.

Apple and Meta beat antitrust lawsuits; Apple’s battle was with Epic Games, Meta with state AGs

Image Credits: Nicholas Kamm / AFP / Getty Images

Apple this week won its antitrust-focused appeals court battle with Fortnite maker Epic Games over its App Store policies, according to the opinion issued today by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court largely upheld the district court’s earlier ruling related to Epic Games’ antitrust claims in favor of Apple, but it also upheld the lower court’s judgment in favor of Epic under California’s Unfair Competition Law.

The ruling is a major setback for Epic Games and other developers who hoped the ruling could set a precedent for further antitrust claims and require Apple to open iOS devices to third-party app stores and payment systems. However, the one bright spot for developers is that the ruling upheld the lower court’s prior decision on anti-steering changes.

Noted Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney: “Fortunately, the court’s positive decision rejecting Apple’s anti-steering provisions frees iOS developers to send consumers to the web to do business with them directly there. We’re working on next steps.”

In addition to Apple, Meta also won an antitrust lawsuit, under appeal, that had pitted the tech giant against dozens of state attorneys general, led by New York. The states alleged Meta had illegally maintained monopoly power in the social networking market through its acquisitions of photo-sharing app Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, and that it gained further power through data policies that harmed app developers.

The U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg originally ruled that states had waited too long to challenge Meta’s acquisitions and that the policies they had cited were not illegal under antitrust law. The appeals court upheld this decision.

Platforms

Apple

• A rumor floating around says Apple’s iOS 17 may bring changes to the iPhone Lock Screen, new features for Apple Music including lyrics on the Lock Screen, Control Center UI changes, additional Lock Screen customizations and more. The source is the same one that correctly leaked the yellow iPhone 14, so people are giving it the benefit of the doubt.
• Apple released the third betas for iOS 16.5, iPadOS 16.5 and macOS Ventura 13.4.
• Apple’s Music and TV apps were updated for Windows 11 users and support for lyrics and improved playback for songs with “consecutive lossless tracks, among other bug fixes.
• Apple is reportedly testing a system in iOS 16 to restrict features based on the user’s location, 9to5Mac says.
• The EU confirmed that Apple is one of 19 tech giants that will be subject to the Digital Services Act. This online safety and transparency legislation will apply to Apple’s App Store, specifically, and will require changes to ads, recommendations and more.
• In compliance with the Act, Apple reported its European MAUs for its App Stores, noting iOS has 101 million users, iPadOS has 23 million, macOS has 6 million, tvOS has 1 million and watchOS, Books and Podcasts have less than 1 million each.

Google

Image Credits: Google

• Google wants developers to get ready for I/O. In a new blog post, it suggests how to get prepared by browsing the program, creating an agenda and creating your developer profile.
• Google has been testing a new Play Store ad slot ahead of its I/O developer conference in May. If rolled out publicly, the change could significantly expand the company’s Play Store search ads business by offering developers access to new prime real estate for their app marketing efforts directly on the Search tab alongside other personalized suggestions.
• In a new report, Google said it prevented 1.43 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play in 2022 in part due to new and improved security features and policy enhancements.
• As part of the ActivityX 1.7.0 release, Android’s Photo Picker support library will use a backported version provided by Google Play services on devices running Android KitKat (4.4) and later. The Photo Picker feature was launched last year to offer a browsable interface that presents the user with their media library, sorted by date from newest to oldest, that integrates nicely with an app’s experience without requiring media storage permissions.

Image Credits: Google

App Updates

Messaging

Image Credits: Microsoft

• iMessage is finally coming to Windows. Microsoft announced that Phone Link for iOS is rolling out to all Windows 11 customers, allowing iPhone users to make and receive phone calls, send and receive messages via iMessage, access their contacts, and see their phone’s notifications directly on their Windows PC. The feature had previously been available as an early preview to Windows Insiders.
• WhatsApp introduced “Keep in Chat,” a feature that lets recipients of disappearing messages save them with the sender’s consent. It also expanded its multi-device feature so users can access their same account across multiple phones.
• A federal court in Brazil ordered a temporary ban on Telegram after the company refused to share information about neo-Nazi groups with Brazil’s Federal Police.

Streaming & Entertainment

• Spotify announced its Q1 earnings, reporting it now has 515 million MAUs, representing a 5% increase on the previous quarter and a 22% increase on the corresponding period last year. The streamer’s Q1 revenue was up 14% YoY to €3B, ad revenue was up 17% YoY to €329M, and Premium Subscribers were also up 15% YoY to 210M.
• YouTube Music is adding support for podcasts on Android, iOS, and the web, plus support listening offline, in the background and casting for all U.S. users, with or without a Premium subscription.
• Alphabet reported during earnings that YouTube’s ad revenue fell 2.6% year over year as advertisers pulled back from the platform due to economic uncertainty. YouTube only generated $6.69 billion in advertising revenue for the first fiscal quarter of 2023 compared to $6.87 billion during the same period last year.
• Triller settled a lawsuit with Sony Music over its use of artists’ music on its platform by agreeing to pay $4.5 million.

E-commerce

Image Credits: Klarna

• Klarna’s payments and shopping app rolled out new features to give users a more personalized shopping experience. The app now has “Ask Klarna,” a personal shopping assistant where users can speak to real fashion experts; “Creator Shops,” a customized storefront for content creators; an AI-powered discovery shopping feed; and a resell functionality.
• TikTok Shop has reportedly caught fire in Indonesia, TikTok’s second largest market, where TikTok has an estimated 110 million users. The Shop Seller app in the country has seen around 5.5 million installs.
• Instacart added a few new ways for users to find deals on its app, including a “Your Items on Sale” section on a store’s page that uses an AI recommendation system to help users find personalized deals based on their past orders. There’s also a new “Stores to Help You Save” section and more.
• Meta said it’s phasing out the onboarding of new Shops that don’t offer checkout on Facebook and Instagram. Beginning April 24, 2024, Shops without checkout on Facebook and Instagram enabled will no longer be accessible. This means that shops that direct people to an e-commerce site to complete a purchase will no longer be accessible through Meta’s apps.
• Amid earnings, Pinterest announced a multiyear strategic ad partnership with Amazon aimed at bringing more brands and relevant products to its platform. The new deal will make the e-commerce giant Pinterest’s first partner on third-party ads, and will bring Pinterest users directly to Amazon when ads are clicked on.

Fintech

• U.K.-based stock-trading startup Lightyear expanded to the web, nearly two years after emerging from stealth. Though mobile is a popular way to interact with stock trading apps, the company said web was its mostly highly requested feature.
• China’s biggest messaging app WeChat said this week it extended the use of e-CNY payments to transactions happening through its short video and mini-app platforms.
• Robinhood launched “Connect,” a feature that lets users fund their Web3 wallets without having to leave a decentralized app or be in their Robinhood Crypto account. The feature is already live with MyDoge, Giddy, and Slingshot wallets, and will support Exodus and Phantom soon.

Gaming

• Snowman, the maker of hit mobile games like Alto’s Adventure and Alto’s Odyssey, has announced its new title, Laya’s Horizon, and its launch date. The company says it’s not quite ready to share details about the game yet, but notes it’s an “entirely new IP and something we’ve been working on for a long time.” The game is due out on iOS and Android for Netflix subscribers on May 2.

Social

• BeReal claims to have 20 million DAUs and is now letting users post up to three times per day in the U.K. as part of its pilot test of a “Bonus BeReal” feature. We reported the~20 million DAU last fall, citing multiple sources, indicating the network hasn’t grown much since. Third-party data from Apptopia says the October figure was around 15 million but was down to 6 million as of March.
• Reddit hired a former Meta exec, Jim Squires, for its newly created role of EVP of Business Marketing and Growth.
• During earnings, Mark Zuckerberg disputed that Meta is shifting away from its metaverse vision, saying he sees AI and the metaverse as part of its future. Reality Labs, Meta’s department for VR and AR, lost nearly $4 billion in the quarter. Last year, it lost $13.7 billion.
• Meta says time spent on Instagram grew 24% due to its TikTok-style AI Reel recommendations. The company reported an earnings beat with Q1 revenue up 3% YoY to $28.6B, its net income down 24% YoY to $5.7B, and the “family daily active people” figure up 5% YoY to 3.02 billion for March 2023.
• Meta’s avatars are gaining new body shapes, improved hair and new clothing textures. The company also announced that more than one billion avatars have been created across its platforms.

Image Credits: Meta

• Meta also lost its head of Development and Programming, Mina Lefevre, amid layoffs. The departure came as Meta scaled back its original programming, with cancelations of most of its FB Watch Originals, including Red Table Talk.
• U.S. senators introduced a bipartisan bill that would ban kids under 13 from joining social media sites and require that tech companies get parental consent for teens’ accounts.
• Snap had a bad quarter with revenue down 7% to $989 million when analysts were expecting $1.01 billion. However, global DAUs were up 15% YoY to 383 million, close to estimates of 384 million, and its $329 million net loss was lower than expected. The stock sank 24% on the weak results.
• Clubhouse, the audio app that’s been on the downswing following the pandemic, said it was laying off 50% of its employees and will need to reset the company.
• Reddit has begun testing Discord-like chat channels with 25 subreddits that have less than 100,000 members. The company is giving moderators tools like the ability to choose who can participate in the chat, manage the chat queue and moderate reported messages in a conversation. The channels will be persistent on the community navigation bar so members can visit them frequently.
• NYC’s MTA ends its Twitter service after the Musk-run social media company demanded $50,000 per month for API access. “We want to communicate with our customers through all platforms, but we need a platform that is reliant and consistent and up to date,” MTA’s acting chief customer officer Shanifah Rieara said. As a result, the following MTA accounts will no longer offer real-time updates: @NYCTSubway, @NYCTBus, @LIRR and @MetroNorth.
• A former IRL employee alleged in a legal filing over an alleged unfair dismissal that the company inflated its user count and then retailed against him and others who raised concerns, The Information reported.

Image Credits: T2

• While Bluesky has its moment, another Twitter alternative T2 is also hoping to gain traction. The company this week readied for expansion with the launch of its invites system, aiming to grow its much smaller network of around 1,000 to at least double that if everyone invites at least one person. All users were to receive five invites, the company said. For some, the descriptions of Bluesky floating around are pushing them to try something else — shitposting is not for everyone. That could help T2 grow.

(Psst…Want a T2 invite? We have eight here. Feel free to find me on T2 as @sarahp).

AI

Image Credits: Yelp

• Yelp rolled out an AI-powered search experience and the ability to add videos to reviews. Thanks to the changes, Yelp says it can better understand a user’s search intent and highlight relevant information from reviews in new snippets that will appear under each business listing in search results. For video, users can now post high-resolution videos up to 12 seconds alongside their text and photos in their reviews.
• Artifact, the personalized news aggregator from Instagram’s founders, is further embracing AI with the launch of a new feature that will now summarize news articles for you. The company announced today it’s introducing a tool that generates article summaries with a tap of a button, in order to give readers the ability to understand the “high-level points” of an article before they read. For a little extra fun, the feature can also be used to summarize news in a certain style — like “explain like I’m five,” in the style of Gen Z speech or using only emojis, for example.
• Apple is reportedly working on an AI-powered health coaching subscription code-named Quartz, Bloomberg says. The coaching service would help users stay motivated to exercise, improve their eating habits and sleep better.
• TikTok is testing a feature that lets users create AI-generated profile pictures similar to Lensa’s AI app. The tool asks users to select between three to 10 photos to create their avatars, according to screenshots posted by social media consultant Matt Navarra. TikTok confirmed the test was running in “a few select regions.”

• Tinder announced a new verification process that will now use AI and video selfies to make a determination that someone is real and looks like their photos.
• Spotify’s CEO discussed AI’s progress on the company’s earnings call, describing it as both “really cool and scary,” and acknowledging there’s risk to the creative industry. “I don’t think in my history with technology I’ve ever seen anything moving as fast as the development of AI currently is at the moment,” he said.

Etc.

• Taking cues from Apple and Google, Meta announced its Meta Quest Store would now include an App Privacy tab — a new tab for product description pages “that makes it easier to understand the types of data an app or game may access — before you download it.”
• Dropbox laid off 16% of its staff or around 500 people, blaming slowing growth and the “AI era of computing.”

Funding and M&A

• Yahoo (also TechCrunch’s parent co) acquired Wagr, a three-year-old social sports betting startup based out of Nashville. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Wagr had $16 million in outside funding, including from Greycroft, Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six and others. The deal will see Wagr integrated into Yahoo Sports and Wagr itself shutting down.
• Lookout sold its consumer mobile security business to Finland’s F-Secure in a deal valued at around $223 million, allowing it to fully embrace the enterprise business that have been its larger focus in recent years.
• Fireside, the Mark Cuban-backed interactive entertainment app, confirmed its $25 million Series A, valuing the business at $138 million, post-money. The company had been rumored to be raising at a $125 million valuation last year.
• Kakao Pay, the online payment service of South Korean tech and messaging giant Kakao, acquired a stake in Siebert Financial, a brokerage firm based in New York. Kakao spent $17 million on this transaction and the company now owns a 19.9% stake in Siebert.

Downloads

Runway

Image Credits: Runway

The AI startup Runway, which helped develop the AI image generator Stable Diffusion, launched its first mobile app this week, giving users access to Gen-1, its video-to-video generative AI model. The app allows users to be able to record a video from their phones and generate an AI video in minutes as well as transform any existing video in their library by using text prompts, images or style presets.

Plus, users can select from a list of presets like “Cloudscape,” or transform their video to look like it’s a claymation, charcoal sketch, watercolor art, paper origami and more, TechCrunch’s Lauren Forristal reported, or they can upload an image or type an idea into the text box.

The app is currently iOS-only and has paid subscriptions.

The Standard ($143.99/year) plan offers 625 credits/month and other premium features like 1080p video, unlimited projects and more. The Pro ($344.99/year) plan offers 2,250 credits/month and all of Runway’s 30+ AI tools.

Petey for iPhone

Image Credits: Petey

Petey, the mobile app that introduced ChatGPT to Apple Watch users, recently brought its feature set to the iPhone, allowing users to access its AI assistant more quickly and even swap out Siri with Petey using Apple’s Shortcuts. Now, Petey has a new trick up its sleeve. In its latest update, out today, the app can be connected to Apple Music, so it can make playlists for you or help you add individual songs to your Apple Music library.

The new feature arrives alongside several other updates, including the ability to access the latest AI model, GPT-4, through a paid “Petey Premium” subscription.

To get Petey’s music recommendations, you simply type your request for a playlist into the app’s interface.

The app then lines up short previews of each recommended song below the returned playlist allowing you to scroll through and sample each one. If you like the song, you can tap on the three-dot “more” menu next to the song to either listen to the full version in Apple Music or save the track to your Library. You can also tap the “Create Playlist” button, to give the AI-built playlist a name, then open it up in Apple Music’s app and begin listening.

This Week in Apps: Users pan Snapchat’s AI, Bluesky has a moment, Apple wins antitrust appeal by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

When it comes to cloud growth, it’s probably safe to say that the sky isn’t falling, even though revenue growth rates have been. We’ve seen the aggregate public cloud revenue growth decline from 32% in Q1 last year to 19% this year. That’s a pretty steep drop-off, and it shows that the cloud has run into some headwinds.

As a result, we have seen folks talking about a great repatriation where cloud workloads will move back on-prem, but the evidence doesn’t suggest that’s happening. Instead, companies may be slowing cloud migration as they look at the most efficient way to distribute their workloads.

Clearly, companies have learned that not every workload is well suited to the cloud. Some that can’t deal with even a little bit of latency to get to the cloud and back, for example, need to be hosted on the edge to be closer to the compute source. But it doesn’t look like many IT departments long to go back to the days of racking and stacking new servers.

So why is public cloud growth slowing down? Customers have started to look at their hefty cloud bills, with budgets coming under ever more intensive review this year, looking for ways to cut costs, which Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky acknowledged in the company’s earnings call with analysts this week.

“Enterprise customers continued their multidecade shift to the cloud while working closely with our AWS teams to thoughtfully identify opportunities to reduce costs and optimize their work,” he said during the call. In CFO speak, that means that they aren’t abandoning the cloud, but they are taking a hard look at expenses, which is having a pretty significant impact on the company’s cloud growth numbers.

He added that the slowing growth could continue for a couple more quarters, but that overall customers are still high on the cloud. “So far in the first month of the year, AWS year-over-year revenue growth is in the midteens. That said, stepping back, our new customer pipeline remains healthy and robust, and there are many customers continuing to put plans in place to migrate to the cloud and commit to AWS over the long term.”

By now, the value proposition of the cloud, regardless of the vendor, is clear. It allows a level of flexibility that just isn’t possible when you run your own data center, and running your own data center is expensive and requires an entirely different set of skills from running cloud workloads.

So what does all this mean for the cloud infrastructure market revenue growth? If the data is right, it’s going to be fine. It just looks a little dicey in the short term.

In spite of recent a downward trend, the future remains bright for cloud by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

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 economy in 2023 hit a few snags, as consumer spending last year dropped for the first time by 2% to $167 billion, according to data.ai’s “State of Mobile” report. However, downloads are continuing to grow, up 11% year-over-year in 2022, to reach 255 billion. Consumers are also spending more time in mobile apps than ever before. On Android devices alone, hours spent in 2022 grew 9%, reaching 4.1 trillion.

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

Top Stories

Apple plans its next “sherlock:” journaling apps

Apple is planning to “sherlock” a new class of applications if a new report from The Wall Street Journal holds true. The paper reported Apple is planning to introduce an iPhone journaling application as part of its expansion of health initiatives. The new app, which is unnamed, would challenge those on the market like Day One (acquired by WordPress.com maker Automattic in 2021). The WSJ said a document describing Apple’s app noted journaling helps to improve mental and physical well-being.

The app is reportedly set to arrive with the launch of iOS 17 and would put Apple again in the crosshairs of regulatory scrutiny. The company has come under fire in recent years for its habit of lifting ideas from the wider app developer and partner community. The practice has become so common, it’s got its own name — sherlocking — a reference to Apple software that started this trend decades ago.

The timing of this move is worth noting. Apple is currently under DoJ investigation for alleged anticompetitive behavior in the App Store and in other business practices. The DoJ has spoken to companies who have been “sherlocking” victims as part of its inquiry, including Tile, whose business was hit by the launch of Apple’s AirTag. The Justice Dept. has also spoken to other app developers, including smaller companies like Basecamp and parent control software maker Mobicip, as well as bigger developers like Match and Spotify, about Apple’s App Store terms.

For Apple to now launch yet another app that competes with a number of third-party developers shows Apple is not worried much about the regulatory pressure and isn’t adjusting its behavior.

Related to this, The WSJ also recently ran a feature on Apple’s “kiss of death,” citing partners who detailed what it felt like when the tech giant came calling. After initially being excited by the prospect of an Apple partnership, many partners now say Apple has stolen their ideas for itself, hurting their own businesses.

Twitter’s Checkmark Apocalypse has arrived — and it’s quite the debacle

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

Twitter has finally made good on its promise to yank its users’ verification checkmarks from their profiles in what has to be one of the more ridiculous decisions Elon Musk has made to date since taking ownership of the social media platform.

Seemingly not understanding the value of the company he owns, Musk believes that no one should be verified unless they’re paying Twitter. But in reality, the verification service was a resource provided to Twitter’s community that added value. The blue checkmark symbol indicated that a high-profile figure, celebrity, institution or journalist was who they said they were and not an impersonator.

Twitter is not a curated, visual platform like Instagram, where a verification mark (which you can also now pay for!) provides an influencer with clout or bragging rights. Instead, Twitter is a network that’s centered around the rapid-fire dissemination of news and information in real time. The checkmark meant the source had been already vetted to be the real person, organization or official in question, allowing for faster fact-checks. This aids in newsgathering and establishes a baseline of trust across the platform.

But of course, Musk doesn’t understand this.

He has such a low opinion and value for journalism that he went around adding “state-affiliated media” and then “government-funded” labels to the profiles of news outlets like PBS, NPR, CBC, BBC and others, lumping these editorially independent news-gathering organizations alongside state-run media entities like the Kremlin-backed Russia Today. Some of the news organizations finally left Twitter — something more should do, in fact. (No, I don’t control TC’s social media efforts.)

It’s unclear what’s happening with those labels now, as they’re disappearing from accounts on Friday, including those of China state-affiliated media.

Musk historically has demonstrated a callous disregard for journalism, calling The NYT “fake,” while tweeting out actual fake news himself. He also has Twitter’s comms email respond to press inquiries with a poop emoji. For that reason, it’s almost funny to watch Musk run headfirst into a wall with his complete mishandling of such a pivotal Twitter feature.

After all, if Musk had wanted to generate revenue from Twitter power users, he could have done so by giving ID-verified users their own checkmarks, perhaps with a different color scheme, that provided the set of special features and timeline prioritization that Twitter is now selling with its Blue subscription. That would have added value without disrupting the existing system.

Instead, he’s again created chaos by removing checkmarks from almost everyone, allowing for impersonation — and, in some cases, the spread of dangerous misinformation, as well. On top of that, he left legacy checkmarks on some high-profile accounts, like LeBron James and Stephen King, both of who said they would not pay for Twitter Blue. It was a power play, clearly. If the celebs don’t leave, they’re tacitly confirming they’ve accepted the new system.

In addition, Twitter is being dishonest about who is truly a paid Twitter Blue subscriber.

Yours truly paid for Blue earlier this year to fact-check a story and then immediately canceled. I now continue to have a checkmark despite the subscription’s expiration in February, as documented below. (In any event, don’t bother to follow me on Twitter, by the way — I’m on Bluesky, T2, Post and Mastodon.)

Along with the checkmark removals, Twitter has also now begun pressuring advertisers to either pay for Twitter Blue or Verified Organizations to continue running ads on the platform. Those businesses that already spend over $1,000 per month will have gold checks automatically, Twitter said.

Snap’s Partner Summit focuses on Shopping, AR and AI

Image Credits: Snap

Snap this week hosted its Partner Summit where it shared a number of features, updates and initiatives in areas like e-commerce, AR and AI. The company also used the time to introduce a range of consumer-facing updates for its Snapchat mobile app.

At the event, CEO Evan Spiegel commented on the proposed TikTok ban in the U.S., joking at first that Snap would “love that,” but noting that such a ban sets a dangerous precedent for other social platforms. Though he acknowledged there could be national security concerns, the exec, like Zuckerberg has, also pushed for tech regulations.

“It is important for us to be thoughtful and really develop a regulatory framework to deal with security concerns, especially around technology,” Spiegel.

Among the other event highlights and news:

• Snap said the Snapchat+ paid subscription now has over 3 million users. That’s up from 2 million in February and 1 million last August.
• Snap opened its Public Story revenue share program to creators with at least 50,000 followers and 25,000 monthly Snap views who post at least 10x per month.

Image Credits: Snapchat

• Snapchat added new Story modes like “After Dark” for posts after 8 pm and “Communities” which let users interact with people in their same school.
• Snapchat updated its flashback feature Memories to show friends what they were doing on a given day exactly a year ago.
• The Snap Map will start suggesting places that Snap thinks users would like. A new “Popular Last Night” tag will also show people where their friends were hanging out.
• Snapchat is adding an interactive Lens that lets users complete puzzles and play games together while they’re face-to-face on a video call.

Image Credits: Snapchat

• Snap also announced new AR Lenses powered by generative AI, starting with a new “Cosmic Lens” that turns you and your surroundings into an immersive, animated sci-fi scene. The move follows TikTok’s recently successful launch of the AI filter, “Bold Glamour.” The app will also use AI to recommend Lenses based on the photo or video users provided.

Image Credits: Snapchat

• Bitmoji’s avatar style is being updated with a more expressive look with realistic dimensions, shading and lighting.
• Snap’s enterprise biz, ARES, introduced AR Mirrors — a way to bring AR experiences to real-world locations, like retail stores. Men’s Wearhouse and Nike have used its AR Mirrors in stores and Coca-Cola is building a prototype drink machine with Snap that lets consumers use hand gestures to control the screen.

Image Credits: Snap

• Snapchat announced its AI chatbot, My AI, is now free for all Snapchat global users instead of only Snapchat+ subscribers, as before. However, Snap is also rolling out a subscriber-only My AI feature which will see the chatbot able to “Snap” you back using generative AI to create photos. The AI chatbot will also now be able to be added to group chats with an @mention, make recommendations for places on Snap Map, suggest Lenses and send chat replies when you send it Snaps.

Image Credits: Snap

Platform News

Apple

• Apple is introducing a new feature that will reduce the burden on app developers when it comes to solving subscription billing issues. Often, when an app’s subscribers have a payment method that fails, they’ll turn to the app developer for help. But the developer doesn’t handle billing issues for their App Store apps — those are managed by Apple itself. Now, Apple says a new warning message will appear to prompt users inside the app when their payment method fails, meaning they’ll no longer need to bother the developer for help with this common issue.

• Apple is rumored to be developing VR apps and services for its upcoming mixed-reality headset in categories like gaming, fitness, live sports and collaboration.
• Researchers said they found evidence that Apple’s Lockdown Mode has helped block an attack by hackers using spyware made by the infamous mercenary hacking provider NSO Group.
• Apple launched its Apple Card savings account inside Apple Wallet offering an attention-getting 4.15% APY. The accounts are open to Apple Card holders in the U.S. and are technically managed by Goldman Sachs, so they have FDIC protections.
• Apple Watch’s software is due to get its biggest update since its release, according to a new report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Details were sparse but we expect to hear more at WWDC.

Google

• Google Play will tell users to update their buggy, crashing apps: Google announced a new Play Store feature that will prompt users to update developers’ apps if the app crashes in the foreground and there’s a more stable version of the outdated app already available for download. The feature will apply to phones and tablets running Android 7.0 (SDK level 24) and above. Developers don’t need to do any integration work to take advantage of the feature, which is enabled automatically when Google Play determines a newer version of the app has a statistically relevant, lower crash rate.

• Ahead of Google I/O, a leak is suggesting the upcoming Google Pixel Tablet will be priced around €600-650 ($658.63-$713.52 if converted directly to USD) — pricier than rivals — and the dock will cost around $120.
• Google shared a number of updates to help app publishers increase revenue and grow their businesses with AdMob, including those around inventory access, bidding, revenue optimization and more.
• Google Play Points can now get you more stuff. The company this week announced changes to the program which rewards users with points for making purchases on Google Play to now include app offers — like $10 off DoorDash or Instacart; Google merchandise (like Chrome dino game socks!); in-game items and coupons; and Google Play Credit for making in-app purchases, apps, books and subscriptions.

Image Credits: Google

App Updates

Messaging & Communications

• Telegram’s latest update brings shareable chat folders, custom wallpapers and other features to users. The app’s chat folders can now be shared with a link, the company says, allowing users to invite friends or colleagues to dozens of work groups, collections of news channels and more.
• Google Fi, the tech giant’s carrier service, is being rebranded to Google Fi Wireless and gaining new features, including the ability to add on a Pixel Watch or Samsung Galaxy Watch to their plan at no extra charge. Users can also get a free phone for adding a line if they agree to stay with the service for 24 months, among other things. The options are available from the Google Fi mobile app and website, where consumers manage their service.
• The company behind the popular iPhone customization app Brass and others launched an AI chat app called Superchat, which allows iOS users to chat with virtual characters powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Other companies already offer AI chats with characters in more advanced ways, including D-ID. Meanwhile, the developer of another AI chat app called Superchat says their concept was ripped off by another Superchat app before they could launch. “Super chat” is not a unique name, though, as it’s well-known as YouTube’s paid live chatting feature for creators and fans.

Gaming

• Roblox’s reach into a slightly older demographic is expanding, data shows. The gaming platform maker’s 17-to-24 age group has grown 33% year-over-year as kids are aging up but remaining on the platform.
• Netflix is launching a follow-up to the supernatural thriller Oxenfree after acquiring the studio behind the game (Night School Studio) in 2021. The company says Oxenfree II: Lost Signals will arrive on July 12 on Netflix, Nintendo Switch, PS4/PS5 and Steam. Netflix recently announced it has 40 games slated for launch this year and has 70 in development with its partners.

• Netflix also just hired former Halo Infinite creative head Joseph Staten to develop a multi-platform AAA title for the Netflix Games division. Staten will serve as a creative director at Netflix, he announced in a tweet, adding that his work will focus on developing on original IP.
• Meta opened up its social VR space Horizon Worlds to teen users aged 13 to 17 after originally keeping it to 18 and up. The company said as part of its expansion it would include age-appropriate protections and safety defaults. Children’s rights activists had earlier urged Meta to abandon its plans to court younger users.
• Niantic announced a partnership with Capcom to launch a game within the Monster Hunter franchise later this year. The new mobile title will come to both iOS and Android and will have players hunt monsters in the real world.

Social

Image Credits: Meta

• Instagram said users can now add up to five links to their profiles, in a move that challenges Linktree, Beacons and numerous other “link in bio” solution providers.
• Reddit is shifting to a paid subscription model for API access, impacting app developers like the makers of the popular Reddit app, Apollo. The change will likely mean most third-party apps will need to shift to their own subscription model going forward. The company’s decision has to do with the demand for data to train AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and others. “The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable…we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free,” said Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.
• The Verge does a deep divide into ActivityPub, the open source, decentralized social networking protocol powering Mastodon and the wider Fediverse. Want to get up to speed on the state of the Fediverse and its potential? This is a good place to start.
• Fiction apps Wattpad and Yonder are now being overseen by KB Nam, previously head of Strategy and Research at their parent company Naver Webtoon. Nam will report directly to Webtoon Americas president, Ken Kim.
• The Jack Dorsey-backed Twitter alternative Bluesky arrived on Android but remains invite-only. The community has around 20,000 users but the app has been downloaded 240,000 times on iOS to date.

Image Credits: Bluesky

• Magazine app Flipboard is furthering its investment in the Fediverse with its newly launched “editorial desks” that curate news for the Mastodon community. Initially, the company will launch four desks — News, Tech, Culture and Science — which it says won’t be automated by bots but instead by professional curators who have expertise in discovering and elevating interesting content.
• Pinterest hired a Google Pixel VP to fill its CPO position. Sabrina Ellis spent the last 12 years at Google, where she led the work on Google Pixel. Previously, she spent eight years at Yahoo in numerous leadership roles. She will replace Pinterest’s current senior vice president of product, Naveen Gavini.
• Imgur plans to ban explicit images, while still allowing for artistic nudity starting on May 15. The company says the service will adopt a mix of automatic and human moderation. The changes may impact NSFW subreddits (communities) on Reddit which allow for explicit images. The MediaLab-owned company said explicit content was a risk to Imgur’s “community and its business,” as the reason for the move.

Streaming and Entertainment

Image Credits: Spotify

• Spotify announced it will now work with BeReal to allow the social app’s users to share what they’re listening to on Spotify through a new integration. After connecting your accounts, BeReal will automatically pull in the song or podcast you’re listening to on Spotify at the time you capture a BeReal.
• Creator company Jellysmack is partnering with Spotify to bring its creators to the streaming platform. A selection of its creators will upload weekly video podcast episodes to the service, including Ed Bolian (VINwiki), Audit the Audit, Christina Randall, Brooke Makenna, and Jessica Kent.
• Cameo introduced Cameo Collage, a free group-gifting feature. Gift givers can now combine celebrity Cameo videos with more personalized videos, images, GIFS and written messages from friends and family to create a digital collage for the recipient.
• Netflix in its Q1 earnings said it would begin its password-sharing crackdown in the U.S. and other countries this summer (Q2). It has already implemented the changes in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain.
• Netflix reported mixed earnings with revenue of $8.16 billion, behind estimates of $8.18 billion. It reported higher-than-expected earnings of $2.88 per share in Q1, as analysts had anticipated $2.86 per share.

Transportation

Image Credits: Google / Waze

• Waze on Google built-in has come to Volvo Cars and Polestar 2 cars. After a one-time setup, Volvo and Polestar drivers can access Waze’s real-time routing, navigation, alerts, settings, preferences and saved places on a bigger, eye-level display.

Health & Fitness

• Marvel announced a new mobile fitness app, Marvel Move, featuring immersive audio-based running routines with popular Marvel Comics characters. The app, part of a collaboration with Six to Start, co-creator of the popular fitness app Zombies, Run!, includes five storylines to choose from including Thor & Loki, X-Men, The Hulk, Daredevil and Doctor Strange and the Scarlet Witch.

News

• Samsung launched its own take on Apple News with its new “Samsung News” app that gives users access to everyday news from a variety of publications. The app will replace the company’s current “Samsung Free” app, and includes custom news feeds in addition to morning and evening briefings about the top news of the day.

Government, Policy and Lawsuits

• WhatsApp, Signal, Viber, Wire and other encrypted messaging apps signed an open letter asking the U.K. government to “urgently rethink” its Online Safety Bill legislation, which they say will force tech companies to break end-to-end encryption on private messaging services, weakening the “privacy of billions of people around the world.”
• Google has asked the court to dismiss multiple claims in its antitrust trial with Epic Games, Match, state AGs and others. In a new filing, Google’s legal team is now asking the court to dismiss several of the plaintiffs’ arguments regarding the nature of its app store business, revenue-sharing agreements and other app store-related projects in a partial motion for summary judgment. Google believes the court should now have enough information on hand to make determinations on a handful of the plaintiffs’ claims before the case goes to trial, saying that these items are not in violation of antitrust law. If the court agrees with Google’s position, the trial would still move forward as other claims would still need to be argued in court.

• The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) opened a consultation on Google’s proposal to let developers use alternative payment methods for in-app purchases on Android, aka “User Choice Billing.” It’s inviting interested stakeholders to respond to Google’s proposal by May 19 and will then make a decision on whether to accept the comments and resolve the case. Google is suggesting it cuts its commission to 4% if the developer offers Google’s own billing alongside their own. But this would only be cut to 3% if just third-party billing was offered.
• Montana lawmakers approved a bill that would ban TikTok and would bar app stores from offering the app within the state, starting on January 1, 2024. It’s unclear how such a measure would be enforced as the app stores don’t offer a way to block distribution by state, only by country.

Funding and M&A

• Starboard (Formerly Olympic Media) concluded the acquisition of right-wing Twitter alternative Parler and shut it down. The company said of the decision: “No reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more [sic].” The Parler app will undergo a strategic assessment and it’s not clear what the company has in store for its future.
• Epic Games expanded its Latin American footprint with its acquisition of the Brazilian game development studio Aquiris. The developer is best known for “Wonderbox: The Adventure Maker,” a magic-themed game-creation sandbox available on Apple Arcade.

• Myxt, an audio file management platform for creators, raised $2 million in seed funding led by Accel Ventures and Quiet Capital. The startup offers a collaborative workplace app for audio creators that’s available on web, iOS and Android, where users can stream tracks, organize files and back up their library.
• SoundHound closed on $100 million in strategic funding from Atlas Credit Partners as part of a new $125 million loan facility. The publicly traded company is using the money to refinance its debt and continue to fund its long-term strategy.
• Japanese gaming giant Sega is acquiring Finland’s Rovio in an all-cash deal worth €706 million ($775 million). The deal is expected to close in Q2 or Rovio’s fiscal year (in the next couple of months). Sega’s offer represents a 63.1% premium on Rovio’s closing price on January 19.

Downloads

Wavelength

Image Credits: Wavelength

An interesting new chat app called Wavelength has arisen out of the ashes of the social networking app Telepath, which shut down last year. Now the team has shifted its focus to improving group chat experiences. Instead of having different group chats, it introduces the idea of threaded messaging combined with AI. The threads help to keep group chats less cluttered by making it easier to follow multiple conversations at once.

In addition, users can add OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 into their group chats by mentioning @AI. This makes the app among the first to offer chatting with AI. Snapchat is also now doing this with its My AI feature as is Ghost, which allows groups to chat with ChatGPT.

The startup aims to focus in other areas as well, like privacy, moderation, discovery and more. Notably, John Gruber is an advisor for the currently iOS and Mac-only app.

You can read more about Wavelength here.

Nocam

A new social video app called Nocam has a radical idea to make social networking more authentic — it’s turning off the camera so you can’t see how you look while filming. The idea is to make capturing a moment feel natural while reducing the friction that comes with seeing a preview of your own image, which can often leave users hesitant to post or scrambling to add edits and filters to touch up their appearance.

Image Credits: Nocam

Nocam believes this concept better reflects the way people interact in real life, where we aren’t faced by a mirror that shows us what we look like, that is. The company describes its app as BeReal meets TikTok. But perhaps it’s more accurate to say BeReal meets TikTok Challenges, as the app focuses on sending users fun or silly prompts they have to act out with the camera, like doing a dance or just showing what they’re up to. Users can also prompt their friends, too.

You can read more about Nocam here.

Proton Pass

Image Credits: Proton

Proton, the maker of the end-to-end encrypted email service Proton Mail, Proton VPN, Proton Drive and Proton Calendar, this week launched a new password manager called Proton Pass. Everything stored in the app is end-to-end encrypted, and Proton itself never has access to your data. The beta version is live now to Proton users with a lifetime plan and will then roll out to other subscribers and customers in the future.

The app comes about from the company’s acquisition of SimpleLogin, an email alias startup, and is available as a desktop as a browser extension, iOS or Android app.

You can read more about Proton Pass here.

Etc.

Does anyone wish they still had their old phone?

This Week in Apps: Apple ‘sherlocks’ journaling apps, Twitter’s checkmark apocalypse, Snap summit recap by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Google is hoping to speed along the resolution of its antitrust legal battle with Fortnite maker Epic Games, Match Group, and state Attorneys General. In a new filing, Google’s legal team is now asking the court to dismiss several of the plaintiffs’ arguments regarding the nature of its app store business, revenue-sharing agreements, and other app store-related projects in a partial motion for summary judgment.

According to Google, it believes the court should now have enough information on hand to make determinations on a handful of the plaintiffs’ claims before the case goes to trial, saying that these items are not in violation of antitrust law. If the court agrees with Google’s position, the trial would still move forward as other claims would still need to be argued in court.

Google specifically wants the court’s judgment on five key claims which would seemingly be pivotal to the plaintiffs’ ability to prove anticompetitive behavior.

It wants the court to dismiss the argument that Google’s Developer Distribution Agreement is illegal because it prohibits the distribution of other app stores. Google counters this by saying it doesn’t have a legal obligation to distribute to other app stores, and notes that most Android devices come preloaded with more than one app store. In addition, it points out that consumers can install additional app stores from the web browser.

“Android is the only major mobile platform that allows multiple app stores,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “In fact, most Android devices ship with two or more app stores preinstalled, and consumers can install others. Epic, Match Group and the state Attorneys General ignore the openness and choice Android and Google Play offer, and we look forward to making our case in court,” they added.

Another argument it wants dismissed is focused on “Project Hug,” a Google-run program that was designed to incentivize Android game developers to keep their games on the Google Play Store. The plaintiffs argued that Google quietly paid game developers millions of dollars in incentives as part of this initiative, which was later known as the “Apps and Games Velocity Program.” Epic Games alleged the program came about because Google was scared other developers would follow its lead after it exclusively released Fortnite for Android outside the Play Store through its own installer. Supposedly, Google was also worried Epic might strike up other exclusive pre-install deals with OEMs like Samsung to lower its revenue splits.

The program itself was fairly successful as Google was able to forge deals with a number of developers, including Activision Blizzard, to keep their games on the Play Store, earlier filings had stated.

Google, however, argues that Project Hug was not an anticompetitive move, but has been mischaracterized by the plaintiffs. It says the program offered developers benefits and early access to Google Play users when developers released new or updated content, but did not prevent developers from creating competing app stores.

The company is also pushing back against claims over revenue-sharing agreements with wireless carriers, saying they are outside the statute of limitations. The agreements have been expired for more than four years, Google says, so should be dismissed.

In addition, Google claims the AGs and consumer class were unable to show that Google harmed competition by selling app subscriptions and in-app purchases to consumers. For that reason, consumers should not be able to recover any of these alleged overcharges, Google says.

The final claim focuses on tying — or the allegation that in order to buy one product, the buyer also had to purchase a different (or tied) product. The plaintiffs argued that Google Play and Google Play’s billing services are illegally tied together, but Google says this isn’t true. Instead, it argues Play’s billing services are not a separate product. It also notes that over 90% of the apps on Google Play are free and developers pay nothing when they are downloaded.

The new push for a partial summary judgment follows shortly after last month’s ruling that Google’s failure to preserve some of its messages for discovery requires sanctions. The plaintiffs successfully demonstrated that Google employees tended to switch off chat history on internal discussions, in an effort to destroy sensitive communications related to the case. The DoJ recently cited the same issue in its own antitrust investigation. The judge gave the plaintiffs’ lawyers until April 21 to provide an amount in legal fees they are seeking as part of the sanctions, as a start.

Google earlier asked for the trial to be delayed and was denied.

Epic Games has been asked for comment and we’ll update if one is provided.

Google asks court to dismiss multiple claims in Epic Games antitrust trial by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

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 economy in 2023 hit a few snags, as consumer spending last year dropped for the first time by 2% to $167 billion, according to data.ai’s “State of Mobile” report. However, downloads are continuing to grow, up 11% year-over-year in 2022 to reach 255 billion. Consumers are also spending more time in mobile apps than ever before. On Android devices alone, hours spent in 2022 grew 9%, reaching 4.1 trillion.

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

Finally, finally, newsrooms leave Twitter

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

This week was one of the more interesting ones for Twitter since Elon Musk’s takeover, as multiple newsrooms finally had enough of Elon Musk’s antics. After Musk labeled NPR and others as “state-affiliated media” — a label previously reserved for state propaganda accounts, like the Kremlin-backed Russia Today and China’s Xinhua — NPR and PBS have stopped tweeting.

After backlash to NPR’s new label, Twitter shifted to a newly made-up designation, “government-funded media.”

In addition to NPR, the news organizations PBS and the BBC received the new labels as well. The BBC objected, too, and Twitter changed its label to “publicly funded” instead. (PBS and NPR remain labeled as “government-funded” as of the time of writing.)

Musk’s capricious decision to lump independent news organizations alongside state-supported propaganda accounts is both misleading and dangerous. NPR, for instance, receives “less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.” PBS receives more of its funding from the public and philanthropic organizations than it does from the small amount it gets from government subsidies.

More importantly — unlike in state regimes where government officials heavily influence the spread of information to the people — NPR and PBS are editorially independent.

Whether you like the nature of their reporting is, of course, a subjective matter. But an objective analysis puts the two in the middle of the Ad Fontes media bias chart.

Musk, however, wanted to sully their brands by suggesting the U.S. government has influence over their reporting. That’s what labeling them “state media” or “government-funded” does, and he certainly knows it.

The Twitter owner delights in dragging down the media, having already done so on numerous occasions. He has tweeted conspiracies and called The NYT’s news “fake.” He banned reporters who commented on his own ban of a bot that tracked his private jet. He has shown so little regard for the media that he set Twitter’s press email to respond to inquiries with a poop emoji.

What he gets from these sorts of antics is unclear, because it’s not good for the business he runs.

The erratic billionaire seems more interested in performing stunts for his fans — followers who cheer on dumb things like this — than ensuring Twitter’s own brand can stay afloat.

But so far, the real-world fallout has been minimal. Not this week. To actually target media like this — by marring their brands on Twitter’s platform — was the last straw for some.

In addition to NPR and PBS, other news organizations have also now abandoned ship, including Boston NPR affiliate WBUR, Hawaii Public Radio and LA-based local news source LAist. You can be sure many others are reconsidering the extent of their investments.

What Musk may not understand is that, despite journalists’ own addictions to the app, Twitter actually sends very little traffic to news sites. And what it does send is declining. Largely, media organizations get inbound views from much bigger platforms, like Facebook, Google Search and Google News.

They can, in fact, live without Twitter. And now they will.

What’s more, if more newsrooms are to follow suit, Twitter’s reputation will be harmed. The app, after all, is not listed in the Social Networking category on the App Store, but in “News.” The network, if anything, is known as the first place news lands, not only from traditional media organizations but from on-the-ground, live tweets by regular people witnessing news events, too.

But if the news leaves Twitter, what will Twitter become?

Death by a thousand cuts: The Twitter alternatives grow

At the same time, Twitter alternatives are siphoning off portions of the user base, including those interested in discussions around news and other topical events.

This week, for instance, Twitter and Substack got into it over Substack’s launch of Notes, its new Twitter-like discussions feature for newsletter authors and their readers. In response, Twitter throttled Substack links, put up warnings and prevented users from liking, replying or retweeting posts with Substack links.

Musk also accused Substack of trying to download a massive portion of its user base to bootstrap Substack Notes.

In an exceedingly awkward interview with The Verge, where Substack CEO Chris Best should have been able to take a victory lap as a viable Twitter threat, he instead fully dropped the ball. The exec dodged questions over content moderation, making it clear to anyone following that Substack would permit all kinds of speech — potentially losing the company new subscribers who would have otherwise considered joining.

For example, when pressed about whether or not racist speech would be allowed on Substack, Best would not respond with an affirmative “no.” Instead, he replied, “We have content policies that are deliberately tuned to allow lots of things that we disagree with, that we strongly disagree with.” When pressed further, he wouldn’t even respond to a question as to whether or not it would allow “overt racism” on the platform. “I’m not going to engage in speculation,” he said.

Wow, just wow.

And yet, Best’s obvious signaling here could appeal to a certain toxic-leaning crowd that still hangs out on Twitter.

It’s clear at least that Elon Musk must view Substack as a threat to Twitter’s business because of its appeal to self-identified free speech enthusiasts who now rally around Musk himself.

Substack isn’t alone in targeting Twitter’s users with a new discussion platform at this time.

Though arguably aiming for a different demographic, the news aggregator app Artifact from Instagram’s founders this week rolled out commenting.

Like Substack Notes, the feature could appeal to those who want to engage in discussions around the news, though perhaps those of a more civil nature. Artifact promises it will engage in moderation, bans if needed, and it curates its news sources upfront. And with the app’s newly Reddit-like comment upvoting features and user reputation scores, it’s incentivizing people to spend their time building up a name for themselves on its platform, instead of over on Twitter.

Then there are the many, many Twitter alternatives to contend with, including Mastodon (and its app ecosystem), Bluesky, T2, Post and others still to emerge.

While most are being built as Twitter clones, Post’s idea is to create a feed that caters to news publishers by allowing for micropayments that let users read otherwise paywalled articles. The idea is interesting but, like all newcomers, the question is one of scale.

Still, as newsrooms scramble for Twitter’s exit doors, Post’s platform could look more appealing. And if the news orgs come, the people may follow.

Even if these alternatives only pull a few thousand users away from Twitter at first, those numbers could grow over time as each individual network grows. It’s too soon to say if any will pull ahead as the default “new Twitter,”  but they could deliver death by a thousand cuts, so to speak.

Why Twitter won’t die

That begs the question as to if or when Twitter itself will ever actually die. And the answer is that it may not for quite some time.

Myspace still lived long after Facebook took over. (In fact, you can still sign up.)

Google Plus became a barren wasteland long before Google pulled the plug. (It was even hacked and no one cared!)

BlackBerry phones were sold well into the iPhone era. (Kim Kardashian still carried one for years.)

In other words, we won’t just wake up one day to find Twitter has suddenly gone offline. It will slowly become less relevant, barring major changes to get it back on track, and when it dies we may not even notice.

Already, Twitter is morphing into something new. Today’s Twitter is nothing like its predecessor. Across every front, the app is being made over, often for the worse.

Musk revamped Twitter Blue with the goal of democratizing verification, only to create a system where something that was once a feature that made Twitter better, was now a curse. Verification previously served the purpose of confirming people were who they claimed. Now, it’s open to anyone, including bad actors, who want to masquerade as others or cause trouble. What’s more, Twitter says it plans to make the main For You (algorithmic) timeline only available to those who pay — a move that would make Twitter far less useful.

Musk also cut off API access to app developers, then updated its API pricing to make building simple Twitter tools, like helpful bots, out of reach. Apps and bots have since shut down.

He also reinstated controversial accounts, like those of white supremacists, and now generally uses Twitter to create chaos, leading to continual confusion among users as to what the state of the network is on any given day.

Twitter currently keeps itself in the news by being in a constant state of flux. 

Over the past several days, for instance, Twitter announced it would reduce Twitter Blue subscribers’ ad load; saw Twitter Circle bugs that allowed others to see private tweets; got sued by its ex-CEO and other execs over unpaid legal bills; announced a new date (4/20 ofc) to remove legacy checkmarks; rebranded Super Follows to Subscriptions, promising creators it won’t keep any of their money at first; partnered with the investment platform eToro to show real-time information about stocks and crypto prices; and added support for 10,000-character-long tweets.

All this activity masks what’s actually going on: Twitter’s slower, quieter demise.

Musk can claim all he likes that the company is now breaking even. The fact is, it’s been losing money compared to where it was before.

Over the past two months,the top 50 Twitter advertisers spent $83 million, down from $102 million year-over-year, and major brands including Mars, AT&T, VW and Stellantis haven’t returned. Traffic to Twitter’s ad portal was down 18.7% year-over-year, indicating declining interest from marketers. The percentage of Americans who reported using Twitter dropped from 32.4% to 29.5% from pre-Elon to post-Elon, one survey said.

Advertisers aren’t just on pause. They’ve also seemingly lost trust in Twitter, as Quartz reported this week with the damning headline “Elon Musk is personally ruining Twitter’s ad business.” The article notes the company is expected to bring in 28% less revenue this year than in 2022, or $2.98 billion down from $4.14 billion.

Despite everything, Twitter has perservered, and will likely take some time before it reaches its inevitable end. Widespread company-wide layoffs and Twitter’s refusal to pay its bills or its rent have helped it stay afloat in the near term.

But the company can’t run on Musk’s hopes and dreams about becoming a super app called “X” forever. Twitter will require funds to stay alive. And if cash isn’t flowing in from advertisers, then perhaps Musk will dig into his own pockets or those of its Saudi investors to keep the tweet engine going for a bit longer.

In other words, don’t hold your breath awaiting Twitter’s coming demise.

But feel free to withhold your attention.

Weekly News

Platforms

Apple

• iOS 16.4.1 was released with bug fixes related to emoji skin tone variations and Siri — the latter addressing issues that caused Siri to not respond at times; iPadOS 16.4.1 accompanied the release.
• Apple also released security updates for its older operating systems, including iOS 15.7.5, iPadOS 15.7.5, macOS Monterey 12.6.5 and macOS Big Sur 11.7.6.
• New beta builds rolled out, too, including iOS 16.5 Beta 2 and iPadOS 16.5 Beta 2, as well as macOS 13.4, watchOS 9.5 and tvOS 16.5.

Google

Image Credits: Brian Heater

• ANDROID 14 After two developer previews, Google launched the first of four planned public beta releases of Android 14. The beta is also the first release that anyone can install over the air if they have a supported Pixel device. There are only a couple of user-facing changes in the beta, including a new back arrow that matches your wallpaper or theme. Developers will also be able to add custom actions to the system sharesheet, which will now be smarter about how it ranks sharing targets.
• Google made a series of announcements at KotlinConf, where it was a gold-level sponsor. A summary of the latest news can be found here, including news that the K2 compiler will be released in Kotlin 2.0, Compose for iOS is in Alpha, the Gradle Kotlin DSL will be the default for new builds, Kotlin Multiplatform will become stable this year, and more.
• Google says that Play Store apps that allow for account creation will also have to add features that let users “initiate account and data deletion” from their app and online. The change is being rolled out slowly to give developers time to comply.

Image Credits: Google

• Starting May 31, Google will restrict personal loan apps from accessing sensitive user data like photos, videos, precise location, call logs, external storage and contacts after many app makers’ engaged in predatory behavior by harassing borrowers in India and Kenya. Google also introduced rules to ban unlicensed loan apps from the Google Play Store.
• Google brings its AirPlay-like Nearby Share feature to Windows so you can transfer files between Android and PCs.
• Google’s Android is gaining a new auto-archive feature for apps. The company says the feature will reduce unnecessary uninstalls and help users successfully install new apps. “Once a user opts in, auto-archive can help them automatically free up to nearly 60% of an app’s storage space, without removing the app presence or users’ data from the device,” said Google.

App Updates

AI

• Baidu sued various app developers and Apple over the numerous fake apps pretending to be its Ernie AI bot on the App Store. Launched last month, Ernie — a Chinese version of something like the U.S.-based ChatGPT — does not have an official app. At the time of the announcement, there were at least four fake apps found.
• Snapchat added new guardrails around its AI chatbot. The app had been criticized for responding in an unsafe and inappropriate manner shortly after its launch in February. Now, the AI bot will include an age filter and insights for parents and guardians about their children’s interactions with the chatbot in its parent controls hub, Family Center.
• The $4.99 ChatGPT app for Apple Watch, Petey AI, expanded to the iPhone with a recent update. The new app is faster than the watch-based counterpart and supports Dynamic Island and Live Activities. You can also switch out Siri with Petey using Siri Shortcuts.

Image Credits: Petey

• Poe’s AI chatbot app, made by Quora, now lets users make their own chatbots using prompts combined with an existing bot, like ChatGPT, as the base. Initially, Poe debuted with support for a handful of general knowledge chatbots, including Sage and Dragonfly, powered by OpenAI technology, and Claude, powered by Anthropic. Last month, Poe rolled out subscriptions that allow users to pay to access the more powerful bots based on new language models, including GPT-4 from OpenAI and Claude+ from Anthropic. The new chatbot feature will only work with Claude and ChatGPT as the base bots and works on both web and mobile.

• User spending on AI apps increased by more than 4,000% year-over-year, according to Apptopia data. Downloads also increased by 1506% year-over-year, reaching nearly 20 million in March. Multiple similarly named apps like Nova AI, Genie AI and Chat with Ask AI have broken into top charts. Chat with Ask AI was on the top 10 free apps list on iOS in multiple countries.

Image Credits: Apptopia

• The European Parliament is close to finalizing new AI measures that will require chatbot makers to reveal if they use copyrighted material, the FT reported citing sources.
• Pixelmator Photo rebranded as Photomator and introduced a new AI-powered subject selection feature, as well as others around selective adjustments, brush selections, gradient mask tools and more.
• Microsoft added three AI features to its SwiftKey keyboard app on iOS and Android: web search results, a tone option where AI writes text, and its AI chatbot. The features were previously available in Bing. The company also announced Bing recently hit 100 million daily users (and 100 million chats).

Social

Image Credits: Instagram

•   Instagram Reels gained a number of new features in a significant update. Among the changes are features that help creators see what’s trending in terms of both audio and hashtags, new tools that make it easier to edit reels in the app, an expansion of gifts to more markets outside the U.S., updates to Reels insights with two new metrics (total watch time and avg. watch time) and a new way to see how your reels are contributing to your growth.

Image Credits: Instagram

• Pinterest expanded its Creator Inclusion Fund to 5 more countries: Canada, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France. The program began in 2021 to help communities that Pinterest said have been “disproportionately underrepresented — including Black, Latiné, LGBTQIA+, Asian, Indigenous people and people with disabilities.” The fund has already supported creators in the U.S., U.K. and Brazil.
• Reddit posts on its main feeds were revamped to now have a cleaner layout with less unused space and more emphasis on community. The company said the changes will make it “easier for redditors to find the conversations they’re looking for.”
• Yik Yak users are angry about the changes being made to the anonymous chat app after its acquisition by Sidechat. Its new parent company revamped the Yik Yak app to look and function like the anonymous college chat app, when Yik Yak before was more community-based. The apps appear to now run on the same servers and users are asked for their student ID, which they worry will identify them or allow for targeted ads.

• Snapchat’s Lenses have arrived in Microsoft Teams. With the launch, Teams users gain access to a collection of 26 popular Lenses during meetings. The Lenses let you do things like turn yourself into a cartoon character or add fun backgrounds to your video calls.
• Snap also signed new music licensing deals to expand its Sounds library, which offers music that can be used in Snaps and Stories.
• Instagram added new features to its creator marketplace via new APIs to make it easier for brands to discover and work with creators on the third-party creator marketing platforms they already use. It also expanded access to brand agencies.
• Artifact, the recently launched personalized news app from Instagram’s founders, launched a social discussions feature. Previously in private testing, the feature introduces a way for users to comment and engage in conversations around news articles they’re reading on the service, which can then be up and downvoted by others, similar to Reddit. Users will also gain a visible reputation score based on their activity.

• Following last month’s NBC News investigation into Pinterest that exposed how pedophiles had been using the service to curate image boards of young girls, the company on Tuesday announced further safety measures for its platform, including a new set of parental controls and updated age verification policies, among other things. However, the company also said that it would soon re-open some of its previously locked-down features for teens to allow them to once again message and share content with others after approving contacts.

Messaging

• WhatsApp is now easier to use on multiple devices thanks to a new companion mode that lets you access your account across more than one smartphone.
• WhatsApp users in Brazil can also now pay merchants through the app, allowing consumers to have end-to-end shopping experiences from discovery to checkout.

Streaming & Entertainment

• Spotify shut down its Clubhouse-style live audio app Spotify Live, previously known as Locker Room ahead of its acquisition. Spotify bought the company in its €57 million acquisition of Betty Labs in March 2021.
• Spotify also said it’s shutting down Heardle, the Wordle-like music guessing game it acquired last year, saying its new focus will be on the discovery features it introduced recently at Stream On, including the new TikTok-like recommendation feeds.
• Spotify and activity tracking app Strava teamed up on a new in-app integration that lets users easily access their Spotify music, podcasts and audiobooks from the Strava app while tracking activities.
• Warner Bros. Discovery announced its new streaming service Max that will combine HBO Max and Discovery+ content into a single destination. The company promised a better-performing, more personalized app across platforms, which will include a range of new titles, including more spin-offs from Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, True Detective, Big Bang Theory and others, as well as more DC Comics movies. The HBO Max will automatically update to become Max on most platforms on May 23, but Discovery+ users will be allowed to remain in their same app if they choose.

Image Credits: Warner Bros. Discovery

• Despite the threat of a TikTok ban, U.S. advertising on TikTok grew 11% in March 2023 with top spenders including Apple, Pepsi, DoorDash and Amazon.
• TikTok was spotted testing a new “Explore” tab, similar to Instagram. The tab could replace the Friends tab where TikTok today lets users keep up with their contacts and post BeReal-like photos and videos in its own TikTok Now experience.

• TikTok quietly launched “animated video stickers” for direct messages in February. The new stickers work like GIFs and are an expansion of TikTok Stickers, which first rolled out last December, letting users create and upload their own custom images to be used in direct messages.
• YouTube added a Podcasts tab to channel pages globally on its website and mobile apps that show the playlists that creators have marked as podcasts. The new tab appears between “Live” and “Playlists.”
• YouTube added new features to its paid subscription YouTube Premium bringing enhanced bitrate 1080p support on iOS and the web for “extra crisp and clear” videos, plus support for Apple’s SharePlay, and access to managing your queue on mobile.

Image Credits: YouTube

• The popular music player Winamp is coming to iOS and Android after a big revamp, but it won’t be what users expect. Now owned by a company called Llama Group, the online player doesn’t look like the old Winamp at all. Instead, it will work as a streaming service where users only follow their favorite artists, who they also support in a sort of Patreon-like model of subscriptions. Currently, only some indie European and Vietnamese bands and singers were available. The player is available on the web for now, with mobile apps arriving in Q3.
• Sling TV came to the Amazon Echo Show 8 and 10, nearly two years after Amazon first announced it would.
• Spotify finally added an iPhone Lock Screen widget that offers an icon that will provide easy access to the app. The icon of the Spotify logo, when tapped, launches the iOS app before unlocking the phone.

Image Credits: Spotify

Gaming

• Nintendo and app developer DeNA officially launched Nintendo Systems, the joint venture first unveiled back in November, which is meant to help reinforce Nintendo’s business and “create value-added services,” the companies said. It’s not yet known what exactly the two companies are currently working on, as no games or software have been announced.
• Nintendo is pulling Mario away from the mobile gaming market. In a Variety report, Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto said that “mobile apps will not be the primary path of future Mario games.” The company had earlier launched two moderately successful iOS titles and others, Dr. Mario World, that was removed two years after its release. Super Mario Run grossed $60 million in its first year and 2019’s Mario Kart Tour has generated $300 million.
• Pokémon GO is sidestepping the App Store and Google’s Play Store by selling its PokéCoins via its new Pokémon GO Web Store. The company emailed it users to notify them of the launch where it’s selling the bundles. The U.S., however, was not among the countries supported at launch.
• Messenger introduced 14 free-to-play games you can play during video calls in the messaging app on the web, iOS or Android. Among the titles were Words With Friends, Card Wars, Exploding Kittens, Mini Gold FRVR and more.

Image Credits: Facebook Gaming

Fintech

• Social finance app Hyve opened to the public after earlier raising $2.25 million in a pre-seed round in January 2022 from an investor group that included The Flying Whale VC, MoreVC and the founders of Guardio. The app is targeting Gen Z and young millennials with tools to pay down debt, save and invest with the help of friends and family.
• Visa announced a new interoperable peer-to-peer (P2P) payment offering, Visa+, that allows people to transfer money to friends even if they use a different payment service. The service will later this year power a new integration that lets Venmo and PayPal users transfer money between their users — both are owned by PayPal, however. Other companies that have committed to Visa+ include Western Union, TabaPay, i2C and DailyPay.

Image Credits: Visa

Security

• Hackers used spyware created by an under-the-radar Israeli spyware maker QuaDream to create malicious calendar invites in order to hack the iPhones of journalists, political opposition figures and one NGO worker.
• WhatsApp introduced new device verification and account protection features, including new defenses against SIM jacking and other social engineering attacks. The downside of the changes is that moving WhatsApp to a new phone may become more difficult with added steps.
• Several security experts found malware on Chinese shopping app Pinduoduo that exploited vulnerabilities in the Android OS. The exploits were said to be used to spy on both users and competitors in an effort to boost sales and were found in off-Play Store versions of the app, as Google Play Protect would have likely identified the malware. The team working on the app was then moved to Temu, now a top U.S. shopping app.

Etc.

• You can now order a Domino’s pizza from your car thanks to the app’s new CarPlay support.
• Amazon removed systemwide hands-free Alexa access on Alexa Built-In smartphones, including a handful of models from OnePlus, as well as models from brands like Motorola, Sony, LG and Moto.
• Truecaller rolled out an update that will finally provide live caller ID support on iOS, available to people using its paid tiers. However, the system comes with a catch — it only works via a Siri interaction, due to Apple’s limitations on third-party caller ID apps.
• Opera, the makers of an ad-blocking web browser, rolled out an updated version of its iOS app that now includes its free VPN. Previously available on Mac, Windows, Linux and Android, the iOS release now makes Opera the first browser to offer a free VPN service across all major computing platforms, the company said.
• ComiXology vets return to startups with DSTLRY, a next-gen comics publisher that will distribute both in print and digitally via an app that will launch further down the road.
• Google Maps introduced new features to make it easier for users to navigate national parks, including trail maps that show the entire route, not just a pin.

Government & Policy

• Apple won an appeal against a U.K. antitrust regulator that wanted to open an investigation of the iPhone makers’ mobile browser and cloud gaming service. The Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT) ruled the regulator was too late in deciding to open the probe. “We are pleased with the Competition Appeal Tribunal’s decision and will continue working to deliver support for developers and a safe and secure experience for users,” said Apple.
• TikTok was fined £12.7 million (~$15.7 million) for breaching U.K. data protection law, including rules intended to protect children. Per the ICO, TikTok had an estimated 1.4 million underage U.K. users during a two-year period (May 2018 and July 2020), contrary to the terms of service stating users must be 13 or older.
• Australia is the latest country to ban TikTok on government devices. Other countries with bans include New Zealand, the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Belgium and others in the EU.
• Germany’s antitrust authority confirmed Apple meets its test for special abuse controls — saying the company has “paramount significance for competition across markets”. The designation stands for five years and allows Apple to face an inquiry into its possible antitrust abuses. Apple plans to appeal.
• Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communications is opening a probe into TikTok over harmful content and false information. The ministry said TikTok’s Vietnam arm had taken down 2.43 million videos uploaded by Vietnamese users in Q1 2023 over violations of community guidelines related to “nudity, sexual acts involving minors or inciting violence” and “for frightening content, harassment, bullying, suicides, and others.” Now the office believes that removal may not be enough and should be subject to tougher rules.
• South Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) fined Google $32 million for blocking developers from releasing games on a Korean Play Store competitor called One Store. Google allegedly required Korean video game makers to exclusively release their new games in the Play Store from June 2016 to April 2018, in violation of fair competition laws.
• Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a bill that requires that social media companies verify new users’ ages and get a parent’s consent for users under 18. The state is now the second to create its own laws to regulate social media, following Utah, due to the lack of federal oversight.

Funding and M&A

• Right-wing social media platform Parler was acquired by digital media conglomerate Starboard, which recently changed its name from Olympic Media. The company will temporarily shut down the app ahead of a revamp and relaunch of an updated version. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
• U.S.-based savings and investing startup Acorns acquired London-based GoHenry for an undisclosed sum. Acorns was most recently valued at $2 billion; GoHenry was believed to be valued at between $250 million and $500 million in October 2022.
• Savvy Games Group, a games and esports company that is part of the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund, is acquiring mobile games studio Scopely for $4.9 billion. Scopley’s top games include Yahtzee With Buddies, Star Trek Fleet Command, Marvel Strike Force, Stumble Guys and Scrabble Go.
• Emirates Telecommunications acquired a 50.03% stake in the super app Careem from Uber’s Middle East unit for $400 million. Uber will keep Careem’s ride-hailing business as part of this deal.
• SMB growth app Zeely’s raised a $1 million seed round from Ukrainian VC Vesna.Capital, Angel One Fund (a Ukrainian fund), Imaguru Ventures, and angels Murat Abdrakhmanov (an investor in Udemy), Adrian J. Slywotzky (a partner at Oliver Wyman) and ZAS Ventures. Zeely’s app can generate a web store quickly on a mobile, as well as allow a business to promote itself across social media platforms like TikTok quickly and easily.
• General Atlantic invested another $100 million in PhonePe, three months after leading a $350 million investment in the Indian fintech startup. At a $12 billion valuation, PhonePe is India’s most valuable fintech and competes with Google Pay and Paytm.

This Week in Apps: Newsrooms leave Twitter, Reels expands, Android 14 arrives by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Google’s Chrome web browser is getting a speed boost. According to a news announcement out today, Google has made several under-the-hood performance improvements to its popular browser, leading to a significant new performance milestone across Mac and Android. Collectively, a series of adjustments gave Chrome a 10% increase on Apple’s Speedometer 2.1 browser benchmark over the course of three months, Google says.

The changes involve a range of tweaks from improved caching to better memory management, the company notes. This includes things like improved caching and better memory management. While not everyone will care about the technical details as to how the speed improvements were accomplished, many will care to see their browser get faster.

Despite user complaints over the years about Chrome’s growing sluggishness, Google’s browser still runs away with a large majority of the web browser market share. Per Statcounter’s March 2023 statistics, for example, Chrome is pulling in 64.8% of global market share, while its next closest rival, Safari, is at just 19.5% across all platforms. On the desktop alone, Chrome’s share is even higher — 65.8%, trailed by 11.12% for Edge then 10.91% for Safari.

Image Credits: Google

In a blog post, Google explained exactly what sort of tweaks it made to achieve the new milestone.

It said it found some targeted optimizations for the highly-used JS `Object.prototype.toString` and `Array.prototype.join` functions, specifically. It also implemented targeted improvements in CSS’s InterpolableColor. Additionally, the company noted that `innerHTML` is a common way of updating the DOM via JavaScript so it introduced specialized fast paths for parsing.

Another improvement involved more efficient pointer compression and involves better memory management techniques. This one impacts operations that take place frequently, leading to a more widespread performance boost. The post also talks about the relocation of frequently accessed objects — like JavaScript’s `undefined` — to the beginning of the memory bases, where they can be accessed with faster machine code.

If none of those details matter to you, this might: at least one of the improvements Google made will also benefit WebKit, the browser engine developed by Apple and used in Safari and will be included in that engine, too. That means even more web browser users may see improvements, not just Chrome users.

Google says it just made Chrome a lot faster on both Mac and Android by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Google’s Android development cycle runs on a rather predictable cadence these days. Today, after two developer previews, the company launched the first of four planned public beta releases of Android 14. As with previous versions, the first beta is also the first release that anyone can install over-the-air, assuming they have a supported Pixel device, going back to the Pixel 4a 5G (but not the Pixel 4).

There’s no official support for non-Google phones yet. As always, keep in mind that these are betas for a reason and still mostly meant for developers who want to test their apps against this new version and early adopters who just can’t wait for the stable release. Things can — and will – break.

Image Credits: Google

For the most part, there aren’t many new features in this beta version, though there are two user-facing UI updates worth calling out. The first is a new back arrow (yes – we’ve reached the point in mobile OS history where new back arrows are pretty much the most exciting thing). As Google notes, the gesture navigation experience now “includes a more prominent back arrow while interacting with an app to help improve back gesture understanding and usefulness.” This arrow will match your wallpaper or device theme. Exciting stuff.

Developers will now also be able to add custom actions to the system sharesheet, and the sharesheet will now be smarter about how it ranks your sharing targets.

Otherwise, there isn’t all that much new here. Per-app language settings are here, as are Google’s previously announced new privacy settings.

I expect we’ll hear a bit more about what’s new in Android 14 — and see more user-facing features — at Google I/O next month. For now, though, this appears to be another evolutionary release.

Image Credits: Google

Google launches the first public beta of Android 14 by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

About a year ago, Google announced its Assured Open Source Software (Assured OSS) service, a service that helps developers defend against supply chain security attacks by regularly scanning and analyzing some of the world’s most popular software libraries for vulnerabilities. Today, Google is launching Assured OSS into general availability with support for well over a thousand Java and Python packages — and while Google didn’t initially disclose pricing when it first announced the service, the company has now revealed that it will be available for free.

Software development has long depended on third-party libraries (which are often maintained by only a single developer), but it wasn’t until the industry got hit with a number of high-profile exploits that everyone (including the White House) perked up and started taking software supply chain security seriously. Now, you can’t attend an open source conference without hearing about Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs), artifact registries and similar topics. It’s no surprise then that Google, which has long been at the forefront of releasing open-source products, launched a service like Assured OSS.

Google promises that it will constantly keep these libraries up to date (without creating forks) and continuously scan for known vulnerabilities, do fuzz tests to discover new ones and then fix these issues and contribute these fixes back upstream. The company notes that when it first launched the service with around 250 Java libraries, it was responsible for discovering 48% of the new CVEs for these libraries and subsequently addressing them.

“As organizations increasingly utilize OSS for faster development cycles, they need trusted sources of secure open source packages,” said Melinda Marks, senior analyst, ESG. “Without proper vetting and verification or metadata to help track OSS access and usage, organizations risk exposure to potential security vulnerabilities and other risks in their software supply chain. By partnering with a trusted supplier, organizations can mitigate these risks and ensure the integrity of their software supply chain to better protect their business applications.”

Developers and organizations that want to use the new service can sign up here and then integrate Assured OSS into their existing development pipeline.

Google’s free Assured Open Source Software service hits GA by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

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 economy in 2023 hit a few snags, as consumer spending last year dropped for the first time by 2% to $167 billion, according to data.ai’s “State of Mobile” report. However, downloads are continuing to grow, up 11% year-over-year in 2022 to reach 255 billion. Consumers are also spending more time in mobile apps than ever before. On Android devices alone, hours spent in 2022 grew 9%, reaching 4.1 trillion.

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

Top Stories

DUB DUB Returns

Image Credits: Apple

As expected, Apple announced its plans for this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). The big event will return to Apple Park in Cupertino on June 5-9. However, the event looks like it will still be another scaled-down version, similar to last year, with its keynote and State of the Union again livestreamed.

Apple also noted it will host a special all-day event for developers and students on June 5. And, as in previous years, developers will be able to meet some of the teams at Apple, celebrate top apps at the Apple Design Awards ceremony and enjoy various evening activities. Student developers will also participate in a Swift Student Challenge competition, which could win them WWDC23 outerwear, AirPods Pro, a customized pin set and a one-year membership to the Apple Developer Program. The deadline to apply is April 19.

The company will continue to post WWDC announcements leading up to and during the conference, so keep an eye on your inboxes and the Apple Developer app for updates.

The big question on everyone’s minds is whether or not Apple will present its AR/VR headset during WWDC this year. Various reports have suggested mass production on the device has been pushed back a couple of months to the third quarter of 2023. Plus, a concerning report by The New York Times indicated the device is among the first to generate rare, internal dissent among Apple employees — some of whom don’t believe it’s a fit for the company. Expected to be priced at $3,000, some are worried about its utility and the still unproven market. Still, Bloomberg is betting on a headset reveal and the accompanying xrOS software.

The company will also likely introduce the latest updates to its existing OS lineup, including iOS 17, iPadOS 17, watchOS 10, macOS 14 and tvOS 17. Not much is known about these coming releases except that iOS 17 is codenamed Dawn and will include several of users’ “most-requested” features.

ByteDance pushes another social app, Lemon8, into the App Store’s Top Charts as a TikTok ban looms

Image Credits: Lemon8

As U.S. lawmakers moved forward with their plans for a TikTok ban or forced sale, the app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, began driving another of its social platforms into the Top Charts of the U.S. App Store. The ByteDance-owned app Lemon8, an Instagram rival that describes itself as a “lifestyle community,” jumped into the U.S. App Store’s Top Charts on Monday, becoming the No. 10 Overall app, across both apps and games. By the next day, it ranked No. 9 on the App Store’s Top Apps chart, excluding games.

This is a dramatic chart climb for the little-known app and one that points to paid user acquisition efforts powering this surge. Prior to Monday, the Lemon8 app had never before ranked in the Top 200 Overall Charts in the U.S., according to app store intelligence provided to TechCrunch by data.ai.

The firm confirmed that such a quick move from being an unranked app to being No. 9 among the top free apps in the U.S. — ahead of YouTube, WhatsApp, Gmail and Facebook — implies a “significant” and “recent” user acquisition push on the app publisher’s part.

The app was launched globally back in March 2020 but was only more recently launched on the U.S. App Store, seemingly for testing purposes. Over the past few days this week, it was more “officially” launched — that is, it was accompanied by the clearly sizable spend on paid discovery or app install ads. Globally, Lemon8 had 16 million total installs, Apptopia’s data indicates, with Japan as its largest market.

To push the app up the charts, ByteDance simply leveraged its own channels with influencer reviews on TikTok. Across a number of undisclosed ads, many creators began posting about Lemon8, with their new videos appearing in just the 24 hours prior to the app’s skyrocketing. Most of the reviews used similar language, describing the app as “cute” and a mix of “Pinterest and Instagram.” The creators didn’t tell their followers they were being paid to boost Lemon8.

Despite these efforts, Lemon8 may not be a viable backup plan for a TikTok ban, as lawmakers could consider a wide-ranging set of restrictions on Chinese tech, including on mobile applications far beyond TikTok alone.

Twitter alternative T2 capitalizes on Twitter’s plan to kill legacy verification, hires from Discord

As Twitter begins its shift to a “pay to play” business model, a new Twitter alternative is preparing to take flight. T2, the seed-funded Twitter rival developed by Google and Twitter veterans, is ready to capitalize on Twitter’s upheaval with the launch of a verification program specifically targeting those who are poised to lose their checkmark under Elon Musk’s new Twitter policies. T2 also this week announced a notable new hire with the addition of Discord’s former Senior Director of Engineering Michael Greer as its new chief technology officer (CTO).

Greer joined Discord in 2017, initially as director of Engineering, which touched on a number of areas, including revenue, growth, apps, community servers, design systems, messaging and more. He was promoted to senior director of Engineering just last June. Prior to Discord, Greer worked as the CTO at Tapp Media and The Onion for multiyear stints. At T2, Greer will now oversee the development team and guide the company’s technical growth.

Image Credits: T2 screenshot

Also this week, T2 debuted a new verification process with the launch of its “Get the Checkmark” program timed to correspond to Twitter’s removal of legacy verification checkmarks across all users who aren’t paying for the Twitter Blue subscription. Twitter said its own checkmark removals will begin on April 1st and will include removing the verification from organizations and individuals who had previously qualified as “notable” under the company’s prior rules. Ahead of this change, T2 users who are legacy Twitter checkmark holders can claim their T2 checkmark by filling out this form and then following the subsequent email instructions which involve communicating with T2 via Twitter DM or reply.

After April 1 (or whenever legacy checks actually disappear), will switch over to a new verification flow. For now, while the app is small and in closed testing, this will involve chatting directly with a T2 representative. (A process that would make it very hard for bots to be verified!) Later on, T2 plans to scale this verification using in-app identity and selfie checks. These will be designated as “T2 Authenticated” profiles and will have the standard verified check, not the ruffled edge version of the previously Twitter verified crowd.

Too bad T2 still requires an invite to get in — this is clever marketing!

Platforms

Apple

• Apple released the first betas of iOS 16.5, iPadOS 16.5, tvOS 16.5, watchOS 9.5 and macOS 13.4, shortly after the rollout of iOS 16.4. The beta includes the ability to use Siri to start and stop screen recordings, references to a multi-view mode in Apple TV and the introduction of a Sports section within Apple News, among other things.
• The iOS 16.4 update introduces a number of features, including a set of new emoji, voice isolation mode cellular calls, web push notifications for web apps pinned to the Home Screen, support for unfurling preview cards for Mastodon links (!!!) in iMessage and other apps, and various Apple Music tweaks, among other things.

• Meanwhile, iPadOS 16.4 brings new Pencil hover features. By hovering a Pencil 2 up to 12 millimeters above the new iPad Pro’s screen, you’re able to view line and line width and color previews, along with the ability to choose drawing implements in Markup.
• Apple reminded developers that starting on April 25, 2023, iOS, iPadOS and watchOS apps submitted to the App Store must be built with Xcode 14.1 or later. Xcode 14, which includes the latest SDKs, is a free download on the Mac App Store.
• Apple launched Apple Pay Later, a payment option that lets you split the cost of an Apple Pay purchase into four equal payments over six weeks without interest or late fees. However, the feature isn’t yet broadly available, despite its public debut. Instead, Apple said it will invite randomly selected users to access a pre-release version before rolling it out to all eligible users in the coming months.

Android

• Google won partial relief in its Android antitrust case in India. A tribunal court set aside four out of 10 directives, including the need to allow third-party app stores within Play Store and restrictions around the uninstallation of pre-installed apps by users. However, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal upheld the $161 million penalty levied on Google by the local watchdog, the Competition Commission of India (CCI).
• PayPal introduced Android support for Passkeys, a quick new way to sign into PayPal. This password-free login system is backed by Apple, Google, Microsoft, the FIDO alliance and others. Android mobile device users in the U.S. running the Android 9+ OS can create a passkey for their PayPal personal account using the Chrome browser. The feature is rolling out as of March 23 and is becoming more broadly available over time.

App Updates

AI

• Snap said it’s seeking AI experts for its Safety Advisory Board. The company had clearly put the cart before the horse with its implementation of AI in its new chatbot. While chatting with a Washington Post columnist pretending to be a teen, the bot allegedly advised the columnist about hiding pot and alcohol at a birthday party. In addition, researchers at the Center for Humane Technology found that the bot gave sex advice to a user pretending to be 13 years old. Snap recently said it was working on giving parents more control around teens’ use of the My AI chatbot — another thing it should have done before, you know, launching the thing.
• Microsoft already slipped ads into Bing. The company said it was exploring putting ads in the responses given by Bing Chat, its new search agent powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 which is available on the desktop web and Bing mobile app.

Social

Image Credits: Flipboard

• Magazine app Flipboard is integrating Mastodon in its Android application, as the company broadens its commitment to the federated social web. The feature allows users to browse a feed of short updates from the people they follow, reply to, like and boost posts, as well as click on hashtags to follow discussions, among other things. As on iPhone, where the functionality launched first, Android users can find the new feature by navigating over the accounts section and then logging in with their Mastodon credentials for the instance they’re on. And if the user doesn’t yet have a Mastodon account, they can request access to join Flipboard’s own server from here.
• Twitter unveiled new API pricing, weeks after initially announcing its plan to shut down its free API. Now, there will be three new tiers for developers: a “Free” tier with 1,500 tweets per month, a $100 per month “Basic” tier with expanded access and an “Enterprise” tier that reportedly costs $42,000 per month. Many developers, including Twitter bot makers, are unhappy with the changes as they won’t be able to afford the access needed to run their smaller projects.
• Twitter will remove the legacy checkmarks on April 1st. Afterward, only Twitter Blue verified accounts will appear on the algorithmic “For You” timeline starting April 15.
• Twitter also open sourced some of its code on GitHub, including its algorithm for tweet recommendations on the For You feed, but not its ad recommendation algorithm.
• Meta will allow Facebook and Instagram users to opt out of tracking in Europe, according to The WSJ and confirmed by Meta. Users will be able to opt for a version of the service where they’re only targeted with ads based on broader categories, like age and location. The changes follow multiple multimillion-dollar fines in the EU.
• Reddit said it removed 473% more subreddits in 2022 and permanently suspended 244% more accounts for violations of its non-consensual intimate imagery policies.
• Snap’s head of growth and previously longtime product head Jacob Andreou announced he will be leaving the company in May after eight years to join Greylock as a general partner.

Media & Entertainment

• YouTube expanded its Analytics for Artists tool with the addition of YouTube Shorts-related data to the “Total Reach” metric, which gives artists and their teams an overview of how their music is reaching audiences across YouTube. Before this, the Total Reach metric only included official content uploaded by the artists and long-form videos uploaded by fans. Now it will include Shorts, too.
• Spotify was spotted testing out new card-style user profiles that offer the ability for users to establish more of a social identity on the platform in addition to providing easy access to Spotify’s unique features — like its personalized recommendations, Blend playlists, co-listening experiences and more.

Image Credits: Chris Messina via Twitter (opens in a new window)

• Spotify launched new personalized playlists called Niche Mixes that let you create mixes based on just a few words of description in the Search tab. For instance, you could type in an “activity, vibe or aesthetic,” the company notes, then append the word “mix” to generate the custom playlist. For example, you could make a “feel good morning mix,” “90s running mix” or “driving singalong mix.” The feature is available to all free and premium users in English.
• While the U.S. government debates TikTok’s future, the video app announced a new product called Branded Effects aimed at businesses. The solution will allow brands to collaborate with TikTok effect creators to design custom effects — like AR experiences and other interactive features — to accompany their online campaigns and marketing efforts.

Gaming

• Netflix appears to be working to bring its games to the TV with the iPhone as a controller. New code discovered inside the Netflix app is set to ask the user: “A game on your TV needs a controller to play. Do you want to use this phone as a game controller?” Netflix declined to comment on its plans.
• Pokémon GO fans are upset over changes to the pricing of Remote Raid Passes. The game’s maker Niantic said the cost of these items will nearly double to 195 coins for one pass or 525 coins for three passes. Previously, one pass was 100 coins (about $1) and three passes were 250 coins (about $2.50). Plus, players will only be able to participate in five raids per day. The pricing changes suggest the company is facing economic headwinds. Niantic has not been successful in translating its AR platform to other titles to create another hit as big as Pokémon GO.
• In Epic Games’ antitrust case against Google, lawyers for the plaintiffs submitted a number of exhibits to demonstrate Google employees’ tendency to switch off chat history on internal discussions. Epic believes this behavior is meant to destroy sensitive communications related to its Fortnite lawsuit. Shortly after the new filing, a federal judge ruled that Google’s failure to preserve messages requires sanctions. The judge is requiring Google to pay attorney fees and is debating what other non-monetary sanctions will be needed.

Fintech

• Block said on Thursday it had verified 44 million of its over 51 million monthly active users through its identity program as of December 31. The statement was made following an investigative report from short seller Hindenburg Research, which claimed 40-75% of Cash App accounts they reviewed were fake, committing fraud or were additional accounts belonging to a single individual.

Etc.

• Google Fi subscribers can finally use 5G on the iPhone. The support requires the new iOS 16.4 update on an iPhone 12 or newer, then the phone has to be switched over to 5G Auto in cellular settings.
• Google Search, including its mobile search app, will now include extreme heat alerts that will tell users when a heat wave is expected to start along with tips to help users stay cool.
• Lyft’s co-founders, CEO Logan Green and president John Zimmer, are stepping down. Green on April 17 and Zimmer on June 30. Ex-Amazon exec David Risher will be the new CEO.
• OverDrive, a longtime digital reading companion used by library patrons, will be shutting down for good. After announcing its plans to sunset the app and removing it from app stores last year, the company now says that OverDrive will fully shut down on May 1, 2023. Readers will be directed to use the newer digital app Libby instead.

Security Concerns

• Two targeted spyware campaigns involving several zero-day exploits for Android, iOS and mobile versions of the Chrome browser were detailed by researchers from Google’s Threat Analysis Group. Hackers were able to install a tool that allowed them to track the location of devices in Italy, Malaysia and Kazakhstan.
• A Washington Post report warns that many of the most popular VPN services and apps have misled users about their practices while also disguising their origins, ownership and locations. It noted also that many of these apps are based in China or controlled by Chinese nationals.

Funding and M&A

• New York City-based LeapXpert, which monitors employee communications with customers and co-workers across chat apps like iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and WeChat, raised $22 million in Series A funding led by Rockefeller Asset Management.
• Indian fintech PhonePe will no longer be acquiring BNPL service ZestMoney, in a deal that was set to be between $200-300 million. The M&A was called off over due diligence concerns.
• YC and Foundation Capital-backed meditation app Simple Habit was acquired by wellness marketplace company Ingenio for an undisclosed sum. Simple Habit will rebrand itself to Sleep Reset as a result of the deal.
• Autio, a location-based audio entertainment app co-founded by actor Kevin Costner (previously known as HearHere), raised a $5.9 million seed extension led by iHeartMedia.
• Cabify — the Madrid-based platform that competes against Uber in Spain and Latin America — announced $110 million in funding. However, the exact breakdown of the funding is unclear. The figure includes a €40 million loan from the European Investment Bank announced in December 2022 and the proceeds of a funding round of an unconfirmed amount that Cabify secured in July 2022.

Downloads

Perplexity AI

Image Credits: Perplexity on the App Store

AI search startup Perplexity AI this week announced $25.6 million in a new funding round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). The San Francisco-based company is one of now several hoping to challenge Google by offering users a new way to ask and get answers to their everyday system. Notably, Perplexity’s CEO worked previously as a researcher at DeepMind and the Google Brain project. That connection has brought some half dozen AI researchers at Google and DeepMind as investors, including SVP for Research and AI, Jeff Dean. While Perplexity launched in December, it’s been recently gaining more traction, Bloomberg reported, with February’s 13 million visits more than double that of January’s.

However, the company’s mobile app only launched this past week (March 28), offering a way for iPhone users to get instant answers on any topic with up-to-date (and cited!) sources. You can also ask the chatbot follow-up questions and engage with the app using either typing or your voice. Plus, you can keep your thread history to pick up where you left off. Noted one App Store review, “this really is too good to be true,” noting that the app was free to use despite all the functionality — making it a possible threat to OpenAI.

Apple Music Classical

Image Credits: Apple

Apple’s new app for classical music, Apple Music Classical, is now available as a free download for Apple Music subscribers. At launch, the service will be available globally, except in select markets, including China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Taiwan and Turkey. However, Apple says it will arrive in these countries at some point in the future.

The company said that there are more than 5 million tracks available on the app right now, as well over 50+ million data points with data attributes of 20,000+ composers, 115,000+ unique works and 350,000+ movements. This data helps Apple Music subscribers find recordings across the catalog through the app’s specialized search engine built for classical music.

As Apple explains, classical works have multiple movements and tracks, while famous pieces have hundreds of recordings with different orchestras, conductors and soloists. In addition, many composers have their own special catalog classifications, which means classical music search has to be built differently with these complexities in mind. Because of these challenges, it’s been difficult to find classical works on traditional music streaming apps.

In the new app, users can search for works using keyword combinations that include composer, work, opus number, conductor, artist, instrument or even the work’s name. Plus, when you look up a work on the app, you’ll find all its associated recordings as well as a hand-picked “Editor’s Choice” performance. Apple Music Classical’s editors created over 700 playlists to guide listeners through 800 years of music and plans to add more over time.

Arc’s mobile browser companion app

Image Credits: Arc

A buzzy new desktop web browser Arc has been rethinking how browsers should work. However, with the launch of its mobile app this week, Arc opted not to create another browser to compete with Safari. Instead, its app serves mainly as a mobile companion to Arc, offering users access to their Spaces and tabs from Arc for Mac while on the go, as well as the ability to save links from other apps to read later, and a way to view your saved Easels (a scrapbooking feature) and Notes. Arc is interesting because it’s trying to reimagine a basic part of everyday computing with an eye on the future — and it has a lot of fans. However, its focus is scattered, trying to solve many problems at once at the same time it’s inventing new tools to use, like its web scrapbooks which feels more like a standalone product idea that’s been mashed into a browser. The real test for Arc will be when it exits its private beta testing and opens to the wider public.

This Week in Apps: WWDC23, ByteDance pushes Lemon8 ahead of TikTok ban, T2 capitalizes on Twitter chaos by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

In a new filing in Epic Games’ antitrust case against Google, lawyers for the plaintiffs have submitted a number of exhibits that attempt to demonstrate Google employees’ tendency to switch off chat history on internal discussions. Epic believes this behavior is meant to destroy sensitive communications related to its lawsuit, but it’s not the only one making this claim. The issue with Google’s deletion of chat history was also recently cited by the U.S. Department of Justice in its own antitrust investigation, where it alleged Google had for years “routinely destroyed” an entire category of communication.

That makes the new discovery of communications where Google employees often instructed others to turn off chat all the more interesting.

In one particularly notable instance, Google CEO Sundar Pichai asked for the chat history to be turned off and then tried to unsuccessfully delete the preceding message. It’s not clear, however, from the exhibit shared with the court, that the topic of the conversation would have had bearing on Epic’s antitrust case against the tech giant.

However, in other chats, Google employees were found to be asking others to switch off chat history when discussing more potentially relevant matters, like Revenue Share Agreement (RSA) contracts, Mobile App Distribution Agreements and a topic called “Project Runway,” which was the internal codename for a project that involved changing the Google Play commission rate in response to developer complaints and the threat of regulation.

In another example, Google’s Head of Platforms & Ecosystems Strategy for Android, Margaret Lam, remarks “I talk about RSA related things all day and I don’t have have history on for all my chats :),” after another employee had informed her that any conversation about RSA needed to have chat history turned on “per policy.”

“We cannot delete it. I am also on multiple legal hold,” the employee advised her, to which she responded, “Ok maybe I take you off this convo,” followed by a laughing face emoji. When pressed as to why she was going against the company training on the matter, Lam said “it’s just causing more touchpoints on my end,” then added she would ping others directly — seemingly a choice meant to route around the chats with history, rather than allowing the conversation to be documented.

In other conversations, Lam is spotted again asking employees to turn off history, the exhibits show.

In a separate 2021 conversation, one Google employee asks another if they can discuss Project Runway and was reminded to “communicate with care” because everything said would be subject to discovery if there were any regulatory or legal proceedings in the future.” They were also reminded that group chats can’t have history turned off, “unlike 1:1 chat threads where you can turn off history and they disappear in 24 hours.”

Another couple of conversations features Google VP Tian Lim (who has since changed jobs to join Roblox) asking to turn chat history off. But the same employee had testified on January 12, 2023, that he had made “a good-faith effort to comply with obligations to preserve chat communications that were subject to the legal hold.”

Of course, it’s again not clear from the filings that Lim’s subsequent conversations would have been relevant to Epic’s case, but the point of these exhibits is to raise the question as to why switching off chat was such a common practice.

Epic originally filed suit against Google over the alleged antitrust violations in August 2020, shortly after it forced Google to remove its Fortnite mobile game from the Play Store by intentionally violating Google Play policies around in-app purchases. (The company had done the same thing with Apple, but both parties were unhappy with the outcome of that case, which is now in the hands of an appeals court.) As most of the chats submitted in this new discovery are from the following year, it would have been clear to Google employees by then that a litigation hold on their conversations was necessary.

That said, across the 35 new exhibits featuring various Google employees discussing when or if to turn off chat history, or asking others to do so, it’s not clear that they were actively planning to discuss Epic Games or its antitrust claims, specifically. Instead, it appears the Google employees were having business-related conversations that may or not have ultimately been relevant to the case — something it will be hard at this point to determine, as many chats had been moved to off-the-record locations.

What the records attempt to show is that many at Google had a habit of switching off chat history or shifting conversations to places where they couldn’t be tracked. However, it will be up to a judge to determine whether or not Google should be sanctioned for this behavior. But the judge’s determination could then be referenced in the DoJ case against Google, which is making similar claims about Google’s alleged destruction of evidence.  

Google has been asked for comment.

Epic Games produces documents in antitrust case showing Googlers avoiding its litigation hold by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch