Tech Roundup: Paid YouTube, Yahoo! Account Key & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

Material Design goodness in Google Play Store

Android update system is broken:
The very name Android embodies choice, but more often than not, they have come at the cost of delayed software and security updates, and although as a way of getting around this fragmentation problem, Google has been moving more and more pieces of Android out of its AOSP variant and into Play Services/Store, the big question is whether all of this is enough. The internet predictably went berserk weeks ago when Motorola's list of Android devices that would be updated to Marshmallow didn't include Moto E, a mid-range smartphone it had unveiled just seven months back. Furthermore, the recent Stagefright security nightmare has spooked Google into committing to monthly security updates (highlighted by Android Security Patch Level in Settings -> About Phone, followed by a date), but will OEMs follow suit and ensure these updates are pushed out to their phones in a timely fashion? "Until Google re-architects Android to support centralized, device-agnostic updates, we just don't see a solution to Android's security problems," bemoaned Ars Technica's Ron Amadeo, and I, for one, would like to see this happen.

Google unveils Accelerated Mobile Pages:
Much has been said and written about the timing of Apple's new ad-supported news aggregator app, Apple News, and its decision to allow content/ad blockers on iOS. While Apple News is no different from Google Play Newsstand, or Flipboard or Facebook Instant Articles, all of them share a unifying feature, in that they all run ads, albeit from their own respective (mobile) ad platforms (iAd, AdSense, Atlas etc.). So is Apple aiming at Google, hitting the search advertising giant where it hurts, with official support for ad blocking software? Whether it's yes or no, Google isn't sitting idle. Recently it demonstrated Accelerated Mobile Pages, a means to load articles (including ads) much faster on mobile web browsers by prioritising speed over everything else. According to the blog post announcing the development, "the project relies on AMP HTML, a new open framework built entirely out of existing web technologies, which allows websites to build light-weight webpages."

In other news:

• ​Life on earth began 4.1 billion yrs ago, 300 million years earlier than previously thought; evidence discovered in specks of graphite from Jack hills Western Australia, containing an isotope of carbon associated with life.
• Ebola now a sexually transmitted disease - first case reported in months after a Liberian woman dies post unprotected sex with survivor; virus found in semen samples, researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine.
• Shiv Kumar Yadav, ex-driver of ride-sharing service Uber, is found guilty of raping a female passenger in New Delhi last year, in a incident that sparked widespread protests against sexual violence and a temporary ban on Uber.
• Google shows off a fresh, playful Material Design makeover for Play Store Android app with a new layout.
• Microsoft joins hands with search engine Baidu to offer personalised search experiences for users in China; to be the default homepage and search engine on its Edge browser in place of Bing.
• Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Instagram cross 900 million and 400 million monthly active users respectively.
• Apple's latest iPhones, 6s and 6s Plus, land in India with bank-breaking price tags (Rs. 92,000 for iPhone 6s Plus 128GB variant).
• Google announces plans to provide free Wi-Fi in over 400 railway stations in India, as Android CEO Sundar Pichai marvels at the incredible scale and scope of Indian Railways.
• Surface tension brews up; Lenovo says it won't resell Microsoft's Surface laptops unlike Dell and HP.
• Google kills off Notification Center and 'OK Google' voice search features in Google Chrome for desktop (Windows, Mac and Linux) because nobody used it.
• Cloud storage service​ Dropbox announces Paper (the third product to be thus named, after Fiftythree and Facebook), a new collaborative document editing tool to take on Microsoft (Word), Google (Docs), Apple (Pages) and smaller players like Quip.
• World's largest video portal, YouTube, is planning paid content, reports Recode.
• Twitter ropes ex-Googler and Chief Business Officer Omid Kordestani as its new executive chairman.
• Yahoo! unveils new design for Mail with options to manage multiple mailboxes; goes password-free with Account Key.
• LG begins rolling out Android Marshmallow to LG G4 starting with Poland.
• Apple ordered by US court to pay University of Wisconsin-Madison's patent licensing arm more than $234 million in damages for incorporating their chip technology (patent# 5,781,752) into its A7, A8 and A8X chipsets without permission.
• 'Never Settle' OnePlus set to announce a new smartphone come Oct 29.