Tech Roundup: Google Fact Check, Snap Q1 & More

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

Alphabet/Google:

• Android apps can collude together to mine user information from smartphones, new study reveals.
• Rolls out fact check in search results page.
• Updates YouTube partner program with a new caveat that prevents content creators from monetising their videos until they hit a collective 10,000 views in an attempt to prevent bad actors from uploading videos owned by other people. (Have they taken click fraud into account?)
• Guns for Pinterest with better fashion-related image search results.
• Drops shopping list support from Keep via Google Assistant in a forced, user-hostile move to fight Amazon in retail; moves it to Google Home app and adds almost-useless Google Shopping Express integration instead.
• Launches food delivery service Areo (Android only) in Bangalore and Mumbai.
• Flips on audio calling for Google Duo users worldwide; begins offering options to let users shop for similar items straight from image search results.

Google highlights fact check on search results

Apple:

• New iPhone renders with rear-mounted TouchID fingerprint sensor emerge. (God please, no!)
• Takes watchmaker Swatch to court over its "Tick Different" campaign; says it's misleadingly similar to its "Think Different" ads back in 1999.
• Receives permit to test self-driving cars in California.
• Rebrands iTunes podcasts as Apple Podcasts. (Is this officially the start of its slow disassociation from the ponderous and confusing iTunes monolith? Is iTunes officially on death watch?)
• iOS share in china dips to its lowest level in three years.
• Gets sued by chipmaker Qualcomm; says iPhone-maker didn't "use the full potential of Qualcomm chips in iPhone 7 phones so that they wouldn't perform better than the modems provided by Intel."

Facebook:

• To add peer to peer payments transfer feature in WhatsApp in India, reports The Ken (paywall, via The Economic Times)
• Takes action on revenge porn by allowing users to report photos that violate their privacy; will be reviewed by Specially trained representatives from the site's community operations team. (The murky, psychologically traumatic field of content moderation continues...)  
• Allows users to split bills using new group payments feature on Messenger (needs a debit card to be linked to your number/FB account).
• Adds smart suggestions to its AI assistannt M (such as recommending a bye-bye GIF if someone says "Goodbye", or providing an option to send the current location in response to "Where are you?").
• Says it has over five million advertisers on the social network.
• Launches a web version of its photo sharing service Moments.
• Instagram Stories becomes more popular than its Snapchat counterpart in less than a year after the feature was copied last August; hits 200 million users per day (as opposed to Snapchat's 161 million at the end of fourth quarter).

Samsung:

• Tizen OS is a security nightmare, warn security experts.
• Says Bixby voice assistant feature won't be available on Galaxy S8 until spring later this year.

Snap:

• Goes into damage control following reports that CEO Evan Spiegel had dismissed concerns about the app floundering in overseas markets by saying "[T]his app is only for rich people. I don't want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain"; Google Play Store ratings for the app take a hit.
• To share user location with advertisers (through Geofilters) as it prepares to report its first ever quarterly results on May 10.

In other news:

• Hacking group Shadow Brokers releases a new cache of sensitive data from the National Security Agency; includes a "trove of highly classified hacking tools used to break into various Microsoft systems, along with what it said was evidence that the N.S.A. had infiltrated the backbone of the Middle East’s banking infrastructure."
• AOL and Yahoo! to come under a new umbrella company under Verizon called Oath.
• Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, wins the 2016 Turing award.
• Music streaming service Spotify to begin offering new albums to free listeners as late as two weeks after release (paid subscribers will enjoy release day privileges) as it readies to go public.
• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to sell US$ 1 billion worth of Amazon stock every year to fund his space flight company Blue Origin.
• Twitter creates a Lite version of its mobile website by taking advantage of Google's progressive web apps.
• Neil Hunt, one of the chief architects of Netflix Inc.'s streaming service, departs after 18 years.
• Indian online retailer Flipkart gets fresh infusion of money from Microsoft, eBay and Tencent in hopes to stop Amazon juggernaut in the country.
• Ride hailing startup Uber returns to Taiwan two months after it was suspended (but faces shut downs in Italy and Denmark); reports its finances for the first time (despite no being public) highlighting its revenue growth to tide over the string of bad rep affecting the company.