Tech Roundup: Facebook Dating, Google's Drone Project Backlash & More

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

Alphabet/Google:

• Officially removes "Don't Be Evil" clause from its code of conduct; announces plans to stop working on a controversial U.S. Department of Defence drone surveillance program called Project Maven in 2019 after employees hit back.
• YouTube's built-in sharing and messaging service lands on the web; adds new digital well-being feature that prompts users to take a break from Tubeception.
• Google Drive and Android Developers website gets a fresh coat of Material Design to match that of Gmail; teases upcoming design refresh for Chrome browser, adds support for boarding passes, tickets and p2p payments in Google Pay as it rolls out the payments service on the web.
• Unsurprisingly begins testing ads in Google News Feed; begins outselling Amazon in smart-speaker sales for the first time last quarter (3.2 million Google Home and Google Home Mini devices vs. Amazon's 2.5 million Echos).
• Releases first beta of its 'Flutter' UI framework that makes it possible to develop app across multiple platforms, adds support for multi-step actions (called Routines) in Assistant.
• Starts transitioning Hangout video calls to Hangouts Meet for G Suite users; pauses development on instant messaging service Allo to focus on Messages and getting more carriers aboard RCS.

Amazon:

• Says it has over 100 million Prime subscribers; increases the cost of annual Prime memberships from US$ 99 to US$ 119 effective May 11, rolls out a new mobile internet browser called Internet (available only in India) and reportedly developing its first robot for the home under the codename Vesta, named after the Roman goddess of the hearth.
• Tweaks its cloud platform (alongside Google) to disable domain fronting, making Signal vulnerable to censorship.

Apple:

• Launches a new privacy portal that allows users (only EU for now, because GDPR, duh!) to download a copy of everything Apple knows about them; is forced to reveal new testing documents that suggest the company knew about iPhone 6 and 6 Plus design problems before the two devices launched.
• Begins removing apps from the App Store that share users' location with third-parties without their explicit permission; comes under official investigation in the EU over its acquisition of Shazam.
• Said to be launching a credit card service in partnership with U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs.
• Reportedly knew that iPhone 6 and 6 Plus would bend (remember #bendgate?), despite stating to the contrary, according to an investigation by Motherboard.

Facebook's new ads on New York City subway (Image: Wired)

Facebook:

• WhatsApp founder-CEO Jan Koum quits Facebook over the latter's controversial decision to bring Facebook and WhatsApp together, even as WhatsApp Stories hit 450M users.
• Begins wider trial of 'dislike' button for downvoting comments on public posts; adds support for 2-factor authentication using authenticator apps like Google Authenticator, Authy etc.
• Faces a month-long ban in Papua New Guinea in an attempt to research the social network's effects on the population and to crack down on fake accounts and pornography.
• Instagram makes it easier for users to mute accounts; adds a new Data Download option in settings to let users download their data, makes it possible to make reservations and buy movie tickets, and informs users 'you're all caught up' in its first time-well-spent feature.
• Raises fresh ethical questions over use of AI and machine learning after it disclosed that it is using billions of Instagram images to train artificial intelligence algorithms.
• Invites criticism after its Android app is caught requesting for superuser (aka root) permissions; said to be testing an unreleased feature called Facebook Avatars that lets people build personalised, illustrated versions of themselves for use as stickers in Messenger and comments (watch out Snapchat, Facebook is coming for Bitmoji!).
• Brings video calls and third-party app integration (GoPro, Spotify, among others) to Instagram; to introduce Clear History privacy tool in coming months, completely redesigns Messenger to make it look more simple and takes on Tinder with new dating features.
• Expands Marketplace to enable users hire cleaners and plumbers; adds Voice Posts, Stories archive and new cloud storage features, begins inserting ads in between Facebook Stories as usage hits 150 million active users and gets accused of introducing extremists to one another through 'suggested friends' feature.
• A survey by DuckDuckGo reveals that a majority of Americans don't know that Facebook owns Instagram; 76% feel very concerned about the safety of their online data in the wake of Cambridge Analytica scandal, reveals a Mozilla survey of 47,000 people.
• Becomes a lucrative ad market in China despite ban; repeatedly makes US$ 5 billion of ads (10% of total global revenue), making China the second-largest ad spender on Facebook, only behind the U.S.

Microsoft:

• A team of Microsoft researchers create the first machine translation system that's capable of translating news articles from Chinese to English with the same accuracy as a person.
• Microsoft and Amazon show off Alexa integration in Windows; releases new Android and iOS apps to mirror your phone on PCs and makes it convenient to pay bills from inside Outlook.
• Surpasses Google's parent Alphabet to become world's third most valuable publicly traded company behind Apple and Amazon; Facebook and China's Tencent come fifth and sixth.
• Working on a Windows 10 lean edition for devices with less storage in its ongoing efforts to stop Chromebook dominance.

In other news:

• Image-sharing service Imgur takes next step towards profitability; adds short-form video to the platform.
• Vulnerabilities in Chrome and Firefox browser's implementation of new CSS standards introduced in 2016 may have leaked users' Facebook usernames, profile pictures, and likes, according to security researchers.
• Snapchat rolls back some parts of its controversial design after quarterly revenue miss (in other words, made less money off its users); begins selling an updated Spectacles with features to capture images and videos in HD for a higher price tag of US$ 150, CEO Evan Spiegel says letter about toxic employee culture was a wake-up call and promises to do better.
• Telegram instant messaging app, which has been blocked in Russia for failing to handover users' encryption keys to the government (in addition, Russia has also blocked 50 internet anonymisers and VPN services), criticises Apple for blocking updates (including GDPR compliance) to the app since mid-April; Apple responds by mysteriously letting the updates go through while giving no reasons as to why it was blocked in the first place.
• Website discovery platform StumbleUpon to shutdown on June 30.
• Popular adult porn website PornHub launches its own VPN service with free and unlimited bandwidth.
• Online video streaming platform Netflix blows past Disney in market cap after proving it can raise prices without losing customers (Los Gatos, California-based Netflix added 7.41 million users in the period, posting its its strongest first quarter since going public 16 years ago); releases a new feature called mobile previews, a version of stories on apps like Instagram and Snapchat that shows users previews of shows and movies on the subscription service.
• Ex-Googler Andy Rubin-led smartphone company Essential reportedly looking at selling itself after tepid sales of its first Android smartphone, according to Bloomberg.
• Starbucks' mobile payments solution reportedly has more users than Apple's or Google's in the U.S.
• Online dating service Tinder launches Tinder Places, a new way to find potential matches based on their location.
• Ride-hailing startup Uber shuts down self-driving program in Arizona following the death of a pedestrian.
• HTC and OnePlus' new phones U12+ and Exodus (powered by Blockchain, no less!), and OnePlus 6 officially go on sale.
• Twitter switches to custom Twemoji for Android because most phones are not on the latest version of software, thus making it difficult to view the same emojis across different devices; reportedly testing encrypted chats on the service.
• Intel, Google, and Microsoft disclose a new variant of the Spectre design flaw and security vulnerability that impacts millions of computers and mobile devices from a range of manufacturers.
• AsteroidOS, an open-source Wear OS alternative, now available as a stable release.
• U.S. retail giant Walmart confirms US$ 16 billion investment in Flipkart, giving it a 77% stake in India's e-commerce leader.
• Square acquires website builder Weebly for US$ 365 million, following its acquisition of food delivery service Caviar and corporate catering startup Zesty, in an attempt to create “one cohesive solution” for entrepreneurs looking to build an online and offline business.
• Pinterest now lets users filter search results by skin tone.
• Popular music streaming service Spotify hits 75 million subscribers; launches a redesigned app with on-demand playlists for free users.
• Photo-sharing service Smugmug acquires rival Flickr from Oath.
• Smartphone shipments in China see their biggest decline ever this quarter, as shipments drop to 91 million units.
• Yahoo!'s parent Oath partners with Samsung to cram bloatware on Galaxy smartphones.
• Finnish tech giant Nokia to sell its digital health business back to the co-founder of Withings.
• Popular podcast app Pocket Casts gets acquired by NPR, WNYC Studios, WBEZ Chicago and This American Life.
• Chinese government admits to collecting deleted WeChat messages for surveillance purposes.
• Samsung releases new Galaxy J2 Pro 'dumb'phone that cannot connect to the internet.
• News aggregation service Flipboard introduces expanded tech coverage and new private sharing features as it competes with Apple News, Google News, Twitter and Reddit as the go-to place for News.