Tech Roundup: Facebook Fallout, Troubled Tesla & More

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

• Brian Acton, WhatsApp co-founder who encouraged people to #deletefacebook following Cambridge Analytica data scandal, calls himself a sellout for allowing Facebook to buy his company (It's worth noting here that Google's Larry Page personally got on call with WhatsApp's other co-founder Jan Koum requesting them to stay independent as they are a big threat to Facebook.), days after Instagram co-founders' departure instigates an ugly back-and-forth; says the company used him to push the acquisition past E.U. regulators to tell them that it would be difficult to link WhatsApp with Facebook when it was exploring that very option (Facebook was later fined US$ 122 million for misleading regulators, but the European Commission stopped short of reversing its earlier decision to clear the acquisition.) and that "I sold my users' privacy to a larger benefit... I live with that every day," but provokes strong reaction from David Marcus, VP of messaging products, ("I find attacking the people and company that made you a billionaire, and went to an unprecedented extent to shield and accommodate you for years, low-class. It's actually a whole new standard of low-class.") and Alex Stamos, former chief security officer, in a 13-part Twitterstorm ("It is foolish to expect that FB shareholders are going to subsidize a free text/voice/video global communications network forever. Eventually, WhatsApp is going to need to generate revenue...").
• Mobile websites can access smartphone motion, orientation, proximity and light sensor data without asking users' explicit consent (unlike location, for example), reveals a new study.
• India's highest court upholds the legality of Aadhar, the world's largest biometric identity project run by the government, saying it's not a violation of citizens' privacy.
• The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accuses Tesla CEO Elon Musk of securities fraud; seeks to remove him from his role in charge of the electric car company, saying he made a series of "false and misleading" tweets about potentially taking Tesla private last month in an attempt to impress his girlfriend.
• Google gets fine TRY 93 million after an year-long investigation by Turkey's Competition Authority rules that the search giant abused its dominant position to force mobile device manufacturers to add Google Search by default on Android smartphones.
• Grab's acquisition (and subsequent merger) of Uber's Southeast Asia business in March is declared "anti-competitive" by the Competition Commission of Singapore following a months-long investigation into its impact on the country.
• Google-owned mobile operating system Android turns 10 years old.
• Satellite radio company Sirius XM purchases Pandora music streaming service for US$ 3.5 billion.
• Microsoft unveils a new search experience dubbed Microsoft Search to brings together search results from Bing, Office, Windows and more in one place; bakes LinkedIn into Outlook and other Office apps.
• Facebook-owned WhatsApp hires 'grievance officer' to help combat false information in India.
• Apple completes takeover of music identification service Shazam weeks after E.U. approval; app set to become ad-free.
• Snapchat begins rolling out a new visual tool that allows users identify objects in real life and then buy them on Amazon.
• Office chat service Slack acquires Astro and shuts down its email app.
• Google celebrates 20 years of search with a slew of new announcements: adds a news feed to its homepage on mobile, improves travel planning in search results, brings Google Lens powered image search to Google Images, doubles down AMP-powered Stories, to surface old searches (tied to users' accounts) under a section called "Related activity" in search results, to allow users bookmark search results into a special viewer called Collections (remember Google Spaces, although I am not sure how Google Save fits into all this).
• Ride-hailing service Uber to pay US$ 148 million in connection to a 2016 data breach (revealed last year) that granted hackers access to the personal information of 57 million riders and drivers, resulting in Uber paying them US$ 100,000 to delete the data and keep the breach quiet, rather than report the incident.
• Google adds new social features in Google Maps to let users poll their friends on where to eat; Reserve with Google expands its reservation options to include museum tickets and other activities (apart from gyms and spas).
• Facebook says Stories on Facebook and Messenger have a combined 300 million daily active users, in what could spell further trouble for Snapchat. (Instagram has 400 million daily active users, as of June 2018.)
• Microsoft Windows 10 crosses 700 million installations, three years since its launch.
• Android Messages gets improved search features that makes it possible to search photos, videos and locations shared in conversations.
• Mozilla launches Firefox Monitor, "a free service that notifies people when they've been part of a data breach."
• Facebook-owned Oculus VR unveils new standalone virtual reality headset called Quest for US$ 399.
• Amazon opens a new physical store in New York City that only sells products with 4-star ratings and above. (Rigging reviews on Amazon is already a thing, now it's going to get worse!)
• Qualcomm files lawsuit against Apple, accusing the iPhone maker of stealing modem-chip designs and giving them to Intel in order to help Intel make cellular chips that could be used in iPhones at lower prices than those charged by Qualcomm.
• Uber lands a significant win after a federal appeals court throws out a lawsuit that sought  independent contractors of the company be deemed "employees"; asks dispute to be handled in private arbitration instead as stipulated by the Uber driver agreement. (In other words, Uber drivers gave away their rights to sue in court when they signed up to work for them.)
• Facebook begins rolling out redesigned Messenger experience (that was unveiled at F8 developers conference back in May) for Android smartphone users.