Tech Roundup: Pinterest IPO, Samsung Galaxy Fold Fiasco & More

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

1. French government launches a new encrypted messaging app TChap (based on Riot) for government communication to replace WhatsApp and Telegram; sign-ups restricted to French government employees.
2. Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato, Italy's antitrust and competition authority, opens a preliminary investigation into whether Amazon abused its dominance in e-commerce and logistics services to favour third-party vendors who used its logistics service over others.
3. More than 4,000 pages of leaked documents from 2011 to 2015 originated from a 2015 lawsuit filed against Facebook by startup Six4Three for cutting it off from accessing certain types of user data (through its Graph API) reveal how Mark Zuckerberg and Co. leveraged its massive trove of personal information as a bait to favour strategic friends and deny access to potential rivals, reports NBC News, suggesting it deliberately turned a blind eye to the potential privacy risks associated with such data-sharing arrangements while simultaneously crafting a misleading narrative publicly promising to protect user privacy.
• The report shows that the company also considered charging for premium access to data (ultimately dropped), that "Facebook gave Amazon extended access to user data because it was spending money on Facebook advertising and partnering with the social network on the launch of its Fire smartphone," and that it discussed "restricting the MessageMe app from accessing Facebook data because it had grown too popular and could compete with Facebook messages." (It bears repeating at this stage that Vine suffered from a similar fate, resulting in the app shutting down.)
4. Popular social video sharing app TikTok faces new obstacles in India, its fastest growing market (which accounts for 39 percent of its total 500 million users as of 2018), after the country's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology briefly bans the app, ordering both Apple and Google to remove the app from its app stores over pornographic and illicit content. (ByteDance's TikTok was recently fined US$ 5.7 million by the U.S. FTC for violating child protection guidelines.)
5. Alphabet-subsidiary Sidewalk Labs' plans to build a smart neighbourhood called Quayside in Toronto runs into further trouble after Canadian Civil Liberties Association sues Waterfront Toronto, municipal, provincial and federal governments over privacy concerns relating to the project's proposed plans to collect data from a range of sources; says "Canada is not Google's lab rat."
6. Amazon workers in its warehouses at Rheinberg, Werne, Bad Hersfeld and Koblenz in Germany go on strike demanding better pay and working conditions.
7. Employees at Chinese tech firms like Alibaba, Huawei, ByteDance (owner of TikTok) and others push back against 996 schedule of working from 9 AM to 9 PM six days a week, prompting a debate about work-life balance (or lack of it); Alibaba CEO Jack Ma says it's a 'huge blessing' for young workers to be working gruelling 12-hour shifts, 6 days a week.
8. Apple and Qualcomm end their legal battles over former's allegations that the chipmaker was charging too much for licensing its essential patents, following which Qualcomm managed to get iPhones banned in China and Germany for patent infringement; companies announce a surprise joint settlement, with Apple reportedly set to pay an undisclosed amount to Qualcomm, in addition to establishing a six-year licensing agreement (with the option to extend by up to two years), and a "multiyear" chipset supply agreement.
9. Facebook officially adds dark mode to Facebook Messenger through an option in the settings, more than a year after it was officially announced; begins testing a horizontal-scrollable carousel-like experience in its flagship app that merges News Feed, Sponsored Posts and Stories.
10. Apple's next iteration of iOS to include a system-wide dark mode, improved Undo-Redo gestures and multiple item selection, redesigned volume HUD and Reminders app, and a new font-management system, according to exclusive details made available to 9to5Mac; to bring Shortcuts, Screen Time, iMessage effects to macOS later this year.
11. Microsoft said to be working on its own brand of wireless earbuds, following the footsteps of Apple (AirPods), Google (Pixel Buds), Samsung (Galaxy Buds) and Amazon (reportedly in the works with Alexa integration).
12. Streaming giant Netflix to invest upto US$ 100 million in New York City to build a production hub and hire hundreds of new staffers as it continues to double down on original content; adds 9.6 million new paid subscribers (7.86 million international, 1.74 million in the U.S., taking the total paid streaming memberships to 148.9 million) for the quarterly period Jan-Mar, with revenues of US$ 4.5 billion, and says it's not overly concerned about new entrants Disney+ and Apple TV+, but forecasts only 5 million net new subscriber additions for Q2 2019.
13. Google brings its fitness app Google Fit to iOS, and introduces a new budgeting feature in Google Play store that lets users track expenses and specify an upper spending limit for purchases on apps, movies, books, songs, or any other items; Chrome for Android gets dark mode, while desktop version gains a reader mode that strips out a webpage's unnecessary background clutter to make an article easier to read.
14. Pinterest prices IPO at US$ 19 a share, taking the company's total value to US$ 10 billion as it begins trading on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: PINS).
15. Samsung' Galaxy Fold, an Android foldable smartphone that makes use of a flexible display to be used as a 7.3-inch tablet, runs into quality control issues after multiple reports of display issues emerge that range from bulging to blank screens; Samsung indefinitely postpones its release as it says "We will thoroughly inspect these units in person to determine the cause of the matter."
16. Google brings YouTube Music support (only free tier) to Google Home smart speaker, as Amazon launches a free tier of its music streaming service in the U.S. that is ad-supported and available to use through the company's Echo speaker and other Alexa devices.
17. Instagram begins testing a new post layout that hides like counts, says "we want your followers to focus on what you share, not how many likes your posts get"; Facebook said to be working on a voice assistant to take on Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Apple Siri that could be used on the company's hardware products like Portal video chat smart speakers and Oculus VR headsets, reports CNBC.
18. Amazon shutters its China online storefront amazon.cn as it cedes control to local rivals Alibaba and JD.com, of which Google is an investor.
19. Mozilla calls out Apple for its "Privacy" slogan; urges the company to provide an option to automatically reset advertising identifier on iPhones and iPads on a monthly basis; says "If Apple makes this change, it won't just improve the privacy of iPhones — it will send Silicon Valley the message that users want companies to safeguard their privacy by default."
20. Amazon and Google settle their ongoing streaming feud; YouTube app to return to Amazon Fire TV devices and Fire TV Edition smart TVs in return for Amazon Prime Video bringing support for Chromecast and Chromecast built-in devices. (The deal still doesn't address if YouTube has plans to bring its app to Echo Show smart displays, or if Amazon has agreed to stock Google Home smart speakers. Amazon however did begin selling Chromecasts again on its website at the end of 2018.)
21. Sony launches a new taxi-hailing service S.Ride, joint venture between Sony Corporation, Sony Payment Services and several Japanese taxi companies, in Tokyo to rival Uber. (It is to be noted that ride hailing services are banned in Japan. Under Japanese law, private drivers are banned from transporting paying passengers.)