Tech Roundup: Facebook GlobalCoin, Saleforce's Tableau Acquisition & More

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

• Facebook releases a new Study from Facebook app for Android, months after shutting down Research and Onavo apps, that allows the company to monitor people who sign up for the study (aged 18 and above) in exchange for a monthly payment; app to be available only in the U.S. and India, and will gather which apps are on users' phone, how much time they spend using those apps, the app activity names of features they use in other apps, plus their country, device and network type. (This only goes on to show that Facebook clearly feels that it still needs this data on how people are using their phones, and help gain crucial insights that could be valuable in shaping its product roadmap when it comes to adding new features. In a separate development, Facebook has said in a letter to lawmakers it obtained data on ~187,000 users via its now-defunct Research app, including ~31,000 US users and ~4,300 US teenagers. The rest of the users are from India.)
• Google makes it possible to sign in to Google accounts on iOS devices using an Android smartphone as a hardware security key; comes more than a month after it announced similar capabilities for Chrome OS, macOS, and Windows 10.
• Microsoft launches Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which gives users access to PC and Xbox games for US$ 15/month and includes Xbox Live Gold (Xbox Game Pass for PC will be available for US$ 4.99/month with access to at least 10 games during beta); xCloud console streaming service to let users stream their Xbox One library, including Xbox Game Pass, to many platforms, with preview coming in October.
• Facebook has reportedly signed up 12+ companies, including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Stripe, Booking.com, and Uber, to back its GlobalCoin cryptocurrency (nicknamed Project Libra) it plans to unveil on June 18, according to The Wall Street Journal.
• Enterprise cloud service/CRM solutions provider Salesforce buys data visualisation Tableau for US$ 15.7 billion in an all-stock deal as the company looks to bulk-up its data analytics offerings; Tableau, which is valued at US$ 10.79 billion (trading now halted), operate independently and under its own brand post-acquisition. (The development comes close on the heels of Google's acquisition of data analytics startup Looker for US$ 2.6 billion.)
• Google-owned navigation service Waze gains support for Google Assistant; finally adds option to compare and highlight differences between two documents in Google Docs.
• Amazon to shut down its Amazon Restaurants food delivery service in the U.S. on June 24, after closing in the U.K. late last year, as competition from Grubhub and Uber Eats intensifies; to shut down Spark, the interest-based recommendations service it launched in 2017 for Prime members, and redirects users to a new site called #FoundItOnAmazon, which is a lot similar to Interesting Finds.
• Mozilla says a premium version of Firefox is being developed with features like VPN and "secure storage", may come this fall with monthly subscription plan, once again underscoring the fact that privacy online never comes cheap; announces that "Firefox" is becoming its own brand name that encompasses the products: Firefox Browser, Firefox Send (file transfer), Firefox Lockwise (password manager), and Firefox Monitor (breach notifier).

The new Firefox family

• Google preempts Pixel 4 leaks by posting an image of the upcoming smartphone; confirms a square-shaped rear camera bump, a feature also rumored to be coming to the 2019 iPhones.
• Ride hailing service Uber is expanding its financial services efforts by hiring several dozen engineers and product managers in New York City, reports CNBC, as it hopes to increase brand loyalty and engagement through products like a bank account. (It's worth noting Uber's India rival Ola recently unveiled a credit card service.)
• Opera launches Opera GX, the world's first gaming-focused browser, with a built-in system to limit the browser's CPU and RAM usage, so other apps run unhindered; also comes with Twitch integration.
• Apple brings its iCloud service as an app for Windows 10 devices as it continues its services push; brings green screen editing to iMovie for iOS, along with 80 new soundtracks that can be used for videos or trailers.
• Huawei indefinitely postpones the announcement of a new Windows laptop, originally scheduled for this week, amid ongoing U.S. trade sanctions; tells Verizon that the U.S. carrier should pay US$ 1 billion in licensing fees for more than 230 of the Chinese telecoms equipment maker's patents. (The patents in question range from core network equipment, wireline infrastructure to internet-of-things technology.)
• Cloud service provider Dropbox updates its macOS and Windows apps with a new design, Slack and Zoom integration.
• Uber to use Australia's second-largest city, Melbourne, as the first international test site for the group's planned UberAIR flying taxi service; to deliver McDonald's meals via drones in San Diego as soon as this year, as rival Zomato conducts a successful drone test in India to deliver food in less than 15 minutes.
• Google moves some production of US-bound Nest thermostats and server hardware out of China to Taiwan and Malaysia, avoiding punitive U.S. tariffs amid ongoing trade war with China, reports Bloomberg.
• Facebook quietly limits the functionality of Graph Search — which lets users run queries like "people who live in the city of New York" — after it's found to abused to lookup information on Facebook users en masse; says Watch video platform has 140M daily active users who spend at least a minute on the site.
• City navigation and public transit app Citymapper ends Citymapper Ride, a shared riding program let riders pool together to avail buses and cabs; says it intends to focus on Pass, its subscription service that provides access to mobility services including public transit, bicycles and cabs for one fee.
• European digital banking startup Revolut that offers forex services, business accounts, and cryptocurrency trading tests international waters with Australia launch.
• Video streaming service Netflix unveils plans for a mobile game based on the Stranger Things universe for 2020, the company reveals at E3 gaming event.
• Popular note taking service Evernote fixes a security flaw in its Web Clipper Chrome extension that could have allowed hackers access to users' sensitive info from third-party sites.
• Popular encrypted messaging service Telegram gets hit with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack in Asia as protestors in Hong Kong take to the streets to voice their concerns against new laws that would require suspects accused of criminal wrongdoings, such as murder and rape to be extradited from Hong Kong to mainland China.
• Walmart announces plans to integrate Jet.com's retail, technology, marketing, analytics, and product teams with its own e-commerce business, the company it acquired for US$ 3.3 billion in 2016.
• Amazon faces new lawsuit that accuses the company that it recorded audio from millions of children without getting consent from their parents; says Alexa records people regardless of whether they purchased the device or signed up to use the Alexa app, and that it doesn't warn unregistered users they're being recorded.
• Facebook has failed to delete 93 percent of posts containing speech violating its own rules in India, a year-long study by South Asian advocacy group Equality Labs finds.
• Google backs out of plans to kill ad blockers in Chrome; says the new extension API (called Declarative Net Request, which will replace the current Web Request API) will improve user privacy by ensuring that the extension does not access a user's sensitive data in order to block content, and updates the rules limit from 30,000 to 150,000 that allows third-party ad-blocking extensions to filter hundreds of thousands of ad-related domains.
• Apple revises its privacy policy (updated on May 9, 2019) to pre-screen or scan "uploaded content for potentially illegal content, including child sexual exploitation material."