Tech Roundup: Amazon Food, Facebook Shops & More

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

• Apple (as part of iOS 13.5) and Google (via an update through Google Play Services) officially release their COVID-19 contact tracing technology to public health agencies (PHAs) around the world, with 23 countries across five continents requesting access to the decentralised Exposure Notification API, which will allow PHAs to develop their own contact tracing apps. (So far, two dozen countries have already released their own homebrew contact tracing apps, but the Apple-Google release is expected to dramatically accelerate the process.)
• Ride-hailing platform Uber to slash 3,000 more jobs, weeks after laying off 3,700 jobs in the first week of May, as it resizes the company in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
• A court in the Netherlands rules that, under GDPR, a woman must delete photos of her grandchildren that she posted on Facebook and Pinterest without their parents' permission.
• Privacy-focussed messaging app Signal launches profile PINs as part of its first step towards moving away from using phone numbers as profile identifiers and help users migrate account data between devices.
• Facebook takes on Amazon with new online shopping venture called Shops as part of a major new push into e-commerce; to allow businesses to set up digital storefronts on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp and sell directly to users on the platform.
• The U.S. government announces new regulations to limit Chinese electronics giant Huawei from using American technologies to make its semiconductors, preventing foreign manufacturers of semiconductors who use American software and technology in their operations from shipping their products to Huawei unless they get a license from the U.S.; Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world's biggest contract chip maker and a key Huawei supplier, to stop new orders from Huawei to comply with the latest export control regulation aimed at further limiting chip supplies to the company.
• Microsoft debuts WhiteNoise, a new machine learning toolkit that leverages differential privacy to make it possible to derive insights from data while protecting private information; launches Lists, an Airtable-like service app for Microsoft 365 subscribers to "track issues, assets, routines, contacts, inventory and more using customisable views and smart rules and alerts to keep everyone in sync," and a new type of Office document called Fluid Framework that lets users create and edit charts, tables, and lists in real time.

Google tests "Interesting searches" on mobile web

• Canada's competition watchdog fines Facebook C$ 9 million after an investigation finds the company made "misleading" claims about how it shared personal information of users with some third-party developers.
• A U.S. District Court in the state of Washington rules that law enforcement searching a suspect's smartphone for evidence requires a warrant, even if it's just to access the lock screen; says "pushing the button on the phone to activate the lock screen qualified as a search, regardless of the lock screen's nature."
• Google pledges to stop building customised artificial intelligence tools that help oil and gas firms to extract fossil fuels worldwide; comes following a Greenpeace report that highlighted how Google, Microsoft, and Amazon use AI and warehouse servers to help the likes of Shell, BP, and ExxonMobil to locate and retrieve oil and gas deposits from the earth.
• Online e-commerce platform Walmart shut down online-only marketplace Jet, which it Acquired for US$ 3 billion in 2016 streamlines mobile shopping with a new app that combines its its Walmart and Walmart Grocery apps into a single entity.
• Google reportedly working on end-to-end encryption in RCS messages, the improved version of SMS/MMS, with options to fall back to the default SMS in the absence of a good internet connection and allow other third-party apps to access the encrypted messages.
• Sony's PlayStation Now cloud gaming subscription service hits 2.2 million subscribers, with PlayStation Plus surpassing 41 million paying users. (In comparison, Xbox Game Pass had 10 million subscribers and Xbox Live had 90 million active users in April.)
• Reliance Industries-owned retail platform JioMart launches in dozens of metro cities across India, counting Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Pune, Bokaro, Bathinda, Ahmedabad, Gurgaon, and Dehradun.
• Amazon India launches a food delivery service called Amazon Food in select areas of Bengaluru; to expand to other cities in a few weeks as it enters a market populated by Swiggy and Zomato, both of which have slashed thousands of jobs to tackle a downturn in demand following the coronavirus outbreak.
• Indian ride-hailing company Ola to cut 1,400 jobs, or 35 percent of its workforce in the country, as revenue drops by 95 percent in the last two months in the wake of COVID-19.

The new shopping feature in Instagram

• Indian food delivery startup Swiggy to lay off 1,100 employees, or nearly 14 percent of its workforce, in a bid to cut costs, as a continued nationwide lockdown to curb the coronavirus outbreak hits demand for online food ordering.
• On-demand video streaming service Netflix to prompt customers who have been inactive for a year or more if they want to keep their subscriptions, cancelling accounts that take no action.
• Online dating platform Tinder to start testing Global Mode, a new opt-in feature that lets user profiles show up around the world without any geographical restrictions.
• Facebook Workplace hits five million paid users, up from three million in October 2019; trials new feature that lets users add contacts with a QR code.
• Google rolls out major privacy and security enhancements to Chrome browser (version 83); adds a new puzzle icon in the main toolbar that allows users to manage extension permissions, to block third-party cookies in Incognito mode, a more prominent Safety Check tool that scans the browser for vulnerable passwords and rogue extensions, and an Enhanced Safe Browsing mode that shares URLs of "uncommon" websites with Google in real time, allowing the company to block phishing websites.
• Chinese handset makers OnePlus, Meizu and Realme join the likes of Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo for a peer-to-peer file transfer protocol (called Peer-to-Peer Transmission Alliance) that would work across their devices a la Apple's AirDrop. (Google is already working a similar Fast Share feature that works across Android.)
• Twitter tests new feature that lets a tweet's author limit who can reply, giving the options of "Everyone," "People you follow," and "Only people you mention" to tackle unwanted replies and make it easier to have meaningful conversations.
• Facebook unveils a new Messenger feature to alert users about malicious activity, aimed at preventing scams, filtering potentially suspicious messages from strangers, and unwanted interactions with those under 18, by employing a machine learning analysis of communication metadata (e.g. who is talking to whom, when they send messages, with what frequency, and other attributes of the relevant accounts) to identify shady behaviours.