Tech Roundup: Amazon Honeycode, Two Years of GDPR & More

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

• The European Commission touts GDPR regulations in the region have made citizens more empowered and aware of their rights to privacy and data portability, two years after the groundbreaking data protection laws were introduced in the E.U.; cautions "harmonisation across the Member States is increasing, although there is a certain level of fragmentation that must be continually monitored," and that there's a "lack of a consistent approach" to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and the internet of things.
• Germany's Federal Court of Justice rules that Facebook abused its dominant market position in social media to illegally harvest data about its users; says the company broke competition laws by combining data it collected about users across its different platforms, including WhatsApp and Instagram, as well as from outside websites and third-party apps, with "no option for users to have Facebook's content "personalisation" based only on the data they reveal on facebook.com."
• The upshot of this ruling could be that Facebook could be forced to allow users to block the company from combining their Facebook data with information about their activities on other apps and websites, which will in turn amount to a "structural separation of Facebook's social empire."
• In a separate development, India's antitrust watchdog, the Competition Commission of India, approved Facebook's purchase of a 10 percent stake in Reliance Jio Platforms, clearing the path ahead for a deeper integration of Jio's services on WhatsApp.
• U.S. lawmakers jointly introduce a new bill (called Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act of 2020) that aims to ban the use of facial recognition technology by federal law enforcement agencies in the country.
• Apple says it declined to implement 16 new web technologies in its Safari web browser, including Bluetooth, NFC, magnetometer, battery status, proximity sensor, geolocation sensor, and user idle detection APIs, over concerns that they could be used to violate users' privacy using browser fingerprinting techniques.
• Google to default new users' privacy settings, such as location, web, and app history, to be auto-deleted after 18 months, with YouTube history to be erased every 36 months.
• The idea here is to give users the convenience and benefits of machine leaning-based recommendations that come from retaining 18 months of history, while eliminating indefinite storage.
• This, however, doesn't apply to existing users on the platform, who will have to proactively fine-tune these settings, nor extend to its other services like Gmail, Google Drive and Photos, or to the third-parties that may have shared this information with Google.
• ByteDance-owned TikTok says it will stop stealthily accessing users' clipboard following new iOS 14's feature that notifies people when apps attempt to read the clipboard; claims it was used to identify spammy behaviour.

The new iOS 14 experience

• China launches its final satellite to complete the country's in-house global navigation system Beidou, an alternate solution to the widely used, U.S. government-owned GPS system.
• Facebook's plans for mobile payments in WhatsApp faces fresh setback after Brazil's central bank orders Visa and Mastercard to halt payments and transfers via the system just a week after launch; says the service "could damage the Brazilian payments system in the areas of competition, efficiency and data privacy."
• Retail giant Amazon purchases Zoox, a 2014-founded startup focussed on developing a range of purpose-built, zero-emissions vehicles designed for autonomous ride-hailing, for over US$ 1.2 billion as it seeks to one-up its primary rivals Waymo (which is owned by Alphabet/Google), Uber, Lyft, Cruise (a subsidiary of General Motors), and ArgoAI (which is owned in part by Ford and Volkswagen).
• Facebooks's "long history of allowing racist, violent and verifiably false content to run rampant on its platform," costs it dearly after a string of high-profile brands, including Verizon, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Hershey, Honda and Rakuten Viber, pause their advertising efforts on the social network; company outlines proposals to ban ads that claim people from a specific race, ethnicity, nationality, caste, gender, sexual orientation or immigration origin are a threat to the physical safety or health of any individual.
• Facebook is also beginning to alert users when they are about to share articles that are over 90 days old; says "timeliness of an article is an important piece of context that helps people decide what to read, trust and share," and that they could "misconstrue the state of current events."
• Music streaming service Spotify begins testing in-app ads on podcast episode pages, allowing users to redeem offers and promo codes simply by clicking on the ads.
• Mozilla's VPN service, Firefox Private Network, gets rebranded as Mozilla VPN; to cost US$ 5 per month for users in the U.S.
• Microsoft previews Teams chat app for personal use following Zoom's sudden success in the communications space; announces plans to shut down Mixer live game streaming service on July 22, along with transitioning its streamers and audience to Facebook Gaming as it aims to better competes with rivals Twitch and YouTube. (It's worth noting that Microsoft acquired Beam in 2016 and relaunched it as Mixer in 2017 as a competitor to Twitch.)
• Search giant Google extends fact checking to image search results; to add blurbs and fact-check labels from trusted sources indicating what's false and offering a link to the full article debunking the image, as tech companies come under increasing pressure to combat the viral spread of misleading claims online.
• Microsoft to permanently shutter its 83 retail stores and put its resources into online shopfront Microsoft.com after closing the outlets in late March due to COVID-19.
• Facebook-owned Instagram expands e-commerce footprint by letting creators sell their merchandise directly on the platform, as it works to make shopping a cornerstone of its app experience; the company's internal R&D group, NPE Team, releases new iOS app called Forecast for crowdsourced community predictions to a variety of questions spanning various topics.

• Indonesian ride-hailing and delivery giant Gojek becomes the latest company to slash 430 jobs (or 9 percent of its workforce), as it grapples with the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
• Disney's Disney+ streaming service to expand to eight new European countries, including Portugal, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Belgium and Luxembourg, on September 15.
• China's Tencent to launch Trovo, a Twitch-like live game streaming service, in the U.S., as it follows ByteDance's footsteps to build online users outside its home country.
• Facebook to discontinue Oculus Go, its least powerful and least expensive virtual reality headset headset, to focus on Oculus Quest; teases options for developers to "share their apps to anyone with a Quest, without having to be accepted into the Oculus Store, and without the need for sideloading."
• Enterprise messaging platform Slack launches Connect, letting up to 20 organisations communicate in a single Slack channel in a bid to bring enough people into a channel to make email unnecessary.
• Mastercard, the world's second-largest payments processor, to acquire Finicity, a finch firm that helps banks share customer data with other financial companies, in a deal valued at US$ 825 million.
• Google announces plans for a revamped Google News experience later this year with support for subscriptions and to "help participating publishers monetise their content through an enhanced storytelling experience that lets people go deeper into more complex stories, stay informed and be exposed to a world of different issues and interests."
• Camera maker Olympus quits the business after 84 years to focus on supplying industrial and medical equipment such as endoscopes; to sell its imaging division to private equity firm Japan Industrial Partners.
• Apple acquires Fleetsmith, an enterprise device management company that makes tools that enable businesses to more easily deploy iPhones and Macs to their employees, in addition to managing apps, settings, and security preferences, for an undisclosed sum.
• Amazon's AWS announces Honeycode, a new cloud infrastructure for non-developers to build powerful mobile and web applications without the need for writing any code.
• Instagram expands its TikTok competitor, Reels, following its launch last year in Brazil to new markets in France and Germany, allowing users to record short, 15-second video clips set to music or other audio, then share them on a platform of their choice.
• Google to begin offering loans to merchants in India through its Google Pay for Business app in partnership with financial institutions as it seeks to make a headway in the fin-tech sector in the country ahead of rivals Walmart's PhonePe and SoftBank-backed Paytm; Amazon partners with more than 1000 retail shops in the country to launch Smart Stores, allowing shoppers to scan a QR code to browse store inventories and buy items using Amazon Pay.
• Google overhauls its Google Photos app for Android and iOS with a new icon and map view to browse geo-tagged photos and videos on an interactive map; tests a new TikTok-like feature on YouTube that will allow users to record 15-second, multi-segment videos.
• Ride hailing service Uber to "deprioritise" its finance-related projects, including Uber Money, to focus on rides and food delivery amid cratering demand during the pandemic.