Tech Roundup: Apple Silicon Macs, Project Taara & More

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

• Biotech megacorporation Pfizer announces that its COVID-19 vaccine, a collaboration with German firm BioNTech, is "more than 90 percent effective in preventing COVID-19."
• A group of 165 companies and industry bodies, including Yelp, Booking.com, Expedia, Kayak, Opentable, Tripadvisor, Trivago, Kelkoo, Stepstone, and Foundem, call on E.U. antitrust authorities to take a tougher line against Google, accusing the U.S. tech giant of unfairly favouring its own services on its web searches.
• India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, which oversees programming for television and theatres, to begin regulating policies for streaming platforms and digital news outlets.
• Popular videoconferencing platform Zoom agrees to enhance its security as part of a proposed settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, after the company was accused of falsely claiming its video calls were protected by end-to-end encryption, thereby "deceptive and unfair practices that undermined the security of its users"; to implement a vulnerability management program and deploy safeguards such as multi-factor authentication to protect against unauthorized access to its network.
• Japanese electronics giant Sony announces plans to enter the drone market with a new brand called Airpeak; to officially launch the project in the spring of 2021.
• Indian antitrust authority, the Competition Commission of India, formally opens investigation into Google for allegedly abusing the dominant position of its app store to promote its payments service in the world's second largest internet market; to review claims of whether the Android maker prominently promotes Google Pay during the setup of an Android smartphone.
• Apple suspends "new business" with Pegatron, its second-largest iPhone assembler after Foxconn, after a new investigation by reveals that thousands of student interns had worked overtime to assemble iPhones, in breach of Chinese labour laws.
• Twitter reportedly working on a new feature that prompts users with a "misleading information" label when attempting to "Like" a tweet that's been marked as misinformation as part of its latest efforts to tackle the spread of fake news by adding a friction layer before retweeting and liking tweets.

• Google reportedly working on an upcoming feature for Google Drive that allows users to open encrypted files; to end support for unlimited storage in Google Photos and to begin counting Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms and Jamboard files against free and paid storage caps effective June 1, 2021 as part of a larger push to drive users to subscribe for Google One storage.
(It's an interesting catch-22 situation. Paying Google for services is a lot better than paying with your data or attention, but it's also likely to attract more antitrust concerns, allowing the company to leverage its wide user base in anticompetitive ways to give it unmatchable advantages over smaller rivals.)
• Apple officially debuts M1 chip, its Mac-specific version of the A-series processor based on ARM technology, with 16 million transistors, an 8-core CPU and up to 8-core GPU, a 16-core Neural Engine dedicated to machine learning tasks, and integrated processors for camera, video, audio, storage, and security features, as it moves away from Intel CPUs for laptop and desktop computers since the company began using them in 2006; unveils new Mac lineup comprising of MacBook Air (US$ 999), MacBook Pro (US$ 1,299), and Mac Mini (US$ 699) computers with support for M1 macOS Big Sur.
• Music streaming service Spotify acquires podcast hosting and advertising company Megaphone for US$ 235 million, as the company fleshes out its own podcasting ecosystem — a network of exclusive shows (Gimlet Media, Parcast, The Ringer), a podcast player (the Spotify app), podcast creation software (Anchor), a hosting company, and its own ad sales team.
• Alphabet partners with Kenyan telecom company Econet to deliver wireless Internet over light beams in Kenya using a technology that can cover distances of up to 20km under its moonshot initiative Project Taara (formerly known as The FSOC Project).
• European antitrust regulator, the European Commission, levels formal charges against ecommerce giant Amazon over its "dual role" in the business as a retailer and also a platform for third-party retailers, alleging that the company has abused its size, position, and access to data to gain an unfair advantage over the competition by using third-party merchant data to compete against those vendors with its own-label products.
• Facebook's WhatsApp rolls out new shopping button in its Business version of the app that lets users browse through a business' catalogue directly from the chat screen.
• Ride-hailing service Uber rolls out new feature called Uber Reserve that allows users reserve rides up to 30 days in advance and pick their favourite driver for the trip in a bid to attract customers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• China releases draft antitrust guidelines for the first time to rein in internet-based monopolies, signalling policymakers' heightened concerns over the growing power, influence and risks of digital platforms and their market practices in the economy; move erases about US$ 280 billion of market value from Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, JD.com, and Meituan, with the regulations deeming activities like offering steep discounts to eliminate rivalry, colluding on sharing sensitive consumer data, and forming alliances to force out competitors as potentially monopolistic.
• TikTok-owner ByteDance is on track to generate at least 180 billion yuan (US$ 27.2 billion) in advertising revenue in China this year, cementing its second spot in the country's digital ad market.
• Amazon unveils Alexa Care Hub, allowing people to care for aging family members via an activity feed that can be reviewed by caregivers, alongside an emergency contact feature to call for help.
• Disney's Disney+ streaming service surpasses 73 million paid subscribers at the end of September, up from 57.5 million at end of June and 60.5 million in early August.
• Facebook rolls out Vanish Mode, its Snapchat-like feature for disappearing messages, to Messenger and Instagram, a week after debuting a similar ephemeral messaging feature on WhatsApp; redesigns Instagram's layout for the time in years with a new bottom navigation bar that puts Reels and Shopping tabs front-and-centre, with the Compose button and the Activity tab have been relocated to the top-right of the home screen.
• Google adds support for PyTorch to Android's Neural Networks API, enabling third-party app enable developers to run computationally intensive AI models on-device; reportedly working on messaging features for Stadia game streaming service as well as integrating its Chromecast streaming devices with Nest Audio speakers, brings Google Calendar integration to Google Chat, and announces plans to pull the plug on Expeditions, its education-focused VR app, on June 30 2021, with existing AR/VR experiences to be migrated to Google Arts & Culture app.
• Apple's iOS 14.3 beta code indicates the iPhone may suggest third-party apps to users during the iPhone or iPad setup process likely in an attempt to appease antitrust concerns.
• Inrupt, the three-year-old startup from World Wide Web founder Tim Berners-Lee, releases an enterprise version of the Solid privacy platform, which allows organisations and governments to build privacy-focussed applications that put users in control of their data via online storage entities called Personal Online Data Stores (or Pods).
• Photoshop maker Adobe to acquire Workfront, a startup that develops employee collaboration and project management software for marketers, for US$ 1.5 billion.