Tech Roundup: China Online Payments, Loon Shutdown & More

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

• Italy's data privacy authority, the Italian Data Protection Authority, orders video sharing app TikTok to temporarily block the accounts of any users whose ages can't be verified following the death of a 10-year-old girl allegedly playing a 'choking' game, weeks after it debuted new policy that requies users to be at least 13 years old to sign up for an account on the platform.
• Google signs an agreement with French media publications to create a framework that allows it to pay for content used for preview snippets in its news aggregation and search products by taking into account criteria such as the daily volume of publications, monthly internet traffic and "contribution to political and general information"; threatens to pull its search engine entirely from Australia if a proposed law goes into effect that would force digital platforms to enter into negotiations with news media companies for payment for content.
• Regulators in the E.U. begin scrutinizing how employers monitor remote workers, including via video surveillance and key logger technology that captures everything they type, after German electronics retailer is fined US$ 12.6 million for using video surveillance cameras to monitor employees in violation of GDPR laws.
• China's central bank, the People's Bank of China, outlines draft rules to curb monopolistic practices in online payments; says firms with over 50% of the market could face antitrust probes in what's a setback for Tecent and Alibaba. (As of June 2020, Tencent's WeChat Pay accounted for roughly 39% of the market share, while Alibaba's Alipay had a 56% share.)
• Hike, the messaging app backed by SoftBank Group and WeChat-owned Tencent, shuts down in India.
• Twitter partners with Dailyhunt to bring Moments to the Indian social news app to showcase curated tweets pertaining to news and other events as part of its efforts to extend its reach in the country. (While Twitter has few than 75 million monthly active users, Dailyhunt, in comparison, reportedly reaches over 285 million users each day.)

• Bangalore-baed Flipkart launches SuperCoin Pay to allow customers redeem their rewards points across thousands of retail stores across the country as Walmart-owned ecommerce giant bets on its loyalty program to win and sustain its user base in the world's second-largest internet market.
• ByteDance suspends development of its own smartphone under Smartisan brand and fold the unit's R&D team into the company's educational hardware team; launches new e-wallet feature in Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, called "Douyin Pay" to compete with rival digital payment services WeChat Pay and Alipay.
• Tencent WeChat says it facilitated US$ 250 billion (1.6 trillion yuan) in annual transactions through its third-party "mini programs", double the value of transactions in 2019.
• Brave becomes the first major browser to natively support peer-to-peer (InterPlanetary File System) IPFS protocol to help improve "the overall resilience of the Internet" by allowing files to be hosted by a multitude of users distributed across networks a la BitTorrent.
• South Korean search engine company Naver Corporation acquires online self-publishing platform Wattpad for an estimated US$ 600 million.
• Turkey imposes advertising bans on Twitter, Periscope and Pinterest following a failure to appoint local representatives in the country under a new social media law; says their bandwidth will be cut by 50% in April and by 90% in May.
• Content discovery platform Taboola rolls out Stories in beta, letting publishers add the format directly to their websites or mobile articles.
• On-demand video streaming platform Netflix begins rolling out "Shuffle Play", a feature that lets its algorithms decide what users watch next based on their tastes, as it surpasses 204 million paying subscribers worldwide. (In comparison. Disney+ had 86.8 million subscribers as of early December.)
• Adobe says 303 billion PDFs were opened using its services in 2020, a 17% rise year-over-year.
• South Korean electronics giant LG reportedly mulling exiting smartphone business altogether in 2021; "Since the competition in the global market for mobile devices is getting fiercer, it is about time for LG to make a cold judgment and the best choice," the company says, adding "nothing has been finalised."

• Web browser maker Opera acquires YoYo Games for US$ 10 million and launches Opera Gaming division to monetise its gaming efforts, as Opera GX gaming browser hits 7 million monthly active users in December 2020.
• Fines imposed under the General Data Protection Regulation in the E.U. have risen 40% to €159 million in the past year when compared to the first 20 months the law was in force; a total of €272 million has been levied in fines by European data protection authorities since the introduction of the GDPR in 2018, with over half of those penalties imposed by Italy and Germany.
• Google's parent company Alphabet grounds Loon balloon-powered internet initiative after more than seven years; says "we haven't found a way to get the costs low enough to build a long-term, sustainable business." (It's worth noting that Alphabet also pulled the plug on a similar initiative called Makani, which aimed to harness wind power from gigantic kites fitted with airborne turbines, in February 2020.)
• Bitcoin tumbles below $30,000, as the volatile cryptocurrency continues its 2021 slide after quadrupling in value to reach a peak of $41,940 early this month.
• U.S. delivery and pick-up service Instacart slashes 1,877 jobs, including its only union roles, as it shifts to new models such as Partner Pick, which allows grocery store employees, instead of Instacart shoppers, use the company's technology stack to prepare orders for customers.
• Microsoft backtracks on price hike for Xbox Live Gold subscriptions that would have raised the price to US$ 10.99 per month in the U.S. and US$ 5 for a three-month membership (not to mention double the price of a yearly subscription from US$ 60 a year to US$ 120); says free-to-play games will no longer require a Gold subscription to play on Xbox.
• Uber lays off about 185 Postmates staff, about 15% of the division's workforce, including CEO Bastian Lehmann, a year after purchasing the food delivery service for US$ 2.65 billion, as the ride-hailing giant consolidates its food delivery operations.
• Chinese electronics giant Huawei's Honor brand releases new View40 smartphone and announces partnerships with Microsoft, Qualcomm, Intel and AMD, as the company, which is currently restricted from using US technology after being blacklisted in 2019, spins off the brand as a separate company from its parent to bypass the restrictions.