Tech Roundup: Brave Search, Facebook SEER & More

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

• Google unequivocally states it would not build alternate identifiers or tools to track users across multiple websites once it begins phasing out third-party tracking cookies from its Chrome browser by early 2022, signalling a major shift to its ads-driven business model; says "advances in aggregation, anonymisation, on-device processing and other privacy-preserving technologies offer a clear path to replacing individual identifiers."
• What Google will stop doing is selling web ads tailored to individual users' browsing habits, and its Chrome browser will no longer allow third-party cookies used by ad companies to track users on the web to build a dossier of interests based on the sites visited to target relevant ads. Instead, it aims to make use of Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) — which it claims is a "privacy-first" and "interest-based" advertising technology — in which a user's browsing habits on Chrome are stored locally on the devices, utilising them to place the user in various audiences, or "cohorts," based on those habits. Advertisers will then target their ads to cohorts, rather than an individual user.
• As privacy becomes more mainstream, the fact that Apple and Google are positioning themselves for a more privacy-conscious future in ways that seek to preserve their dominance — likely at the expense of a slew of smaller rivals — should come as no surprise.
• The big picture here is that tech giants are powerful enough to dictate the terms of the modern internet, and while moving toward models that are ostensibly better for consumer privacy is a step in the right direction, the moves are also aimed at remoulding the playing field in their own interests.
• Inner Mongolia, China's top energy consuming province, announces plans to suspend all new and existing bitcoin mining projects before the end of April in the wake of mounting pressure to meet its energy-saving targets.
• Facebook to bringing its news curation offering to Germany later this year following deals with the country's top publishers, including leading national outlets Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Zeit.
• Uber spins out Postmates X, the robotics unit of the delivery startup it acquired last year for US$ 2.65 billion, as an independent company now called Serve Robotics.
• Chipmaker Intel is ordered by a U.S. federal court to pay US$ 2.18 billion after a jury in the state of Texas found the company of infringing two patents once owned by NXP Semiconductors and now owned by VLSI Technology.
• Virginia offcially signs the Consumer Data Protection Act into law, effective January 2023, making it the second U.S. state to pass a comprehensive data privacy regulation in the country.
• Microsoft rolls out end-to-end encryption for one-to-one calls in Teams, announces a new Teams Connect feature that lets users share channels with other internal or external users, and unveils Intelligent Speakers, which can automatically transcribe Teams meetings and use AI to identify up to 10 unique voices; launches Power Fx open source low-code language that takes its cues from Excel formulas, Microsoft Mesh, a mixed-reality platform on Azure, and Azure Percept, a hardware and software platform to implement Azure AI services for use cases such as object and anomaly detections at the edge.

• Google updates Chrome for desktop with a revamped user profile experience that makes it easy for user to swap between different profiles and a new Reading List feature for saving articles to read later, and to switch the browser release cycle for the first time in a decade by shipping a new milestone every four weeks instead of the current six weeks, putting it at par with Mozilla Firefox; begins migrating Hangouts users to Google Chat for personal accounts, as it continues to slowly phase out the messaging platform in favour of Chat and Meet.
• Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi revives its defunct instant messaging app MiTalk as Jushou (meaning "hands up"), a social audio chat platform for professionals to fill the void left by audio chatroom app Clubhouse after its brief surge in popularity in the country.
• Facebook's Instagram launches Live Rooms for live broadcasts with up to four creators, up from two, and announces plans to roll out new audio features in coming months to take on Clubhouse and prevent users from shifting to non-Facebook properties for social interactions. (Last year, it was TikTok, now it's the turn of Clubhouse to face the heat from Facebook.)
• Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's financial company Square, which also owns mobile payment service Cash, to launch banking capabilities with a new entity called Square Financial Services later this year; acquires a majority stake in TIDAL streaming service Tidal for US$ 297 million.
• Google restarts updates for some iOS apps such as Google Docs and Gmail after a three-month-long long pause triggered by a new requirement from Apple effective December that prevents developers from issuing further updates until privacy labels are applied to existing apps distributed via the App Store. (However it's worth noting that a number of prominent apps, including Search, Photos, Assistant, Maps, Pay, and Chrome, are yet to receive the privacy label treatment.)
• Facebook's WhatsApp rolls out support for one-to-one audio and video calls in its desktop app, and begins testing disappearing messages in conversations, as it bets big on busines chats a la WeChat to counter privacy concerns and supercharge the messaging app as an all-in-one platform.
• Netflix launches Fast Laughs, a TikTok-like feed in its mobile apps that presents a string of comedy clips from its stand-up specials, TV series, and movies.
• Apple debuts a new service to let users transfer iCloud photos and videos to "another participating service" like Google Photos in Australia, Canada, the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S.; clarifies that users can't actually set a default music service in iOS 14.5 but has a feature that lets Siri attempt to learn preferred listening apps over time.

• Microsoft rolls out new features for Edge browser, including vertical tabs and a feature that it says can improve startup times by 29% to 41% after device reboots; updates Bing image search with improved visuals and launches Group Transcribe for iOS, a transcription and translation app for in-person meetings.
• Twitter begins rolling out new update for its Android app that allows users to join and host audio-based conversations in its Clubhouse-like live chatroom platform Spaces; to label tweets with misleading information about COVID vaccines and debut a strike system that can lead to permanent account suspension after five strikes.
• Semiconductor and wireless technology company Qualcomm announces Snapdragon Sound, an initiative to enhance the wireless sound experience by lowering latency and improving connection issues; partners with Lofelt to create a "universal haptic software framework" for Google's Android that runs natively on the the chip maker's Snapdragon mobile platform and can be licensed by device makers to incorporate advanced haptics for mobile gaming and other immersive experiences into their products, and even device accessories.
• Facebook builds a computer vision program called SEER (short for "SElf-supERvised") that can recognize objects in a photo or interpret a block of text without relying on carefully curated and labeled data sets by feeding it over 1 billion random, public, and non-E.U. images from Instagram.
• Apple adds a new "Apple for Kids" portal to its support website, offering parents and guardians a one-stop hub for getting their children set up on Apple's devices, services, and platforms, and managing their usage.
• Retail behemoth Amazon opens its first cashierless store outside of the U.S. with a new Amazon Fresh location in London, allowing customers to pick items off shelves and take them out of the store without having to stop and pay a cashier.
• Google unveils Flutter 2.0, an open source UI development kit that helps app makers build cross-platform software from the same codebase, including web, desktop, and even emerging form factors such as foldables; offically stops selling its Cardboard VR goggles after seven years.
• Brave acquires Tailcat, an open-source search engine developed by the team behind the now-defunct Cliqz anti-tracking browser, and shares plans to launch Brave Search as a privacy-friendly alternative to Google search with an ad-free paid search option, as Brave browser usage tops 25 million monthly active users.