Tech Roundup: Apple Antitrust Probe, Facebook Live Audio Rooms & More

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

• Germany's Federal Cartel Office (FCO) announces fresh antitrust investigation into Apple's App Store practices (i.e. the 30% cut of in-app purchases) and its pre-installed ecosystem of apps and services to determing whether the Cupertino tech giant holds a "paramount significance across markets" and whether, through its ecosystem, Apple holds enough power to make it difficult for "other companies" to challenge it, following similar antitrust probes into Amazon, Facebook and Google.
• Russian lawmakers pass new legislation that requires U.S. tech companies with more than half a million daily users in Russia to set up a local branch or Russian legal entity by January 2022 or risk facing punitive measures.
• Nigerian government debuts on Indian social media platform Koo in the wake of an indefinite ban on microblogging service Twitter.
• Chinese tech giant ByteDance says its annual revenue in 2020 grew 111% year-over-year to US$ 34.3 billion compared to 2019, with gross profit rising 93% year-over-year to US$ 19 billion.
• China's market regulator, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), opens an antitrust probe into Didi Chuxing to investigate whether the company used any anti-competitive practices to squeeze out smaller rivals unfairly, as it prepares for a U.S. IPO later this year.
• Facebook-owned Instagram launches ads (be up to 30 seconds and vertical in format) in Reels worldwide, as the company turns its TikTok competitor format into a revenue generator; rolls out Clubhouse-rival Live Audio Rooms, available to verified public figures and select Groups, and its podcast service, available to select partners, in the U.S.

• Popular Apple-owned music discovery service Shazam surpasses more than 1 billion Shazams per month and a total of 50 billion tags since the app was first launched in 2002.
• Bitcoin gets its first makeover in four years, as part of a new upgrade called Taproot that's due to take effect in November; to enable greater transaction privacy and efficiency, and add support for smart contracts to the bitcoin blockchain network.
• Music streaming service Spotify acquires Podz, a podcast discovery startup that enables podcasters promote their show using machine learning to select 60-second clips of key moments; says "Podz' technology will complement and accelerate Spotify’s focused efforts to drive discovery, deliver listeners the right content at the right time, and accelerate growth of the category worldwide."
• PUBG Mobile returns to Google Play Store in India with new name Battlegrounds Mobile India, after being banned for nine months on national security grounds.
• Google is reportedly working to build an Android device network like Apple's Find My, an APK teardown of new version of Google Play Services reveals; to face fresh investigation from E.U. antitrust regulators into its digital advertising business before the end of the year.
• Internet behemoth Baidu to deploy 1,000 budget robotaxis on Chinese roads over the next three years, as it seeks ways to monetise autonomous driving technology as part of a partnership between its autonomous driving unit Apollo and BAIC Group's ArcFox.
• South Korean multinational automotive manufacturer Hyundai acquires innovative robotics company Boston Dynamics from SoftBank in a deal valued at US$ 1.1 billion, three years after SoftBank purchased the firm from Google in June 2017.