Tech Roundup: Google RCS Expansion, Venmo Redesign & More

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

• China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology calls out 145 apps, including those from Amazon, ByteDance and NetEase, for illegally collecting user information, order them to take corrective measures before July 26 or face punishment; comes as the government singles out more than 1,300 apps to date for illegally collecting user information, requesting excessive permissions or misleading customers following a broader push towards strengthening consumer data protection.
• The U.K. government unveils proposals to increase competition in digital economy and "help British startups and scaleups to compete more fairly against those tech giants that have powerful positions in the market"; to include clauses that bar tech platforms from "pushing their customers into using default or mandatory associated services, or ensuring third party companies that depend on them aren't blocked from doing business with competitors."
• Financial services company Revolut launches Stays, which lets users book hotels and other accommodations via its super app, in Europe, with U.S. launch to come in the following months, as it moves to challenge to travel industry giants like Booking.com, Expedia and TripAdvisor.
• Google's YouTube acquires Indian social commerce startup Simsim in a deal reportedly valued at over US$ 70 million; debuts Super Thanks, which lets users tip creators for individual uploaded videos and have their message highlighted in comments.
• Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo announces cross-platform alternative to Apple's Hide My Email; launches new Email Protection feature that will allow users to save themselves from being tracked by trackers embedded into emails by forwarding them to a free and personalized DuckDuckGo "@duck.com" email address before being sent to their actual email after scanning them for trackers.
• Digital payments platform Square launches Square Banking, which offers savings, checking, and loan services to Square merchants, expanding on its financial services offerings following other initiatives Square Debit Card and Square Capital.
• Newsletter platform Substack to fund the launch of podcast network Booksmart, allowing subscribers access extra content for US$ 7/month or US$ 70/year.

• Verizon becomes the third major U.S. carrier to support Google's RCS-based Messages as the default texting app, officially joining AT&T and T-Mobile, as the search giant prepares to roll out support for end-to-end encryption in the next-gen standard designed to replace SMS. (It also poses an intersting question: Will Apple — which has made privacy and security a key part of its marketing push — ever support RCS? Because text messages across Android and iOS ecosystems will fall back to SMS instead of RCS.)
• Google releases Chrome 92 for desktop, Android, and iOS with improved per-site permissions, site isolation and phishing detection, new Chrome Actions to perform safety checks right from the address bar, support for full-page screenshots, and the ability to lock down incognito tabs with Face ID; officially launches Backup by Google One, a unified Android cloud backup that syncs app data, messages, photos, and more.
• Twitter begins rolling out a preview of a revamped version of TweetDeck with a "small group of randomly selected people" in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, featuring an option for wider columns, and a Explore tab with trending topics.
• Microsoft ships new Windows 11 update that natively bakes its Chat feature for talking with friends and family members over Microsoft Teams as part of its Windows Insider program before the redesigned operating system becomes generally available later this year.
• Cloud storage service Dropbox turns on new file conversion feature, which lets users convert images between different formats like JPEG and PNG, and files into PDFs, with support for video conversion coming soon; makes automatic backup utility for photo uploads available to all free users.
• PayPal-owned mobile wallet and peer-to-peer payments service Venmo debuts a complete overhaul of its app, ditching its public, global feed of users' transactions in favour of a limited "friends feed" that restricts the social elements to users' friends.
• Google unveils a public preview of Google Cloud Armor Adaptive Protection, a machine learning-powered service for Google Cloud apps and sites to protect against DDoS attacks.
• Facebook-owned Instagram enables new feature that allows users control "sensitive content" in the Explore tab, with settings to "Allow", "Limit", and "Limit Even More" in a bid to contain sexual and violent imagery.
• On-demand video streaming service Netflix, which added 1.54 million new subscribers in Q2 2021, announces plans to expand into mobile gaming; to bundle upcoming titles with the subscription at no additional cost.