Tech Roundup: Apple Child Safety Measures, Firefox Enhanced Cookie Clearing & More

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

• Apple announces plans to introduce new privacy-oriented child safety features in iOS and macOS that aims to flag and limit the spread of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) online as governments around the world mandate online service companies proactively look for and report problematic content; says it will reject any government demands to use new child sexual abuse image detection system for surveillance.
• Twitter Spaces launches a co-hosting feature in Spaces, which allows rooms to have one host, up to two co-hosts, and ten additional speakers active at once.
• Cloud storage service Dropbox beats in Q2 2021 with revenue of US$ 530.6 million and 16.14 million paying users.
• Google refreshes its Nest lineup, including its video doorbell and indoor-only camera, with a unified design language; announces battery-powered Google Nest Cam (US$ 180) and Google Nest Doorbell (US$ 180), Google Nest Cam with Floodlight (US$ 280) and Google Nest Cam Indoor (US$ 100), noting that the Doorbell’s battery can run for up to six months on a single charge, while the Nest Cam can run for up to seven months.
• Newly unsealed court filings reveal that Google contemplated buying some or all of Epic Games as it dubbed the company's plans to distribute Fortnite through other channels via sideloading a threatening "contagion," as the company alleges that Android is much less open than Google claims, saying it cuts create deliberate barriers — including Android phone features and deals with phone makers — to restrict third-party app stores and discourage downloading apps directly.
• Mozilla adds new "Enhanced Cookie Clearing" option to Firefox 91 that makes it "easy to delete all traces of a website in your browser without the possibility of sneaky third-party cookies sticking around"; comes as the web browser haemorrhages nearly 46 million users over the last three years, according to the company's Public Data Report, as users increasingly shift to Chromium-based browsers like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, which serves as the default web browser for Windows.

• Chinese handset maker Xiaomi emerges world's biggest smartphone vendor for the first time for the month of July, with 17.1% of the global market share, Samsung in second with 15.7%, and Apple in third with 14.3%, weeks after the company surpassed Apple to become the second in worldwide smartphone shipments for Q2 2021; debuts Mix 4 smartphone with a bezel-less design and an under-display selfie camera in China for US$ 770.
• China reportedly plans to impose a fine of ~US$ 1 billion on food delivery giant Meituan in the coming weeks for abusing its market position, requiring it to revamp its operations and end its exclusivity arrangements with merchants known as "pick one from two"; comes as Tencent resumes accepting user registrations on WeChat, after suspending them on July 27 for a "security technical upgrade" to comply with Chinese regulations.
• India's Supreme Court rules in favour of Amazon to stall the sale of Future Group to Reliance Industries in a major victory for the American e-commerce giant in the key overseas market.
• Facebook adds audio chat features to its dating service; redesigns its data portability "Transfer Your Information" tool to let users move images to Photobucket and event listings to Google Calendar, as part of the Data Transfer Project; begins testing ads on its Shop tab in Instagram.
• Google expands VPN service offered as part of its One subscription bundle to Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, and the U.K. months after debuting the feature in the U.S. in late October 2020; refreshes its USB-based Titan two-factor authentication security keys with USB-A and USB-C configurations, alongside NFC support, while discontinuing the Bluetooth variants for good.
• Privacy-oriented messaging app Signal adds new privacy setting that allows users to to set a default disappearing message timer after which the chats are deleted for both the sender and receiver; says the preconfiguration applies to all newly created groups as well as conversations initiated from one-to-one chats.
• Salesforce launches Salesforce+, a free streaming service targeting business professionals, with original programming (including live event programming) from Salesforce and its clients.
• Google rolls out new features aimed at offering safer experiences that are customised for younger audiences; to give users under the age of 18 options to enable safe search by default and request the removal of their images from Google Image results, change the default video upload setting in YouTube to the most private option available and turn of autoplay, as well as block ad targeting based on the age, gender, or interests of people under 18.