Tech Roundup: Facebook U.K. Fines, PayPal-Pinterest Deal & More

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

• The U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) fines Facebook £50 million (US$ 70 million) for "consciously refusing to report all the required information" related to its acquisition of GIPHY in 2020 for US$ 400 million; to also face a monetary penalty of £500,000 (US$ 700,000) for "changing its Chief Compliance Officer on two separate occasions without seeking consent first."
• Netflix changes the public-facing metrics it uses to rank the most popular titles on its streaming service; pivots from measuring the completion of at least two minutes of a film or TV show in its first 28 days to the total number of hours a movie or series is viewed.
• Twitter has acquired London-based Sphere, which operates an eponymous groups chat app, the latest in a series of recent moves from the social network as it looks to aggressively broaden and improve its product offerings.
• Microsoft — in partnership with Amazon and its app store — begins testing a small subset of about 50 Android apps to the Windows 11 Insider Program.
• Online payments company PayPal is reportedly exploring the purchase of social media company Pinterest in a potential deal valuing the company at about US$ 39 billion; comes as the platform redesigns its home feed with a Watch tab for viewing photo albums and short videos.

• Facebook-owned WhatsApp launches a new feature called catalog "Collections" to make it easier for users to shop for items using categories from small businesses around the world.
• Music streamer Spotify partners with Shopify to let artists list merchandise on profiles for US$ 29/month to US$ 299/month, starting in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
• Fin-tech company Stripe purchases Bengaluru-based Recko, a platform that lets businesses track and automate payments reconciliation, marking the payment processing company's first ever acquisition in India.
• Google says its new data privacy section for Play Store apps, which lists what type of data apps collect, whether this data is optional or required to use the apps, and whether or not the app encrypts data in transit, will be visible to users from February 2022 and mandatory for developers to submit the relevant information by April that same year.
• China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is considering rules that would force Tencent, ByteDance, and other media companies to let rivals access and display their content in search results in what could be a huge shakeup aimed at breaking down online barriers among the country's internet giants.