Tech Roundup: ByteDance Party Island, WhatsApp Eyes U.S. & More

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

• Apple faces fresh lawsuit from U.S. lawmakers, who side with Epic Games and accuse the company of stifling competition with its monopoly on app distribution through the App Store; say " Apple continues to monopolize app distribution and in-app payment solutions for iPhones, stifle competition, and amass supracompetitive profits."
• Google loses bid to reverse a US$ 120 million fine imposed by French regulators in December 2020 over dropping tracking cookies without users' consent; court says Google's behaviour "amounted to a lack of clear and compete information of users, a failure to seek their prior consent and a deficient mechanism to block the cookies."
• ByteDance, owner of short-video sharing app TikTok and its Chinese sibling Douyin, launches a new social app in China called Party Island that allows users to interact in a virtual community through avatars, as the company cashes in on the metaverse craze.
• Google to invest US$ 700 million in Bharti Airtel, India's second largest telecom operator, for a 1.28% stake as part of its US$ 10 billion 'Google for India Digitization Fund.'
• Smartphone shipments grows about 5% to more than 1.35 billion units in 2021; Samsung takes the top spot with 270 million units, followed by Apple with 235 million units.

• Apple adds unlisted app distribution to the App Store, letting developers publish an app that can only be installed via a direct link and not found via any other means, including App Store categories, recommendations, charts, search results, or listings.
• Meta-owned WhatsApp rules out support for RCS messaging on its platform, as the company makes its first marketing push for WhatsApp in the U.S. touting its privacy benefits over traditional SMS.
• Google makes a U-turn after a customer backlash; allows owners of legacy free G Suite accounts to migrate their data to consumer Workspace accounts before the July 2022 without having to pay a monthly fee.
• Life360, a family safety and tracking service, scales back its user data sales business to just two partners Allstate Arity and Placer.ai; comes after the company announced a deal to acquire the item tracker Tile in November and following reports that revealed that "Life360 was supplying up to a dozen data brokers with the whereabouts of millions of its users."
• Google reportedly working on gaming-focused Chromebooks; comes amid renewed plans for Android tablets with Android 12L, a mid-cycle update of Android dedicated to tablet and foldable functionality.