Tech Roundup: Google Domains, Meta Family Center & More

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

• China's Cyberspace Administration unveils new draft rules that will make it harder for Big Tech firms like Tencent and ByteDance to profit from video gaming, live-streaming and social media services targeted at the country’s 180 million internet users under the age of 18; mandates online service providers to set up a "youth mode" for their services, stating clear limits in terms of user time, content and functions. (The proposal comes as the government has already limited video game playing time to three hours per week for teenage players on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.)
• South Africa's Competition Commission calls out Facebook and WhatsApp owner Meta Platforms for allegedly abusing its dominant position in the market by "engaging in exclusionary conduct geared at preventing competitors or potential competitors from entering into, participating, and expanding in a market."
• Salesforce-owned Slack begins cutting off access for select customers in Russia in order to comply with U.S. and international sanctions.
• Google formally launches Domains domain registration service in 26 countries, seven years after launching it as a beta in June 2014; features support for over 300 domain endings.
• Meta Platforms to debut NFTs in Instagram over the next several months, allowing users to showcase their existing tokens and mint new ones.
• Google rolls out support for Steam in Alpha "on select Chromebooks for users to try"; details Stadia plans, including letting developers offer trials, port Unreal Engine and Unity games more easily, a public-facing storefront to browse the game streaming service's catalog, and a new B2B offering called "Immersive Stream for Games," in partnership with Google Cloud to allow third-parties to license and take advantage of the platform's underlying technology to deliver games directly to players.
• The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fines Meta €17 million for GDPR violations related to 12 personal data breaches that the tech giant disclosed to the regulator between June 2018 and December 2018.
• The European Commission, the antitrust regulator for the European Union, green-lights Amazon's US$ 8.45 billion acquisition of MGM.
• Food delivery firm Zomato reaches a merger agreement with instant delivery service Blinkit, formerly Grofers, in an all-stock deal valuing Blinkit between US$ 700 million and US$ 750 million.
• Pinterest announces new feature that lets creators download and share Idea Pins, a mix of Stories and short-form video, across social channels, including Facebook, Instagram, and others.
• DigitalOcean Acquires CSS-Tricks, a learning site with 6,500 articles, videos, guides and other content focused on frontend development.
• Amazon comes under the scanner of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for its use of dark patterns to trick users into signing up for its Prime subscription.
• NortonLifeLock's US$ 8.6 billion purchase of Avast hits a snag after the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it would launch a deeper investigation into the proposed cybersecurity merger following competition concerns.
• Meta introduces Family Center for Instagram, "a new place for parents and guardians to access supervision tools and resources from leading experts"; announces parental supervision tools for VR headsets.
• Google launches new Google Docs feature that allows users to draft emails in its word processor and send them right from within the application; reportedly strikes a deal to buy Raxium, a "five-year-old startup that develops tiny light-emitting diodes for displays used in augmented and mixed reality devices."
• Ukraine, which has received US$ 100 million in cryptocurrency donations amid its ongoing war with Russia, legalises virtual assets in the country.
• Netflix pilots a new, opt-in feature in Peru, Chile, and Costa Rica that prompts subscribers to pay extra for sharing the service with users outside their own households, including friends and distant family members, to address unauthorised password sharing.
• Microsoft unveils the AI-powered Surface Hub 2 Smart Camera, with support for automatic reframing, and image correction, for US$ 799.
• Instacart’s rolls out a new Shoppable Recipes feature to let creators link shopping lists to their TikTok videos.
• Social audio application Clubhouse begins testing Wave Bar, a new feature that enables users to view and invite online friends to social rooms.