Tech Roundup: Opera One, U.K. DMCC Antitrust Bill & More

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

• The U.K. announces plans for a new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Bill that aims to promote competition and protect consumers; to fine businesses which do break the law up to 10% of their global turnover.
• Apple is reportedly working on a privacy enhancement for its Safari browser that prevents website developers from cloaking third-party cookies (such as those from Adobe or Google for analytics) as first-party cookies; comes after the company took steps to deprecate third-party cookies in 2017.
• Twitter restores the gold badges and verified checkmarks of some news organizations and popular personalities over one million followers despite not paying for Blue subscription; restricts its search to registered users.
• Google tests a new Chrome browser design for tablets and foldable devices; finally updates Google Authenticator for Android and iOS with a new icon and account synchronization, letting users back up their 2FA codes to the cloud.
• A U.S. appeals court affirms a lower court's 2021 ruling largely rejecting claims by Epic that Apple's App Store policy banning third-party app stores is illegal; requires that Apple allow developers to place links inside their apps so users could make purchases outside the App Store.
• Microsoft to stop bundling Teams with Office following an antitrust complaint from Slack to the European Union.
• Salesforce-owned Slack officially rolls out Canvas, a collaboration tool for each channel with document creation, editing, and other options.
• Music streamer Spotify surpasses 500 million monthly active users for the first time, with paid subscribers touching 210 million; partners with BeReal to share music and podcasts.
• Yelp becomes the latest service to incorporate AI into its search features, as Klarna announces an AI-powered discovery shopping feed and a personal shopping assistant that allows users to speak to real fashion experts.
• Opera launches a new version of its browser called Opera One in preview that integrates ChatGPT, ChatSonic and AI Prompts, and leverages AI features to automatically group tabs based on context; to replace the company's flagship product on Windows, macOS and Linux later this year.
• Google updates Meet with new feature that lets users pause video streams of individual tiles to improve focus on frequent speakers or presenters.
• Apple takes 49% of the global refurbished smartphone market in 2022, as refurbished iPhone sales grows 16% YoY.
• ByteDance TikTok is working on a feature that lets users create AI-generated profile pictures similar to Prisma Labs' Lensa app.
• Artifact, the personalised news aggregator from Instagram's founders, harnesses AI with a new feature that generates article summaries.
• Apple removes the Virtual Scanner app including Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin whitepaper that shipped with macOS Mojave and up in its latest macOS Ventura beta.
• OpenAI allows ChatGPT users to turn off their chat histories, excluding them from being utilised in training the company's AI models, in a bid to address privacy concerns; also introduces a new export option to download data. (That said, the data will still be retained for 30 days to monitor the chats for abuse before they are permanently deleted. OpenAI previously said that its software filters out personally identifiable information that comes in from users.)
• Meta's WhatsApp expands its multi-device feature to let the same account be used across multiple smartphones, removing restrictions that limited the usage to just tablets and computers; tests option that permits users to auto-share their WhatsApp status to Facebook and lock individual or group chats with a fingerprint.
• Google begins suggesting ads in the Play Store's search menu on Android; pilots a new single-row layout for shortcuts in the desktop version of Chrome browser, enables 1080p video calls in Meet, and adds a new enhanced tool finder across Docs, Sheets and Slides to quickly locate commonly used tools and options.
• Meta reports US$ 3.99 billion loss from its virtual reality and augmented reality unit, as the number of number of daily active users across its family of apps jumps 5% to 3.02 billion; says time users spend on Instagram grew over 24% since the launch of the Reels format.
• Brazil orders a temporary ban on Telegram in the country after the company refuses to share information about neo-Nazi groups with the federal police.
• Amazon pulls the plug on its health-focused Halo division, and discontinues Halo Band, Halo View, and Halo Rise devices, as the company continues to cut costs and trim down its portfolio.
• German company Bosch announces plans to acquire U.S. chipmaker TSI Semiconductors to expand its semiconductor business with silicon carbide chips (SiC).
• Microsoft rolls out iPhone support to the Phone Link app on Windows 11; faces fresh setback after its proposed US$ 75 billion takeover of Activision is blocked by the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
• Movie streaming service Netflix is estimated to have lost more than one million users in Spain in the first three months of 2023 after it introduced a new password-sharing policy.
• Apple says the iOS App Store has 101 million users in Europe, iPadOS has 23 million, the Mac App Store has 6 million, the tvOS App Store has 1 million and the watchOS App Store has under 1 million; reveals Apple Books and Podcasts paid subscriptions are being used by less than 1 million people in Europe per month.
• Telegram gains new features that allows users to share entire chat folders with one link, create custom wallpapers for individual chats and use web apps in within chat.
• Pinterest announces a multi-year strategic ad partnership with Amazon, its first ads partner, to bring more brands and relevant products to the social network; reports 463 million monthly active users in Q1 2023, up 7% YoY.
• Snapchat reports 383 million daily active users in Q1 2023, up 15% YoY.
• Google's YouTube Music adds podcasts on Android, iOS, and the web, supporting listening offline, in the background, and casting for all U.S. users.
• Brave says it has removed "last remnant of Bing from search results page" and that its search engine is served by "our own index."
• Global smartphone shipments fall 14.6% YoY to 268.6 million in Q1 2023, the seventh consecutive quarter of decline, according to IDC; Samsung drops 18.9%, Apple 2.3%, Xiaomi 23.5%, OPPO 6.7% and vivo 18.8%.
• The U.S. state of Washington passes law requiring users' consent before companies collect, share or sell their health data.
• Reddit pilots new chat channels feature to take on Discord for users to hold real-time conversations within subreddits.
• Meta begins testing a new feature in Instagram that allows user to add songs to photo carousels.