Tech Roundup: Google-Sonos Patent Fight, Microsoft-Activision Blizzard Deal & More

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

• A new investigation from The Guardian reveals that Amazon hired warehouse workers in Saudi Arabia who were trafficked from Nepal; company says it's implementing stronger controls.
• OpenAI's ChatGPT apps for iOS and Android hit US$ 4.58 million total revenue in September 2023 from the US$ 20/month ChatGPT+ plan, up from US$ 3.81 million in August and US$ 2.74 million in July.
• X lets users block unverified accounts from replying to their posts; comes as rival Mastodon reaches 1.8 million monthly active users and Meta-owned Threads readies a trending topics feature on the platform as well as the ability to share voice posts and edit a post repeatedly within five minutes of sending.
• Netflix plans to end its free mobile tier in Kenya, which offered 25% of its shows and movies, after two years on November 1, and rolls out a ~US$ 6/month ad tier.
• Google lands a victory in its legal tussle with Sonos after a U.S. court in the state of California overturns a US$ 32.5 million verdict for Sonos, finding that the patents at the heart of the infringement lawsuit are unenforceable; says the "patents [were] issued after an unreasonable, inexcusable, and prejudicial delay of over thirteen years by [Sonos]" and that it "filed the provisional application from which the patents in suit claim priority in 2006, but it did not file the applications for these patents and present the asserted claims for examination until 2019." (Google, which has called the lawsuit a misleading patent campaign, has since wasted no time rolling out an update to let Nest speakers, displays and Chromecast devices belong to multiple speaker groups.)
• Spotify puts restrictions on its free tier in India to attract more paid users; disables options for users to play songs in any order, tapping back, and repeating tracks.
• The U.S. state of Utah sues TikTok, accusing it of getting kids hooked through "algorithms and manipulative design features," following similar lawsuits by Indiana and Arkansas.
• California signs into law the Right to Repair Act, effective for devices made and sold after July 1, 2021, barring select consoles and alarm systems; also passes new Delete Act, which requires data brokers to delete a resident's personal information after a single request.
• Google adds 1080p video in Google Meet group calls for Workspace customers, after rolling out the feature for one-on-one sessions in April 2023; tests a Discover feed for desktop web on its home page in India.
• TikTok adds Direct Post, which lets users post directly from popular editing apps like Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Express, CapCut, DaVinci Resolve, SocialPilot and Twitch's Clip Editor.
• Microsoft rolls out new tools in preview for healthcare organisations, including three new AI models for Azure AI Health Insights and an Azure AI Health Bot, as Google Cloud announces new artificial intelligence-powered search capabilities to help clinicians quickly access information from different data sources.
• Adobe debuts Firefly Image 2 Model in Firefly for the web, its generative AI image creation service to better render humans, including facial features, skin, body and hands, and creates a new symbol called Content Credentials to encourage tagging AI-generated content; previews Project Res Up, an experimental AI tool that upscales low-resolution GIFs and videos, Project Stardust, an AI-based image editing engine, Project Draw & Delight, and Project Fast Fill, which lets editors remove objects from a video or change backgrounds.
• Microsoft walks back on earlier plans to revise its storage quota of 5 GB to include OneDrive photo albums; says it will no longer roll out the update.
• Google announces enhanced search results for electric vehicles, home heating and cooling systems, and expands AI tools to better predict floods, wildfires and extreme heat.
• Sony plans to launch PS5 game cloud streaming for PlayStation Plus Premium members in Japan on October 17, Europe on October 23 and North America on October 30.
• Dropbox announces an open beta for its AI-powered Dash universal search tool as it unveils a new redesigned web user interface and a new tool called Dropbox Studio that allows users to "create, edit, review, approve and publish videos" directly from the service.
• Global PC shipments fall 7.6% YoY to 68.2 million in Q3 2023, led by a 23.1% decline in Apple during the quarter, according to IDC.
• WordPress offers official support for ActivityPub, allowing users to follow WordPress.com sites on Mastodon and other federated platforms.
• Mozilla tests a new experimental Firefox feature called Review Checker, powered by Fakespot (which it acquired earlier this year), to flag misleading reviews and counterfeit products on Amazon, BestBuy and Walmart.
• Google vows to defend users of generative AI tools in Google Cloud and Workspace from copyright claims, following similar pledges from Microsoft, Adobe and others that offer such tools; says it assesses training datasets for potential sources of unfair bias and that it tests for a wide spectrum of vulnerabilities and potential areas of abuse.
• Atlassian, the company behind Bitbucket, Confluence, Jira and Trello, announces plans to acquire video messaging platform Loom for about US$ 975 million.
• Google updates its Search Generative Experience with the ability to generate images using prompts and to write drafts that can be customized for tone and length; begins offering passkeys as the default sign-in option across personal accounts and easy access to the dark web report by bringing it to the account menu in the Google app for Android and iOS.
• Meta-owned WhatsApp adds a new scheduling feature called Event for group chats in beta, allowing users to plan and organize chat-based events within the app.
• Microsoft officially completes its US$ 69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard acquisition after a 20-month battle with regulators in the U.K. and the U.K.; comes after the tech giant restructured the deal to sell some of Activision's cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft to address competition concerns.
• India rolls back its plan announced on August 3, 2023, to impose restrictions on laptop imports, saying the government "only wants importers to be on close watch."
• Google agrees to pay German publishers €3.2 million per year for publishing their content on Google News.
• The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) opens an investigation into the Vodafone-Three US$ 19 billion merger for potential antitrust concerns; comes amid the European Commission seeking opinions on whether Apple iMessage and Microsoft Bing should be subjected to the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
• Klarna launches a suite of new features, including an AI-powered image-search tool called shopping lens that allows users to search and shop for items by taking a picture of the product.