Tech Roundup: Europe TikTok Probe, Google Willow & More

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

• Google faces new regulatory scrutiny in Japan after the antitrust watchdog, the Fair Trade Commission (JFTC), accuses it of forcing smartphone makers to use its search app and have it located in a specific position on the devices' screens in order for them to be able to access the Google Play app store.
• A new survey of 2,170 people finds that three in 10 U.K. adults (29%) don't know how to wipe their personal information from an old device or tech product.
• Google raises privacy concerns after it announces an update to the Ads platforms program that will allow its partners to use "cookies, web beacons, IP addresses or other identifiers" starting February 2025 to better audiences on smart TV, streaming services and internet-linked games consoles; says it will require "advertisers and publishers to be fully transparent with users about the data they collect and how it is used."
• X raises the prices of Premium+ subscription by 37.5%, costings US$ 22 in the U.S., up from the current US$ 16, to continue supporting an uninterrupted browsing experience, add more exclusive features, and "directly fuel" its creator program.
• Meta tests new feature in Instagram to display unseen Story Highlights from a user's mutual followers at the end of the Stories carousel; rolls out WhatsApp improvements, such as the ability to choose participants from group chats, use new effects on calls, and take advantage of higher resolution video.
• Google brings instant playback for newly-uploaded videos to Drive, eliminating wait times; makes available NotebookLM Plus to all Workspace customers, and expands its data migration experience to include the ability for Google Workspace admins to migrate conversations from channels in Microsoft Teams to spaces in Google Chat.
• Meta reportedly plans to add a display to its Ray-Ban glasses as soon as H2 2025 to show notifications or AI responses, as the company accelerates development to stay ahead of rivals in the augmented reality market.
• Google expands Gemini's latest in-depth research mode to 40 more languages, nearly two months after it launched real-time search capabilities, enabling its language models to access current information from Google Search, and brings "Help me write" to Gmail on the web to help users tweak their messages using Gemini.
• OpenAI unveils new o3 and o3-mini models that are trained to "think" before responding via what OpenAI calls a "private chain of thought", and plans to launch them in early 2025; comes as Google releases Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, an experimental "reasoning" model that "explicitly shows its thoughts" and can use them to strengthen its reasoning.
• The European Commission approves Nvidia's acquisition of Israeli AI workload management startup Run:ai, saying the takeover raises no competition concerns in the region.
• Malaysia says it has identified WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, Telegram, WeChat and TikTok as platforms that need to obtain a license by next year.
• The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) says its initial probe found that chip design software maker Synopsys' US$ 35 billion acquisition of 3D software maker Ansys could lower innovation and raise prices; adds that it would commence an in-depth probe of the merger if the companies did not submit suitable proposals to address the concerns.
• The European Commission opens a formal investigation into TikTok over concerns foreign actors used it to interfere in the Romanian presidential elections.
• Global shipments of wrist-worn wearables hit 139 million units in the first nine months of 2024, down 1% YoY; China leads with 45.8 million units.
• Vietnam and Indonesia impose restrictions on Chinese e-commerce companies like Temu and Shein, seeing cheap imports as a threat to homegrown industries.
• Social media network Tumblr takes on subreddits and Facebook groups with a new Community feature for users to connect with other people based various topics or interests.
• Australia plans a levy on tech companies like Meta with more than AU$ 250 million in local revenue to force them to pay publishers for journalism, after Meta quit the prior deal.
• LG becomes the latest electronics company after Oppo and Samsung to discontinue Blu-ray players.
• Epic Games partners with Spain-based telecommunications giant Telefónica to preinstall the Epic Games Store on millions of Android devices across several European and Latin American countries.
• Google unveils new quantum computer chip Willow that it claims "performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today's fastest supercomputers 10^25 or 10 septillion years," adding "it lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse."
• Russia tests cutting off access to the global internet in select regions of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia, as part of a new censorship crackdown.
• Meta says it will require advertisers globally to get verified before running financial service ads targeting Australian users, starting in early February 2025, to tackle investment scams; requires businesses to provide their Australian financial services licence number and provide a government-issued ID.
• Yelp adds AI-powered review insights to restaurants spanning categories such as food quality, service and ambiance; updates personalised visual feed with autoplay user videos, user reviews, trending searches and popular businesses.
• Google updates Maps with the option to personalise vehicle markers with additional car choices and up to 8 colours.
• Swiss company Proton brings new encrypted collaboration features that include a new suggesting mode; offers users the ability to set permissions to read-only and apply an expiration date when sharing documents.
• Mastodon, the open source, decentralised alternative to X and Bluesky, rolls out a refreshed notifications page with settings to filter unwanted notifications, improved account recommendations and an updated look when creating a new post.
• Chinese e-commerce platform JD.com begins accepting Alipay for online payments, in a continuing sign that the infamous walled gardens in the country are breaking down following government crackdown on monopolistic practices.