Tech Roundup: Microsoft Turns 50, TikTok Ban Extension & More

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

• China's Cyberspace Administration, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Public Security and the State Administration for Market Regulation jointly announce a crackdown on inappropriate collection and subsequent use of personal information.
• Microsoft celebrates its 50th anniversary, as CEO Satya Nadella recreates the company's first ever product launched in 1975, the BASIC interpreter for the Altair, within minutes using AI Copilot.
• The European Commission orders Apple to open iOS to third-party connected devices and charges Google with breaking the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in search and Google Play; Apple says the new E.U. interoperability rules "wrap us in red tape," force "us to give away our new features for free," and are "bad for our products" and users, as Google says more changes to Search in the E.U. would "reduce traffic to European businesses" and changes to the Play Store may expose users to "malware and fraud."
• Google's YouTube adds new editing features to Shorts, including a new and improved editor and the ability to choose stickers and import photos from a device's gallery for use as templates; come at a time when TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, risks a ban in the U.S. if it's not sold to an American owner by April 5. (However, U.S. President Donald Trump has extended the deadline by another 75 days, as a deal "requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed.")
• Google unveils a NotebookLM "Discover sources" feature, which searches the web and recommends up to 10 sources for users to add to their notebooks; introduces Sec-Gemini v1 model for cybersecurity-focused tasks like incident root cause analysis, threat analysis and vulnerability impact understanding.
• German and Dutch authorities shut down Kidflix, a CSAM streaming platform with over 1.8 million users between April 2022 and March 2025, on March 11, 2025.
• Adobe updates Premiere Pro with AI features like Generative Extend, which lets users extend clips by up to two seconds in 4K quality and with background audio.
• Anthropic debuts a new Claude for Education tier for colleges as a response to OpenAI's ChatGPT Edu plan, with Learning Mode, which "guides students' reasoning process rather than providing answers, helping develop critical thinking skills" and shares templates for papers.
• Nintendo unveils GameShare to enable local multiplayer on multiple Switch consoles with just one copy of a title; to launch alongside the Switch 2 console, which is set for a June 2025 launch for a price tag of US$ 450.
• Roblox rolls out new parental controls, including to let parents block and report people on their child's friends list, building on changes it made in 2024; comes as Character.AI adds a Parental Insights feature that lets teens send reports of their chatbot usage to their parents, including which bots they are talking to. (However, the new settings have been found to be easy to bypass by creating Character.AI accounts and that parents are not notified when a minor account logs out of their account and signs into a Parental Insights-free account.)
• A new investigation finds that at least five popular VPN apps on the App Store and Google Play, Turbo VPN, VPN Proxy Master, Thunder VPN, Snap VPN and Signal Secure VPN, have ties to Qihoo 360, a Chinese company with links to the military that was sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2020.
• Google tests the ability for users to import and export passkeys in its Password Manager app for Android; updates Gmail to automatically choose a user's web signature if a mobile-specific one has not been already set.
• TikTok tests TikTok for Artists, which provides musicians with analytics and fan engagement tools, in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia.
• OpenAI makes ChatGPT Plus free for college students in the U.S. and Canada through the end of May, intensifying competition with Anthropic in higher education; says India is its fastest growing market, as over 130 million ChatGPT users generate more than 700 million images since the March 25 launch of the image generation feature.
• Amazon tests a "Buy for Me" button powered by agentic AI that will let users purchase products from third-party websites (if Amazon doesn't sell the items directly) without leaving its app; adds a new Recap feature to Kindle to allow readers of book series recall plots by "providing a quick refresher on storylines and character arcs."
• Spotify debuts new advertising tools, including an AI tool in the U.S. and Canada that generates scripts and voiceovers; pitches itself to advertisers as "nutritional".
• Proton redesign its Proton VPN app for iOS and Windows, following a similar update to the Android app last year; comes after it added support for Apple TV and Windows Arm devices.
• Google debuts a new developer API with Android 16 called SettingsPreferenceService that allows apps to integrate their settings directly into the Android Settings app, similar to Apple iOS and iPadOS.
• X is reportedly readying to set up a "handle inquiry" process that lets Verified Organizations bid on abandoned X handles starting from $10,000, as it looks to other ways to boost revenue.
• Caller ID service Truecaller surpasses 450 million users, adding 50 million users in the past 10 months and 15.5 million users since the beginning of 2025.
• Google says its test removing European news content for 1% of users in eight E.U. countries, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain, found that there was no change to Search ad revenue due to the removal; comes in response to an European copyright law requires it to pay news publishers for reusing snippets of their content.
• Microsoft brings Copilot Vision feature to Windows and its iOS and Android apps, letting it analyse real-time video from a mobile camera; brings Copilot Search to Bing and adds support for memory, personalisation, web-based actions like booking tickets through integration with third-parties, podcast creation, shopping, camera and screen analysis, and deep research in Copilot.
• Vimeo launches Vimeo Streaming, allowing content creators to launch subscription streaming services without any coding experience and offering features like AI translations.
• Midjourney debuts V7 in alpha, its first new AI image model in nearly a year with a "totally different architecture", a week after OpenAI debuted a viral new image generator in ChatGPT.
• Google expands the availability of its Titan Security Keys to new markets, including Ireland, Portugal, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Puerto Rico.
• Meta updates Meta AI in WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram Direct and the Meta.AI website with Llama 4 in 40 countries, as the company launches Llama 4 Maverick with 400B parameters and Scout with 109B parameters and a 10M context window, and previews Behemoth with 2T total parameters.
• OpenAI and Google reject the U.K.'s proposal to allow training AI on copyrighted work without permission unless rights holders opt out to "reserve their rights."
• Apple gets accused of false advertising and unfair competition in a new lawsuit for delaying Siri Apple Intelligence features that it promoted when launching iOS 18 and the iPhone 16 models.
• xAI acquires X in an all-stock deal valuing xAI at US$ 80 billion and X at US$ 33 billion.