Google News

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS, Google Play and third-party Android app stores in China grew 19% in 2021 to reach $170 billion. Downloads… Source link

Within hours, an app designed to help Russians register protest votes against Putin could no longer be downloaded from Google or Apple, whose main representative in Moscow faced a similarly harrowing sequence. Titans of American technology had been brought to their knees by some of the most primitive intimidation tactics in the Kremlin playbook. Story continues below advertisement The unnerving encounters, which have not previously been disclosed, were part of a broader campaign that Putin… Source link

Google has once again prevailed in an ongoing legal battle with song lyrics website Genius, which claimed that Google was using its transcribed lyrics without permission in search results. Genius sued Google in 2019, arguing that Google was scraping lyrics from its website in violation of Genius’ copyright. Genius has a large database of song lyrics, and bills itself as “the world’s biggest music encyclopedia.” It tried to demonstrate that Google was scraping info from its… Source link

In 2018, Google, Facebook / Meta, Microsoft, and Twitter teamed up to announce the Data Transfer Project, which worked on tools to help users “transfer data directly from one service to another, without needing to download and re-upload it.” Since then, Apple has signed on, while other integrated services include Google Photos, Mastodon, and SmugMug, in addition to the various data export and transfer tools available from the original four companies. This week, Google provided an… Source link

Google Pay is a digital wallet and online payment system that’s developed by Google to make it easy for you to make purchases. It automatically syncs your saved credit cards wherever your Google account is logged in for quick payments, and it will import loyalty cards, tickets, and offers from your Gmail account. Google Pay is supported at most major markets, gas stations, and department stores. How to set up Google Pay Setting up Google Pay is straightforward. You need a debit /… Source link

Google will roll out vehicle ads to all U.S. advertisers beginning this month, the company announced Friday. An example of vehicle ads in the Google search results. Image: Google. Vehicle ads will roll out to advertisers in more countries at an undisclosed “later date,” Google said in the announcement. How vehicle ads work. Vehicle ads are designed to allow auto advertisers to promote their entire vehicle inventory to potential customers on Google.com. This… Source link

Google has started rolling out an Android update that sorts business and personal messages under separate tabs to make it easier for people to focus on work-related texts. The update will arrive over the coming weeks for smartphones and tablets running Android 6 or higher, Google said this week. It will contain several features meant to improve the use of the mobile operating system’s messaging app. The new tabs resemble those found in email applications. The idea is to provide quick… Source link

A secret deal struck between Google and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is being investigated by antitrust regulators in the European Union and Britain for potentially undermining competition in the multibillion-dollar digital advertising market. The inquiry, which was announced on Friday by the European Commission and U.K. Competition and Markets Authority, is the latest effort to scrutinize the business practices of the world’s largest technology companies. The regulators said the… Source link

A 3D printed Facebook’s new rebrand logo Meta is seen in front of displayed Google logo in this illustration taken on November 2, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Files Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register BRUSSELS/LONDON, March 11 (Reuters) – European Union and British antitrust authorities launched parallel investigations on Friday into a 2018 online display advertising deal between Google and Facebook, adding to a long list of regulatory challenges facing the… Source link

Google is being probed by the EU and the U.K. over whether it and Meta Platforms sought to illegally fix prices in digital advertising. Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press Source link