Android ad prices jump, TikTok resumes, Google Play’s antitrust lawsuit – TechCrunch

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 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7… Source link

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Facebook and Instagram are making you poor, financial adviser says

Facebook and Instagram are making you poor, financial adviser says Keeping up with the Joneses in 2021 is next to impossible when the internet has made us all neighbors, and it’s putting a serious strain on our finances. More than a third of Americans admit social media has influenced their spending habits, according to a survey from Mint last year — even though 64% wonder how their friends can afford all the glamorous trips and cars they’re posting about online. Obviously, competing with… Source link

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Yandex, GrubHub Announce Food Delivery Bot at 250 U.S. University Campus

Yandex.Rover autonomous delivery robot on a snow-covered route to transport online food orders … [+] Russia’s largest internet company, Yandex NV, is deploying suitcase-sized robots that seek to provide takeaway despite a winter snowstorm.Photographer: Andrey Rudakov / Bloomberg © 2020 Bloomberg Finance LP Yandex, a Russian technology company working on self-driving systems, has partnered with GrubHub to deploy a fleet of delivery robots on selected university campuses in the United… Source link

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Biden just canceled millions more in student loan debt — who qualifies this time?

Biden just canceled millions more in student loan debt — who qualifies this time? The Biden administration is wiping out another tens of millions of dollars in student loan debt, affecting borrowers who were deceived by schools that are now out of business. With this new debt forgiveness, the Department of Education has now canceled at least $3 billion in student loans since the beginning of the year. Borrowers have been given more room in their budgets to save, invest or get a grip on their… Source link

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A new Biden stimulus benefit offers free health insurance for 6 months

A new Biden stimulus benefit offers free health insurance for 6 months The massive COVID rescue package President Joe Biden signed back in March — the same law that included $1,400 stimulus and the monthly payments for families that start next week — is now offering free health insurance to millions of Americans, through the end of 2021. The benefit’s zero-premium health plans became available on July 1, with no income limits for qualifying. But there is one major eligibility… Source link

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Kentucky joins with 37 states suing Google | Kentucky

FRANKFORT, Ky. (KT) – Attorney General Daniel Cameron has joined a coalition of 37 states and the District of Columbia to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google.  The suit claims Google unfairly restricted competition with the Google Play Store, harming consumers by limiting choice and driving up app prices. This antitrust lawsuit is the newest legal action against the tech giant,… Source link

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Is Google’s ‘Nasty’ New Technology Secretly Tracking Your iPhone?

Google’s business model was under attack again this week, with a “broad coalition” of privacy oriented tech firms asking regulators to take a stand against “the collection of data from across websites and services,” enabling “dominant platform actors to abuse their positions by giving preference to their own services.” ADVERTISEMENT Google wasn’t named, but then naming Google wasn’t really necessary. The campaign was organized by Chrome rival Vivaldi, which… Source link

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Breaking down Elon Musk’s latest market-moving Dogecoin tweet

Leave it to Elon Musk to give Dogecoin the lift it sorely needed. With yet another market-moving tweet on Friday, the Tesla chief—who famously dubbed himself “The Dogefather”—lifted Dogecoin out of its recent slump, driving the crypto meme-coin back above 22 cents after a steady decline that had seen it slip below 20 cents on Thursday. That’s still a long way from Dogecoin’s heady highs in May, when it broke 74 cents in the buildup to Musk’s hotly anticipated Saturday Night… Source link

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Google’s CEO Is Facing Intense Criticism for His Leadership. His Response is Pure Emotional Intelligence

Last month, Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, faced criticism over his leadership style in the form of a New York Times piece. The report relies on 15 current and former executives who have expressed discontent over–among other things–the amount of time Pichai takes to make decisions.  According to the Times, employees expressed frustration that “Google did not move quickly on key business and personnel moves because he chewed over decisions and delayed action.” For example, the sources… Source link

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Rupert Murdoch’s answer to Google News is dead after only 18 months

Enlarge / The now-defunct news aggregator was an excellent source of boldface, italics, underline, and wildly mismatched typefaces. In August of 2019, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp announced that it was developing Knwez, its own “conservative friendly” alternative to Google News. Knewz went live without much fanfare in January of 2020, and officially died today, less than eighteen months later. What was Knewz? Knewz described itself as “an… Source link

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