Tag Archives: TechCrunch

Russia fined Google 21.1 billion rubles ($374 million) on Monday for repeatedly failing to “remove prohibited information” — content related to the country’s invasion and subsequent war in Ukraine. The country’s telecommunication watchdog Roskomnadzor cited a court order and said Google (particularly YouTube) didn’t take down content that discredited “the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.” The watchdog’s press release also accused Google of… Source link

Denmark is effectively banning Google’s services in schools, after officials in the municipality of Helsingør were last year ordered to carry out a risk assessment around the processing of personal data by Google. In a verdict published last week, Denmark’s data protection agency, Datatilsynet, revealed that data processing involving students using Google’s cloud-based Workspace software suite — which includes Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar, and Google Drive… Source link

Google has released the fourth and final Android 13 beta ahead of its official launch, which the company says is “just a few weeks away.” There aren’t many changes with this latest update, as Google already reached platform stability with Android 13 beta 3 last month. The company released the first developer beta in February and made notable announcements with the release of the second public beta in May at its developer conference. Previous Android 13… Source link

South Korean messaging giant Kakao confirmed today it will remove an external payment option after Google blocked the South Korean company behind KakaoTalk from issuing updates.  The South Korean company continued using an external payment link in its Android app against Google’s new in-app payment rules. While the app’s updates were suspended on June 30, the local reports about the KakaoTalks’ updates being blocked on the Play Store only emerged last week.

It’s been a long time coming, but Google Cloud today announced its first Arm-based VMs, following AWS, with its Graviton instances, and Azure, which also recently launched Arm VMs. But while AWS built its own custom chips, Google Cloud is following Azure’s lead here by using chips from Ampere. These new VMs, which are now in preview, will join Google Cloud’s line of Tau VMs under the ‘Tau T2A’ moniker. This line launched almost exactly a year ago, using AMD Milan processors,… Source link

Sundar Pichai, boss of Google and its parent Alphabet, told employees to “be more entrepreneurial” and work with “more hunger” in a staff-wide email that warned of consolidation, several news outlets reported. Citing the “uncertain global economic outlook,” the CEO said Google would slow its hiring pace for the second half of 2022. Google brought on a whopping 10,000 workers during the second quarter, per Pichai. The chief Googler went on to say the… Source link

The TikTok threat to Google’s business isn’t just limited to YouTube, as it turns out. Core Google services, including Search and Maps, are also being impacted by a growing preference for social media and videos as the first stop on younger users’ path to discovery, a Google exec acknowledged today, speaking at an industry event. Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan, who runs Google’s Knowledge & Information organization, referenced the popular social apps in a broader… Source link

Google has responded to dating app maker Match Group’s antitrust lawsuit in a scathing new court filing which refers to Match’s original complaint as a “cynical attempt” to take advantage of Google Play’s distribution platform and other tools while attempting to sidestep Google’s fees. The two tech giants have been battling it out in court after Match sued Google this May over its alleged monopoly power in Android app payments. Match — which operates dating apps including… Source link

Around nine months after bringing real-time lyrics to Android, iOS, smart TVs, game consoles, and desktops, Spotify has now introduced them to the Nest Hub, Google’s smart device for the home, as well as other Google Assistant smart displays. 9to5Google and Reddit users noticed this rollout a few days ago. Spotify and Google haven’t offered a comment. To access real-time lyrics on Nest Hub devices, you tap the lyrics icon on the bottom-right corner of the… Source link

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. App Annie says global spending across iOS and Google Play is up to $135 billion in 2021, and that figure will likely be higher when its… Source link