Author: Max Milella

Google was recently slammed by 36 antitrust lawsuits in the US over its dominating the Play Store on Android platforms. Now, CNET reports that it’s been served another antitrust lawsuit by two Massachusetts companies accusing it of giving Facebook an unfair advantage in online advertising.  Google gets served The suit is calling for “class-action status” for other advertisers that the plaintiffs believe were damaged by Facebook and Google’s collusion, which has been alleged since December of last year. According to CNET, Facebook threatened that it would pursue a technique of ad buying called “header bidding”, also known as advance bidding,…

Facebook has banned the personal accounts of several researchers from the NYU Ad Observatory who were investigating ad transparency and misinformation spread across its own platform. Facebook claims that by using a browser plugin that collects data on political ads spread across its platform the researchers have engaged in privacy scraping, and have violated the platforms terms of service. Facebook doesn’t appreciate snooping An ironic accusation considering the amount of fire Facebook remains under over its own privacy scraping practices surrounding ad targeting. The NYU Ad Observatory researchers were completing a project looking into political ads on the social media…

While Activision Blizzard is already facing a lawsuit over sexual discrimination and harassment in the workplace from the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, it is now facing a second lawsuit, this time from its own shareholders. The suit (which we read on Ars Technica) alleges that thanks to the entire situation, shareholders say they have been “economically damaged”. Activision Blizzard’s shareholders strike The lawsuit singles out CEO Robert K. Kotick, current CFO Dennis Durkin, and ex-CFO Spencer Neumann, laying several claims as to why they should be held responsible for the shareholders’, such as being “directly involved in the…

Activision Blizzard has been making headlines for most of this month, facing a lawsuit from the California DFEH over an alleged “frat boy” workplace culture that’s led to unchecked sexual harassment and discrimination. Blizzard upper management was slammed for its “tone deaf”-ness by employees and activists, who called for greater action to be taken at a company-wide level. Now, both company president J. Allen Brack and head of Human Resources Jesse Meschuk have left the company. Blizzard backlash Brack’s departure was accompanied by an announcement on Blizzard’s official blog. According to The Verge staff were informed before the community announcement. Brack…

Not even a month ago, Xiaomi overtook Apple to become the second most successful smartphone manufacturer in the world. Now it’s creeping up on Samsung, and while it still trails behind globally, it has managed to steal the South Korean giant’s crown as the biggest phone maker in Europe.  Xiaomi’s climb to the top According to Strategy Analytics, an analysis firm, in Europe in Q2 2021 Xiaomi topped Samsung’s 12 million shipped devices by a further 700,000, narrowly sliding ahead as the top brand on the continent. This gives Xiaomi 25.3% of the total market share, and its South Korean…

In some space-themed news that isn’t just billionaires taking joyrides on rocket ships, SpaceX announced that it has now finished attaching 4 grid fins and a monstrous 29 Raptor engines to its Super Heavy rocket booster. The company tweeted the announcement in anticipation of its first test orbital flight.  It’s called Super Heavy for a reason https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1422368427369402370 As if 29 Raptors weren’t enough already, SpaceX plans to add more following a series of test flights. The date of the first test has yet to be revealed, but if all goes well Super Heavy will be used to facilitate SpaceX flights…

Considering just how much we loved the first pair, we’ve been anxiously waiting for news of Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Buds 2 for a while now. While we’re certain they’ll make an appearance at the upcoming Galaxy Unpacked event, we’re always excited to get some deets early. Thanks to WinFuture (translated by Android Authority), we now know a little more about the Galaxy Buds 2. Samsung’s best Buds for your ears Just looking at what appears to be some promotional pictures of the Buds, they don’t look hugely different to the first set Samsung rolled out back towards the end of…

Telegram recently received an update, and this one is bursting with new features and upgrades, many of which are related to video. The first, and arguably most interesting one, is that you can now have up to 1,000 people on one group video call. More is more, we guess.  And if you think 1,000 is a lot, Telegram still isn’t satisfied.  “We will keep increasing this limit until all humans on Earth can join one group call and watch us yodel in celebration (coming soon),” the messaging platform said in an announcement.  The accompanying image indicates that this feature isn’t…

When Apple first introduced its Add Tracking Transparency policy with iOS 14.5, Facebook was particularly displeased with it. See, it makes a lot of money off of serving targeted ads to users of its services and platforms. The social media goliath braced for the revenue impact that was sure to follow. It, however, may have braced a little earlier than it had to. Thanks to the company’s recent earnings call, we can now see that Facebook actually had a pretty bumper Q2 this year.  Facebook’s killer quarter Facebook’s ad revenue this quarter was $28.6 billion, up by 56% on a…

Facebook announced back in September 2020 that it would be teaming up with EssilorLuxottica, famed maker of Ray-Ban glasses, to create a pair of “smart glasses”.That was about all that was said back then, but on a recent earnings call (handily transcribed by Seeking Alpha) Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the very next Facebook-branded hardware launch would be that very pair of glasses.  Facebook’s sights are set on specs “Looking ahead here, the next product release will be the launch of our first smart glasses from Ray-Ban in partnership with EssilorLuxottica,” said Zuckerburg. “The glasses have their iconic form factor, and…