During hearings into Facebook’s new Libra cryptocurrency, she grilled David Marcus, the head of its Calibra wallet, which is how its users will interact with Libra. “So, we are discussing a currency controlled by an undemocratically selected coalition of largely massive corporations. Do you believe currency is a public good?”
It’s official. Google Photos now has a billion users on the service, a milestone that took the image sharing-and-storage service…
And then sanity prevailed. On Sunday, US President Donald Trump effectively lifted the ban on US firms dealing with Chinese telecoms giant Huawei. This follows a turbulent six weeks where the threat of not being able to buy from US firms sent the telecoms industry and its supply chain into chaos.
It’s happened. In a manner of speaking. Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp is currently testing the ability to share statuses — those Facebook-like, limited-time messages — with other apps. Including Facebook and Instagram. What could possible go wrong?
I’d never heard of Carlos Maza until this month, when the Vox video producer made a supercuts video of all the homophobic and racist ranting by a popular YouTuber called Steven Crowder. The right-wing pundit has 3.8m subscribers to his YouTube channel has attacked Maza repeatedly, called him an “anchor baby, a lispy queer, [and] a Mexican”.
But the big news on Monday was that the Department of Justice was investigating Google and Apple; while the and Federal Trade Commission (FTCO is looking into Facebook and Amazon. All of accused of anticompetitive tactics for promoting their own services over that of rivals.
Future Huawei smartphones won’t come with Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or Instagram pre-installed.
Google is killing off its Trips app in August 2019 and rolling many of its features into Google’s ‘travel’ service and Google Maps.
The first problem I encountered, as I gave up Google for a week, was that I couldn’t get my email. As the possibility of living without Android and Google services emerged as the US government banned American firms from dealing with Huawei, I tried to live without the world’s biggest mobile operating system (OS). The short answer: it’s virtually impossible to live without Google in this smartphone era.
When the news broke that the US government was blacklisting Huawei in the last two weeks, it seemed like another incremental escalation in the China trade war that could blow over.