As expected, the European Commission has now come up with a fitting bill for Google's newest strain of antitrust violations.
As reported earlier, Google violated EU's antitrust laws with their advertisement network AdSense.
During the time of previous reports the size of the fine was not revealed, but now we have proper figures from the European Commission themselves. As reported, this one is the smallest of the three antitrust fines Google has gotten from EU, but is still significant and in the same billion dollar range as the others.
Previously Google has been ruled two fees, 4.34 billion euro ($4.91 billion) for abusing competitive advantage with Android and 2.4 billion euro ($2.72 billion) for preferring Google's price comparison data in their search engine.
Google is set to pay a fine of 1.49 billion euro (approx. $1.69 billion) for requiring advertisers an exclusivity, or "relaxed exclusivity", for search adverts. This happened since 2006 up until 2009, after which Google implemented a less strict but still illegal Premium Placement clauses.
Microsoft, like many others, paid close attention to Google's Game Developer Conference keynote this week. Google's new cloud gaming platform Stadia probably sent shivers down the spines of people at OnLive and others, but Microsoft doesn't seem too phased.
According to reports, Microsoft's Xbox boss Phil Spencer sent a memo to employees thanking for the hard work they've done in the recent years.
He said that Google's announcement only validifies their mission during the past two years and which will be unveiled at E3 later this year. Spencer is of course talking about a cloud gaming platform of their own, which is called Project xCloud within the company and is now seemingly confirmed for June launch.
Just Google, Microsoft has a strong cloud service infrastructure which will help in the logistics side of things. In addition Microsoft obviously has strong gaming pedigree, which Google largely lacks.
It looks like the cloud gaming wars are just around the corner, and there's plenty of contender of the highest tech tier.
As expected, Oculus has finally revealed that they'll be bringing a new virtual reality headset to market soon. The device, called Rift S, has been developed, somewhat surprisingly, with the help of Lenovo.
Rift S is a more mobile headset that integrates new environment sensing cameras which means that there's no need for external motion sensing cameras.
However, to keep the price down they've had to make some compromises compared to previous Rift headset. While the resolution has gone to 1280 x 1440 from 1080 x 1200, the refresh rate is actually lower at 80hz (was 90hz) and OLED panels have been changed to less impressive LCD technology.
There's no setting for the optics either, so you won't be able to change the distance of the lenses to your specific needs.
The headphones are also a downgrade to what Oculus uses in it's cheapest Go headset, which are near-ear speakers. There are other slight changes too which TechCrunch has listed nicely.
Oculus has confirmed the price at $399 and they should become available some time this spring.
Norwegian public broadcaster NRK has found out that Nokia's Android phone, Nokia 7 Plus, leaks data to servers in China.
The data leak was found out by a Norwegian citizen, Henrik Austad, who wanted to find out what his phone sends over the Internet. He found out that his phone sent an unencrypted data burst every time a phone was switched on. This data package included phone's location, SIM card number and phone's serial number among other details.
The data was sent unencrypted over the Internet to a server located in China, operated by Chinese government-owned ISP China Telecom.
Nokia itself doesn't manufacture phones nowadays, but instead, has licensed its brand to another Finnish company called HMD Global. HMD Global says that the claims are true, but were caused by a bug in specific production batch - and that the issue has since been fixed with later production phones. HMD Global also says that the information leak didn't include anything that could be associated to a specific person or to allow tracking of a specific person.
As HMD Global is based in Finland (as is Nokia whose license they are using), the Finnish Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman has announced that they will start an official investigatio into this matter. European Union's GDPR data procetion directive states clearly that while data can be pretty much freely transferred within the European Union, with user's consent, the transfer of data to outside of the European Union is a different matter. With such case, there needs to be a legal rationale behind the data transfer and the user should know about it.
Google announced a new cloud gaming platform called Stadia earlier this week. Few of the luckier gaming reporters have managed to get some hands-on time with the service, and we've got some news about some of the platforms issues.
If you aren't familiar with the new service, well, read our previous article, but in short terms it is a game streaming platform that allows you to enjoy performance intense games on any screen.
This means that the heavy lifting is done in Google's services and the picture is just transferred to your phone, PC or even TV screen.
However, one problem remains. Latency.
Latency of course being the time it takes for the command to go from your button press to the servers and them come back as an accordingly updated frame to your display.
When you are doing the calculations locally you need to take into account the time it takes to transfer the data back and forth. Eurogamer have done a little bit of a test with the help of Digital Foundry on Stadia's latency, and determined that in very ideal conditions it could provide as good latency as a locally operating Xbox One X.
As Google announced their upcoming cloud gaming platform, they also introduced their newest piece of hardware. While Stadia doesn't require any hardware boxes to operate, Google did reveal the Stadia controller.
The Stadia controller looks like a typical console game controller, perhaps a combination of both Xbox controller and the Sony's DualShock.
The controller connects straight to the Stadia server using WiFi and it recognizes which device or screen you are going to play the game on.
The controller has two dual triggers for index fingers, a D-pad, two analog sticks, and four ABXY buttons like the Xbox controller.
It also features both a dedicated capture button for YouTube streaming as well as Google assistant. Pressing the latter will open up Google Assistant which you can use by voice with the built-in microphone. Google Assistant is said to have special in-game features that are put in place by the game developers.
The controller comes in three different colors, and just like the service itself will be available later this year.
Google has revealed that it is introducing a new gaming service to the public later this year. The service called Stadia offer games as streamable content to all screens.
The search giant's new service isn't really anything new in the gaming sector. Services like OnLive, Nvidia's GeForce Now, and others already offer a cloud gaming service. Google plans to expand the experience to more screens, and with some impressive specs.
According to them, everyone with a Chromecast, or even a Chrome browser, could play the newest games in 4K and 60 fps. This includes graphics intensive games like Doom Eternal in HDR.
The company compared the processing power dedicated to player to PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X. In fact, they said that the 10.7 teraflots beats both, even combined, since PS2 Pro calculates at the speed of 4.2 teraflops and Xbox One X at around six.
Google also announced partnership with AMD which has developed a chip for Google's data centers. This allows the closest possible location to deliver gamers the performance they need.
Being close is probably the toughest problem for game streaming platforms. You cannot have too high of a latency, especially in action-packed games. There is no word how they are going to tackle the problem, except relying on extensive data center network.
In addition to new iPad models, Apple has already this week revealed new iMacs. While iMac Pro was left untouched, both 4K and 5K models of the iMac got some improvements.
The first update in two years to regular iMacs comes with improved performance but same design. After such a long time you are rightly expecting a fair bump in computational prowess, and you'd be right.
According to Apple, the 21.5 inch 4K iMac improves performance up to 60 percent over its predecessor, while the 27 inch 5K iMac destroys the previous model with 2.4x (240%) the performance.
The new 21.5 inch model features a generation old Intel Core processors but the 27 inch 5K iMac at least offers in the highest tier the newer 9th gen Intel Core processors. The CPUs in the new 21.5 inch models are either quad-core or 6-core ones while the 27 inch model offers 6-cores except for the top tier 8-core processor.
Both have AMD's Radeon Pro Vega GPUs, and Apple claims that the graphics performance has been improved by 80 percent in the smaller iMacs and 50 percent in the 5K models. The cheapest model has a Radeon Pro 555X, the top 21.5 inch model a Radeon Pro 560X, and the three tiers of 27 inch models have Radeon Pro 570X, Radeon Pro 575X, and Radeon Pro 580X.
To start off the week Apple revamped their iPad lineup with two new models. Neither the iPad Air (pictured below) or the iPad (pictured above) mini are the cheapest iPads around but they do bring something new to the table.
The more expensive of the two, iPad Air, offers the newest A12 Bionic chip you find in the iPhone XS. Not quite as fast as iPad Pro but still blisteringly quick. Also it supports Apple Pencil, although not the 2nd gen one like iPad Pro.
There is no 120hz ProMotion support like in the iPad Pro in iPad Air's 10.5 inch display but it does support TrueTone colors, just like the bigger brother. Talking about size, Air weighs one pound just like the newest regular iPad. They've shaved off some thickness though, it being only 0.24 inches thick. Still not quite as thin as the largest iPad Pro.
The new iPad mini on the other hand features similar specs with a 7.9 inch TrueTone display, same A12 Bionic chip, and support for 1st gen Apple Pencil. The resolution in 2048 x 1536, which is lower due to the size but gives it nice 326 ppi pixel density, a little bit above aforementioned larger siblings.
The FaceTime cameras are a big upgrade from regular iPad. Both iPad Air and iPad mini can now take 7 megapixel selfies and record Full HD video. The back camera is still just a 8 MP f/2.4 shooter.
The United States regulatory body for telecommunication, Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has decided to create a experimental license for a new terahertz spectrum.
Like the gigahertz spectrum in use today, and far into the future, it will provide means for wireless communications but at far greater speeds and provide new possibilities. The new spectrum ranges from 95 GHz to the new tera terrority at 3THz.
Some of the spectrum, 21.2 Ghz to be exact, was set aside for scientific and governmental purposes.
The FCC terahertz test license is going to be valid for testing during the upcoming 10 years in which FCC believes new technologies using denser wavelengths will emerge. However, the license also allows the sale of terahertz equipment during this 10 year test period.
While increasing the frequency of the wireless connection increases the potential speed, it also makes the range much shorter and connection more susceptible to obstacles. Perhaps terahertz will bring along a new wireless data transfer technology for equipment that is nearly touching, maybe between components of the same device.
Google is about to receive a third fee for antitrust violations from the European Commission. Again Google has violated the laws by preventing third parties from displaying Google competitor advertisement on its AdSense network.
According to the Reuters, EU's legislative and regulatory body is going to address Google a fine next week. The fine is not going to be as high as the previous ones, but at this time there's no word on how much Google has to pay for the violations.
Nonetheless this one will certainly sting too, as just the fact that EU is striking down anything that smells like a monopolistic policy or practice is going to tighten Google's ropes.
Previous billion dollar fines came from Google giving themselves an unfair advantage regards to Android against competitive platforms and price comparison data in the search engine.
The former was the larger one at 4.34 billion euro ($4.91 billion) and the latter cost Google another 2.4 billion euro ($2.72 billion).
This is likely not the last we hear about EU and their antitrust battles with Google. European Commission has recently started new investigations into Google's search engine data and how they treat competitors.
Spotify and Apple are one of the more important modern day tech rivalries. The David vs. Goliath setup is definitely there, and makes it all the more interesting.
While Apple tries to abuse its power and reach with its own mobile operating system, Spotify fights back with innovation and carefully directed attacks at Apple policy.
Recently Spotify has addressed Apple's App Store royalties to the European Commission, accusing Apple of building an unfair competitive advantage with rules and regulations for competitors in the store.
Apple's response couple days ago claimed that Spotify wants to use their product but aren't willing to pay the price everyone pays for participating. Now Spotify has come out of the woodwork and responded once more, Variety reports.
Spotify reiterates its case about the 30 percent cut that Apple takes each time a person makes a purchase in the App Store. This 30 percent cuts deeply into the margins of a streaming service, and obviously Apple doesn't have to pay it.
While iMessage is the king of messaging platforms on iPhones, there's one cross-platform messenger that has held the crown for years with active users in the billions. It is of course WhatsApp.
WhatsApp offers a range of impressive features, including end-to-end encrypted messaging, calls, and even video chat. However, it's not always easy to know if you can use any of these features, if the recipient has blocked you.
If you have been blocked by the person you are trying to contact, you aren't made aware of it. Fortunately there are a few ways that indicate you might have been blocked.
There's no certainty, since WhatsApp doesn't allow the blocked person to know the status, but with the help of a few indicators you might get closer to the truth.
You cannot see the contact in online mode or the time when the contact has been last seen
You cannot see changes in the contact's profile picture
Sending a message to the contact always results in one, and only one, checkmark. One means sent, two means received.
Calls never reach the recipient.
If you can check all these checkboxes, and it continues to be the case, it is likely that you have been blocked. However, remember that this isn't conclusive, since WhatsApp doesn't want the blocked to know for sure.
Microsoft has been developing a port of Xbox Live to mobile platforms for a while now. Now it has officially confirmed that Xbox Live is coming to both Android and iOS.
Just as we are ready to enter this years Game Developer Conference, or GDC, Microsoft has revealed that it is going to release a version of Xbox Live to Google's and Apple's mobile platforms.
What this means is that game developers can use the Xbox Live platform and its features in their mobile games for Android and iOS. This includes the likes of achievements and community features.
Some games, developed by Microsoft, already support Xbox Live features, but now the Xbox Live ecosystem will become available to all game devs.
In the future with features like the achievements you can easier compare games to their cross-platform counterparts. It can also bring together different platforms in larger communities.
Microsoft is clear that they are trying to bring Xbox Live to as many platforms and gamers as possible. You shouldn't be surprised if Microsoft will eventually try to conquer PS4 and Nintendo Switch, or their successors, as well.
Yesterday Tesla introduced their upcoming crossover vehicle, Model Y, but we also got a little taste of more distant future. Even though Model Y did complete Elon Musk's pun-ful S3XY collection, this is not the end for new Tesla models.
In fact, the ending of the webcast that featured the amazing soundtrack from the original Blade Runner also quickly flashed a teaser we didn't expect. Thankfully Elon Musk revealed this teaser in his Twitter post.
Around a minute in they flashed a picture which features the silhouette of a futuristic looking vehicle. Elon Musk calls this "Tesla cyberpunk truck," a model that has been talked about for quite a while. Trucks are of course hugely popular in America, and would be an obvious next move for Tesla and its high-torque electric motors.
It's hard to say what the picture is, but it kind of looks like the back of a pickup with a bed cap and a Tesla logo on it. The light strip would act as backlights.
Obviously at this point it might just be a drawing that won't get even close to production, after all even some of the now introduced Model Y versions will take another year and a half.