The EU investigates Apple, Meta and Google, Steve Wozniak vs. YouTube, and X valuation plunges
Also, WhatsApp imitates Telegram, iOS copies Android, and humans are more creative than AI
Welcome to Tech Pills, the weekly newsletter about technology, innovation and startups. My name is Jose, and you can follow me on LinkedIn. Let’s begin!
🔎 The EU is investigating Apple, Meta, and Google for alleged monopolistic actions. The investigation is motivated by the possible violation of the DMA (Digital Markets Act). This regulation, introduced in 2022, aims to promote practices that favor competitiveness. The investigation will focus on aspects such as Google's preferential treatment in certain services or the abusive use of data. This news follows a €1.8 billion fine imposed by the EU on Apple for violating competition laws in the field of music streaming. This case will be closely followed by US regulators because Apple has also been sued in its home country for monopolizing the smartphone market.
Once again, it is up to Europe to assume the role of bad cop and try to regulate technology. They already did it recently with ChatGPT. The accusations of monopoly aren’t surprising at all. What is curious though is accusing companies that pretty much created the markets in which they operate of monopolizing the market (with nuances, of course).
Technological companies are way faster than the regulators of each country and continent. This means that by the time the EU has finished investigating them, Google and Meta will have updated their terms and conditions three or four times.
In reality, the only entities that are truly above technological companies from a legal point of view are the governments from their countries of origin.
⚖️ Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak talks about his lawsuit against YouTube. The conflict originated in 2020 when his name was associated with cryptocurrency scam videos. The reason for the lawsuit is that, according to Wozniak, YouTube was aware of what was happening because they granted verification to some of these channels.
This is a class action lawsuit filed along with 17 other victims of the same scam. The most recent update on this legal conflict was released this week. The judge has ruled in favor of the Apple co-founder in the first instance, and he’ll have the opportunity to argue his lawsuit further. Here you can see the video of the interview in which Wozniak confirms that he'll do his best to win against Google in court.
📢 Glassdoor may have been revealing user profile names that should’ve remained anonymous. According to the news, a user raised the alarm after, according to her version, Glassdoor showed her real name in her profile after making a request for deleting her account. She also claims that deleting the account doesn’t imply deleting the data from their database. It simply disables the access.
Glassdoor is a job search platform where employees can anonymously post information such as salaries, job interview questions, or company reviews to help other people who are looking for a job and need that information. If this is true, the real names of the users would be forever linked to their publications. And this could be revealed at any time if requested by a judge.
This news has generated a wave of users making requests to delete their accounts. And what is worse for Glassdoor, skepticism about how the platform is managed.
📉 The value of X drops 73% since Elon Musk bought it. According to this news, the decline of advertisers has caused the value of the American company to plummet since its change of ownership.
Selling ads remains as the main source of income for social networks. In fact, to this day, it is the only reliable model to make them profitable. Since buying Twitter, Elon Musk has introduced two new ways to monetize the social network: charging for using its API and a premium subscription.
👮♀️ A SWAT team raided a house by mistake because the app “Find my iPhone” sent an incorrect location. It happened in Missouri, United States. The police broke into a house by mistake while searching for a stolen car. The AirPods of one of the suspects were lying on the sidewalk in front of the house and the authorities thought it was a good idea to get a warrant to enter in case they had firearms.
The story ended with the family suing the police and the stolen car found 10 km away from the house.
Innovation & Startups
📌 WhatsApp now allows to pin up to three messages in chats. Meta announced three months ago the possibility of pinning one message in WhatsApp chats. This week they announced a new feature for pinning up to three messages in any chat.
However, they won’t offer an option to pin a message indefinitely for now, and we still have to choose among pinning messages for 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days. This feature has been available in Telegram for years and can be very useful for common actions such as pinning a poll in a group so that all members have quick access. This update will be rolled out gradually.
📱 Apple finally gives in and will allow blank spaces between icons on home screens. iOS 18 will bring a very expected new feature that has been present in Android for 15 years. We’ll be finally able to align the icons to our own liking without having to follow the automatic order marked by the operating system. It will be similar to Android, the icons will have to occupy one of the designated grids. But it will be the user who decides in which grid to place each icon.
This new update will be presented at the WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) in three months. It’s rumored that this update could be one of the biggest renovations in the history of iOS.
🎬 Only a 22% of consumers think AI is better than humans at doing creative tasks. The study was published after the announcement of Sora, OpenAI's generative video AI tool (the creators of ChatGPT). The study is focused on movies and series. According to this information, 70% of people confirmed they prefer to watch a movie or series created by humans. 25% of respondents have used generative AI to create text, and 18% to create images.
An expansion project of a studio estimated at $800 million dollars was put on hold after the presentation of Sora.