Today is Sunday, October 23rd: time for the weekly roundup of the good, the bad and the ugly tech news of the week! The Good ‘Car feature’ subscriptions are not that common in the US (except for Tesla’s Full Self Driving) and are the practice of having to pay a monthly subscription fee in order to use a feature that is already installed in the car. In the UK and Korea, BMW is selling autos with heated seats installed, however in order to use this feature consumers must pay BMW a monthly subscription (even though they have already paid for…
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Google Inc. 159,92 +1,97 +1,25% has removed 16 apps from their Playstore that have been found to be performing ad (click) fraud. In addition they were casing users device battery’s to deplete and in some cases causing users to exceeded their data caps. Furthermore, these 16 apps had a combined install base of around 20 million. The apps provided legitimate functions, including flashlight, camera, QR reading, and measurement conversions, security firm McAfee said on Wednesday. When opened, however, the apps surreptitiously downloaded additional code that caused them to perform ad fraud. From then on, infected devices received messages through the Google-owned…
Today is Sunday, October 9th: time for the weekly roundup of the good, the bad and the ugly tech news of the week! The Good Finally some good news with the Windows 11 2022 Update (22H2). Coming later this month….(may be as early as this ‘Patch Tuesday’ the 11th?) are the additional set of experiences for Windows 11. Two big features/experiences for those who have already upgrade to the 22H2 update will include the Tabbed File Explorer and improved taskbar. The Bad Google Chrome is one of the most popular browsers for non-mobile users. Unfortunately, that popularity makes it a…
Another day and another tech company getting a slap on the wrist punishment for illegal user tracking and other privacy violations. This time around it’s Google’s turn with the state of Arizona fining Google Inc. 159,92 +1,97 +1,25% a measly $85 million dollars. I say measly because Google/Alphabet’s revenue in Fiscal Year 2021 was $258 Billion or $64.5 Billion Quarterly or $21.5 Billion Monthly. $85 million works out to three one-hundredths of a percent (.03%) of their annual revenue. Recall Google’s Android division failed to overturn an EU anti-trust ruling and ended up with a reduced fine of around $4…
While Google failed to get Europe’s General Court to overturn the Commission’s ruling on its Android antitrust case, they did manage to get their fine reduced from €4.3 Billion to €4.125 Billion (~$4.121 Billion USD). The Commission previously found that Google acted illegally by making it mandatory for Android manufacturers to pre-install its apps and its search engine. By doing so, the Commission said that the company was able to “cement its dominant position in general internet search.” Approximately 80 percent of smart devices in Europe as of July 2018 were running Android OS, and people tend to be content…