India’s antitrust regulator has ordered an investigation into Alphabet’s Google, alleging the U.S. tech giant abused its dominant position in the country’s online market by imposing unfair terms and discriminatory practices in its popular app store.
The order came in response to complaint filed by multiple Indian app developers and industry groups, many of whom have also publicly raised concerns about what they allege is unfair practices by Google.
CCI’s allegations centre around Google’s billing system for in-app purchases and paid apps on its Play Store.
The watchdog’s decision is the latest headache for Google in India, its biggest market by users but one where it has long faced allegations of anti-competitive practices.
The U.S. giant has previously defended its Play Store policies, saying the service fee supports its investments in Android and Play Store, allowing it to provide developers with tools and a global platform to access billions of consumers around the world.
The “State of Subscription Apps” report offers a bird’s-eye view into the subscription app universe, as RevenueCat has nearly 30,000 apps using its platform’s tools to manage their monetization.
Outside of Apple and Google, that makes RevenueCat the largest collection of subscription app developers on one platform.
For instance, 59% of the apps that reach $1,000 will go on to reach $2,500 and 60% of the apps that reach $2,500 will make it to $5,000.
The report highlights other aspects of the race to subscription app monetization, as well, including that North America-based apps have 4x the monetization of the global average.
The larger report gets into more specifics that will be useful to subscription app developers, including details about subscription packages, pricing, trial strategies, conversion, refund rates, retention, growth, and more.
Apple will allow iOS developers located in the European Union to distribute apps from the web, rather then via its App Store.
“Web Distribution, available in a software update later this spring, will let authorized developers distribute their iOS apps to EU users directly from a website the developer owns and operates,” it writes.
iOS users will also need to approve the developer installing apps from their site via their iPhone Settings.
Apple’s initial proposal for DMA compliance did not allow web based distribution for apps.
While its current attempt to force EU users to consent to tracking is being challenged via GDPR and consumer protection complaints.
Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth announced today that he is joining Match Group, the parent company of several popular dating apps, including Tinder and Hinge.
Yoel, who shared the move on LinkedIn, is now the company’s Vice President of Trust and Safety.
I swiped right on Match Group,” Roth said in his announcement post.
Roth is now taking his trust and safety expertise to Match’s family of dating apps, which includes Tinder, Match.com, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, OurTime, and more.
Although dating apps have built-in features to keep users safe, there is still a lot of toxic behavior on these apps, and not everyone trusts them.
Apple released VisionOS 1.1 on Thursday with the most notable feature being improved personas of users.
Additionally, users can also now set up their personas without holding the device through Settings>Persona and selecting “Hands-free Capture” mode after initial steps for setup.
The new version of VisionOS also introduces Mobile Device Management (MDM), for enterprises to manage their devices.
This enables admins to set up devices for custom configuration, install apps at scale, and perform a remote erase of the device.
“We know that in order to unlock all of [the power of the Apple Vision Pro], businesses are going to want to manage these devices at scale.
When some American users opened TikTok on Thursday morning, they were met with a full-screen message encouraging them to call Congress and say no to a TikTok ban.
“Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO.”Below the message, users can click a red “call now” button.
Last year, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before Congress for five hours, addressing lawmakers’ concerns about Chinese authorities accessing American data (TikTok, an American company, is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company).
Chew has repeatedly stated that TikTok and ByteDance are not conduits for the Chinese government.
The bill’s sponsors are urging TikTok to sever its ties with ByteDance to avoid this fate, or else it could lose its 170 million American users.
Anonymous social apps tend to appeal to younger users and are often used for bad behavior like bullying, harassment, and online abuse.
It seems every few years — and no matter how many times anonymous apps like these fail — someone, somewhere builds yet another anonymous social platform.
Yik Yik, in fact, is on its second life.
No matter how many times this trend is tried, standalone anonymous social apps aimed at consumers rarely lead to a sustainable business.
Yik Yak, Sidechat, Whisper, and Fizz were asked for comment using public email addresses published on their websites and in their terms of service.
Mindfulness and meditation apps have tremendous potential in the world of extended reality.
The full immersion created by headsets like the Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro offer great potential to kickstart such practices, which are notoriously difficult to both begin and maintain.
As such, partnership between leading meditation app Headspace and Quest-maker Meta is a no-brainer.
At the very least, the experience seems engaging in a way not normally associated with meditation apps.
The app is available now for Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro.
It was only a few years ago — in 2021 — that Windows 11 gained official support for Android apps thanks to a Microsoft-maintained VM called the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA).
With the WSA, Windows 11 users could install and run nearly the full range of apps for Android, optionally through Amazon’s Android marketplace — the Amazon Appstore — thanks to an Amazon-Microsoft deal.
Now, Windows 11 is losing official Android app support — and access to the Amazon Appstore along with it.
Windows 11 users who’ve installed the Amazon Appstore or Android apps will continue to have access to those apps through March 5, 2025 — but not after.
Now, just because Microsoft’s ending support for the WSA doesn’t mean it’ll become impossible to run Android apps on Windows.
Reports are coming in that a number of Meta’s top social apps, including Facebook and Instagram, as well as its new app Threads, are all experiencing an outage on Tuesday morning.
We’ve reached out to Meta to confirm the timing and the reports and will update if we hear more information.
In the meantime, Meta communications director Andy Stone has confirmed the outage in a post on X, noting, “We’re aware people are having trouble accessing our services.
To quell its potential role in influencing the elections’ outcome, Meta disables political ads in the timeframe leading up to key elections, like the U.S. midterms.
To address newer concerns, Meta also announced it would label political ads with AI-generated imagery for the 2024 election cycle.
