Google is expanding end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to include group texts in the Messages app. The feature will be available as an open beta later this year. Engadget reports: Google hasn't revealed more details about E2EE in group chats, but it will surely be similar to how the option works in one-on-one conversations. Everyone in the group will need to have RCS chat functions switched on to use the feature. You'll be able to tell if a message you're about to share with the group is encrypted if there's a lock icon on the send button. The Messages app now has more than 500 million monthly active users with RCS. So, there's already a large number of people who'd be able to take advantage of E2EE in group chats.

At its I/O developer conference, Google today launched Google Wallet, a new Android and Wear OS app that will allow users to store things like credit cards, loyalty cards, digital IDs, transit passes, concert tickets, vaccination cards and more. TechCrunch reports: That's pretty straightforward, but from here on out, it gets a bit confusing. [...] [Back in 2018, Google Wallet was folded into Google Pay.] Currently, Google Pay is available in 42 markets, Google says. Because in 39 of those markets, Google Pay is still primarily a wallet, those users will simply see the Google Pay app update to the new Google Wallet app. But in the U.S. and Singapore, Google Pay will remain the payments-focused app while the Wallet app will exist in parallel to focus on storing your digital cards. Meanwhile, in India, Google says that "people will continue to use their Google Pay app they are familiar with today."

"The Google Pay app will be a companion app to the Wallet," said Arnold Goldberg, the VP and GM of Payments at Google, who joined the company earlier this year after a long stint at PayPal. "Think of [the Google Pay app] as this higher value app that will be a place for you to make payments and manage money, whereas the wallet will really be this container for you to store your payment assets and your non-payment assets." Goldberg noted that Google decided to go this route because of the rapid digitization we've been seeing during the last two years of the pandemic.

Google announced several new gadgets during its I/O developer conference on Wednesday, including its long-awaited Pixel Watch, a new budget Pixel 6a phone and headphones. It also teased its flagship Pixel 7 phone, which is coming this fall. From a report: The Google Pixel Watch offers features similar to the Apple Watch's and sports a refined and sleek look that could appeal to customers who use Android instead of the iPhone, which it doesn't work with. It will integrate Fitbit's technology, allowing it to pull on years of research and development from the fitness startup it acquired last year. The Fitbit tech will let users track their sleep, heart rate and workouts. The watch runs Google's Wear OS software that lets users do things such as check messages and download music. Users can also get directions with Google Maps or connect it with their smart home devices, so they can, for example, change their thermostat temperature or make sure the lights are turned off.

Google will release its latest budget Pixel phone this summer. The Pixel 6a has mostly the same design as the Pixel 6, but will be slightly smaller and cost $449. Google promised an all-day battery that can last up to 72 hours when in the Extreme Battery Saver mode, which it said is a first for Pixel phones. It also uses Google Tensor, so the budget phone will have the same power as the more expensive Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. [...] Google teased the new Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro flagship phones. They'll use the next generation of the Google Tensor chip and will ship with Android 13. The company didn't provide pricing, but the Pixel 6 had been targeted at the midrange market with a $599 starting price, while the 6 Pro started at $899.

ellithligraw writes: Analytics company Pixalate found that there are over 1.5 million abandoned iOS and Android apps. This analysis comes after Apple's announcement of changes to their App Store for abandoned apps, prompting a discussion on the Web.

"Pixalate claims they crawled the App Store and Play Store to analyze all apps available for download based on their last update to determine their degree of 'abandonment,'" reports InfoQ. "Based on the previous definitions, Pixalate found over 650k iOS apps and about 870k Android apps to qualify as abandoned apps (haven't been updated in over two years). Of those, just about 180k iOS apps and 130k Android apps qualify as super-abandoned (haven't been updated in at least five years)." Note that according to Statista there are 4 million iOS apps, and 3 million Android apps available.

Matter is a new open-source, interoperability smart home standard that's been created by over 200 companies to allow all of your devices to communicate with each other locally, without the need for a cloud. The Verge sat down with Michele Turner, the senior director of Google Smart Home Ecosystem, to hear how the company plans to implement Matter when it finally arrives later this year. Here's an excerpt from the interview: Matter has evolved substantially from that first meeting, and there have been delays and setbacks. Do you still feel confident in that original vision, that it's being carried through and is on track to achieve what you set out to do at that Woodside dinner three years ago?

Michele Turner: I do. And, in fact, I think it's exceeding our original vision in some ways. It's been incredibly heartening to see the enthusiasm and the adoption and the number of companies that have joined the CSA and the Matter workgroup. We're at 200 companies -- it's amazing.

How is Matter going to change the smart home experience for the Google Home user?

Michele Turner: "For the Google Home user, I think the bigger areas of Matter where they'll see change first is in getting your devices set up. I just set up some lights at my mother-in-law's house, and it still took me 45 minutes to set up four lights. It shouldn't have been so hard. The first thing is going to be that significantly simpler setup. The second piece is the speed and the reliability of the local network. This has been a big pain point for users. My team spent a lot of time working with partners on improving reliability and reducing latency. Because in our mind, if it's not as fast as a light switch, what's the point? We believe Matter's going to drive down those latency numbers significantly and improve the overall reliability of devices in the home. Then, I think interoperability for users is going to be a big piece. As much as we love having everybody using the Google Assistant, the reality is people have iPhones and Android phones in their homes. Some of them want to use HomeKit. We just don't have that kind of compatibility today for users. And I think that's hard. Being able to have multi-admin really work well between these ecosystems is going to be a big benefit for users.

Then, our long-term goal is to build out what we call the proactive home. Instead of having a whole bunch of connected devices, how do we build that truly proactive home that works for the benefit of users? ... Matter is going to be absolutely foundational to that. It's the architecture behind the proactive home. If we don't have a home that's reliable, if we don't have things running locally, if it doesn't work consistently, we cannot deliver on that promise. The proactive home is really that intelligence layer, whether it's being able to predict that I'm going upstairs, it's 10 at night, and I always go into my bedroom at that time, so turn on the lights for me; or, I'm watching TV, it's 9:30PM, the kids are in bed, and I get a notification on my phone that the lights just went on in the kid's bedroom. Is somebody sick? Are they watching YouTube? Being able to do anomaly detection. Now, Matter doesn't do that. But it's foundational to be able to enable the rest of that. Because if that core foundation of the home -- of the smart home -- isn't solid, the rest of it just doesn't work."

As you've said, Matter is complicated. And there's a lot of expectation that's been placed on its shoulders. What would you say is the biggest misconception right now with Matter?

Michele Turner: "I think the biggest misconception is that Matter is going to solve every problem in IoT. It doesn't have a native intelligence layer that's going to automatically give you the proactive home. In my mind, it's solving three very foundational things. It's solving making setup easier for the majority of the devices that people put in their homes. Not the majority of device types, necessarily, but the majority of devices people put in their homes. It's making the IoT more reliable and faster. And then it's going to solve this multi-admin problem. It's going to provide that device interconnectivity that we don't have today that is really great for users. While it's going to be a lot more than that, it's not today. But it's solving what we believe are really the core problems that have challenged adoption by mainstream users in the past." The report notes that all of Google's existing Nest branded smart speakers and displays will be upgraded to support Matter, "allowing you to use Google's voice assistant to control any Matter-enabled device in your home, no matter who made it."

Back in March, Google halted Android app and subscription purchases in Russia due to sanctions. Google Play is now "blocking the downloading of paid apps and updates to paid apps in Russia starting May 5, 2022.â 9to5Google reports: The company cites "compliance efforts" as being responsible for this latest policy. There are no changes to free applications as Google says in the Q&A of its support article on the matter: "Can I publish new apps or update existing apps during this pause? You can still publish new free apps, and update existing free apps. Updates to paid apps are blocked for compliance reasons."

Google has recommended developers defer payment renewals (which is possible for up to one year). Another given possibility for developers was making apps free or removing the paid subscription "during this pause." That was advised for applications that provide a "critical service to users that keeps them safe and provides access to information."

Facebook on Thursday began informing users that Nearby Friends and other location-based features will soon be discontinued at the end of the month. While the reasons are currently unclear, the company claims that all information related to these features will be deleted from Facebook's servers. 9to5Mac reports: Users have been getting a notification in the Facebook app for iOS and Android about the end of Nearby Friends, a feature that lets people share their current location with other Facebook friends. At the same time, Facebook also says that Time Alerts, Location History, and Background Location are also "going away soon." According to the company, Nearby Friends and other location-based features will no longer be available to users after May 31, 2022.

Some of the data, such as the user's location history (which automatically uses your location to create a map of places you have visited, will be available for download by August 1, 2022. After that, Facebook says that this data will be deleted. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that Facebook's app will stop collecting users' location. The company states that location data will still be collected "for other experiences." Of course, you can always disable the Facebook app's access to your location by going into the iOS Privacy settings.

Match Group accused Alphabet's Google in a lawsuit of acting as a monopolist with its app store billing rules, the latest escalation in a brawl over the mobile-app industry. From a report: Match Group, which operates dating apps such as Tinder and OkCupid, alleged that Google breaks federal and state laws and abuses its power with a requirement that app developers use its billing system on Android devices. "Ten years ago, Match Group was Google's partner. We are now its hostage," Match Group said in a complaint filed Monday in northern California federal court.

"Blinded by the possibility of getting an ever-greater cut of the billions of dollars users spend each year on Android apps, Google set out to monopolize the market for how users pay for their Android apps." Google, like Apple, has faced enormous recent legal and political scrutiny over the commission fees and billing restrictions both companies apply to paid services in their app stores. Congress is currently weighing a bill to force Google and Apple to change their business models.

The BBC reports: Large tech companies such as Google and Facebook will have to abide by new competition rules in the UK or risk facing huge fines, the government said. The new Digital Markets Unit (DMU) will be given powers to clamp down on "predatory practices" of some firms.

The regulator will also have the power to fine companies up to 10% of their global turnover if they fail to comply.... The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said as well as large fines, tech firms could be handed additional penalties of 5% of daily global turnover for each day an offence continues. For companies like Apple that could be tens of billions of US dollars. "Senior managers will face civil penalties if their firms fail to engage properly with requests for information," the government said. However, it is unclear when exactly the changes will come into force, as the government has said the necessary legislation will be introduced "in due course...."

Google's search engine, which is currently the default search engine on Apple products, will also be looked at by the regulator, the government said.

It added it wants news publishers to be paid fairly for their content — and will give the regulator power to resolve conflicts.
The BBC reports the new rules also "aim to give users more control over their data," and that the new regulator "will also make it easier for people to switch between phone operating systems such as Apple iOS or Android and social media accounts, without losing data and messages."

Following up on its earlier move to pull Audible audiobook purchases from its Play Store app, Amazon is also turning off Kindle digital book purchases on Android. Ars Technica reports: The Google Play purchasing crackdown is to blame, of course. Starting on June 1, Google will require all Play Store apps to use Google Play billing for digital purchases or face removal from the marketplace. Google Play billing technically has been in the rules for a while, but Google is ending a hands-off enforcement policy that effectively allowed companies to run their own billing systems. When you visit the Amazon app, you can still buy physical books, but digital purchases now show a "Why can't I buy on the app?" link instead of a purchase button. Amazon's link shows a popup that says, "To remain in compliance with the Google Play Store policies, you will no longer be able to buy new content from the app. You can build a reading list on the app and buy on [the] Amazon website from your browser."

Amazon Music purchases have also been shut down on the Google Play app. The move brings Amazon's Google Play app in line with the iOS app, which also doesn't allow digital purchases. On Android, Amazon is pushing users to the website, where they can still buy digital content or sign up for an unlimited subscription, which avoids the Play Store purchase lockdown. Google Play billing takes a percentage of in-app purchases (usually 30 percent, though media can be as low as 10 percent), and several big companies have responded to the rule change by removing purchases from their Android apps.

YouTube Go is shutting down beginning this August, Google has announced this week. From a report: The lightweight Android app first launched in 2016 and features offline viewing and nearby sharing. Like other apps designed for emerging markets, YouTube Go includes a suite of features that take into consideration the high costs of data, poor signal strength and the prevalent use of SD cards on Android devices. YouTube Go first launched in India and later became available in more than 130 countries worldwide. The company notes that since 2016, it has invested in improvements to the main YouTube app that make it perform better in emerging markets, while also delivering a better user experience.

Since Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming launched two years ago, more than 10 million people worldwide have streamed games through the service. That number's likely to jump a bit higher as a result of a partnership Microsoft struck with Epic Games to offer Epic's hit title Fortnite for free through Xbox Cloud Gaming. From a report: The move will effectively let people play Fortnite in a way similar to how they stream videos from companies like Netflix, regardless of how beefy their gaming device is. Unlike previous efforts, Microsoft said this agreement applies to anyone who wants to play, with or without a subscription. Gamers will be able to play on an iPhone or iPad or a device powered by Google's Android software, even though both Apple and Google have banned Fortnite from their respective app stores amid an ongoing legal dispute. "This is just the beginning for us -- we're going to learn, implement feedback, and in time look to bring even more free-to-play titles to players through the cloud," Microsoft said in a statement. The service will be available for free in 26 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Japan, Mexico and the US.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Volvo will only sell electrified cars in the US beginning with the 2023 model year, the automaker confirmed Tuesday. "Electrified" means that in addition to EVs, Volvo will continue to offer gas-powered cars, but they'll all either have mild-hybrid or plug-in hybrid technology. Volvo will continue to offer plug-in hybrid powertrains, as well. In fact, these T8 Recharge models recently received a power boost, in addition to increased electric-only driving range. The 2023 model year Volvos should arrive at dealers this summer. Meanwhile, Volkswagen says it has "sold out" of battery-powered models in the U.S. and Europe for this year as persistent supply chain bottlenecks hit global production.

vm shares the blogpost of Mozilla releasing Firefox 100, and outlines some of thoughts: Out of the ashes of Netscape/AOL, Firebird rose as a promising new browser. A significant name change and a hundred releases later, Firefox 100 is still the underdog that keeps on fighting. With my mounting annoyance at all the Google services underpinning Chrome, I've since discovered and used Ungoogled Chromium, Waterfox, LibreWolf, and a handful of other lesser known spins on Chrome or Firefox. On mobile, Brave really does the best job at ad blocking whether you're on iOS or Android but the Mozilla Foundations is probably still the largest dev group fighting the good fight when it comes to both privacy and security enhancements.That's not to say that the Chromium team isn't security savvy -- I only wish they were just a little less Google. Anyhow, tell us about your favorite browser in the comments and have a look at Mozilla's latest release while you're at it.

PayPal helped spur a formal antitrust complaint against Apple and its iPhone payments system by raising concerns with the European Commission, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: European regulators hit Apple with a so-called statement of objections on Monday, arguing that the iPhone maker abuses its control over mobile payments. The complaint centers on the company reserving the iPhone's tap-to-pay abilities for its own Apple Pay service, rather than letting rival payment platforms use the feature. PayPal, which has its own payment service, was one of multiple companies making informal complaints about the situation to the commission, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private. PayPal offers a tap-to-pay option on Android phones and wants to be able to offer the same feature on Apple's iPhone.

Telegram appears to be testing another way for the super popular messaging app to start bringing in revenue. From a report: Beta testers for Telegram's iOS app noticed something new in version 8.7.2, as first spotted by Android Police: a new set of stickers and reaction emoji that you can only unlock "by subscribing to Telegram Premium." Telegram Premium, of course, doesn't exist yet. But right now, users with access to Telegram's TestFlight builds and its Test Server are able to send each other exploding-heart and flying-ghost reactions, a sticker in which that cute blobby yellow duck is just unbearably sad, and a few other new things. And it appears that, ultimately, even the recipients of those messages will need Telegram Premium to see them; if you send a non-subscriber a sad duck, they'll get a prompt to sign up.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Alibaba Cloud has advanced its work to port Android to the RISC-V architecture. The Chinese cloud giant has spent more than a year working on a port of the Google-spawned OS and in January 2021 showed off a GUI powered by Android 10 running on silicon designed by T-Head Semiconductor -- an Alibaba subsidiary that designs its own RISC-V chip. Alibaba Cloud has now revealed it's working on Android 12, and has integrated third-party vendor modules. The result is Android on RISC-V that's capable of playing audio and video, running Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios, and driving cameras.

The company has also "enabled more system enhancement features such as core tool sets, third-party libraries and SoC board support package on RISC-V," which collectively make RISC-V a better target for Android. Another advance is successful trials of TensorFlow Lite models on RISC-V. That effort means Android on RISC-V should be capable running workloads like image and audio classification and Optical Character Recognition. Alibaba Cloud hasn't detailed whether its porting efforts are directed to any particular processor, but is keen to point out that its homegrown Xuantie C906 processor recently aced the MLPerf Tiny v0.7 benchmark -- a test applied to Internet of Things devices. The company has also pointed out that its home-grown RISC-V kit has already been employed in smart home appliances, automotive applications, and edge computing. [...] The Xuantie C906 uses Alibaba-designed cores that are -- as required for RISC-V users -- available on GitHub. When the firm has a complete version of Android on RISC-V, it "will be an important step towards China's goal of reducing its reliance on technology that other nations can control with restrictions such as trade bans," notes The Register. "As RISC-V is open source, preventing its flow to China is all but impossible."

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you'd told us that Bandcamp's acquisition by Epic Games would lead fairly swiftly to an argument with a tech giant, our money would have been on that giant being Apple. Nope. Epic Games is seeking a court injunction against Google, over changing rules on its Google Play Store for Android. Bandcamp CEO Ethan Diamond blogged about the dispute overnight, noting that since 2015, Bandcamp has used its own billing system to process payments made for music and merch within its Android app. "However, Google is now modifying its rules to require Bandcamp (and other apps like it) to exclusively use Google Play Billing for payments for digital goods and services, and pay a revenue share to Google," wrote Diamond. "If Google's policy changes stand, beginning on June 1st, we would have to either pass Google's fees on to consumers (making Android a less attractive platform for music fans), pass fees on to artists (which we would never do), permanently run our Android business at a loss, or turn off digital sales in the Android app." Diamond also said that the new policy could see a delay in payments for artists and labels, from the current 24-48 hours to "15 to 45 days after a sale," while Epic's filing notes that Google's system can't be used for purchases of physical items (merch and physical music), which would force it to use two separate payment systems anyway.

Information released under data protection laws sheds light on apparent effort to undermine Canadian research group Citizen Lab. From a report: When Downing Street was recently named as the suspected victim of a phone hack by the United Arab Emirates using the Israeli-made spyware, Pegasus, few were surprised at who was behind the discovery. The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto has for years been a thorn in the side of the NSO Group, deciphering the company's sophisticated hacking tools and -- crucially -- identifying victims of the spyware. Ron Deibert, the longtime director of the Canadian research group, is one of the world's leading experts on identifying digital threats against civil society. John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, is among a relatively small group of experts globally who can identify which iPhones and Android devices have been infected with Pegasus, and which government clients are likely to have been responsible.

It is unsurprising, then, that the pair were an intense focus at Novalpina, the London-based private equity group which took over NSO Group in 2019, and quickly sought to stem its reputation for enabling repressive governments to commit widespread human rights abuses. Using UK data protection laws, Deibert and Scott-Railton last year sought the personal data held on them by Novalpina. The results of their so-called subject access requests, recently shared with the Guardian, contain snippets of hundreds of emails and attachments that included their names. The released data, combined with information from other sources, sheds light on an apparent attempt by Novalpina partner Stephen Peel to gather information on and undermine Citizen Lab. In one case, he even reached out to George Soros, whose foundation is an important Citizen Lab donor, and complained about the researchers.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Qualcomm bought a chipmaking startup called Nuvia back in March of 2021, and later that year, the company said it would be using Nuvia's talent and technology to create high-performance custom-designed ARM chips to compete with Apple's processor designs. But if you're waiting for a truly high-performance Windows PC with anything other than an Intel or AMD chip in it, you'll still be waiting for a bit. Qualcomm CEO Christian Amon mentioned during the company's most recent earnings call that its high-performance chips were on track to land in consumer devices "in late 2023."

Qualcomm still plans to sample chips to its partners later in 2022, a timeframe it has mentioned previously and has managed to stick to. A gap between sampling and mass production is typical, giving Qualcomm time to work out bugs and improve chip yields and PC manufacturers more time to design and build finished products that incorporate the chips. [...] Like Apple's processors, Nuvia's support the ARM instruction set but don't use off-the-shelf ARM Cortex CPU designs. These processor cores have been phenomenally successful in commodity SoCs that power everything from Android phones to smart TVs, and they helped popularize the practice of combining large, high-performance CPU cores and small, high-efficiency CPU cores together in the same design. But they rarely manage to top the performance charts, something that's especially noticeable when they're running x86 code on Windows with a performance penalty.