India’s antitrust watchdog fines Google, Snap shares fall, WhatsApp comes back online following two hours of issues.
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Wednesday, October 26, and I’m your host, Tom Li.
India’s antitrust watchdog has fined Google $113 million for abusing the dominant position of its Google Play Store. In addition, it ordered the company to allow app developers to use third-party payment services for in-app purchases. The Competition Commission of India said forcing developers to use Google’s own billing system for in-app purchases “constitutes an imposition of unfair conditions.” India is Google’s largest market by users. The company has invested billions of dollars in the South Asian market over the past ten years.
Source: TechCrunch
Snap shares fell 28 per cent after investors continued to analyze the company’s third-quarter earnings report that was released last week. The company posted an unexpected profit, but missed revenue estimates slightly, coming in at $1.13 billion versus the expected $1.14 billion. The company has been impacted as a result of the struggling online advertising market. Additionally, Apple’s data privacy update from last year has limited the ability of social media companies to track users online. Despite this, Snap has managed to continue to grow in popularity, with daily active users increasing just under 20 per cent year over year in the third quarter. However, Snap shares fell about 77 per cent year to date.
Source: CNBC
WhatsApp is finally coming back online after almost two hours of issues. The messaging app was down early yesterday leaving thousands of users unable to use the platform. When trying to chat, many are simply seeing the clock icon on their messages which means they haven’t been sent. While it’s unclear what has caused the problems, most users should now start seeing their chats being sent and received. The problems began around 3:00 am EST. WhatsApp confirmed the outage saying it was working on a fix. At the time of the problem, Down Detector had about 70,000 people reporting errors.
Source: Express
A new study reveals that kids who play video games have better memory and better control over their motor skills than kids who don’t. While the study can’t say what exactly causes the difference between the two groups, the findings showed gamers have better performance on some tests of brain function. According to a report from The Verge, the study used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, which tracks brain development in thousands of children in the United States as they grow into adulthood. Researchers found that kids who play video gamers did better on their tests and had differences in brain activity patterns from the non-gamers.
Source: The Verge
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Tom Li.