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UK’s CMA opens market study into Apple, Google’s mobile ‘duopoly’
The U.K.’s competition watchdog will take a deep dive look into Apple and Google’s dominance of the mobile ecosystem, it said today — announcing a market study which will examine the pair’s respective smartphone platforms (iOS and Android); their app stores (App Store and Play Store); and web browsers (Safari and Chrome).
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is concerned that the mobile platform giants’ “effective duopoly” in those areas might be harming consumers, it added.
The study will be wide ranging, with the watchdog concerns about the nested gateways that are created as a result of the pair’s dominance of mobile ecosystem — intermediating how consumers can access a variety of products, content and services (such as music, TV and video streaming; fitness tracking, shopping and banking, to cite some of the examples provided by the CMA).
“These products also include other technology and devices such as smart speakers, smart watches, home security and lighting (which mobiles can connect to and control),” it went on, adding that it’s looking into whether their dominance of these pipes is “stifling competition across a range of digital markets”, saying too that it’s “concerned this could lead to reduced innovation across the sector and consumers paying higher prices for devices and apps, or for other goods and services due to higher advertising prices”.
The CMA further confirmed the deep dive will examine “any effects” of the pair’s market power over other businesses — giving the example of app developers who rely on Apple or Google to market their products to customers via their smart devices.
The watchdog already has an open investigation into Apple’s App Store, following a number of antitrust complaints by developers.
It is investigating Google’s planned depreciation of third-party tracking cookies too, after complaints by adtech companies and publishers that the move could harm competition. (And just last week the CMA said it was minded to accept a series of concessions offered by Google that would enable the regulator to stop it turning off support for cookies entirely if it believes the move will harm competition.)
The CMA said both those existing investigations are examining issues that fall within the scope of the new mobile ecosystem market study but that its work on the latter will be “much broader”.
It added that it will adopt a joined-up approach across all related cases — “to ensure the best outcomes for consumers and other businesses”.
It’s giving itself a full year to examine Gapple’s mobile ecosystems.
It is also soliciting feedback on any of the issues raised in its statement of scope — calling for responses by 26 July. The CMA added that it’s also keen to hear from app developers, via its questionnaire, by the same date.
Taking on tech giants
The watchdog has previously scrutinized the digital advertising market — and found plenty to be concerned about vis-à-vis Google’s dominance there.
That earlier market study has been feeding the U.K. government’s plan to reform competition rules to take account of the market-deforming power of digital giants. And the CMA suggested the new market study, examining “Gapple’s” mobile muscle, could similarly help shape U.K.-wide competition law reforms.
Last year the U.K. announced its plan to set up a “pro-competition” regime for regulating internet platforms — including by establishing a dedicated Digital Markets Unit within the CMA (which got going earlier this year).
The legislation for the reform has not yet been put before parliament but the government has said it wants the competition regulator to be able to “proactively shape platforms’ behavior” to avoid harmful behavior before it happens” — saying too that it supports enabling ex ante interventions once a platform has been identified to have so-called “strategic market status”.
Germany already adopted similar reforms to its competition law (early this year), which enable proactive interventions to tackle large digital platforms with what is described as “paramount significance for competition across markets”. And its Federal Cartel Office has, in recent months, wasted no time in opening a number of proceedings to determine whether Amazon, Google and Facebook have such a status.
The CMA also sounds keen to get going to tackle internet gatekeepers.
Commenting in a statement, CEO Andrea Coscelli said:
Apple and Google control the major gateways through which people download apps or browse the web on their mobiles – whether they want to shop, play games, stream music or watch TV. We’re looking into whether this could be creating problems for consumers and the businesses that want to reach people through their phones.
Our ongoing work into big tech has already uncovered some worrying trends and we know consumers and businesses could be harmed if they go unchecked. That’s why we’re pressing on with launching this study now, while we are setting up the new Digital Markets Unit, so we can hit the ground running by using the results of this work to shape future plans.
The European Union also unveiled its own proposals for clipping the wings of Big Tech last year — presenting its Digital Markets Act plan in December, which will apply a single set of operational rules to so-called “gatekeeper” platforms operating across the EU.
The clear trend in Europe on digital competition is toward increasing oversight and regulation of the largest platforms — in the hopes that antitrust authorities can impose measures that will help smaller players thrive.
Critics might say that’s just playing into the tech giants’ hands, though — because it’s fiddling around the edges when more radical intervention (break ups) are what’s really needed to reboot captured markets.
Apple and Google were contacted for comment on the CMA’s market study.
A Google spokesperson said: “Android provides people with more choice than any other mobile platform in deciding which apps they use, and enables thousands of developers and manufacturers to build successful businesses. We welcome the CMA’s efforts to understand the details and differences between platforms before designing new rules.”
According to Google, the Android App Economy generated £2.8 billion in revenue for U.K. developers last year, which it claims supported 240,000 jobs across the country — citing a Public First report that it commissioned.
The tech giant also pointed to operational changes it has already made in Europe, following antitrust interventions by the European Commission — such as adding a choice screen to Android where users can pick from a list of alternative search engines.
Earlier this month it agreed to shift the format underlying that choice screen from an unpopular auction model to free participation.
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Google speeds up its release cycle for Chrome
Google today announced that its Chrome browser is moving to a faster release cycle by shipping a new milestone every four weeks instead of the current six-week cycle (with a bi-weekly security patch). That’s one way to hasten the singularity, I guess, but it’s worth noting that Mozilla also moved to a four-week cycle for Firefox last year.
“As we have improved our testing and release processes for Chrome, and deployed bi-weekly security updates to improve our patch gap, it became clear that we could shorten our release cycle and deliver new features more quickly,” the Chrome team explains in today’s announcement.
Google, however, also acknowledges that not everybody wants to move this quickly — especially in the enterprise. For those users, Google is adding a new Extended Stable option with updates that come every eight weeks. This feature will be available to enterprise admins and Chromium embedders. They will still get security updates on a bi-weekly schedule, but Google notes that “those updates won’t contain new features or all security fixes that the 4 week option will receive.”
The new four-week cycle will start with Chrome 94 in Q3 2021, and at this faster rate, we’ll see Chrome 100 launch into the stable channel by March 29, 2022. I expect there will be cake.
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Apple, Opera and Yandex fix browser address bar spoofing bugs, but millions more still left vulnerable
Year after year, phishing remains one of the most popular and effective ways for attackers to steal your passwords. As users, we’re mostly trained to spot the telltale signs of a phishing site, but most of us rely on carefully examining the web address in the browser’s address bar to make sure the site is legitimate.
But even the browser’s anti-phishing features — often the last line of defense for a would-be phishing victim — aren’t perfect.
Security researcher Rafay Baloch found several vulnerabilities in some of the most widely used mobile browsers — including Apple’s Safari, Opera and Yandex — which if exploited would allow an attacker to trick the browser into displaying a different web address than the actual website that the user is on. These address bar spoofing bugs make it far easier for attackers to make their phishing pages look like legitimate websites, creating the perfect conditions for someone trying to steal passwords.
The bugs worked by exploiting a weakness in the time it takes for a vulnerable browser to load a web page. Once a victim is tricked into opening a link from a phishing email or text message, the malicious web page uses code hidden on the page to effectively replace the malicious web address in the browser’s address bar to any other web address that the attacker chooses.
In at least one case, the vulnerable browser retained the green padlock icon, indicating that the malicious web page with a spoofed web address was legitimate — when it wasn’t.
An address bar spoofing bug in Opera Touch for iOS (left) and Bolt Browser (right). These spoofing bugs can make phishing emails look far more convincing. (Image: Rapid7/supplied)
Rapid7’s research director Tod Beardsley, who helped Baloch with disclosing the vulnerabilities to each browser maker, said address bar spoofing attacks put mobile users at particular risk.
“On mobile, space is at an absolute premium, so every fraction of an inch counts. As a result, there’s not a lot of space available for security signals and sigils,” Beardsley told TechCrunch. “While on a desktop browser, you can either look at the link you’re on, mouse over a link to see where you’re going or even click on the lock to get certificate details. These extra sources don’t really exist on mobile, so the location bar not only tells the user what site they’re on, it’s expected to tell the user this unambiguously and with certainty. If you’re on palpay.com instead of the expected paypal.com, you could notice this and know you’re on a fake site before you type in your password.”
“Spoofing attacks like this make the location bar ambiguous, and thus, allow an attacker to generate some credence and trustworthiness to their fake site,” he said.
Baloch and Beardsley said the browser makers responded with mixed results.
So far, only Apple and Yandex pushed out fixes in September and October. Opera spokesperson Julia Szyndzielorz said the fixes for its Opera Touch and Opera Mini browsers are “in gradual rollout.”
But the makers of UC Browser, Bolt Browser and RITS Browser — which collectively have more than 600 million device installs — did not respond to the researchers and left the vulnerabilities unpatched.
TechCrunch reached out to each browser maker but none provided a statement by the time of publication.
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Microsoft’s Edge browser is coming to Linux in October
Microsoft’s Edge browser is coming to Linux, starting with the Dev channel. The first of these previews will go live in October.
When Microsoft announced that it would switch its Edge browser to the Chromium engine, it vowed to bring it to every popular platform. At the time, Linux wasn’t part of that list, but by late last year, it became clear that Microsoft was indeed working on a Linux version. Later, at this year’s Build, a Microsoft presenter even used it during a presentation.
Image Credits: Microsoft
Starting in October, Linux users will be able to either download the browser from the Edge Insider website or through their native package managers. Linux users will get the same Edge experience as users on Windows and macOS, as well as access to its built-in privacy and security features. For the most part, I would expect the Linux experience to be on par with that on the other platforms.
Microsoft also today announced that its developers have made more than 3,700 commits to the Chromium project so far. Some of this work has been on support for touchscreens, but the team also contributed to areas like accessibility features and developer tools, on top of core browser fundamentals.
Currently, Microsoft Edge is available on Windows 7, 8 and 10, as well as macOS, iOS and Android.
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Mozilla goes full incubator with ‘Fix The Internet’ startup lab and early-stage investments
After testing the waters this spring with its incubator-esque MVP Lab, Mozilla is doubling down on the effort with a formal program dangling $75,000 investments in front of early-stage companies. The focus on “a better society” and the company’s open-source clout should help differentiate it from the other options out there.
Spurred on by the success of a college hackathon using a whole four Apple Watches in February, Mozilla decided to try a more structured program in the spring. The first test batch of companies is underway, having started in April an 8-week program offering $2,500 per team member and $40,000 in prizes to give away at the end. Developers in a variety of domains were invited to apply, as long as they fit the themes of empowerment, privacy, decentralization, community and so on.
It drew the interest of some 1,500 people in 520 projects, and 25 were chosen to receive the full package and stipend during the development of their MVP. The rest were invited to an “Open Lab” with access to some of Mozilla’s resources.
One example of what they were looking for is Ameelio, a startup whose members are hoping to render paid video calls in prisons obsolete with a free system, and provide free letter delivery to inmates as well.
“The mission of this incubator is to catalyze a new generation of internet products and services where the people are in control of how the internet is used to shape society,” said Bart Decrem, a Mozilla veteran (think Firefox 1.0) and one of the principals at the Builders Studio. “And where business models should be sustainable and valuable, but do not need to squeeze every last dollar (or ounce of attention) from the user.”
“We think we are tapping into the energy in the student and professional ‘builder communities’ around wanting to work on ideas that matter. That clarion call really resonates,” he said. Not only that, but students with canceled internships are showing up in droves, it seems — mostly computer science, but design and other disciplines as well. There are no restrictions on applicants, like country of origin, previous funding, or anything like that.
The new incubator will be divided into three tiers.
First is the “Startup Studio,” which involves a $75,000 investment, “a post-money SAFE for 3.5% of the company when the SAFE converts (or we will participate in an already active funding round),” Decrem clarified.
Below that, as far as pecuniary commitment goes, is the “MVP Lab,” similar to the spring program but offering a total of $16,000 per team. And below that is the Open Lab again, but with 10 $10,000 prizes rather than a top 3.
There are no hard numbers on how many teams will make up the two subsidized tiers, but think 20-30 total as opposed to 50 or 100. Meanwhile, collaboration, cross-pollination and open-source code is encouraged, as you might expect in a Mozilla project. And the social good aspect is strong as well, as a sampling of the companies in the spring batch shows.
Neutral is a browser plugin that shows the carbon footprint of your Amazon purchases, adding some crucial guilt to transactions we forget are powered by footsore humans and gas-guzzling long-distance goods transport. Meething, Cabal and Oasis are taking on video conferencing, team chat and social feeds from a decentralized standpoint, using the miracles of modern internet architecture to accomplish with distributed systems what once took centralized servers.
This summer will see the program inaugurated, but it’s only “the beginning of a multiyear effort,” Decrem said.
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Google Meet launches improved Zoom-like tiled layout, low-light mode and more
Google Meet, like all video chat products, is seeing rapid growth in user numbers right now, so it’s no surprise that Google is trying to capitalize on this and is quickly iterating on its product. Today, it is officially launching a set of new features that include a more Zoom-like tiled layout, a low-light mode for when you have to make calls at night and the ability to present a single Chrome tab instead of a specific window or your entire screen. Soon, Meet will also get built-in noise cancellation so nobody will hear your dog bark in the background.
If all of this sounds a bit familiar, it’s probably because G Suite exec Javier Soltero already talked to Reuters about these features last week. Google PR is usually pretty straightforward, but in this case, it moved in mysterious ways. Today, though, these features are actually starting to roll out to users, a Google spokesperson told me, and today’s announcement does actually provide more details about each of these features.
For the most part, what’s being announced here is obvious. The tiled layout allows web users to see up to 16 participants at once. Previously, that number was limited to four and Google promises it will offer additional layouts for larger meetings and better presentation layouts, as well as support for more devices in the future.
For the most part, having this many people stare at me from my screen doesn’t seem necessary (and more likely to induce stress than anything else), but the ability to present a single Chrome tab is surely a welcome new feature for many. But what’s probably just as important is that this means you can share higher-quality video content from these tabs than before.
If you often take meetings in the dark, low-light mode uses AI to brighten up your video. Unlike some of the other features, this one is coming to mobile first and will come to web users in the future.
Personally, I’m most excited about the new noise cancellation feature. Typically, noise cancellation works best for noises that repeat and are predictable. Think about the constant drone of an airplane or your neighbor’s old lawnmower. But Google says Meet can now go beyond this and also cancel out barking dogs and your noisy keystrokes. That has increasingly become table stakes, with even Discord offering similar capabilities and Nvidia RTX Voice now making this available in a slew of applications for users of its high-end graphics cards, but it’s nice to see this as a built-in feature for Meet now.
This feature will only roll out in the coming weeks and will initially be available to G Suite Enterprise and G Suite Enterprise for Education users on the web, with mobile support coming later.
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Mozilla names long-time chairwoman Mitchell Baker as CEO
Mozilla Corporation announced today that it has chosen long-time chairwoman Mitchell Baker to be CEO, replacing Chris Beard, who announced last August he would be stepping down at the end of the year.
Baker represents a logical choice to lead the company. At a time of great turmoil in the world at large, she brings the stability of someone who has been with Mozilla Corporation since 2003. Writing in a company blog post, she certainly recognized the challenges ahead, navigating the current economic uncertainty and the competitive challenges the company faces with its flagship Firefox browser.
“It’s a time of challenge on many levels, there’s no question about that. Mozilla’s flagship product remains excellent, but the competition is stiff. The increasing vertical integration of internet experience remains a deep challenge. It’s also a time of need, and of opportunity. Increasingly, numbers of people recognize that the internet needs attention,” Baker wrote.
Baker has been acting as interim CEO since December when Beard officially left the company. In a blog post from the board announcing Baker’s official new title, they certainly recognized that it would take someone with her unique combination of skills and experience to guide the company through this next phase.
“Mitchell’s deep understanding of Mozilla’s existing businesses gives her the ability to provide direction and support to drive this important work forward,” they wrote. Adding, “And her leadership style grounded in openness and honesty is helping the organization navigate through the uncertainty that COVID-19 has created for Mozillians at work and at home.”
Mozilla Corporation was founded in 1998 and is best known for its flagship, open-source Firefox browser. The company faces stiff competition in the browser market from Google, Apple and Microsoft.
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Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browser gets new privacy features, will be generally available January 15
Microsoft today announced that its Chromium-based Edge browser will be generally available on January 15 and that the release candidate for Windows and macOS is now available for download (and that it features a new icon).
The development of the new Edge has progressed pretty rapidly and the latest build has been very stable, even as Microsoft started building more differentiated features like Collections into its more experimental builds.
With today’s release, Microsoft also is announcing new privacy features. The marquee feature here is probably the new InPrivate browsing mode that now, in combination with Bing, will keep your online searches and identities private. InPrivate, as the name implies, already deleted any information about your browsing session on your local machine when you closed the window. But now, when you search with Bing, Microsoft’s search engine you’ve probably forgotten about, your search history on Bing and any personally identifiable data will also not be saved or associated back to you.
By default, Edge will also now enable tracking prevention. “One of the things that’s hard on the web is how to balance the desire for privacy and the protection of your data — and yet you still want the web to be personalized,” said Yusuf Mehdi, the corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Modern Life, Search and Devices Group, in a pre-recorded briefing ahead of today’s announcement. “The problem today is, nobody has really nailed it. You’ve got some good companies doing some really innovative work to try and have super-strict privacy controls. The problem is, they break the web. And then you’ve got other ones who say, ‘hey, don’t worry about it, we’re just going to make it all work for you.’ But in the background, your data is getting tracked.” Mehdi, of course, thinks that Microsoft’s approach is the better one here — and more balanced.
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Autify raises $2.5M seed round for its no-code software testing platform
Autify, a platform that makes testing web application as easy as clicking a few buttons, has raised a $2.5 million seed round from Global Brain, Salesforce Ventures, Archetype Ventures and several angels. The company, which recently graduated from the Alchemist accelerator program for enterprise startups, splits its base between the U.S., where it keeps an office, and Japan, where co-founders Ryo Chikazawa (CEO) and Sam Yamashita got their start as software engineers.
The main idea here is that Autify, which was founded in 2016, allows teams to write tests by simply recording their interactions with the app with the help of a Chrome extension, then having Autify run these tests automatically on a variety of other browsers and mobile devices. Typically, these kinds of tests are very brittle and quickly start to fail whenever a developer makes changes to the design of the application.
Autify gets around this by using some machine learning smarts that give it the ability to know that a given button or form is still the same, no matter where it is on the page. Users can currently test their applications using IE, Edge, Chrome and Firefox on macOS and Windows, as well as a range of iOS and Android devices.
Chikazawa tells me that the main idea of Autify is based on his own experience as a developer. He also noted that many enterprises are struggling to hire automation engineers who can write tests for them, using Selenium and similar frameworks. With Autify, any developer (and even non-developer) can create a test without having to know the specifics of the underlying testing framework. “You don’t really need technical knowledge,” explained Chikazawa. “You can just out of the box use Autify.”
There are obviously some other startups that are also tackling this space, including SpotQA, for example. Chikazawa, however, argues that Autify is different, given its focus on enterprises. “The audience is really different. We have competitors that are targeting engineers, but because we are saying that no coding [is required], we are selling to the companies that have been struggling with hiring automating engineers,” he told me. He also stressed that Autify is able to do cross-browser testing, something that’s also not a given among its competitors.
The company introduced its closed beta version in March and is currently testing the service with about a hundred companies. It integrates with development platforms like TestRail, Jenkins and CircleCI, as well as Slack.
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How to profit from valuable peer referrals hiding in Slack
Colin is Senior Director of Analytics and Strategy for Cloudinary, the co co-author of High Performance Images, and passionate about data, web performance and user experience.
Brands are often left to act like the person who searches for their keys under the streetlight simply because that is where the light is better. However, when brand marketers focus only on engaging with the customers they can more easily see — where online activity is visible — they risk overlooking the valuable opportunities hiding in darker spaces.
One of the most valuable of those dark web spaces is in the realm of what we call “microbrowsers” — the messaging apps like Slack, WhatsApp and WeChat. We call them microbrowsers because they display miniature previews of web pages inside private message discussions. These previews, also known as ‘unfurled links’, create your brand’s first impression and play a big role in whether or not the person on the receiving end will click through to buy, or read or engage.
Google Analytics lumps all microbrowser-generated web traffic into the ‘Direct’ bucket, which we often just ignore. This means we look for customers where we know how to create campaigns easily — on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and buying Google Ad Words.
And as more people rely more heavily on messaging apps for primary communication, these link previews from microbrowsers are becoming the leading segment of your direct traffic visitors. In Cloudinary’s 2019 State of Visual Media Report, which drew on data from more than 700 customers and 200 billion transactions, we found that 77% of link sharing in Slack occurs during working hours and that the vast majority of the click-throughs are reported as ‘direct’ traffic. The rise of microbrowsers gives us an opportunity to engage and attract customers through word of mouth discussions.
The good news is that the ‘leads’ that microbrowsers send to your brand site are usually highly qualified and close to the bottom of the traditional sales pipeline funnel. When consumers arrive on your site they are often ready and eager to buy (or read, view and listen to your content).
Whether it be for sneakers, tickets to a concert, a birthday gift idea, or an article to read — a trusted peer recommendation typically happens in that fleeting moment when the appetite to buy is right now. That isn’t just valuable, it’s the holy freaking grail!
Top tips for creating links that engage
Image via Getty Images / drogatnev
The way to get the most value from microbrowser traffic is by helping along this peer influencing that happens in the dark. By creating compelling, informative links with images, video and text information specifically for microbrowsers, you increase the likelihood that peer-to-peer recommendations in groups convert into sales and reads.
What follows are some top tips to ensure that the links unfurling within microbrowsers have the greatest impact.
First, remember the golden rule: your audience is human. When creating content for microbrowsers, design it for humans, not machines.
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