The Tech Landscape #133 🎄
Arsenal Football Club was founded 133 years ago by munitions workers at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, and has been in the top division of English football for 100 years—the longest streak of any club.
I thought I wasn’t going to send an email this week, but a couple of interesting things were announced. Even so, I hope you’re not reading this until January, and that you had a very happy Christmas and New Year.
Games
Facebook has acquired PlayGiga, a Spanish cloud gaming service. This will take on Google’s Stadia, incumbents Playstation and Xbox, and long-rumoured Amazon and Steam services. I’d imagine this might well be included with a future Portal hardware device.
cnbc.com/2019/12/18/facebook-acquires-spanish-cloud-video-gaming-company-playgiga.html
Google has acquired games developer Typhoon Studios, which will join its Stadia Games and Entertainment studio launched earlier this year.
blog.google/products/stadia/typhoon-studios-joins-stadia-games-and-entertainment/
Snap announced Leaderboard Games, minigames in Snapchat that let players match their scores against those of their friends. Until now, games in Snap were only multiplayer when all players were online together.
digitaltrends.com/social-media/snapchat-leaderboard-games/
Everything Else
Amazon, Apple, Google, IKEA and many others are partnering on a new smart home compatibility standard. Project Connected Home over IP will make it easier for new smart home products to work with Alexa, Assistant, Siri, etc. Google will donate its smart home protocols Weave and Thread, while Apple will open-source parts of HomeKit.
apple.com/newsroom/2019/12/amazon-apple-google-and-the-zigbee-alliance-to-develop-connectivity-standard/
Facebook quietly bought a startup called Packagd, which specialises in live shopping, earlier this year. Packagd’s first product worked with YouTube, but Facebook has obviously seen the explosion in live video shopping in China and is well-placed to try it here.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-20/facebook-acquired-a-startup-to-build-a-live-shopping-feature
Google has enabled its RCS messaging service for Android users in the US. RCS was intended to be rolled out in partnership with network carriers, but fed up of slow progress Google has bypassed them entirely.
inputmag.com/tech/google-flips-on-rcs-in-the-us
Facebook is working on its own operating system for future devices, according to a report in The Information. Facebook’s current hardware, Oculus and Portal, run on modified versions of Android, so its own OS would reduce its reliance on a competitor.
theverge.com/2019/12/19/21030043/facebook-os-custom-operating-system-android-reliance-self-sufficiency-ar-glasses
Facebook plans to launch its own music video service and is renegotiating deals with music publishers, according to a report by Bloomberg. Social music is very popular in China, and seems like something Facebook could easily replicate.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-19/facebook-pursues-music-video-rights-in-challenge-to-youtube
Facebook is bringing its fact-checking tools to Instagram. Content marked as false will be removed from the Explore and hashtag pages.
about.fb.com/news/2019/12/combatting-misinformation-on-instagram/
Huawei’s VR Glass headset is now on sale in China. The device is said to be the lightest on the market, and connects to a smartphone with a cable. No idea yet on a global release.
gizmochina.com/2019/12/19/huawei-vr-glass-sale-china/
Xiaomi launched its first smart display, the XiaoAI Touchscreen Pro 8, running its own XiaoAI assistant. China only, for now, but could be a future competitor to Amazon and Google.
voicebot.ai/2019/12/16/xiaomi-debuts-new-smart-display-in-china-to-compete-directly-with-amazon-and-google/