The Tech Landscape #163 ⚽️
This is issue 163 of The Tech Landscape, a weekly collection of news about consumer digital technology. Stories are selected by me, Peter Gasston, with a little insight and opinion where appropriate.
In the days before broadband Chinese users had to dial 163 to connect to the internet. To capitalise on the familiarity with this number, the Chinese technology giant NetEase chose the official web domain 163.com.
I really like the Stories format pioneered by Snapchat (and copied by literally everybody else), so I was really keen to play around with the new Web Stories plugin for Wordpress. Here are a few I made—I’d love to hear your feedback.
Regulation Update
In last week’s newsletter I included a bunch of links about regulation. This piece by Ben Evans is a brilliant explanation of what’s going to happen as we move into the era of technology regulation.
ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/7/23/regulating-technology
Messaging & Social
Snapchat released its first Minis, the light apps which let users collaborate and share with friends. Meditation app Headspace is the first to launch, and three more are expected this week. Start off fun, then start bringing the ecommerce…
theverge.com/2020/7/20/21331037/snapchat-headspace-meditation-mini-apps-mental-health
Messenger Rooms can now live broadcast calls of up to 50 participants into a Profile, Page, or Group. If nothing else, Zoom has massively influenced the product roadmap of every other platform this year.
about.fb.com/news/2020/07/go-live-on-facebook-from-messenger-rooms/
Messenger introduced App Lock, an option to require the use of fingerprint or face authentication to open the app. Good for privacy, bad for snooping parents of teenaged children.
about.fb.com/news/2020/07/messenger-app-lock-and-privacy-settings/
Google Messages gained a bunch of new features including voice messages and integration with Duo for video calling. It doesn’t specifically mention this, but I’m presuming this is only available to people using RCS rather than SMS.
blog.google/products/messages/5-messages-features-stay-connected-more-personal-ways/
Commerce
Google will no longer take a commission fee from sales made directly on its Shopping service, and will also allow retailers to integrate directly with existing systems like Shopify. Google Shopping has had a ton of updates in the past month—the COVID-19 lockdown has accelerated ecommerce and Google wants its slice.
blog.google/products/shopping/buy-on-google-is-zero-commission/
Google opened a public beta of Recommendations AI, a tool for delivery high-quality personalised retail recommendation (obvs). It monitors customer purchase habits to build customised models for each. It’s already in use by selected clients including Sephora.
cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/online-shopping-gets-personal-with-recommendations-ai
Assistants & Voice
Amazon announced 31 new features for Skill developers at its Alexa Live event, including better natural language support, audiovisual tools, a smart conversational dialogue builder, and improved discovery. The rate of iteration of Alexa compared to Google Assistant is quite telling.
developer.amazon.com/en-US/blogs/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/2020/07/31-new-features-to-unlock-more-natural-and-immersive-alexa-experiences
Google is testing an unannounced Assistant feature called Family Bells, which schedules alarms which are displayed on shared Home and Hub devices with attached family groups.
androidpolice.com/2020/07/23/google-assistants-new-bell-feature-is-a-virtual-nanny-for-your-smart-speakers/
Entertainment
Google’s Nest Hub & Hub Max smart displays can now play Netflix. Interesting to see Google position this as the ‘second TV’.
blog.google/products/google-nest/netflix-arrives-nest-hub-and-hub-max/
Twitch is moving into sports content with a dedicated vertical on the platform, and partnerships with four football clubs including the almighty Arsenal.
sportico.com/2020/leagues/soccer/twitch-top-soccer-clubs-partnership-sports-vertical-launch-1234609638/
Search
Google has pushed back the date at which it will switch Search to use mobile websites as the first choice for indexing to March 2021. If you’re a website owner, you should take a look at this.
webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/07/prepare-for-mobile-first-indexing-with.html
Google Search will start showing specific information for mortgage-related searches, including a step-by-step guide, glossary, and payment calculator. This is good for users, bad for providers of mortgage content; there’s a constant tension between getting information to a user as quickly as possible, and surfacing information from indexed sites.
blog.google/products/search/find-mortgage-information-search/
Stat of the Week
Zoom was downloaded 300m times in Q2, with 94m coming from the US alone—setting a new download record, according to the latest Sensor Tower data.
9to5mac.com/2020/07/17/app-store-record/
Everything Else
Immersive content creation platform Poplar has acquired Svrf, an immersive discovery platform. Poplar is an official creation partner of both TikTok and Google, and recently took on large investment.
poplar.studio/blog/ar-creative-platform-poplar-acquires-svrf-inc/
Roblox announced new features coming to the platform, including layered clothing for avatars (for sponsorship opportunities), subscription services, cross-platform messaging, and a developer job board. Roblox gets overlooked a lot because of its young audience, but there’s a lot of really interesting stuff happening there in terms of a virtual economy.
twitter.com/i/events/1286723703452004352
Google announced a bunch of security features for its G Suite tools, including authenticated brand logos in Gmail to mitigate against phishing emails.
cloud.google.com/blog/products/g-suite/gsuite-security-updates-for-gmail-meet-chat-and-admin/
Google Lens’ live translate feature is now available on phones running KaiOS in India. It can read text to people who are illiterate, and translate to and from English, Hindi, and six other Indian languages. KaiOS is a light OS for very low-powered phones, used by millions in India.
india.googleblog.com/2020/07/use-google-to-read-and-translate.html