Tag Archive for: Google’s

Google’s alternative billing, Instagram’s chronological feeds, digital driver’s licenses – TechCrunch

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Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

The app industry continues to grow, with a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS, Google Play and third-party Android app stores in China grew 19% in 2021 to reach $170 billion. Downloads of apps also grew by 5%, reaching 230 billion in 2021, and mobile ad spend grew 23% year over year to reach $295 billion.

Today’s consumers now spend more time in apps than ever before — even topping the time they spend watching TV, in some cases. The average American watches 3.1 hours of TV per day, for example, but in 2021, they spent 4.1 hours on their mobile device. And they’re not even the world’s heaviest mobile users. In markets like Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea, users surpassed five hours per day in mobile apps in 2021.

Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours, either. They can grow to become huge businesses. In 2021, 233 apps and games generated over $100 million in consumer spend, and 13 topped $1 billion in revenue. This was up 20% from 2020, when 193 apps and games topped $100 million in annual consumer spend, and just eight apps topped $1 billion.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place, with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and suggestions about new apps to try, too.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

There is no bigger news in the world of apps this week than that of Google’s announcement that it would begin to pilot a third-party billing system in various markets. To be clear, this is only a pilot program for the time being. And Google so far has only announced one partner: app store agitator and noted critic, Spotify. But ultimately, Spotify says it aims to roll out this third-party billing option in all markets where it sells Spotify Premium, which is 184 worldwide markets.

There are…

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War and the app economy, Google’s Messages update, Telegram ‘TV’ – TechCrunch

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Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

The app industry continues to grow, with a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS, Google Play and third-party Android app stores in China grew 19% in 2021 to reach $170 billion. Downloads of apps also grew by 5%, reaching 230 billion in 2021, and mobile ad spend grew 23% year over year to reach $295 billion.

Today’s consumers now spend more time in apps than ever before — even topping the time they spend watching TV, in some cases. The average American watches 3.1 hours of TV per day, for example, but in 2021, they spent 4.1 hours on their mobile device. And they’re not even the world’s heaviest mobile users. In markets like Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea, users surpassed five hours per day in mobile apps in 2021.

Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours, either. They can grow to become huge businesses. In 2021, 233 apps and games generated over $100 million in consumer spend, and 13 topped $1 billion in revenue. This was up 20% from 2020, when 193 apps and games topped $100 million in annual consumer spend, and just eight apps topped $1 billion.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place, with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and suggestions about new apps to try, too.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

Russia’s app economy shuts down

Image Credits: Mika Baumeister / Unsplash

As the Russia-Ukraine war continued this week, the app ecosystem also saw further impacts. As businesses pulled out of Russia, the ability for Russian consumers to transact on the app stores and in apps is similarly being impacted. This week, Google announced it was suspending Google Play’s billing system for users in Russia in the “coming days,” which means Russian users won’t be able to purchase apps…

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Google’s Chrome Is Under Heavy Attack—This Startup Thinks It Has A Rival To Save Businesses From Disaster

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Browsers are proving to be a potential Achilles’ heel in computer and smartphone security. This year has seen a record number of so called zero-day attacks in the wild, where unpatched weaknesses in software are exploited by hackers, and Google Chrome has seen at least 12 so far this year.

In Covid and post-pandemic times, as workers use their personal devices for work, or their work ones for personal use, the danger of being hacked via Chrome or whatever browser they use has become considerably more real. Enter Talon Cyber Security, an Israeli startup that’s already claimed the largest seed round in its country’s history with $26 million in April this year. Coming out of stealth with its first product on Wednesday, it has created a browser, TalonWork, based on the same Chromium base code that Chrome uses, but with a promise to do a better job than rivals at protecting the more distributed, often home-based workforce of the post-Covid era.

The company claims its browser, which can be deployed across a customer’s organization in less than an hour, is “hardened” from zero-day attacks as Talon’s servers detect attempted attacks. It also isolates work-related browsing activity from any malware on the device. And, via a management console, businesses can apply their own policies across their employees’ browsers and get data on what workers are doing on the web, though only when it’s linked to work, Talon cofounder and CEO Ofer Ben-Noon tells Forbes. “IT can see, monitor and control everything work related.” Companies can choose how they want to split personal and work use.

Talon claims ten customers and design partners are already using the browser, though it isn’t revealing any names.

The company claims its product is a first of its kind, though others have sold secure browsers into the enterprise market before. Google, for instance, has its own enterprise-focused version of Chrome that offers many of the same support and control features Talon is…

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Google’s built-in security for Android detects only 31% of malicious spyware

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Cybersecurity researchers discovered that Google’s security software detected only 31% of spyware threats on Android devices, failing to recognize 20 out of 29 malicious apps in a recent security application test.

Antivirus software organization AV-Test (via Atlas VPN) tested a number of popular security software applications to see their overall spyware (also known as stalkerware) detection performance on Android. The results revealed Google Play Protect, the built-in security software on Android devices, had the lowest success rate. 

According to the results, Google’s security feature detected only nine out of 29 spyware threats in the test. This means potential hackers have a better chance to slip spyware in Android apps on the Google Play Store without any flags being raised.

Spyware can be used to monitor and record private information on a user’s smartphone, giving them full access to login credentials, bank account details, sensitive cryptocurrency information, and more. With Google Play Protect failing to catch nearly 70% of threats, the tech giant may need to address the security software’s effectiveness.

Google Play Protect is used to automatically run safety checks on apps from the Google Play Store before users download them. It’s free to use and is native to all Android devices, warning users of potentially harmful apps and removing them.

While Google’s security feature is free, so are a number of antivirus applications that scored highly in the spyware test. Antiy AVL, Bitdefender Mobile Security, and Trend Micro Mobile Security detected all 29 spyware threats, while ESET Mobile Security and Kaspersky Internet Security detected all but one.

The test also showed NortonLifeLock Norton 360, the second-lowest scoring security application, detected 17 out of 29 spyware apps — nearly double what Google Play Protect could recognize as a threat. 

How to switch on Google Play Protect 

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