UK’s competition regulator asks for views on breaking up Google

The UK’s competition regulator has raised concerns about the market power of digital ad platform giants Google and Facebook in an interim report published today, opening up a consultation on a range of potential inventions — from breaking up platform giants, to limiting their ability to set self-serving defaults, and enforcing data sharing and/or feature interoperability to help rivals compete.

Breaking up Google by forcing it to separate its ad server arm from the rest of the business is one of a number of possible interventions it’s eyeing, along with enforcing choice screens for search engines and browsers that use non-monetary criteria to allocate slots — vs Google’s plan for a pay-to-play offering for EU Android users (which rivals argue does not offer relief for the antitrust abuse the European Commission sanctioned last year).

The UK regulator is also considering whether to require Facebook to interoperate specific features of its current network so they can be accessed by competitors — as a fix for what it describes as “strong network effects” which work against “new entrant and challenger social media platforms”.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched the market study in July — a couple of weeks after the UK’s data watchdog published its own damning report setting out major privacy and other concerns around programmatic advertising.

It is due to issue a final report next summer — which will set out conclusions and recommendations for interventions — and is now consulting on suggestions in its interim report, inviting contributions before February 12.

Since beginning the study the CMA says it has received several requests to open a full-blown market investigation, which means it has a statutory duty to consult on making such a reference.

Based on initial findings from the study it says there are “reasonable grounds” for suspecting serious impediments to competition in the online platforms and digital advertising market.

The report specifically flags three areas where it suspects harm — namely:

• the open display advertising market — with a focus on “the conflicts of interest Google faces at several parts of its vertically integrated chain of intermediaries”;
• general search and search advertising — with a focus on “Google’s market power and the barriers to expansion faced by rival search engines”;
• social media and display advertising — with a focus on “Facebook’s market power and the lack of interoperability between Facebook and rival services”;

Other concerns raised in the report include problems flowing from a lack of transparency in the digital advertising market; and the difficulty or lack of choice for consumers to opt out of behavioral advertising.

However the regulator is not making a market investigation reference at this stage — a step which would open access to the order making powers which could be used to enforce the sorts of interventions discussed in the report. Instead, the CMA says it is favors making recommendations to government to feed into a planned “comprehensive regulatory framework” to govern the behaviour of online platforms.

Earlier this year the UK government set out a wide-ranging proposal to regulate a range of online harms. Although it remains to be seen how much of that program prime minister Boris Johnson’s newly elected Conservative government will now push ahead with.

“Although it is a finely balanced judgement, we remain of the view that a comprehensive suite of recommendations to government is currently the best way forward and are therefore consulting on not making a market investigation reference at this stage,” the CMA writes, saying it feels it has further investigation work to do and also does not wish to “cut across” the government’s plans around regulating platforms.

“The concerns we have identified regarding online platforms such as Google and Facebook are a truly global antitrust challenge facing governments and regulators. Therefore, in relation to some of the potential interventions we may consider in a market investigation, and in particular any significant structural remedies such as those involving ownership separation, we need to be pragmatic about what changes could efficiently be pursued unilaterally by the UK,” it adds, saying it will “continue to work as closely as we can with our international counterparts to develop a coordinated position on these issues in the second half of the study”.

Antitrust regulators in a number of countries have been turning their attention on platform giants in recent years — including Australia and the US.

The new European Commission has also talked tough on platform power, suggesting it will further dial up scrutiny of tech giants and seek to accelerate its own interventions where it finds competitive harms.

Responding to the CMA report in a statement, Ronan Harris, VP, Google UK and Ireland, told us:

The digital advertising industry helps British businesses of all sizes find customers in the UK and across the world, and supports the websites that people know and love with revenue and reach. We’ve built easy-to-use controls that enable people to manage their data in Google’s services — such as the ability to turn off personalised advertising and to automatically delete their search history.  We’ll continue to work constructively with the CMA and the government on these important areas so that everyone can make the most of the web.

A Facebook spokesperson also sent us this statement:

We are fully committed to engaging in the consultation process around the CMA’s preliminary report, and continuing to deliver the benefits of technology and relevant advertising to the millions of people and small businesses in the UK who use our services.

We agree with the CMA that people should have control over their data and transparency around how it is used. In fact, for every ad we show, we give people the option to find out why they are seeing that ad and an option to turn off ads from that advertiser entirely.  We also provide industry-leading tools to help people control their data, like “Off Facebook Activity”, and to transfer it to other services through our Data Transfer tools.  We look forward to further engagement with the CMA on these topics.

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Amazon, Apple, Google and Zigbee join forces for an open smart home standard

The biggest names in the connected home category are reaching across the aisle to create an open source standard. Marquee names Amazon, Apple, Google and the Zigbee Alliance are leading the charge here.

There are a number of key partners on the board, as well, including IKEA, Legrand, NXP Semiconductors, Resideo, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Signify (nee Philips Lighting), Silicon Labs, Somfy and Wulian.

The goals certainly seem solid from the outset. The Connected Home over IP project seeks to create a connectivity standard designed the increase compatibility across companies and devices. The landscape is pretty scattered at the moment, with each player digging pretty heavily into their own standard and forcing many smaller third-party players to pick sides.

There will no doubt continue to be a degree of that, but more devices can speak to one another, that would certainly appear to be a net positive for the consumer. The aim is to make it easier for hardware makers to build devices that work with Alexa, Assistant, Siri and the like.

“The project is built around a shared belief that smart home devices should be secure, reliable, and seamless to use,” according to the joint release. “By building upon Internet Protocol (IP), the project aims to enable communication across smart home devices, mobile apps, and cloud services and to define a specific set of IP-based networking technologies for device certification.”

Security and privacy ought to be pretty high up on the list, as well. These topics are of utmost and increasing concern as we surrender more of our square footage to connected products.

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Blindlee is Chatroulette for dating with a safety screen

Make space for another dating app in your single life: Blindlee is Chatroulette for dating but with female-friendly guardrails in the form of a user-controlled video blur effect.

The idea is pretty simple: Singles are matched randomly with another user who meets some basic criteria (age, location) for a three minute ‘ice breaker’ video call. The app suggests chat topics — like ‘pineapple on pizza, yay or nay’ — to get the conversation flowing. After this, each caller chooses whether or not to match — and if both match they can continue to chat via text.

The twist is that the video call is the ‘first contact’ medium for determining whether it’s a match or not. The call also starts “100% blurred” — for obvious, ‘dick pic’ avoidance reasons.

Blindlee says female users have control of the level of blur during the call — meaning they can elect to reduce it to 75%, 50%, 25% or nothing if they like what they’re (partially) seeing and hearing. Though their interlocutor also has to agree to the reduction so neither side can unilaterally rip the screen away.

Dating apps continue to be a bright spot for experimental ideas, despite category giants like Tinder dominating with a much cloned swipe-to-match formula. Tech giant Facebook also now has its own designs on the space. But turns out there’s no fixed formula for finding love or chemistry.

All the data in the world can’t necessarily help with that problem. So a tiny, bootstrapping startup like Blindlee could absolutely hit on something inspired that Tinder or Facebook hasn’t thought of (or else feels it can’t implement across a larger user-base).

Co-founder Sacha Nasan also reckons there’s space for supplementary dating apps.

“We’re focusing on blind dating which is a subset of dating so you can say that indirectly rather than directly we are competing with the big dating apps (Tinder etc). This is more niche and is definitely a new, untried concept to the dating world,” he argues. “However the good thing about dating apps is that they are not substitutes but complements.

“Just like people may have installed Uber on their phone but also Hailo and Lyft, people have multiple datings app installed as well (to maximise their chances of finding a partner) and that is an advantage. Nonetheless we still think that we only indirectly compete with other dating apps.”

Using a blur effect to preserve privacy is not in itself entirely a new idea. For example Muzmatch, a YC-backed dating app focused on matchmaking Muslims, offers a blur feature to users not wanting to put their profile photos out there for any other user to see.

But Blindlee is targeting a more general dating demographic. Though Nasan says it does plan to expand matching filters, if/when it can grow its user-base, to include additional criteria such as religion.

“The target is anyone above 18 (for legal reasons) and from the data we see most users are under 30,” he says. “So this covers university students to young professionals. On the spectrum of dating apps where ‘left’ would be hookups apps (like Tinder used to be) and ‘right’ would be relationship app (like Hinge), we position ourself more on the right side (a relationship app).”

Blindlee is also using video as the chemistry-channeling medium to help users decide if they match or not.

This is clever because it’s still a major challenge to know if you’ll click with an Internet stranger in real life with only a digitally mediated version of the person to go on. At least live on camera there’s only so much faking that can be done — well, unless the person is a professional actor or scammer.

And while plunging into a full-bore videochat with a random might sound a bit much, a blurry teaser with conversation prompts looks fairly low risk.

The target user for Blindlee is also likely to have grown up online and with smartphones and Internet video culture. A videocall should therefore be a pretty comfortable medium of expression for these singles.

“The idea came from my experience in the app world (since the age of 14) combined with a situation where my cousin… went on a date from one of the dating apps where the man who showed up was about 15 years older. The man had used old pictures on his profile,” explains Nasan. “That’s just one story and there are plenty like these so I grew tired of the sometimes fake and superficial aspect of the online dating world. Together with my cousin’s brother [co-founder, Glenn Keller] we decided to develop Blindlee to make the process more transparent and safer but also fun.

“Blindee makes for a fun three-minute blurred video experience with a random person matching your criteria. It’s kind of like a short, pre-date ice-breaker before you potentially match and decide to meet in real life. And we put control of the blur filter in the woman’s hand to make it safer for women (but also because if the men would have control they would straight away ask to unblur it — and we have tested this!).”

The app is a free download for now but the plan is to move to a freemium model with a limit on the number of free video chats per day — charging a monthly subscription to unlock more than three daily calls.

“This will be priced cheap around £3-4/month compared to usual dating premium subscription which cost £10+ a month,” he says. “We basically look at this income as a way of paying the server bills (as every minute of video costs us).”

The London-based startup was founded in March and launched the app in October on iOS, adding an Android version earlier this month. Nasan says they’ve picked up around 5,000 registered users so far with only minimal marketing — such as dropping flyers on London university campuses.

While they’re bootstrapping the launch he says they may look to take in angel funding “as we see growth picking up”.

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2019: the year podcasting broke

Like any burgeoning art form, podcasts have a complicated relationship with corporate America.

The form’s appeal has long been its accessibility; for years, it’s been open to anyone with an idea, a little free time and a computer. The results haven’t always been stellar, but the medium’s potential is seemingly limitless.

The exact beginnings of podcasting are difficult to pinpoint — that, naturally, has been the nature of plenty of IP lawsuits, as those involved early on lay claim to the rapidly expanding industry. For the sake of brevity, let’s call 2004 the birth of podcasting, as that’s when the term was coined, at the pre-iPhone apex of iPod popularity. Conveniently, that arbitrarily chosen date puts pegs the medium at about 15 years old.

It also affords us the opportunity to borrow a tongue-in-cheek title from “1991: The Year Punk Broke,” a documentary that arrived roughly 15 years after the broadly acknowledged birth of a once-subversive music genre which found then-Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore sneering about “modern punk — as seen in Elle magazine.” While it’s true corporate America has long toyed with and circled podcasting, it seems likely that 2019 will be regarded as the year that podcasting had its “modern punk” moment, per Mr. Moore.

In other words, podcasting is an overnight success 15+ years in the making.

The numbers certainly bear it out. Spotify’s spending is probably the most commonly-cited flashpoint — and understandably so. While the music streaming service hasn’t given exact numbers, it announced plans to spend between $400 million and $500 million on the genre in hopes of catching up with Apple’s decade-and-a-half long head start.

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The Top Apps and Games of the 2010s

In addition to its new report on the top apps of 2019, app store intelligence firm App Annie also closed out the year with its Decade in Review analysis, which looks at the most popular apps over the past 10 years. Not surprisingly, Facebook dominated the charts, claiming four of the most-downloaded apps of the decade with Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Subway Surfers, meanwhile, became the most-downloaded game of the decade, thanks to strong adoption in India.

To be clear, the analysis excludes third-party app stores in China, instead relying on iOS and Google Play data to come up with the list of top apps. But this still provides a way of examining worldwide app trends, despite that exception.

Making a good case for its monopoly status, Facebook didn’t just operate four of the most-downloaded (non-game) apps of the past ten years — it runs the top four most-downloaded apps. In order, that’s Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

Right on Facebook’s heels is Snapchat as the No. 5 most-downloaded app of the 2010s — a big reason why Facebook was ready to spend billions earlier on in the decade to bring the app under its roof.

Communication and social media apps were also among the most popular over the past 10 years, claiming 7 out of the 10 top spots of the decade’s most-downloaded apps thanks to Skype at No. 6 and Twitter at No. 10.

In terms of consumer spending, video streaming and music apps ruled the charts (outside of games), with top apps including Netflix (No. 1), Pandora Music (No. 3), and Tencent Video (No. 4) also in the top 5.

And though dating app Tinder was the most profitable app this year, Netflix was the No. 1 app by all-time consumer spend over the past decade.

The rest of the list included No. 4 LINE, followed by iQIYI, Spotify, YouTube, HBO NOW, and Kwai.

On the gaming side, however, Subway Surfers by Kiloo was the somewhat surprising top game of the decade, in terms of downloads. It can attribute its No. 1 spot to the demand from Indian users, as the country accounted for over 15% of Subway Surfers’ all-time downloads across iOS and Google Play combined.

No one publisher dominated the charts, as a wide range of major gaming companies were represented.

Following Subway Surfers, the most-downloaded games of the decade included Candy Crush Saga from Activision Blizzard, Temple Run 2 from Imangi, My Talking Tom from Outfit7, Clash of Clans from Supercell, Pou from Zakeh, Hill Climb Racing from Fingersoft, Minion Rus from Vivendi, Fruit Ninja from Halfbrick, and 8 Ball Pool from Miniclip.

The top games by consumer spending were almost an entirely different list.

Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga were the only two games to appear on both the top games by downloads and consumer spend lists, App Annie found.

Instead, the top games by consumer spending were led Supercell’s Clash of Clans, followed by Monster Strike by mixi, then Candy Crush.

The rest of the list was rounded out by Puzzle & Dragons by GungHo Online Entertainment, Fate/Grand Order by Sony, Honour of Kings by Tencent, Fantasy Westward Journey by NetEase, Pokémon Go by Niantic, Game of War – Fire Age by MZ, and Clash Royale by Supercell.

Many of the decade’s most-downloaded and most profitable apps and games have also appeared on the top apps list at the end of every year, but some of the apps are growing in popularity while others are waning.

For example, the most profitable game of the decade, Clash of Clans, was ranked No. 8 as opposed No. 1 on 2019’s list of the most profitable games. HBO NOW had a big showing in the 2010s thanks to its hit series, “Game of Thrones,” but didn’t make this year’s list at all now that the show has wrapped. And though Facebook ruled the 2010s, there are now signs that consumers may be ready for something new as short-form video apps TikTok and Likee moved onto 2019’s most-downloaded app list, as No. 4 and No. 7, respectively.

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The Top Apps and Games of the 2010s

In addition to its new report on the top apps of 2019, app store intelligence firm App Annie also closed out the year with its Decade in Review analysis, which looks at the most popular apps over the past 10 years. Not surprisingly, Facebook dominated the charts, claiming four of the most-downloaded apps of the decade with Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Subway Surfers, meanwhile, became the most-downloaded game of the decade, thanks to strong adoption in India.

To be clear, the analysis excludes third-party app stores in China, instead relying on iOS and Google Play data to come up with the list of top apps. But this still provides a way of examining worldwide app trends, despite that exception.

Making a good case for its monopoly status, Facebook didn’t just operate four of the most-downloaded (non-game) apps of the past ten years — it runs the top four most-downloaded apps. In order, that’s Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

Right on Facebook’s heels is Snapchat as the No. 5 most-downloaded app of the 2010s — a big reason why Facebook was ready to spend billions earlier on in the decade to bring the app under its roof.

Communication and social media apps were also among the most popular over the past 10 years, claiming 7 out of the 10 top spots of the decade’s most-downloaded apps thanks to Skype at No. 6 and Twitter at No. 10.

In terms of consumer spending, video streaming and music apps ruled the charts (outside of games), with top apps including Netflix (No. 1), Pandora Music (No. 3), and Tencent Video (No. 4) also in the top 5.

And though dating app Tinder was the most profitable app this year, Netflix was the No. 1 app by all-time consumer spend over the past decade.

The rest of the list included No. 4 LINE, followed by iQIYI, Spotify, YouTube, HBO NOW, and Kwai.

On the gaming side, however, Subway Surfers by Kiloo was the somewhat surprising top game of the decade, in terms of downloads. It can attribute its No. 1 spot to the demand from Indian users, as the country accounted for over 15% of Subway Surfers’ all-time downloads across iOS and Google Play combined.

No one publisher dominated the charts, as a wide range of major gaming companies were represented.

Following Subway Surfers, the most-downloaded games of the decade included Candy Crush Saga from Activision Blizzard, Temple Run 2 from Imangi, My Talking Tom from Outfit7, Clash of Clans from Supercell, Pou from Zakeh, Hill Climb Racing from Fingersoft, Minion Rus from Vivendi, Fruit Ninja from Halfbrick, and 8 Ball Pool from Miniclip.

The top games by consumer spending were almost an entirely different list.

Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga were the only two games to appear on both the top games by downloads and consumer spend lists, App Annie found.

Instead, the top games by consumer spending were led Supercell’s Clash of Clans, followed by Monster Strike by mixi, then Candy Crush.

The rest of the list was rounded out by Puzzle & Dragons by GungHo Online Entertainment, Fate/Grand Order by Sony, Honour of Kings by Tencent, Fantasy Westward Journey by NetEase, Pokémon Go by Niantic, Game of War – Fire Age by MZ, and Clash Royale by Supercell.

Many of the decade’s most-downloaded and most profitable apps and games have also appeared on the top apps list at the end of every year, but some of the apps are growing in popularity while others are waning.

For example, the most profitable game of the decade, Clash of Clans, was ranked No. 8 as opposed No. 1 on 2019’s list of the most profitable games. HBO NOW had a big showing in the 2010s thanks to its hit series, “Game of Thrones,” but didn’t make this year’s list at all now that the show has wrapped. And though Facebook ruled the 2010s, there are now signs that consumers may be ready for something new as short-form video apps TikTok and Likee moved onto 2019’s most-downloaded app list, as No. 4 and No. 7, respectively.

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The top mobile apps and games of 2019

Mobile consumers worldwide will have downloaded a record 120 billion apps from Apple’s App Store and Google Play by the end of 2019, according to App Annie’s year-end report on app trends. This represents a 5% increase from 2018 — a notable achievement given that the number doesn’t include re-installations or app updates. Consumer spending on apps, meanwhile, approached $90 billion in 2019 across both apps stores, up 15% from last year. The new report also examined the year’s biggest apps, including the most downloaded apps and games as well as the most profitable.

Worldwide, the most downloaded non-game apps remained relatively consistent in 2019, with only one new entry on the list of the most downloaded apps — a short-form video creation and sharing app called Likee, which is benefitting from the overall popularity of short-form video. Elsewhere on the chart, TikTok came in at No. 4, beating out Facebook-owned Instagram, plus Snapchat, Netflix and Spotify.

However, Facebook still owned the top of the charts. Its Messenger app was the most downloaded non-game app of 2019, followed by Facebook’s main app, then WhatsApp.

The top 10 games chart showed more volatility in 2019, as 7 out of the top 10 games were new to the chart this year. This included the hyper-casual title Fun Race 3D as well as the anticipated Call of Duty: Mobile, representing the battle royale genre.

While mobile gaming drives the majority of consumer spending on apps, the subscription economy in 2019 played a big role in increasing app revenues, as well.

Specifically, the non-game apps driving revenue growth this year included those in the Photo & Video and Entertainment categories — a trend App Annie predicts will continue in 2020, as new video services, like Disney+, continue to rise. 2020 will additionally see the launch of several other video services, including HBO Max, NBCU’s Peacock, and Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Quibi, which could aid in those increases.

Already, many of the top apps are subscription-based, App Annie had previously noted. During the 12 months ending in September 2019, over 95% of the top 100 non-gaming apps by consumer spend were offering subscriptions through in-app purchases. Publishers’ growing use of subscription services will continue in 2020 to drive consumer spending even higher, the firm says.

 

This year, Tinder switched places with Netflix for the No. 1 spot on this chart — last year, it was the other way around. HBO NOW, which saw a surge in spending thanks to “Game of Thrones” also fell out of the top chart this year, allowing LINE Manga to take its spot. Tencent Video and iQIYI have the same positions as 2018, while YouTube grew from No. 7 to No. 5, and Pandora slipped from No. 5 to No. 6, compared with last year.

App Annie also took a look at a new category of apps which it’s calling the “breakout” apps of the year. These are those that saw the largest absolute growth in downloads or consumer spending between 2018 and 2019. On this list, the No. 7 most-downloaded app of the year, Likee, from YY Inc., becomes the No. 1 “breakout” app of the year, followed by YY Inc.’s Noizz and Helo. Meanwhile, Indian users drove the adoption of social gaming app Hago at No. 4, which is also popular with Gen Z users in Indonesia.

Breakout apps by consumer spending included YouTube, iQIYI, DAZN, and Tencent Video — similar to the top 10 list.

On the gaming side, hyper-casual titles were successful, claiming 7 out of 10 slots on the breakout games of the year chart. Hot releases like Mario Kart Tour and Call of Duty: Mobile also appeared. But by consumer spending, core games like No. 1 Game of Peace and No. 2 PUBG Mobile, both published by Tencent, made up the top spots.

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