Amazon rolls out Alexa-powered voice shopping experience in India

Amazon today rolled out Alexa-enabled voice-powered shopping feature in India as the e-commerce giant looks for new ways to engage with customers in one of its key overseas markets.

The American giant said the feature, currently rolling out to Android users, is available “primarily in English” though it understands proper nouns and regional words across various languages.

“As we brought this functionality to Indian customers, we built custom functionality to cater to India’s unique requirements. We built this keeping the Indian customer at the center, optimizing for myriad accents and products relevant to the Indian customer,” an Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch.

This is the first time Amazon is bringing this feature outside of the U.S., the spokesperson said.

Customers will be able to use Alexa to search for items on the e-commerce platform, add them to the cart, and proceed to checkout — by saying commands such as “Alexa, show me sarees,” “Alexa, add saree to my cart,” and “Alexa, go to checkout.”

Once the order has been placed, users can check the whereabouts of the order through voice as well, by asking “Alexa, where is my delivery?”

Amazon has claimed in the past that its voice-enabled shopping feature is gaining traction, but according to one 2018 report, most users were not showing great appetite for this experience.

But India, where the company has vast presence and has invested over $5.5 billion in the local business, may provide the company with some breakthrough.

As hundreds of Indians came online in the last decade, many have gravitated toward voice to engage with apps and internet services and make searches as they are not comfortable with typing in English. Last year, Google reported that voice queries had grown by 270% over a year in India.

“Recognizing the opportunities, several well-known brands have enabled voice-activated search, including ride sharing apps, e-commerce sites, telcos, and car brands, to name a few,” it wrote in a blog post.

Amazon’s Alexa now speaks Hindi

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Tree planting search engine Ecosia is getting a visibility boost in Chrome

Ecosia, a not-for-profit search engine which uses ad generated revenue to fund planting trees, is set to get a visibility boost in Chrome. A change Google is making to its chromium engine will see it added as a default search engine choice in up to 47 markets for the version 81 release of Google’s web browser.

Ecosia will soon be included on Chrome’s default search engine list in several major markets, including the UK, US, France and Germany — alongside the likes of Google Search, Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yahoo!

It’s the first time the not-for-profit search engine will have appeared in Chrome’s default search engine choice list. And while users of Chrome can always navigate directly to Ecosia to search, or download an extension to search via it directly in the browser’s URL bar, those active steps require prior knowledge of the product. Whereas being listed as a default option in Chrome means Ecosia will be put in front of people who aren’t yet familiar with it.

The Berlin-based search engine said Google Chrome’s selection of default search engines is based on search engine popularity rankings in different markets.

The full list of markets where it will be offered as a choice in the v81 release is: Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Bahrain, Brunei, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Switzerland, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Germany, Denmark, Ecuador, Spain, Faroe Islands, France, Guatemala, Croatia, Hungary, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mexico, Nicaragua, New Zealand, Oman, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Paraguay, Sweden, El Salvador, Taiwan, United States, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Venezuela and Vietnam.

The shift comes after what Ecosia said was a record year of usage growth for its search engine — with monthly active users rising from 8 million to 15 million during 2019.

The company dedicates 80% of advertising profits to funding reforestation projects in biodiversity hotspots around the world, and says it has planted 86 million+ trees since it was founded back in 2009 — a total it’s expecting will grow as a result of Google’s decision to include Ecosia as a default choice.

Commenting in a statement Ecosia CEO Christian Kroll said: “Ecosia’s growth over the last year shows just how invested users are in the fight against the climate crisis. Everywhere, people are weighing up the changes they can make to reduce their carbon footprint, including adopting technologies such as Ecosia. Our addition to Chrome will now make it even easier for users to help reforest delicate, at-risk and often devastated ecosystems, and to fight climate change, just by using the internet.”

“It’s also good news for user choice and fairness,” he added, pointing to recent research which he said indicates that providing a choice of search engines has the potential to increase the collective mobile market share of Google alternatives by 300-800%.

“It’s important that there are independent players in the market that don’t just exist for profit. We put our profits into tree planting and we are also focused on privacy, so users can have a positive impact on the environment while having greater control over their personal information.”

The chromium update will also see rival search engines DuckDuckGo and Yahoo added as a default in more markets when the v81 release of Chrome is pushed out.

These are the latest revisions to Chrome’s search engine defaults. But in a major shift this time last year Google quietly expanded the choice of search product in a way that gave the biggest single boost to the visibility of pro-privacy search engine rival DuckDuckGo.

It said then that the changes derived from “new usage statistics” from “recently collected data.”

But the company’s business had been facing rising attention over privacy and competition concerns.

As, indeed, Google still is…

Forty-nine states and the District of Columbia are pushing an antitrust investigation against Google

In Europe, meanwhile, antitrust enforcement around how Google operates its Android smartphone platform has already forced the tech giant to offer a choice screen that surfaces alternative search engines and web browsers alongside its own products.

In 2018 the EU’s competition competition concluded Google had violated antitrust rules by requiring Android device makers pre-install its own search and browser apps. It was fined $5BN and ordered to cease the infringement — initially responding with a choice screen prompt that appeared to select products based on marketshare. Before announcing it would move to a ‘pay-to-play’ auction model to assign the non-Google slots on the screen starting early this year.

Rival search engines including Ecosia, DuckDuckGo and French pro-privacy search engine Qwant have been highly critical of this pay-to-play switch — hitting out at the limited slots and sealed bid auction structure Google devised. And DuckDuckGo has remained critical despite winning a universal slot on the screen early this year.

Ecosia chose to boycott the auction entirely — telling the BBC in January it’s at odds with the spirit of the Commission ruling.

“Internet users deserve a free choice over which search engine they use and the response of Google with this auction is an affront to our right to a free, open and federated internet. Why is Google able to pick and choose who gets default status on Android?” Kroll said then.

Asked for current Android usage metrics the company told us Ecosia’s total daily active users on Google’s platform have grown from 489,422 this time last year to 1,245,777 now — a 155% year over year rise in DAUs.

Though it remains to be seen whether Google’s shift to a paid auction model which Ecosia is not participating in — given doing so would require the not-for-profit to spend money paying Google to appear as a choice rather than ploughing those revenues into planting more trees — will put a dampener on Ecosia’s Android growth this year.

A spokesman for Ecosia pointed us to statcounter figures that estimate it took a 0.22%market share of mobile search in Europe between February 2019 and February 2020.

On desktop the search engine takes a higher regional share, per statcounter, account for 0.5% of desktop searches.

Overall, across mobile and desktop, Google’s share of the European search market over the same period is 93.83% vs 0.33% for Ecosia.

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Desperate to exit, a $10B price tag for Magic Leap is crazy

Augmented reality headset maker Magic Leap has struggled with the laws of physics and failed to get to market. Now it’s seeking an acquirer, but talks with Facebook and medical goods giant Johnson & Johnson led nowhere according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Ed Hammond.

After raising over $2 billion and being valued between $6 billion and $8 billion back when it still had momentum, Hammond writes that “Magic Leap could fetch more than $10 billion if it pursues a sale” according to his sources. That price seems ridiculous. It’s the kind of number a prideful company might strategically leak in hopes of drumming up acquisition interest, even at a lower price.

Startups have been getting their valuations chopped when they go public. The whole economy is hurting due to coronavirus. Augmented Reality seems less interesting than virtual reality with people avoiding public places. Getting people to strap used AR hardware to their face for demos seems like a tough sell for the forseeable future.

No one has proven a killer consumer use case for augmented reality eyewear that warrants an expensive and awkward-to-wear gadget. Our phones can already deliver plenty of AR’s value while letting you take selfies and do video chat that headsets can’t. My experiences with Magic Leap at Sundance Film Festival last year were laughably disappointing, with its clunky hardware, ghostly projections, and narrow field of view.

Apple and Facebook are throwing the enduring profits of iPhones and the News Feed into building a better consumer headset. Snapchat has built intermediary glasses since CEO Evan Spiegel thinks it will be a decade before AR headsets see mainstream adoption. AR rivals like Microsoft have better enterprise experience, connections, and distribution. Enterprise AR startup Daqri crashed and burned.

Magic Leap’s CEO said he wanted to sell 1 million of its $2300 headset in its first year, then projected it would sell 100,000 headsets, but only moved 6,000 in the first six months, according to a daming report from The Information’s Alex Heath. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai left Magic Leap’s board despite Google leading a $514 million funding round for the startup in 2014. Business Insider’s Steven Tweedie and Kevin Webb revealed CFO Scott Henry and SVP of creative strategy John Gaeta bailed in November. The company suffered dozens of layoffs. It lost a $500 million contract to Microsoft last year. The CEOs of Apple, Google, and Facebook visited Magic Leap headquarters in 2016 to explore an acquisition deal, but no offers emerged.

Is AR eyewear part of the future? Almost surely. And is this startup valuable? Certainly somewhat. But Magic Leap may prove to be too little too early for a company burning cash by the hundreds of millions in a market newly fixated on efficiency. A $10 billion price tag would require one of the world’s biggest corporations to believe Magic Leap has irreplicable talent and technology that will earn them a fortune in the somewhat distant future.

The fact that Facebook, which does not shy from tall acquisition prices, didn’t want to buy Magic Leap is telling. This isn’t a product with hundreds of millions of users or fast-ramping revenue. It’s a gamble on vision and timing that looks to be coming up snake eyes. It’s unclear when the startup would ever be able to deliver on its renderings of flying whales and living room dinosaurs in a form factor people actually want to wear.

 

One of Magic Leap’s early renderings of what it could supposedly do

With all their money and plenty of time before widespread demand for AR headsets materializes, potential acquirers could likely hire away the talent and make up the development time in cheaper ways than buying Magic Leap. If someone acquires them for too much, it feels like a write-off waiting to happen.

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How the coronavirus outbreak will stress-test startups

Eli Cahan Contributor

Eli Cahan is a medical student at NYU on leave to complete a master’s in health policy at Stanford as a Knight-Hennessey Scholar. His research addresses the effectiveness, economics, and ethics of (digital) health innovation.

More posts by this contributor

• How the coronavirus outbreak will stress-test startups
• Will unreliable research bury your healthcare startup?

The coronavirus pandemic continues to spread with no signs of abating. Over 100,000 cases have been confirmed in almost 100 countries across the globe as of this writing. Some 4,000 deaths have been reported, 80% of which occurred in mainland China. 

Preventive measures taken by the public sector and by global industry are already having widespread effects. In the past several days, Italy has officially imposed a whole-country lockdown, and in the U.S., epicenter states such as California and New York have declared emergency status while instituting lockdowns on high-risk districts such as New Rochelle. Last week, the OECD cut global economic growth projections by half, and the JPMorgan Global Manufacturing Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) fell to its lowest level since 2009. Numerous companies including Apple and Nvidia have reported underwhelming earnings in recent quarters and have proceeded to cut their earnings guidance for the foreseeable future.

These economic impacts are in part related to disruption in demand for goods due to quarantines and travel restrictions. However, more nefariously, economic pundits have expressed concern for supply-side disruptions: including staff productivity losses, supply-chain dysfunction, and facility closures.

According to a Dun & Bradstreet whitepaper released this week, 94% of Fortune 1000 companies have key elements of their supply chain housed directly within the epicenter of the outbreak in China. Supply-side shocks are much more difficult for central banks to contain by moves such as interest-rate cuts or financial stimulus. These typically serve to catalyze demand (through increased cash or borrowing power), but do not directly alleviate the kind of production paralysis capable of hamstringing global commerce. 

How these preventive measures implicate startups

Startups are especially vulnerable to such supply-side disruptions, each of which is worth considering independently.

Decreases in staff productivity

Operating through lean organizational structures in which personnel often occupy cross-functional roles, decreases in staff productivity can create significant issues for interdependent activities at startups. The diversion of attention — due alternatively to the need to attend to personal needs (such as family caregiving, healthcare issues, or household concerns) or societal requirements (such as monitoring the development of the virus and state or federal reactions to it) — can make a cumulative impact over the days, weeks, and months of the outbreak.

The increased frequency of absences to attend to personal issues (such as individual healthcare or childcare amidst school closings) likewise presents a major challenge to fulfillment of contracts and other business obligations for startups. A CNBC survey conducted two weeks ago found that some 40% of companies had “stranded employees” facing some form of hurdle to commuting to the workplace. These figures are likely higher today.

Moreover, increased frequency of absences can be accompanied by heightened utilization of benefits (such as healthcare, sick leave, or family leave) in a short period, which startups may or may not have sufficient liquidity to support. These considerations around benefits are especially tenuous for startups in the gig economy, who may need to compensate affected employees regardless of their ability to perform tasks.

Supply-chain dysfunction

Turmoil in supply chains can bear significant consequences for startups across a diverse range of sectors, including technology and healthcare. This is especially the case given that these supply chains tend to be concentrated through only a selected group of vendors.

Since China is the world’s largest producer of industrial goods (in particular, basic parts), often at the world’s lowest prices, the widespread quarantines in the region are already proving debilitating: the number of bulk freight shipments has fallen over 70% since January and some 40% of China’s trucking capacity remains offline. And while American companies have sought to diversify away from China in recent years (partially due to political rhetoric), as the viral outbreaks spread to other major manufacturing countries (such as Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Mexico), supply chains for instrumental parts will likely face shortages, delays, and quality compromises.

In terms of services, startups often depend on regulatory, legal, and industrial collaborators for deliverables that are a prerequisite to their doing business. Disruptions in this “soft” supply chain capable of delaying essential credentialing, contracting, or data acquisition can prove incapacitating for startups. Furthermore, the proliferation of outsourcing (on the order of 14 million jobs in 2015) in service supply chains for critical tasks, such as customer service and administrative workflows, implies another dimension of vulnerability for service provision.

For either goods or services supply chains, to the extent that startups have relatively undiversified revenue streams — from a single or small group of contracts — these various forms of supply chain bottlenecks can be crippling (of basic fulfillment) in the short-run and compromising (of scaling and reputation) in the long-run.

Facility closures

Lastly, startups ought to consider the impact that closing and/or restricting their facilities can have on their performance.

Recent guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) include recommendations for employers to develop “infectious disease outbreak response plans” that may require office/factory closures. Already, employers across the U.S. are preparing for “social distancing measures” that are, overnight, converting physical workforces into virtual ones.

With the acceleration of community spread leading to diffusion of the virus out beyond U.S. urban centers effected thus far (namely, New York City and San Francisco), more and more startups residing in neighboring suburbs may face closing their workplace.

Steps stakeholders in startups can take to provide stability 

Taken together at face value, these supply-side considerations can seem overwhelming for startups already facing innumerable daily “fires” that need extinguishing. However, there are a variety of steps that CEOs, funders, and partners/clients of startups can take to inoculate themselves against the exogenous threat posed by the coronavirus.

Startup CEOs ought to consider operational, organizational, and financial workarounds.

Operationally, they can take steps to prepare for a virtual workplace by establishing clear methods of digital communication and metrics to ensure productivity. They can also prepare for an “interrupted” workplace (in which employees require more time than usual for personal affairs and may be otherwise preoccupied) by embracing asynchronous workflows, laying out clear priorities for deliverables, and providing flexibility beyond standard office hours.

Organizationally, CEOs can cross-train employees and develop clear workflow protocols to insulate against staffing deficits that may arise. To fortify their organizational strategies, CEOs can identify weak points and/or major dependencies in their supply chains. In turn, they can seek to hedge against these where possible: either through delegation to additional firms or through integration internally.

Financially, to the extent possible, CEOs can shift their business models to prioritize revenue over growth in the short-run, ensuring liquidity against unexpected supply or demand shocks. This can be achieved through cost reduction or signing small-scale contracts (rather than “pursuing Moby Dick”). Alternatively, CEOs can consider raising anticipatory funding, even if in the ideal world they might defer a raise in pursuit of higher valuations.

Funders of startups are likewise well-positioned to buffer against the fever state of startups. Providing leadership for early, anticipatory fundraising can support the stockpiling of dry powder to survive a prolonged siege by coronavirus (due, for example, to structural changes to the supply chain in the wake of the pandemic). It can also promote the creation of a war chest to allow startups to adapt under these abnormal circumstances.

Additionally, funders can leverage their expertise and networks to share learnings on dealing with similar challenges — therefore cultivating an ecosystem of resilience for potentially inexperienced leaders during the tumult associated with the COVID-19 virus.

Finally, partners and clients of startups have an important supporting role to play. It is very much in their own interest to ensure the vitality of startups upon which they depend: to avoid the costs of restructuring their own business models should a startup partner/vendor go defunct and to empower their own innovation pipelines. As such, partner and client companies are well positioned to renegotiate contractual terms to facilitate short-term flexibility while also ensuring long-term performance. Alternatively, they can redesign incentives and milestones in a way that can provide operational and financial security to startups for the time being without sacrificing the overall value expected in the more distant horizon.

Surviving coronavirus can bolster the immune systems of startups in the future

The coronavirus pandemic is likely to strain the capabilities of startups for the foreseeable future. Supply-side disruptions will present distinctive challenges to startups unlike those that typically crop up in a globalized economy. 

Nonetheless, through keen vigilance, rapid adaptation, and comprehensive contingency planning, startups can survive the impending stress test. And in so doing, like white blood cells after a severe infection, surviving startups can develop resistance against the subsequent challenges they will inevitably face in their lifetimes.

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Apple News adds a special coverage section for tracking the coronavirus outbreak

Apple today is rolling out a dedicated section within its Apple News app that will help readers stay updated on the coronavirus outbreak. The special coverage will include informative, fact-based stories from reputable publishers, says Apple, which are curated by Apple News’ team of editors.

The launch of the section comes at a time when social media platforms are struggling to reign in misinformation around the coronavirus outbreak, ranging from conspiracy theories about the virus’s origins to bogus medicines, preventatives and treatments — including those are bizarre as drinking bleach, and more. Facebook, Twitter, and Google have been working with the World Health Organization to remove misinformation and to direct users to trusted resources, but the inaccurate and often dangerous information continues to spread.

With Apple News, Apple has the ability to reach millions of people through the built-in app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices. On desktop and on mobile, users will now see a banner at the top of the Apple News homepage (the “Today” section) directing them to the special coverage on COVID-19.

When clicked, users are taken to an organized roundup of recent news stories and other information, starting with a list of the latest headlines.

Currently, stories from The New York Times, NBC News, and CNN are featured here, but other sources are also utilized, as they are elsewhere in Apple News. There’s also a map showing the spread of the coronavirus, a guide to understanding the epidemic (via Ars Technica), and a section on “Your Health,” with information about washing hands, which disinfectants to use, how self-quarantine works, and more.

Further down the page are other featured articles offering various perspectives, those that track the numbers of cases, and a guide planning ahead. A list of resources, including links to the CDC and State.gov, are at the bottom of the section.

In addition, users can follow the “coronavirus” topic on Apple News to be alerted to the latest news at any time, the app reminds users.

This is not the first time Apple has launched a dedicated special coverage section in its Apple News app. It regularly does this for tracking election coverage in the U.S., for example. It is, however, a little late to introduce such a feature, given that all other major tech platforms had already launched their own initiatives focused on guiding users to factual, trusted resources within their own apps.

That said, Apple News is doing more than just pointing users to sites like CDC.gov or WHO.int when they perform a search for coronavirus information. It’s curating content from across a variety of news publications to find the most important stories.

The special section is available today to Apple News readers on desktop and mobile.

 

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All the startups threatened by iOS 14’s new features

Fitness, wallpaper, and lost item-finding startups could have a big new competitor baked into everyone’s iPhones. Leaks of the code from iOS 14 that Apple is expected to reveal in June signal several new features and devices are on the way. Startups could be at risk due to Apple’s ability to integrate these additions at the iOS level, instantly gain an enormous install base, and offer them for free or cheap as long as they boost sales of its main money maker, the iPhone.

It’s unclear if all of these fresh finds which actually get official unveiling in June versus further down the line. But here’s a break down of what the iOS 14 code obtained by 9To5Mac’s Chance Miller shows and what startups could be impacted by Apple barging into their businesses:

Fitness – Codename: Seymour

Apple appears to be preparing a workout guide app for iOS, WatchOS, and Apple TV that would let users download instructional video clips for doing different exercises. The app could potentially be called Fit or Fitness, according to MacRumors‘ Juli Clover, and offer help with stretching, core training, strength training, running, cycling, rowing, outdoor walking, dance, and yoga. The Apple Watch appears to help track your progress through the workout routines.

Icons for Apple’s fitness feature from the iOS 14 code

The iOS Health app is already a popular way to track steps and other fitness goals. By using Health to personalize or promote a new Fitness feature, Apple has an easy path to a huge user base. Many people are afraid of weight and strength training because there’s a lot to learn about having proper form to avoid injury or embarassment. Visual guides with videos shot from multiple angles could make sure you’re doing those pushups or bicep curls correctly.

Apple’s entrance into fitness could endanger startups like Future, which offer customized work out routines with video clips demonstrating how to do each exercise. $11.5 million-funded Future actually sends you an Apple Watch with its $150 per month service to track your progress while using visuals, sounds, and vibrations to tell you when to switch exercises without having to look at your phone. By removing Future’s human personal trainers that text to nag you if you don’t work out, Apple could offer a simplified version of this startup’s app for free.

Apple Fitness could be even more trouble for less premium apps like Sweat and Sworkit that provide basic visual guidance for workouts, or Aaptiv that’s restricted to just audio cues. Hardware startups like Peloton, which offers off-bike Beyond The Ride workouts with live or on-demand class, and Tempo’s giant 3D-sensing in-home screen for weight lifting could also find casual customers picked off by a free or cheap alternative from Apple.

There’s no code indicating a payment mechanism so Apple Fitness could be free. But it’s also easy to imagine Apple layering on premium feature like remote personal training assistance from human experts or a wider array of exercises for a fee, tying into its increasing focus on services revenue.

Wallpapers – Access For Third-Parties

The iPhone’s current wallpaper selector

In iOS 14, it appears that Apple will offer new categorizations for wallpapers beyond the existing Dynamic (slowly shifting), Still, and Live (move when touched) options. Apple’s always only offered a few native wallpapers plus the option to pull one from your camera roll. But the iOS 14 code suggests Apple may open this up to third-party providers.

A wallpaper ‘store’ could be a both a blessing and a curse for entrepreneurs in the space. It could endanger sites and apps like Vellum, Unsplash, Clarity, WLPPR, and Walli that aggregate wallpapers for browsing, purchase, or download. Instead, Apple could make itself the ultimate aggregator by being built directly into the wallpaper settings. But for creators of beautiful wallpaper images, iOS 14 could potentially offer a new distribution method where their collections could be available straight from where users install their phone backgrounds.

The big question will be whether Apple merely works with a few providers to add in wallpaper packs for free, does financially-backed deals to bring in providers, or creates a full-blown marketplace for wallpapers where creators can sell their imagery like developers do apps. By turning this formerly free feature into a marketplace, Apple could also start earning a cut of sales to add to its services revenue.

AirTags – Find Your Stuff

Apple appears to be getting closer to launching its long-awaited AirTags, based on iOS 14 code snippets. These small tracking tags could be attached to your wallet, keys, gadgets, or other important or easily lost items, and then located using the iOS Find My app. AirTags may be powered by removable coin-shaped batteries, according to MacRumors.

Native integration with iOS could make AirTags super easy to set up. They could also benefit from the ubiquity of Apple devices, as the company could let the crowd help find your stuff by allowing AirTags to piggyback on the connectivity of any of its phones, tablets, or laptops to send you the missing item’s coordinates.

Most obviously, AirTags could become a powerful competitor to the vertical’s long-standing frontrunner Tile. The $104 million-funded startup sells $20 to $35 tracking tags that locate devices from 150 to 400 feet away. It also sells a $30 per year subscription for free battery replacements and 30 day location history. Other players in the space include Chipolo, Orbit, and MYNT.

But as we saw with the launch of AirPods, Apple’s design expertise and native iOS integrations can allow its products to leapfrog what’s in the market. If AirTags get proprietary access to the iPhone’s Bluetooth and other connectivity hardware, and if they’re quicker to set up, Apple fans might jump from startups to these new devices. Apple could also develop a similar premium subscription for battery or full AirTag replacements, as well as bonus tracking features.

Augmented Reality Scanning – Codename: Gobi

iOS 14 includes code for a new augmented reality feature that lets users scan places or potentially items in the real world to pull up helpful information. The code indicates Apple is testing the feature, codenamed Gobi, at Apple Stores and Starbucks to let users see product, pricing, and comparison info, according to 9To5Mac’s Benjamin Mayo. Gobi can recognize QR-style codes for specific locations like a certain shop, triggering a companion augmented reality experience.

It appears that an SDK would allow partners to build their own AR offerings and generate the QR codes that initiate them. Eventually, these capabilities could be extended from Apple’s mobile devices to the AR headset it’s working on so you’d instantly get a heads-up display of information when you entered the right place.

Apple moving to power lighter-weight AR experiences rather than just offering the AR Kit infrastructure for developers to build full-fledged apps could create competition for a range of startups and other tech giants. The whole point of augmented reality is that it’s convenient to explore hidden experiences in the real world, which is defeated if users have to know to download and then wait to install a different app for every place or product. Creating a central AR app for simpler experiences that load instantly could speed up adoption.

Snapchat’s Scan AR platform

Startups like Blippar have been working on AR scanning for years in hopes of making consumer packaged goods or retail locations come alive. But again, the need to download a separate app and remember to use it has kept these experiences out of the mainstream. Snapchat’s Scan platform can similarly trigger AR effects based on specific items from a more popular app. And teasers of Facebook and Google’s eventual augmented reality hardware and software hinge on adding utility to every day life.

If Apple can build this technology into everyone’s iPhone cameras, it could surmount one of AR’s biggest distribution challenges. That might help it build out a developer ecosystem and train customers to seek out AR so they’re all ready when its AR glasses finally arrive.

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Your VPN or ad-blocker app could be collecting your data

The underpinnings of how app store analytics platforms operate were exposed this week by BuzzFeed, which uncovered the network of mobile apps used by a popular analytics firm Sensor Tower to amass app data. The company had operated at least 20 apps, including VPNs and ad blockers, whose main purpose was to collect app usage data from end users in order to make estimations about app trends and revenues. Unfortunately, these sorts of data collection apps are not new — nor unique to Sensor Tower’s operation.

Sensor Tower was found to operate apps such as Luna VPN, for example, as well as Free and Unlimited VPN, Mobile Data, and Adblock Focus, among others. After BuzzFeed reached out, Apple removed Adblock Focus and Google removed Mobile Data. Others are still being investigated, the report said.

Apps’ collection of usage data has been an ongoing issue across the app stores.

Facebook and Google have both operated such apps, not always transparently, and Sensor Tower’s key rival App Annie continues to do the same today.

Facebook

For Facebook, its 2013 acquisition of VPN app maker Onavo for years served as a competitive advantage. The traffic through the app gave Facebook insight into what other social applications were growing in popularity — so Facebook could either clone their features or acquire them outright. When Apple finally booted Onavo from the App Store half a decade later, Facebook simply brought back the same code in a new wrapper — then called the Facebook Research app. This time, it was a bit more transparent about its data collection, as the Research app was actually paying for the data.

But Apple kicked that app out, too. So Facebook last year launched Study and Viewpoints to further its market research and data collection efforts. These apps are still live today.

Google

Google was also caught doing something similar by way of its Screenwise Meter app, which invited users 18 and up (or 13 if part of a family group) to download the app and participate in the panel. The app’s users allowed Google to collect their app and web usage in exchange for gift cards. But like Facebook, Google’s app used Apple’s Enterprise Certificate program to work — a violation of Apple policy that saw the app removed, again following media coverage. Screenwise Meter returned to the App Store last year and continues to track app usage, among other things, with panelists’ consent.

App Annie

App Annie, a firm that directly competes with Sensor Tower, has acquired mobile data companies and now operates its own set of apps to track app usage under those brands.

In 2014, App Annie bought Distimo, and as of 2016 has run Phone Guardian, a “secure Wi-Fi and VPN” app, under the Distimo brand.

The app discloses its relationship with App Annie in its App Store description, but remains vague about its true purpose:

“Trusted by more than 1 million users, App Annie is the leading global provider of mobile performance estimates. In short, we help app developers build better apps. We build our mobile performance estimates by learning how people use their devices. We do this with the help of this app.”

In 2015, App Annie acquired Mobidia. Since 2017, it has operated a real-time data usage monitor My Data Manager under that brand, as well. The App Store description only offers the same vague disclosure, which means users aren’t likely aware of what they’re agreeing to.

Disclosure?

The problem with apps like App Annie’s and Sensor Tower’s is that they’re marketed as offering a particular function, when their real purpose for existing is entirely another.

The app companies’ defense is that they do disclose and require consent during onboarding. For example, Sensor Tower apps explicitly tell users what is collected and what is not:

 

App Annie’s app offers a similar disclosure, and takes the extra step of identifying the parent company by name:

Despite these opt-ins, end users may still not understand that their VPN app is actually tied to a much larger data collection operation. After all, App Annie and Sensor Tower aren’t household names (unless you’re an app publisher or marketer.)

Apple and Google’s responsibility 

Apple and Google, let’s be fair, are also culpable here.

Of course, Google is more pro-data collection because of the nature of its own business as an advertising-powered company. (It even tracks users in the real-world via the Google Maps app.)

Apple, meanwhile, markets itself as a privacy-focused company, so is deserving of increased scrutiny.

It seems unfathomable that, following the Onavo scandal, Apple wouldn’t have taken a closer look into the VPN app category to ensure its apps were compliant with its rules and transparent about the nature of their businesses. In particular, it seems Apple would have paid close attention to apps operated by companies in the app store intelligence business, like App Annie and its subsidiaries.

Apple is surely aware of how these companies acquire data — it’s common industry knowledge. Plus, App Annie’s acquisitions were publicly disclosed.

oh wait! pic.twitter.com/ktVc6E9t1f

— Will Strafach (@chronic) March 10, 2020

But Apple is conflicted. It wants to protect app usage and user data (and be known for protecting such data) by not providing any broader app store metrics of its own. However, it also knows that app publishers need such data to operate competitively on the App Store. So instead of being proactive about sweeping the App Store for data collection utilities, it remains reactive by pulling select apps when the media puts them on blast, as BuzzFeed’s report has since done. That allows Apple to maintain a veil of innocence.

But pulling user data directly covertly is only one way to operate. As Facebook and Google have since realized, it’s easier to run these sorts of operations on the App Store if the apps just say, basically, “this is a data collection app,” and/or offer payment for participation — as do many marketing research panels. This is a more transparent relationship from a consumer’s perspective too, as they know they’re agreeing to sell their data.

Meanwhile, Sensor Tower and App Annie competitor Apptopia says it tested then scrapped its own an ad blocker app around six years ago, but claims it never collected data with it. It now favors getting its data directly from its app developer customers.

“We can confidently state that 100% of the proprietary data we collect is from shared App Analytics Accounts where app developers proactively and explicitly share their data with us, and give us the right to use it for modeling,” stated Apptopia Co-founder and COO, Jonathan Kay. “We do not collect any data from mobile panels, third-party apps, or even at the user/device level.”

This isn’t necessarily better for end users, as it further obscures the data collection and sharing process. Consumers don’t know which app developers are sharing this data, what data is being shared, or how it’s being utilized. (Fortunately for those who do care, Apple allows users to disable the sharing of diagnostic and usage data from within iOS Settings.)

Data collection done by app analytics firms is only one of many, many ways that apps leak data, however.

In fact, many apps collect personal data — including data that’s far more sensitive than anonymized app usage trends — by way of their included SDKs (software development kits). These tools allow apps to share data with numerous technology companies including ad networks, data brokers, and aggregators, both large and small. It’s not illegal and mainstream users probably don’t know about this either.

Instead, user awareness seems to crop up through conspiracy theories, like “Facebook is listening through the microphone,” without realizing that Facebook collects so much data it doesn’t really need to do so. (Well, except when it does).

In the wake of BuzzFeed’s reporting, Sensor Tower says it’s “taking immediate steps to make Sensor Tower’s connection to our apps perfectly clear, and adding even more visibility around the data their users share with us.”

Apple, Google, and App Annie have been asked for comment. Google isn’t providing an official comment. Apple didn’t respond. App Annie did not have a comment ready by deadline.

Sensor Tower’s full statement is below:

Our business model is predicated on high-level, macro app trends. As such, we do not collect or store any personally identifiable information (PII) about users on our servers or elsewhere. In fact, based on the way our apps are designed, such data is separated before we could possibly view or interact with it, and all we see are ad creatives being served to users. What we do store is extremely high level, aggregated advertising data that may demonstrate trends that we share with customers.

Our privacy policy follows best practices and makes our data use clear. We want to reiterate that our apps do not collect any PII, and therefore it cannot be shared with any other entity, Sensor Tower or otherwise. We’ve made this very clear in our privacy policy, which users actively opt into during the apps’ onboarding processes after being shown an unambiguous disclaimer detailing what data is shared with us. As a routine matter, and as our business evolves, we’ll always take a privacy-centric approach to new features to help ensure that any PII remains uncollected and is fully safeguarded.

Based on the feedback we’ve received, we’re taking immediate steps to make Sensor Tower’s connection to our apps perfectly clear, and adding even more visibility around the data their users share with us.

 

 

from Apple – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/3aV4Mb9