New Delhi: Users of Android mobile devices will now be able to get rid of pre-installed Google apps, including YouTube and the Chrome browser, if they wish to, courtesy India’s competition regulator.

In a Thursday order, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), a statutory body under the Union government’s Ministry of Corporate Affairs, imposed a fine of Rs 1337.76 crore on Google for alleged violations relating to its dominant position, while also directing the tech giant to take various steps that will ultimately allow consumers to have wider access to apps that compete with Google’s services.

The CCI has said that Google violated rules under Section 4 in the Competition Act, 2002 (abuse of dominant position) in multiple markets and ordered the internet giant to cease such activities.

The violations related to the Indian markets for licensable smartphone operating systems (OS), the app store for Android smart mobile OS, general web search services, non-OS specific mobile web browsers, and online video hosting platforms (OVHP).

The CCI found that Google was dominant in all of these markets and was unfairly taking advantage of its position. The tools of this misuse, the CCI found, were the various types of agreements Google signs with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for the use of Google’s Android Operating System (OS) and Play Store.

These agreements govern the rights and obligations of the OEMs and include Mobile Application Distribution Agreements (MADAs), Anti-fragmentation Agreements (AFAs), Android Compatibility Commitment Agreements (ACCs), and Revenue Sharing Agreements (RSAs)

“MADA assured that the most prominent search entry points i.e., search app, widget and Chrome browser are pre-installed on Android devices, which accorded significant competitive edge to Google’s search services over its competitors,” the CCI said in a release announcing its decision.

“Further, Google also secured significant competitive edge over its competitors, in relation to [another] revenue earning app i.e. YouTube in the Android devices,” the CCI added.

In a statement Friday, Google said the CCI’s order was a major setback for Indian consumers and businesses.

“CCI’s decision is a major setback for Indian consumers and businesses, opening serious security risks for Indians and raising the cost of mobile devices for Indians,” the statement said. “We will review the decision to evaluate next steps.”

‘Significant entry barriers’ for Google competitors

The competition watchdog noted that Google’s competitors could never have as much market access as the US company had secured for itself through MADAs.

“Network effects, coupled with status quo bias, create significant entry barriers for competitors of Google to enter or operate in the concerned markets,” the CCI said.

Further, AFAs/ACCs “guaranteed that distribution channels for competing search services were altogether eliminated” by prohibiting original equipment manufacturers from offering devices based on Android forks, the CCI said. “It ensured that OEMs are not able to develop and/or offer devices based on forks, which are outside the control of Google.”

A fork is when a software developer uses a copy of the source code of a programme — in this case, the Android OS — to create a new software or OS based on it. Such restrictions deprived competing search services of sufficient distribution channels for their market to grow. At the same time, RSAs helped Google secure exclusivity for its search services.

Altogether, these agreements worked to leave competitors out in the cold and to deprive consumers of choice, the regulator said.

“The combined results of these agreements guaranteed a continuous access to search queries of mobile users which helped not only in protecting the advertisement revenue but also to reap the network effects through continuous improvement of services, to the exclusion of competitors,” the CCI said.

“With these agreements in place, the competitors never stood a chance to compete effectively with Google and ultimately these agreements resulted in foreclosing the market for them as well as eliminating choice for users,” It added.

The CCI also found that the mandatory pre-installation of the Google Mobile Suite (GMS) — a collection of Android apps such as YouTube, Duo, Chrome, etc — with no option of uninstalling them amounts to the imposition of unfair conditions on device manufacturers. It further said that Google had “perpetuated its dominant position” in the online search market and the app store markets to deny market access to its competitors and protect its position.

“Google, by making pre-installation of Google’s proprietary apps (particularly Google Play Store) conditional upon signing of AFA/ACC for all Android devices manufactured/distributed/marketed by device manufacturers, has reduced the ability and incentive of device manufacturers to develop and sell devices operating on alternative versions of Android i.e., Android forks and thereby limited technical or scientific development to the prejudice of the consumers, in violation of the provisions of Section 4(2)(b)(ii) of the [Competition] Act,” the CCI added.

What this means for consumers & manufacturers

One of the CCI’s decisions most relevant to consumers of Android devices is that “Google shall not restrict un-installing of its pre-installed apps by the users”.

In other words, if users find that Chrome is consuming too much of their RAM, they can now uninstall it. Or if they want to clear up space on their phone by deleting other unused Google apps, they can now do so.

The order also directed Google to allow users, during the initial set-up of the device, to choose their default search engine, and give them the flexibility to easily change the default settings in the device “in minimum steps possible”.

Google now must also allow OEMs to choose not to have Google’s bouquet of applications pre-installed on their smart devices, the CCI said, adding that Google can’t link the licensing of its Play Store services to this mandatory requirements of pre-installing Google apps.

Further, Google must allow interoperability of Android apps between its own platforms and the Android fork platforms.

This, and the decision to make Google allow developers of app stores to distribute them on the Play Store, is likely to give users in India much greater choice over the operating systems and apps they will have access to on their phones.

On Apple vs Android

During the inquiry, Google argued that it faced “competitive constraints” from Apple and that there was a degree of substitutability between its Play Store and Apple’s App Store.

The CCI, however, rejected these claims and said that the Apple and Android ecosystems followed different business models, which affected the “underlying incentives” governing their decisions.

“Apple’s business is primarily based on a vertically integrated smart device ecosystem which focuses on sale of high-end smart devices with state of the art software components,” the CCI said.

Google’s business, on the other hand, it said, “was found to be driven by the ultimate intent of increasing users on its platforms so that they interact with its revenue earning service i.e., online search which directly affects sale of [its] online advertising services…”

Regarding the app stores, the CCI said that the demand for app store services came from three quarters: Smart device OEMs who wish to install an app store to make their smart devices commercially viable and marketable, app developers who want to offer their services to the end users, and end users who wish to access app stores to access content or avail of other services.

“The Commission examined the substitutability between Google’s Play Store for Android OS and Apple’s App Store for iOS from the perspective of all three demand constituents and found that there is no substitutability between Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store,” the CCI said. “The Commission further noted that there might be some degree of competition between the two mobile ecosystems i.e., Android and Apple, however, that too is also limited at the time of deciding as to which device to buy.

Even at the point of purchase, the CCI said that the most significant factor affecting the purchase decision was the device price and its hardware specification.

Antitrust allegations not new

News reports from last week show that the European Commission, the EU’s competition regulator, was considering launching an investigation into Google’s adtech business over concerns that the tech giant might be getting an unfair advantage over rivals and advertisers. Google has reportedly had to pay up over €8 billion (about $7.7 billion) in EU antitrust fines over the last decade.

In June 2017, the European Commission fined Google €2.42 billion (about $2.39 billion) “for breaching EU antitrust rules”.

“Google has abused its market dominance as a search engine by giving an illegal advantage to another Google product, its comparison shopping service,” the European Commission’s order at the time said.

In September 2022, a US court allowed a case to proceed against Google for similar reasons.

The abuse of dominance by tech firms — not just Google — is something competition watchdogs in several major economies are struggling with.

Back in 2009, the European Commission dropped a case against Microsoft once the software major agreed to give users of its Windows platform a fair choice of internet browsers, apart from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. In 2013, the Commission fined Microsoft $731 million for failing to live up to the agreement.

Courts in the UK are currently entertaining a lawsuit against Amazon for damages worth £ 900 million (about $1 billion) over alleged abuse of its dominant position in the online marketplace by favouring its own products.

(Edited by Asavari Singh) 

New Delhi, October 20

This time, countries worldwide will witness a partial solar eclipse on October 25 and this will happen just after the festival of Diwali.

The eclipse will begin before sunset in the late afternoon and will be visible from most areas.

It will not be visible from some eastern regions of the nation, including the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, as well as the north-eastern cities of Aizawl, Dibrugarh, Imphal, Itanagar, Kohima, Sibsagar, Silchar, and Tamelong, among others.

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the sun and the earth, obstructing the sun's light from reaching the earth. As a result, the moon casts a shadow on the earth, resulting in a solar eclipse.

Even for a short time, viewing the eclipsed sun with the naked eye is not recommended. Even if the moon hides the majority of the sun, it will still cause lifelong eye damage and blindness.

Let's look at the dos and don'ts to keep you safe during the solar eclipse.

Dos

The most secure and recommended approach to seeing the solar eclipse is with the help of appropriate filters like solar viewing or eclipse glasses, telescopes and others.

NASA recommends wearing eye protection before even glancing up at the sky during a solar eclipse.

During the eclipse, keep your headlights on.

Don'ts

It is not safe and advisable to wear conventional sunglasses instead of solar viewing or eclipse glasses.

Avoid taking pictures of the eclipse with your camera. There is always a danger that the sun's powerful rays will hurt your eyes if you are not wearing suitable glasses.

If you aren't going to be present to monitor your children, keep them away from eclipse viewing places.

During the maximum eclipse, the moon will hide the sun to a degree of around 40 to 50 per cent in the country's northwestern areas. The percentage coverage will be lower than the statistics indicated above in other parts of the country.

At the time of the maximum eclipse, the moon will cover around 44 per cent of the sun in Delhi and 24 per cent in Mumbai.

From dawn to sunset, the eclipse will last 1 hour 13 minutes in Delhi and 1 hour 19 minutes in Mumbai. The eclipse will last 31 minutes and 12 minutes in Chennai and Kolkata, respectively.

 

 Reuters

 

October 21

Twitter Inc on Thursday clarified to staff that there are no plans for company-wide layoffs since it signed a deal to be acquired by billionaire Elon Musk, after a media outlet reported that Musk is considering layoffs at the company.

Twitter General Counsel Sean Edgett emailed employees on Thursday saying the company does not plan layoffs, according to a source who viewed the email.

The Washington Post reported earlier on Thursday that Elon Musk told prospective investors in his deal to buy Twitter that he planned to get rid of nearly 75% of the company's 7,500 workers, citing interviews and documents.

The job cuts are expected in the coming months, no matter who owns the company, according to the Washington Post report.

Twitter's current management planned to pare the company's payroll by about $800 million by the end of next year, a number that would mean the departure of nearly a quarter of the workforce, the report said.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Human resources staff at the social media company have told employees that they were not planning for mass layoffs, but documents showed extensive plans to push out staff and cut down on infrastructure costs were already in place before Musk offered to buy the company, the Washington Post reported.

Musk had tried to walk away from the deal to buy Twitter in May alleging the company understated the number of bot and spam accounts on the social media platform, which started a series of lawsuits between the two parties.

Earlier this month, Musk reversed course and said he will proceed with the deal on original terms.

NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) scans the sky every six months to search for asteroids and other near-Earth objects (NEOs), including those that could pose a threat to Earth. Combining more than 10 years of NEOWISE observations and 18 all-sky images, scientists have created a time-lapse movie of the entire sky, revealing changes in the Universe.

"If you go outside and look at the night sky, it might seem like nothing ever changes, but that's not the case. Stars are flaring and exploding. Asteroids are whizzing by. Black holes are tearing stars apart. The universe is a really busy, active place," said Amy Mainzer, principal investigator for NEOWISE at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

 

Check out this movie by NEOWISE that includes previously hidden brown dwarfs, a feeding black hole, a dying star, a star-forming region, and a brightening star.

The NEOWISE mission was originally named the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and was repurposed in 2013 to find and study comets, asteroids and other NEOs. The infrared telescope has improved scientists' understanding of objects outside our solar system as well as black holes.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA-JPL) in Pasadena, California, manages and operates the NEOWISE mission.

 

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology convened a series of emergency meetings over the past week with leading semiconductor companies, seeking to assess the damage from the U.S. chip restrictions, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.

The ministry summoned executives from firms including Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC) and supercomputer specialist Dawning Information Industry Co to attend closed-door meetings, the report said. This month the Biden administration passed a sweeping set of export controls aimed at slowing Beijing's technological and military advances, including sales restrictions on certain advanced chips and chip equipment tools.

Experts have said the new rules will have a broad impact, slowing China's efforts to develop its own chip industry and advance commercial and state research involving military weapons, artificial intelligence, data centres and many other areas that are powered by supercomputers and high-end chips. According to the Bloomberg report, many of the participants at the meetings argued that the U.S. curbs spell doom for their industry, as well as China's ambitions to untether its economy from American technology.

YMTC, Dawning and the industry ministry did not immediately reply to Reuters' requests for comment. On Sunday, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for his country to "win the battle" in core technologies in his full work report as he kicked off the once-every-five-years Communist Party Congress.

 

Experts have said the work report could signal an overhaul in Beijing's approach to advancing its tech industry, with more state-led spending and intervention to counter U.S. pressures.

NFTs have emerged as perhaps the most popular and most expensive asset class the crypto space has to offer so far. With the arrival of metaverse platforms like Decentraland, Axie Infinity, and The Sandbox, the use cases of NFTs have grown even further in number. According to Statista, on April 15 of 2021, the art-specific NFT sales recorded on the Ethereum, Ronin, and Flow blockchains in the previous month totaled up to an amount of around $78 million- one of the highest monthly totals ever recorded. In more recent news, as of September 15, 2022, the estimated art based NFT sales value over the previous month went up to about $25.5 million.

 

Outside of the art sector, pretty much anything you can think of- real estate, books, precious metal, videos and music- it can be NFT-fied. For example, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first-ever tweet sold as an NFT for $2.9 million in 2021. It’s safe to say that the NFT craze that initially started among crypto people has caught on with the general global populace too.

At this point, it’s quite interesting to look back to the beginning of NFTs and explore what gives them these grand values. For additional fun, in this post, let’s also take a look at some of the costliest NFTs ever sold in the history of non-fungible tokens.

What is an NFT, and what gives it value?

Let’s go back to the basics for a bit. A NFT is a non-fungible token, and it is issued on a blockchain to virtually represent a unique asset (physical or virtual). Said asset can be an artwork, a sheet of music, a house, or a manuscript. The ‘non-fungible’ part comes into play because every NFT stands for an exclusive asset that can’t be replaced with a similar asset of the same variety.

This is where NFTs primarily differ from your usual cryptos too. Even if two non-fungible tokens look quite similar, they cannot be swapped out for each other. So, while you can exchange one ETH for another, you cannot trade a NFT for something equal in value or contents.

CryptoKitties on the Ethereum blockchain was the first NFT platform users had hyped up to a greater than usual extent. This game allows you to purchase digital cats in the form of NFTs, breed more of these cats, and collect and trade said NFTs.

Coming to our next topic, what exactly gives non-fungible tokens value? Well, there are no set parameters for the valuation of an NFT, to be exact. An NFT’s value is largely shaped by the market supply and demands. There are several other factors that may affect a NFT’s value, namely:

• NFTs part of a limited series, with specified use cases are usually more valuable.
• Rarity is definitely one of the primary factors impacting a non-fungible token’s price.
• The artist/creator behind a non-fungible token can be a major factor buoying the NFT’s price.
• Community and market sentiments are of course major players in determining a NFT’s price at a particular point in time.

What are some of the costliest NFTs ever sold?

Now that we’ve had a look at the very basics of NFTs, let’s find out what are the most expensive NFTs told till date! Interestingly enough, the most precious of NFTs are usually all artworks.

Everydays: The First 5000 Days

Everydays: The First 5000 Days is a digital artwork by Beeple- the American graphic designer Mike Winkelmann. The NFT sold for $69.3 million back in February 2021, and it was bought by the investor Metakovan at an auction sale held by Christie’s.

Coming to the art piece itself, it is a collage of 5,000 of Beeple’s artworks. Since 2007, Beeple had been uploading a brand new artwork to his Instagram page every day, and this he carried on for 13 years. The everyday art pieces are usually based in post-apocalyptic landscapes, and they hint at whatever the current major happenings were in the world.

Clock

Clock is quite a unique NFT- it represents a progressive timer to count the number of days Julian Assange has spent in prison. Assange, the editor and publisher of WikiLeaks, is facing extradition to the US, and a possible sentence of 175 years in jail. The digital artist Pak and Assange himself created the NFT to fund his legal defense.

AssangeDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization created to fight for Assange’s freedom, won the bid for the Clock NFT. The artwork sold for around $52.7 million.

HUMAN ONE

The HUMAN ONE NFT is another triumph from Beeple, it’s a hybrid digital and physical artwork. The NFT was put on auction as a part of Christie’s 21st Century Evening Sale on November 9, 2021, when it sold for $28.9 million.

The artwork is a kinetic video sculpture combined with a dynamic NFT (like Clock above). The NFT is designed to display the changing artwork over time, and Beeple will always have creative control over the NFT’s contents.

CryptoPunk #5822

CryptoPunks are one of the most famous NFT series we have seen till date. As for CryptoPunk #5822, it is by far the biggest NFT purchase in the history of CryptoPunks. The NFT was bought by Deepak Thapliyal– the CEO of Chain, earlier this year. CryptoPunk #5822 sold for approximately $23.7 million in February 2022, removing the “COVID Alien” CryptoPunk #7523 as the highest valued CryptoPunk in the process.

CryptoPunk #7523

The aforementioned COVID Alien CryptoPunk is also the fifth most expensive NFT sold till date. CryptoPunk #7523 was auctioned at Sotheby’s for a whopping $11.75 million in June 2021.

 

And that was a list of the costliest NFTs sold so far! We do hope this post has been a fun guide to NFTs for you. For more such interesting content visit WazirX blog now!

 

 All through childhood,Miriam Abdullah wasshuttled in and out ofhospitals. “At somepoint, even my mumgave up,” recalled Abdullah, now 35.

 LinkedIn ran experiments on more than 20 million users over five years that, while intended to improve how the platform worked for members, could have affected some people’s livelihoods, says a new study.

 Washington, 

NASA aeronautical innovators are poised to break the sound barrier again, this time in a very different way that could make it possible for all of us to one day travel by air just as fast as any of the X-1 pilots who flew supersonic.

NASA's X-59, the centerpiece of the agency's Quesst mission, will enable commercial supersonic travel over land.

Lockheed Martin has designed, built and conducted initial flight tests with the aircraft and the first flight is targeted for 2023.

"That first supersonic flight was such a tremendous achievement, and now you look at how far we've come since then. What we're doing now is the culmination of so much of their work," said Catherine Bahm, an aeronautical engineer at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California.

Through Quesst, NASA plans to demonstrate the X-59 can fly faster than sound without generating the typically loud sonic booms that led to supersonic flight over land being banned in 1973.

The plan includes flying the X-59 over several communities to survey how people react to the quieter sonic "thump" it produces - if they hear anything at all.

"Their responses will be shared with regulators who will then consider writing new rules to lift the ban," said NASA.

"And when that happens, it will mark another historic milestone in flight, potentially opening a new era in air travel, where airline passengers might hop on a supersonic jet at breakfast time in Los Angeles to make a lunch-time reservation in New York City," it added.

Seventy-five years ago, a sonic boom thundered for the first time over the high desert of California, when the thunder came from the Bell X-1 rocket plane flying faster than the speed of sound.

It was October 14, 1947, and the joint X-1 team of NACA, Air Force (newly formed that year), and Bell engineers and pilots had broken the sound barrier -- an imaginary wall in the sky some said was impossible to penetrate.

"With the X-59 flying on the Quesst mission, I think we are ready to break the sound barrier once again," said Peter Coen, NASA's mission integration manager for Quesst. IANS

Washington [US], October 15 (ANI): According to new research, oxygen levels in the Earth’s atmosphere are likely to have “fluctuated wildly” one billion years ago, creating conditions that could have accelerated the development of early animal life.

Scientists believe atmospheric oxygen developed in three stages, starting with what is known as the Great Oxidation Event around two billion years ago, when oxygen first appeared in the atmosphere. The third stage, around 400 million years ago, saw atmospheric oxygen rise to levels that exist today.

What is uncertain is what happened during the second stage, in a time known as the Neoproterozoic Era, which started about one billion years ago and lasted for around 500 million years, during which time early forms of animal life emerged.

The question scientists have tried to answer is – was there anything extraordinary about the changes to oxygen levels in the Neoproterozoic Era that may have played a pivotal role in the early evolution of animals – did oxygen levels suddenly rise or was there a gradual increase?

Fossilised traces of early animals – known as Ediacaran biota, multi-celled organisms that required oxygen – have been found in sedimentary rocks that are 541 to 635 million years old.

To try and answer the question, a research team at the University of Leeds supported by the Universities of Lyon, Exeter and UCL, used measurements of the different forms of carbon, or carbon isotopes, found in limestone rocks taken from shallow seas. Based on the isotope ratios of the different types of carbon found, the researchers were able to calculate photosynthesis levels that existed millions of years ago and infer atmospheric oxygen levels.

As a result of the calculations, they have been able to produce a record of oxygen levels in the atmosphere over the last 1.5 billion years, which tells us how much oxygen would have been diffusing into the ocean to support early marine life.

Dr Alex Krause, a biogeochemical modeller who completed his PhD in the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds and was the lead scientist on the project, said the findings give a new perspective on the way oxygen levels were changing on Earth.

He added: “The early Earth, for the first two billion years of its existence, was anoxic, devoid of atmospheric oxygen. Then oxygen levels started to rise, which is known as the Great Oxidation Event.

“Up until now, scientists had thought that after the Great Oxidation Event, oxygen levels were either low and then shot up just before we see the first animals evolved, or that oxygen levels were high for many millions of years before the animals came along.

“But our study shows oxygen levels were far more dynamic. There was an oscillation between high and low levels of oxygen for a long time before early forms of animal life emerged. We are seeing periods where the ocean environment, where early animals lived, would have had abundant oxygen – and then periods where it does not.

Dr Benjamin Mills, who leads the Earth Evolution Modelling Group at Leeds and supervised the project, said: “This periodic change in environmental conditions would have produced evolutionary pressures where some life forms may have become extinct and new ones could emerge.”

Dr Mills said the oxygenated periods expanded what is known as “habitable spaces” – parts of the ocean where oxygen levels would have been high enough to support early animal life forms.

He said: “It has been proposed in ecological theory that when you have a habitable space that is expanding and contracting, this can support rapid changes to the diversity of biological life.

“When oxygen levels decline, there is severe environmental pressure on some organisms which could drive extinctions. And when the oxygen-rich waters expand, the new space allows the survivors to rise to ecological dominance.

“These expanded habitable spaces would have lasted for millions of years, giving plenty of time for ecosystems to develop.” (ANI)