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Google issues new warning to publishers who dismiss Russia-Ukraine war
The search giant has cracked down on irresponsible content creators before
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has dialed up Google's vigilance when it comes to monetizing controversial content. The company has received criticism in the past for allowing the monetization of hateful or violent content through its ad network. However, Google has been taking steps to address this issue. For example, at the end of March, the search giant made it clear that it would enforce already-existing rules it has about not running ads alongside victim-blaming content regarding Ukraine — and it just doubled down on the warning.
Google introduced Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) back in 2015 as an attempt to make web pages load faster on mobile devices. While an admirable enough goal, in the years since there's been a lot of pushback regarding both how AMP is implemented and whether it really delivers on those speed promises. Last summer AMP's future really started to look in doubt, as Google began removing the project's lightning bolt symbol from search results and confirmed AMP wouldn't be mandatory for pages to rank well. Now the other shoe's dropping, as major publishers make it clear that AMP isn't just unpopular — some are ready to dump it completely.
Google will pay some Australian publishers after threat to leave market boomerangs
New Aussie names are joining the News Showcase program
Google is starting to back down on its threat to leave the Australian market. In a blog post today, the company extended an olive branch, highlighting Australian publishers that would be joining the News Showcase program, which pays publishers as part of a licensing program to refer traffic to their stories.
Bing to the rescue: Microsoft happy to step in if Google pulls out of Australia
This marks the first time anyone's actually looked forward to Bing
Google threatened to leave the Australian market if the local government pulls through with a law that would require search engines to pay publishers for linking to news articles. The threat hasn't gone down well, and in a turn of events that shouldn't surprise anyone, smaller competitors are ready to step in should Google pull through with its decision if the law is passed. Microsoft is ready to agree and work with the Australian government going forward, just like DuckDuckGo.
Google will disable Search in Australia if government insists that it pays publishers
"We don't respond to threats," says the Prime Minister
With great power comes great responsibility, and also great scrutiny — just ask Google. The world's leading search engine may have to pay publishers in Australia if new legislation is passed by the government. In response, Google has threatened to disable Search in the country if the new code is passed, and the threat has understandably not gone down well down under.
For a while now, Facebook has been trying to figure out what to do with video, both in its app and on the site. The social network has been testing various UI changes, such as a live streaming tab and a suggested video FAB. In the States, there has been a video tab in place of friend requests for some time, for many users at least. Since the company gave up on pushing live video quite so hard, this has been home to video notifications and suggested videos as well. Facebook has reimagined this space once again, and it will now be home to a new video platform called Watch.
Google Contributor was a very interesting proposition for those of us in the web publishing industry. It allowed sites like Android Police to offer readers an option to pay a little bit of money per month to remove some ads and thus have a better experience reading us while also helping us stay in business. It was launched in August of 2015 and has thus far stayed limited to users in the US. Today though, Contributor is being discontinued.
If you owned a game console at any point in the last thirty years, you've probably at least heard of Konami, Squaresoft, and Enix. If you consider yourself a gamer, you probably know their major franchises by heart. Castlevania. Final Fantasy. Dragon Warrior. Metal Gear. Konami and Square Enix are giants of gaming, at one point standing toe-to-toe with companies like EA and Nintendo, dominating the console landscape and releasing some of the most beloved video games of all time.
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It seems like forever since we've talked about an update to Newsstand, but we get to change that with today's bump to version 3.4. In terms of user-facing features, this release is essentially focused on visual changes. Adjustments have been made to the navigation drawer, some icons, and at least one button. The potentially bigger news comes via a teardown that reveals Newsstand will enable customers to share details and verify their subscriptions with publishers, and that Google may be testing in-content advertisements for some content.
Free-to-play is a divisive topic in the games industry right now. Some developers and publishers, especially in the mobile gaming world, love it - free games get downloaded more, and they have the potential to bring in more revenue. Gamers used to the "pay once, pay forever" model of games and software in general over the last 30 years think it's changing the industry and damaging both the economics and the mechanics of gaming itself.
Yesterday social gaming giant Zynga purchased NaturalMotion, developers of notable mobile games including the CSR Racing series, Backbreaker Football, and the official Jenga game for iOS and Android. TechCrunch reports that the $527 million purchase includes $391 million in cash and 39.8 million shares of Zynga stock. NaturalMotion operates offices in London, Oxford, Brighton, and San Francisco.
Just one week after bringing Play Music to France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK, Google has reached a major licensing deal with Armonia, a music licensing initiative that represents an alliance of publishers from across Europe. The deal will give Play customers access to Armonia's 5.5 million musical works licensed across over 30 countries.
The Nexus One died for the general public, sadly, but continued to live on with the help of Google's own ADP (Android Developer Phone) program.