A federal judge declared last month that Apple was not a monopoly when issuing the court’s decision on California’s Epic Games v. Apple case. But the one area where Apple lost ground was in what sort of rules it can make for its own App Store. On this point, the judge sided with Epic Games, saying that Apple can no longer prohibit developers from pointing to other means of payment beyond Apple’s own payment systems. Now, Apple is appealing that decision and asking for a stay on the injunction the judge had put into place. The move could delay any sort of changes to the App Store’s rules until a final decision is made after the appeals case has been decided.

Apple had been ordered to update its App Store policies to stop prohibiting developers from including external links and other calls to action inside their apps that could direct customers to other purchasing mechanisms in addition to in-app purchasing. Apple could also not stop developers from communicating with customers through points of contact they obtained voluntarily from customers through their app’s registration, the injunction said.

This is in line with other settlements Apple has recently made both inside and outside the U.S., including one with a Japanese regulator which changed its policy for “reader apps,” allowing them to add a link to their website inside their apps. South Korea also passed a bill that will prevent Apple and Google from forcing developers to use their in-app billing systems. And in a recent class-action settlement with developers in the U.S., Apple clarified that developers could use communications, like emails, to share information about alternative payment methods with their iOS customers.

In the Epic Games ruling, however, Apple was required to put into place the new rules within 90 days of the court’s decision on September 10, 2021. Some in the market were already moving forward to capitalize on that potential change. For example, Paddle, a solutions provider for subscription businesses, announced somewhat prematurely it would introduce a new in-app purchasing system aimed at iOS developers that would allow a drop-in replacement to Apple’s own as soon as the injunction went into effect.

If Apple wins the stay, the early December deadline to comply with the injunction will be discarded as the appeals case is argued in court. That means there could be no changes for App Store developers for many months to come.

Apple won nearly every point in the Epic Games battle except for this one minor point related to its “anti-steering” rules. But Apple was going to be forced to return to court anyway, due to Epic’s appeal.

Despite winning the ability to add links to alternative payment methods, Epic Games was unsatisfied with the court’s original decision, which declared that Apple’s success was “not illegal.” It had filed an appeal of its own back in mid-September, with the hope of convincing the appeals court that Apple was acting as a monopolist.

The battle between the two tech giants continues to wage outside the courtroom, as well. Last week, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney pointed out, via a post on Twitter, how Apple was using its platform to market its own apps to customers within the iPhone’s Settings screen — effectively an ad slot that third-party competitors didn’t have access to, he said. The company declined to say if it would bring up this point in a later trial, however.

 

Disney’s newest digital service, Disney Genie, is launching on October 19 at Walt Disney World Resort. The service, first unveiled in August, is an update to the company’s earlier line-reservation tools for Disney’s parks, allowing guests to plan and update their itineraries, book time slots for the most popular attractions, and optionally purchase paid access to the fast lanes’ “Lightning Lane” entrances, either à la carte on top attractions or through the “Genie+” add-on.

The service will replace Disney’s older FASTPASS, FastPass+ and Disney MaxPass services, as Disney Genie will roll out across Walt Disney World Resort and Disneyland Resort, the company said.

At the core of the Disney Genie experience is a smart trip-planning capability that maps out a personalized itinerary based on which rides, attractions or food and entertainment experiences guests want to make sure to do while at the parks. That means Genie users can customize their day based on not only the top attractions, but also their general interests — like whether they need to incorporate Princess meet-and-greets into their day, or if they’d rather seek out the best cocktails at the park’s bars, for instance.

Before Genie, guests could make up to three reservations in advance of a park visit through the FastPass+ scheduling system, and could then continue to make reservations through the My Disney Experience app after those first three reservations had been used. But this free system made it difficult to get reservations on top rides, as it favored Disney resort-goers who could book 60 days in advance, while others got a 30-day window. It also didn’t make all top rides (aka Tier 1 attractions) available for the initial booking.

Disney Genie aims to address some of these issues, but for a fee. That’s led to quite a bit of backlash from Disney fans who feel they already pay enough for their Disney trips and don’t want to add more charges. In fact, the video announcement has a ratio of 12,000 dislikes to just 948 likes, as of the time of writing. However, paid fast-lane access to a park’s main attractions is a common staple at Disney’s theme park competitors — and one that can help those who have tighter schedules ensure they get everything done.

With Genie’s WDW launch on October 19, guests will be able to choose from the two paid options — either individual access to up to two Lightning Lanes or Genie+’s broader selection.

Disney says the following rides are available for the à la carte option: Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Space Mountain at Magic Kingdom, Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure and Frozen Ever After at Epcot, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway at Disney Hollywood Studios, and Avatar Flight of Passage and Expedition Everest at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

While picking two options could help speed up your wait times, it may not include your must-have ride selections.

Disney Genie+, meanwhile, opens up Lightning Lanes at a total of 40+ attractions across the four parks instead, including many more of the Tier 1 rides. It will be priced at $15 per ticket per day at Walt Disney World Resort and $20 per ticket per day at Disneyland Resort, when available.

The à la carte pricing will vary by date, attraction and park, Disney says. While Disney hasn’t announced specific ranges for each ride, it has offered some examples. It says the Lightning Lane entrance to Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure will be $9 per person on October 19 and $11 per person on October 23. But on those same dates, the Lightning Lane entrance to Expedition Everest – Legend of the Forbidden Mountain will be just  $7 per person, while Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance will be $15 per person.

With today’s news of the October 19 launch at Walt Disney World Resort, the company is also detailing how the feature is integrated into its My Disney Experience app. This is the app offering access to your tickets, park maps, showtimes, online food ordering and more.

Today, many park-goers turn to third-party apps like those from TouringPlans.com or other indie developers, as well as Disney fan blogs, to get tips about how to plan their route through a given park to ensure they see all the main attractions and events. But Genie promises to help prioritize your trip for you directly in its own My Disney Experience app, using the company’s understanding of things like wait times and other park changes — like rides that temporarily closed or other delays. This in-house option could potentially impact the revenue streams from the third-party businesses that have sprung up to address park planning needs.

Plus, unlike static plans, Genie’s experience will adapt to users’ days and their own unexpected plan changes — like needing to head back to the hotel to let little kids nap, taking an unplanned snack break or deciding you want to ride something twice. As you adjust your plans, Genie also updates your itinerary. And this aspect of the service is offered for free, even if you’re not paying for fast-lane entry.

Disney has not yet announced when Disney Genie will launch at Disneyland Resort, but said earlier that it would arrive this fall.

Many of Amazon’s corporate employees may continue to work mostly from home or other remote locations for the foreseeable future, CEO Andy Jassy said Monday.

Jassy said in a memo posted to a company website that Amazon would not have one company-wide policy for returning to the office as the pandemic continues, but instead would allow middle-managers to make decisions on a team-by-team basis.

“We expect that there will be teams that continue working mostly remotely, others that will work some combination of remotely and in the office, and still others that will decide customers are best served having the team work mostly in the office,” Jassy wrote.

The Seattle-based online retailer and tech giant had previously planned to have office workers back at their desks in January for at least three days a week.

But Jassy said senior management had decided to change course and not have a “one-size-fits-all approach,” instead choosing to let teams experiment and adjust.

“We’re intentionally not prescribing how many days or which days — this is for Directors to determine with their senior leaders and teams,” he added. The guiding principle, he wrote, would be what’s “most effective for our customers.”

Jassy said that employees should be “close enough to their core team that they can easily travel to the office for a meeting within a day’s notice.” But employees would have the option to work up to four weeks per year “fully remote from any location” as long as they’re within their country of employment, he said.

Other tech companies including Facebook and Google have been aiming for a January return for their office workers, having delayed their plans after the spread of the delta variant.

The new remote-work policy is for corporate roles and does not apply to workers in Amazon’s warehouse and transportation divisions or in its cloud-computing data centers. Jassy said those roles “aren’t as flexible.”

Amazon warehouse workers saw a spike in Covid-19 cases over the summer, and in August the company began requiring warehouse workers to wear masks regardless of vaccination status.

Facebook is expanding its investment in audio initiatives with the launch of a new “Audio” destination in its mobile app in the U.S., where users will be able to discover in one place all the audio formats Facebook now hosts, including podcasts, Live Audio Rooms and short-form audio. The company says it’s also making its Clubhouse rival, Live Audio Rooms, more broadly available to global users, and is beginning to roll out a new product called Soundbites, a sort of TikTok for audio offering short audio clips.

An early version of the new Audio destination has been in the process of rolling out to all Facebook users (18 and up) in the U.S. across both iOS and Android, but is being officially announced now. It can be accessed through the top navigation within Watch, Facebook’s video hub — a design choice that feels a little incongruous, given that audio content is meant to be listened to, not “watched.”

The company says the new destination will help creators to have their shows found, while Facebook users will be able to find audio content from favorite creators, discover new ones and access content they had saved for later. At launch, the Audio section will feature the content from the creators you’re already following, and will include a set of personalized recommendations as well as suggestions of other audio that’s popular across Facebook.

The destination will become more personalized to your own tastes and interests over time, as you engage with the audio content and follow more creators, Facebook notes.

Timed with this launch, Facebook offered an update on the work it’s been doing to expand access to more of its audio products.

This spring, Facebook had introduced a suite of new audio features, including its Clubhouse competitor called Live Audio Rooms, as well as the short-form audio product called Soundbites, plus support for podcasts. With Spotify, it also partnered on a new miniplayer that streams from the music service to users on Facebook.

Live Audio Rooms officially launched in June to U.S. public figures in good standing with Facebook and to select Facebook Groups. Since then, Facebook said the feature has been found to work as a lightweight means of connection and conversation across communities, where it’s been adopted by creators including Lil Huddy, Noah and Miley Cyrus, quarterback Russell Wilson, singer Becky G, comedian Sherry Cola, Mereba Music and others.

Now, Facebook says Live Audio Rooms are rolling out to more public figures and creators outside the U.S. as well as non-U.S.-based Facebook Groups. In addition to iOS, the feature has launched on Android, and the ability to listen to Live Audio has arrived on desktop, which makes it more accessible as it expands to other markets.

Meanwhile, the short-form Soundbites product has been in testing since June with a group of emerging creators and others, including comedian and best-selling author Josh Sundquist; actress, disability advocate and lifestyle influencer Lolo Spencer; and digital creator Molly Burke. This test recently expanded to include more creators, and now, Facebook says Soundbites will roll out to more people in the U.S. in the coming weeks.

The company also noted it’s been working on support for podcasts following its audio announcements earlier this year. This summer, it made podcasts available to U.S. users. More recently, it’s rolled out the ability to share short podcast clips in News Feed and added support captions on Android (with iOS still to come). Podcasters were additionally given the ability to add their RSS feeds to their Facebook Page on desktop and mobile. However, podcast listening remains still U.S.-only for the time being.

Facebook says as it’s been expanding its audio experiences, it’s been working on tools that would help to identify and act upon content that violates its Community Standards. This includes tools to automatically identify harmful content on Facebook. Plus, Facebook says it’s adapting both its technology and processes to detect and moderate violating audio content, as it learns more.

This new follows a tough week for Facebook, which not only included one of its longest outages to date, but also saw a whistleblower testifying before the U.S. Senate about the harms enabled by Facebook’s platform, including its engagement-based algorithms, inability to fight misinformation and corporate decision making that put profits above people. Facebook’s staff are now divided over the whistleblower’s testimony, The New York Times reported. With Facebook now venturing deeper into audio and live audio — a difficult area to address from a moderation standpoint — Facebook could become a platform for more misinformation to spread if it’s not able to develop the necessary technology that would make audio a safe environment.

Making sure mental wellness is part of your routine can be difficult, especially if you are already busy and stressed. MindLabs wants to make it easier with a combination of on-demand or live video classes and community features. The company announced today it has raised a $3.5 million seed round, almost eleven months after its pre-seed funding.

The seed round was led by PROFounders Capital, with participation from Slack Fund; Sky executive chairman and former chief executive officer Jeremy Darroch; and returning investors Passion Capital and Seedcamp. The timing of the announcement comes three days before World Mental Health Day on October 10, to raise awareness of mental health issues and increase access to care.

The new funding will be used to hire for MindLabs’ product and engineering, content and market as it prepares for its public launch next year.

MindLabs was founded last year by Adnan Ebrahim and Gabor Szedlak, who previously launched and ran CarThrottle, an automotive site and community that was acquired by Dennis Publishing in 2019. When TechCrunch first talked to the founders last year, they said they decided to focus on mental health for their next startup because of the rapid increase in depression, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the past year, MindLabs has hired leaders for its engineering, production and marketing teams, and built out its beta app, which now has 16 instructors. The startup’s platform is slated for a public launch in the first quarter of 2022. Ebrahim told TechCrunch that MindLabs currently has thousands of users on its waitlist, thanks in part to the growth of its Instagram account, which has almost 60,000 followers.

MindLabs will be available first in the United Kingdom, before launching in the United States. Ebrahim says it plans to expand into non-English speaking countries, since the team believes the platform is easily translatable.

Its app now has over 100 on-demand videos created by mental wellness, psychology and neuroscience professionals, and will also host daily live videos classes from its studio in West London. One of its instructors is Richie Bostock, aka The Breath Guy, who is a meditation and breath-work expert. Community features were built in, partially in response to the isolation people have experienced during the pandemic.

MindLabs also eventually plans to release hardware, like an EEG headband, to track health indicators. Ebrahim said MindLabs is launching with an app-first strategy before moving into wearables, with affordable subscription plans for classes so they can reach as many people as possible.

“We’re still extremely excited about tracking biomarkers of the mind, such as EEG, heart rate and breathing patterns, through existing and our own wearables,” he said. “We believe this will help us build a more accurate, real-time picture of how our users feel, and therefore be able to serve them with the most relevant video classes to help improve their mood.”

Just days after Voodoo acquired Beach Bum, another French mobile gaming company has news to share. Homa Games is raising a $50 million Series A round led by Northzone. The company partners with indie game studios and acts as a publisher.

Other investors in today’s funding round include Singular, King, the founders of FuboTV and Daniel Ek’s family office. The company is raising this Series A round just seven months after raising its seed round (led by Headline and Eurazeo).

In particular, back in February 2021, the company said it managed to generate 250 million downloads. That number has now doubled as the startup has now delivered 500 million installs.

Homa Games specializes in hypercasual, casual and board games, a segment of the mobile gaming industry that requires a methodical, technology-driven approach. It has developed its own tech stack that optimizes the performance of each game.

Game developers can build a prototype with Unity and submit it to Homa Games. After that, Homa Games can test the potential of each prototype to find out if it’s worth exploring further.

The startup has developed an all-in-one SDK that helps developers optimize their mobile game through analytics and A/B testing to turn it into a profitable venture. It lets them track and improve the most important metrics of the industry — cost of acquisition, retention and session times. Of couse, this will lead to a better average revenue per user.

Homa Games then takes care of publishing the game on the App Store and Play Store. It relies heavily on advertising to generate revenue.

What’s interesting is that you don’t have to spend months or years to craft the perfect mobile game. With the current state of hypercasual mobile games, game developers focus on one key concept that is going to make you compulsively launch the game again and again. All of Homa Games’ success that ended up in the top 20 of most downloaded games in the App Store and Play Store have been developed in eight days or less.

“Their platform gives any game entrepreneur or independent studio super powers by allowing them to tap into publishing, analytics and marketing tools to compete on an even footing with the giant game studios across the world. Daniel and Oliver don’t just bring a vision but more importantly, a killer execution that is helping them define and build an entirely new category within gaming,” Northzone’s Pär-Jörgen Pärson said in a statement.

So far, the company has released 40 games. But Homa Games is increasing its release pace as 20 games will be released by the end of 2021.

And now, the company is working on a sub-genre of hypercasual games. Homa Games call this the ‘arcade idle’ category. Like in many hypercasual games, it features a texture-less stickman character that you move around the digital world. Like in idle games, players have to gather resources to increase wealth and unlock new levels.

This is what it looks like in Craft Island, Farm Land, and Harvest It:

According to the company’s blog post, the company plans to monetize these games through interstitial ads, in-app purchases and subscriptions. Players can also choose to watch an ad to go faster.

I don’t know if we should celebrate this kind of innovation or not, but it’s clear that there’s still a lot of business potential in mobile gaming. And Homa Games seems well-positioned to become an important publisher.

Four search engine rivals to Google have called on European Union lawmakers to address the tech giant’s continued dominance of the market by setting rules for search engine preference menus, arguing that the tech giant’s ability to set damaging defaults is continuing to limit how easily consumers can switch to non-Google alternatives.

In an open letter today, the non-tracking search engines DuckDuckGo and Qwant, along with tech-for-good focused Lilo and tree-planting not-for-profit Ecosia, urge the region’s lawmakers to go further to tackle the platform giants’ market power.

“The DMA [Digital Markets Act] urgently needs to be adapted to prevent gatekeepers from suppressing search engine competition,” they write. “Specifically, the DMA should enshrine in law a requirement for a search engine preference menu that would effectively ban Google from acquiring default search access points of the operating systems and the browsers of gatekeepers. Moreover, the DMA should ensure that, in addition to selecting their preferred search default in initial onboarding, consumers are able to one-click switch at any time via prompts from competing search engine apps or websites. These actions would finally lead to significant implications for competition in the search engine market and ensure there is real consumer choice online.”

The Commission presented the Digital Markets Act at the end of last year — proposing a fixed set of ex ante rules for so-called internet “gatekeepers” with the aim of ensuring that these intermediating internet giants cannot abuse their power to crush competitors and squeeze consumers.

However the four Google search rivals say the proposed legislation doesn’t currently contain any measures that will help break the tech giant’s continued dominance of search in Europe (where it has around 93%) — hence their call for EU lawmakers to make amendments to add binding rules for search preference screens so that consumers always have an effortless ability to switch their default search engine choice, whether on mobile or desktop.

While the Commission was responsible for the original draft of the DMA, the EU’s other core institutions — the European Parliament and member states, via the EU Council — have to agree on the details so negotiations over the exact shape of the regulation are continuing.

“We welcome the Commission’s goals with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) but the DMA fails to address the most acute barrier in search: Google’s hoarding of default positions,” the four search rivals also write. “Google would not have become the overall market gatekeeper they are today without years of locking up these defaults. If the DMA fails to address this fundamental issue, we believe the status quo will continue, leaving the root cause of this problem unchanged.”

Google has been contacted for comment on the claims.

Back in 2018, the EU’s competition commission fined Google $5 billion over antitrust abuses in how it operates its Android smartphone platform.

Following that intervention the tech giant introduced a regional search preference screen that was shown on setting up a new Android smartphone in Europe. However Google quickly implemented a sealed bids auction model that required rivals to pay it (and outbid each other) to appear in one of the available slots, which competitors immediately decried as unfair and non-transparent.

Some three years later, following another intervention by the Commission — and after absolutely no dent in Google’s search marketshare in Europe — the tech giant finally announced it would drop the auction model, replacing it with a choice screen that displays eligible search rivals without requiring a fee.

But, again, rivals quickly pointed out continuing limitations with Google’s “remedy” — such as the fact it only applies to mobile devices, not to users of Google’s browser Chrome on desktop devices; and the fact that Android users are only shown the choice screen on setup or at a factory reset, so most of the time they use a device they do not see it.

DuckDuckGo, for example, has been loudly pressing the case for a “truly fair” search choice that only requires one click for consumers to switch — not the 15+ clicks it says it takes to switch the default search engine on an Android device currently at any other point after initial setup (or a factory reset).

Using such dark patterns to lock in self-preferencing defaults is something that should be proscribed by EU law, the search rivals argue.

“Google-imposed limitations make it hard for consumers to adopt other search engines, despite the Commission’s antitrust decision,” they argue. “Like MEP Yon-Courtin proposed in her draft report for the Economic Affairs committee, we believe a properly designed preference menu should be mandated more broadly.”

We’ve reached out to the Commission for comment on the call for dedicated search preference screen rules to be baked into the DMA and will update this report with any response.

Update: A Commission spokesperson confirmed it has taken note of the letter, adding: “We are of course aware of the ongoing debate in the European Parliament and Council.”

“The DMA already includes several provisions specifically geared towards injecting contestability in the search engine sector, such as an obligation for gatekeepers to make essential data available to competing search engine providers. It also includes a strong anti-circumvention clause,” the spokesperson also said. 

“The Commission is engaging constructively with both co-legislators in their objective to making the DMA most effective in achieving its goals in practice.”

Where’s the remedy?

The European Commission has — for years — shied away from imposing specific remedies on Google, despite a string of antitrust enforcements. Instead EU lawmakers have typically said it is up to Google to figure out exactly how to comply with its various orders to cease infringements in areas like product search, search ad brokering and Android.

The result of such a hands-off approach by the EU’s executive is that Google has been able to find ways to maintain its dominance of key strategic markets like search — in spite of a string of high-profile antitrust enforcements in Europe.

It’s an uncomfortable record for the EU’s competition chief, Margrethe Vestager, who has carved out a reputation as the “iron lady” willing to take on Big Tech — yet whose enforcements in the digital sphere haven’t actually moved the needle on platform giants’ market share. (Nor blocked Google from continued consolidation.)

However some EU member states are starting to take a much more hands on approach to reigning in Big Tech’s market abuse, which looks like it will have an impact.

France’s competition authority, for example, recently extracted a series of interoperability requirements from Google in a case related to self-preferencing of its adtech.

While Germany’s Federal Cartel Office started this year armed with beefed-up powers to impose ex ante remedies on digital giants that are deemed to have substantial market power. It’s now in the process of assessing whether Google — and a number of other tech giants — meet that bar. If it finds they do it looks eager to get to work setting preemptive rules for how they can operate in Germany.

Outside the EU, the U.K. is also reforming domestic competition rules to clip Big Tech’s wings. It’s in the process of shaping an ex ante regime for digital giants with what it describes as “strategic market status” — that, unlike the Commission’s approach with the DMA, won’t be one-size-fits-all.

Instead the U.K. has said it wants to tailor rules to the specific business — which would give its regulators more leeway to, for example, impose a search preference menu remedy on a firm like Google if they decide such a step is necessary.

The Commission’s centralized single set of rules for Big Tech does, therefore, look like it could end up being a weak tool in the face of extremely well-resourced “innovators” who have years of experience building and iterating services that are designed to eliminate friction and topple barriers to greater scale.

The EU’s executive risks being caught flat-footed on the issue of tech antitrust at a time when lawmakers all around the world are fired up and active on the issue — from China to the U.S.

It’s also interesting to note how, in the wake of a very bad week for (another tech giant) Facebook, including Congressional testimony by the latest tech whistleblower, Francis Haugen, EU commissioners were falling over themselves to tweet about their “urgency” to tackle Big Tech:

We will open up platforms for better public and regulatory scrutiny. This is why we have #DSA, #DMA and #EDAP. This is why I will propose soon the regulation on online political advertising. It’s time for the digital world to respect the European values. 2/2

— Věra Jourová (@VeraJourova) October 6, 2021

Antitrust chief Vestager also tweeted in the wake of the global Facebook outage — which was also an Instagram and a WhatsApp outage, since all three social services run on the same infrastructure, all being owned by Facebook — with the EU’s EVP saying the episode demonstrated the need for “alternatives and choices in the tech market.”

Given that headline anti-consolidation message, EU citizens might be forgiven for asking why Vestager’s department hasn’t blocked a single tech acquisition — including Google’s recent gobbling of health tech company Fitbit?

How exactly does Vestager propose to support startups and alternatives in gaining the necessary scale to challenge platform giants?

Sadly her tweet didn’t contain any solutions — so the search for a remedy goes on.

#facebookdown tells 2 things :
1/ we need alternatives & choices in the #tech market, and must not rely on a few big players, whoever they are => that’s the aim of #DMA
2/ that sometimes, there’s nothing better than talking to each other… just on the phone or … offline

— Margrethe Vestager (@vestager) October 5, 2021

It also remains to be seen where the Commission’s next Google antitrust investigation will go.

This summer the bloc’s executive confirmed it was looking into the tech giant’s adtech — lagging antitrust interventions already been taken elsewhere in the region, including in the U.K. and France.

As for Google, the tech giant has been busy fighting the Commission’s existing antitrust enforcements against it.

Last week its lawyers were up in court for their appeal against the Commission’s $5 billion Android antitrust fine — claiming that penalty was based on flawed calculations, was not “appropriate” and that it had not had any anti-competitive intent.