Bloomberg Quint: Google Ban Fails to Stamp Out Short-Term Payday Lending Apps. “In August, Google announced a global crackdown on Android apps that offer short-term loans, saying it wanted to protect consumers from what it called ‘deceptive and exploitative’ terms. But five months later, payday-style applications offering fast money for one or two weeks are still easy to find in many countries on Google Play, the company’s marketplace for Android apps. Some charge interest rates that can exceed 200% annualized.”
Android
Digital Trends: Google releases 3 more Android apps to help you spend less time on your phone
Digital Trends: Google releases 3 more Android apps to help you spend less time on your phone. “Have you considered throwing your phone in an envelope to cut down on screen time? At least that’s what Google wants you to do with Envelope, one of the three experimental apps the company is releasing today. The new apps have emerged from the search engine giant’s Experiments With Google division and offer unorthodox solutions to help you spend less time staring at your phone.”
Hongkiat: 5 Best Apps to Monitor Mobile Data Usage
Hongkiat: 5 Best Apps to Monitor Mobile Data Usage. “It’s always a good idea to keep track of your mobile data usage so you can avoid exceeding your data usage quota. Among the two main mobile operating systems, Android natively provides you an interface to keep track and monitor mobile data usage; iOS on the other hand, doesn’t offer much information. So in this post, I am going to discuss some useful apps (both iOS and Android) that you can download to keep track of mobile data usage, starting with the one I’m current using.”
ZDNet: Google removes WhatsGap from app store
ZDNet: Google removes WhatsGap from app store. “Search engine giant Google has removed popular Hong Kong pro-democracy mapping app WhatsGap from its app store. WhatsGap is an app used to identify retailers that are in support of Hong Kong’s democracy. Google told ZDNet the removal of WhatsGap was sparked by ‘sensitive content’ that was being published on the app.”
Gizmodo: What Is Google Labs And Why Is It Appearing On Some Phones?
Gizmodo: What Is Google Labs And Why Is It Appearing On Some Phones?. “Back in 2011 Google Labs was discontinued on desktops. A home from experimental Google features, it allowed users to test them before being rolled out en masse. We’ve known for awhile that Labs was set to make a comeback on mobile, and it seems to already be appearing for some people.”
Neowin: Open letter from 50+ organizations want Google to do something about Android bloatware
Neowin: Open letter from 50+ organizations want Google to do something about Android bloatware. “Over 50 organizations including the Privacy International, Digital Rights Foundation, DuckDuckGo, and Electronic Frontier Foundation have written an open letter to Alphabet and Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai about exploitive pre-installed bloatware on Android devices and how they pose a privacy risk to consumers.”
ZDNet: Google details its three-year fight against the Bread (Joker) malware operation
ZDNet: Google details its three-year fight against the Bread (Joker) malware operation. “While most malware operators give up once Google detects their apps, the Bread group never did. For more than three years, since 2017, Bread operators have been churning out new versions of their malware on a weekly basis.”
