Monthly Archives: July 2021

Google has shared timing for a change for Google Play developers announced last summer during Google I/O: starting in August, Google will require that new Play apps will have to be published using the Android App Bundle format. Your phone will still download apps as APKs, but the app bundles will create APKs that are optimized for your device.

On a Google page about Android App Bundle, the company touts many potential improvements with the new format, such as smaller app downloads for users. But the format has a catch: Android App Bundles are a format that only Google Play uses, which could complicate app redistribution.

The timing of Googles announcement also comes just days after Microsoft announced Windows 11, which has the ability to let you sideload Android apps as APKs. Googles switch to App Bundles may mean that there will be fewer apps available to run on Microsofts new operating system, though youll also be able to get Android apps on Windows 11 from the Amazon Appstore.

The requirement to use Android App Bundles only applies to new apps, according to Google. Existing apps are currently exempt, as are private apps being published to managed Google Play users, the company says. And if youre a developer planning on releasing a new app, you only have a short time to make sure youre using the new format.

Update July 1st, 6:38PM ET: Clarified how long this change has been in the works and specified more detail about the Android App Bundle format.

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Google is moving away from APKs on the Play Store - The Verge

The Android App Bundle logo.

App Bundles let Google Play servers customize an app for each user.

A midrange phone user gets the base APK, xhdpi image assets, the ARM v7 code, and the English language.

Here, a high-end phone gets the xxxhdpi asset bucket, ARM64, and a whopping three languages.

At Google I/O 2018, Google said APK config splits offered an average of 20 percent space savings, thanks to more targeted languages, image assets, and architectures.

For more specific app-size savings, Google showed off this chart.

Google I/O 2018

Config splits only work on Android 5.0 Lollipop and up. So for older devices, full APKs are generated.

Android's app file format, the APK (Android PacKage), has been with us since the 2008 launch of Android. It's portable, easy to create since it's just a structured .zip file, and widely supported by a variety of tools. Windows 11 is even going to support the format as part of its upcomingAndroid compatibility.Google, though, doesn't want APKs to be the way to publish an Android app anymore. Google's Android Developer Blog recaps how, starting in August, new apps being uploaded to the Play Store will need to use the new Android App Bundles (AAB) format to distribute apps. This sounds like just the beginning, and Google says that App Bundles"will replace the APK as the standard publishing format."

Android App Bundles were introduced to the Android ecosystem in 2018, and I wrote a big section about them in the Android 9 review. The basic sales pitch is that Android devices have plenty of different hardware and language combinations that apps have to support, and shipping all of that code to every individual device is a waste of space.Android supports over 150 languages, four different CPU architectures (ARMv7, ARMv8, x86, and x86_64), and several screen resolution buckets. It's common to pile all of this into a single APK (though sometimes they are split up by CPU architecture), but doing so means each device gets a lot of code and resources that are irrelevant for its specific combination of CPU, locale, and screen size. While this waste of storage space doesn't matter much on high-end phones with good Internet connections, it can be a big deal for cheaper, storage-limited devices and in places where speedy Internet is hard to come by.

Google's solution is the Android App Bundle, which turns Android app distribution from a monolithic, universal APKinto a collection of "split APKs" that can be specifically doled out by the Google Play Store for each individual device. As the name suggests, these "Split APKs" aren't entire apps. They're parts of an app, each targeting a specific area of change, that combine to form the final app. With App Bundles, if you have a high-resolution, ARMv8 device with a locale set to English with App Bundles, the Play Store will spit out a set of Split APKs that supports only that device type. If your friend has a low-resolution ARM v7 phone set for English and Hindi, they'll get another set of APK that supports exactly that. Google Play can generate bespoke APKs for every user, giving them only the code they need and nothing more. Google says the result is apps that are 15 percent smaller than a universal APK.

Developers using App Bundles can even modularize features of anapp. This allows the features to only be delivered to devices that support them, or they're just not included in the initial download and are only available to users as an on-demand download. The same on-demand feature kicks in if a user changes the locale settings.

While the App Bundle system would prefer to send out the fancy, new split APKs, it doesn't have to. Since it can format apps however it wants, a backward-compatible, monolithic APK can still be generated. That makes theapproach universally compatible with all Android phones, no matter how neglected your current device is.

Like many new Android features, the change from APKs to Android App Bundles results in a more complex, sophisticated feature set for rolling out apps. But it also gives Google a lot more control over the Android ecosystem. Android App Bundlesneed to be processed by an app store's cloud computer in order to be useful. While App Bundles are an open source format, and Google has an open source "bundletool" app that can compile them, some other company would need to build its own infrastructure, pay the server costs to host it in the cloud, and handle the scary app signing requirements (more on that later).

The open source nature of App Bundles allows development tools to more easily support them. But an alternative app store would have to take on so much work and responsibility that it's doubtful the format will become anything other than the Google Play App Package.

One major security component of APKs is app signing. This is a digital certificate owned by the app developer that certifies it made the app. The app signature is not really relevant on the first install, but for every point after that, the signatures need to match. That means only the owner of the certificatethe original app developeris able to update that app. No random third party can make an APK called "Google-Pay.apk" that overwrites the real Google Pay app and steal all your bank information.

Google's control over the Play Store means it already owned the street and the driveway, but now it has even more control over your app. If Google Play's roving bands of automated terminator bots target your developer account for some perceived infraction, you'll have even less recourse.

Android App Bundles place an enormous amount of power and responsibility in the hands of the app-store owner. If the app-store infrastructure gets compromised, a third party could get access to the developer keys and start pushing out malicious updates. If you dont trust the app store owner, too bad. It owns the signing key now and can change your app without your knowledge, if it wanted to. A government could compel the app store owner to change your app, too. In the case of Google, the company is probably doing a better job of storage security than most app developers. But again,it's hard to imagine any non-Google stores adopting this.

Google has made some concessions to alleviate concerns about this. Developers can keep a local copy of the signing key they upload to Google, allowing them to generate valid updates that can be installed over Google Play versions. Developers can also download signed "Distribution APKs" from the Google Play Developer Console, which are old-school universal APKs that can be uploaded to other app stores. If you're concerned about Google changing your app without your consent, Google says an optional new "code transparency" feature will let developers verify that the hashes on downloaded app code match what they uploaded.

As of August, App Bundles will be mandatory for new apps.Google says that, for now, "Existing apps are currently exempt" from the app-bundling requirement. We're going to take the presence of the word "currently" as a big indicator of future plans.

For Google, Android App Bundles are a big deal. At Google I/O 2018, the company said that if every app switched to bundles, Google would save 10petabytes of bandwidthper day, which is an incredible number, indicating the scale the Play Store operates at. For those of us who don't care about Google's bandwidth bills, though, is a potential 15 percent space savings really worth upending the entire APK ecosystem and transferring even more power to the Play Store and Google's servers?

Listing image by Google

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Google Play dumps APKs for the more Google-controlled Android App Bundle - Ars Technica

To the Editor:

Google Dominates a Hidden Market With No Rules, by Dina Srinivasan (Opinion guest essay, June 25), makes claims about our advertising technology business that we strongly disagree with.

Independent reports show that the fees we charge our partners are lower than the industry average. In fact, the 100 largest news publishers many of which have in-house sales teams that perform many of the functions provided by Googles ad sales, exchange and brokerage operations using our tools keep more than 95 percent of the revenue that their ad space earns, a far cry from the 50 percent Ms. Srinivasan cites.

While one section of Ms. Srinivasans essay refers to ad intermediaries in general, our advertising tools do not result in publishers selling for up to 50 percent less than what it otherwise would, as Ms. Srinivasan suggests. In fact, our research shows that publishers revenue increases when they use our tools thats why they choose to use them!

Ms. Srinivasan has ignored the inconvenient reality that this industry is highly competitive with rivalry among household names like Adobe, Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, Facebook, Oracle, Twitter and News Corp, a company for which Ms. Srinivasan has consulted. We also face competition from a legion of lesser-known but fast-growing competitors like The Trade Desk and Magnite. Many of these rivals also offer ad platforms and tools similar to ours that cater to both advertisers and publishers.

While it may be an inconvenient truth for the lawsuits she is championing, its clear that competition in online advertising technology has reduced ad tech fees and expanded options for publishers and advertisers.

Adam CohenLondonThe writer is director of economic policy at Google.

Original post:

Opinion | From Google, on Its Advertising Tech Business - The New York Times

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., July 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --At last, Pharos is here. Joshua Parry teamed up with The Appineersa leading mobile app design and development agency, established in 2017 and located in Atlanta, Georgiato create Pharos.

Joshua's vision for Pharos came about after wanting to create a platform that shines a spotlight on the world of mobile businesses in your area. From food trucks to traveling hair salons users can easily find their new local spot using this app!

Introducing Pharos - a platform that lets users explore local mobile businesses in their area.

The app appeals include the following user-friendly features:

Visit pharosmobileapp.com for further information about the app including screenshots, features, and a video.

Contact: Mobile U, LLC

Phone:719-657-1307

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pharosmobileapp

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pharosmobileapp

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/pharosmobileapp

Download the app from App Store (iOS):

https://www.google.com/urlq=https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pharos/id1542969475&sa=D&source

=hangouts&ust=1624388309745000&usg=AFQjCNHi3kvb93NoG2CzgqRaThevEHGf4Q

Download the app from Google Play Store (Android):

https://www.google.com/urlq=https://play.google.com/store/apps/detailsid3Dcom.app.pharos&sa

=D&source=hangouts&ust=1624388309745000&usg=AFQjCNFIlhRqmrVvEu5sT-tQFHc-lXc87A

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pharos-is-currently-available-in-the-ios-app-and-google-play-store-301324426.html

SOURCE The Appineers

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Pharos Is Currently Available in the iOS App and Google Play Store - Johnson City Press (subscription)

Wing, the drone delivery arm of Googles parent company Alphabet, has launched a free app in the US to help pilots fly their drones legally. OpenSky has been available in Australia since 2019 but is now available for both commercial and recreational pilots in the US to use for anything from conducting commercial surveys to filming and photography. Its available now on both iOS and Android.

OpenSky is based on Google Maps, Wing tells DroneLife, and its color-coded to show areas where pilots can and cant fly. Green areas are a-okay, but pilots need to exercise caution in yellow areas, and shouldnt fly at all in red areas. Perhaps its most useful feature is that it lets pilots submit requests to fly in controlled airspace and receive near real-time authorizations. The approval process works in airspace that supports Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC), which includes hundreds of air traffic facilities and airports according to an FAQ on Wings website.

As well as checking where its legal to fly and request authorization, OpenSky also lets pilots log and plan their flights. The app needs an internet connection to operate, Wing notes, so youre advised to take a screenshot of a flight approval if youre going to need it in an area with poor reception.

The launch of OpenSky comes as drones are receiving increased amounts of regulation in the US and around the world, as lawmakers catch up with the relatively new technology. Pilots in the US currently have to register to fly any drones weighing over 0.55 pounds, and from 2023 drones will have to broadcast their location during flight.

Wings argument is that an app like OpenSky makes it easier for pilots to obey the rules and fly the nearly 2 million drones that have been registered in the US. Compliance will ultimately expand the uses and benefits of dronesamong them emergency response, commercial inspections and contactless deliveryto more people, Wing said in a blog post.

Its that last point, contactless delivery, thats perhaps most important for Wing, which is best known as a drone delivery business. As well as Finland and Australia, Wing has been making deliveries in Christiansburg, Virginia. Speaking to DroneLife, Wings Lia Reich said the company has plans to expand its drone delivery service in the US later this year.

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Googles Wing launches free app to help drone pilots obey US regulations - The Verge

by: Mike Cronin, Austin Business Journal Staff Writer

AUSTIN (KXAN) To find its next CEO, Austin-headquartered AppSumo is offering $100,000 to anyone who refers the person ultimately hired as chief executive.

Noah Kagan, founder of the company that offers daily deals for software programs, pointed out that paying that kind of finders fee for a CEO actually is really cheap.

How much would you pay for a great wife? Kagan asked rhetorically. Its the same thing with a great CEO, who will make the company millions.

Kagan hit on a truth that might escape other entrepreneurs: If you hire people in the traditional way, youre going to get traditional people. If you recruit exceptionally, youre going to get exceptional talent.

You can read more of this story on the Austin Business Journal website.

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Heres how to beat Apple, Google and other giants in the recruiting game - KXAN.com

Last week, third-party cookies received a stay of execution from Google that will allow them to survive until late 2023 almost two years beyond their previously declared decommission date. But the search-ads-and-apps biz is already planning a resurrection of sorts because third-party cookies are just too useful.

The Chocolate Factory envisions a lesser form of third-party cookie, one that in theory won't be used for tracking but will be able to support other more acceptable use cases. Google software engineer Dylan Cutler and engineering manager Kaustubha Govind call their confection "partitioned cookies" in a Web Platform Incubator Community Group proposal called "CHIPs."

Cookies are files that web applications can set in web browsers to store data. They have legitimate uses, like storing data related to the state of the application (e.g. whether you're logged in), and they can also be used for tracking people across websites.

Third-party cookies set by scripts that interact with third-party servers track people by storing a value on one website and then reading that value on another website that implements a similar third-party script. The third-party service in this case then knows all the websites running their script that were visited by the tracked individual.

That's the sort of privacy-invading behavior that led browser makers like Apple, Brave, Mozilla, and others to block third-party cookies by default. But doing so has created problems by interfering with applications that rely on third-party cookies to deliver services across domain contexts.

The browser security model is based on the distinction between first-party and third-party contexts. When an individual visits a specific web domain, that domain operates in a first party context; services available at other domains are considered third-party and face various limitations on what they can do.

Google's CHIPs proposal Cookies Having Independent Partitioned State calls for cookies that can be set by third-party service but only read within the context of the first-party site where they were initially set, as opposed to other sites also running the setter's third-party script.

For example, Cutler and Govind describe a scenario where the site retail.com wants to work with a third-party service support.chat.com to embed a support chat box on its site.

"Without the ability to set a cross-site cookie, support.chat.com could instead rely on retail.com passing along their first-party state (or some derived value of it)," the Googlers explain in their proposal. "However, if the users have not yet created an account and the support widget is helping them sign up, then retail.com would have no notion of identity to forward to support.chat.com."

There are other plausible uses too, like third-party content delivery networks that use cookies to serve access-controlled content, front-end frameworks that rely on remote hosting and remote procedure calls to interact with services, and embedded code designed to support software-as-a-service apps.

Firefox and Safari have each taken steps toward implementing their own versions of partitioned cookies, so Google's approach has conceptual support from other browser makers even if the implementations currently differ.

But privacy advocates have taken issue with Google's approach declaring intent to prototype the technology without much consultation.

"The tech has been talked about for awhile, it works when combined with other techniques to slightly reduce the harm from third-party cookies, but it's not the same as deprecating third-party cookies," said Zach Edwards, co-founder of web analytics biz Victory Medium, in a message to The Register.

"Google is proposing this shift without even acknowledging how it fits into larger plans, and thus making people guess and try to work out the calendar for upcoming Chrome additions and deprecations," he said. "It's an outrageously impossible task if the company making those decisions doesn't keep a running list of changes that impact global businesses, and also flippantly suggests new additions on non-Google websites and via a regularly rotating group of largely unknown Google developers, who when challenged about proposals often fall back on, 'All opinions are my own.'"

Such concern is widespread among those involved in ad tech and marketing because Google is in the midst of changing the rules by which online advertisers operate. The effort to phase out the third-party cookie is part of the company's ongoing Privacy Sandbox initiative, which aims to implement multiple technical specifications that change how online advertising works in the browser. And no one not Google, its allies, its competitors, regulators, or internet users is certain how these works-in-progress will eventually work and interoperate.

In January, the UKs Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) began poking around in Google's Privacy Sandbox to see whether the contemplated changes would disadvantage competitors. In response, Google made a set of commitments to be more forthcoming about its technologies and the viability of competing alternatives.

"The CMA seemingly told Google that they need to change their process and communicate more clearly how data supply changes are being made in Chrome and in Google's advertising systems," said Edwards.

"But if this new proposal is how Google perceives the CMA-mandate, then the folks in the UK should schedule a bit more tea time because they are spinning their wheels during office hours on demands that are being ignored."

Even seemingly minor proposals like CHIPs can be complicated because they don't exist in isolation. They have to be considered in the context of all the other technologies they may touch in deployment.

For example, Google has a proposal called First-Party Sets that would make different domains (e.g. apple.com and icloud.com) owned by the same company function as a single first-party domain for the purpose of cookies. Privacy researcher Lukasz Olejnik has expressed concern about how CHIPs might expand the tracking possibilities when used in conjunction with First-Party Sets.

What's more, the proposal itself acknowledges that partitioned cookies cannot currently be defended against Chrome extensions.

"Extensions' background contexts can query and store cookies across partitions, meaning they could store a cross-site identifier across partitions," explain Cutler and Govind. "Unfortunately, this type of attack is unavoidable due to the nature of extensions."

"Even if we block partitioned cookies (or even all cookies) from extensions' background contexts, an extension could still use content scripts to write cross-site identifiers to the DOM which the site's own script could copy to the site's partitioned cookie jar."

And there are other potential problems that need to be ironed out, like the risk of making sites more prone to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks and increasing the risk of denial-of-service attacks through cookie proliferation that exceeds Chrome's 180-cookie-per-domain limit.

None of these issues are insurmountable. But perhaps Google's decision to treat the technical foundations of web advertising a business upon which it and so many companies depend as a set of experiments needs to be reconsidered in light of the company's market power. Moving fast and breaking things may work well for a nimble startup but when giants do so there's collateral damage.

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Google has second thoughts about cutting cookies, so serves up CHIPs - The Register

Google Cloud and Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) today announced a partnership to jointly develop 5G and edge cloud solutions to help communications service providers (CSPs) digitally transformand to unlock new enterprise and consumer use cases.

Globally, industries with edge presences - including communication service providers, retailers, manufacturers, transport businesses, healthcareand media/entertainment providers - face pressures to build more digitized businesses and new digital experiences for their customers.

To help businesses address this shift, Google Cloud and Ericsson are working together to develop new solutions at Ericssons Silicon Valley D-15 Labs, a state-of-the-art innovation center where advanced solutions and technologies can be developed and tested on a live, multi-layers 5G platform.

Ericsson and Google Cloud have already completed functional onboarding of Ericsson 5G on Anthos to enable telco edge and on-premise use cases for CSPs and enterprises.

As part of the partnership, Google Cloud and Ericsson are also piloting enterprise applications at the edge on a live network with TIM. The project, which will automate the functions of TIMs core 5G network and cloud-based applications, will use TIMs Telco Cloud infrastructure, Google Cloud solutionsand Ericssons 5G core network and orchestration technologies.

The joint offerings will help enterprises in the automotive, transportation, manufacturingand other sectors improve efficiencies and lower latency by bringing connectivity close to companies physical locations.

Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud, says: Organizations have a tremendous opportunity to digitally transform their businesses with 5G and cloud capabilities like artificial intelligence and machine learning at the edge. We are proud to partner with Ericsson to help build a foundation for communications service providers and enterprises alike to take advantage of cloud technology and cloud-native services, from telecom network core to the edge and enterprise premises.

Niklas Heuveldop, President and Head of Ericsson North America, says: 5G is a powerful innovation platform. Combined with edge cloud capabilities, 5G has the potential to accelerate the digital transformation of virtually any sector of industry or society. We are excited about our partnership with Google Cloud as we engage with our customers to leverage our combined capabilities to solve real-world business challenges for the benefit of consumers, enterprises and society at large.

Ericsson and Google previously formed a services partnership to enable the digital transformation of operator networks and application migration through cloud-native, container-based solutions.

To learn more about Google Clouds telecom strategy, click here.

Additional Resources:

About Google CloudGoogle Cloud accelerates organizations ability to digitally transform their business with the best infrastructure, platform, industry solutions and expertise. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Googles cutting-edge technology all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.

About EricssonEricsson enables communications service providers to capture the full value of connectivity. The companys portfolio spans Networks, Digital Services, Managed Services, and Emerging Business. It is designed to help our customers go digital, increase efficiency and find new revenue streams. Ericssons innovation investments have delivered the benefits of mobility and mobile broadband to billions of people around the world. Ericsson stock is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm and on Nasdaq New York. http://www.ericsson.com

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Google Cloud and Ericsson partner on 5G Edge - Ericsson

The European Union has opened an antitrust investigation into whether Google is stifling competition in the highly profitable online advertising market. The probe follows cases in France and elsewhere in Europe questioning how the company runs its ad business. It is the first time the EU has investigated Googles online display advertising business, where it serves as an intermediary between advertisers and publishers to fill ad space on web pages and apps.

Google collects data to be used for targeted advertising purposes, it sells advertising space and acts as an online advertising intermediary. So, Google is present at almost all levels of the supply chain for online display advertising, the European Commissions competition chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.

We are concerned that Google has made it harder for rival online advertising services to compete in the so-called ad tech stack. The investigation will also touch upon Googles plans to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome as part of its Privacy Sandbox plans, as well as the upcoming changes to advertising IDs on Android. At the heart of this is the question as to whether Google is unfairly limiting access to user data to its competitors?

This follows on the heels of the recent case in France where the competition regulator there fined Google $267 million last week for favoring its own services for placing online ads at the expense of rivals. The competition authority ruled that Google gave preferential treatment to its own ad inventory marketplace AdX and to the Doubleclick Ad Exchange, its real-time platform for letting clients choose and sell ads.

More to the point, ...it is the first decision in the world to look into complex algorithmic auctions processes through which online display advertising works," the authority's president Isabelle de Silva said in a statement.

Related Article:Highlights From Google's Marketing Livestream

Aidan Fitzpatrick is the founder of UK-based Reincubate. He said that Google has a bunch of data and can monetize it, but that does not mean that others have the capability to do that too. The key is the scale and Google's move to deprecate cookies removes a scale of data from the competitive realm of the marketplace for most enterprises, he said.

As ingrained consumer behavior makes Google the default in search and therefore the default repository for consumer data removing access to this data does stringently limit competitor access. Unfairly so? he asks. Difficult question as it was Google, not the competitors, who endeavored to create a search ecosystem for consumers to operate in, and to monetize that ecosystem through the exchange of access for user data.

It raises the question, at what point does the Google market model become a monopoly of consumer data? If the large tech players effectively remove all data access from the marketplace, then it imperils free enterprise and is inherently unfair. If some tech leaders do it and others don't then what are the options for the competitive marketplace seeking data-fueled resources?

Facebook might be able to monetize some user behavior data, but it would not just need a single person's data it needs the whole graph of data and interactions. Could any other business without scale make use of that? Would the data be relevant? Would making them share it be useful? Or other large search entities such as Bing.

If not considered unfair practice today, I predict that if this present course of data firewalling under the banner of consumer privacy will indeed lead to unfair competitive practice, he said.

Of course, there is another, more significant issue, which this line of questioning opens: Who really owns this consumer data, anyway? Or are there staked portions to be considered?

You own the photo you post on Instagram, and the description you write. But if someone likes your photo, is that your data? Or theirs? Or both? Whose consent is required to transfer that? If you can answer that question, is the answer the same in the UK as it is in the U.S.? What about in India?

While Google's reported market share of the display market may appear lower you could argue Facebook and Google are servicing entirely different digital markets and customer needs. Google has a monopoly of the search market at 92% (2021). Facebook market share of the social media market is 71% (2021), also a monopoly, said Adam Clarke a corporate SEO expert and author.

Google's data is at the very core of maintaining their competitive position. Everything a user searched since they have signed up for a Gmail account, including where to study, financial research, relationship problems, family concerns, career, news and media preferences all saved in Google's servers," he added.

"This data is kept securely at Google, to keep their advertising services more relevant and targeted than competitors by a significant degree. This data, which is essentially a chronology of user's life and interests, is very valuable."

He pointed out that almost every website you visit has the Google Analytics tracking code, which feeds user information to Google's advertising software. The only way for other people to use this data is to become a customer of Google's display ad services.

Google Analytics move to phase out third party cookies is marked as a move to improve privacy, but is also likely (but unverified) to be part of a much larger initiative to slowly, but eventually phase out third party cookies in Chrome and the Google search results.

This will be replaced with Google's machine learning technology that is able to fingerprint users without the use of a third party cookie, by analysing the user's online behaviour patterns through machine learning software. This would force all websites that want any kind of targeted advertising to rely on Google's ad services and Facebook, as those are the only two services that will have any sufficient data.

Yes, it's fair to say Google's display services are a monopoly for the search engine market and the only way that someone can avail themselves of this data is to be a paying customers, and there's unlikely to be any valid competitors for targeted advertising anytime soon that will supplace Google and Facebook's monopolies of the search and social markets, respectively, or realistically become a competitor anytime in the future, he said.

Google is unfairly limiting access to user data to its competitors, Bill DeLisi, CEO of Chino, CA-based GOFBA, concludes. It is well known in the industry that Google requiring advertisers to use their own Ad Manager to display ads on YouTube, and favoring its own ad exchanges on YouTube and other sites, has presented an unfair advantage to Googles competitors, he said.

With Google eliminating 3rd party cookies in Chrome with their Privacy Sandbox plan (use this link for Privacy Sandbox: they will have control over some of the most drastic changes on the internet. By blocking third-party tracking cookies, Google is actually walling off a portion of the internet. This would be a major disadvantage to its ad competitors by pretty much eliminating their access to detailed information about consumer web behavior, he said.

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Google Stands Accused of Unfairly Limiting Data Access to Its Competitors - CMSWire

Now that Google Photos no longer offers free unlimited photo storage, you may want to check out a different online service to store and manage your photos. If youre a PC user, Microsoft OneDrive may be worth considering because its built into Windows 10 and is seamless and easily accessible.

Though OneDrive isnt a dedicated photo manager like Google Photos, you can still use it to back up, sync, and share your photos from your PC, the mobile app, and on the web. It can also be used to view, manage, and search for photos, create special albums, view photos by location, and automatically upload any images taken on your mobile device.

The major downside with OneDrive is that it offers only 5GB of free storage. And that amount of space is for all of your files, not just your photos. Even Google Photos still gives you 15GB of free storage. However, if youre an Office 365 subscriber, you get a whopping 1TB of OneDrive space. Otherwise, you can score 100GB of storage for $1.99 a month.

Now, lets look at the ways to enlist OneDrive as your photo manager. For the steps here, well assume youre already using OneDrive for file backup and syncing.

To back up and sync files and photos in OneDrive, place them within the OneDrive folder in File Explorer or inside the Desktop, Documents, or Pictures folders. This means you can leave your default Pictures folder where it is, and the photos inside will be synced.

To set this up, right-click on the OneDrive icon in the Windows System Tray and select Settings. At the Settings window, click the Backup tab and click Manage backup.

Make sure that the Pictures entry is selected and then click the Start backup button. OneDrive tells you that its starting to back up your files. Click View sync progress to check on the status of the backup. After the backup is complete, you can view your synced photos from the Pictures folder in File Explorer.

By default, your photos (and other OneDrive files) are stored online and only downloaded to your PC when you open them. The idea here is to save space on your hard drive.However, this means you need to be connected to the internet to access your files. You can tell if a file or folder is being stored online only because it will display a cloud icon next to it.

To download a folder or file so that its always stored on your computer as well as in the cloud, right-click on it and select Always keep on this device. After the folder or file has been downloaded, a green check mark appears next to it.

To store all your synced photos and other files on your computer, right-click the OneDrive System Tray icon and select Settings. Click the Settings tab and uncheck the box next to Save space and download files as you use them, then click OK.

You can also automatically upload photos to OneDrive that you save on your computer. With the OneDrive Settings window open, click the Backup tab.

Check the box under Photos and Videos to automatically save photos and videos to OneDrive whenever you connect a camera, phone, or other device to your PC. You can also opt to automatically save screenshots to OneDrive. Click OK when done.

You can do one better if you use the mobile app for iOS and Android. Instead of connecting your phone to the computer in order to sync photos, the app can upload any photos and videos you take to OneDrive automatically.

To turn this on, open the app and tap the Photos icon in the toolbar. You should see a prompt at the top telling you that Camera upload is turned off. Tap the Turn On button, and any photos you take will automatically be saved to OneDrive.

You can share a photo in OneDrive from your computer. Right-click on the photo you want to share and select the Share command. In the pop-up window, choose whether you want the recipient to be able to edit the file or only view it.

Type the name or email address of that recipient, add a message if you wish, and then click the Send button to share the file.

There is more you can do with your photos by heading to your online OneDrive website. Right-click on the OneDrive icon in the System Tray and choose the View online option. At the left pane, click the Photos category to see all the photos stored in OneDrive organized by date.

By default, this view reveals all your photos stored in OneDrive. To narrow the scope to just photos stored in the Pictures folder, click the drop-down arrow next to Show photos and change it to Pictures folder. Squeeze more photos on the screen by displaying them as tiles. Click the drop-down arrow next to the square in the upper right and select Tiles.

Click a photo to open and view it full screen. From the top toolbar, you can share the photo, add it to an existing or new album, play a slideshow, rotate its orientation, or edit the image. Other options allow you to download it to your computer, delete it, open the files location in OneDrive, embed a link to the file for a website or blog, or view the images version history.

Use the Next and Previous buttons to cycle through images. To view information about the photo, click the Info icon, or click the X button to return to a view of all your photos.

If you wish to edit a photo, click the Edit button. From the editing screen, you can crop, flip, or rotate the image. The photos brightness, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, saturation, warmth, or tint can also be tweaked.

Click the Albums tab to view your photos within collected albums. If you want to create albums for your photos, OneDrive already suggests potential albums based on multiple photos from a specific date. Click one of the suggested albums and choose Add to your Albums to keep it or Discard album to get rid of it.

You can create your own album by clicking the Albums tab on the website. Click Create a new album, then name your album and select the photos you wish to add.Click on each photo individually or click the circle in front of a specific date to grab all photos for that date. Click Add album at the top and your new album appears.

You can also find photos based on location under the Places tab. On this page, you can click a specific place to find all photos geotagged with that location.

If you cant find a specific photo, you can search for it. Use the search box at the top of the OneDrive website to search by name or tag. Thanks to the artificial intelligence used in OneDrive, you can even search for an object or text in the photo.

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Quitting Google Photos? How to Manage Your Photos With Microsoft OneDrive - PCMag