Epic Games has finally yielded to Google as the company makes Fortnite available for download on Play Store.
Facebook has picked up equity stake worth $5.7 billion in Reliance’s Jio Platform, making it one of the largest minority FDI in India. The duo plans to take Indian consumers closer to local kirana stores.
Blockchain firm Ripple has sued YouTube over a cryptocurrency giveaway scam.
Netflix’s subscriptions surge with the video streaming company adding 15.8 million subscribers in the quarter ending March 31. Finally, speaker-maker Sonos has launched its own streaming radio.
Facebook buys 9.99% stake in Reliance Jio Platforms
Facebook has picked up a tenth of the equity stakes in Jio Platforms for Rs.43,574 crore as the social networking giant expands its footprint in Asia.
The investment values Jio Platforms at Rs. 4.62 lakh crore pre-money enterprise value, making it the largest FDI for minority investment in India, Reliance said in a statement.
As part of this deal, WhatsApp will pair up with Reliance’s JioMart to enable small businesses to connect with consumers directly. “This is especially important right now, because small businesses are the core of every economy and they need our support,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post. “India has more than 60 million small businesses and millions of people rely on them for jobs.”
The two companies plan to work closely to bring consumers closer to local stores by helping them transact with JioMart using WhatsApp.
The deal comes at a time when WhatsApp has secured approval to launch its digital payment service in India.
A blockchain company sues YouTube over cryptocurrency scam
Blockchain company Ripple sued YouTube for failing to protect consumers on the video-streaming company’s platform from a cryptocurrency “giveaway scam.”
The giveaway scam is an attempt made by scammers to defraud money from unassuming consumers via social media impersonation.
Ripple claims that scammers posted a video on YouTube impersonating its CEO Brad Garlinghouse to bait consumers into sending thousands of dollar worth of Ripple’s cryptocurrency XRP.
In the video, viewers are instructed to “to send between 500 XRP to 1 million XRP” to a specific virtual currency wallet; in return, they are promised “between 25,000 XRP to 5 million XRP”, according to a court filing. (5 million XRP = $1 million.)
“YouTube and other big technology and social media platforms must be held accountable for not implementing sufficient processes for fighting these scams.”
Ripple has also accused YouTube of profiting from the scam by selling paid ads on the video impersonating Mr. Garlinghouse.
YouTube spokesperson Alex Joseph said the platform takes abuse seriously and acts quickly when it detects violations of policies, such as scams or impersonation, according to a Reuters report.
Speaker-maker Sonos introduces streaming radio app
Sonos has launched it free streaming radio service exclusively for owners of Sonos speakers. The service will stream ads on the platform.
“The new service introduces a holistic and cohesive way to explore radio, bringing together more than 60,000 stations from multiple streaming partners alongside original programming from Sonos,” the company said in statement.
The content is picked by a team of curators, DJs, and artists, and has both classics and contemporary music.
A large part of the content that will be available on Sonos Radio will be music and news streaming. This was already part of the Sonos app. The company is now repackaging it for the Radio.
The service will also provide ad-free content. For this, the company is leveraging its existing relationships with eminent music artists.
Sonos Radio will feature content curated by David Byrne, Thom Yorke and Brittany Howard to draw listeners to celebrity-curated playlists.
The service will roll out from Tuesday as part of the app’s software update. Sonos Radio users can integrate TuneIn and iHeartRadio with the app.
Fortnite is now available on Play Store
Epic Games has finally released the popular game Fortnite for download on Google’s Play Store, 18 months after releasing the game as third-party software, TheVerge reported.
The gaming company said it was doing so as Google has been putting third-party software at a disadvantage by warning its users of potential security threats when they download an app outside Google Play’s ecosystem.
“After 18 months of operating Fortnite on Android outside of the Google Play Store, we’ve come to a basic realization,” Epic said in a statement cited by TheVerge.
“Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store.”
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has accused both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store of abusing their dominant market position to over-charge game developers.
“The 30% store tax is a high cost in a world where game developers’ 70% must cover all the cost of developing, operating, and supporting their games,” Sweeney had said in when Fortnite was first released as an installer app.
Netflix adds 16 million new subscribers
Nearly 16 million people started subscribing to Netflix in the quarter ending March 31 as the COVID-19 pandemic nudged people to stay at home and stream content online.
The new addition of 15.8 million customers is more than twice what the streaming company had forecast for the quarter. With this increase, Neflix will have 182.9 million viewers worldwide.
“Paid net membership additions for the three months ended March 31, 2020 increased 64% as compared to the three months ended March 31, 2019, as a result of the long term trend toward streaming on demand entertainment and in large extent due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting local government mandates of home confinement,” the company said in a filing.
Netflix anticipates that actions taken by governments, including social distancing and isolating residents to their homes, to battle the global health crisis will impact businesses negatively.
