Techmeme
August 14, 2020, 2:55 PM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
By weaponizing Fortnite and with Apple as its primary target, Epic Games is well positioned to lead the fight for a change in app store policies  —  Epic Games executed its most ambitious Fortnite live event yesterday, leading both Apple and Google to remove one of the world's most popular games from their app stores.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Google removes Fortnite from its Play Store, argues that although its Android ecosystem is open, Epic's decision violates store policies  —  You can still install it directly from Epic, however  —  Following its removal from the Apple App Store, Fortnite has also been kicked off of the Google Play Store for Android.
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
Epic files a suit against Google alleging that its Play Store payments restrictions constitute a monopoly, also accuses Google of being anti-competitive  —  Just like Apple  —  Epic Games has filed suit against Google over alleged antitrust violations, just hours after being dropped …
Austen Goslin / Polygon:
Accompanying its lawsuit, Epic released a 1984-inspired Fortnite short, parodying Apple's iconic Macintosh commercial  —  Epic is taking on the Apple App Store, with a video and a lawsuit  —  Epic premiered a new short video in Fortnite on Thursday called “Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite.”
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Andrew Webster / The Verge:
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Ubisoft fires Ashraf Ismail, the creative director of its newest Assassin's Creed game, following an investigation into misconduct allegations  —  Ubisoft Entertainment SA has dismissed the creative director of the newest Assassin's Creed game, the latest result of a MeToo reckoning …
Katyanna Quach / The Register:
Mozilla confirms a deal to keep Google as the default search provider in Firefox; source says the deal is worth $400M to $450M a year between now and 2023  —  $2.5m-a-year CEO set to take a pay cut, so that's all right, then  —  Mozilla has renewed its lucrative nine-figure deal with Google …
Tom Simonite / Wired:
Adobe to add tech to Photoshop later this year to cryptographically tag images with metadata to help identify deepfakes and verify authenticity of images/videos  —  Adobe is adding technology to tag images with metadata, part of an effort to identify deepfakes and other efforts at manipulation.
Eva Xiao / Wall Street Journal:
China says it will expand a pilot program of its digital currency, led by its central bank People's Bank of China, to include a number of large cities  —  Testing efforts are being led by the People's Bank of China  —  HONG KONG—China's Commerce Ministry said it would expand a pilot program …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Warner Music acquires IMGN, which creates and tracks viral social media content in categories like e-sports, gaming, and ASMR, source says for just under $100M  —  It's a whole new playing field these days for music labels and publishers, and today one of the big three made an acquisition …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple will launch “Apple One” tiered subscription bundles, with Music, TV+, News+, and a new virtual fitness service, as early as October  —  Apple Inc. is readying a series of bundles that will let customers subscribe to several of the company's digital services …
Gannon Burgett / Digital Photography Review:
Russell Kirsch, inventor of the pixel and algorithms that laid the foundations for image processing and image pattern recognition, dies at 91  —  Computer scientist Russell Kirsch, best known for inventing the pixel, passed away August 11 at his home in Portland, Oregon.  He was 91-years-old.

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