Techmeme
December 30, 2020, 10:05 AM

Top News

Stephanie Chan / Sensor Tower Blog:
Consumers worldwide spent $407.6M across the App Store and Google Play on Christmas, up 34.5% YoY; mobile games rose 27% YoY to $295.6M, led by Honor of Kings  —  2020 has been a record-setting year for worldwide spending on mobile apps and games, which passed $100 billion in a single year for the first time ever in November.
Flurry:
Survey: US smartphone activations on Christmas Day fell 23% YoY as iPhones dominated the top 10 activated smartphones and budget devices, like LG K30, surged  —  Christmas day in the United States is the single greatest day for new smartphone activations.  And despite supply chain delays caused …
Reed Albergotti / Washington Post:
Federal judge dismisses Apple's claims that mobile device virtualization company Corellium violated copyright law with its software to run iOS on PCs  —  Corellium helps customers find bugs in Apple's mobile operating system.  Apple aimed to shut it down.  —  Corellium, a security research firm sued …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google is testing an expansion of its “Short Videos” feature at the top of mobile search that will surface TikTok and Instagram videos in a dedicated carousel  —  Google is testing a new feature that will surface Instagram and TikTok videos in their own dedicated carousel …
Nathaniel Popper / New York Times:
Analysis of internal data at Coinbase through 2018 highlights pay inequity for women and Black employees; Coinbase says it implemented a new compensation plan  —  An analysis of internal pay data at the San Francisco company Coinbase shows disparities that were much larger than those in the tech industry.
Emily Birnbaum / Protocol:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is tying the fate of $2,000 stimulus checks to the repeal of Section 230  —  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is tying the fate of $2,000 stimulus checks to the repeal of Section 230, an effort that will likely doom both pieces of legislation in the Senate.
Jaewon Kang / Wall Street Journal:
Some US supermarkets say they aren't making money through Instacart due to the service's 10% commission on each order  —  Some supermarkets plan to stick with delivery service despite fees; Instacart says it lets grocers expand e-commerce without building their own infrastructure
Rohit Prasad / Fast Company:
The head scientist for Alexa argues that Turing Test, designed as a thought experiment, is no longer relevant for building AIs that are designed to help humans  —  This year marks 70 years since Alan Turing published his paper introducing the concept of the Turing Test in response to the question, “Can machines think?”
Tweets: @edbott
CoinDesk:
Coinbase says it will suspend trading of XRP on January 19, 2021, following the SEC's suit against Ripple  —  Coinbase said it will suspend trading of XRP, the cryptocurrency the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claimed last week is really a security.
Wall Street Journal:
France says it has resumed collecting its digital services tax, as the UK and Italy prepare to collect their own; France's 3% levy brought in €400M in 2019  —  Dispute centers on cross-border revenue at Google, Facebook, Amazon and other tech firms  —  Detente is ending in the global fight over tech taxes.

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Earlier Picks

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Bloomberg:
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David Shepardson / Reuters: