Google says it will phase out its use of Material Design interface elements within its iOS apps in favor of Apple’s own UIKit. Jeff Verkoeyen, the company's iOS design chief, announced the change in a Twitter thread spotted by The Verge.

Introduced in 2014, Material Design is Google’s in-house design language. The company has used it to unify the look and feel of its apps and services across various platforms. According to Verkoeyen, Google shifted its open source iOS Material component libraries into maintenance mode earlier this year after it conducted a “deep evaluation” of what it means to build a “hallmark” Google experience on iOS. What it found was that many of the custom elements it started building nearly a decade ago to fill gaps in UIKit’s design language are no longer necessary.

“With the introduction of SwiftUI and significant UIKit improvements in iOS 14+, it’s never been easier to build a great branded experience with a tiny amount of code,” Verkoeyen said. 

With the shift to UIKit, Verkoeyen expects his team will spend less time building custom code, which should hopefully lead to faster and more frequent releases. Additionally, the use of UIKit should allow the company to more tightly integrate its software into iOS. However, those benefits may pale in comparison to the fact the company’s apps may end up looking more at home on Apple devices.

Google has countersued Epic Games over in-app purchases on Fortnite, saying it "willfully breached" its Play Store developer agreement, ZDNet has reported. Epic originally sued Google in August, shortly after it filed a complaint against, and was countersued by, Apple. "Epic has alternatively been unjustly enriched at Google's expense," the company said in its complaint. 

As a reminder, Epic sued Google for removing Fortnite from its Play Store after a "Mega Drop" update gave players a way to bypass Play and get discounted items. Google later forced OnePlus to break off a deal that would have seen the Fortnite launcher pre-installed on its OnePlus 8 smartphone, bypassing the Play Store and eliminating Google's commission on in-app purchases. 

Google stated that unlike with Apple's App Store, Android developers aren't forced to use Google Play. "They choose to use it when given a choice among Android app stores and distribution channels," according to the complaint. "Google supports that choice through Android itself, Google Play's policies and Google's agreements with developers and device manufacturers."

Unlike competitors like Apple, Google does not require Android users or developers to use Google Play in order to download, install, or distribute apps on Android.

That argument is complicated by documents unsealed in Epic's original lawsuit against Google, however. They showed that Google paid other game developers and phone makers like LG and Motorola to exclusively use the Play Store rather than offering other store options. That's one reason cited by the 38 US states and territories that filed an antitrust suit against Google, in the same California federal court where Epic filed its own claim. 

In 2018, Google reportedly offered Epic up to $208 million to bring Fortnite to the Play Store — effectively cutting its usual 30 percent take by around five percent. According to the same court documents, Google was so concerned by a potential loss of Play Store revenue that it even considered acquiring Epic.

Epic received a mixed ruling in its lawsuit battle with Apple. On the one hand, judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered Apple to eliminate App Store rules that prevent developers from adding in-app links to payment sites. On the other, she ruled that Apple was not anticompetitive based on California law and ordered Epic to pay Apple $3.6 million. Both parties have appealed that ruling, and Apple has said it won't letFortnite back on the store until all appeals are resolved. 

One week after a massive Facebook outage that took all of the social network’s apps offline for more than six hours, Instagram says it’s testing notifications that will alert users to “temporary issues” like outages or other technical issues.

The new alerts would appear in users’ Activity Feed, alongside other in-app notifications. The messages could be used to let users know about specific issues, like Story uploads not working, or a more widespread problem, like the two outages last week. Importantly, Instagram says it doesn’t plan to alert users to every issue, but ones that may be a source of widespread confusion.

“We won’t send a notification every single time there is an outage, but when we see that people are confused and looking for answers, we’ll determine if something like this could help make things clearer,” Instagram wrote in a blog post. The company added that it’s testing the feature in the US “for the next few months.”

Instagram

Separately, Instagram also showed off a new “account status” section of its app, which is meant to alert users to “what's going on with your account” more generally. Instagram says it’s starting with notifications about posts that are removed and when an account “is at risk of being disabled” due to rule violations.

According to Instagram, the feature is meant to make it easier for users to understand why a post may have been removed, and whether or not they may be in danger of losing an account altogether. While the app has notified users in the past when a post is labeled or removed, the company hasn’t always done a good job letting people know which policy they violated. The Oversight Board has repeatedly told Facebook it needs to do a better job at explaining rules to users, and account status could help them do just that.

Account status could also help the app address a more Instagram-specific issue: concerns over “shadowbanning.” Instagram says that “in the coming months” it plans to update account status to let people know “how their content is being distributed and recommended across different parts of Instagram.” 

15 years ago, if you were writing a document, chances are you were doing it in Microsoft Word. Part of the company’s wildly successful Office suite, Word was the de-facto option for drafting text, whether you were an author, an office worker, a student, a teacher… you get the point.

But on October 11th, 2006, Google officially launched Google Docs and Spreadsheets in beta. As with everything Google, Docs and Sheets were cloud-based applications that also let you collaborate with others in real time. It’s easy to forget now, but this was completely different from how most people worked on documents at the time.

I was in a different career 15 years ago, one that required me to work on lots of spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations that were accessed in a shared network drive. Submitting them to others for edits and notes was a fraught process. Making sure you had the most current version of the document usually involved six-digit numbers representing the last date it was modified, initials to note who had checked it out, and messy notes added to the end until you landed on something insanely convoluted like “April_Report_051504_NI_final_final_reallyfinal.doc.”

15 years later, I’m writing this story in a Google Doc shared with my editors; they can make as many changes as they want to the finished parts of the draft as I keep typing away here and nothing will get lost. Collaborative work is a lot better than it used to be, and Google Docs is a big part of that – but it wasn’t always smooth sailing to get here.

Google Docs began as a “hacked together experiment,” its creator Sam Schillace said in an interview with The Verge in 2013. Eight years earlier, he created a tool called Writely, a web-based text editing platform. Google bought the company in March of 2006. According to Schillace, 90 percent of the company was using Writely only a month later. “When we went to Google, Writely was internally adopted very quickly,” he said. Barely seven months after that, Google officially released Docs and Sheets at the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. As with most Google products at the time, it was released in beta for free.

TechCrunch / Google

Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t quite up to par with what Microsoft was offering with Office. The text editor was, comparatively speaking, very simple. But more importantly, Google Docs only worked when you had an active internet connection. While good broadband was fairly common in workplaces and universities, it was far less easy to find when you ventured out into the world. If you wanted to get some work while traveling, say on an airplane, Google Docs was a non-starter.

It didn’t take Google long to realize it needed to come up with a way to sync documents to a computer for offline access. In May of 2007, at its first “worldwide developer day,” the company introduced Google Gears. Gears was an open-source project and browser extension for Mac, Windows and Linux that would help web apps work with no internet connection. While the project was meant for any developer to use, using it for Google Docs made perfect sense.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the most stable tool. In late 2009, Google stopped development on Gears in favor of using the capabilities afforded by HTML 5. But even though Google continued supporting applications that used Gears, a technology transition probably didn’t do the company any favors in getting Docs and its broader app suite adopted in businesses and education institutions.

Around this time, Google was experimenting with a variety of ways to push collaboration and communication forward — Docs was just one of the success stories. There were failures though, the most high-profile of which was Google Wave — an ambitious combination of instant messaging, email, documents, multimedia and more. It was hyped by the tech press, so much that Google Wave invites were being sold on eBay. But interest dropped off quickly, in large part because it felt like even less of a finished product than most of Google’s “beta” launches.

Google / Engadget

Google didn’t do a great job explaining exactly what problem this new tool was designed to solve, and the company pulled the plug in 2010, after only a year. But many of the things Google experimented with in Wave ended up living on in other places. Indeed, right around the time Google ended development on Wave, the company added chat to Google Docs, letting people who had the same file open discuss what they were working on right alongside the content itself.

Google Docs clearly evolved past its early struggles, though. Google put a somewhat surprising amount of focus on the product over the last decade-plus, incrementally iterating and improving it at a steady pace. That’s the hallmark of products Google seems to really believe in. It’s the same way the company treated Android, Chrome (both the browser and OS), Drive, Photos, and, of course, Search and Gmail.

As internet access has become more and more widespread, the fact that Docs (like most of Google’s products) works best online was less of a hindrance. Not having to worry about saving a document took a while to get used to, but it’s something that we take for granted now — if your browser crashes, whatever you were working on should still be there waiting for you in the cloud.

Perhaps the biggest endorsement of Google’s cloud-first strategy came in 2010, when Microsoft took its first steps towards bringing Office applications online. For a long time, though, Google’s suite of apps were better-suited to the cloud. For example, you couldn’t have multiple people working on the same Office document until late 2013, something that was built into Google Docs from day one. Apple also followed Google’s lead, bringing its iWork apps online in 2013 and eventually enabling simultaneous collaboration as well.

While Office remains dominant in the workplace, it’s fair to say that Google gave Microsoft its first real competition in many years. Google has some giant customers, like Salesforce, Whirlpool, Twitter and Spotify. And Google’s apps, combined with inexpensive Chromebooks and its education platform, have made the company a force in the K-12 space as well as in higher education.

As for the next 15 years, it’s all but assured that collaborative and remote working will continue to be hugely important. That was clear before COVID-19, and the last 18 months have basically blown up the notion that everyone needs to go to an office. For a good idea of where collaborative work is going, consider Microsoft’s open-source Fluid framework. First announced in May of 2019, Fluid is meant to remove the barriers between different file formats and make it easy to pull in content from a wide variety of sources. Microsoft described it as a way to share atomized components of data across multiple files — so if you’re updating a spreadsheet in one document, you can link to that content in another file and it’ll automatically reflect those changes.

Dropbox hasn’t come up with its own “atomized components” of documents, but its Paper app works in a similar fashion. They’re collaborative like Google Docs, but they support a wide range of content plug-ins, so you can embed YouTube videos, Google Calendar elements, Figma documents, to-do lists, Trello lists, and even entire Google Docs.

Microsoft has been deliberate about developing Fluid, taking small steps since its initial release. Earlier this year, the company announced that some Fluid components would work in its communications platform Teams. I think that content moving outside of strict platforms like Google Docs or Microsoft Office into all the other places that we do work is going to be another important step forward.

That’s already happened to some degree. For years now, Dropbox has supported creating, sharing, and editing Microsoft Office documents right inside its own app and website, and it later added similar support for Google Docs as well. And apps like Slack have a host of integrations for things like Google Drive and Trello, though it’s not clear how widely used or essential they are to a Slack workflow. (I mostly just drop links to Google Docs I need edited.)

Somewhat ironically, as the barriers between content and file types fall away and more people do work in virtual spaces like Teams and Slack, Google’s vision for Wave looks to be rather prescient. The notion of a space for a project or team that encompasses all of its important elements, be they written documents, spreadsheets, images, videos or any other kind of content seems to be where we’re headed. But despite the fact that Google (and the rest of the industry) are moving back towards models that remind us of what Wave attempted, there’s still a missing piece in Google’s strategy.

That piece is messaging, something Google has struggled with, well, for about as long as Google has existed. As exhaustively detailed by Ars Technica, Google has never been able to stick with a coherent messaging plan for consumers or businesses. At some point, Google Chat (née Hangouts) could have been a solid Slack competitor, as well as the web that connects all the content people work on, but the company missed the boat as Slack solidified its dominance over the past five years. Even though Google Workspace has a huge user base, it hasn’t made inroads in the messaging side — which is what pulls a modern workplace together.

That said, Google’s Smart Canvas (announced at I/O this year) could be its own version of Fluid, a way to unify disparate forms of content and communication all in one place. From what we’ve seen so far, Smart Canvas has various “building blocks” that you can pull all into a single canvas — like a Meet call alongside a Google Doc for taking notes and a to-do list to assign items to team members. It’s only rolling out on a limited basis to paying Google Workspace customers, but it’s definitely worth watching to see how it evolves.

No one can really say what other cultural workplace shifts, like those brought on by COVID-19, will happen in the next 15 years. And those shifts are probably what will drive the most significant changes in products meant for work.

Google TV is about to make it easier for everyone in your household to maintain their own watchlists. If you already use the platform, you may know that more than one person can sign in with their Google Account. However, at the moment, Google TV will only generate recommendations for the primary account holder. That’s about to change.

Google is introducing support for personalized profiles, allowing everyone with a Google account in your household to maintain their own watchlists and Assistant settings. That also means they’ll be able to get their own content recommendations. Support for personalized accounts will start rolling out next month to Chromecast with Google TV in addition to supported sets from TCL and Sony.

With the introduction of accounts, Google is also enhancing the platform’s ambient mode. In addition to shortcuts for things like podcasts, music and photos, you’ll see glanceable cards that will include personalized information related to the weather, news and more. This feature will first be available only in the US. Lastly, if you’re a Philo TV subscriber, you’ll now see content from the service show up in Google TV’s Live and For you tabs. Separately from today's announcements, Google told Engadget the mobile remote app for Google TV will be available soon through the Google Home app on Android and iOS.

The fight to rein in delivery apps

Helen Rosner, The New Yorker

The pandemic has intensified the fight between food delivery apps and restaurants. High commissions and courier compensation are key issues, but now that these services have become an essential part of most restaurants' business these days, regulation or a massive update to the delivery app model is well overdue.

Facebook banned me for life because I help people use it less

Louis Barclay, Slate

A developer built a browser extension called "Unfollow Everything" that allowed Facebook users to essentially disable the News Feed by unfollowing friends, groups and pages while retaining other "positive features." The company threatened legal action and demanded Barclay never create tools that interact with its services again.

The Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, says she wants to fix the company, not harm it

Jeff Horwitz, The Wall Street Journal

Ahead of her congressional testimony this week, Frances Haugen explained to WSJ why she came forward and why, despite the appearances, she's actually trying to help the company reform itself. 

The judge who presided over the Apple vs. Epic case largely sided with the tech giant, except in one area: She ruled that Apple must allow developers to direct users to other payment systems within their apps. Any changes the company has to make to App Store rules to accommodate for that must be in effect by December 9th, or so the judge originally ruled. But now, Apple has filed a notice of appeal (PDF via CNBC) asking for a stay on the injunction, which could push back developers' ability to offer alternative means of payment by one more year.

In its appeal, Apple wrote that it "has already taken concrete, specific steps in the direction indicated by the Court’s opinion — including by agreeing to eliminate the prohibition on targeted out-of-app communications." The tech giant argued that it "would be a poor use of resources" to require it to comply with the injunction due to the "near-inevitable litigation" from Epic regarding the scope of its compliance. "There is no reason to expend resources,"it said, adding that "a stay would maintain the status quo while the appellate process progresses to completion."

Trystan Kosmynka, Apple's senior director of App Review, also said:

"At a high level, it is my judgment that, without thoughtful restrictions in place to protect consumers, developers, and the iOS platform, this change will harm users, developers, and the iOS platform more generally."

Allowing developers to add in-app links to external payment options would be a major shift for the company. It originally yanked Fortnite from the App Store when Epic offered buyers discounts and freebies if they make their purchases directly from the developer. Shortly after that, the tech giant removed Epic's developer tools, as well. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney shared communications between the two parties back in September, wherein the tech giant said it wouldn't allow Fortnite back in the App Store until all court appeals are exhausted. The process could take five years.

According to a previous analysis by the CNBC, the App Store had gross sales of around $64 billion in 2020. Apple typically takes a 30 percent cut from app purchases, though it recently lowered that to 15 percent for all apps that earn less than $1 million a year. Giving developers the means to accept alternative modes of payment could cost the company billions. As Bloomberg notes, however, the judge that issued the injunction didn't specifically mention that the company can't charge developers a commission for payments made outside the App Store. Whether Apple would still ask developers for a cut remains to be seen, though it would be a complex undertaking if it decides to do so. 

A hearing has been set for Apple's request to stay the injunction on November 16th, but it's looking to move the proceeding to November 2nd. 

Developers who let users create an account in their iOS, iPadOS and macOS apps will soon have to offer people a method of deleting their accounts in apps too. Apple says that as of January 31st, all app submissions (including updates) will need to include the option.

The company announced this requirement alongside other App Store guideline changes at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in June as part of a push to give users more control over their data. As The Verge notes, Apple is only requiring developers to let people "initiate deletion of their account from within the app," so apps might send you to a website or even a chat with an agent before you can actually close your account.

It remains to be seen how useful this requirement will actually be in practice, given the tricks many developers employ to encourage you to remain as a user. Still, if you have an account in an app, deleting it will be slightly less of a headache, which can't be a bad thing. This will hopefully make it easier for people to ditch subscriptions and apps they aren't actually using. 

Elsewhere, App Store pages on iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey (which is still in beta) now have a Report a Problem button, so you can flag any issues or concerns you have with an app to Apple. The feature is available in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US for now. Apple will roll out the button to more regions later.

Drivers in the UK are taking legal action against Uber over its real-time biometric identification checks, TechCrunch has reported. A union representing the drivers claims that some members were wrongly suspended when they were misidentified, and lost their licenses as a result. "[The] facial recognition systems... are inherently faulty and generate particularly poor accuracy results when used with people of color," the App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU) wrote in a blog post.

Backed by two worker's rights groups, the union is crowdfunding the legal action, taken on behalf of former UberEats courier Pa Edrissa Manjang and former Uber driver Imran Javaid Raja. It said they were "unfairly dismissed after the company's facial recognition system failed to identify them."

"Workers are prompted to provide a real-time selfie and face dismissal if the system fails to match the selfie with a stored reference photo," the ADCU wrote. "In turn, private hire drivers who have been dismissed also faced automatic revocation of their private hire driver and vehicle licenses by Transport for London."

Earlier in 2021, Uber was forced to reclassify UK drivers as workers, offering benefits like pension pay and holiday time. That came about because of a lawsuit filed on behalf of two Uber drivers, James Farrer and Yaseen Aslam, who eventually helped form the ADCU in February 2020. 

Transport for London (TfL) pulled Uber's license in 2019 over "a pattern of failures." One particular sore point was that it allowed uninsured and suspended drivers to operate in the city, due to a loophole allowing them to upload their photos to another driver's account. To meet the regulator's requirements, Uber introduced random driver checks via a facial recognition system that uses Microsoft's FACE API technology, according to the ADCU. (Uber won back its license in September of 2020.)

The union noted that Microsoft withdrew sales of its facial recognition software to US police departments, and that the use of similar software has been discontinued or banned by Amazon, IBM, Axon and other companies. It also cited stats showing that facial recognition programs are far less accurate for people of color. 

However, Uber pushed back, saying that it doesn't depend solely on AI. "Our Real-Time ID Check is designed to protect the safety and security of everyone who uses the Uber app by helping ensure the correct driver is behind the wheel," Uber responded in a statement to TechCrunch. "The system includes robust human review to make sure that this algorithm is not making decisions about someone’s livelihood in a vacuum, without oversight." It added that no Uber or Uber Eats accounts is suspended solely as a result of AI. 

However, Farrer said that the union has won at least 10 appeals in court against drivers dismissed by TfL that cite Uber's ID checks. "With Imran [Javaid Raja], Uber and TfL have already admitted they got it wrong. But he was out of work for three months. No apology. No compensation,”

Mozilla likes to cut distractions and speed up browsing, and its latest browser reflects that priority. The developer has revamped Firefox Focus for Android and iOS to give it a "fresh new look" (including a dark theme), more privacy and quicker access. There's now a shield icon to quickly turn trackers on or off, not to mention a global counter for every blocked tracker. You'll find a shortcut feature, too, to help you visit favorite sites that much sooner.

Firefox is receiving improvements on other platforms. On top of easier password autofill, Firefox users on Android (iOS is coming later this year) can easily create new passwords for apps or unlock accounts using only biometric data like fingerprints and facial recognition.

And yes, Mozilla is taking advantage of Microsoft's loosened Windows 11 store rules for third-party browsers. The company has promised that Firefox will be available through Microsoft's app portal "later this year." While that doesn't provide a firm date, it's a welcome addition for users who want to quickly grab an alternative to Edge.