Google may let rival ad platforms run commercials on YouTube

Google will allow other advertising intermediaries to run ads on YouTube, according to Reuters. The company currently requires advertisers to use its Ad Manager to place ads on YouTube, which has caught the attention of European Union antitrust officials.

The European Commission opened a probe into Google’s ad tech in 2021 after two years of informal consultations. Competition officials also cited concerns about potential restrictions on how rival ad platforms can run YouTube ads and the fact advertisers need to use the Display & Video 360 and Google Ads services. The investigation centers around whether Google, a division of Alphabet, gave itself an unfair advantage in the digital advertising space by limiting the user data that advertisers and rival ad platforms can access.

Reuters reports that Google’s concession could help allow it to settle the case and avoid a fine of as much as 10 percent of its global turnover. Alphabet generated revenue of $257 billion in 2021. However, it’s believed that Google will need to address other concerns to resolve the investigation.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority is also looking into the company’s ad tech practices. In the US, senators last month filed a bill with bipartisan support that would break up Google’s ad business were it to become law. 

“We have been engaging constructively with the European Commission. We don’t have anything further to share at this stage,” a Google spokesperson told Engadget. “As with the Privacy Sandbox initiative, we are committed to working with regulators and the wider industry to achieve the best possible outcomes.”

Update 6/13 10:52PM ET: Added Google’s statement.

Amazon’s Prime Air service will begin making drone deliveries in California this year

In 2013, former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced the company was working on 30-minute drone deliveries. At the time, Bezos said the service wouldn’t launch until 2015 at the very earliest. Now, nearly a decade later after that first reveal, Amazon says …

Microsoft formally agrees to respect Activision Blizzard unionization efforts

Microsoft has formally agreed to respect the right of Activision Blizzard workers to unionize in a pact with the Communications Workers of America. The agreement will be applied 60 days after Microsoft closes its acquisition of the video game publisher. The $68.7 billion takeover requires approval from regulators in various markets and is expected to close by the end of June 2023.

“This agreement provides a pathway for Activision Blizzard workers to exercise their democratic rights to organize and collectively bargain after the close of the Microsoft acquisition and establishes a high road framework for employers in the games industry,” CWA president Chris Shelton said in a statement. “Microsoft’s binding commitments will give employees a seat at the table and ensure that the acquisition of Activision Blizzard benefits the company’s workers and the broader video game labor market. The agreement addresses CWA’s previous concerns regarding the acquisition, and, as a result, we support its approval and look forward to working collaboratively with Microsoft after this deal closes.”

The agreement follows Microsoft announcing a set of “principles for employee organizing” earlier this month that did not contain much in the way of actual substance. The CWA pact is legally binding and centers around five core provisions. Microsoft laid those out as follows:

  • First, Microsoft will take a neutral approach when employees covered by the agreement express interest in joining a union.

  • Second, covered employees will be able to easily exercise their right to communicate with other employees and union representatives about union membership in a way that encourages information sharing and avoids business disruptions.

  • Third, employees will have access to an innovative technology-supported and streamlined process for choosing whether to join a union.

  • Fourth, employees can maintain confidentiality and privacy of that choice if they wish.

  • Fifth, if a disagreement arises between the CWA and Microsoft under the agreement, the two organizations will work together promptly to reach an agreement and will turn to an expedited arbitration process if they cannot.

“Earlier this month, we announced a set of principles that will guide our approach to labor organizations, and the Activision Blizzard acquisition is our first opportunity to put these principles into practice,” Microsoft president and vice chair Brad Smith said. “We appreciate CWA’s collaboration in reaching this agreement, and we see today’s partnership as an avenue to innovate and grow together.”

Microsoft and the CWA also agreed to explore other forms of collaboration. Among those are “joint opportunities for the US workforce to benefit from new technology and skill building programs that will enhance the country’s competitiveness.”

The arrangement formalizes much of Microsoft’s rhetoric about Activision Blizzard workers’ attempts to organize. Microsoft Gaming CEO and Xbox chief Phil Spencer reportedly said in an all-hands meeting in late May that “we would absolutely support [an] employees’ organization that’s in place.” Microsoft corporate vice president Lisa Tanzi previously said the company “respects Activision Blizzard employees’ right to choose whether to be represented by a labor organization and we will honor those decisions.”

The pact may also help Microsoft placate the Federal Trade Commission and antitrust regulators in other key markets as it tries to secure approval for its Activision Blizzard takeover. The publisher’s shareholders approved the proposed buyout almost unanimously in April.

Last month, quality assurance workers at Activision studio Raven Software voted to form the first union at a major video games company in North America. Activision Blizzard did not formally challenge the result of the election with the National Labor Relations Board. The company affirmed last week it would enter negotiations with the CWA, which is representing the workers.

Activision Blizzard is bound to conduct good faith negotiations over a collective bargaining agreement, though CEO Bobby Kotick warned that “may take some time to complete.” The company, which the CWA hasaccused of union busting, said in April it would hire 1,100 QA workers as permanent employees with higher minimum pay and benefits. However, it did not extend the same offer to the Raven workers who have organized as the Game Workers Alliance.

Microsoft Teams is using AI to prevent awkward interruptions in video calls

Microsoft might soon mitigate some of the worst nuisances in video chats. The Vergenotes Microsoft is rolling out AI-based voice quality upgrades that should help every call participant hear each other clearly. New machine learning models can not only cancel echoes, but even reduce the chances of awkward interruptions by eliminating echo-related overlaps. This won’t stop rude people from hijacking the conversation, but it might help you raise an important point without completely disrupting someone else’s train of thought.

The machine learning technology counters echoes by using a combination of roughly 100,000 simulated rooms and training from 30,000 hours of speech. Microsoft also paid regular Teams users to record their voices to help recognize thousands of different devices. And crucially, the processing happens on your device. This helps Microsoft cut costs, of course, but also makes sure the echo reduction happens quickly and across a wider range of users.

The feature is live now following months of testing. It comes in tandem with a few other upgrades, including AI improvements for bandwidth-limited video calls and optimizations for displaying text. This by itself probably won’t make you choose Teams over rivals like Zoom or Google Meet, but it might tip the balance if virtual meetings are commonplace at your workplace.

SpaceX faces more Starship delays as NASA seeks launch safety assurances

The explosive demise on SN-10 last year broke more than SpaceX’s Starship prototype. It’s also spurred NASA to put a pin in plans for the vessel to use Cape Canaveral as a backup launchpad, at least until the company can provide evidence that another blow up on the pad won’t damage infrastructure critical to resupplying the ISS.

The situation is this: Plans for the primary launchpad SpaceX wants in Boca Chica, Texas for the upcoming Starship rocket is already facing lengthy regulatory delays (though the review phase is expected to wrap up next week). The Army Corps of Engineers in April also denied the company’s application to expand Galveston-area launch site after SpaceX failed to provide required documentation. 

The company has also been rapidly constructing a secondary launch pad at its Cape Canaveral facility but those plans are now on hold. The problem is that SpaceX’s new Starship launch pad sits just a few hundred feet from NASA’s launchpad 39A, you know, the only NASA launch pad currently in existence that SpaceX’s Dragon Crew is approved to launch from. Should another Starship — which relies on an mix of liquid nitrogen and methane as fuel that is unfamiliar to regulators — go kablooey, the explosive force and ship shrapnel could damage launch complex 39A. And with no 39A, we have no more crewed missions to the ISS until it gets fixed.

“We all recognize that if you had an early failure like we did on one of the early SpaceX flights, it would be pretty devastating to 39A,” Kathy Lueders, NASA’s space operations chief, told Reuters. 

SpaceX, which has already invested heavily in the construction of its now-paused platform, has offered to try to “harden” pad 39A against the forces imparted by both successful and unsuccessful Starship launches as well as build up launch complex 40, located about 5 miles away, with crew launching capabilities. Both of those options would still require agency approval as well as months if not years of construction to get ready. 

Watch Xbox and Bethesda’s showcase here in under 20 minutes

This weekend’s Xbox and Bethesda showcase was jam-packed with news, trailers, updates and announcements about games that are already on Xbox or coming to the platform over the next year. If you don’t have a spare hour and 40 minutes or so to watch the entire event, don’t worry. You can catch up on the highlights with our supercut, which runs less than 20 minutes.

Freshly announced games include Forza Motorsport, Minecraft Legends, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland’s typically wacky High on Life. You’ll get also your first in-depth look at gameplay from Starfield, along with news on Diablo IV, Grounded, Microsoft Flight Simulator and a tonof titles that are coming to Game Pass. The highlights for me were the first peek at co-op vampire shooter Redfall in action and the Overwatch 2 release date, but there’s at least a little of something for just about everyone here.

Spotify buys an AI startup that turns text into ‘realistic’ speech

Spotify’s string of recent acquisitions now includes a potentially huge text-to-speech upgrade. The streaming music service is acquiring Sonantic, a startup that uses AI to produce “stunningly realistic” voices from text. While Spotify didn’t divulge its exact plans for the purchase, it teased multiple potential improvements.

Sonantic’s tech could provide context for upcoming recommendations even when you aren’t looking at your screen, Spotify said. The AI voice platform could also “reduce barriers” for new audio experiences. We’d add that this could help with accessibility. You might have an easier time navigating Spotify without relying on the visual interface.

Spotify didn’t say when it expected the deal to close. The move makes sense in light of broader trends, however. Social networks like Instagram and TikTok already use text-to-speech for robotic voiceovers. Meld this with Spotify’s TikTok-style discovery feed and the company may have a better chance of reeling in listeners used to finding their tunes on social networks.

These are the games included with PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium

You don’t have to wonder just what games you can play if you subscribe to PlayStation Plus Extra or Premium. Twitter user Wario64 has noticed that Sony published its game catalog for those who sign up for PS Plus’ two higher-end plans. As hinted earlier, the company is offering a mix of big-name hits, classics (for Premium users) and lower-profile titles.

You can expect well-known games like Death Stranding, several Final Fantasy releases and Red Dead Redemption 2 alongside major PS4 and PS5 offerings like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Demon’s Souls, Ghost of Tsushima and Spider-Man: Miles Morales. There are some curious splits, though. You can play Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy through the mid-priced Extra tier, but you’ll need Premium to revisit the series’ roots through the Nathan Drake Collection — it’s considered a classic even though it’s a PS4 title.

There’s also a clearer look at Premium’s time-limited free trials. You’ll have a chance to try Horizon Forbidden West, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands in addition to nine other games as of this writing. You won’t want to subscribe to Premium with the trials in mind, then, but they could be nice perks on top of core benefits.

Extra costs $15 per month in the US, while Premium is $18 per month. The full list underscores the differences between the new PS Plus and Xbox Game Pass. While Sony is including some recent games in its costlier tiers, it’s not making a point of adding games on launch day like Microsoft sometimes does. This is a bonus for PlayStation fans, not a replacement for buying the latest blockbusters.

Netflix confirms ‘Squid Game’ is returning for a second season

It was never truly in doubt that Netflix would bring its most popular show of all time back, but the company has at last officially greenlit season two of Squid Game. It hasn’t been revealed when the next batch of episodes will hit the streaming service.

Squid Game became a word-of-mouth phenomenon when it debuted last September. Netflix said that, in the first 28 days it was available, viewers watched a little over 1.65 billion hours of the first season. Money Heist: Part 5, which arrived that same month, is in second place with 792 million hours watched over the same timeframe — less than half the overall viewership time of Squid Game.

The show scooped up Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards this year. It’s likely to feature heavily among the Emmy nominations when those are announced next month.

Last October, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk said he wasn’t sure whether there’d be more episodes but that he would hold talks with the company because he wanted to make a film first. Netflix said in January a second season would “absolutely” happen, but it’s not clear why it took quite so long for a formal announcement.

Not too many details have been announced for season two of Squid Game just yet. Hwang confirmed protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) will return, as will villain The Front Man (Lee Byung-hun). In addition, Hwang promised to reveal the “boyfriend” of Young-hee, the giant animatronic doll that monitored competitors during the show’s first deadly game, Red Light, Green Light.

Crypto lending giant Celsius ‘pauses’ withdrawals after token value plunges

Another big name in crypto finance is taking drastic steps in the wake of plunging currency values. As The Vergenotes, lending heavyweight Celsius Network has ‘paused’ all withdrawals, inter-account transfers and Swaps in response to “extreme market conditions.” The move is meant to stabilize the liquidity of assets and provide a better opportunity to meet withdrawal obligations, according the company.

The firm didn’t say when it would lift the freeze, or what would happen next. It promise to restore usual operations “as quickly as possible,” but cautioned that the effort would “take time” and could include delays.

Celsius has struggled like much of the cryptocurrency market. Its CEL token was worth $7 roughly a year ago, but had tumbled to $3 by early April and is worth just 21 cents as we write this. The company claimed on June 7th that it had the reserves and Ethereum to meet obligations, but CEL’s value was cut by more than half in just the few days after that initial announcement.

Critics have raised concerns about Celsius’ unusually high yields (currently over 18.6 percent for deposits) and its links to the failed stablecoin Terra. Its CFO was arrested in November over fraud, money laundering and sexual assault allegations. Regulators in Alabama, New Jersey, New York and Texas have also scrutinized Celsius’ activities, with New Jersey issuing a cease-and-desist order last September. Simply put, there have long been worries Celsius’ business was unsustainable — the activity pause doesn’t help matters.

Customers, meanwhile, might pay the price. Unlike a conventional bank, Celsius doesn’t have FDIC insurance to protect users. If it fails, the roughly 1.7 million people who use the lender might not have much opportunity to recover their lost finances. While some crypto asset regulation is in development, it might arrive too late for Celsius’ clients.