Author: TechBrunch
Epic Games' Mega Popular Fortnite will return to the US iOS App Store next week after receiving an astonishing ruling in a long-standing legal battle with Apple. The controversy between Epic and Apple began in 2020 when Apple removed Epic Games from the iOS store. As Apple accounts for 30% of all in-app purchases, Epic introduced direct payment support in Fortnite to bypass Apple's fees. The following year, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers determined that Apple could not prevent developers like EPIC from adding links for customers to purchase digital products outside of the iOS ecosystem. But almost four years later,…
MoviePass is a startup that marks its cinema subscription service and is known for constantly shaking things, and the latest ventures are no exception. On Thursday, the company announced the beta launch of Mogul, a new daily fantasy entertainment platform specially designed for the Hollywood industry. To understand what a big name is, it is important to first understand the concepts of fantasy sports. This subcategory of fantasy sports allows players to compete in a short period of time rather than in the entire season. Players assume the role of team manager and create their own dream team made up…
WhatsApp currently uses more than 3 billion people per month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted in a first-quarter results conference call on Wednesday. Founded in 2009 and acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion, WhatsApp remains at its disposal and does not offer advertising. The app reached the 2 billion monthly active user mark in 2020, but the latest milestone has made it one of the few apps besides Facebook to surpass the 3 billion user mark. Its huge user base makes WhatsApp a key business in the meta. In particular, the company has bet on farms on its…
World, Biometric ID Company, best known for its eye-running ORB devices, announced several partnerships on Wednesday aimed at demonstrating sign-up driving and applications for its technology. World is partnering with dating app conglomerate Match Group to verify the identity of Japanese Tinder users using a global identity verification system. Additionally, World has established separate collaborations with both forecast market startup Kalshi and decentralized lending platform Morpho. These partnerships allow customers to sign in to these services using their already globally registered IDs. World is planning to team up with Visa to launch the World Card. This is a card that…
The epic game won in an ongoing legal dispute with Apple. As a result, Fortnite could return to the US iOS app store as early as next week. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said in Wednesday's ruling that Apple was a “willful violation” of a 2021 injunction that banned the company from anti-competitive pricing. Apple has won a lot of debate on the Epic Games Trial. One notable exception was the ruling that prohibits Apple from collecting fees for purchases made outside the app itself. Back then, Apple was told to change its app store so developers could direct customers to…
Epic Games won in an ongoing legal dispute with Apple. As a result, Fortnite was able to return to the US iOS app store as early as next week. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said in Wednesday's ruling that Apple was in a “willful violation” of a 2021 injunction that barred the company from imposing anti-competitive pricing. Apple won a lot of controversy in its trials with Epic Games. One notable exception was the ruling prohibiting iPhone makers from collecting fees for purchases made outside of apps. At the time, Apple was told to change its app store so developers could…
The tech layoff wave is still kicking in 2025. Last year saw more than 150,000 job cuts across 549 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. So far this year, more than 22,000 workers have been the victim of reductions across the tech industry, with a staggering 16,084 cuts taking place in February alone. We’re tracking layoffs in the tech industry in 2025 so you can see the trajectory of the cutbacks and understand the impact on innovation across all types of companies. As businesses continue to embrace AI and automation, this tracker serves as a reminder of the human…
Google's Gemini Chatbot app now allows you to change both images and images generated by AI uploaded from your phone or computer. Native image editing at Gemini will unfold slowly today and expand to more people in more than 45 languages and most countries in the coming weeks. The release follows the AI image editing model piloted by Google on the AI Studio platform in March. Like ChATGPT's recently upgraded image editing tool, Gemini's NewFangled Native Image Editor can achieve better results than the standalone AI image generator. Gemini provides a “multi-step” editing flow where Google describes “further, more contextual”…
Meta's X-rival Instagram threads have now grown to over 350 million active users. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday during the company's first quarter revenue call. This is an increase of 30 million users since the last quarter, and Meta reports that it has 320 million users on its thread. The new figures represent an increase in growth as threads added 30 million in the first quarter of this year compared to 20 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. It is also worth noting that in the quarter, the thread added roughly the same users as one of its new…
Apple sent a notification this week to several people who believe the company is targeting government spyware, according to the two targets. In the past, Apple sent similar notifications to Spyware targets and victims, and directed them to contact nonprofits specializing in investigating such cyberattacks. Other tech companies, such as Google and WhatsApp, have been sending such notifications regularly to their users in recent years. As of Wednesday, only two people had made the move to make it clear they were among those who received notifications from Apple this week. One is Ciro Pellegrino, an Italian journalist who works for…