Both Google and Apple have been the target of several anti-trust suits and complaints in the past couple of years, and this week the UK is progressing further towards attempting to intervene with the two tech giants. A new report released today shows that the UK takes issue with the “duopoly” Google and Apple have over the mobile space.
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GDPR has had a huge effect on how internet services work in the European Union, but following Brexit, Google may make some changes to how UK data is handled. A report from Reuters reveals that Google is preparing to shift data from UK users to be under US jurisdiction.
The outcome of the UK referendum known as Brexit which saw the country opting for leaving the European Union earlier this summer surely created a bit of turbulence in the economic space, leaving more than a few companies in a state of uncertainty.
In spite of this, however, the country’s capital city still seems to be going strong, and Google appears to be ready to actually double down on its efforts there…
After Android Pay finally launched in the UK last month, Google is doing its best to encourage Brits to give it a try. It’s announced a monthly Android Pay Day, offering discounts for using the service to pay, with the first of these taking place today.
After a false start yesterday, Android Pay is now live in the United Kingdom. Those with compatible credit and debit cards can set up the contactless payment service after downloading the app from the Play Store. Google has also announced that Android Pay is coming soon to Australia and Singapore.
Update 5/18: Android Pay has officially launched in the UK. Coming soon to Australia and Singapore.
Update: As many have pointed out, the app is not yet in the Play Store. Google has since pulled the original tweet and commented that Android Pay in the UK is “not quite there yet”. An official announcement will likely coincide with I/O tomorrow.
After announcing plans for Android Pay’s first international expansion in March, Google’s contactless payment service is now available in the United Kingdom. According to the official Android Twitter account, those in the country can now download the app and set up the service.
Few things have made the case for an interesting use of the NFC chips inside our phones like contactless payments. Revived by Apple with the introduction of Apple Pay in late 2014, mobile-based transactions have seen an interesting resurgence ever since.
Companies like Samsung and LG have come up with proprietary solutions, but Android users have all found a home under Google‘s very own rooftop with Android Pay. Initially launched in the US alone, the service is now expanding, and after recent promises of a forthcoming launch, it looks like the green light for the UK may be imminent (via Telegraph)…
Mobile contactless payments are progressively becoming more and more mainstream as major manufacturers adopt systems that can be easily used via our smartphones. While LG Pay is yet to be seen in action, Google, Apple and even Samsung all have a technology – Android Pay, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, respectively – that allows a user to complete transactions thanks to the NFC chips contained in most recent devices.
To this day, however, Apple Pay was the only service active in the United Kingdom, leaving a good number of consumers out of the industry, as more than half of the smartphones sold in the country run Android. According to a Telegraph report, however, sources close to the matter have confirmed that Android Pay should go live across Britain within the end of next month, approximately six months after the original US debut…
Just one day after the UK’s public spending watchdog described the £130M ($185M) back-tax paid by Google in the country as “disproportionately small,” France is demanding a rather larger sum. Reuters reports that the country’s finance ministry believes Google owes €1.6B ($1.76B).
“As far as our country is concerned, back taxes concerning this company amount to 1.6 billion euros,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said […]
Earlier this month, Finance Minister Michel Sapin ruled out striking a deal with the U.S. search engine company as the British government recently did, saying the sums at stake in France were “far greater” than those in Britain …
According to a report over the weekend from Crain’s Detroit Business, Google/Alphabet is seeking an R&D site for its self-driving cars near Ann Arbor, Michigan. This report comes as FCC documents last month revealed that the Mountain View company was planning to bring the cars to four new cities. Kirkland, Washington officially became one of those locations two weeks ago, and as we noted, a location near Ann Arbor makes perfect sense to be one of the next bunch…
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While Google has expanded its US-based autonomous vehicle trials to include both Texas and Kirkland, WA since its launch in Mountain View, it seems the company is being courted by another city across the pond. London transport officials are said to be in “active discussions” with Google to convince the tech giant to test its driverless cars in England’s capital…
The European Commission says that the £130M ($185M) tax deal struck between Google and the UK government may amount to “illegal state aid” by offering the company better terms than those available to smaller businesses.
Google first came under fire for its tax arrangements in the UK in early 2013, when it was accused of funneling profits from UK Adword sales through Ireland, resulting in the company paying just £6M ($8.5M) tax on a turnover of £395M ($565M). In the new deal, it agreed to change its accounting practices to pay more tax in the UK, and to pay a lump sum in back tax …
BlackBerry already made the PRIV official last month, and then followed up with some of the first official images of the device posted to its blog. Not much of what the company has said up to this point though has been new, though. Even the official images it published a couple weeks ago were pretty much the same as the ones we saw four months ago.
And this new video follows in the same vein as that theme. We’ve already seen an in-depth hands-on video with the phone, we’ve seen its specs leaked what feels like a dozen times, pre-registration for the phone opened up a couple of days ago, and just earlier today pre-orders for the phone went live in the UK. I guess it’s just a pretty marketing clip…
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Motorola, this morning, opened up pre-orders for its newest flagship, the Moto X Style in the UK. While the device has been available to order in the US for a couple of weeks already, pre-sales only began today across the pond in Britain. Pricing starts at £399 and increases based on materials used on the back, or which storage option you go for.
If you’re an EE customer in the UK and have an HTC One M9, you might want to check your settings menu for software updates. The latest — launching today — brings Wi-Fi calling to your phone and enables you to make calls and send texts using a Wi-Fi network.
EE customers in the UK have been able to make use of Wi-Fi calling for the past couple of months, but only on a very select few handsets. Namely: iPhones and Samsung Galaxy S6 phones. Now the list of compatible handsets has grown. Today, HTC has announced that EE customers should receive a software update to enable on the feature on its flagship One M9.
WiFi calls are seamlessly integrated into general usage, and are therefore indistinguishable from regular calls from an HTC handset. WiFi Calling from EE and HTC uses the phone’s normal dialler and contacts book to make calls, and the normal text button to send text messages. Customers don’t need a stand-alone app, a unique HTC interface will automatically detect whether to use WiFi or cellular each time the HTC One M9 is used to make a call.
It’s an incredibly useful feature to have (as any T-Mobile US customer will tell you) particularly if you live in an area where cellular coverage can be a little unreliable. The update is available immediately.
Amazon accidentally revealed earlier this week that this would be happening today, but we now have proof that the slip was legit: the Nexus Player has now launched on the Google Store in the UK for £79. A couple of new Android Wear accessories have also landed in the store today though, including a Sony SmartWatch 3 watch band and a standalone charger for the Asus ZenWatch.
The Nexus Player has been available in the US for quite some time, but now we have a bit of an idea of when the device will be launching in the UK. As spotted by Engadget, the Nexus Player has shown up on the UK Amazon website with a launch date of March 26th and a price of £80. Sadly, that page seems to have been taken down already and the only listing for the device is currently via a third-party reseller (at a pretty decent markup).
In January, Google revealed that the Nexus Player would be coming to Japan by the end of February, its first market outside the US. More recently, Google posted the Android 5.1 factory image for the Nexus Player. If you’d like to, you can head over to read our full review that we published all the way back in November. We found it to be a useful new platform for Android, but a lot of its features can feel a bit half-baked.
Google first announced its Google Play for Education program in mid-2013 at Google I/O with the program launching to K-12 schools in the United States later that fall, and today the company shared that it’s now bringing Google Play for Education to schools in the UK using Android tablets…
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SamMobile reports on Tuesday that Samsung is now rolling out Android Lollipop for the Galaxy S5 in the United Kingdom, after seeding the software update in Poland, Spain, Russia, and Malaysia. The report claims that the update is arriving in the form of Android 5.0, despite Samsung internally testing Android 5.0.2 on flagship devices internally.
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We’ve known about the Desire 620 for a while now, but now HTC has announced that the budget handset—previously only officially available in Taiwan—will be available in the European market as early as January of next year (via Pocket-Lint).
If you live in the UK and have been feeling left out of all the Nexus 6 madness over the last few days, your wait appears to be almost over. According to mobile retailer Mobiles.co.uk, the Nexus 6 will be available for pre-order in the UK on November 18th. Retail availability will be December 1st, with pre-ordered devices hitting customer doorsteps on that same day.
Today, Google announced that it has opened yet another Google Glass Basecamp, this time in London, UK. And while it may seem that Google has definitely put Glass on the back burner with the flurry of Android Wear announcements, this is a comforting reassurance that the Glass project hasn’t been abandoned. You can schedule a visit to the new Basecamp online, where you’re able to register for a “demo,” “try and buy,” a “fitting,” or “support.”
The 2014 “Pure Edition” Moto X is now available in the UK via Motorola’s Moto Maker. The entry-level 16GB model will set you back £420, while the 32GB variant carries a price tag of £460.
Google is offering a new bundle through Google Play in some countries that offers a discounted price for customers that purchase both a Nexus 5 and LG G Watch. Discounts vary with local currencies, but discounts general range from $100 in Australia to £60 in the UK.
We reached out to Google to find out where exactly the deal is available, and it offered up a full list of countries: GB, IE, FR, DE, AU, KR, JP.
You can head over to Google Play now if you’re in a participating country to take advantage of the deal.