Welcome to the Tech Meme Ride Home for Tuesday, December 19th,

2023. I'm Brian McCullough today.

Google has settled lawsuits from the states, has agreed to offer new billing tools and may owe you some

money as they've agreed to pay 700 million dollars in restitution. What happens to

Adobe and Figma now that they've got to go their own ways? Why do hackers love

targeting game developers and game

preservationists have uncovered a gold mine? Here's what you missed today in the world

of tech. I said it felt like people were rushing to get layoffs in by the end of the year

but now it also looks like regulators and legal decisions are racing the

calendar and the clock as well.

Google has agreed to pay 700 million dollars racing the calendar and the clock as well.

Google has agreed to pay $700 million and make app store changes like new billing tools

in order to settle a 2021 antitrust lawsuit brought by 36 US states and the District of Columbia, quoting the journal.

The settlement resolves claims by a group of states that Google operated its App Store Google

Play as an illegal monopoly, allegedly stifling competition from other app

distributors on devices using the Google-owned Android operating system.

Developers will also now be able to use an alternative billing system to

Google Play's billing option, which the company said

it has been piloting for over a year. The settlement also requires that Alphabet simplify

the process of downloading apps directly from developers' websites without using an

online store such as Google Play." As I said this resolves a complaint

brought back in 2021. The complaint accused Google of creating obstacles

...