Google makes an Epic Compromise - DTNS 5140

0:03This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, November 5th, the 5th of November. Happy Bonfire Day 2025. We tell you what you need to know, give you the important context, and help each other understand. Today, Epic and Google agree to open up Android worldwide. I'm Tom Merritt. And I'm Sarah Lane. Let's start with what you need to know with that big story. Peace in our time. Epic Games and Google have agreed to settle their five-year-old antitrust case over the Google App Store. The settlement includes many, if not most, of the remedies that were ordered by Judge James Donato in his ruling from October 2024.

0:43It will prevent an appeal from taking place. And here's what stays. Google will still have to allow third-party app stores, which it has already done complying with, and in-app payment systems on its version of Android without additional fees or unnecessary impediments. Google will not use revenue sharing as a way to stop a company from making its own app store. It will not enter into exclusivity agreements. It will not get OEMs and carriers to restrict pre-installation or placement of Google Play Store. And the three-member dispute panel with members approved by both Epic and Google will still be created to resolve any disputes over the settlement.

1:25Now, the settlement goes beyond the judge's ruling in a few ways. This will apply worldwide. So the court is just in the U.S. Google would only have to do this in the U.S. But Google is going to say, you know what? We're going to do this everywhere. It will last for six and a half years at the least. They can go longer if they want, but this will go through 2032. The judge had only required three for the initial order. Google will lower its fee structure. Now, it gets complicated when you wade into the details, but right now it's either 30 or 15%. It's going to get a lot more complicated about what percentage applies when, but the max will be 20 % and the minimum 9 % that has to go to Google from developers for purchases made using the Google in-app payment system.

2:11And Google will certify makers of alternative app stores and payment systems for safety. Hold on to that thought because there's a little spin on that that makes it different than the original order. There are two ways that, two significant ways that it differs. Google can require that devs include an option alongside third-party payment methods. Apps can still set their own prices and offer lower prices if you skip Google's system, but Google can require you to have them as a payment option. Registered app stores, so if you register with Google, will be able to install from a website with a single click.

2:53No scare warnings, no bouncing through sideload methods. This replaces something in the original order where Google would have been required to distribute the third-party app stores. Now, U.S. District Court Judge James Donato has to review the settlement and sign off on it before it can go into effect, partly because they changed some stuff. Like, you were going to make Google distribute them. Epic's saying, we're okay if we do this one-click install from the web thing instead. and the judge is probably going to sign off on it and then we're off to the races. A couple of questions here. I guess my first, what I'm most interested in is that three-member dispute panel.

3:32So it's like, all right, three people, Epic and Google, both say, yes, you are the three people who are going to settle disputes between us as we go forward. Who are those people? And how does it benefit both companies? and also the applicable worldwide, not just in the US, and for more than twice what the judge required. Six and a half years rather than three. I would assume a lot of this is Google being like, get off our back. Let's make nice with Epic. We don't have to worry about this for a while. And everybody's happy. I think that's the key to all of this is Google wants to make Epic agree not to sue them again.

4:15you know, because if they follow the judge's order and then they do something that Epic doesn't like, and then it goes to that panel you're talking about and Epic still doesn't like it, they might bring a lawsuit again. This is going to make that much less likely because Epic is very happy with this. The statements from both Google and Epic were all like, this is going to do for Android what it should have been like the whole time, et cetera, et cetera. You know, just praising it to the high hills. So I think Google is avoiding this continuing to be a problem. That's why they want to make it six and a half years to keeps epic off their backs, like you say, for another six and a half years.

4:49And it makes that three member panel less of an important question. Cause, cause you're right. If, if this was a contentious dispute ordered by a judge, then who goes on that panel is, is really interesting, right? Uh, if these two are getting along with the settlement, that panel is still probably going to be necessary here and there for some judgment calls, but, but by and large, the two companies are going to try to get along because they made this settlement. Yeah. For any devs out there who are listening to all these details and have been following this story, I would assume there's a lot of happy people out there today.

5:22Yeah, especially with that drop from 30 % and 15 % to 20 % and 9%. Right. A little more paperwork there. The one thing I've seen people upset about is the idea of registering. Developers will need to register their identity to distribute apps that can run on Android at all. That's something Google, we covered that last week. And some folks are upset with that. They don't believe that is in the true spirit of openness to have to have any kind of identity associated with an app. But that is not prohibited by this settlement. It's not particularly named. It's sort of left vague how this registration process is going to work.

6:03But one assumes it's going to be something like that where Google says, we just want to make sure you're not scammers in Myanmar trying to create an app to fish people. Yeah. That is a story we will get to later in the show. A little tease ahead there. For now, you know what we want to do? We want to thank our listeners. We are made possible by all of you. Thank you to Reed Fishler. Thank you to Larry Bailey. Thank you to Michelle Sergiu. And thanks to our new patrons, Evan Kate and Doug O. Woo! Yay! Thanks, Evan. Welcome, Evan Kate. There's more we need to know today. Let's get to the briefs.

6:40sony's playstation portal handheld was released back in 2023 for 200 supporting remote play of games on your ps5 however and you may recall your ps5 had to be on had to be connected to the internet and that connection had to be good enough to stream your game which wasn't always the case however not anymore we're on the up and up everybody the playstation portal now supports cloud streaming of games directly from sony's servers as long as you subscribe to playstation Plus Premium, which will cost you$18 per month. That does let you game side by side with somebody using your PS5 under another account, or could let somebody watch a movie on your PS5 while you use the portal to play a game at the same time.

7:24I can already hear somebody saying, well, you still need a good internet connection to stream to the portal, which is true. But you had to have it on both ends before. Now you only have to have it on the one end. And Sony servers are probably not going to be the bottleneck on this. But the bigger thing is that last stuff you said where if you were doing this you couldn't use your ps5 for anything else uh probably not a big deal all the time but occasionally an annoyance and now you'll be able to just do the cloud game if it has the game you want and you're paying for the service i get that but but you'll be able to if you have that going on uh let somebody use your ps5 to do something else with it yeah yeah seems like it seems like a win for ps5 folks yeah yeah uh and it doesn't take away the ability to stream from the ps5 if you're like i don't want to pay that subscription fee, right?

8:09Like you can still use it the way it's been used up until now without having to pay anything. We have options. We mentioned back in June that Google's DeepMine Weather Lab had begun releasing forecasts for hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, the like. There were high expectations for the model. And now that the Atlantic hurricane season is winding down, we can see whether it met those high expectations. The official numbers are going Going to come a little later from the U.S. National Hurricane Center in a few months, but senior researcher Brian McNulty at the University of Miami got a hold of the raw data and crunched a bunch of the numbers to give folks a preview.

8:45Out of 11 forecast models, the U.S. National Weather Service's global forecast model had the most track forecast errors across the 13 name storms this season. That's actually not a surprise. That model is not always that great, but it was particularly bad. and set against Google DeepMind, the difference between the two was significant. DeepMind was almost twice as good at the five-day maximum forecast level as the National Weather Service forecast. However, the official forecast from the National Hurricane Center, or OFCL, is the one to beat. That's the gold standard. It is actually made by human experts consulting data from multiple models, the two of those, the OFCL and the Google DeepMind, were almost identical for the first 12 hours out, right?

9:35Like when you're very close to the storm and you kind of know where it is. Google DeepMind did slightly better until about four days out when the two converged. So five days away, they were both really good. Right before the storm, they were both really good. but in the interim, Google DeepMind was better. The gold standard of all these models is the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecast. That data was not included in this analysis. That's why we want to wait a couple months for the official stuff. But typically, that one does about the same as the OFCL, just a little better. So it'll be interesting to see how it matches up.

10:10Google DeepMind also performed well at predicting intensity changes, which is also important, not just where it is, but how bad it is. Is it category five? That kind of stuff. Ars Technica quoted a hurricane specialist, Michael Lowry, noting that how much more quickly the DeepMind product can produce a forecast compared to the traditional physics-based counterparts that require some of the most expensive and advanced supercomputers in the world is quite notable. And he also pointed out that neural networks like DeepMind have the ability to learn and improve on the fly. So it's only going to get better the more it does this.

10:42Yeah, I mean, I think that that's kind of the key, right, is it's cheaper and it can reverse course. Ha ha, no pun intended. But it can kind of go like, oh, wait a second. Now we got a little bit more information. I know I said this two hours ago, but now I'm going to go ahead and update the forecast for something that is extremely important to somebody. for example, a level five hurricane. This is stuff that the more you know ahead of time, very, very, very important for anybody who's affected. So yeah, I mean, listen, we all love to talk about the weather ad nauseum, depending on where we live.

11:24Weather is very important. It affects your life one way or another. So yeah, the better we can get using some of these models, You know, I'm into it. I wonder how much some of the old guard of weather folks are like, Google deep mind, you know, they think they're so smart. I don't know. I certainly haven't talked to all the weather experts out there. But but the folks I read today and I read two or three different folks were pretty excited about this. They were like, this is great because their goal is to make sure they can tell people to get to safety ahead of time and not have to waste time preparing for a hurricane in a place it's not going to hit.

12:03Right. They want both of those. And this made it better. This made it easier to do that. It made it more more effective. And that's really what's important. And not for nothing. And, you know, let's point out that this is this is AI. This is that AI that people are often railing about being used to make a demonstrably better prediction about something that will, in fact, save lives. So I don't think we should lose sight of that. And this is not a like, well, we'll see how it does. Maybe it was a blip like this was, you know, over the course of an entire season compared against dozens of models like it did well.

12:41And it's probably going to continue to do well, if not better. Amazon is suing Perplexity for computer fraud. The retailer alleges that Perplexity's Comet browser doesn't disclose when it's shopping on a person's behalf, which, Amazon says, is a violation of its terms of service. Amazon terms prohibit any use of data mining, robots, or similar data gathering and extraction tools. Perplexity agreed back in November of last year not to let its agent shop on Amazon sites. But then this August 2025, the Comet browser started accessing Amazon, identifying itself as a Chrome browser user. Amazon obviously took issue with that.

13:23Sent a cease and desist letter on Friday to Perplexity, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday. Amazon is offering its own automated shopping, including Buy4Me, which can shop brand sites within Amazon, and Rufus, an assistant that can find and recommend items and put them in the cart. So there's a little bit of competition going on here. But likely, even a bigger concern is that if you're a user and you're using the comment browser, you're not seeing ads when that agent is doing your shopping. Yeah, that's the one, right? Amazon makes a lot of money off putting ads on the page to direct you to like, maybe you want to buy this, maybe you want to buy that.

13:59Which is very effective. Yeah, they've been making more and more money off of it as time goes on. If people aren't seeing those ads because the agent is doing it, those ads aren't very effective anymore. And what Amazon wants to do is figure out a way to say, let's make an agreement with every agentic browser out there that they will somehow pass along ads or bring in the user into the loop and make the process less good. Like this is going to be a fight. And this is not going to be the only company that does this that says, we have built a system based on people seeing things. You've changed that system.

14:38And we don't want to change our system. So you need to hobble your new technology from doing it. I mean, Amazon ran into this when it tried to do screen reading on Kindle itself, right? It got a bunch of audiobook makers mad at it because it's like, well, you're replacing audiobooks. So now they're on the other end of it. Well, and Amazon obviously offering something that's not exactly what Comet Browser is doing, but something that's baked into its own ecosystem. Amazon wants you to use that. Yeah, definitely. They don't want you to use anybody else's. They'll be able to direct you to the ads using their tools, right?

15:12Yeah, this is going to be any kind of automation like this ends up causing problems for people who built their systems around the world without that kind of automation. Google announced a research effort called Project Suncatcher, which will explore the possibility of launching a cluster of satellites to act as a data center in space. Google would put its tensor processing units on the satellites, outfit the satellites with solar panels, and those solar panels would generate electricity almost continuously. That would make them an estimated eight times more productive than a solar panel would be on the surface of the planet.

15:47The satellites would have to stay within a kilometer or two of each other to support the tens of terabits per second of links needed to make it work. That sounds like a long way, but in space, it's not a long way. satellites usually stay much farther away from each other yeah the tpu chips no no not in space right uh the tpu chips also need to be hardened against radiation uh they have tested trillium tpus which survive a dose equivalent to five years in space without permanent failures so there's promise there the cost of the launch would be too much right now it would be prohibitive but what google is saying is they expect it to get cheap enough by 2030 to mean the energy savings from the solar panels would balance it out.

16:33So rockets get cheaper, solar panels make it more energy efficient, and then it's going to be at least about the same as a data center on Earth. And then you say, well, okay, and maybe it's cleaner because it's using solar and it's up there in the clouds. Don't forget that you have CO2 emissions coming from the rocket that has to launch the satellites. And even when you amortize that over the life of the satellites in space, The CO2 emissions right now would be much more for getting these satellites into space. However, once again, there is hope. SpaceX's Starship has lower emissions, and it has to be reusable, by the way.

17:10Any throwaway rocket is going to be way off the charts on pollutants. But a reusable Starship rocket from SpaceX might just have low enough emissions to make it balance out there as well. So not better than on the surface, but at least equal to it. Google plans to launch a prototype in collaboration with a company called Planet by 2027. Now, how often do these rockets have to go up and just perform maintenance on these solar panels? I don't think they would. Maintenance is pretty low, and I think the satellites would have to perform their own maintenance. You wouldn't be sending rockets up to do maintenance.

17:47Yeah, because I'm thinking of, you know, for anybody who's got a bunch of solar panels on their house, and Tom, I know that you went solar some years ago with good results. And, you know, it's something that you invest in to get more out of it after a certain amount of time. So I think for anybody who's kind of like, all right, well, solar panels either work for me or don't work for me right now. Is this going to change the game for homeowners? Yeah, I don't think it does much for me as a homeowner. It would be nice not to have to go up there and clean the solar panels. I assume that the solar panels on the satellites won't have to be cleaned because there's not a lot of dust up in space.

18:26But yeah, I think that's one of the things that they're going to look for in Project Suncatcher is to figure out like, okay, what unforeseen problems are there when you put this up in space? And that's why they're going to do the test plan first. But they're hoping that the cost of rocket launches has come down quite a bit and will continue to come down. And then putting them up in space, I think, has some other benefits in that you don't have them near anyone. so it's not bothering anybody. It's not making the landscape look ugly or anything like that. Potentially, it could make the sky look ugly if too many of them got up there, I guess.

19:04I don't know. Yeah, I know. It's like if they're a kilometer away from each other, okay, that makes sense. But how far away are they from the ground of gravity? Yeah, they're low Earth orbit, so they're way up there, and a kilometer doesn't look like anything. So if you've got a cluster of them, They might be a bright light, you know, bobbing around up there. Maybe they can arrange them like drones to make faces and emojis and stuff. Yeah, yeah. It's solar, but it's fun. China's Osmo Mobile 8 gimbal is now available outside of China. It has a multifunctional tracking and built-in light, as well as Apple Dot Kit support, 260-degree panning, and pet tracking.

19:46A multifunctional module lets you track subjects with a camera app, lots of camera apps. But the Apple Dot Kit is a nice feature because then you don't need the attachment if you're using iOS and a compatible app. It also has an integrated tripod, easy switching between front and rear cameras, built-in extension rod, depending on what you need. Some of this might work out for you. The DJI Osmo Mobile 8 gimbal is€159 or$159 and available now. This is a nice-looking gimbal. And if you don't know what a gimbal is, I mean, just think like automated selfie stick. The gimbal is the thing in the drone that moves the camera around and keeps the balance of the drone.

20:27But they've taken that same attachment and put it on a big old tripod stick. So you can just hold your phone and the phone can track you or now track your dog or your cat. And they're really useful. They're very cool for that. Yeah. Anything between, I don't know, I guess home tracking, pet tracking, vacation stuff. I mean, it would be good for a lot of this. All right. Finally, some quick headlines that are things to keep in mind. If you're reading the news in the future, you're like, oh, wait, I heard about that. I knew about that. We got lots of stuff for you to listen to right here. Two former Meta employees launched the Sandbar Stream smart ring.

21:06It has a mic and also a touchpad, which in conjunction with an iOS app, and it is iOS only for now, lets you take notes and interact with an assistant by voice going throughout your day. A little gesture. Tap it. Tap, tap, tap. Google has been replacing Google Assistant with Gemini in Google Maps. That means you'll be able to use more natural language and ask multiple questions at a time. The Motion Picture Association sent a cease and desist to Meta, ordering it to stop using the term PG-13 when describing its Instagram content's rating system. The MPA, I said, you're not doing well enough. That is not PG-13 content.

21:44That word does not mean what you think it means. You need to stop. In a crackdown on one of the greatest sources of online scams, China has sentenced five members of a Myanmar scam organization to death on charges of homicide, as well as lots of other crimes, with 16 more people convicted of fraud, injury, and other crimes, receiving life sentences, commuted sentences, and rather severe sentences there as well. Australia added Reddit and live streaming platform Kik to the list of organizations that have to restrict anyone younger than 16 from using their platforms. Bunch of 15-year-old Reddit users got really upset at this.

22:25uh fair phone has launched its repairable fair buds 11 earbuds in the u.s and plan to launch its repairable phones in the united states as well apple podcasts will soon automatically generate chapter markers this is something that a lot of people are always asking us to do and links to related content you can as a podcast maker opt out if it doesn't opt us out uh i will let it automatically make chapter markers because my only resistance was like it takes time and we You want to get the news out as fast as possible. Yep. Yep. Open AI launched its Sora video generation app on Android. If you're in Canada or the US, you can get it now.

23:04I downloaded it yesterday. Nintendo launched a store app that lets you buy games, hardware, and merchandise, as well as download demos, Amiibo, and track your gameplay hours. China's Xpeng plans to roll out three models of autonomous cars next year that will be made entirely with tech, like hardware and software, from within China, not relying on any outside vendors. Xi 'an opened its first store in France. The French finance ministry has announced that it has begun the process to suspend Xi 'an until it removes illegal products from its online platform and can prove it has done so. Just in time, right?

23:43It's like, well, at least you can go to the physical store. That one will still be allowed. You just can't shop online if we don't figure this out. Uh, don't forget folks, we do a bunch of live streams. Uh, I do a mailbag office hours, do a hangout on Friday. Uh, we stream live with it. Uh, Sarah hosts that a bunch of product reviews with products we've actually lived with on Wednesdays. And of course, DTNS live, uh, where we do a big recap of the news of the week on Thursdays. You can find all of that at youtube.com slash daily tech.

24:16We like to end every episode of DTNS with some shared wisdom because you're all very smart out there. Today, Richard explains why subscription gaming just not worth it for him. Yes, Richard writes, good day, guys. You discussed those Xbox price changes. The issue is not the price change, but the fact that none of the subscriptions match how most families use their Xbox as a shared resource. I canceled my subscription at the last price hike, and my kids and I are now not able to play couch co-op with the games that I actually own already and are not part of Game Pass. If I own it, I should be able to play it in co-op on my couch with my kids without Game Pass, especially when it's an offline game.

24:59The only feature I care about in Game Pass is the console multiplayer. However, it's not worth the$15 Australian just for that and a few extra games. and Microsoft needs to make local multiplayer part of the console, not the subscription. It's an example of somebody saying, you mentioned this thing. That reminds me of another thing that bothers me. But I think it's a fair complaint to say, hey, I'm in my house with my kids. I'm not playing online. I'm playing co-op with my console that's in offline mode. Why do I have to pay for that? Why do I have to pay extra for that? Totally fair question.

25:34Yeah, I get you, Richard. That would irk me too. If you've got thoughts, whether it's gaming or tech or anything that we talk about on the show, if you have insight to a story, you want us to talk about something on a future episode, do share it with us. We read every single email. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Keep them coming. Big thanks to Richard for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You keep us in business, folks. if you're not a patron yet you can keep us in business by becoming one do it right now patreon.com slash d t n s

26:18the dt n s family of podcasts helping each other understand diamond club hopes you have enjoyed this program