News & Reviews:   Google Malaysia

Google recently weighed in online via Mark Risher, Senior Director for Account Security, Identity, and Abuse about the current online security COVID-19 situation. On Google’s side, Google Meet, GMail and Google Play Protect for example have mostly built-in automatic protections but there are a number of checkup tools to see if you’re safe or not and the advice on what to do about it. On our part, we’ve seen a marked increase in such scams.

Businesses around the country are having a hard time adapting to the current situation, especially smaller companies. But it's during times like this that we can learn new ways to work and communicate. Google Malaysia wants to help local companies learn these digital skills and has announced a series of free online workshops.

Today, we had the opportunity to sit down with Google Malaysia and they shared with us some interesting insights on how Malaysians are using Google. In this year's Year in Search Insights for Brands report, there are five new trends that Malaysians are showing through the search engine - Convenience, More informed, Ecommerce growth outside of cities, Local content demand, and more conscious towards the environment.

In this week's tech news recap, Samsung stole the show by unpacking the latest Samsung Galaxy Note10 and Note10+! Compared with the predecessor, it has several new features such as the S Pen Air Action, AR Doodle, PlayGalaxy Link, 3D Scanner and many more. Samsung Malaysia quickly soon announced the official local price starting from RM3699 and the series are now on pre-order which sold out quickly. Dayum son! We can't wait to get our hands on it for the review!!

Besides that, HONOR Malaysia shortly announced the HONOR 20 Pro price for RM2299 (not too shabby). If you're thinking of getting one, we just released our review so do check out the camera capabilities (#satisfied). Also, Huawei revealed its own HarmonyOS which can potentially replace Android and they should just do it anyway as a competition. Lastly, some #khabarbaik announcement by TM on new price slash for all Streamyx users at RM69/month and Unifi Air for RM79/month. Pretty cool, now onto the NewsBytes below.

One of the most annoying things to happen while gaming on your phone are the pop up ads and banners that you find yourself accidentally clicking while you play. If you agree with me, there is a way to be rid of the annoying ads. Google is planning on launching a service called Google Play Pass which lets users game with no ad interruptions for a monthly fee of USD$4.99 (~RM21).

This isn’t really shocking, really. According to a recent study, Google and Facebook could potentially be tracking your visits to porn sites even when you’re on incognito mode. Google has trackers on 74% of the porn sites, Facebook on 10% and Oracle on 24%. Yikes.

The biggest problem with launching a phone OS is not the technical bits but rather the building of the ecosystem. The OS would not be successful without apps on it and Huawei definitely sees this. As a step to overcome the problem, the Chinese manufacturer invites partners and developers to join the “Ark of Friends Circle” to help build a “fair, open, healthy and win-win” ecosystem. Huawei’s Ark Compiler is set to be officially open source starting this August. 

Loot boxes has been deemed a form of gambling in gaming which is pretty detrimental as the audience in games are usually younger children. Due to that, Google has now asked developers of apps and games on the Google Play Store to show the loot box odds.

So a lot of things happened this week. First, there was Computex 2019 with ASUS showing a wide range of products - a new ZenFone 6 Edition 30, ZenBook Edition 30 laptop and a Prime X299 Edition 30 motherboard for its 30th Anniversary, a ZenBook Pro Duo with two functioning 4K touchscreens, new VivoBook S14 and S15 with a 5.65-inch ScreenPad 2.0 display, two new portable monitors (ZenScreen Touch and ROG Strix XG17), ROG Swift gaming monitor, a new Glacier Blue skin for ROG gaming laptops in the near future, and many more. 

The Trade War between the USA and China still going on, the chain effect has hit across the nation. Our Prime Minister voiced out on the matter, saying Malaysia will still use Huawei technology; Huawei has also prepared to file a lawsuit against the US Government for bullying, a number of Malaysian restaurants are showing support for Huawei smartphone users, and for some reason, the Mate 20 Pro is back on the Android Q beta program. 

And on other news, Apple Malaysia has just announced a new iPod touch with AR capability coming soon to Malaysia from RM899, Pokemon Masters is also set to be released on our mobile devices this year, and finally, OPPO Reno 10X Zoom was announced for RM3399 (which to be honest, is kinda expensive comparing with the Xiaomi Mi 9 for having similar tech specs minus the 60x zoom feature for just RM1699, now you tell me which one makes more sense). 

Not too long ago, Google had announced that they will be shutting down Youtube Gaming app at the end of March but that didn’t happen. At least, not yet. Now, the company has announced that they will be officially shutting the doors to the gaming streaming app on the 30th of May.