#84 - 🏖️Summer pastille

Hello, I hope you are well and wish you to still enjoy the last days of summer!

For me everything is fine and I am sending you this little postcard from my vacation spot.

As promised here is a little summer newsletter while waiting for the weekly schedule to resume at the end of August.

👀A new kind of TV show

We don't talk much TV in this newsletter and yet Today I would like to talk to you about an upcoming TV show which is based on a rather disturbing concept.

You have certainly seen videos taken by Ring video doorbells on your social networks. You might see a clumsy delivery guy, a dog ringing the doorbell, or any other stupid (and sometimes funny) thing that happens in front of a door.

These videos captured by connected doorbells (the best known of which is ring owned by Amazon) are always shared by the owners of the videos and it has become such viral content that Amazon had the idea via MGM television (which it also owns) to put together a TV show on the subject.

It's a video gag version 2022 but what poses a bit of a problem to me is that it is Amazon which uses this content when we know that the company has very few scruples about sharing the recordings of the ring cameras with the police without warning the owners (in the case for example where something happened in front of your home) and sometimes even without requiring a warrant.

In short, it's a bit open bar in terms of sharing but I want to say that it's part of which we implicitly accept when we buy a connected device from Amazon.

🫤Always more mess in Google's messaging apps

Despite its power, its top engineers and its billions, there are 2 things that Google won't stop no screw-up: social networks and messaging applications.

Messaging apps and Google are a long story and certainly Google's most persistent failure. For 15 years, Google has been making multiple attempts to offer messaging services: Talk, Voice, Hangout, Allo, Duo, Message/RCS and finally Meet.

Many alternatives from Apple, WhatsApp and even Zoom appeared much later, succeeding where Google continues to fail. One of the keys to their success? Offer a product that is easy to understand with a unique name and focus on the few essential features.

The latest mess, the recent announcement of the merger of Google's two video messaging services: Duo and Meet.

In the long term, Meet will remain the brand, but until then, hello confusion. In fact, all Duo applications will gradually be renamed Meet. This will lead some users of the 2 services to have 2 applications of the same name installed.

To be more precise there will be 2 Google Meet applications:

• Google Meet (classic): the updated Meet application
• Google Meet: the updated Duo application

And ultimately the one that will remain is the former Duo renamed Meet (Google Meet: The updated Duo app). It's clear, right?

A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging apps

Sixteen years after the launch of Google Talk, Google messaging is still a mess.

Ars TechnicaRon Amadeo

🤔Will Google remain the number 1 search engine?

One thing is certain: Google is no longer the innovative and disruptive company that it once was. We saw it above with its difficulties in maintaining a good messaging app but it is on its core business, search, that things could get tougher.

In fact, Amazon is now the leading product search engine and for places and businesses, Tiktok and Instagram are becoming for generation Z a place of passage and discovery with a lot of content generated by users.

We explain all this to you in the last episode d'Encore A Tech Podcast who, unlike me, is not taking a vacation this summer.

🤡The joke of the week

It's stupid but it made me laugh and even though it's a few weeks old I wanted to share it with you.

Étienne Klein a physicist posted a few weeks ago on Twitter a photo of Primoxima Centauri, the star closest to the sun taken with the James telescope Webb.

Twitter got excited because it is true that James Webb's photos are incredible and give a level of detail never before reached.

Except that given the success of his tweet Étienne Klein admitted that it was in fact a photo of chorizo 😜.

It remains good-natured and not malicious so it's a great 👍.

Have a good read and see you soon !