Gmail Gets a New Look, Instagram Travels Trying to Be TikTok, and India Blocks Battleground Mobile – TechCrunch

Hello hello! Welcome to Review of the week, a newsletter where we summarize TechCrunch’s most read stories from the past week. The idea: If you’ve had a busy few days, you should be able to skim through the Week in Review and still have a good idea of ​​what’s been happening in tech lately. Want it in your inbox? Register here.

The the most read This week’s story was about Battlegrounds Mobile India, the popular battle royale game that has found an audience of tens of millions in India. Players woke up to find the game suddenly blocked from both Google Play and Apple’s App Store on the orders of the Indian government. why? It’s… not entirely clear yet, but Manish is having a breakdown all we know so far.

other things

The new Gmail for everyone: Use Gmail? Don’t be surprised if things look different soon. The company announced this week that an overhaul of the “Material You” interface it has been testing will be available to all users in the coming weeks. Don’t like the new style? At least for now, you can find a toggle hidden in the settings menu to toggle it back.

Instagram misstep(s).: As far as we can tell, TikTok seems to be eating Instagram’s lunch. Could Instagram Be More Like TikTok? Recent updates — like an emphasis on full-screen video and more content from people you don’t follow — have made Insta’s interface look more and more like TikTok… and, well, the complaints have been loud. However, Instagram is at least pretending to listen and saying it will going back to many of the changes mentioned. it is possible.

Riva layoffs: Earlier this month, there were rumors that layoffs were looming at Rivian; Of course, the company confirmed this week that it is laying off around 6% of its workforce as part of a “restructuring plan”.

Pennies for your tips?: OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 can create incredible art seemingly out of thin air, but sometimes it can take some… finesse to get the results you want. This startup wants to “sell word strings that produce predictable results” on DALL-E 2 and other similar systems. The interesting story is made even better by the Seuss-esque opening image, which I note was created by a real person (and great at the same time).

Target blinds Tuned: Did you know that Meta has a social app for couples? Probably not! Under the name Tuned, it was part of the Meta New Product Experimentation effort, and that particular experiment appears to be over. Meta announced this week that Tuned will be shutting down on September 19th. The app was meant to help couples communicate and “create a shared album” of photos/videos, etc. It doesn’t help that it was launched right at the beginning of the pandemic, when many couples probably had no problem staying in touch because they weren’t going anywhere anyway.

audio stuff

Is reducing your company’s intrinsic valuation ever a good thing? Natasha and Anita focused on this issue on Wednesday an episode of Equity. Meanwhile, on a chain reactionLucas and Anita chatted about Minecraft saying “no damn thanks” for NFT and Lauren jumped The TechCrunch Podcast to tell us why (as we learned last week) Netflix is ​​losing customers.

additional things

If you’re a TechCrunch+ subscriber, (a) thank you! and (b) we have some good stuff for you this week. Such as:

3 thoughts on Amazon’s acquisition of One Medical: Love it or hate it, Amazon is buying One Medical. A good thing? bad? Alex Wilhelm, Walter Thompson and Miranda Halpern share their perspectives.

8 fintech investors on how to pitch them: What are fintech investors looking for right now? Mary Ann Azevedo has signed up with eight leading investors in the space.

Could the CHIPS Act spark a new startup renaissance in the US?: US Senate clearly wants more semiconductor manufacturing in the US, but manufacturing chips is very expensive. Is this “potential cash injection” an opportunity for new startups to change the way things are done? As Hadje puts it, “Those weird theories you studied as part of your PhD? Now is the time to dust them off.”