The Six Invitational is finally right around the corner! Taking place in Paris, France, from May 11th to 23rd. watch your favourite Rainbow Six Siege Pro’s battle it out for the top prize of $1 million dollars and the title of Six Invitational Champions.
You can access the full guide to the Six Invitational HERE and see below for a visual of participating teams and the first group stage!
Six Invitational Participating Teams:
Group Stage (May 11 – 16):
Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature has been available to iPhone users for a couple of weeks now. And early metrics suggest that an overwhelming 96% of users in the U.S. leave app tracking disabled. In other words, 96% of iPhone users do not want to be tracked at all. This comes from analytics firm Flurry who looked at 2.5 million users in the U.S.
In short, only 4% of users opted into app tracking in the U.S. When looking at users worldwide who allow app tracking, the figure rises to 12% of users in a 5.3 million user sample size. Flurry’s figures also show a stable rate of app-tracking opt-outs. The U.S. figure hovers between 11-13%, and 2-5% worldwide.
Flurry themselves point out what is at stake here:
With opt-in rates expected to be low, this change is expected to create challenges for personalized advertising and attribution, impacting the $189 billion mobile advertising industry worldwide.
In other words, if you’re Facebook, and your revenue model relies on being able to track users all over the Internet, you have a serious problem. And it highlights that users on the iOS platform overwhelmingly value their privacy above all else.
If you want to learn more about App Tracking Transparency and how you can disable it or enable it on an app by app basis, I wrote an article about it here.
Google Adds YouTube TV Channel To Main App To Get Around Roku Related Dispute… Get Ready For Vengeance From Roku
Posted in Commentary with tags Google, Roku on May 7, 2021 by itnerdYou might remember that Google and Roku were in a dispute over the YouTube TV channel that Roku has characterized as an anti-trust dispute. Then Roku pulled the YouTube TV app from Roku’s their store. To get around this, it appears that Google has added a new “Go to YouTube TV” option within the primary YouTube app on Roku which remains available to download on the streaming platform. In short, Google has put the YouTube TV channel into the YouTube channel. And by extension, they’ve now basically dared Roku to pull the main YouTube channel. The Verge has additional details:
In essence, Google has basically stuffed the YouTube TV app into YouTube itself, a solution that seems unlikely to make Roku very happy. Google says it’s “still working to come to an agreement with Roku to ensure continued access to YouTube TV for our mutual customers,” and it notes the YouTube TV app remains usable for those who already have it installed.
But in the event that things totally fall apart, Google says it’s “in discussions with other partners to secure free streaming devices in case YouTube TV members face any access issues on Roku.” A Google spokesperson told The Verge that this workaround is only for consumption of YouTube TV; customers cannot sign up for new subscriptions through the YouTube app at this time.
Roku had this to say:
Google’s actions are the clear conduct of an unchecked monopolist bent on crushing fair competition and harming consumer choice. The bundling announcement by YouTube highlights the kind of predatory business practices used by Google that Congress, Attorney Generals and regulatory bodies around the world are investigating. Roku has not asked for one additional dollar in financial value from YouTubeTV. We have simply asked Google to stop their anticompetitive behavior of manipulating user search results to their unique financial benefit and to stop demanding access to sensitive data that no other partner on our platform receives today. In response, Google has continued its practice of blatantly leveraging its YouTube monopoly to force an independent company into an agreement that is both bad for consumers and bad for fair competition.
It now seems that this dispute has gone nuclear. And I’ll be watching for the mushroom clouds.
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