Week in Review - Little firewalls everywhere

Saturday, September 05, 2020 • By Lucas Matney

Howdy friends, welcome back to Week in Review. This past week, I wrote about Apple’s war with Epic and this week I’m talking about the globalization of The Great Firewall.

If you're reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox here, and follow my tweets here.

The Big Story

The TikTok deal has felt like some bizarre political theatre and I think there’s some tendency to think of it as a one-off fueled by the Trump Administrations flare for the dramatic and ill-considered re: foreign policy.

But what’s been stranger is witnessing this bout get one-upped by India’s increasingly nationalist approach to app storefronts in the country. They already leveled TikTok and dozens of other apps this past June, now they’ve taken aim at gaming smash success PUBG Mobile and 100 other apps including Tencent’s WeChat Work.

Is it surprising? I guess not in the case of TikTok, though unencrypted messaging and email apps seem like they would have been the first targets though China’s tech giants have been content with software platform dominance in their country and have been slow to make cross-border ventures. Gaming does feel like a surprising target, but it also betrays just how entrenched Tencent is in the gaming world.

When Trump put together his ban on American companies doing business with Tencent’s WeChat, there was initially plenty of confusion over whether the ban was limited to the messaging app or encompassed all of the massive tech company’s separate business interests. As people enumerated just how wide the company’s holdings were, clarifications came from the DOJ that indicated the order was just confined to TikTok, for now.

But what if the Trump administration aims to more further and match India’s intensity?

There’s still plenty of room for app stores to move to the frontline of foreign policy skirmishes and it’s clear we haven’t seen the end of nation states using the software availability of tech giants as a more commonly flexed bargaining chip.

Image Credits: Jennifer A Smith / Getty Images

Trends of the Week

Amazon’s drone fleet gets FAA approval
Amazon’s Prime Air delivery drone service has long been in the public eye, but only as a future promise from Amazon. Well, we’re yet another step closer to the dream being realized as Amazon announced this week that they had received FAA approval. Read more here.

India bans PUBG
Who knew that battle royale games were in for such a turbulent year? This week, India announced that they were banning PUBG Mobile and more than 100 other apps linked to China. This, of course, comes after the company banned TikTok earlier this year. Read more here.

Netflix doles out freebies to coax new subscribers
As Netflix finds the streaming space more crowded, the company is aiming to showcase the strength of its original programming by making some of its movies and tv shows free for non-subscribers. Read more here.

TechCrunch Disrupt

Several months ago, before the world became so much more complicated, it was still crystal clear that TikTok was a force to be reckoned with and that its massive growth signaled big things for both Silicon Valley and the global tech scene. As the ByteDance-owned social media app has been drawn into a political crisis after the Trump administration made aggressive moves to force the app under new ownership, the conversation around the future of the app has grown even more intense.

As tech giants mull bids for the app, competitors in the space see room to swoop in and capture its momentum, convincing users to embrace what they've built. The usual suspects are pushing clones, including new features inside Snapchat and Facebook's Reels product, but plenty of venture-backed startups are making their case as well. Perhaps the most convincing seems to be Los Angeles-based Triller, which is itching to capitalize on the uncertainty and claims that its own app has more than 65 million monthly active users.

We're excited to share that Triller CEO Mike Lu is joining us at TechCrunch Disrupt in September to discuss his company's ambitions and how social media is finding new ways to transform the music industry.

As TikTok's geopolitical theater plays out, Triller is aiming to reach the throne by nabbing more outside investment. The company has been aiming to raise a round of funding valuing it at $1 billion, even as it sues ByteDance, claiming that TikTok's app design violates patents that Triller owns. Triller's existing backers include institutional firms like Lowercase Capital and Pegasus Tech Ventures, but also musicians like Snoop Dogg, The Weekend, Marshmello and Lil Wayne.

Hear how it all got started, and what's next for Triller, from Lu at Disrupt 2020 on September 14-18. Get a front-row seat with your Digital Pro Pass for just $245 during our Labor Day Flash Sale or with a Digital Startup Alley Exhibitor Package. Prices increase next week, so grab your tickets today!