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Week in Review - Privacy as a Service

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Saturday, June 12, 2021 By Lucas Matney

Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review!

Last week, I wrote about the search for a new crypto savior. This week, I’m looking at Apple’s privacy updates which are good for consumers and extra good for Apple’s future.

If you're reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox from the newsletter page, and follow my tweets @lucasmtny.

The big thing

This week, Apple further doubled down on its commitment to privacy as a key marketing pillar, declaring privacy a "fundamental human right."

They also took the time to showcase a new subscription product complete with paid privacy features called iCloud+. It includes a handful of new features alongside storage including added HomeKit camera storage and a pair of features called Private Relay and Hide My Email.

From our story on the upgrades:

In Safari, Apple is going to launch a new privacy feature called Private Relay. It sounds a bit like the new DNS feature that Apple has been developing with Cloudflare. Originally named Oblivious DNS-over-HTTPS, Private Relay could be a better name for something quite simple — a combination of DNS-over-HTTPS with proxy servers.

When Private Relay is turned on, nobody can track your browsing history — not your internet service provider, anyone standing in the middle of your request between your device and the server you're requesting information from…

The second iCloud+ feature is 'Hide my email'. It lets you generate random email addresses when you sign up to a newsletter or when you create an account on a website. If you've used 'Sign in with Apple', you know that Apple offers you the option to use fake iCloud email addresses. This works similarly, but for any app.

It’s an… interesting… move for Apple to start monetizing privacy-centric features and use them to push users towards storing more data on their servers, Private Relay and Hide my email are purely convenience-driven and don’t seem to provide real platform advantages for Apple while clearly benefitting users.

These are all things that are good for consumer privacy and make for very simple marketing slam dunks, but Apple seems to be drawing a line on what privacy features should be available by default and which should further line their coffers.

The big thing image

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Other things

Here are the TechCrunch news stories that especially caught my eye this week:

Everything Apple announced at its WWDC keynote
It wasn’t the wildest year of announcements for WWDC with pretty minor OS upgrades across the board, but there was still plenty to see including some social upgrades to FaceTime, a new “Focus” mode, some Safari upgrades and a cool software update to AirPods Pro…

Musk unveils Tesla Model S Plaid
Tesla showcased an updated version of its Model S electric sedan, called the Model S Plaid, a reference from the Mel Brooks 1987 classic “Spaceballs.” The car boasts a 0-60mph time of just 1.99 seconds.

Biden rescinds Trump era order on TikTok, WeChat
This week, President Biden clawed back some of the uncertainty Chinese tech firms were facing, officially signing an executive order revoking some of the actions targeting TikTok and WeChat made by the Trump administration while pushing for the Commerce Department to take their own review of the apps.

Facebook buys game studio BigBox VR
Facebook just bought the maker of a rather convincing Fortnite VR clone, acquiring BigBox VR for an undisclosed sum. This comes just a few months after buying the maker of another VR shooter title “Onward.”

Apple announces 2021 Design Award winners
As they do each year at WWDC, Apple announced the apps and games which they saw as the most innovative across six categories. We’ve got the details on all of them.

Other things image

Image Credits: Screenshot/Tesla

Extra things

Some of my favorite reads from our Extra Crunch subscription service this week:

How to start a company in 4 days
“Running a startup can be a complicated, difficult process fraught with pitfalls and ample opportunities to make mistakes. But the logistics of setting up a startup should be simple, because over the long run, complicated equity setups and cap tables cost more money in legal fees and administration time…”

The rise of robotaxis in China
“In China, each local government is incentivized to really act like entrepreneurs like us. They are very progressive in developing the local economy… What we feel is that autonomous driving technology can greatly improve and upgrade the [local governments'] economic structure.

The fintech endgame
“If money is the ultimate commodity, how can fintechs — which sell money, move money or sell insurance against monetary loss — build products that remain differentiated and create lasting value over time?.”

Extra things image

Image Credits: Peter Dazeley / Getty Images

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