[The Exiled]

Behind a Secret Deal Between Google and Facebook

Facebook was going to compete with Google for some advertising sales but backed away from the plan after the companies cut a preferential deal, according to court documents. Google and Facebook said that such deals were common in the digital advertising industry and that they were not thwarting competition. Google and Facebook accounted for more than half of all digital advertising spending in 2019. In addition to displaying advertising on their own platforms, such as Google’s search engine and Facebook’s home page, websites, app developers and publishers rely on the companies to secure advertising for their pages.

Signal recovers from a day-long service outage: An influx of WhatsApp users led it to buckle under demand.

WhatsApp has contended that the exodus was the result of confusion, and stressed that it couldn’t read messages.
However, the damage was already done — many were convinced WhatsApp would share chats with its parent, Facebook.

WhatsApp is now reserving the right to share data it collects about you with the broader Facebook network, which includes Instagram, regardless of whether you have accounts or profiles there. Much of the policy, which is about monetizing WhatsApp, is broadly in line with what came before, and states that “WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information with, the other Facebook Companies. We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them, to help operate” and market services. More broadly, almost all of the $21.5 billion in revenue Facebook generated in the third quarter of 2020 came from ads, and there are none in WhatsApp. The company wants to be able to serve more targeted ads to people on Facebook and Instagram by also knowing their usage habits on WhatsApp, and let businesses take payments in WhatsApp for items that, for instance, were clicked on in Instagram ads.

Izvor: The New York Times