EU antitrust regulators are now going after Google’s ad business

European Union antitrust regulators have sent two “statements of objections” to Google over its Adsense for Search platform, accusing the search giant of abusing its position by preventing third-party websites from showing ads from its competitors.

With Adsense for Search, Google gives third-party sites access to a custom search bar powered by Google Search, and in return shows ads next to the search results. Revenue from ads clicked on the site is shared between Google and the third-party site, and the caveat is that competing search ads cannot be placed next to or above the custom search bar. The EU’s regulators state that in doing so, Google is stifling competition.

The EU commission also mentioned that it has “reinforced” its earlier case against Google wherein it accused the search giant of giving an unfair advantage to its own comparison shopping service in search results.

From the official press release:

The Commission has sent two Statements of Objections to Google. The Commission has reinforced, in a supplementary Statement of Objections, its preliminary conclusion that Google has abused its dominant position by systematically favouring its comparison shopping service in its search result pages.

Separately, the Commission has also informed Google in a Statement of Objections of its preliminary view that the company has abused its dominant position by artificially restricting the possibility of third party websites to display search advertisements from Google’s competitors.

Google places search ads directly on the Google search website but also as an intermediary on third party websites through its “AdSense for Search” platform (“search advertising intermediation”). These include websites of online retailers, telecoms operators and newspapers. The websites offer a search box that allows users to search for information. Whenever a user enters a search query, in addition to the search results, also search ads are displayed. If the user clicks on the search ad, both Google and the third party receive a commission.

Specifically, the EU’s regulators have raised issues with the following policies followed by Google for its Adsense for Search platform:

• Exclusivity: requiring third parties not to source search ads from Google’s competitors.
• Premium placement of a minimum number of Google search ads: requiring third parties to take a minimum number of search ads from Google and reserve the most prominent space on their search results pages to Google search ads. In addition, competing search ads cannot be placed above or next to Google search ads.
• Right to authorise competing ads: requiring third parties to obtain Google’s approval before making any change to the display of competing search ads.

The commission is giving Google and its parent company Alphabet ten weeks to respond to the latest round of charges. In addition to these objections, the commission is going after Google for abusing its dominant position in the mobile space by requiring manufacturers pre-install its services like Google Search and Chrome on all Android phones.

Sony Xperia E5 now available at Vodafone for just £100

The Sony Xperia E5 is now available from Vodafone UK for just £100 on a pay as you go plan. If you’d rather pay over time, you can pick one up for £16 which includes unlimited texts, 250 minutes and 250MB of data per month. As a refresher, the Xperia E5 sports a 5-inch 720P display, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage and runs Marshmallow out of the box.

You’ve also got a 13MP camera on the front, with a 5MP shooter on the front for capturing those stunning selfies. Will you be picking up one of these, or do you have something else in mind? Be sure to let us know in the comments.

See at Vodafone

Tefal app-controlled ActiFry Smart XL and Cook4Me Connect to stir things up in the kitchen

Not so hot at juggling pans like a pro? Tefal may have the answer for today’s tech-driven cooks: its app-connected Cook4Me Connect pressure cooker and ActiFry Smart XL connected healthier fryer.

The idea of both is simple: download the relevant app, install it on your Apple or Android device, connect via Bluetooth and you can select from various recipes that will auto-instruct the cooking appliance.

In the case of the ActiFry Smart XL, which includes a rotating paddle to its centre to stir food in its sealed container, that will differ depending on what you’re cooking. Breaded chicken nuggets won’t be stirred until they’re cooked for long enough to avoid breaking down the coating, for example, as we were shown at Tefal’s launch demo day.

Pocket-lint

The ActiFry only needs one spoon of oil to cook, making it far healthier than a dredged-in-oil traditional fryer. Plus, given the app controls the timer, it will automatically switch off at the end of a cycle and keep food warm, so no risk of burning if you’ve had to pop to the shops for five minutes.

The Cook4Me Connect pressure cooker, which is Tefal’s first connected cooker, is a more interactive experience. Again, recipes can be selected via the app, but the approach is more stage driven: the screen on the appliance’s front will instruct with what to do next, mirrored on the app device too. If you’re not so hot at getting everything perfect then this step-by-step approach all in the one pan will ensure spot-on results.

No app? No worries. Both appliances will work with simple button inputs if you simply want to set the time, temperature and get cooking without a connection.

Each appliance will retail for £300 each when they go on sale via Amazon and Currys. Get cooking.

Pokemon Go: How to catch Pikachu as your first Pokemon

Pokemon Go is undoubtedly one of the biggest success stories of the App Store and Google Play Store this year so far, perhaps even this decade. Millions of smartphone users have downloaded, signed-up and tried to “Catch ‘Em All” in the real world. Sometimes that’s lead to users ending up in the strangest of places, sometimes in danger, or just lead thousands to crowd up in Central Park.

If you’re yet to give the game a spin, but you’re a fan of the TV show, you know there’s one star, and that’s Pikachu. The little half rabbit-half electrical storm is as cute as he is formidable, and he’s the lead character Ash’s sidekick.

• Pokemon Go: Best, worst and craziest places people have found Pokemon
• London through the eyes of Pokemon Go
• What is Pokemon Go and why is everyone talking about it?

You’ll be disappointed (but not surprised) to know that when you sign up to start the game, he’s not among the first three Pokemon available to catch and start your collection. Instead, you get three options: Squirtle, Charmander and Bulbasaur. But there is a way to get Pikachu right from the beginning. 

First up, you need to download the game, which you can find here in the iTunes App Store for iPhone, or from the Google Play Store for Android. Second, you sign up as normal on the initial screen either using your Google account or a Pokemon Trainer Club account.

Side note – If you’ve already started the game and chosen one of the first three characters, you’ll need to sign out and create a brand new account using another Google account, or just registering a new Pokemon Trainer Club account.

To sign out, hit your red and white Poke-ball, tap the settings cog in the top right corner, scroll to the bottom of the following screen and choose “Sign Out”.

Your next step, once you’ve started from scratch is to go walk outside. You’ll notice the three startup characters somewhere waiting for you together, instead of walking towards them, walk away from them until your phone vibrates and they appear again on your screen. Keep walking away from them. At some point around the fifth or sixth time they reappear, you should see a fourth character appear next to the original three. It’s Pikachu.

Tap on Pikachu and throw your Poke-ball at him until you’ve caught him, and hey presto, your first character is the little lightning-bunny. After that, you choose your username as we showed you in the get started guide, and start playing. 

Philips personal health programmes: A full suite for managing health and chronic conditions

Wearables and health monitors are nothing new: we’ve seen bundles of fitness trackers, bands, smart scales and more from a variety of manufacturers. Which is why Philips’ personal health programmes suite of products is an interesting take on the health market, for it focuses on not only maintaining health but also managing chronic conditions.

The products, sold separately, are made-up of the Health Watch, a £250 continuous heart-rate monitor and wrist-worn hub to the system; blood pressure monitor (£90 for the upper-arm one, £70 for the wrist-worn one); Body Analysis Scale (£90) to measure weight, estimate body fat percentage and BMI calculation; and even an ear thermometer (£45) for taking temperature.

Packages from competition such as the Under Armour HealthBox total £349 for wearable, scales and chest-strap heart-rate monitor, which makes the more practical Philips wrist-worn combination of Health Watch and Body Analysis Scales more affordable. And let’s not forget that a large part of the Philips business is based in supplying medical-grade products to healthcare businesses.

Pocket-lint

The hub of the system, the Health Watch, which communicates with an associated app on phone or tablet, is able to measure heart-rate and even sleep patterns for around four days at a time, Philips claims. After which it will need a 40-minute stop to recharge. No interchangeable batteries means this might not always be practical, but that’s an issue with most current products in this sector.

The Health Watch will auto detect raises or drops in heart-rate and associate these to exercise, such as running or cycling, or sleep, as a means to assess stress. Being able to look back over these will act as a means to identify stress factors in given days or weeks and take action. If you have high or low blood pressure then integrating a monitor for this to your package may further assist with countering ongoing conditions.

Pocket-lint

The system can also handle food data input, whether via the app or the watch itself, the Body Analysis Scales obviously being the means to continually measure and, the theory being, hit your goal of weight/mass gain or loss.

The Philips personal health programmes products have been a long time coming – we’ve seen the Health Watch before now – but will finally go on sale in September 2016. Looks like a serious take on health monitoring – we’ll be pulling together the full suite for a long-term ongoing review as and when it becomes available.

How many Pokemon are there in Pokemon Go? 151 and here they all are

Pokemon Go has been a global hit. The augmented reality game is available for iOS and Android in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and now the UK too, so you can head out onto the streets to find and catch Pokemon.

However, how do you know which Pokemon to look for? And how many can you catch exactly?

There are more than 700 Pokemon that have appeared in the franchise in the last 20 years, 729 to be precise, but the number of them that can be caught in Pokemon Go is far smaller. In fact, thanks to Reddit user Juxlos, who deep dived into the field test version of the game, it has been revealed that there are 151 Pokemon in the mobile app to be found.

• Pokemon Go: How to play and other tips and tricks
• Can’t get Pokemon Go in your country yet? Here’s how to download it now
• What is Pokemon Go and why is everyone talking about it? 
• Pokemon Go: Best, worst and craziest places people have found Pokemon
• London through the eyes of Pokemon Go
• Pokemon Go: 11 amazing, mind-boggling facts about the AR game
• Pokemon Go: How to catch Pikachu as your first Pokemon

At least, there were 151 data files for Pokemon in the test version seeded a few months back. There might be more in the full consumer release, although 151 sounds about right as that’s the exact same number of Pokemon that appeared in the original Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue Game Boy games that originally started the whole (Poke) ball rolling.

It has lead many to believe that Pokemon Go has, therefore, the entire original cast of critters for you to catch.

And on that basis, we present all 151 to you so you can see what you are looking for, and even tick them off when you’ve caught them.

Just flick through our gallery above and you’ll find all 151 Pokemon in alphabetical order.

Many of them are evolved versions of others. We’ve also attempted to find stills of them taken from the cartoon series or games, to make the experience even more retro. We hope they give you fond memories of the last time Pokemon took over the world.

Enjoy.

Pokemon Go review, or The Trials and Tribulations of a Pokemon Go addict

It’s raining. The British summer has been everything we expect it to be, and at 4pm on a Wednesday afternoon, you’re not supposed to be sitting in your car playing Pokemon Go.

But addiction makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do and things you certainly wouldn’t normally admit to. 

The cosseted interior of a BMW 5 Series is a fine place to launch an assault on the local Pokemon Gym. It’s raining, after all, and as a 39-year-old it’s perhaps a little too wet to be outside, even if that’s what Pokemon Go wants you to be doing.

Sheltering under the bridge next to this particular Pokemon Gym are three teens. The flash of green on their permanently awake smartphones confirms they’re Go players too. This is their Gym and they’re about to lose it. 

The gym is a soft target, although it takes several Pokemon to defeat the fully powered-up Hypno who’s lurking there. From the soaring high of the victory, comes the crushing low of seeing those teens rush out to reoccupy the Gym with a new set of more powerful Pokemon, faster than we can move in. It’s an embarrassing twist of events.

This is where Pokemon Go takes you. It crosses divides, from the softly heated leather of a BMW, to the cowled figures sheltering from the rain. You’re not playing in your front room on your sofa – something that has characterised computer gaming from its inception – instead you have to take yourself outside into the real world, where there are real people. 

Pocket-lint

Pokemon Go review: A game of two very different halves 

It’s at this point that Pokemon Go is likely to divide its players. There are two sides to Pokemon Go. The first is the collection of Pokemon. This is the aspect that’s casual, but very, very, addictive. You have a Pokedex, a list of those Pokemon you have and those you could have, so you face the same sort of addiction that drives people to collect football stickers or Facebook friends – you don’t want gaps, you want the complete set.

Because Pokemon are fairly easy to find and fairly easy to catch, you feel like you’re making progress right from the start. You might catch a lot of the same type of Pokemon – for us it’s Pidgy and Rattata – but they play a part in helping you evolve and get new Pokemon.

Pokemon Go rewards you for heading to new places. Your garden is unlikely to yield much Pokemon action and quiet residential streets may be the same. But head into a town, or city centre, and Pokemon Go quite literally takes over. This will cause frustration for some players: if you live in the country, Pokemon might be hard to find.

As PokeStops – places where you can collect items like health potions and Poke Balls – are often on notable cultural locations, like statues, memorials or pubs, once you’re in a populated location, the riches are plentiful. Walk through Trafalgar Square in London and you’ll be collecting items about every 10 paces, feeling the endorphin rush of having your cravings sated.

Pocket-lint

Catching Pokemon requires those Poke Balls you collect at PokeStops and catching a Pokemon is fairly easy. You press and hold the ball, watch the ring concentrating on the centre of your target, then you flick the ball at the Pokemon, hopefully hitting it on the head, where you’ll usually capture that character. 

Sometimes the Pokemon jumps or moves, and sometimes they can escape. Sometimes you’ll throw a lot of Balls, then hit them with a Razz Berry to soften them up, before you make a successful capture. The higher the CP of that Pokemon, the harder it is to catch, the rarer it is, again, the more tricky it seems to be. 

This is the side of Pokemon Go that will likely be popular with all ages and types of mobile gamers. You can sit in the park, eating your lunch, catching Pokemon. You can be waiting for the bus, and stroll up and down the street visiting PokeStops and seeing what Pokemon are out there. It’s a lovely distraction. 

Or someone might drop a Lure at the PokeStop pub you’re sitting in, and it’s happy days. It’s here that the augmented reality that Pokemon Go has been lauded for comes into play. When you go to capture, the camera on the rear of the phone shows you the real world with your target character in it. It’s fun, it’s novel, adding a sense of purpose to AR in a game that it has so far lacked, giving that feeling that you’re actually living in this alternate reality.

Yes, there have been a few times when we’ve felt our phone buzz, and we’ve looked around the real world for that Pokemon to catch.

Pokemon Go review: Cry ‘havoc!’, and let slip the Arcanine of war

Pokemon isn’t just about catching them all. It’s about pitching them into battle. This is where Gyms come into play, and ultimately, this is what the different Pokemon stats are about: how strong they will attack and how well they will survive attacks, as well as which Pokemon is more effective against which other type.

When you encounter a Gym, you’ll find it occupied by a team and defended by one or more Pokemon. You’ll be made to join a team as you progress through the game and that determines whether you’ll be training and defending the Gym, or battling the occupants, knocking down prestige and ultimately taking control for your own team.

It’s here that Pokemon is a very different game to the cutsey “catch ’em all” fun. Having to go to that Gym with those aims is very different to exploring and the reward of discovery.

Pocket-lint

But it’s also what Pokemon is really about, and where the biggest rewards lie. If it’s your Gym and you’re defending it, you’ll earn coins and those coins will let you buy things from the store without spending real money. Gyms give you the chance to feed your habit without having to sell family heirlooms, or raid the kid’s college funds, but you’ll have to go back to it regularly.

Ultimately, the aim of catching, hatching, evolving or powering-up, is so that your Pokemon champion is more Gregor Clegane and less Tyrion Lannister. You’ll also want an army of strong Pokemon, rather than just a few, so you have the resources to take down a Gym. This is where the obsessive catching and evolving, filling out your Pokedex comes into its own, but where having friends on the same team as you matters, as you’ll need to attack Gyms together to have the power or the time to over-throw the defending team. Yes, a bit like gang warfare.

For many – those with the time – hanging out at Pokemon Gyms will be the hit, bringing the buzz of Pokemon Go, and taking the game to its highest highs. But for others, it will feel like Pokemon OD, where it gets too much, takes too much time and involves too much loitering.

It’s amusing that in these early days that no one really knows how to best tackle these battles and that’s part of the fun, because it’s all so new. We suspect that once Gyms get to high levels, casual players won’t stand a chance to winning and it’ll all come down to coordinated team efforts, which might reduce casual gamers to vagrant wanderers, hunting far and wide for an easy target.

Pokemon Go review: Real world costs

Aside from the real money you could spend, if you’re so far gone you just have to buy more stuff through in-app purchases, there are other tangible costs.

As smartphone users know though, keeping your phone on all the time costs you a lot in battery life. That’s where Pokemon Go really hits home. As you need to phone awake to be playing the game, you need it on. You don’t have to interact with it all the time, because you’ll get a vibration to notify you of something. 

An excited glance at your phone might reveal a new Pokemon for you to capture, or if you’re unlucky, just a text message from a loved one. We’re talking about addiction, remember?

With walking specific distances necessary to hatch eggs in incubators, there’s a feeling that things could be handled better – is it about the walking, or time spent with the game open? Sadly, it’s about walking with the game open, so there’s no escaping the massive drain on the battery as you do so, but we’ve started carrying a 10,500mAh battery pack like a pro, good for three full recharges.

If you’re fully addicted to Pokemon Go, you can expect your battery to be drained in a couple of hours – but just think about how far you might walk – we’ve chocked up 15km walks on some days, although Pokemon Go’s measurement of distance seems much lower than what you actually walk.

Pocket-lint

Pokemon Go review: Pandemic problems

Pokemon Go’s success has surprised everyone. The game has become pandemic, already seeing huge adoption in regions in which it is yet to officially launch. This is part of the cult – you’re playing something you’re not supposed to, and that’s part of the thrill, being part of something that’s a huge event in mobile gaming, and brand new. That might lessen now that it’s officially launched in the UK.

There is a downside that plagues the game, however, and that’s a point of infrastructure. Server problems have been rife and that can mean failures to access the game, and failures to sync.

You might be mid-capture of Jynx and you’ll get the spinning wheel as the game stutters and fails to connect. We’ve had a number of freezes and crashes at this point, manually quitting the game and restarting to get things running again. It’s far from perfect, but, perhaps, Niantic Labs didn’t think it would be so viral.

Pocket-lint

Then there are the locations. One of our local Gyms isn’t in a place you can get to. We don’t know how Pokemon Go’s locations were put together, but we guess it was some sort of location scraper that used online sources to collect data and images of places. But in the real world, you’ll find some of these locations are behind fences, on private property, or for us, on a building site.

Yes, Pokemon Go has placed a Gym on a field next to an actual gym. Unfortunately the developers rolled in with earth movers and put up boarding, so the physical location of that Pokemon Gym isn’t accessible. It’s still occupied, however, and there’s a flattened section under some fencing that lets the local kids in. Pokemon Go might lead some players to places they really shouldn’t be in. 

While some locations are good humoured about it, we’re not sure St Mary’s Church wants that many people standing in its cemetery and The Anglers pub might not want its outdoor seating area full of Go players. If they’re paying customers, there’s a happy medium here, but pubs with groups of kids hanging around outside might not do so well.

Verdict

Pokemon Go has already made its mark on the landscape. It comes at a time when many people wanted a distraction from the turmoil of the real world and Pokemon Go whisks you away on a flight of fancy. 

Exploring, collecting and catching is exciting, and being able to do that in that outdoors, on your feet, wherever you happen to be that day, is part of the magic, whether you’re young or old, in a group or on your own. 

For many, the battles and occupying the Gyms will be the game, especially for those with a Gym on their doorstep. It’s about dominating, owning your territory and leaving your mark, but some might simply find they’re too far from a Gym to ever really exploit that side of the game. It’s a social game that doesn’t leave you chatting to strangers via some chat app, but swapping tips with real people, in the real world. This could lead to meeting new people, but we’re sure there will be real world battles too, as people decide it’s easier to chase off Gym attackers, rather than beat them in the game.

Pokemon Go’s moment is now. It’s a rollercoaster ride you should jump on while the thrills are fresh and while it’s new and novel. Go and buy yourself a spare battery, and make yourself part of this crazy social event, before it fizzles out. For us, we’re almost ready to go Cold Turkey.

Motorola launches third-gen Moto E, confirms Moto G4 Play for UK

It looks like Lenovo’s Moto refresh isn’t yet complete, with the company today announcing a new Moto E handset. This third-gen Moto E slips into the bottom of the Moto line, but still offers you plenty for the £99 asking price. 

With the Moto G4 jumping up to 5.5-inches, many thought that Lenovo had abandoned the smaller-format of handset, but that’s not the case. The Moto E3 comes with a 5-inch display, although the resolution is 1280 x 720, so strictly HD.

There’s a quad-core processor to power things along, support for microSD and a 2800mAh battery, packed into a body that gets Moto’s water-repellent treatment, so should be able to fend off the odd rain shower.

There’s an 8-megapixel camera on the rear and a 5-megapixel snapper on the front. Aside from those details, Moto hasn’t gone into specifics, except to say that it will be available from Tesco, Amazon, Argos and O2 from early September.

Motorola has also confirmed you’ll also be able to get the Moto G4 Play in the UK. This third model was announced in some regions alongside the Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus, and will only cost you £129 when it hits shelves in mid-August. 

It’s a bit of a step down from the Moto G4, with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 chipset, 2GB RAM, 2800mAh battery, and 16GB of internal storage, with microSD card support. Again there’s a 5-inch HD display, like the Moto E3. 

There’s an 8-megapixel camera on the rear and a 5-megapixel camera on the front.

Both phones launch on Android Marshmallow, presenting a nice clean and clutter-free Android experience, for not a lot of money.

Watch The Open for free with Now TV

You can watch the first day of The Open golf championship for free today, 14 July, thanks to Now TV.

The major golf event is being shown exclusively by Sky Sports and if you don’t have Sky you might miss out. However, Now TV is giving everyone a free Sky Sports Day Pass today, usually worth £6.99. That means you can watch for the next 24 hours on a connected TV, games console, tablet, phone or set-top-box at no cost.

The championship has started already, so you’ll have to jump in while it’s underway, but you’ll still get completely free coverage for the rest of the day. And as the Day Pass runs for 24 consecutive hours after you start watching, it’ll run to tomorrow morning too.

To get the free Sky Sports Day Pass, head to nowtv.com. You can either sign up for the first time or be an existing customer.

• Now TV Smart Box preview: Live TV and Sky in one device for a handsome price
• Now TV vs Now TV Smart Box vs Sky+HD vs Sky Q: Which Sky package is right for you?

A Sky Sports Day Pass also expires after the set time limit. You will not be charged for a further pass after it has completed (unlike the Sky Cinema or Sky Entertainment Monthly Passes).

Now TV has also recently released a new set-top-box of its own. The Now TV Smart Box can stream Now TV content, plus around 50 additional apps, as well as contains a digital TV tuner to watch, pause and rewind live terrestrial television.