Welcome to the 401st edition of Android Apps Weekly. Here are the big headlines from the last week:
Netflix added a new feature this week. The Play Something feature lets Netflix choose what you watch. Netflix uses its algorithm and the stuff you previously watched to recommend something new. The change is rolling out to all Netflix users starting this week. Unfortunately, iOS users are left to wait a bit longer but it's coming there as well.
Google Assistant's Quick Phrases feature started rolling out this week. The new feature lets you create multiple sets of hotwords or phrases for various commands. The feature lets you initiate commands without the need to say "Hey, Google" first. There are many different examples and you can hit the link for more. However, based on one of our recent reader polls, most of you will be nice to Google Assistant, even with these new phrases.
Google decided not to move forward with its Google bank account. The new account, dubbed Plex, was to be a part of Google Pay. Unfortunately, things are going very wrong for Google Pay at the moment. The Google Pay team saw a lot of departures after the app's big refresh in November 2020. Citigroup also ended its involvement with Google Pay (or vice versa) despite having 400,000 people on the waitlist. There are big things going on with Google Pay right now and it's not looking good.
Everybody knows about the big Facebook outage that took place earlier this week. The service went down early in the afternoon (Eastern Standard Time) and was down for over six hours. Instagram and WhatsApp were also down. Billions of people use those three services so it was a pretty big deal. It turns out that a bad update locked Facebook out of its own servers (and buildings, apparently) and it took a long time to get people in and the problem fixed. You can read about the mayhem at both links.
Telegram had a great week because of the Facebook outage. The service gained over 70 million users in just one day. It makes a lot of sense. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger were down and people needed a place to continue to talk. Telegram seems to have won out over the other chat apps. Even some of our readers signed up in the face of the outage. Hit the links to learn more.
Girl Cafe Gun
Price: Free to play
There's always a startup angle (even with 'Squid Game')
Mobile gaming startup Homa Games raises $50 million