Technology

Hereone way to play catch-up in the competitive streaming music market: preinstall your app on millions of Android handsets. Thatwhat Google will now be doing with YouTube Music. The company announced today the app will come preinstalled on all new devices launching with Android 10, as well as Android 9, including its own Pixel series of smartphones.

The move comes at a time when the companymusic strategy is in need of change.

Since the launch of YouTube Music in November 2015, Google has operated two separate music services — the other being Google Play Music, launched in 2011. To add to the confusion, YouTube also offered a subscription tier, originally called YouTube Red and rebranded later to YouTube Premium, which would provide access to both Google Play Music and YouTube Music. Plus, Google Playsubscribers would also receive access to YouTube Premium. Oh, and as of last May, Google also allowed you to buy YouTube Music separately, if you&d prefer.

Did you follow all that?

Okay, sure, this wasn&t as bad as Googlebizarre messaging app strategy, but it was still a mess.

This April, Google finally confirmed that it would replace Google Play Music with YouTube Music, explaining that the closure of Google PlayArtist Hub was a part of a broader strategy to merge the two music services.

But despite todaynews that YouTube Music is being added to the list of preinstalled apps that ship with Android, and is now the new default, the Google Play Music shutdown has not yet occurred.

Instead, the company says that Google Play Music listeners with Android 10 devices can continue to use the service by downloading the app directly from the Play Store, if desired.

And those without a new Android (9 or 10) handset can continue to seek out YouTube Music from the Play Store, if they choose.

YouTubestreaming music service is fairly competitive (in terms of feature set) with its larger rivals, like Apple Music and Spotify. Like most in the space, it also offers the ability to discover and stream music, but in its case, this includes albums, live performances and remixes. With a paid subscription, YouTube Music users can listen ad-free and offline. It also just introduced its own version of SpotifyDiscover Weekly with the launch of its own Discover Mix.

But because YouTube Music has had to compete with Androidbuilt-in music app for subscribers, itbeen lagging in subscribers, compared with Spotify and Apple. This is made worse by the fact that therenot been a way to import a Google Play Music userplaylists and liked songs, curated over years, to YouTube Music.

YouTube Music, in May, had some 15 million subscribers. For comparisonsake, Spotify said it had 232 million monthly active users and 108 million paying subscribers at the end of June, and Apple Music in June surpassed 60 million subscribers.

The plan to replace Google Play Music is still in the works, Google says. It just hasn&t happened yet.

&As we&ve previously announced, eventually we plan to replace Google Play Music with YouTube Music. As part of the transition, YouTube Music will replace Google Play Music and come preinstalled on new Android Q devices,& a YouTube spokesperson confirmed.

This is, surely, the moment some loyal fans have waited for. And understandably so. The Galaxy Fold is, by all measures, an exciting phone. Itthe sort of bold brashness that has helped Samsung set itself apart from the competition. Many of us laughed at the Galaxy Note, too, and yet here we are, with larger phones across the board.

Five months after originally planned, the Galaxy Fold goes on sale today in the U.S. The handset has had its share of setbacks, of course. The first round ran into problems from several reviewers for a variety of reasons. And as I outlined yesterday, I ran into my own issues with the reinforced version of the handset.

Even in its current version, the Galaxy Fold is a fragile thing. Thatsomething Samsung has been abundantly cautious about disclosing, through a video pleading to &just use a light touch& and a lot of paperwork that ships with the device. I&ll be giving more thoughts on my time with the product in an upcoming write-up. In the meantime, however, anyone thinking of plunking down the $2,000 (and up) needs to factor that into the equation.

But this is a phone, not a Fabergé egg. It will be interesting to see how wider availability plays out. There is still a sense around the launch that we&re dealing with a sort of wider-scale beta phase here. It would be silly to suggest that the foldable category will live or die by this launch, but it will surely be the most closely watched device release in recent memory.

Also out today is the Galaxy Watch Active 2. I&ve been wearing that device around as well. More on that soon, but so far, so good.

In a move to correct the imbalance of power between technologically sophisticated corporations and the lawmakers who regulate them, presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren is proposing that Congress reinstate the Office of Technology Assessment.

Ita move that gets deep into the weeds of how policy making in Washington works, but itsomething that Warren sees as essential to leveling the playing field between well-paid corporate lobbyists who are experts in their fields and over-worked, under-staffed congressional members who lack independent analysts to explain highly technical issues.

&Lobbyists are filling in the gaps in congressional resources and expertise by providing Congress information from the perspective of their paying corporate clients. So letfix it,& writes Warren.

Itone of the key planks in Warrenlatest policy proposal and an attempt to tip the scales against corporations and their lobbyists. With the move, Warren clearly has her eye on technology companies and their representatives, who often are the very people congressional lawmakers rely on to explain how rule-making would impact their industries.

&[Members] of Congress aren&t just dependent on corporate lobbyist propaganda because they&re bought and paid for. Italso because of a successful, decades-long campaign to starve Congress of the resources and expertise needed to independently evaluate complex public policy questions,& Warren writes.

&For every bad faith actor in Congress bought off by the big banks, there are others who are genuinely trying to grapple with the technical aspects of financial reform. But as the issues facing Congress have grown more complex, resources to objectively and independently analyze them have been slashed. Republicans eliminated an independent office of experts dedicated to advising Congress on technical and scientific information,& the Senator says.

The lack of independent analysis stymies congressional oversight in areas from banking and finance reform, to the oversight of technology companies, to the potential to effectively pass laws that will respond to the threat of climate change. Committees that oversee science and technology have seen their staff levels fall by more than 40% in the past decade, according to Warren, and staff salaries have failed to keep up with inflation, meaning that policymakers in Washington can&t compete for the same level of talent that private companies and lobbyists can afford several times over.

Sen. Warren saw this firsthand when she worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau .

&Financial reform was complicated, and the bank lobbyists used a clever technique: They bombarded the members of Congress with complex arguments filled with obscure terms. Whenever a congressman pushed back on an idea, the lobbyists would explain that although the congressman seemed to be making a good point, he didn&t really understand the complex financial system,& she writes. &And keep in mind, the lobbyists would tell the congressman, that if you get this wrong, you will bring down the global economy.&

The inability of lawmakers to understand basic facts about the technologies they&re tasked with regulating was on full display during the Senate hearings into the role technology companies played in the Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Issues from net neutrality to end-to-end encryption, or online advertising to the reduction of carbon emissions, all rely on Congress having a sound understanding of those issues and how regulation may change an industry.

Right now, ita case of which multibillion-dollar company can buy the best lobbyists — as is the case with Alphabet and Yelp or Facebook and Snap.

Under the auspices of Warrenanti-corruption plan, the senator is calling for the reinstatement and modernization of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, a significant increase to salaries for congressional staffers and stronger funding for agencies that support congressional lawmaking.

The OTA was created in the seventies to help members of Congress understand science and technology issues that they&d be regulating. Over the tenure of the agency, it created more than 750 reports — including two landmark studies on the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming in the 1990s, which brought it to the attention of conservative lawmakers, who defunded it in 1995.

At the time, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said the agency was &used by liberals to cover up political ideology.&

Under Warrenplan, the OTA would be led by an independent director to avoid partisan manipulation. The newly re-formed agency would have the power to commission its own reports and respond to requests from lawmakers to weigh in on rule-making, help congressional legislators prepare for hearings and write regulatory letters.

Warren also calls for funding to be increased for the other congressional support agencies — the Congressional Research Service, the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office. Combined, these agencies have lost half of their staff.

Money for the increased activities of the agencies would come from a tax on &excessive lobbying.& The goal would be &to reverse these cuts and further strengthen support agencies that members of Congress rely on for independent information,& according to the Warren plan.

&These reforms are vital parts of my plan to free our government from the grip of lobbyists & and restore the publictrust in its government in the process,& Warren writes.