DuckDuckGo chief says Google contract stopped deal with Apple

Gaganyaan mission Live Updates: Test vehicle launch to take place in 9 minutes

Google Meet is rolling out a long-awaited feature that enables users to enhance their appearance during video calls. This new feature, known as "portrait touch-up," was announced in a recent Google Workspace update and is currently available to early adopters on mobile devices. The extended rollout to all remaining accounts is set to commence on October 28th. Additionally, Google has plans to bring this feature to Google Meet on the web by the end of 2023.

Google pays as much as $10 billion per year to ensure that users access the internet through its search engine — payments that have blocked startups and fellow tech giants Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. from competing, according to the US Justice Department.

Ahead of TwitchCon Las Vegas, creator Nicholas “Nickmercs” Kolcheff has announced he will expand on to competitor Kick.com. The exact details were not disclosed, but the one year non-exclusive deal was for eight figures. Nickmercs will continue to stream on Twitch, but the majority of his broadcast hours will shift to Kick.

Google for India 2023: The 9th annual Google event focused towards India and Indian users took place today, October 19, at the Pragati Maidan in New Delhi. Ahead of the event, the tech giant said that it will be sharing its vision for the next chapter of India's journey. The event highlighted the capabilities of generative AI and how it can benefit Indian users.

Though Harebrained Schemes' The Lamplighters League was just released and found solid critical success, publisher Paradox Interactive plans to cut ties with developer Harebrained Schemes following plans to write down development costs after slower-than-expected sales of the game. In a recently released press release, publisher Paradox Interactive announced that a "mutual agreement" was made between both parties and that Harebrained Schemes would separate from the publisher and return as an independent studio on January 1, 2024. This sudden news comes less than a month after the game's release. First acquired by Paradox Interactive in 2018, The Lamplighters League tactics strategy game was the developer's first project as an internal studio. Before The Lamplighters League, Harebrained Schemes worked on the recent Shadowrun and BattleTech role-playing games, which found great success among the rush of crowdfunding games during the 2010s. In a press release following news of the game's lackluster success, Paradox Interactive CEO Fredrik Wester stated: "The Lamplighters League is a fun game with many strengths. Even though we see cautiously positive player numbers in subscription services, the commercial reception has been too weak, which is frankly a big disappointment. Game projects are by their nature always risky, but at the end of the day we haven't performed at the level we should. It is painful but makes us more eager to roll up our sleeves and do better." For now, Harebrained Schemes will still be supporting The Lamplighters League with post-launch updates and patches. In early 2024, the developer will move on from Paradox Interactive and return to being an independent studio. For Paradox Interactive, this marks the second major developer shift in recent years following the reboot of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, which The Chinese Room is now developing. In our own full review, editor Ali Jones gave the game a positive review and stated: "The Lamplighters League might not stand fully toe-to-toe with the strategy juggernauts of recent years, but it's a plucky competitor - just as long as you don't get bogged down in its attempt to set itself apart from the games it's trying to emulate."

By Tom Warren, a senior editor covering Microsoft, PC gaming, console, and tech. He founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge in 2012.

Sony Interactive Entertainment could respond to Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard with a major deal of its own.

After the historic Moon landing made possible by the amazing Chandrayaan-3 mission through the Vikram lander, ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organisation, is embarking on an ambitious journey of exploration with a series of upcoming missions. These missions include plans to revisit Mars, Venus, and the Moon, alongside the eagerly anticipated maiden human spaceflight program. In addition to these celestial endeavors, ISRO is also focusing on missions designed to study the climate and weather conditions of Earth.

League of Legends is undoubtedly a behemoth, standing tall as one of the biggest games on PC years after its release. The community is ever-expanding, and Riot Games isn’t slowing its flow of improvements and new content any time soon. While LoL continues to grow, its long list of changes does as well. From more instant, minor bug fixes to phasing out a system that replaces players’ Summoner Names, Riot makes regular adjustments to its work.

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP has teamed up with ChatGPT owner OpenAI to offer clients advice generated by artificial intelligence as the Big Four audit firms look to cut costs and boost productivity.

Another Lords of the Fallen patch has dropped and while it makes a slew of improvements to the Hexworks soulslike game, I’m immediately pleased to tell you that those incredibly annoying ranged enemies that feel like they can snipe you at any distance using what feels like the latest installment in hitscan tech have been pared back, among other changes.