Top Tech News Of The Week: Huawei OS Might Be Out In Fall And Google Employees Can See Users' Password

Welcome back to top tech news of the week from MobyGeek. Here is what you may have missed:

Huawei’s Own OS Will Reportedly Be Launched By Fall

Let's start this week top tech news by an update from the Chinese tech giant which has been in tension with the US in the last few days. In response to the US government recent ban, Huawei announced that its own operating system for smartphones and laptops would be out in fall in its home country China. It has been forced to do this after Google cut it off from all Android and app updates.

According to Huawei’s head of consumer business Richard Yu, after China, an international version of the OS would be launch in the first or second quarter of next year.

A local state-run news agency, The Global Times, claimed that the OS would be named HongMeng and it was still in trial. Huawei hopes that this HongMeng will be an alternative to Android.

Amazon Japan Stops Selling Huawei Products Following US Ban

The next on our list of top tech news is another update related to Huawei. According to Nikkei, the lastest response to the ban issued by the US government is from Japan. Amazon Japan has removed all of Huawei products from the direct sale. However, Nikkei also said that customers in the country could still purchase these merchandises from third-party retailers.

As for now, all Huawei products on Amazon Japan are listed as “out of stock,” following an executive ban from the US government that forbid any US firms from doing business with Huawei for fear of its close relationship with the Chinese government.

Instagram IGTV Uses TikTok-like Algorithms For Its Latest Update

To improve user experience and help them post longer videos, Instagram IGTV has taken the interface and AI of TikTok and Snapchat to add to its own.

With this new design, tabs such as “Popular,” “For You,” “Continue Watching,” and “Following” will be gone. There will be a single feed only, controlled by algorithms. This change will push Instagram closer to what TikTok offers.

There will be a vertical scroll so that users can see all the recommended videos to replace the horizontal one. Users have the choice to play any video they like from the list. This new scroll from Instagram is similar to that of Snapchat.

Google Is About To Put More Ads On Mobile Devices

Google is making a lot of new ad types, especially for handheld devices, meaning that we will see more of them in the future.

One of the additions is ad gallery that will be right on Google search on mobile devices. With this function, advertisers can upload a series of photos to show users at once. The discovery feeds will have ads too. As we speak, some particular parts of the world have had these changes already.

What Google is after is to make people notice ads more. According to Prabhakar Raghavan, director of the ad department, the gallery had boosted the attention of users by 25% in comparison with the traditional types.

Google Has Stored Users' Passwords Insecurely For More Than A Decade

The last recap in our list of top tech news for this week comes from Google. When people’s memory of Facebook and Twitter’s privacy scandal is still fresh, the world's largest search giant is the next in line to be at the center of attention. The two former companies reportedly store users’ passwords in plain text, and the latter also has a similar problem. It is believed that Google has a bug that lets its employees see what people use to secure their access to private accounts for more than ten years.

This news was leaked in a blog post that told G Suit users to be aware of this issue. The passwords are not encrypted when they are stored in Google servers, and those who want to read them can do so easily as they are all plain text.

Google has been aware of the bug. More importantly, there was another problem surfaced in January, which resulted in passwords being insecure for two weeks.