Tag: shut down

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Google will shut down Stadia, refund all purchases

Google published a blog post on September 29th announcing it will shut down its Stadia game streaming platform and refund all purchases in January 2023:

“We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store. Players will continue to have access to their games library and play through January 18, 2023 so they can complete final play sessions. We expect to have the majority of refunds completed by mid-January, 2023.”

The company directs players to its Help Center for more information on the refund process.

In the blog post, the company notes that the service “hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected.” However, Google also notes that it sees opportunities to apply Stadia tech elsewhere, including on YouTube, Google Play, and augmented reality (AR) efforts. Google also plans to keep the tech available for industry partners.

The news comes amid continued cancellations of Google projects. The company recently shuttered its Pixelbook division and reduced funding for its experimental software division, Area 120. Employees on the Stadia team will be distributed to other parts of the company.

Source: Google

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Canada decommissions COVID Alert app, here’s how to delete it

The Canadian government officially decommissioned the COVID Alert contract tracing app effective June 17th.

In a press release shared by Health Canada, the government said that it disabled the exposure notification service and that “users can delete the app from their devices.”

“While the pandemic is not over, the decision to decommission COVID Alert comes after careful consideration following discussions with provinces and territories on the ongoing evolution of public health programming that varies in each jurisdiction,” read the release.

Health Canada goes on to encourage people to “stay aware of COVID-19 activity in their local area” and keep up with recommended COVID-19 vaccinations.

COVID Alert was available for nearly two years — the app first became available in July 2020. It was intended as a way to aid in contact tracing by leveraging Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) tech on Android smartphones and iPhones to share anonymous codes between nearby devices. Users who tested positive for COVID could use the app to warn others who had been near them of potential exposure to COVID-19, all without revealing people’s identities.

The app ran using a contact tracing solution jointly developed by Apple and Google. That framework is built into the company’s respective mobile operating systems. Countries were encouraged to develop apps using the framework.

However, COVID Alert never really took off. Despite heavy promotion from the government, only 6.9 million people living in Canada downloaded the app. Moreover, only slightly more than 57,000 users notified others that they had tested positive using COVD Alert.

Recent changes to testing in Canada, such as a decrease in PCR testing, saw a reduced number of one-time keys made available to COVID Alert users. Moreover, the app suffered technical issues, with some older phones not supporting it and other users not getting notifications at all. It also didn’t help that some provinces chose not to adopt the app.

The government spent about $20 million on COVID Alert, with $3.5 million going towards building the app and $15.9 million spent on promoting and advertising it to Canadians, per Global News.

At the time of publication, COVID Alert was still available to download from both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

How to delete COVID Alert

To delete COVID Alert on iPhone:

  1. Press and hold the app icon
  2. Tap ‘Delete App’
  3. Tap ‘Delete’

On Android:

  1. Press and hold the app icon
  2. Drag it to ‘Uninstall’
  3. Tap ‘OK’

Source: Health Canada Via: Global News

Categories
Mobile Syrup

Canada may finally kill COVID Alert — sorry to the 6 people still using it

The federal government reportedly plans to shut down its COVID-19 contact tracing app, COVID Alert, sometime this week.

The news comes from The Globe and Mail, which cited two sources familiar with the situation. However, the publication didn’t identify the sources, who weren’t “authorized to discuss the shutdown.”

The report hardly comes as a surprise, given many provinces rolled out changes to PCR testing regulations that rendered the app useless several months ago.

Further, it was widely reported that COVID Alert had failed, based on the number of downloads and other usage metrics. Intended to help warn Canadians of potential exposure to COVID, only 6.9 million people downloaded the app by last February — Canada has a population of over 38 million people. Moreover, users had only inputted 57,704 codes declaring a COVID infection into the app. The Globe notes that at that time, over 3 million Canadians had contracted COVID-19.

For those unfamiliar with the app, COVID Alert ran on a system developed jointly by Apple and Google that leveraged smartphones’ Bluetooth capabilities to trade anonymous signals between people who were in close contact. If someone tested positive for COVID-19, they could input a code into the app, which would then send notifications warning of possible COVID exposure to other app users who had been near the person who tested positive. While the underlying framework for the contact tracing app came from Google and Apple, COVID Alert was built by the Canadian Digital Service with help from Shopify and a security review from BlackBerry.

The government reportedly spent over $20 million developing the app, which launched in July 2020. However, questions remain about whether the app was helpful in combating the spread of COVID-19.

Source: The Globe and Mail