Google Bans Download of Chinese App Pinduoduo Over Security Concern

The technology giant is also sending out notifications to the users who have downloaded these apps to remove them from their device immediately.

New Delhi: American technology giant Google has suspended Pinduoduo, a Chinese e-commerce app, on the ground of security concerns. The company has also banned several apps developed by Pinduoduo. According to a Google spokesperson, the step was taken after malware issues were found on versions of the Chinese e-commerce app outside Google’s app store.

In a statement, Google spokesperson Ed Fernandez said, “Off-Play versions of this app that have been found to contain malware have been enforced on via Google Play Protect.” In case you are unaware, off-play apps are those that are not available on Google Play Store, but can be downloaded through APKs.

The technology giant is also sending out notifications to the users who have downloaded these apps to remove them from their device immediately. The apps were reportedly tracking users’ data.

“Google Play has informed us this morning that Pinduoduo App has been temporarily suspended as the current version is not compliant with Google’s Policy, but has not shared more details,” a Pinduoduo spokesperson said in an email.

There are several other apps that have been suspended by Google Play, Pinduoduo added.

Google Launches Early Access to its AI Chatbot Bard

Google has announced that it is opening up access to its ChatGPT competitor “Bard” as an early experiment for users to collaborate with generative AI.

The early access to Bard has rolled out in the US and UK, and the company said it will expand the access over time to more countries and languages.

“You can use Bard to boost your productivity, accelerate your ideas and fuel your curiosity. You might ask Bard to give you tips to reach your goal of reading more books this year, explain quantum physics in simple terms or spark your creativity by outlining a blogpost,” Google said in a blogpost.

Bard, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing chatbot, is based on a large language model (LLM), specifically a lightweight and optimised version of LaMDA, which the tech giant said will be updated with newer, more capable models in the future.

Users can think of an LLM as a prediction engine. When given a prompt, it generates a response by selecting, one word at a time, from words that are likely to come next, according to Google.

Users can interact with Bard by asking questions and refining their responses with follow-up questions.