TC Roundup: Russian competition watchdog opens case against Google: Interfax

Russian competition watchdog opens case against Google: Interfax: Russia's Anti-Monopoly Service has opened a case against Google following a request from Russia's biggest search site Yandex, Interfax news agency reported on Friday citing the regulator.

Yandex said on Wednesday it had asked the competition watchdog to investigate whether Google was abusing the dominance of its Android mobile operating system.(Reuters)

Lenovo under fire as adware leaves laptops vulnerable to hacking: Lenovo, the world's largest computer manufacturer by unit sales, has been forced to disable controversial software that left users of its laptops vulnerable to hacking attacks.

The software, called Superfish, which was preinstalled on Lenovo's devices, was billed as a free "visual search" tool. But Lenovo used it to inject adverts into web pages.(Financial Times)

A year later, $19 billion for WhatsApp doesn't sound so crazy: Messaging is the center of mobile. Snapchat is raising at around a $20 billion valuation. And no one cares who owns apps. On February 19th, 2014, we didn't know any of these things for sure. So when Facebook announced it would pay $19 billion to acquire WhatsApp — an app most American pundits had never used — it seemed ludicrous. Zuck had to be crazy, right? Wrong.

Without WhatsApp, Facebook's international situation would look a lot dicier. And if a competitor like Google acquired it instead, it could have been disastrous. (Tech Crunch)

YouTube is reportedly launching an app for kids next week: YouTube is getting ready to announce a brand-new app aimed at kids, according to published reports.

The new app, which is expected to be populated with content that's age-appropriate for children and to be available only for Android, should launch on Monday, according to USA Today. (Venture Beat)

Hackers said to remain active in U.S. state department e-mails: U.S. and private security specialists are trying to expel unidentified hackers from the unclassified portion of the U.S. State Department's e-mail system, two officials familiar with the investigation said Thursday.

The problem persists three months after the hackers were first discovered because the intruders' techniques keep shifting, said the officials, who asked for anonymity because the inquiry is classified even though no classified material appears to have been obtained.(Bloomberg)