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Mozilla’s 2020 list of creepy tech, Google Photos, and more tech news today
June 15, 2025
1. Mozilla’s creepy tech list grows
Mozilla’s annual *Privacy Not included buyer’s guidehas reached its fourth edition and for tech devices, things are… getting worse? Sort of?
New AI concerns, and lack of smartphones in the list:
I caught up with Mozilla’s Lead of the Privacy Not Include project, Jen Caltrider, to ask about their new AI section, and why smartphones aren’t included in the lies.
Here’s a slice of that interview:
Q: Why is an artificial intelligence section included this year, and what does it reveal?
Jen Caltrider:AI is becoming commonplace in consumer devices. As I was doing research for this guide, I saw everything from kid’s toys to dog toys marketed “with AI built-in!” At least one-third of products in the guide use your personal data to make decisions for you and about you. For example: Smart speakers converse with you, thermostats learn your preferences, and cameras detect your face.
We’re just starting to learn what all this means for consumers, and it’s important for consumers to know this because AI technology doesn’t always put their interests first. Sometimes this technology benefits consumers, but other times it benefits the manufacturer — like allowing Roku to target ads.
Q: We all have a smartphone — but there’s no breakdown of smartphones here! Could you let us know the decisions going into why smartphones aren’t included, and from there, how Mozilla determines the devices included in the list of 136 here?
Caltrider:We only have the research capacity to focus on a certain number of products. So we look at what’s most popular, and also strive to pick products from a diversity of categories (e.g. Smart Home, Toys & Games, Home Office). Since smartphones are often purchased directly rather than given as gifts, we decided not to include them.
That said, two major smartphone players — Apple and Google — have other products in this year’s guide. Readers can get familiar with those products to better understand how these companies operate in the smartphone space.
Final Comment:
- Wow,Google made a big moveandwill end its free, unlimited Google Photos storage on June 06, 2025, after five years of unlimited free photo backups. There’ll now be a hard 15GB cap for all new photos after that date, but existing photos and documents uploaded before then will not count against the cap. I think a lot of people are dismayed or even more upset, but there’s also an understanding that Google couldn’t keep everything free forever. Pixel phones users will still have unlimited High Quality uploads after the cutoff, too (Android Authority).
The scale is crazy: Google said 4 trillion photos are stored in Google Photos (likely much more than 4 exabytes of storage), and every week 28 billion new photos and videos are uploaded. Still, it makes one of Google’s best-ever products less attractive. My solution? I’ve beenpaying for Google Onefor a while now to store my photos (and increase my Gmail storage) at original quality, without compression. (Android Authority).
Great insight: Google’s unlimited free Photos storage offer destroyed the competition, made startups uncompetitive, and just when the market is entirely with Google, it starts charging a fee:Google Photos just made the case for breaking up Big Tech(OneZero).
3.YouTube, YouTube TV, and Google TV are back onlineafter suffering a worldwide outage for about an hour (@teamyoutube).
4.Samsung Exynos 1080 launched: Flagship power in a mid-range chipset (Android Authority).
5.OPPO announces Inno Day 2020 event: What should we expect this time? (Android Authority).
6.PUBG Mobile announces return to India: New game, $100 million investment, India-only version with changes (Android Authority).
7.A browser extension from The Markup shows Google Search without all the related Google services. Why? Well, you find your search results like it’s 2009 or something, not just surfacing another Google property (Engadget).
8.Apple’s TestFlight, finally, added automatic update support with version 3.0, finally doing away with manual installs to update (MacRumors).
9.BMW’s new electric scooterconcept aims to be your perfect cyberpunk mount (The Verge).
10.The strange and twisted tale of Hydroxychloroquine: The much-hyped drug sparked a battle between power and knowledge. Let’s not repeat it (Wired).
- “What’s something that’s heavily outdatedbut you love using anyway(assuming you could, in theory, replace that thing)?” (r/askreddit)
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