Study Reveals How User Incentives and Search Engine Awareness Could Challenge Google’s Dominance

Even with the rise of AI and people using AI for search, Google is still dominating the search market even though it has recently faced an antitrust ruling too. A new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) analyzed which are the main reasons Google has such a big hold on search space. For the study, the researchers gathered 2,000 people and looked at their searching habits for two weeks. They also offered cash rewards to some participants by asking them to use Microsoft Bing while asking some to actively choose their search engine instead of sticking to a default one.

The results showed that participants who were paid to use Bing had positive reviews about it and some even continued using it after two weeks were finished. On the other hand, when users were asked to actively choose their search engine instead of some default one also increased Bing’s usage by 1.1%. The researchers said that if users have a clear understanding of the quality of each search engine and do not find it inconvenient to switch to other search engines, Microsoft Bing could have a 15% increase of market share than what it holds now.

This study was done because the court had decided how they wanted to address illegal tricks of Google in the search markets, with them proposing solutions like stopping Chrome from operating under Google, sharing its data with its rival companies for 10 years and ending default search deals with some companies. The study also suggests that policies should ask users to try alternative search engines like Bing to challenge Google.

Image: DIW-Aigen

Read next: End of an Era? CPU Performance Drops in 2025—What’s Really Happening?
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

End of an Era? CPU Performance Drops in 2025—What’s Really Happening?

According to new data from PassMark Software, which has offered PC benchmark testing tools since 1998, average CPU performance has started to decline with every new model that comes. Many of us would assume that when we buy the latest computer, they will have faster performance but this isn’t the case, according to the data. PassMark submitted a graph about average performance of CPUs over the course of 20 years and it was found that average CPU performance did climb up a lot in the past two decades, but suddenly started declining from 2024 to 2025.

PassMark tweeted that this is the first time in history that CPU performance is about to drop in 2025. They also said that most of the people are ready to buy cheaper hardware because they do not find it important to invest in a more powerful hardware. The data also revealed that performance benchmarks are based on PCs with no more than 8 cores and the same amount of people are using 8 cores as they were doing in 2020.

AMD's 96-core Threadripper PRO 7995WX which was from 2023 is the most powerful chip on the desktop side. Many of the chip makers like Intel and AMD are now focusing on AI applications and power efficiency rather than raw CPU performance with low power CPU cores. Intel’s latest desktop chips have also removed hyper-threading but the latest PC chips still offer year-over-year improvements in processing power. Now we have to wait and see whether this decline in CPU power is just for a short while or if it’s going to become long term. PassMark also says that users using Windows 10 and 11 can also be a factor for the performance decline but it will change as Microsoft is going to end its support on Windows 10 soon.

Read next: New Study Shows ChatGPT Doesn’t Use as Much Energy as Most People Assume
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

TikTok and Facebook Pledge to Increase Fight Against Disinformation in the EU but X is Nowhere To Be Seen

Tech giants Facebook and TikTok are pledging to build up the fight against disinformation in the European Union. The news comes just days after the latest US administration was able to condemn the online content regulations put forward by the region.

However, it was clear that among the many big tech names enlisted, Elon Musk who is the owner of X was not present there. The billionaire chose to withdraw his app from the original code launched in 2023. He has continued to fight against the EU for its stringent content moderation rules enlisted in the Digital Services Act.

The DSA forces all digital companies to regulate online content and stop the growing rise in misinformation and disinformation. Similarly, the EU has been probing X under this law since the start of 2023. That includes a host of efforts to battle disinformation on this app.

The latest law is actually at the center of a wide range of tensions between American tech giants and the current administration against the EU. We’ve already witnessed American Vice President JD Vance mention how the DSA was stopping adult males and females from accessing data that the government felt was incorrect information. But the EU Refused to comment on this statement.

But announcing the formalization of this code of conduct under the latest laws means the DSA is here to stay and lawmakers want to make sure the EU is as safe of an online working space as possible. This is to stop people from getting manipulated. As per the EU officials, they always needed a regulatory framework to fight against these matters.

The code will remain the most meaningful order for determining the DSA’s compliance when it applies to start the month of July as per the EC. For instance, the EU feels fact-checking is the most effective form of moderating content online and that’s why it’s a part of the code. But it’s not forcing any company to do anything.

Meta continues to stay a part of the code despite Zuckerberg being close to the White House and speaking against the growing rise in censorship by the EU. Let’s not forget he put an end to fact-checking on Facebook which was met with great skepticism.

One official from the EU says that if tech giant Meta wished to withdraw from commitments under this code, they can and no one will be forced to remain. The EU has made it clear that just signing codes like this does not mean the platforms are innocent. They needed to do more in terms of greater steps for fighting disinformation.

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Read next: Apple Selects Alibaba Over Deepseek To Handle its iPhone AI in China
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Apple Selects Alibaba Over Deepseek To Handle its iPhone AI in China

The recent hype surrounding the successful launch of DeepSeek had many thinking iPhone maker Apple just might select them to power the Apple Intelligence platform in China.

However, we can confirm that this is not happening as the company has selected to move ahead with Alibaba for all iPhone models sold in China. The Cupertino firm was said to have been in discussion with different companies to determine which one could be capable of the features of Apple Intelligence.

As per reports from The Information, Apple was aiming to take Baidu on board but it failed to meet their standards. Therefore, it had to select other possibilities and the hunt continued for a few months now.

The company assessed various models created by Tencent, Bytedance, and Alibaba. And in the end, the latter has come out on top for Apple. However, the firm failed to share more details about when it would launch Apple intelligence in the country.

We know that Apple is adding support for different languages in two months. This includes those users based in China, Korea, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Vietnam. However, adapting to the Apple Intelligence in various models will take a longer time.

It’s very much possible that Apple partners with all of them or different firms in China to offer the best LLMs along with the iPhone AI. They have done the same with ChatGPT beginning with the iOS 18.2 variant.

We first heard about Apple Intelligence making a launch in America late last year with the latest iOS 18.1 design. While the company no longer needs more users inside America, it's nowhere near the level that other players could reach.

Apple Intelligence might be working well with ChatGPT but the results published so far show that it’s far behind on the long list of possibilities offered by rivals including Google, OpenAI, and DeepSeek. We hope to see the tech giant experimenting with iOS 18.4 at any given moment in time. The new software update was teased in a way to bring greater screen awareness for Siri.

While the iPhone maker might be delaying the feature later on for iOS 19, we might be seeing more major changes rolling out in the year 2026.

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Read next: CIRP Report Reveals iPhone Owners Breaking Upgrade Patterns, What’s Driving the Shift?
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

CIRP Report Reveals iPhone Owners Breaking Upgrade Patterns, What’s Driving the Shift?

According to the latest reports from CIRP, there is a change in iPhone upgrade patterns which were especially seen in the last quarter which ended in December 2024. Many of the users stopped using the “younger” models of iPhone as compared to users in the previous quarter. 36% of the users in December 2024 said having their previous phones with them for two years or less as compared to 31% who said this in December 2023. Only 33% of the buyers of newer iPhone models had their previous models with them for more than three years in December 2024 while 30% had them for two to three years in December 2023.

Many of the investors and analysts are also asking the question about how often users are upgrading their iPhone models because users upgrading their iPhone models every one to two years makes a big impact on the company. But if the users do not upgrade their iPhone models for 3 to five years, it can impact the company in a negative way.

• Also read: Planned Obsolescence: A Tactic Used by Manufacturers Which Makes You Buy More

Analysts suggests that users quickly upgrading to new iPhone models can be due to Apple Intelligence. Apple Intelligence is available in newest models of iPhone so users of iPhone 15 and older models may find the new feature in newest models interesting. Tim Cook also says that iPhone 16 is better performing in sales than iPhone 15 and demands for the newer model are high because of Apple Intelligence.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Mobile Apps Are Stealing Your Data — Even the Ones You Least Expect

According to a new research conducted by Nsoft, we are not safe from apps on our mobiles stealing our data and companies collect this data for different purposes. There are some apps like Roblox, Duolingo and Candy Crush that we do not think of as invasive to our privacy that are stealing our data even if they claim that they do not. Candy Crush says that it gives 10% of collected data to other companies while Duolingo says that 20% of the collected personal data goes to other companies and the rest of the data is used by apps for analytics and functionality.

Social media apps also collect users’ personal data massively and some social media apps even use 90% of the user data for app functionality for contacts and messaging. Some of the social media apps which do this are Instagram, LinkedIn, Messenger, TikTok, Snapchat and Threads. Meta apps share 68.8% of users data with third parties and it is an alarming and worrisome situation. WhatsApp Business also requires a lot of invasive information of users (57.1%) as it doesn't have end to end encryption and Meta can read or record messages shared within the app.

YouTube and Amazon also take too much of user data, with YouTube sharing 31.4% of user data to other companies and Amazon sharing 6% of user data with third parties. YouTube is owned by Google and other Google apps like Gmail, Google Maps and Google Play are also among the top 20 most invasive apps which share customer data with other companies. PayPal is the seventh most invasive app, collecting 65.7% of data for purposes like financial information, search history, contact list, browsing history, photos and videos.

There are some apps like weather apps and delivery apps that need your location data no matter what but even though Uber is on the list of invasive apps, Lyft or Doordash isn't. After analysing it, it was found that Uber uses more specific information for tracking than Lyft does because it needs the data to track online activities of users. Dating apps like Tinder and Bumble also use a lot of personal information because it is needed for a chance at love or even romancing scams.

If you want apps to not collect your private information, make sure to read all the privacy reports and terms and conditions of the app before downloading it. It is also good if you delete extra apps from your mobile phone that you haven't used in a while.

Read next: AI Faces Skepticism in Moral Decision-Making Despite Advancements, New Study
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

OpenAI Is Introducing New Models But How Much Is Too Much?

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman just debuted the company's latest AI agent dubbed Deep Research.

The full 03 reasoning AI model is sure to give rise to an autonomous assistant that is designed to scour online pages and other digital scholarly sources for data regarding a certain issue. The agent can comply with new reports while users go about their business in different tabs.

You can even leave your PC behind as a whole, allowing the agent to produce several minutes or a few hours with alerts. Unlike Google’s Deep Research, the value of OpenAI 03 Deep Research was witnessed by many in the outside AI world.

It was first shared as a product that only those with the ChatGPT Pro subscribers could benefit from. However, this time around, it’s going to be up for grabs to free and Pro users.

Obviously, those getting it for free have limited uses as compared to those paying for the subscription. While 10 does seem like a reasonable amount, it all depends on how well the agent works. The goal is to encourage more people to upgrade to higher-cost plans to avail more benefits.

If you happen to be a free ChatGPT user, two uses per month are limited to queries or things you’re in search of with Deep Research. However, the company should hope the latest 03 Deep Research launch is worth that price tag.

Next, Sam Altman is clearing the air about how AI models are not going to shy away from sensitive categories. They will refrain from making assumptions that seem out of their view. In a new and updated version of the Model Spec, the company shared how the models will not attempt to steer users in the pursuit of a better agenda, either through direct or indirect means.

The company strongly feels in matters like having intellectual freedom that entails freedom to hear and discuss concepts. This is why Sam Altman is promoting greater transparency and avoiding certain viewpoints that could be shunned forever. It might also have to do with the growing amounts of political pressure in everyday life.

Many of the current President’s closest allies such as Elon Musk and David Sacks went out to accuse AI agents of censoring data linked to conservative views. Some accused the company of being too woke and unreliable about political subjects.

OpenAI says it has major plans to make its models simpler than before as it tries to ship non-reasoning models like GPT-4.5. This is usually a very rare admission from a tech organization. After all, most of these product releases are not differentiated enough for various clients.

This is why Altman just took to the X app to mention new updates on the product and acknowledge so many of the organization’s recent releases. They wish to do some better jobs of sharing and simplifying. They would like AI to work and not complicate models which so many previous designs have been accused of.

The number of models that users can select totally depends on the subscription tier. Altman explained how the firm would like to combine its technology including the o-series of models into the latest GPT-5 when it comes down to APIs and ChatGPT. For the past one year, OpenAI shared its GPT-40, o1, o3, and o3-mini models. It also rolled out the latest ChatGPT subscription tiers such as the $200 per month ChatGPT Pro subscription.

Above all, the organization shared its Operator agent called Deep Research where it tasks ChatGPT and a few other new features that aren’t available via specific designs or paid levels.

Image: DIW-Aigen

Read next: New Study Shows ChatGPT Doesn’t Use as Much Energy as Most Assume
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World