users

Netflix users love to watch the first season of a series. Then they love to stop seeing it completely

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What tremendous hype when Netflix has a new series and promotes it even in the soup: you swallow the trailer, the premiere promises infinite and then, you finally see the first episode and devour the entire season. And after? If I have seen you, I don’t remember: literal and figuratively, because Netflix series lose audience drastically from one season to the next, according to data from Netflix itself collected by Bloomberg. Millionaire investments, Hollywood marketing and a journey that deflates like a soda bottle. what’s happening. The network’s flagships deflate after the first season. One Piece lost more than 30% of its audience in the second season,’Row‘ fell more than 70%, ‘The Night Agent’ lost half of its audience in the second (and another 35% in the third) and ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender‘ plummeted more than 60% in its last installment, based on Netflix data for the first four weeks of the premiere of each series. And Netflix does not have a clear contingency plan on how to deal with the problem: some have been canceled (The Night Agent), others have been renewed (Running Point, The Four Seasons) despite the losses. The company would be analyzing its data to find out why, according to close sources. Why is it important. Historically, Netflix series have obtained their highest ratings in their debut season, a phenomenon that is exactly the opposite of what happened with traditional TV, where word of mouth used to cause series to improve their numbers over time. In a phrase: retention is lacking. Bloomberg echoes of the company’s concern regarding this reality, as well as that of investors regarding its ability to retain user loyalty. And the time that its clients have dedicated to watching said streaming platform this year has increased less than 2%. Because Netflix is ​​the absolute leader in streaming, but the advantage is blurring. Context. This last year Netflix shares are in decline since he presented an offer for Warner Bros. Discovery that did not come to fruition. At that time, Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters they claimed his interest in the rival entertainment company because it was a unique opportunity to acquire a valuable asset. Although there is another potential reading: that Netflix is ​​running out of ideas. After years of betting on developing mainly with its own content, it is now looking forward to growing through acquisitions. In detail. Obviously, Netflix does not put all its eggs in a single basket, in this case, a single series: the company launches a large catalog of new releases every quarter with the expectation of achieving new successes with these premieres. However, in the first five months of 2026 it only had two great successes: ‘His and Hers’ and the fourth season of ‘The Bridgertons’, precisely one of the honorable exceptions to that rule. Yes, but. Despite these warning signs, Netflix remains the undisputed leader: it has half of the most watched programs in streaming and has plenty of experience to recover after bad streaks. In fact, the platform has already added new programming formats, such as the commitment to live sports. Furthermore, and although more modest, its viewing share is still in the green in a more mature, expensive and competitive market. In Xataka | Netflix has achieved what seemed crazy at first: that we pay in exchange for watching ads In Xataka | Of course you don’t remember anything that happened in the last season of your favorite series. It’s deliberate Cover | Gemini

The retail SSD market has all but disappeared. And it is not because users have stopped buying them

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Buying an SSD seemed, until not so long ago, one of those fairly simple decisions in the PC world: choose capacity, look at speeds, compare prices and little else. But the market behind this daily gesture has changed significantly. What we have seen in recent months is not a disappearance of the need for storage, but a much deeper strain on the supply chain. SSDs are still necessary, but an increasing share of drives that could previously end up in the channel retail seems to be finding other destinations before reaching the retail window. what’s happening. The clearest signal was put on the table by Nelson Duann, vice president of Silicon Motion, one of the major manufacturers of SSD controllers. In an interview with Tom’s Hardware during Computex 2026the executive summarized his reading of the market like this: “The retail SSD market has practically disappeared.” He was not talking about a specific drop or a minor adjustment, but rather about what happened during the first half of 2026, a period in which retail sales of SSDs fell significantly. The chain has moved. The key point is who is buying those units now. Duann explained that the controllers sold by silicon motion to module assemblers, that is, companies that integrate memory, controllers and other components to sell complete SSDs, largely end up in units destined for PC manufacturers. It’s not a minor detail: according to that reading, manufacturers like Acer, Asus, Dell or HP can’t get enough NAND or SSD supply directly from the big memory manufacturers, so they are turning to a channel that previously looked much more towards the end user. The pressure of AI. The background appears clearly in TrendForce data. According to the consulting firm, cloud service providers increased demand for enterprise SSDs in the first quarter of 2026 due to the need to build infrastructure for AI servers, with high-speed data transmission and enormous storage capacities. Added to that was another factor: the structural shortage of traditional hard drives pushed a significant portion of orders toward QLC enterprise SSDs. There are figures. TrendForce says the combined revenue of the world’s five largest NAND Flash vendors grew 83.7% quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter of 2026 to exceed $38.9 billion. The increase came in a scenario of strong demand and limited supply, with average sales prices above expectations. The distribution also shows the scale of the phenomenon: Samsung closed the quarter with 13.51 billion dollars, SK hynix Group reached about 7.53 billion and Kioxia reached 5.96 billion. The indirect winnerss. The hit to the retail storefront does not mean that the entire chain is losing at the same rate. Duann added that, in the past, most of these companies were focused on selling to the end user, but since the end of last year and through 2026 that dynamic has changed. Demand from PC manufacturers has strengthened and those suppliers are directing a significant portion of their production directly to them. For companies like Silicon Motion, which sell SSD controllers to these assemblers, the market continues to move, although it does so through another door. What the buyer notices. This industrial readjustment ends up reaching the user in a fairly direct way. As we have seen, the prices of consumer SSDs have increased significantly in recent quarters due to the priority that memory manufacturers are giving to the AI ​​sector. That is to say, the pressure does not stay in the data centers, it also filters down to the shop window and the computer that we end up buying. everything remains the same. TrendForce indicates that large NAND Flash suppliers will add virtually no new capacity during the year and that, due to AI-related demand, supply shortages will remain. Production will also continue to be heavily focused on server storage applications, with high-capacity QLC enterprise SSDs gaining penetration. In this context, the retail market is conditioned by an industrial priority that does not aim to change immediately. In summary. The retail SSD market has weakened not because the user no longer needs fast storage, but because the industry has changed its order of priorities. Available NAND is being disputed between data centers, large buyers in the PC industry and companies trying to respond to increasingly server-oriented demand. What once came more naturally to the showcase is now more likely to end up integrated into a new team or AI infrastructure. The SSD is still there, but the usual buyer is no longer first in line. Images | Western Digital + Photoshop In Xataka | SSD prices are so crazy that a 2TB drive for the PS5 costs more than the PS5 itself

Threads already boasts 500 million users. The missing figure remains the most important

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Threads was born at the time when competing with X seemed more possible than ever. The old Twitter was going through a period of profound changes under Elon Musk and Meta decided to enter with its own app in a field that X had dominated for years: brief, immediate public conversation supported by text. What was not clear was whether that window could become sustained use, community and real scale. Almost three years after its launch, the company already has an answer to teach the market. The data comes from the Goal itself, which has announced that Threads It has reached 500 million monthly active users in June 2026. The application would have added about 100 million monthly users since August of last year, when it was already around 400 million. It is a huge figure for such a young network and enough to place it in a very different conversation than in its first months. The company led by Mark Zuckerberg has presented the milestone along with several new features, with special emphasis on reinforcing the role of communities within Threads. In its official announcement, Meta maintains that these groups, organized around conversations on topics such as books, basketball, parenting or musichave helped shape the application. That’s why Communities It is now out of beta and adds functions such as a center to find communities, own icons, progress indicators for topics that are close to becoming a community and more recognition for outstanding users. The figures we have and the figures we are missing Part of the explanation is that Threads didn’t have to convince the user to start from a blank page. It’s no secret that upon its initial launch it benefited from a highly optimized growth strategy: the app was able to build on the connections that millions of people already had on Instagram, and some viral Threads posts even appeared on Instagram and Facebook. This advantage helps to understand why its adoption was so rapid, although it does not solve the underlying question: how many of those users have turned Threads into a commonly used app. This pace places Threads in a striking position if we compare it with other large networks, although with an important caution: not all of them were born in the same conditions nor did they communicate their metrics in the same way. TikTok/Douyin reached 500 million monthly active users in July 2018a little less than two years later of the launch of Douyin in China. Instagram reached that barrier in June 2016some five years and eight months after its premiere. Facebook announced 500 million active users in July 2010a little more than six years after its birth, although that communication did not formulate the metric with the same detail as MAU. Threads did it just before turning three years old. There is the missing figure. Meta has given the global number, but has not published the breakdown by country: we do not know what Threads’ main market is, where the growth is concentrated or how many monthly active users it has in Spain. That gap matters because a social network is not only measured by its aggregate size, but by the weight it achieves in each local conversation. And in Spain, without a public figure that allows it to be measured, Threads does not yet seem to occupy a place comparable to that of X, Instagram or TikTok. Some clues help to read this incomplete map, although none replace the official breakdown that we do not have. In its announcement, the company led by Mark Zuckerberg mentions that local communities will start with native language labels in Japan, Korea and Taiwana clue as to where you are putting the focus. Meta claims to be seeing more traction in Asia, especially in South Korea and Japan, where usage time has increased by 80% and 130%, respectively, compared to the previous year. This is useful data, but it is not equivalent to knowing how many monthly active users there are in each country. Images | Goal In Xataka | “Deepfake” calls have become a top-level security problem: Google believes it has the answer

OpenAI wants to turn ChatGPT into a super app. Users fear the worst

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Internal statements cited in The Financial Times reveal how OpenAI is preparing what could be the biggest change for ChatGPT since its launch in November 2022. The company It already has 1,000 million users of the free version of its models, but wants to increase the number of those who pay, and the key is the change of approach. chat is dead. The summary of the approach is in the phrase “Chat is dead”, uttered by a senior company official under anonymity. Keeping 1 billion users using the chatbot for free requires enormous computing power and therefore money. That does not seem to have a clear return at the moment, so the company no longer sees ChatGPT as the final product, but as a gateway to hook the user and gradually convince them to use the company’s paid services, such as ChatGPT Plus. A super app on the horizon. The objective, say sources close to the company, is to launch a super app that combines both programming tools and AI agents, which will make it possible to add paying subscribers to a platform that needs to eat income. Especially considering that its IPO is imminentjust sent documentation to the SEC to prepare for that move. Codex as the center of everything. The idea here is to turn Codex into that revenue engine that ChatGPT has not been. Following the launch of the desktop application in February 2026, Codex has already multiplied its weekly active user base by six, and now exceeds 5 million. While ChatGPT has a small proportion of paying users, the vast majority of Codex users pay a subscription. Third-party apps and services. The ChatGPT interface redesign is expected to begin rolling out in the coming weeks on both the web and mobile apps. In a first phase ChatGPT will “direct” users to third-party services such as Canva or Booking, they say in the FT. The idea is that over time OpenAI will get rid of prompts so that its models understand the intention of their users when they use the website or the app. Agents in power. The new approach considers that the real value of the market is not in writing poems or summarizing texts, but in using agents that help us both personally and professionally. According to those responsible cited in the newspaper, the classic distinction between a web search engine, a chatbot and an AI agent for programming will disappear so that the future ChatGPT will be crazy without us realizing it. Thibault Sottiaux, who did speak officially, confirmed that they were preparing “a personal agent who is capable of helping you in any facet of your life, whether personal or professional.” Reasonable criticism. Photo users like Reddit They have reacted with clear criticism to this news. Existing ChatGPT Plus subscribers enjoy nearly unlimited conversational access and, separately, “credits” via the Codex programming API. If everything is merged into a new super app, these users fear that this theoretical unified agent will end up consuming an account’s tokens much faster and the pay-per-use model will harm them all. If the evolution of these models has taught us anything, it is that In fact, agents have made using AI (quite a bit) more expensive for intensive users. Mass adoption is no longer enough. When the AI ​​race began, OpenAI seemed to be happy to attract the largest possible volume of users even at the cost of putting revenue at risk. They believed that they would end up capturing that part sooner or later, but Anthropic appeared on the scene. Amodei’s company has managed to attract paying users – business users – and now OpenAI sees how its initial strategy does not seem to work. In Xataka | Anthropic’s IPO is very similar to the one Netscape carried out in 1995. That is worrying

A dating app has started giving it away so its users can meet in person

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Dating apps are on the decline. After the pandemic boomapps like Tinder they have been losing users. It doesn’t help that the apps are plagued by bots and? we are increasingly lazy to flirtbut now there is a new problem: everything is so expensive that dating has become a luxury, especially for the youngest. In this context, an app has had a rather risky idea. The promotion. They tell it in Wired. There is a dating app that is raffling off cards worth $500 in gas for those who download the app and tag three friends. Their slogan is: “Dating shouldn’t have to compete with the price of filling up with gas.” The app in question is BLK, a dating app for black people that was launched in the US, although it has expanded to other countries such as the United Kingdom. BLK belongs to Match Group, where we also find other apps like Tinder or Hinge, and was born as a response to the racism and prejudice that black people suffer when using these types of apps. The price of gasoline. The price of gasoline in the US, where they launched this campaign, reached a peak last Memorial Day, according to AAA data. A gallon reached $4.56, an increase of $1.30 compared to the same period last year. If we convert it to liters it is around 1.22 dollars, which may not seem like much. looking at the prices we manage on this side of the Atlanticbut it is the highest price in the US in the last four years. The reason is what we already know: the blockade of Hormuz due to the Iran war. And gasoline has not been the only thing that has risen, food and other prices are also rising. essential goods. Looking for a partner is expensive. According to a Montreal bank studythe cost of going on a date in the US and Canada has increased by 12.5% ​​in 2026. The average expense, including prior personal care and gasoline, is $189. This has caused the frequency of dating to decrease and almost half of singles (47%) consider that flirting is not worth it. Furthermore, 50% of Generation Z and 40% of millennials consider that the cost of dating significantly affects their finances and prevents them from achieving their financial goals. Quotes low-cost. The most traditional dating culture in the US is what is known as “wining and dining”, that is, going out to dinner and drinking in elegant places, with the aim of impressing the other person; This is why the cost of appointments is so high. Given this scenario, there are more and more people who are choosing to stop dating directly, but others opt for other types of cheapest plans like going on a picnic or going for a walk. Soft-socializing. That preference for cheaper plans fits into the fphenomenon of soft-socializing, which we could translate as “soft socialization” and which generation Z has made fashionable. It consists of meeting other people, but without the pressure of organizing something very intense or very expensive: for example, meeting at home to do a puzzle, participating in a book club or watching a movie together. For many young people, it is a way to continue socializing without assuming the costs of traditional leisure. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | Goodbye Tinder, hello Strava: running clubs have become the favorite dating app of Generation Z

“Users have many choices”

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Piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem. Gabe Newell, head of Valve, said something like this a few years ago. Newell commented that the fastest way to stop piracy it was not pput up stronger barriersbut to give users a better service than what they would receive from pirates. And it is clear that Steam offers a good service for consumers, but… what about video game companies? That is what, in recent years, has awakened the criticism that Steam is a monopoly. And don’t think that it is a criticism on networks or with a small mouth: it is something that is sparking a deep debate, which has already brought Gabe Newell to court and which translates into two open judicial processes. Newell’s response? Users have many alternatives to buy their games. The reality? Not so many, precisely, because of that good Steam service. But of course, this is a double-edged sword. Steam and the “monopoly” with which users agree, but not all developers David Rosen is an important name in this story. He’s the founder of a studio called Wolfire Games which, if that doesn’t sound familiar to you, is completely normal. What might sound familiar to you if you play on PC is Humble Bundle. At first, Humble Bundle was a website where you paid a certain amount and you took keys that you could redeem on Steam. For 5 euros you got great games and you could decide who the money was going to (non-governmental organizations, the developers, the store or a little for each one). Over time, Humble Bundle evolved and became a store, but also a subscription platform. Things were going well for Rosen and if I tell you this it is because, in 2018, the developer began to pay attention to certain Valve policies that, according to him, harmed smaller creators. These creators would see fewer benefits from having to pay higher percentages per sale on Steam than on other platforms, but they knew they should stay on Steam because it is the platform the user is on. Given the context, in 2021, Rosen himself approached Valve to ask if his studio (the aforementioned Wolfire Games) could publish his game ‘Overgrowth’ on both Humble Bundle and Steam, but at a discounted price on… Humble Bundle. According to Rosen, Valve said something like “you’ll see”, which implied that they would not advertise their game on the cover (something key for visibility). According to Valve, that’s not how it happened, but the result is where we are right now: Rosen and Wolfire Games decided to sue Valve directly for policies that they considered were anti-competitive and anti-consumer. During all this time, and as they point out from BloombergValve has defended itself by stating that its internal policies are actually good for the consumer. And, as I said at the beginning of the article, there really is a lot of reason in this. Although they have questionable things like we didn’t really buy a game, but a license to useSteam is an exemplary platform when it comes to granting refunds if a game is not what we expect or is broken. Steam, in addition, works much better than the store that Ubisoft had, that of Electronic Arts or an Epic Store in which Epic is burning millions of dollars without being able to make a dent in Gabe Newell’s ‘fishbowl’ empire. But Rosen is also right when he points out that This price parity policy is harmful to the user. Because, let’s be clear, if a game is 15 euros on GoG (my favorite platform of PC thanks to the fact that you do have ownership over the games you buy) and 15 euros on Steam, the safest thing for the user who does not care so much about that property is to choose Steam for the achievements, the community, because it is where their friends are, the users who correct bugs or because you have a PC and a Steam Deck and it’s very convenient. But if it is 10 euros on GoG and 15 on Steam, the easiest thing is for them to choose the GoG version. That price parity is one of the battles in these trials and, as usually happens in these cases, many details come to light. Although Valve offers vague explanations about these parity policies, in the Bloomberg report we can see statements from developers who indicate that they received threatening calls from the company. For example, emails to Ubisoft threatening remove ‘Rainbow Six Siege’ edits from Steam because Ubisoft sold them cheaper in its own store or to Warner Bros. because ‘Middle-earth: Shadow of War’ was more expensive on Steam than on other platforms for the same version of the game. A name that has come up is Kassidy Gerberwho worked in business development at Valve and was the one who made those “requests” and, when having to testify, stated that it wasn’t really Valve’s “policy” because “that sounds a little bureaucratic.” The trial, as we say, continues its course, but in the meantime, in the United Kingdom there is a case against Steam which could translate into a fine of up to 900 million dollars for this type of practices. “Customers have a lot of choice. They can decide where they buy their products, whether they buy the game on an Xbox, whether they buy it on Steam, whether they buy it from the Epic Games Store or whether they buy it directly from the software developers” – Gabe Newell And… what does Gabe Newell say about all this? The affable Valve boss who lives on his luxurious yacht was asked about it, responding with the phrase we quote in the headline. That “customers have a lot of choice about where to buy their games” points out that Steam is not a bottleneck like the Google and Apple stores can be (a similar trial occurred between Epic and these stores that ended in both opening the … Read more

The MacBook Neo has made traditional Windows laptops look ridiculous. This is great news for users.

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He MacBook Neo showed the way. Mid-range laptops seemed stuck in the past, with an unattractive price/performance ratio. The feeling was that once you were buying a laptop, it was better to invest 1,000 euros or more to be able to work and play comfortably. That seems to be finally changing, because we are seeing a lot of movement in the world of Windows laptops. Asleep on our laurels. Apple’s new model showed that there could be alternatives and caught manufacturers on the wrong foot. Everyone seemed comfortable with it. status quobut he MacBook Neo woke them up from slumberand soon we will see a deployment of modest but functional equipment. Above all, because three of the semiconductor majors already have their SoCs ready or almost ready to compete with the Apple A18 Pro of the MacBook Neo. Qualcomm Snapdragon C. The first alternative is this chip with ARM architecture that just announced by Qualcomm and according to the firm, it will allow equipment to be offered with starting prices of $300. It is very likely that these proposals are too limited (and have no more than 4 GB of RAM), but also that there are versions with higher configurations. The Snapdragon C promises remarkable efficiency, and Qualcomm is an old acquaintance of Windows for ARM equipment. Intel Wildcat Lake. In April we saw how Intel showed its great commitment to conquer this new era of mid-range laptops. I did it with his family Wildcat Lake in which, for example, the new Intel Core 3 304 are integrated. The fundamental advantage of these chips is that of using the traditional x86-64 architecture, which until now has proven to be the best option for Windows computers due to its completely native support for the OS and its applications. Nvidia waits its turn. A lot has been spoken how the duopoly of Intel and AMD on Windows computers could have an expiration date. Qualcomm has not managed to erode that reality, but who may have an important asset is Nvidia, which is preparing the launch of its Arm chips. There has been talk for months that there will be not one, but two based on the GP10 chip which Nvidia jointly developed with MediaTek. The names that are mentioned in the leaks are N1 and N1X, and although the details are unknown, the expectations are notable and already start to leak also Lenovo models that will integrate the N1X. But Windows on ARM has never caught on. The doubts with Qualcomm and Nvidia’s proposals are not due to them, but rather to Microsoft and its Windows operating system. Its version for ARM chips has been available for years, but the teams that have taken advantage of these chips were limited by some software conflicts. I’d better stay with Intel and AMD. There are hardly any problems in that sense anymore, but the promise of the efficiency of ARM chips was not so striking when the prices of such equipment were high. In the end, it was more worthwhile for most users to bet on “traditional” chips from Intel and AMD, and Qualcomm’s proposals—the only ones that appeared on the market—never quite conquered the general public, not even when Copilot+ PCs appeared. Windows 11, by the way, He didn’t make it easy either. with your list of requirements. Specs don’t matter (that much). We already saw yesterday how the specifications of the Wilcat Lake chips are superior to those of the Apple A18 Pro of the MacBook Neobut that doesn’t mean much. Above all, because the MacBook Neo have proven to be laptops that offer a fantastic user experience, but at the moment computers with Intel chips have not been analyzed and their performance is unknown. These same doubts affect future devices with Qualcomm or Nvidia chips: they will have to demonstrate that the user experience is as good (or better) than that of the MacBook Neo, or else these manufacturers (and Microsoft) will have a serious problem. It’s good news. Whatever happens, Apple’s move has caused manufacturers to finally move and develop solutions to try to compete with the surprising team from Cupertino. If the MacBook Neo had not been launched, we would probably still be stuck in the mid-range Windows laptop segment, but this is going to liven things up and revive competition between manufacturers. We all win. In Xataka | “We arrived too soon, but we were right”: The MacBook Neo is everything Microsoft dreamed of with the disastrous Windows 8

now it goes against its users

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Imagine enjoying all the football and premieres for just 40 euros a year, with the peace of mind that a sophisticated system and payments in cryptocurrencies make you completely invisible. That tranquility has just vanished suddenly for many users of the Cinemagoal network who has been dismantled by the Italian authorities. The biggest risk is no longer that the screen goes black in the middle of the game, but rather receiving a notification in your mailbox with a fine of up to four figures. what has happened. Through the baptized as Operation “Tutto Chiaro”, The Italian Guardia di Finanza has managed to dismantle the technological infrastructure behind Cinemagoal. More than a hundred searches have been carried out in Italy and key servers located in France and Germany have been seized. But what is striking about the case is that they are not only persecuting those responsible for the network, but they are tracking and identifying the subscribers of the service, who are receiving fines ranging from 154 to 5,000 euros. Why is it important. Italy is one of the toughest countries against the broadcast of matches and content without a license; It is not content with dismantling the infrastructure, but is going after the final link that feeds the business: the users. It’s a war they’ve been fighting for years, even leading to prison sentences. Although in Spain it has not reached that point, LaLiga has followed in the footsteps of Italy with the massive blocking of IPsalso affecting legitimate companies and services that have nothing to do with with the distribution of unauthorized content. This is how Cinemagoal worked. The network did not transmit video via IPTV, but used virtual machines that operated 24/7, maintaining open sessions on services such as Netflix, DAZN, Sky, Disney+ or Spotify through legal subscriptions registered in the name of false identities. Instead of copying and broadcasting the audiovisual content, these machines extracted the keys or authorization tokens from the official sessions every three minutes and sent them in real time to the application installed on the clients’ devices. Through this system, users downloaded the video directly from the platforms’ official servers, which completely hidden their IP addresses and made it Piracy Shieldthe Italian platform against the dissemination of unauthorized content, was blind. The service cost between 40 and 130 euros per year and was distributed by more than 70 resellers in Italy, who paid preferably in cryptocurrencies or through foreign accounts to evade tracking. For the users. Cinemagoal customers believed they were protected by anonymity, but the police have managed to identify at least 1,000 users by cross-referencing data. To find them, investigators analyzed customer records seized from more than 70 resellers operating in Italy, tracked payment histories and activity logs (logs) hosted on the application’s own servers. The minimum fine is 154 euros, which will be for users who were simply viewing content. Those who had the “fictitious subscriptions from which the authentication tokens were extracted”, that is, those who redistributed the content, will have to pay up to 5,000 euros. 300 million. The Italian authorities estimate that the damage caused by this platform reaches 300 million euros in subscriptions. It’s what It is known as lost profits, That is, the money that platforms stop earning due to unauthorized content. However, their way of doing the math assumes that the hacking user would have paid 100% if they did not have the illegal option: it is a fallacy and an unrealistic metric of losses. Image | Xataka with Gemini In Xataka | LaLiga wanted to fine VPNs that did not block IPs during matches. A court has been set up

Google search engine is killing blue links. So more and more users are finding refuge in DuckDuckGo

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Search things on Google it’s not the same anymore. The technology giant is turning its traditional search engine into something very different in which AI is taking control whether we like it or not. The good news is that if we don’t like it, we have alternativesand precisely in DuckDuckGo They are taking advantage of this opportunity very well. Times change. For nearly three decades, Google has been the gateway to that traditional list of blue links that the search engine presented as results. In recent years, the search engine is becoming an AI engine that tries to anticipate the user’s intentions and autocomplete queries with long answers. AI Overviews. The arrival of AI Overviews (AI Summaries) has made the search engine answer questions directly at the top of the page, but that move is being heavily criticized. The reason is simple: Google is killing those blue links it defended for more than 25 years. The new AI Mode goes in that same direction and points to a future in which we will not ask the Google search engine things, but simply talk to it. DuckDuckGo takes advantage of its opportunity. DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg recently stated that “Google is imposing AI with no way to disable it.” This has not pleased a certain sector of users who are beginning to use alternatives that give them back control. That’s good news for DuckDuckGo, which has seen more and more users start using its services: Downloads of the DuckDuckGo app in the US grew by an average of 18.1% weekly, and peaks of 30.5% were reached on May 25 The adoption rate on Apple devices was even higher, with an average rise of 33% and a peak of 69.9%. Visits to specific page free of AI, noai.duckduckgo.comincreased on average by 22.7% from week to week. Searches like before, and private. The advantages of DuckDuckGo are striking for those looking for alternatives to the Google search engine. To begin with, DuckDuckGo has that aforementioned page that avoids any trace of AI. If you want to use AI canbut in that case you will have access to somewhat more modest models (Claude 4.5 Haiku, GPT-5 mini, Llama 4 Scout, you can pay to access better models) but with which your conversations will remain private. In addition, DuckDuckGo deletes IPs and prohibits the use of those conversations to train models. It is an extension towards AI that iron defense of privacy that since its inception has differentiated this search engine… although there have been some controversy about it. Google doesn’t even flinch. Despite this growth in downloads and visits to its search services, DuckDuckGo remains an alternative with an anecdotal market share in the search segment. Worldwide it has a 0.71% share compared to Google’s 90.02% and Bing’s 5.14%. Anti-AI shelter. Google’s dominance here is absolute and it seems almost impossible for that to change, but even so DuckDuckGo is clearly positioning itself as the refuge for those who see AI as an unnecessary—or unwanted—complication when performing searches. Kamyl Bazbaz, head of company policy, explained it with a simple statement: “people simply want to be able to choose.” Business model at play. The shift towards AI seems to be beneficial for Google, whose search revenue grew by 19% in the first quarter of 2026. It is a striking fact considering that theoretically AI results make it difficult for advertising to enter the search engine, but Google seems to be solving it with native advertising from AI Overviews or Keyword auctions in AI Mode. This is added to the recommendations of affiliate products that also seem to be working and promoting a business model that is being renewed in parallel to what the search engine is doing. In Xataka | Google already knows how to make its AI Overviews more human: use Reddit content ruthlessly

Reddit was one of the last refuge platforms for Internet users. You just took a step in a worrying direction

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The social network Reddit has become the best source of human data on the internet. It is in fact one of the few remaining refuges from that “human network of networks” with which it all began, but this singular and anarchic social network has just taken a disturbing step: wants to force you to install their app when you use it from your mobile. uncomfortable notice. Millions of people use Reddit daily on their mobile, but in recent days they have encountered an uncomfortable message: a notice that forced them to use the Reddit mobile application instead of being able to continue using the browser to enjoy the famous thematic subreddits. There are many those who they have warned of the problem with diverse messages in the forums of the platform. In one of the most popular subredits, r/technology, the message that talks about the topic has nearly 20,000 positive votes and 4,200 comments. What Reddit says. Company spokespersons indicated at Ars Technica that Reddit has launched a test “for a small subset of mobile users that encourages them to download the app after visiting the site. These users are already familiar with Reddit and we have seen that the experience is much better for them on the app.” Personalization = data collection. The platform argues that if users take advantage of the app they can have a tailored news thread and better searches, but criticism has not been slow in coming. The Ars Technica editor who wrote on the subject himself commented how this notice has also reached him—not us, perhaps because we are not in the United States—and this sounds disturbing. And it sounds like that because it is just how apps like TikTok, X or Instagram work, which have managed to polish their content recommendation algorithms so that the user ends up condemned for doomscrolling. And that would point to Reddit’s ambition that we simply do nothing but be on Reddit. The danger of making your users angry. It is ironic that a platform like Reddit, which has always largely depended on the traffic brought to it by Google, decides to break with that way of reaching its forums. Those responsible for the platform seem to be confident that its content is essential enough for its users to convince them to download and use the app. The question is whether this will not cause an exodus of users. A small solution. Apparently is it possible avoid the message if we clean and we empty both the cache and the cookies of the mobile browser that we use to browse Reddit. This temporary patch can help you continue using Reddit directly from the mobile browser you use. Wall Street rules a lot. This apparent degradation or evolution of the service certainly seems to be aimed at maximizing profit. By going public, Reddit has to prove to shareholders that it can generate growing revenue. And if you can lock users into your official app, you can ensure that no one (including AI) can access that valuable content without going through your controls. Image | Brett Jordan In Xataka | Reddit, nude scenes and a forum out of control: this is how a Dane ended up being convicted in a case that sets a precedent

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