Digital news of the day Important functions are missing: Spotify launches app for Apple Watch

Spotify comes to the Apple Watch with restrictions, Google traffic took a detour through China, Google sister Waymo launches a driverless cab service, tech giants unite against the opioid crisis and Google accounts on Twitter are used for Bitcoin fraud. These are the digital news of the day.

An Apple Watch app from the popular music streaming service Spotify is about to be launched. The app should be available next week, but some important functions are missing for the launch.

For example, the app on the wrist can be used to control Spotify playback, but only when the iPhone is within reach. Saving music or podcasts on the watch for offline listening is not available, nor is playback via the mobile network on Apple Watches with a built-in 4G chip.

Apple apps can do more

With Apple Music and Apple's own podcast app for WatchOS, however, both are possible. This means that Spotify still has a decisive competitive disadvantage, as it will not be possible to use the app when jogging, for example, where people like to leave their iPhone at home.

Spotifytold gizmodo.com that offline listening to podcasts and music as well as streaming directly on the Apple Watch will be added later. However, the company would not provide a specific timetable.

More digital news of the day

Google traffic took a detour via China

On Monday, parts of Google's global internet traffic took an inexplicable detour via China for just under an hour. A Nigerian network operator has now taken responsibility and said that its own systems were incorrectly configured. However, US security experts are skeptical that this was a mishap, writes Reuters.

Waymo launches autonomous cab service

Waymo, a subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet, plans to launch an autonomous cab service on a large scale as early as December, according to Bloomberg. In the greater Phoenix area in the state of Arizona, 400 volunteers will initially test the service, which is intended to compete with established services such as Uber or Lyft. Waymo has not yet announced the name under which the service will be offered.

Twitter, Google and Facebook join forces to fight the opioid crisis

The opioid crisis that has been raging for years, especially in the USA, is now bringing together the tech giants Twitter, Facebook and Google. In the organization "Tech Together to Fight the Opioid Crisis", the companies want to jointly provide help to addicts and stop the sale of the drugs on their platforms, according to Facebook on its blog.

Google Twitter account spreads Bitcoin scam

Fraud attempts on Twitter, in which users are promised Bitcoin gifts, have now reached epidemic proportions. Now even an official Google account on Twitter has been hacked and misused for the scam, reports thenextweb.com

Simply compromising images for websites

With the Google invention Squoosh , website operators in particular can quickly compress images so that they do not consume unnecessary data. The service works directly in the web browser.

Alternatively, the Websiteplanet service is also well suited for compressing images. These can even be up to 50 megabytes in size.