Cyclists may be the only people on the planet who still ask for directions. You can only get a lot of bike specific knowledge from other cyclists. The hill is steep. There are bike lanes on this route. An app can't tell you what's going on.

There are new features in Maps that will let you know about those things. More data about bike routes that show where the bike lanes are, how busy vehicle traffic is, and whether your chosen route includes a steep hill are included in the improved view for cyclists. You can be warned about stairs along the route or be told about some gravel sections. Turn-by-turn directions for bikes will be provided by the maps.

Cyclists will no longer be able to talk to one another. They might be able to complain about the lack of transportation infrastructure investment.

3D photorealistic views of landmarks and more nuanced tools for sharing location with others are some of the new features added by the search engine. Immersive View is a Maps feature that allows you to zoom and pan around the world with unprecedented freedom. The company hasn't said when the feature will come out, but it seems like a step in the right direction.

Along with the Maps update, some changes are coming to the Play store. Some of the app practices on the store need to be cleaned up. Banning apps that try to trick people into downloads, removing vaccine misinformation, and limiting full-screen ads in apps are all part of that. The changes the company has made may help ads be less annoying, but they aren't done with tracking cookies. The Play Store will be live by August 31.

Tiktok has a game.

It's clear that no social platform wants to stay in its lane anymore. The Chinese platform has been eager to change things on its own. In November of last year it announced a partnership with a game developer. Of Farmville infamy. TikTok has quietly released a few games on its platform. They are all made by a few different developers. If a user taps through the videos posted by someone who attached a game to their uploaded video, the games are available. The person has a video and you play the game there.

The feature has not been officially announced or commented on. Expansion is possible even if TikTok has a history of shelving promising experiments.

They want to be TikTok too.

In September 2020, YouTube launched its shorts feature, which allows users to make short clips of video that can be played in an endless scroll. Though it hasn't taken over the world like TikTok has, it has been a success. It is easier to post shorts on the site. Users can now convert portions of longer videos on YouTube into 60-second clips instead of just making a Short on its own, according to an update on the support page. The longer version of the video can be found on the platform.

Everything is TokTok now.

The social media site gets a lot of attention.

You probably know about the controversial Reels feature even if you don't follow it much. You don't follow a lot of accounts so it's a tab filled with streaming videos. It's a blatant rip off of TikTok, even using some of the same songs and sound effects. The full-screen looping videos are going to be a thing.

Meta said last week that it would change theKeywords of its sites to be more similar to TikTok That has trickled over into the two social media sites. Users backlash was swift. It has proven unpopular and even irk some people. The company's usage data shows that the experience is what users really want. In an earnings call, he said he expects recommendations to make up half of the feed on his social network.

Some of Mosseri's statements were returned a day later. Mosseri said in an interview that they will take a big step back and figure out how they want to move forward. It doesn't seem to translate to a big change of plan, and most likely will result in slowing the roll out a bit to give the uproar time to die down.