Google shared its full perspective on supporting developers’ ability to choose how they distribute their apps through multiple app stores on different platforms, ensuring equal treatment for all apps, and allowing developers to communicate with customers.

The company explained it will be making changes in Android 12 next year to make it easier for people to use other app stores on their devices while being careful not to compromise the safety measures Android has in place. 

Google also clarified its Payments Policy to be more explicit that all developers selling digital goods in their apps are required to use Google Play’s billing system.

Uno Platform 3.0 released with Fluent and Material styles
Fluent and Material Design are now available out-of-the-box to use in desktop, mobile, and web applications built with the Uno Platform. 

Both design systems have dark mode-themed styles with no additional code required to support dark mode.

Also, Uno Gallery is a collection of ready-to-use Fluent and Material code snippets to help speed up development. Additional details are available here.

IBM’s Call for Code global challenge finalists announced
The five finalists of IBM’s Call for Code challenge include Agrolly, designed to support farmers by combining weather forecasts with crop requirements; Business Buddy, a one-stop-shop that delivers personalized and responsive updates to small businesses; as well as the applications  Offship, Safe Queue, and SchoolListIt. 

“This year of crisis underscores the need for the world’s developers and business leaders to apply the power of hybrid cloud, AI and open source technology to address society’s most pressing issues,” said Bob Lord, the senior vice president of Cognitive Applications, Blockchain, and Ecosystems, at IBM.

Additional details on all of the projects that made it to the finals are available here.

Mozilla’s European AI fund
The European AI Fund seeks to deepen the pool of  experts across Europe who have the tools, capacity, and skills to catalogue and monitor the impact of AI and data-driven interventions. 

“At Mozilla, we believe that philanthropy has a key role to play in Europe’s digital transformation and in keeping AI trustworthy, as we’ve laid out in our trustworthy AI theory of change,” Mozilla wrote in a blog post. “We’re honoured to be working alongside this group of funders in an effort to strengthen civil society’s capacity to contribute to these tech policy discussions.”

The fund will launch with a 1,000,000 € open call for funding, open until November 1st. Additional details are available here.