Google will delete location history of abortion clinic visits; PE VC investments in India fall 30 percent

Google will delete location data of users who have visited personally sensitive places, including abortion clinics, the internet search giant said in a blogpost on Friday, a week after the US Supreme Court struck down a landmark 1973 judgement — now widely known as Roe V. Wade — that had ensured a woman’s right to an abortion in America. The reversal has polarised opinion world over. “Some of the places people visit — including medical facilities like counselling centres, domestic violence shelters, abortion clinics, fertility centres, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics, cosmetic surgery clinics, and others — can be particularly personal,” Jen Fitzpatrick, a Google senior vice president wrote in a blogpost on the company’s website. “Today, we’re announcing that if our systems identify that someone has visited one of these places, we will delete these entries from Location History soon after they visit. This change will take effect in the coming weeks,” Fitzpatrick added. Apple’s next wristwatch may be equipped with a sensor that can tell if the wearer has a fever, and this feature is a go for the upcoming model, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports. The feature will be part of both the standard Apple Watch, the next of which is the series 8, and also a rugged edition aimed at extreme sports athletes, Gurman writes. It will, however, be absent in the next edition of the iPhone SE model that is also expected this year, he adds. Private equity and venture capital investments in India during the quarter ended June 2022, were lower by more than 25 percent, at $11.3 billion, Venture Intelligence said in a blogpost yesterday. The investments in Q2, across 315 deals, compared with $15.2 billion invested in 264 deals in the same period in 2021. The investments were also down almost 30 percent compared with the first three months of 2022 — which saw $16 billion invested in 390 deals — and marked three continuous quarters of decline, according to Venture Intelligence, a research service focused on private company financials, transactions, and valuations. The latest quarter saw four new unicorns — Leadsquared, Purplle, PhysicsWallah and Open Financial Technologies — compared with 11 in Q1 of 2021 and 14 in Q1 of 2022. Overall, unicorn startups in India, attracted close to $8.5 billion in investments in the first half of 2022, down 16 percent versus the same period last year, which saw $10.1 billion being invested in unicorns, according to Venture Intelligence. Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds: https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds