Government & Policy

Google loses appeal against EU’s €2.4B Shopping antitrust decision, as bloc also wins Apple state aid appeal

Google has once again lost in its bid to overturn a 2017 antitrust decision by the European Commission. The bloc found its shopping comparison service had broken competition rules — hitting Alphabet, Google’s parent, with an at-the-time record-breaking €2.42 billion penalty (around $2.7 billion at current exchange rates) and ordering changes to how it operates […]

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U.S., China and other nations convene in Seoul for summit on AI use in military

More than 90 nations, including the U.S. and China, will convene at a two-day summit in Seoul starting Monday to attempt to establish a blueprint for the use of AI in the military. As Reuters reports, participants hope to establish minimum guardrails and suggest principles for “responsible” AI deployment aligned with NATO principles. The summit

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Telegram reportedly ‘inundated’ with illegal and extremist activity

A New York Times analysis of more than 3.2 million Telegram messages from 16,000 channels found that the messaging platform has been “inundated” with illegal and extremist activity. Specifically, The Times found 1,500 channels operated by white supremacists, two dozen channels selling weapons, and at least 22 channels where MDMA, cocaine, heroin and other drugs were

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Google to receive punishment for search monopoly by next August, says judge

A federal judge says he will deliver a punishment in Google’s antitrust case by August 2025, according to The New York Times, after ruling earlier this month that Google had abused its monopoly power over the search industry. Judge Amit P. Mehta established a timeline for the remedies phase of Google’s antirust trial during a

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Wealthy Harris donors are reportedly pressing for ouster of FTC Chair Lina Khan

Some of Vice President Kamala Harris’ wealthier donors are informally asking for FTC Chair Lina Khan to be replaced, reports Bloomberg. It’s not really surprising: Her expansive definition of antitrust enforcement has countless industries frantic, and the largest corporations opposed her appointment from the start. Khan’s FTC, which has opposed mergers that would have been

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Google faces provisional antitrust charges in UK for ‘self-preferencing’ its ad exchange

More antitrust woes for Google. The U.K’.s competition watchdog said on Friday that it suspects the company of adtech antitrust abuses. The tech giant will now have a chance to respond to the provisional findings before the regulator reaches a final decision. Confirmed violations of U.K. competition law can lead to corrective orders and fines

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Publishers prevail in lawsuit over Internet Archive’s ’emergency’ ebook lending

A long-running lawsuit over the Internet Archive’s “emergency” ebook lending practices during the COVID-19 pandemic has ended in a loss for the website and a victory for publishers. The lawsuit concerned the Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library, a program it established at the beginning of the pandemic to allow wider access to some 1.3 million

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UK regulator greenlights Microsoft’s Inflection acquihire, but also designates it a merger

Good news for Microsoft: The U.K.’s antitrust regulator says that the tech titan’s high-profile acquihire of the team behind AI startup Inflection doesn’t cause competition concerns, and thus it won’t be pursuing a full-scale investigation. However, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) says that the deal does fall under its regulatory purview as a “relevant

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Are Google’s monopoly cases 5 years too late or 2 years too early?

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., at Google’s Bay View campus in Mountain View, California, US, on Wednesday, May 1, 2024. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesImage Credits: Getty Images Google suffered a major defeat when U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta found that the tech giant had acted illegally to maintain

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OpenAI, Adobe and Microsoft support California bill requiring watermarks on AI content

OpenAI, Adobe and Microsoft have thrown their support behind a California bill requiring tech companies to label AI-generated content, according to letters from the companies viewed by TechCrunch. The bill is headed for a final vote in August. AB 3211 requires watermarks in the metadata of AI-generated photos, videos and audio clips. Lots of AI

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