Ohio asked a court on Tuesday to declare Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google a public utility, a step the state’s Republican attorney general said would forbid the search and advertising giant from giving preferential treatment to its own products. “When you own the railroad or the electric company or the cellphone tower, you have to treat everyone the same and give everybody access,” Attorney General Dave Yost said in a statement. The lawsuit, which estimates that Google is used for nearly 90% of… Source link

Google’s Locked Folder feature, which allows you to password-protect specific images or videos to keep them from showing up in your main photo library, is available in the latest Pixel update, according to 9to5Google. Google’s page explaining Locked Folder says the feature is only currently available on Pixel devices, starting with the 3. When it announced the feature at its I/O conference, Google said that it would be coming to other Android phones “throughout the year.” If… Source link

Cancelling $50,000 in federally-backed student loan debt for American borrowers would actually help lower-income debtors far more than rich ones, according to a new research brief. The study by the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning think tank based in New York City, came to the conclusion as other academics argue that eliminating debt for millions of borrowers would instead disproportionately benefit high-income borrowers. “We made a policy mistake, in terms of placing the funding of higher… Source link

WASHINGTON — Just three weeks ago, Great Britain celebrated the success of its vaccination campaign by lifting many coronavirus-related restrictions. “Goodbye, lockdown,” one headline said. But since then, a more transmissible new strain of the coronavirus has taken hold, imperiling plans to fully reopen the country on June 21. Public health officials in the United States are now grappling with the possibility that a similar regression could take place here and, just as in the U.K.,… Source link

You can’t say “Mr. Wonderful” didn’t warn you. Shark Tank host Kevin O’Leary was among the first in the investment community to sound the alarm on bitcoin’s sustainability concerns, when he stressed as much, during an interview with Yahoo Finance at the beginning of May. Two weeks later, Elon Musk announced Tesla was reversing its stance on accepting the crypto as a form of payment, citing the same sustainability issues, sparking a 35% collapse in bitcoin’s price for the month. But… Source link

There is probably a lot of trash in the speculative boom currently taking hold of markets. But hidden amid the meme stocks, SPACs, and crypto coins could be some valuable businesses. “Somewhere in the hundreds of SPACs and scores of meme stocks are some decent companies and potentially even a few huge opportunities,” DataTrek’s Nicholas Colas wrote in a note this week. “For example: Hertz, which was supposed to be a retail investor graveyard, actually exited bankruptcy with its equity… Source link

The meme stock army is showing its support for the OG of the 2021 retail trading movement — GameStop (GME) — ahead of the company’s earnings on Wednesday evening. Shares of GameStop rose as much as 6% to $292 in afternoon trading on Tuesday as fast-money traders positioned themselves prior to the earnings release. GameStop was among the top five most commented stocks on social media, according to data from social monitoring service HypeEquity. Talk on social media of call options on… Source link

Steve Roosa and Daniel Rosenzweig report on Google’s recent announcement regarding Android GAID settings. Beginning later in 2021, for Android 12, Android devices will “zero-out” the Google Advertising ID (“GAID”) for users who have opted out of tracking and personalized advertising. (In other words, using the “Opt out of Ads Personalization” settings). Read the full post on the NT Analyzer blog. Source link

Kevin Durant and the Brooklyn Nets absolutely walloped the Milwaukee Bucks on Monday night, but the afterglow of that win didn’t last long for Durant. On Tuesday morning he saw something that annoyed him so much that he had to tweet about it.  What he saw appears to be a clip from ESPN’s morning show, “Get Up,” in which Jay Williams tells a story about Durant being upset that Williams compared him to Giannis Antetokounmpo. Apparently Durant was so angry that he confronted Williams about it… Source link

We have a little bit of everything in this week’s article, with a pair of superstars, a few significant players and one option for a smaller move. Smart managers should to continue working every angle on the trade market, as they never know where the next great deal will come from. Players to acquire Mookie Betts (OF, Los Angeles Dodgers) I always look for windows to acquire superstars for a reasonable return, and such a window may exist for Betts right now. The Dodgers sparkplug is off to a… Source link