How Senator Amy Klobuchar’s Antitrust Battle Against Apple’s and Google’s App Stores Could Impact Startups
Spotify, Tile, and Match Group aren’t exactly startups anymore. Neither is Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, which last summer was valued at $17.3 billion. But these companies, which all rely on Apple and Google to host their apps, are locked in a battle with the tech giants that could trickle down to smaller companies and independent app developers. Several of these companies testified before a subpanel of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, chaired by Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN),… Source link
Read More »Google’s Fi wireless service gets a new, cheaper unlimited plan – Yahoo Tech
Bloomberg Bank of Canada Becomes First to Signal Exit From Stimulus (Bloomberg) — The Bank of Canada took the biggest step yet by a major economy to reduce emergency levels of monetary stimulus as it hailed a stronger-than-expected recovery from the pandemic.Policy makers led by Governor Tiff Macklem said Wednesday they would scale back their purchases of government debt by a quarter to C$3 billion ($2.4 billion) and accelerate the timetable for a possible interest-rate increase.The upbeat… Source link
Read More »Comparing Google’s newest phones | Lifestyles
I have to wonder about Google’s sales expectations for the Pixel 5 vs. the 4a 5G. They have some differences, but they were both released at the same time, so Google knew people would have to make a choice between them. Let’s look at the major differences. The Pixel 5 has a screen with a higher refresh rate, but 98% of you won’t really notice the difference. The Pixel 5 has two more gigabytes of RAM, but again, most of you won’t notice. The 5′s battery is slightly bigger but not enough… Source link
Read More »Companies Complain to Senators About Apple’s and Google’s App Stores: Live Updates
Here’s what you need to know: An AirTag, which Apple introduced this week as an attachment that helps owners find lost items, and which Tile says is a copy of its trackers.Credit…Apple, via Reuters Tile said Apple boxed out its products and then copied them. Spotify said Apple blocked it from telling customers that they could find cheaper prices outside its iPhone app. And Match Group testified that it now paid nearly $500 million a year to Apple and Google in app store fees, the dating… Source link
Read More »App Providers Are ‘All Afraid’ Of Apple’s And Google’s Market Power, Match Group And Spotify Tell Senate
U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar. (Photo by Evelyn Hockstein-Pool/Getty Images) Getty Images Executives from Apple and Google fielded accusations of anti-competitive behavior from lawmakers and other technology companies during an antitrust hearing on Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lee. Much of the testimony was aimed at Apple’s App Store and the Google Play app marketplace, with executives from music streaming platform… Source link
Read More »Google’s ethical AI researchers complained of harassment long before Timnit Gebru’s firing
Google’s AI leadership came under fire in December when star ethics researcher Timnit Gebru was abruptly fired while working on a paper about the dangers of large language models. Now, new reporting from Bloomberg suggests the turmoil began long before her termination — and includes allegations of bias and sexual harassment. Shortly after Gebru arrived at Google in 2018, she informed her boss that a colleague had been accused of sexual harassment at another organization. Katherine… Source link
Read More »Which of Google’s 17 Recommendations Should Be Applied Automatically
Google Ads recently announced that advertisers can start automatically accepting recommendations for their ads accounts. And no, they’re not asking for a blank check. They aren’t offering to automatically raise budgets, either. Setting our skepticism aside, let’s take a look at the 17 optimizations included in this update and whether any of them are safe enough to accept automatically. Spoiler alert: Some (but not all) of the recommendations are quite good and putting them on autopilot… Source link
Read More »Google’s Grand Plan to Eliminate Third-Party Cookies Has a Big Problem Other Browsers Aren’t Biting
Google’s plan to replace third-party cookies is–on one level–really quite brilliant. Google’s entire business depends heavily on the ability to track users in order to identify their interests, and then show them “personalized ads” based on their web activity. The third-party cookie is a huge part of that business, which means it makes sense Google would want to be leading the way on whatever replaces it. Cookies, if you remember, are little snippets of code that websites use to identify… Source link
Read More »WordPress Proposes Blocking Google’s FLoC
WordPress discussed a proposal to block Google’s new user tracking scheme called FLoC. While most expressed support others raised valid concerns. No decision has been made to block FLoC. Discussions will continue in the official WordPress Slack channel. Google FLoC Being able to track what people are interested in by using third party cookies is lucrative for Google. Ads targeted by user interest are said to convert at a higher rate are are thus more valuable to both advertisers and Google… Source link
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