Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is a mild-mannered software engineer who is not good at games of verbal fisticuffs with US politicians. He received a drubbing last month during the “big tech” congressional hearing. Pichai can, however, summon lawyers and lobbyists galore as soon as the game gets more serious, which it definitely has. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) last week launched a huge and historic antitrust case against Google, accusing the… Source link
Read More »Antitrust law: Google’s defense against lawsuit? You
Should Google’s benefits to consumers cancel out any alleged abuses of its economic might? That’s where the company and the US government may inevitably clash in court. How a judge answers the question could have far wider ramifications than this one case. It reflects deep tensions between what critics of US law say has allowed decades of corporate concentration, and what its defenders say is a feature of the system — not a bug — that keeps the focus squarely on consumers’ welfare in a… Source link
Read More »Who is Google’s market power hurting?
Yesterday, the Department of Justice and 11 states sued Google for violating antitrust law. The complaint argued that Google had become “the unchallenged gateway to the internet for billions of users worldwide,” but that its success depends on unfair and monopolistic behavior. In some ways, the case is an obvious and long-awaited move. But it’s also an early test of how American antitrust law will handle the coming decade’s tech giants. Since the late 1970s, antitrust cases have… Source link
Read More »If Google’s a monopoly, who is harmed by its market power?
Google has long defended itself against charges of monopoly by stressing that its products are free and that no one has to use them. And it’s avoided tough government scrutiny for years based in part on the idea that people searching the internet are not Google’s true customers. … Source link
Read More »Google’s Antitrust Case: Questions and Answers
This Nov. 17 and 18, DealBook opens its doors to our first Online Summit. Join us as we welcome the most consequential newsmakers in business, policy and culture to explore the pivotal questions of the moment — and the future. Watch from anywhere in the world, free of charge. Register now. What you need to know about the Google case The Department of Justice has filed its long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Google, “the government’s most significant legal challenge to a tech… Source link
Read More »How We Spend Hours a Day Using Google’s Products
Outside smartphones, Google is the dominant force on our personal computers. By some estimates, more than 65 percent of us use Google’s Chrome web browser. And in education, our schools have chosen the Chromebook, low-cost PCs that run Google’s operating system, as the most widely used tech tool for students. Online Video This can be brief: YouTube is by far the largest video-hosting platform. Period. About 215 million Americans watch YouTube, spending 27 minutes a day on the site, on… Source link
Read More »Google’s latest smartwatch app skipped its own watches for Apple’s
YouTube Music launched yesterday on the Apple Watch, arriving before an official Wear OS version and only further illustrating Google’s ongoing issues with its competing wearable platform. The app — available to YouTube Music Premium and YouTube Premium subscribers — mirrors all the same features it launched with on iOS, but now in compact watchOS form. Users can stream, control playback, and even cast music from their wrist, complete with a nice complication for Apple Watch… Source link
Read More »Google’s new ‘hum to search’ feature can figure out the song that’s stuck in your head
Google is adding a new “hum to search” feature to its search tools today that will let you hum (or whistle, or sing) the annoying song that’s stuck in your head, and then use machine learning techniques to try to identify it. The new feature is available today in the Google app on both iOS and Android, or in Google Assistant — just ask Google “What’s the song” or tap the newly added “search a song” button, and then hum your earworm. Google will then show you results… Source link
Read More »Google’s ad sales slump but recovery is on the way, analysts say
Ad sales simply have not been adding up, but recovery is on the way. This is the general consensus of Wall Street analysts who follow Google parent Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, -4.41% GOOG, -4.20% after it reported a second straight quarter of declining advertising revenue but offered encouraging signs of a rebound. Still, it wasn’t enough to stop a 5% drop in shares Friday that jeopardizes its $1 trillion market value. Despite the… Source link
Read More »Google’s Advertising Haul Comes Up Short for First Time
The global pandemic dealt a rare losing hand to Google’s venerable digital advertising operation, pushing quarterly revenue down compared with a year earlier for the first time in company history. The search-engine giant posted a $2.6 billion drop in advertising for the second-quarter from a year earlier, as some of Google’s biggest advertisers, including travel companies and consumer brands, cut back on spending in the face of economic uncertainty. … Source link
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