Tag Archives: Naughton

In a strange way, the best thing that could have happened to Google (now masquerading as Alphabet, its parent company) was Facebook. Why? Because although Google invented surveillance capitalism, arguably the most toxic business model since the opium trade, it was Facebook that got into the most trouble for its abuses of it. The result was that Google enjoyed an easier ride. Naturally, it had the odd bit of unpleasantness with the EU, with annoying fines and long drawn out legal wrangles…. Source link

Here’s a hypothetical scenario. You’re the parent of a toddler, a little boy. His penis has become swollen because of an infection and it’s hurting him. You phone the GP’s surgery and eventually get through to the practice’s nurse. The nurse suggests you take a photograph of the affected area and email it so that she can consult one of the doctors. So you get out your Samsung phone, take a couple of pictures and send them off. A short time later, the nurse phones to say that the GP… Source link

Humans are, as someone once observed, “language animals”, implying that the ability to communicate linguistically is unique to humans. Over the last decade, machine-learning researchers, most of whom work for the big tech companies, have been labouring to disprove that proposition. In 2020, for example, OpenAI, an artificial intelligence lab based in San Francisco, unveiled GPT-3, the third iteration of a huge language model that used “deep learning” technology to create a machine… Source link

For seasoned users of the internet, the chronology of our era divides into two ages: BG and AG – before and after Google. The year 1998 marks the dividing line. Before then, as the web expanded exponentially, a host of “search engines” had attempted to provide searchable indexes to it. The best of them was AltaVista, which launched in 1995 and provided the first searchable, full-text database of the web via a simple interface. It was the engine that I and most of my colleagues used… Source link

So, in the dying days of Trump’s first term, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) has finally taken Google to court. Attorney general William Barr, in conjunction with the AGs of 11 states, has filed a 58-page complaint under the Sherman Act “to restrain Google LLC (Google) from unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising and general search text advertising in the United States through anticompetitive and exclusionary practices, and to… Source link