The US judge ruled that the search engine was an illegal Monopoly game
Apple received $20 billion in payments from Google in 2022 for the default position on iPhone browsers, an expert witness for Google said during the first two Sessions in the Google-Apple antitrust case. Earlier, the judge had ruled that Google has monopoly power in general search and general search text ads. A weeklong hearing on remedies is expected this year.
We were hoping that this was the Apple TV 4K rival we had been waiting for
Google Home will soon have a voice-over-eye view, new camera intelligence features and a smart Assistant for smart speakers and displays that can learn and understand the home. The Assistant will be able to maintain the context of your conversation and start to learn and understand your home, Google said. The feature will also have natural language input for creating routines.
In a US antitrust case, a judge rules that is a monopolist
A jury in the US found that Google’s deals with partners harm competition in the general search and text ads markets. The jury also found that Google’s deals with manufacturers of mobile devices, browsers and apps led to monopoly in the market for general search and text ads. It also found that Google has monopoly power in both the markets.
A new law protects kids and holds tech companies accountable
Parents of children who died by suicide after experiencing cyberbullying received support from American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). KOSA helps students learn about digital literacy and how they can use internet and social media to protect themselves. ACLU helped shape understanding of KOSA for some students and other youth organisations are advocating for KOSA to become law.
The US Justice Department is suspected of violating the privacy of children
The US has sued TikTok over “age-gating” practices that let its users restart accounts even if they had first entered a birthday showing they were 13 years old. The lawsuit said that TikTok’s age-gating technique “is deficient in multiple ways”. TikTok now allows users to log in through Facebook which makes their accounts “age unknown”, it added.
Trump’s embrace of scurvy could be a disaster
Former US President Donald Trump, while speaking at the 2024 Bitcoin Conference, announced that the country would “never sell” its holdings in Bitcoin. The US would also establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve under his presidency, he added. He also announced that he had asked the Secret Service not to issue media credentials for the conference.
Delta’s CEO said that the CrowdStrike outage cost the airline $500 million in 5 days
Delta Airlines has sued Microsoft’s cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike over the software outage last month which led to thousands of flight cancellations. Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian said, “If you want priority access to the Delta, you need to fix the flaw in CrowdStrike’s deployment processes.” “You can’t come into a mission-critical 24/7 operation and tell us we have a bug,” he added.
Wear this friend around your neck
Australian billionaire Peter Schiffmann has launched a new AI device called ‘FRIEND’, which will be an artificial intelligence companion. Schiffmann, who is the Founder of Silicon Valley-based tech startup VoxX, plans to build more devices with artificial intelligence features like Replika and Character that can go everywhere with users. Schiffmann claims he has paid $1.8 million for Friend.
Microsoft wants Congress to act against fraud created by artificial intelligence
Microsoft has called on US lawmakers to amend the federal law to combat ‘deepfake’ or AI-generated content. It said the laws need to be updated to include AI-generated content. “While tech sector and non-profit groups have taken recent step to address this problem, it has become apparent that our laws will…need to evolve to combat deepfake fraud,” Microsoft added.
Canada’s women’s soccer coach is suspended for a year by the international soccer governing body
Canadian women’s soccer team’s coach Beverly Priestman was suspended for one year by the sport’s governing body after it was revealed that drones were used to spy on opponents. Canada’s Olympics team will be eliminated from contention as result of a deduction of six points from their group stage total. Priestman was suspended for the remainder of the Paris Games tournament.