Google admits it may have shared your private videos with strangers February 4, 2020 Google has been forced to alert some of its users that their private videos were inadvertently sent to strangers. In an email to Google Photos users, the tech giant said it had suffered a “technical issue” in Google Takeout — the function that allows people to download their data. “Unfortunately, during this time, some videos [...]
UK competition watchdog to push for tighter controls on US tech giants February 3, 2020 The UK’s competition watchdog will push for tougher powers to regulate companies such as Google and Facebook following the UK’s official departure from the EU, and will pursue antitrust investigations against tech giants independently of the bloc. “The upside [Brexit] is that you take back control — genuinely — of the decisions,” Competition and Markets [...]
Big tech’s calls for more regulation offers them a chance to increase their power January 28, 2020 At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, “tech for good” was one of the key themes on the agenda. The big tech companies like Microsoft and Google used their airtime to call for more regulation, particularly in the area of artificial intelligence (AI). It’s a broad term that applies to a set of [...]
Privacy ‘cannot be a luxury good’, says Google boss Sundar Pichai January 22, 2020 Privacy “cannot be a luxury good”, Google’s chief executive said today, while vowing his company would protect its users’ information. Sundar Pichai, who also leads parent company Alphabet, said privacy was “at the heart of what we do”. “Users come to Google at very important moments, ask us questions, we deal with people’s sensitive information [...]
Tech giants lobby EU not to hold them liable for illegal content January 7, 2020 The biggest tech companies have called on the EU not to hold them liable for all content on their platforms, but have accepted that their efforts to remove illegal or harmful content could be regulated by a new European watchdog. A lobby group that represents tech titans including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon has written [...]
‘Don’t be evil’: Google abandoned motto and lost its way, says former exec January 6, 2020 Google’s former head of international relations has hit out at the company’s human rights record and corporate culture in a blog post detailing why he left the tech giant. Ross LaJeunesse, who left Google in May last year after 11 years at the firm, claimed that “standing up for for women, for the LGBTQ community, [...]
France fines Google €150m over anti-competitive behaviour December 20, 2019 France’s competition authority has fined Google €150m (£123m) for anti-competitive behaviour and mistreating advertisers who bought keyword adverts on its search engine. The search engine giant was accused of “brutal and unjustified” suspension of some advertisers by French authorities, which accused Google of abusing its dominance in the sector. Read more: Amazon, Apple and Google [...]
Rivals ‘can’t compete’ with Google and Facebook on digital advertising, watchdog warns December 18, 2019 Tech giants Google and Facebook dominate Britain’s digital advertising market to such a great extent that rivals can no longer compete with them on “equal terms”, the competition watchdog has warned. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) also raised concerns over the pair’s dominance undermining the ability of newspapers and other providers to produce “valuable [...]
Watchdog steps up probe into tech giants over digital ad dominance December 15, 2019 The competition watchdog is set to publish its initial findings into the dominance of tech giants in the digital ad market this week, paving the way for a possible in-depth investigation. In July the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched a market study into Google and Facebook, amid concerns the so-called duopoly could be stifling [...]
Rugby, Avengers Endgame, and Article 50: What trended on Google in 2019? December 11, 2019 Rugby, cricket and Game of Thrones topped Google searches in both London and the UK, as Google released its 2019 Year in Search lists today. Google also revealed the most popular people, events, and topics searched in London and the UK. England’s run to the final of this year’s Rugby World Cup propelled the event [...]