At a hearing Thursday in San Jose, California, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said she’s “disturbed” by Google’s data collection practices in a class-action lawsuit that describes the company’s private browsing promises as a “ruse” and seeks US$5,000 in damages for each of the millions of people whose privacy has been compromised since June of 2016.
Suing technology firms when they mess up is already hard, especially when it’s over privacy violations. Now, Facebook, Google, and the trade groups representing all the big tech firms are asking the Supreme Court to make it even harder for class actions to pursue cases against them.
Facebook, Google, and all the others submitted a filing (PDF) to the Supreme Court this week essentially arguing that if you cannot prove the specific extent to which their screwup injured you, you should not have any grounds to be part of a lawsuit against them.
Google removed at least 100,000 negative reviews of the stock trading app Robinhood from the Google Play app store after angry users sent a flood of critical reviews that caused the app’s rating to plummet on Thursday. The app’s rating went from roughly four stars out of five on Wednesday to just one star on Thursday. Robinhood users were understandably upset after the company halted purchases of GameStop’s stock and other stocks promoted by Reddit’s WallStreetBets community.
*150,000 was from an updated article: https://notthebee.com/article/google-play-magically-removed-100000-negative-reviews-of-the-robinhood-app
Neither side is backing down after weeks of standoff between the Australian government and Google over proposed legislation aimed at better compensating and rewarding local news publishers, while bringing greater transparency to the way algorithms employed by Google, Facebook, and YouTube work.
Canberra is now finalizing the bill which will require Google to obtained licenses for all content published by Australian news companies. Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. oversees an estimated at least 94% of all search traffic in Australia, similar to many other countries globally, at a time it’s coming under increased accusations of using its monopoly power to bully content providers and smaller competitors.
I hope Google gets smashed.
A huge controversy erupted last summer between major US social media platforms and the Australian government over a bill designed to better compensate and reward local news publishers, while bringing greater transparency to the way algorithms employed by Google, Facebook, and YouTube work.
Months after failed attempts to come to an agreement with the government of Australia, Google is now threatening the dramatic step of shutting down its search engine in the country altogether.
Is that really such a bad thing?
Google and Facebook received a growing share of the federal government’s advertising budget after the Trudeau Liberals took power, as Ottawa quadrupled how much it spent each year on ads from the American web giants between 2015 and 2019.
Google informs children when their parents are monitoring their account activity, the tech giant confirmed this month, with the company claiming that doing so is a way of balancing the interests of both parents and children.
Google’s child-notification policies received attention when film director Robby Starbuck claimed on Twitter that his 7-year-old child had received a warning from Google that his account was being monitored.
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” —Vladimir Lenin
This has been such a week or several weeks. Everything seems to be happening. Most of it not so good. And it ain’t over.
At such times, it is easy to become despondent. Americans are watching cherished institutions crumble in the face of leftist ideology: the FBI, the courts, election officials, the Justice Department, ballots in trucks, ballots in suitcases. No need to review that here.
Well, there is something else going on, and maybe it’s time to dig into it a bit.
Stand back from the political maelstrom, take a deep breath, and let’s talk technology. No, let’s go deeper and talk software.
Biden’s administration will be packed with Big Tech insiders.
Google is crafting plans to convince the incoming Biden administration to allow it to continue its growing monopoly over the internet.
The company, facing an antitrust suit from the Department of Justice and heightened public opposition to its power, will conduct an aggressive campaign on the Biden administration, including deploying an army of lobbyists paid millions of dollars and mobilizing tech insiders within the administration.
Google will find it far easier to influence the Biden administration than the Trump administration.
