Business & Tech Department of Justice Pushes for Google to Sell Off Chrome, Android Following a landmark antitrust ruling in August, the Department of Justice and a group of states made a court filing Wednesday asking a judge to force Google to sell its popular Chrome web browser.
Business & Tech Russia Fines Google $20 Decillion For Blocking Channels on YouTube A Russian court has ordered Google/Alphabet to pay two undecillion rubles in fines — that's a two followed by 36 zeroes — in an obviously symbolic ruling expressing the government's wrath over YouTube continuing to block pro-Russian channels.
Business & Tech Google Has Illegal Monopoly Over Web Searching, Federal Judge Rules Google has been declared "a monopolist" in a landmark decision that may shake things up in Silicon Valley. The decision came down Monday in US District Court for the District of Columbia.
Business & Tech Google Fires All 28 Workers Who Pulled an In-Company Protest Against Israeli Defense Contract In a not-at-all surprising development, Google has fired the 28 workers who staged a sit-in protest Tuesday in a top executive’s office, all in protest of a billion-dollar contract Google has with the Israeli government during the Gaza conflict.
Business & Tech Bay Area Man Arrested For Stealing AI Trade Secrets From Google, Shipping Them to Chinese Companies A Chinese national living in Newark was arrested by the feds for allegedly stealing AI technology from Google, and secretly sending the information to two Chinese companies he was working for on the sly.
Business & Tech Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin Hit With Wrongful-Death Lawsuit Over Fatal 2023 Plane Crash A private plane belonging to Google co-founder Sergey Brin crashed off Half Moon Bay last year, killing both pilots onboard, and one pilot’s widow is now suing Brin and Google for allegedly making improper modifications to the plane and obstructing the crash investigation.
Business & Tech The Reviews Are Rolling In For Google's New Chatbot, Gemini, But They’re Not Exactly Raves Google rebranded its public AI chatbot formerly known as "Bard" to "Gemini" last week. But reviews so far are mixed.
Business & Tech Waymo Looks to Expand to the Peninsula, SFO, and Sunnyvale Just as the City of San Francisco is suing the state's Public Utilities Commission (PUC) over the expansion of robotaxi permits, Alphabet-owned Waymo wants to expand its permits further to cover the Peninsula and part of Santa Clara County, as well as LA.
Business & Tech Google Will Begin Mass-Deleting Unused Accounts on Friday, Purging Accounts Not Used In Two Years If you have an old Gmail account you haven't used in two years, be warned it is on the chopping block, as on Friday Google will start deleting accounts that have not been used in two years or longer.
Business & Tech Google Is Opening a Visitors' Center at Its New Campus In Mountain View for Tech Tourists Fans of the Google brand and mythology, as well as the architecturally curious, will be able to check out a new visitors' center at the company's "Gradient Canopy" office complex in Mountain View starting next week.
Business & Tech Feds’ Blockbuster Antitrust Suit Against Google Is Underway, Could (Maybe) Break Up Google As We Know It In what is likely the most significant tech trial of the modern internet era, the U.S. Department of Justice is arguing that Google has grown into an “illegal monopoly” for search and internet ad sales that ought to be broken up.
Arts & Entertainment Peaches Christ Isn't Having Google's Excuses About Pride Party Snub SF drag star Peaches Christ is calling out Google for appearing to kowtow to conservatives and tone down their presence at an employee Pride event this year and pretend that the employees had gone rogue.
Business & Tech Google Unveils Its AI Chatbot, Called Bard The Bay Area is now home to two big companies with AI chatbots that may or may not be writing your niece's term papers right now. Google has just opened up access to its chatbot, called Bard, at least in the U.S. and U.K.
Business & Tech Google, Facebook, and Twitter to Be In the Crosshairs In Biden's State of the Union Address In his likely-to-be fruitless quest to boost bipartisanship in Congress, President Joe Biden is expected to launch some rhetoric in the direction of Big Tech during this evening's State of the Union address.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Justice Department Wants To Break Up Google Governor Newsom met with Monterey Park shooting hero Brandon Tsay, Kevin McCarthy is tossing East Bay Rep. Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee, and the Department of Justice wants to break up Google over its digital ad monopoly.
SF News Friday Morning Constitutional: Google Lays Off 12,000 Workers Google/Alphabet is laying off 12,000 workers, a 3.6M earthquake struck Thursday evening in Sonoma County, and the state wants you to please withdraw your Middle Class Tax Refund ASAP.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Google Settles Suit Over Misleading Pixel Phone Campaign Google/Alphabet and iHeartMedia are settling a lawsuit over a misleading Pixel 4 ad campaign, the air quality management district wants to buy your old (pre-1999) car, and the UC worker strike is in its third week.
Business & Tech Google Agrees To Pay Nearly $400 Million Settlement Over Basically Lying About Letting You Turn Off Location Tracking Google was tracking people even who turned off location tracking, which is kind of a problem in the era of abortion bounty hunter laws, so they’ve agreed to pay a $392 million settlement and they pinky-finger swear they’ll let you turn it off (eventually).
Business & Tech Russian Dissident Alexei Navalny Says Google and Meta Are Enabling Putin's War Machine By Banning Ads Imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny gave an address to an international democracy summit suggesting that tech platforms like Google and Facebook have given a "gift" to Putin by shutting down all advertising.
Business & Tech Alphabet Hit With Racial Discrimination Lawsuit By Former Diversity Recruiter for Google A former Google employee who was tasked with hiring more Black people to the company, and who was herself fired in 2020, has filed suit against Google/Alphabet claiming she was retaliated against for calling out discriminatory practices at the company.
Business & Tech Google Tells Workers It's Back-to-the-Office Time Starting April 4 There have been some false alarms and variant-related surprises in the past, but it could be that Spring 2022 will usher in a new late-pandemic phase of workers grudgingly returning to cubicles and conference rooms in SF and Silicon Valley.
Business & Tech Omicron Scare Likely to Push Back Bay Area Back-to-Office Timeline for Many Despite there being no immediate threat of an Omicron outbreak in the Bay Area and an overall lack of data on the new variant, the general uncertainty around it is very likely to cause big Bay Area tech companies and smaller offices alike to rethink their January return-to-the-office plans.
Business & Tech More Than 600 Google Employees Sign Manifesto Opposing Their Workplace Vaccine Mandate This is merely 600 workers out of 150,000, and you know they’re all just going to cave in eventually, but 600 Google employees won’t go down without a tantrum over the company’s vaccination mandate.
Business & Tech Facebook Is Pulling an Alphabet and Changing Its Name Next Week It's all about the metaverse! According to an internal source at Facebook, the company is preparing a big announcement next week to change its corporate identity and name, which of course has nothing to do with all the negative associations that "Facebook" now has.
Business & Tech Trump Pardons Anthony Levandowski, Convicted Thief of Autonomous Vehicle Trade Secrets Former Alphabet employee, Marin County resident and self-driving technology wunderkind Anthony Levandowski was one of 143 people to receive a last-minute pardon from Donald Trump on his way out of the White House.
