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 Congress Gets Report On Antitrust Investigation Into Big Tech, Including Infamous Facebook Memo; Crackdown Looms A report has come out by the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law, stemming from an investigation that was launched three years ago, and in particular it calls out a 2018 internal memo to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Business & Tech Top FCC Commissioner Demands Apple and Google Yank TikTok From Their App Stores A leading FCC commissioner calls Chinese-owed TikTok an “unacceptable national security risk” and is ordering both Google and Apple to remove it from their app stores, and the clock is ticking on his July 8 deadline.
Business & Tech Google Engineer Claims AI Chatbot Has a ‘Soul,’ Gets Put On Leave, Predictably Becomes Techie Hero and Martyr Brogrammers nationwide are hailing the “findings” of a Google engineer who says the company’s artificial intelligence chatbot has “consciousness and a soul,” but his jeremiad has gotten him placed on administrative leave.
SF News Monday Morning Headlines: Google to Settle Wage-Disparity Suit for $118M Google is settling a five-year-old class-action suit brought by female employees over wages, the Muni bond appears to have failed by 1.5% of the vote, and Newsom says the Boudin recall was very "predictable."
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.
Arts & Entertainment Google Marks Betty White's 100th With Easter Egg; Fans Donate to Animal Shelters Google has a little Easter egg in the search engine today to honor Betty White on what would have been her 100th birthday — had she not been taken from us *too soon* on New Year's Eve.
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.
Arts & Entertainment SF Artist Lampoons Empty Downtown Spaces By Covering Google Office Sign With Spirit Halloween Store Sign A San Francisco conceptual artist wanted to comment on the vast amount of empty real estate sitting unused in the city right now — while lots of people, including artists and the homeless, could be using it.
Business & Tech If You Would Like to Hail a Robo-car in San Francisco You Can Do That Now With Waymo Google's self-driving car spinoff Waymo has just launched its autonomous vehicle ride-hailing service Waymo One in San Francisco, with a view toward getting rid of the "safety driver" altogether and letting the robo-cars do all the work.
SF News Monday Morning Headlines: It's Back-to-the-Office Day For Some at Google Firefighters have contained the 128-acre Diablo Fire in the East Bay, the search continues for a Berkeley runner who went missing in Pleasanton, and today's back-to-the-office day for many employees at Google (and elsewhere).
SF News Day Around the Bay: Massive Google Development Approved in San Jose Google's huge proposed 4,000-unit "village" in San Jose got city council approval, the mother of a Tenderloin fentanyl addict staged her own protest/press event today, and five Sonoma governments reached a settlement with PG&E over the 2019 Kincade Fire.
Business & Tech Facebook, Twitter, and Google Face Angry Lawmakers In First Congressional Hearing Since Biden's Inauguration The CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, and Google were testifying before Congress on Thursday for the first time in the post-Trump era, and for possibly the last time before lawmakers begin debating sweeping changes to how they're allowed to do business.
Business & Tech Google Employees Have Formed a Union, But Only A Tiny Percentage Have Signed Up A smattering of Googlers, YouTubers and Waymo staff have formed the Alphabet Workers Union, in a move that could revolutionize the tech industry — or merely result in about 200 Google employees getting fired for vague “performance” reasons.
Business & Tech 10 (Red) States Are Suing Google Over What They Say Is an Online Advertising Monopoly The end of 2020 is arriving with a slew of legal headaches for Big Tech. And a week after we learned of twin antitrust lawsuits against Facebook being brought by state attorneys general and the FTC in tandem, we learn that a group of states is also filing suit against Google.
Business & Tech Justice Department Files Landmark Antitrust Suit Against Google; Google Calls Suit 'Deeply Flawed' An expected federal antitrust suit against Google dropped today which has many parallels with an antitrust case filed against Microsoft two decades ago, and while it may seem like part of a Republican vendetta against the tech industry, it has plenty of support from congressional Democrats.
Business & Tech Waymo Unleashes ‘Fully Driverless’ Taxis (In Phoenix Only), Elon Musk Stews With Jealous Tweets The Google-Alphabet-Waymo dream of fully autonomous taxicabs is a reality as of today, but only in a small patch of the Phoenix, Arizona area.
