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 Says It's Fixed Gemini People-Generating Feature, Also It's Releasing Customizable Chatbots Google's AI project Gemini hit a snag earlier this year when its image-generating feature was found to create wild historical inaccuracies in the interest of diversity. Google says it's been working on that, and the new and improved people-generator will made available to some paid users soon.
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 Scales Back 'AI Overviews,' Admits the AI Has Been Getting Things Wrong Despite what they said was extensive testing before launch, Google is admitting that its "AI Overview" system has been prone to spreading untruths, and some very weird untruths at that.
Business & Tech Google's 'AI Overview' Gets Facts Wrong, Is Worse Than a Regular Search You may have noticed if you've Googled something in the last week that the search results page on the site is now topped with an "AI Overview" that purports to answer whatever question you may have been trying to get answered. The trouble is, some answers can be blatantly wrong.
Business & Tech ChatGPT Reportedly Rolling Out a ‘Google Killer’ Search Engine, But Failed to Do So In Underwhelming Monday Demo There are reports that new tech industry darling OpenAI is working on an AI-powered search engine they hope will overtake Google, but the company’s ballyhooed Monday announcement did not show anything that will have Google shaking in their shoes.
Business & Tech Google Is Bailing From Its Offices at Trophy SF Building One Market Plaza A prize tenant is leaving a prized property at the luxe waterfront offices of One Market Plaza, as Google is reportedly vacating its 300,000 square feet of the property when the lease expires next year.
SF News Humpday Headlines: Google Outage Affects Search, Google Drive Police in San Jose busted a brothel; a beloved formerly homeless man in Berkeley was found dead from an apparent fall; and Google was experiencing a major outage this morning.
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 Suspends Gemini Image Module After Backlash Over Diverse Depictions of Founding Fathers, Nazis In case you missed the hubbub on Xitter, many people including Elon Musk have been flipping out this week over historic inaccuracies being produced by Google's Gemini chatbot image generator, which have included racially diverse images of "the Founding Fathers."
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 Google Agrees to Pay $700M to Settle States' Antitrust Case, Will Let Developers Take Direct Payments In Play Store We are now learning the details of a settlement reached in September between Google and 50 state attorneys general over antitrust claims about its Play Store, and they are mostly time-limited and minor for Google/Alphabet.
Business & Tech Google Loses Antitrust Suit Brought By Fortnite Maker Epic Games Epic Games, the maker of popular mobile game Fortnite, has prevailed in a federal lawsuit brought in San Francisco against Google over anticompetitive practices relating to the company's app store for Android phones.
Business & Tech Google Launches Updated AI Chatbot That They Say Is More Powerful Than ChatGPT Google’s new Gemini update to their so-called “ChatGPT killer” Bard claims to make it more powerful than its competitor, but says so in corporate-speak that makes little narrative sense, and in language that sounds like it was written by AI.
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.
Business & Tech SF Loses Google Conference to Las Vegas, But Scores Big AI Conference From ChatGPT Company Google has reneged on its deal to hold the 2024 Google Cloud Next conference at Moscone Center, instead moving the event to Las Vegas, but SF did just score a big AI conference from ChatGPT producer OpenAI.
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 Supreme Court Hands Big Tech a Big Win In Content Moderation Cases Two separate lawsuits against tech companies Google and Twitter both went in favor of the tech titans Thursday, as the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that neither were responsible for terrorist acts that were linked to content on their platforms.
Business & Tech Google's Sundar Pichai and OpenAI's Sam Altman Summoned to White House For Meeting About Risks of AI Several tech CEOs whose companies have begun releasing products with powerful artificial-intelligence capabilities were called to a meeting at the White House Thursday to discuss the escalating nervousness around AI and calls to regulate it.
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.
