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.
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.