The US Justice Department’s antitrust investigation into tech giants may not be the only one faced by Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. A new report says that eight US states are considering separate antitrust actions of their own.
The states are said to have met with the attorney general yesterday…
There has been disagreement among analysts and experts as to how worried Apple and Google ought to be about the tech giant antitrust probe being carried out by the Justice Department.
We’ve so far seen everything from warnings to avoid investing in the stocks through to the view that nothing much is likely to change. Now investment bank Macquarie has put some numbers on one possible outcome …
The stats are in for the first year of GDRP, Europe’s gold-standard data privacy law. GDPR fines totalled €56M, with more than 200,000 investigations, 64,000 of which were upheld.
However, the fines were dominated by a single case, with most ranging in the single-digit thousands …
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has taken a side-swipe at Apple, suggesting that the company is effectively selling privacy as a luxury good.
Pichai doesn’t directly name the company, but the reference is clear …
Google’s 2019 I/O developer conference kicked off today and the company introduced a range of new hardware and software. Headlining the keynote were announcements of the new Pixel 3a and 3a XL budget smartphones that start at $350 less than the iPhone XR, the next-gen Google Assistant that will offer 10x faster responses, the new Nest Hub Max, and Android Q news.
France is pushing ahead on its own plans for a so-called GAFA tax – one that would impose a 3% tax on tech companies with worldwide revenues of more than €750M ($842M). The tax is named after four of the target companies: Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon.
Other European countries are in discussions about doing the same across the EU, but have not yet reached agreement on how best to proceed …
The UK wants to get tough on ‘harmful content’ within apps, on social networks and on websites – and is consulting on new legislation which could see companies like Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter fined up to 4% of their worldwide turnover if they don’t act quickly to remove it.
Government minister Jeremy Wright said that “the era of self-regulation for online companies is over” …
With just three months before both national and European Parliament elections, three large tech companies are falling further behind in their promises to tackle the threat posed by fake news …
Update #2: Google’s access to enterprise certificates has been restored.
Update: Apple says it is working with Google to “reinstate their enterprise certificates very quickly.”
Following its decision to block Facebook from using enterprise certificates yesterday, Apple today has taken similar action against Google. This comes after Google, like Facebook, was found to be using Apple’s enterprise certificates to distribute its data collection app Screenwise.
Hot on the heels of Apple blocking Facebook from being able to use its internal iOS apps, Google has also been accused of a similar act, sidestepping the App Store to have users download a certificate to collect user data.
GDPR regulations give European citizens a legal right to see all the personal data held on them, among other rights. But a tech writer requesting data from Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google found that the data isn’t as easy to understand as it should be …
A Japanese communications panel said on Monday that the country should consider legal action to begin imposing domestic-level rules on tech giants not based in Japan, such as Apple, Facebook ,and Google.
France is set to impose a sweeping new law starting January 1 which is set to raise as much as 500 million euros in 2019 alone.
The tax, dubbed GAFA for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, is targeted towards high-profit internet tech giants who generally pay a lower effective tax rate than other corporations, reports AFP News.
Apple and Google have once again made Glassdoor’s list of the 100 best places to work – the only two companies to do so in every one of the 11 years the employee-driven rankings have been collated.
They are, however, ranked very differently this year …
Earlier in October, Google announced Cloud Identity for partners and customers. One of the features of Cloud Identity I was most excited about was the cloud LDAP feature that is part of this service. LDAP is an open source directory protocol that a lot of enterprise services support. Google is heavily investing in its cloud identity service. They expect by 2021, more than 50% of all enterprises will adopt an “all in cloud strategy.” Could Google LDAP login on macOS become a reality in the future?
The UK High Court has blocked a £1B ($1.3B) class action claim filed against Google on behalf of iPhone users. The lawsuit resulted from the so-called ‘Safari bypass,’ where Google continued to install cookies on iPhones despite this being blocked in the browser settings …
As it’s been learned over the years, Google pays Apple to remain the default search engine in Safari on iOS. While neither company publicly speaks on the agreement, analysts believe payments are made in the billions.
Europe’s controversial Copyright Directive has been approved after a previous version was rejected back in July.
Although intended to protect the rights of copyright owners, it’s likely to prove a headache for both Google’s search engine and its YouTube video platform …
The vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee has suggested that regulation of the tech industry is now inevitable.
Sen. Mark Warner’s remarks were made during and after the testimony of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to the committee regarding their failure to prevent state-sponsored interference in the 2016 presidential election and their planned countermeasures in the run-up to the midterms …
Update: Jack Dorsey is live-tweeting his opening statement as he gives it …
Facebook’s COO and Twitter’s CEO will be appearing before Congress today to defend their failure to prevent Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, and to explain what they are doing to prevent state-sponsored interference in the November midterms.
Google was also asked to appear, but it seems unlikely to do so …
A security researcher employed by Google has suggested that Apple should pay almost $2.5M to charity in return for reporting the iOS bugs he has discovered …
My iPhone feels like a much calmer device since I went on a notifications diet, but if you can’t switch off email alerts because you need to know when important ones arrive, Google thinks it may have the solution …