Tech
US Justice Dept. sues Google over digital advertising dominance
WASHINGTON DC, (PTI): The Justice Department and eight states filed an antitrust suit against Google on Tuesday, seeking to shatter its alleged monopoly on the entire ecosystem of online advertising as a hurtful burden to advertisers, consumers and even the US government.
The government alleged in the complaint that Google is looking to “neutralise or eliminate” rivals in the online ad marketplace through acquisitions and to force advertisers to use its products by making it difficult to use competitors’ offerings. It’s part of a new, if slow and halting, push by the US to rein in big tech companies that have enjoyed largely unbridled growth in the past decade and a half.
“Monopolies threaten the free and fair markets upon which our economy is based. They stifle innovation, they hurt producers and workers, and they increase costs for consumers,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference Tuesday.
For 15 years, Garland said, Google has “pursued a course of anti-competitive conduct” that has stalled the rise of rival technologies and manipulated the mechanics of online ad auctions to force advertisers and publishers to use its tools. In so doing, he added, Google “engaged in exclusionary conduct” that has “severely weakened,” if not destroyed, competition in the ad tech industry.
The suit, the latest legal action brought by the government against Google, accuses the company of unlawfully monopolising the way ads are served online by excluding competitors. Google’s ad manager lets large publishers who have significant direct sales manage their advertisements. The ad exchange, meanwhile, is a real-time marketplace to buy and sell online display ads.
Garland said Google controls the technology used by most major website publishers to offer advertising space for sale, as well as the largest ad exchange that matches publishers and advertisers together when ad space is sold. The result, he added, is that “website creators earn less and advertisers pay more.” The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, demands that Google divest itself of the businesses of controlling the technical tools that manage the buying, selling and auctioning of digital display advertising, remaining with search — its core business — and other products and services including YouTube, Gmail and cloud services.
Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, said in a statement that the suit “doubles down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow.” Digital ads currently account for about 80 per cent of Google’s revenue, and by and large support its other, less lucrative endeavours.
Tuesday’s lawsuit comes as the US government is increasingly looking to rein in Big Tech’s dominance, although such legal action can take years to complete and Congress has not passed any recent legislation seeking to curb the influence of the tech industry’s largest players.
The European Union has been more active. It launched an antitrust investigation into Google’s digital ad dominance in 2021. British and European regulators are also looking into whether an agreement for online display advertising services between Google and Meta breached rules on fair competition.
An internet services trade group that includes Google as a member described the lawsuit and its “radical structural remedies” as unjustified.
Matt Schruers, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, said competition for advertising is fierce and the “governments’ contention that digital ads aren’t in competition with print, broadcast, and outdoor advertising defies reason.” Dina Srinivasan, a Yale University fellow and adtech expert, said the lawsuit is “huge” because it aligns the entire nation — state and federal governments — in a bipartisan legal offensive against Google. In December 2020, 35 states and District of Colombia sued Google over the exact same issues.
The current online ad market, Srinivasan said, “is broken and totally inefficient.” The fact that intermediaries are getting 30 to 50 per cent of the take on each ad trade is “an insane inefficiency to have baked into the US economy.” She called it “a massive tax on the free internet and consumers at large. It directly affects the viability of a free press” as well.
As with many highly complex technical markets, it has taken time for federal and state regulators and policymakers to catch up with and understand the online ad market. Srinivasan noted that it took a decade before they woke up to the perils of high-speed trading in financial markets and began adopting measures to discourage it.
This lawsuit seeks to apply to the digital ad market the same rules that apply to the financial markets, she said. Brokers, banks and other companies that have sometimes competing interests aren’t permitted to own the New York Stock Exchange.
Google held nearly 29 per cent of the US digital advertising market — it includes all the ads people see on computers, phones, tablets and other internet-connected devices — in 2022, according to research firm Insider Intelligence. Facebook parent company Meta is second, with nearly 20 per cent of the market. Amazon is a distant, but growing, third.
But that’s not the lawsuit’s concern. It is focused on the technical market mechanisms that Google controls, including the ad server it developed building on the 2008 purchase of market-dominating DoubleClick. DOJ says Google has a more than 90 per cent share of the business that serves ads to websites and controls more than 80 per cent of the “buy-side” business where advertisers compete to place ads.
Google, the lawsuit states, has over the past 15 years “has used acquisitions and market power across adjacent ad tech markets to quash the rise of rivals, tighten its control over the manner and means through which digital advertising transactions occur, and prevent publishers and advertisers from working effectively with Google’s rivals.” This is the latest legal action taken against Google by either the Justice Department or local state governments. In October 2020, for instance, the Trump administration and 11 state attorneys general sued Google for violating antitrust laws, alleging anticompetitive practices in the search and search advertising markets.
Asked why the Justice Department would bring the suit when a similar complaint has already been filed by states, Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, the department’s top antitrust official, said, “We conducted our own investigation, and that investigation occurred over many years.” The states taking part in Tuesday’s suit include California, Virginia, Connecticut, Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Tennessee. (PTI)
NEW DELHI: The Meta-owned WhatsApp (also owners of Instagram and Facebook) unveiled new security measures to give users greater control over their messages and enhance privacy safeguards. The new updates also address some crucial issues like handset and SIM cloning, etc.
Witb the latest updates the messaging app aims to make conversations as secure as face-to-face discussions, and the updates will roll out gradually in different locations, with some taking place automatically in the background.
According to a press note issued, the company encourages users to share these features with their friends and inform them to help more people stay secure.
The instant messaging platform has unveiled a new security measure called Account Protect, which will provide an extra layer of protection to users when they transfer their WhatsApp account to a new device or even another handset of the same model and make.
WhatsApp has introduced another new feature called Device Verification, which aims to protect users from mobile device malware that can exploit their phone without permission and use their WhatsApp to send unsolicited messages. With no user action required, WhatsApp has added checks to authenticate users’ accounts and safeguard them in case their device is compromised.
In addition to the list of new features, the company is also introducing an Automatic Security Codes feature to verify users’ connections securely, based on a process called “Key Transparency.” Previously, only the app’s most security-conscious users could use the security code verification feature to ensure they were chatting with the right recipient. The new feature aims to make secure messaging more accessible to everyone, verifying the security of the connection without requiring any action from users.
Moreover, WhatsApp also offers two-step verification and end-to-end encrypted backups as security options that users can activate themselves. The company encourages users to share these features with their friends to help more people stay secure. The ultimate goal of the new features is to give users greater privacy and control over their messages, and WhatsApp promises to continue developing new tools to enhance the security of its platform, the company said.
WASHINGTON DC, (ANI): Mark Zuckerberg-controlled WhatsApp announced two new major updates for WhatsApp groups recently.
With the new updates, admins will get more control over their group privacy and content. These changes follow some updates made over the last few months, including making groups larger, and giving admins the ability to delete messages sent in the groups they manage and other minor updates or modifications.
“Groups continue to be an essential part of WhatsApp, and we’re excited to give people even more tools to get the most out of groups. Today, we’re excited to roll out a few new changes we’ve made to make these more manageable for admins and easier to navigate for everyone,” the Meta’ statement read. Let’s discuss the new updates in detail.
Admins to decide who can join: This will help admins to decide whether a person can join a group or not. The importance of this tool lies in that groups are where people have some of their most intimate conversations, and, therefore, it is important for admins to be able to decide easily who can be a member and who cannot come in.
Easily see groups in common: With the growth of Communities and their larger groups, WhatsApp wants to make it easy to know which groups users have in common with someone. Whether you’re trying to remember the name of a group you know you share with someone or you want to see the groups you’re both in, you can now easily search a contact’s name to see your groups in common.
These features will start rolling out globally over the coming weeks. (ANI)
NEW DELHI, (ANI): YouTube removed 5.6 million videos from its platform in the month of July and September 2022 for violating their community guidelines.
The platform received roughly 271,000 removal appeals during the two months. Upon review, it reinstated about 29,000 appeals, said Youtube in its latest blog.
From July through September of this year, for every 10,000 views, between 10 and 11 were of content that violated the community guidelines, said Youtube in the blog jointly written by Matt Halprin, Vice President, Global Head of Trust and Safety and Jennifer Flannery O’Connor, Vice President, Product Management, Youtube.
Youtube also tracks the number of appeals submitted by creators in response to videos that are removed, as this helps gain a clearer understanding of the accuracy of its systems.
Community Guidelines are concerned with language and expression. According to the blog, as the global video-sharing platform works to keep its policies evolving with the current landscape, the guiding focus is around one major goal — preventing egregious real-world harm.
According to the blog, preventing egregious real-world harm, however, doesn’t mean that it would remove all offensive content from YouTube as it generally believes that “open debate and free expression” leads to better societal outcomes. “But we’re careful to draw the line around content that may cause egregious harm to our users or to the platform,” the blog post said.
Youtube said it also works closely with NGOs, academics, and relevant experts from all sides and different countries to inform this policy review. “We watch dozens or even hundreds of videos to understand the implications of drawing different policy lines.
Drawing a policy line is never about a single video; it’s about thinking through the impact on all videos, which would be removed and which could stay up under the new guideline.
Following this comprehensive review, the team shares various options for policy lines, making sure to detail examples of videos that would be removed or approved for each (as well as different enforcement actions, like removal vs. age restriction),” it added. (ANI)
Tech
Globehost India – one of the Best Hosting Services in India with prompt and helpful Customer and Tech support
MUMBAI: Very often we are asked by our friends, business associates and clients as to which web hosting service to chose from? And without any doubt or hesitance, our answer always is – Globehost.com India Pvt Ltd. No wonder we have stuck to them for the last six years and hopefully will be with them till kingdom come.
Well, Globehost may not be a Godaddy or AWS (Amazon Web Services) or Bluehost, etc.
But the Mandi Gobindgarh, Punjab-based company is extremely prompt in its tech support and service and with their personalised approach, the staff goes out of the way to help their customers, even if they are not big corporates and small entities like yours truly.
We remember one Tech support executive (unfortunately for us he is not working with Globehost any more) whom we shall only address as S (to protect the identity of the individual) who used to answer our calls even at 4 and 5 am in the early hours of the morning and painstakingly guide us through various technical processes.
And the boss and owner whom we shall only identify as VG personally answers phone calls from customers during odd-hours of the day and night, helping them out with their problems. This is our first-hand experience and this is not a paid review or write-up. It comes straight from the heart.
Just to clarify, this is not a paid article or an advertisement. It is a genuine appreciation of good customer service and tech support.
As a small news website, we have had many teething problems – be it about Google indexing, SSL, redirection, DNS errors, backups, etc., but Globehost has always stood by us and solved our problems in a jiffy.
The uptime of their cloud hosting servers is more than 99.999 per cent, which is very good.
We have been running websites for the last 12-14 years now and had many bad experiences in the past with other web hosting companies in spite of paying much more.
But we never had a problem with Globehost for the last six years.
Not just customer service and tech support, they are very helpful and responsive to payment problems as well. Since we do not post ads or even Google ads on our websites, our revenues are very limited and most of it comes from well-wishers and benefactors.
But Globehost has always helped us in our time of need. We very strongly and personally recommend Globehost India (www.globehost.com) for all your hosting (cloud, dedicated, VPS, shared, bulk hosting), domain booking, SSL, VPNs and all other related web services.
Please understand that good customer care and tech support costs money. If you cringe when it comes to budgets and payments, one should not expect good and professional tech support and customer service. Even if you have to pay a bit more, go for Globehost India and forget about downtime or other related hosting problems.
More power to Globehost India! Jai Ho!
NEW DELHI, (INDIA TODAY): Meta’s very own instant messaging app – WhatsApp is working on exciting and new features which will give more power and enhance the experience for users as well as for group admins.
Right now the option is only available to few ‘Beta testers”, but the feature is expected to roll out for all users over the next two months.
It is not yet known if any group admins in India have got access to this feature, but they should within the coming weeks, according to other reports.
As per a WABetInfo report quoted by India Today, WhatsApp is finally rolling out an ‘admin delete option’ to some lucky beta testers on WhatsApp beta for Android.
The Admin delete feature allows group admins to delete any message in their groups, the report said and the message once deleted will be ‘deleted for everyone’, including the creator or sender.
With this feature, group admins are expected to have more control over their groups by using this new moderation tool.
WhatsApp has released a new footer to inform people that their chats, calls, location sharing, status updates, and more, are end-to-end encrypted, in the WhatsApp beta for Android 2.22.17.6 update.
WhatsApp has also released a rich preview when sharing links to text status updates. The feature has been released to some beta testers that install the WhatsApp beta for Android 2.22.17.8 update or newer versions of the app.
NEW DELHI, (ANI): Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited has made bids worth Rs 88,078 crore accounting for 58.65 per cent of the total value of Rs 1,50,173 crore received by the government in the 5G spectrum auction that concluded on Monday.
Addressing a media briefing after end of the bidding, Union Minister of Communications, Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said Reliance Jio has made bids to acquire 24,740 MHz spectrum in 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 1800 MHz, 3300 MHz and 26 GHz.
Bharti Airtel has made bids worth Rs 43,084 crore to acquire 19867.8 MHz spectrum in 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100MHz, 3300 MHz and 26 GHz frequency bands. Vodafone Idea Limited has made bids worth Rs 18,799 crore to acquire 6,228 MHz spectrum in 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2500 MHz, 3300 MHz and 26 GHz.
Four firms are in the fray for the 5G auction. Adani Data Networks Limited has made bids worth Rs 212 crore to acquire 400 MHz spectrum in 26 GHz frequency band.
The 5G Spectrum Auction has concluded successfully with a total bid amount of Rs 1,50,173 crore.. 72,098 MHz of spectrum was offered for auction, and out of that 51,236 MHz has been sold, the minister said.
The first-ever auction of the 5G spectrum in India began on July 26. The bidding for the auction concluded after a total of 40 rounds of bidding that were held in the past seven days. Total 40 rounds of bidding were conducted. About 71 per cent of the total spectrum that was bid out has been sold, Vaishnaw said. (ANI)
WASHINGTON DC, (ANI): WhatsApp had been testing the entire feature of syncing conversation histories between Android and iOS and made it public on Thursday.
According to GSM Arena, only a few third-party data transfer technologies have been able to move conversation histories between ecosystems; however, these tools are typically expensive and difficult to use.
You’ll need to utilise the Move to iOS tool on Android to accomplish this, as only the Android to iPhone option is available on WhatsApp’s help website as of now.
On both the transmitting and receiving devices, WhatsApp must be updated to the most recent version. Additionally, you must keep your current phone number or switch it before moving.
Also required is a fresh or factory-reset iPhone for the recipient. (ANI)
WASHINGTON DC, (ANI): New reports suggest that American tech giant Microsoft will be adopting a three-year OS release cycle, with the next release marked for 2024.
According to tech portal GSM Arena, a report by Windows Central stated that it’s unclear whether the update will be Windows 12 or a version number of Windows 11. At the same time, Microsoft will increase the release of new features to the existing in-market Windows users.
Starting with Windows 11 22H2 (codenamed Sun Valley 2), Microsoft introduced what it internally calls ‘Moments’, which allows engineers to seed big features to existing users without the need for a major update. The ‘Moments’ system was what allowed Microsoft to release the weather button on the taskbar in Windows 11.
The company has reportedly been working on a release, codenamed Sun Valley 3 for 2023, but that has been scrapped and is now expected to be retooled into the 2024 release.
This new way of updating Windows would allow current users to get access to new features quicker, without the need to wait for the next major OS version, while at the same time allowing developers more time to test it for issues prior to release, as per GSM Arena. (ANI)
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