#Google

#Google

Alphabet Inc.'s Google was ordered to pay 573 million ($666 million) in two antitrust-damages cases brought by German price-comparison websites following on from a European Union case against the search-engine giant. In a suit brought by Axel Springer SE-owned Idealo, which sought 3.3 billion, the Berlin Regional Court awarded 374 million plus 91 million in interest. In a second case brought by Producto GmbH, another price-comparison service that sought 290 million, the judges granted 89.7 million plus 17.7 million in interest.

In one case, according to Starbuck, Google's AI claimed he had been a person of interest in a murder case when he was just two years old. For each source, Google's AI provides a URL, giving the impression that these are real news articles with headlines like, Robby Starbuck Responds to Murder Accusations,' he said. The only way to discover that these URLs are fake is to click on them.

The way we download apps onto our phones could be about to change after a ruling from the UK's competition regulator. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has designated the two tech giants as having "strategic market status" - effectively saying they have a lot of power over mobile platforms. This means Apple and Google may have to make changes, after the CMA said they "may be limiting innovation and competition".

Google relies heavily on online advertising, and the company has previously been criticized for the amount of data it sucked up from users in the name of targeted advertising. However, the search giant introduced the Privacy Sandbox back in 2019 in a bid to deliver a more private approach to advertising on the web. Unfortunately, Google has now announced the end of Privacy Sandbox.

Google upgraded the Try On feature to now support shoes, in addition to other forms of clothing. Plus, Try on will soon also work in Australia, Canada and Japan, Google announced. Google wrote, "Try on's state-of-the-art AI accurately perceives shapes and depths, preserving those subtleties when showing you what something would look like on you. Finally, you can answer the age-old question: "Can I pull off these shoes?."

There's been a lot of discussion lately about how to look at OpenAI, whose outsized ambitions have been on display, from its blockbuster deals with chipmakers to its AI-powered social networking app to its new products announced this week. Here's what this tells me: It's a juggernaut on a collision course with its nemesis, Google. This may not be today's headline, but Google is OpenAI's biggest potential long-term threat, and some of OpenAI's strategic moves seem to address that reality.