Reuters has seen a 2018 tax document filed with the Irish and Dutch governments that suggests Google's parent company Alphabet will no longer use the intellectual property licensing scheme known as the “Double Irish, Dutch sandwich." A 2017 filing showed Alphabet had moved $23 billion through a shell company to Bermuda. It allowed Alphabet to delay paying U.S. taxes.

One day to go before the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) kicks off and U.S. companies are still struggling to comply. About half of U.S. security professionals surveyed by data security software company Egress in October 2019 said their firms were already compliant with CCPA or would be by the end of the year. A November 2019 Egress survey found 93% of US IT decision-makers said they had at least taken some steps to comply with privacy regulations, according to eMarketer.

A discussion on Reddit between Google's John Mueller and others in the Reddit community provided advice on optimizing an audio based site that features podcasts and audio books. All pages need content for Google to understand the content to rank it. Here's some interesting information on optimizing content for all those moving from text to audio.

Bill Slawski, director of SEO research for Go Fish Digital, published his list of the top 10 search engine patents from 2019. The list includes everything from patents for Google News, to local search knowledge graphs. The majority of his favorites from the past year are knowledge-based patents covering the use of knowledge graphs and entity extraction, he wrote in a blog post. 

Google rings in 2020 with a look back at 2019. Emily Wood, editor-in-chief for The Keyword, walks through changes at Google in the past year, everything from search and Stadia, to Action Blocks and Google Maps.

Looking for the perfect game from Google's streaming platform Stadia? It may soon come from Google's acquisition of Montreal-based Typhoon Studios announced Thursday. The studio supported by about 26 employees has yet to release its first title after being founded nearly three years ago, but their upcoming game Journey to the Savage Planet will be released in late January, according to one media outlet.  The employees will join a Stadia team in Canada led by former Ubisoft exec Sébastien Puel.

Microsoft is serving advertising banners in its mail and calendar app in Windows 10. A media site reported briefly seeing the ads last November, before they disappeared. But they are back. The advertising banners also serve up in the Outlook app for Android, according to Mspoweruser. The ads are from third-party vendors.

Michael Bloomberg has shows what a bottomless advertising budget can do. He got to the top of query results by purchasing the word “impeachment" in Google Ads, but he's also buying his way into the hottest political conversations, according to the New York Times. A search asking the question “Who can beat Trump?” returns ads for Mr. Bloomberg, too. The NYT estimates Bloomberg spent $7.5 million in three weeks. The Trump campaign has spent $9.1 million in a year. The money may bring awareness to Bloomberg's campaign, but will it help him to win?

Google Ads shows an optimization score for Search and Shopping campaigns, and it is now available for display campaigns. The combined account-level score will include Search, Shopping and Display, according to a post. Similar to Search and Shopping, the optimization score for Display campaigns ranges from 0% to 100%. One-hundred percent means the campaigns are set to perform at their full potential. Ryan Beauchamp, product manager for Google Ads, explains.

Google says that four of its workers were fired for "clear and repeated violations of our data security policies," according to a memo obtained by Bloomberg. In interviews with the Guardian on Monday, the workers said they were fired to quash organizing oppositions, which is in violation of federal labor laws. The four plan to file charges known as unfair labor practices with the National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. government agency tasked with enforcing labor law.