• Australia's Regulator Accuses Google Of Misleading Users Over Data Privacy
    Australia’s competition regulator accused Google of misleading consumers to get permission for use of their personal data for targeted advertising. The regulators are seeking a fine “in the millions."  The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission court documents accuse Google of not "explicitly getting consent or properly informing consumers of a 2016 move to combine personal information in Google accounts with browsing activities on non-Google websites."
  • Amazon's Jeff Bezos To Appear Before Congress For First Time
    Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will appear before Congress for the first time on Wednesday in a "virtual testimony" meeting, and will participate along with CEOs from Google, Apple and Facebook. The inquiry is the culmination of 12 months of work by a Congressional subcommittee on whether the companies operate on a level playing field. eMarketer estimates that Amazon holds about 38% of online retail sales. Lawmakers have been scrutinizing the company’s competitive behavior as critics have questioned whether some of Amazon’s practices put its own interests ahead of customers. 
  • Will Google's Extended Employee WFH Order Impact Its Ad Business?
    Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Google employees on Monday the company is extending its global voluntary work-from-home option through June 30, 2021 for roles that don't require employees to be in the office. The move will impact nearly all of the approximate 200,000 full-time and contract employees. It's not clear how the WFH order will influence product release schedules, including those related to its advertising business. Many tech companies have announced that some of their employees can work from home until the end of 2020, or have not finalized a timeline, according to some reports. Amazon, Apple, and …
  • Elon Musk Might Be Ready To Spend Money On Advertising
    Elon Musk recently had a dialogue about Tesla advertising and marketing when he responded to CleanTechnica on Twitter, saying: “At some point, we should probably do advertising as art/communication/entertainment & to support high-quality media.” The ads also could create conversations around other aspects of driving and technology such as education on electric vehicles and squashing Tesla myths. Here's how.
  • Calls To Break Up Amazon Continue To Rise
    Amazon seems the most vulnerable to antitrust suits and a potential breakup, according to The Motley Fool. The company seems to push aggressively into emerging industries and technologies. And does so by leveraging its strength in ecommerce, where it controls nearly half of the market. Its clout in cloud computing and infrastructure also helps. Here's how.  
  • Does Google Tap Data Collected By Android To Boost It's Own Apps?
    Google reportedly has an internal program called Android Lockbox that taps "sensitive" data collected by Android on how people interact with non-Google apps, according to Cnet, citing a report from The Information. The company has used this tactic, per the report, to advance its own products and services more than rival Android apps.
  • Apple Acquires More AI Startups Than Other Tech Companies
    Apple has made 20 acquisitions since the 2010 purchase of Siri, and most center on artificial intelligence. These purchases include Novauris Technologies and Voysis to improve speech recognition of its voice assistant platform, and Perceptio and RealFace to develop its Apple ID technology. In fact Apple has made the most acquisition around AI of any other tech companies in the past 10 years, according to CB Insights via PC Magazine. According to data compiled by CB Insights, there have been a total of 635 AI acquisitions between 2010 and September 2019. Those purchases also increased six times over from 2013 to …
  • Amazon VC Fund Accused Of Stealing Ideas From Startups It Invests In
    Amazon.com's venture-capital fund invested in DefinedCrowd and gained access to the technology startup’s finances and other confidential information. Four years later the marketplace launched an artificial-intelligence product that does almost exactly what DefinedCrowd does, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing DefinedCrowd founder and CEO Daniela Braga. The new offering from Amazon Web Services is called A2I. It competes directly with one of DefinedCrowd's main products. 
  • Microsoft Advertising Sees Slower Growth In Search During Q2 2020
    Not surprisingly, Microsoft experienced slowing purchases from small-and-medium size businesses during the second quarter in 2020, which primarily impacted the companies transactional Office and Windows OEM-Pro businesses. The Search business, though rates stabilized through the quarter, Microsoft experiences reduced advertising spend on Microsoft Advertising and Bing, according to the company. Search revenue ex-TAC declined 18% and 17% in constant currency.
  • Google Launches Home Buying, Refinance Tools, Resources
    The most searched mortgage-related questions in the past year in the U.S. are thing like what is a mortgage, what is PMI, should I refinance, what is APR, what is escrow, according to Google Trends. Now home buyers and those looking for answers about refinancing mortgages have new resources from Google. Searching for “mortgage” on a phone will serve up a feature that breaks down the complex mortgage process into easy-to-follow steps to help guide those interested through the process. It connects the person with to a set of resources, including news articles, industry definitions and terms, a calculator to …
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