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[Link] Google loses appeal, faces €2.4 billion shopping antitrust fine

Read: 12/11/2021 arstechnica.com

Google and the European Union are still battling it out over various product-bundling schemes across Google's empire. The latest news has to do with Google Shopping's integration with Google Search.

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[Link] Top Google Result for NFT Marketplace OpenSea Was a Phishing Site

Read: 11/11/2021 www.vice.com

Earlier this week, if you Googled “OpenSea” looking for the eponymous NFT marketplace, you might have found what looks like the site right at the top of Google.

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[Link] Australia also wants Google to unbundle search from Android

Read: 31/10/2021 arstechnica.com

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is the latest government regulatory body to take issue with how Google does business.

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[Link] Opinion: Dear Facebook: No one cares about Oculus; give us Instagram revenue!

Read: 26/10/2021 www.marketwatch.com

Facebook goes the Alphabet route — giving investors numbers on a young business instead of mature operations, while renaming the company — but can we just skip to the part where the SEC makes Zuckerberg tell investors what they actually want to know? Facebook Inc.

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[Link] Google Stadia’s salvaged future as a back-end cloud service is here

Read: 25/10/2021 arstechnica.com

Quick Google Stadia recap: Things have not been great. Google's AAA cloud gaming service launched in 2019 to middling reviews and since then has severely undershot Google's sales and usage estimates by hundreds of thousands of users.

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[Link] How hackers hijacked thousands of high-profile YouTube accounts

Read: 25/10/2021 arstechnica.com

Since at least 2019, hackers have been hijacking high-profile YouTube channels. Sometimes they broadcast cryptocurrency scams, sometimes they simply auction off access to the account.

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[Link] Facebook whistleblower tells politicians to 'team up' with US to regulate social media, or be ignored

Read: 23/10/2021 www.abc.net.au

Frances Haugen quit Facebook earlier this year and told a congressional hearing in October that Facebook's products were harming children and fuelling polarisation in the United States.

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[Link] Google countersues Epic Games for lost Play Store money

Read: 17/10/2021 arstechnica.com

Epic Games keeps piling up lawsuits with app store owners. This time, Google is countersuing Epic for breach of contract. Epic signed contracts with both Google and Apple, pledging to use the default payment systems for in-app purchases.

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[Link] Google Opposes ‘Sweeping’ Popcorn Time Piracy Blocking Request

Read: 14/10/2021 torrentfreak.com

Google has asked a Virginia federal court for permission to formally oppose the request for a far-reaching anti-piracy injunction. The contested anti-piracy measures, aimed at shutting down a popular Popcorn Time app, are proposed by a group of filmmakers.

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[Link] China has won AI battle with U.S., Pentagon's ex-software chief says

Read: 12/10/2021 www.reuters.com

LONDON, Oct 11 (Reuters) - China has won the artificial intelligence battle with the United States and is heading towards global dominance because of its technological advances, the Pentagon's former software chief told the Financial Times.

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[Link] Big changes coming to Chrome may kill ad blockers

Read: 10/10/2021 www.pcgamer.com

In a recent blog post, Chrome extensions and web store product manager David Li announced that extensions to Google's browser built using the Manifest V2 specification will no longer be accepted on the web store as of January 17, 2022.

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[Link] YouTube Removes Legendary Meme Video After 14 Years for ‘Violence’

Read: 29/9/2021 www.vice.com

You probably don’t know Paul Weedon by name, but you’ve probably seen him get punched in the face.

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[Link] Massive Adult Site ‘Rule34’ Prepares Legal Action to Fight Bogus Homepage Delisting

Read: 11/9/2021 torrentfreak.com

Huge adult site 'Rule34' is preparing legal action to have its homepage restored to Google's indexes. The site's operator says that he believes he's been targeted with one or more bogus takedown demands.

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[Link] Chrome will now let you keep searching without hitting the back button

Read: 2/9/2021 www.zdnet.com

Google has announced three new experiments to play with in Chrome beta, with the first allowing users to keep searching without needing to hit the back button.

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[Link] Why You Suddenly Need To Delete Google Chrome

Read: 29/8/2021 www.forbes.com

A shocking new tracking admission from Google, one that hasn’t yet made headlines, should be a serious warning to Chrome’s 2.6 billion users. If you’re one of them, this nasty new surprise should be a genuine reason to quit.

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[Link] YouTube says it bans accounts believed to be owned by the Taliban

Read: 26/8/2021 www.reuters.com

Aug 17 (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) YouTube said on Tuesday it bans accounts believed to be owned and operated by the Taliban, as U.S. social media companies scrambled to publicly clarify their rules on the group that is in control of Afghanistan. After U.S.

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[Link] Amazon, Facebook and Google Paid Millions to Pirates, Study Finds

Read: 17/8/2021 torrentfreak.com

A new report published by the Digital Citizens Alliance suggests that pirates sites earn more than a billion dollars in revenue per year, while pirate apps are good for another quarter. Part of the money comes from big brands such as Amazon, Facebook and Google.

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[Link] All your DNS were belong to us: AWS and Google Cloud shut down spying vulnerability

Read: 9/8/2021 www.theregister.com

Until February this year, Amazon Route53's DNS service offered largely unappreciated network eavesdropping capabilities. And this undocumented spying option was also available at Google Cloud DNS and at least one other DNS-as-a-service provider.

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[Link] Sky News Australia to face Senate inquiry after week-long YouTube suspension

Read: 7/8/2021 www.theguardian.com

Sky News Australia will face a Senate inquiry next week after the broadcaster was suspended for seven days for posting numerous videos which violated YouTube’s Covid medical misinformation policies.

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[Link] Google Play puts Android apps on notice: No naughty JavaScript, Python, Lua

Read: 30/7/2021 www.theregister.com

Google's pending Play Store policy changes are bringing various privacy improvements – but also include a security enhancement and disclosure requirement that deserve mention. First, there's a specific ban on the deceptive use of interpreted languages like JavaScript, Python, and Lua.

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[Link] Beta-Testing Car Software Sounds Like a Bad Idea

Read: 28/7/2021 www.gizmodo.com.au

If you drive a car that supports Android Auto, Google has opened a beta tester program to try the new features before everyone else. Once you opt into the beta, you can help Google test the features with your specific device and vehicle and share feedback to help the company improve the product.

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[Link] Google Maps Now Helps You Avoid People On The Train

Read: 28/7/2021 www.gizmodo.com.au

The world is slowly opening back up. You might be finding yourself using public transit for the first time in ages and trying to figure out how to get around. Some helpful new Google Maps features could help us all navigate through this time, both literally and figuratively.

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[Link] 7 Cool Pixel Features You Can’t Get on Other Android Phones

Read: 28/7/2021 www.gizmodo.com.au

The Google Pixel series of phones hasn’t really caught the imagination or attracted the sort of sales in the same way that its big-name Android rivals have, but Google actually introduced Android features first on its Pixel lineup.

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[Link] YouTube recommends videos that violate its own policies, study finds

Read: 27/7/2021 thenextweb.com

Writer at Neural by TNW — Thomas covers AI in all its iterations. Likes Werner Herzog films and Arsenal FC.

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