Google

The U.S. Justice Department is preparing to sue Google as soon as next month, according to people familiar with the matter, capping years of work to build a case that the Alphabet Inc. unit illegally dominates the digital advertising market. Lawyers with the DOJ’s antitrust division are questioning publishers in another round of interviews to refresh facts and glean additional details for the complaint, said three people familiar with the conversations.

Examining the latest update of the Google TV app has uncovered indications that the tech conglomerate’s move into live TV is well underway with at least 50 channels set to premiere.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google has offered concessions in an attempt to head off a possible U.S. antitrust lawsuit aimed at its massive ad-tech business, according to people familiar with the matter, a sign that legal and regulatory pressures on the tech giant are coming to a head.

The Netflix Co-CEO does confirm that it’s talking to Roku, Google and Comcast about potential partnerships.

The streaming company is seeking to sell ads around its programming to boost revenue. Partnerships could help it move faster to bring an ad-supported version of its service to market.

As the world’s biggest advertising conference convenes in Cannes, France, all eyes will be on Netflix for clues on how the streaming giant plans to break from its ad-free business model to offer a cheaper subscription for the first time. Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos is scheduled to cap off a week of panels with a talk on Thursday at the Cannes Lions festival.

The Scripps Journalism Journey is a multi-year initiative to move experienced journalists with primarily print news backgrounds into broadcast news careers. Participants will be hired into full-time career positions in Scripps local and national media newsrooms. The program provides mid-career transitions into video-driven storytelling through extensive training and support, including mentoring, job shadowing, hands-on work and individual coaching.

The strategic alliance is designed to accelerate growth across Allen Media Group’s portfolio of media and digital properties.

Google is adding a new label to search results for news stories, interviews, announcements and press releases that are frequently cited by other media outlets in an effort to elevate original reporting. Why it matters: Google’s search algorithm is designed to prioritize pages that are the most relevant and useful for users based on their unique queries. Sometimes, the most relevant and useful pages aren’t the source of original information, but they cite the pages that are. Google wants to help point users to those pages.

Google, one of the few American corporate giants still operating in Russia, is poised to lose one of its biggest footholds in the country as tensions with the Kremlin continue to escalate. Alphabet Inc.’s Google shut its advertising business in Russia while maintaining its popular consumer services, such as YouTube. But the video service has become a significant source of tension with the government.

The move came after a Russian regulator demanded that the company stop showing ads with what the regulator claimed was false information about the invasion of Ukraine.

Google announced an improvement to its ranking systems on Wednesday that could give local news publishers a boost in visibility and traffic in search results and Google News Showcase. The improvement to Google’s ranking system would enable local news sources that are deemed authoritative and relevant to appear more often alongside national publications in features such as Top Stories.

As usual, Google’s ad business accounted for the bulk of Alphabet’s profits. The Mountain View, Calif., company earned $20.6 billion, or $30.69 per share, well above the average estimated of $27.66 per share among analysts surveyed by FactSet Research. Revenue rose 32% from the previous year to $75.3 billion, eclipsing analysts’ predictions for revenue of $72.3 billion.

Google is working on a new streaming device that caters to people with older TV sets: The next Chromecast streaming dongle will run its Google TV interface and ship with a remote control, but it won’t support 4K streaming. The device will instead max out at a resolution of 1080p.

AMG says Google Cloud’s scalable cloud infrastructure will power AMG’s digital evolution, allowing it to build apps faster, make smarter business decisions and connect to its audiences anywhere through data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.

“After careful consideration we have decided to withhold from having a presence on the show floor of CES 2022,” a company spokesperson said at the end of last week.

More than 200 newspapers are suing Facebook and Google, alleging that the tech titans have unfairly manipulated the advertising market, siphoning away their revenue and crippling their businesses. The lawsuits are being filed on behalf of some 30 different companies.

Roku stock closed up 18% on Wednesday after it said it had reached a multiyear agreement with Google to keep YouTube and YouTube TV on its streaming platform. The deal will allow the 56.4 million active Roku accounts to continue to watch YouTube and YouTube TV, Google’s livestreaming service, without disruption.

The global advertising industry will notch higher growth this year than previously expected as brands are relying more heavily on search engine and social media companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Meta Platforms to reach customers during the pandemic, according to two ad industry forecasts released today.

Anyone searching for the Federal Communications Commission’s home page on Google will have to do some searching. While that “FCC.gov” home page has typically come up on the first Google search page — take it from a reporter who has Googled “FCC” thousands of times — in the past few days it has not shown up at all.

According to the suit by state attorneys general, one senior Google employee said the ‘analogy would be if Goldman or Citibank owned the NYSE.’

Australia’s antitrust watchdog is calling for powers to curb Google’s use of internet data to sell targeted ads, joining other regulators in saying the firm dominates the market to the point of hurting publishers, advertisers and consumers.

Google’s $2.1 billion real-estate purchase is the latest in a string of blockbuster deals from big tech companies.

Android TV-powered XC9000 series models are selling on Amazon for $1,200.

Google said it is buying a Manhattan office building for $2.1 billion, one of the clearest signals yet of big technology comnpanies’ growing appetite for office space, even as these firms embrace remote work. The deal for the new building on Manhattan’s West Side is the most expensive sale of a single U.S. office building since the start of the pandemic—and one of the priciest in U.S. history.

As Apple and Google enact privacy changes, businesses are grappling with the fallout, Madison Avenue is fighting back and Facebook has cried foul.

The moves may result in a second antitrust lawsuit against Google before the end of the year.

President Joe Biden name checked The Walt Disney Co., Netflix, Google, Fox Corp. and other private companies for instituting new vaccine requirements for their employees. As he referred to the alarming rise in COVID-19 cases as the “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” the president also sought to single out major corporations that in recent weeks have instituted their own types of mandates.

YouTube contributed $7 billion in revenue — up big from last year.

France’s competition regulation agency threatened fines of another 900,000 euros (around $1 million) per day if Google doesn’t come up with proposals within two months on how it will compensate publishers and news agencies for their content.

Technology companies’ blithe disregard for consumer desires is an outgrowth of decades of permissive or nonexistent government oversight. Regulators ought to consider how Big Tech’s monopoly power further empowers the companies to ignore their own customers, in part by gobbling up competitors that offer more consumer-friendly services. Whatever the outcome of the Arizona case, if Google and others are willing to continue offering users choices, they should also be willing to respect them.