Alphabet - CybAI news

21 Nov

Selling Chrome Won’t Be Enough to End Google’s Search Monopoly

stp2y0 CommentsGenAIAlphabet, antitrust, Chrome, department of justice, google, search

To dismantle Google’s illegal monopoly over how Americans search the web, the US Department of Justice wants the tech giant to end its lucrative partnership with Apple, share a trove of proprietary data with competitors and advertisers, and “promptly and fully divest Chrome,” Google’s search engine that controls over half of the US market. The government wants Google to sell Chrome to a buyer it approves, arguing the divesture would “pry open the monopolized markets to competition, remove barriers to entry, and ensure there remain no practices likely to result in unlawful monopolization.”The recommendations are part of a detailed plan…

25 Oct

Waymo raises $5.6 billion to fund Austin and Atlanta expansion

stp2y0 CommentsNewsAlphabet, autonomous, autonomous vehicles, capital, cars, driverless, expansion, funding, INVESTMENT, news, tomorrow, uber, vehicles, waymo

Waymo has raised another huge chunk of change from investors. The company that it secured an “oversubscribed investment round” of $5.6 billion in funding, the largest of which came from Google's parent company Alphabet.The company is working with Uber to expand to by the early part of next year. Waymo says it plans to use this latest infusion of capital for the expansions. This latest round brings Waymo’s total capital fundraising to $11.1 billion, with the $5.5 billion it picked up in two earlier rounds in and .Waymo currently operates in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix with a curbside…

24 Sep

The AI Boom Is Raising Hopes of a Nuclear Comeback

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelsAlphabet, artificial intelligence, energy, google, machine learning, microsoft, nuclear power, science

For five years, reactor one at Three Mile Island nuclear power station in Pennsylvania has lain dormant. Now, thanks to a deal with Microsoft, the reactor will start running again in 2028—this time to exclusively supply the tech firm with oodles of low-carbon electricity.It’s all part of an ongoing flirtation between Big Tech and nuclear power. In March, Amazon Web Services agreed to buy a data center powered by Susquehanna nuclear power station in Pennsylvania. At an event at Carnegie Mellon University on September 18, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai mentioned small modular nuclear reactors as one potential source of energy…

10 Sep

Inside Google’s 7-Year Mission to Give AI a Robot Body

stp2y0 CommentsAIaging, Alphabet, artificial intelligence, google, longreads, robotics, robots

Often during evenings and sometimes weekends, when the robots weren’t busy doing their daily chores, Catie and her impromptu team would gather a dozen or so robots in a large atrium in the middle of X. Flocks of robots began moving together, at times haltingly, yet always in interesting patterns, with what often felt like curiosity and sometimes even grace and beauty. Tom Engbersen is a roboticist from the Netherlands who painted replicas of classic masterpieces in his spare time. He began a side project collaborating with Catie on an exploration of how dancing robots might respond to music or…

10 Aug

Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Dies at 56

stp2y0 CommentsRAG modelsAlphabet, google, silicon valley, susan wojcicki, youtube

The unassuming house on Santa Margarita Avenue in Menlo Park, California, had been empty for only a couple of years when I visited in 2008, but the ghosts were still there. This was where Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google a decade previous. Here was the garage once packed with newly delivered servers and routers; there were the carpeted rooms at the back of the house where Page, Brin, and their first employee, Craig Silverstein, churned out code; out the window was the backyard with the hot tub.In Google’s infancy the house belonged to a young couple, Dennis Troper…

05 Aug

Google ‘is a monopolist’ in search, US judge rules in antitrust case

stp2y0 CommentsNewsAlphabet, antitrust, big tech, gear, google, news

Google is in deep trouble after a federal judge ruled that the company illegally abused a monopoly over the search industry. The ruling follows a 10-week trial held in 2023 that stemmed from a 2020 lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice and several states.“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Judge Amit Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in the ruling. "It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act."Mehta has not imposed any remedies on Google at the time of writing. The judge may order…

17 Jul

TikTok will still be a ‘gatekeeper’ under the Digital Markets Act, EU rules

stp2y0 CommentsNewsAlphabet, apple, ByteDance, dma, eu, gear, meta, news, tiktok

As far as the EU is concerned, TikTok requires strong, ongoing regulations. The EU's General Court dismissed an action brought by TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, which argued that the platform shouldn't be considered a "gatekeeper" under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The designation came in September 2023, and ByteDance filed to undo it just two months later.ByteDance had painted TikTok has an up and comer EU market, citing pushback through the development of Reels and Shorts — the General Court disagrees: "Although in 2018 TikTok was indeed a challenger seeking to contest the position of established operators such as Meta…