An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The state attorneys general investigating Google for potential antitrust violations are leaning towards pushing for a breakup of its ad technology business as part of an expected suit, people familiar with the situation told CNBC. Fifty attorneys general have been probing Google's business practices for months, alongside a similar probe being led by the U.S. Department of Justice. Both the states and the DOJ are looking to file a suit against the internet giant as soon as within the next few months, people familiar with the situation told CNBC.

The states and the Justice Department have not yet officially decided whether to combine their expected suits, the people said, though they have been collaborating closely. Both have been investigating Google's search, ad technology and android business. The attorneys general investigating Google, which is owned by Alphabet, haven't yet definitively ruled out pushing for alternatives for its ad technology business, like imposing restrictions on how it runs its business, one of the sources said. A suit may also include a push for both that option and breaking up the ad tech business. "Critics have said that Google bundles its ad tools so that rivals can't afford to match its offerings and that its operation of search results, YouTube, Gmail and other services to hinder ad competition," reports CNBC. "They also say that Google owns all sides of the 'auction exchange' through which ads are sold and bought, giving it an unfair advantage."

Google's two main deals that provided it the crucial foothold into advertising technology, DoubleClick in 2007 and AdMob in 2009, were years ago. Because of this, it may be difficult for Google to push for a break up of the business.

Facebook said Thursday it will begin blocking state-controlled media outlets from buying advertising in the U.S. this summer. It's also rolling out a new set of labels to provide users with transparency around ads and posts from state-controlled outlets. Outlets that feel wrongly labeled can appeal the process. Axios reports: Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of security policy, says the company hasn't seen many examples yet of foreign governments using advertising to promote manipulative content to U.S. users, but that the platform is taking this action out of an abundance of caution ahead of the 2020 election. Beginning Thursday, the types of state-backed media that U.S. users will see labels on include outlets like Russia's Sputnik, China's People's Daily, Iran's Tasnim News Agency and others. [...]

The purpose of labeling these outlets is to give users transparency about any kind of potential bias a state-backed entity may have when providing information to U.S. users. Gleicher says it's labeling these outlets, not removing them altogether, because in many places around the world, state-backed media is the only form of local news. Facebook considers an outlet to be state-backed not just if it takes state funding, but also based on the organization's structure (whether a government official helps them make editorial decisions) and whether there are clear indications that the entity has editorial independence (like a law or charter granting them that independence).

Streaming platform Roku has removed a channel dedicated to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement after facing criticism for letting it slip through its review and moderation processes last month. The Verge reports: The show, called "Q Channel - QAnon Channel," was hosted by popular QAnon supporter Dave Hayes and advertised as a "opinion based shows for getting the truth out, as we know it, about the Qanon movement." A Roku spokesperson tells The Verge, "The channel is no longer on our platform." But the company would not elaborate on why it allowed the show to launch last month.

Roku is best known as a streaming set-top box maker that also produces interface software for smart TVs. In addition to supporting other streaming services, Roku also allows anyone to create a channel that shows up on its platform as if it were any other legitimate source -- like Hulu, Netflix, or scores of verified news channels. That's what Hayes, who goes by the online handle "Praying Medic," did after he began advertising the launch of his dedicated QAnon opinion show in late May. MediaMatters reports the channel was live for nearly two weeks, promoting prominent QAnon voices and the movement's regular slate of rampant misinformation, conspiracy theories, and other false and manipulated news reports. Hayes also said he would be bringing the channel to other streaming platforms, too. Last week, Google removed three apps related to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement from the Play Store.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: A group of U.S. senators on Monday introduced a bill to regulate contact-tracing apps, aiming to protect user privacy as technology is used to track the spread of the novel coronavirus. The proposal is called the Exposure Notification Privacy Act and seeks to ensure that people couldn't be forced to use the technology. It also would make sure that the data isn't used for advertising or commercial purposes and that people can delete their data. The bill seeks to require that notification systems only rely on "an authorized diagnosis" that came from medical organization.

"Public health needs to be in charge of any notification system so we protect people's privacy and help them know when there is a warning that they might have been exposed to COVID-19," Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington and one of the bill's sponsors, said in a comment provided to CNET. Cantwell's co-sponsor on the bill is Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, also has given her support. "We need to regulate apps that provide COVID-19 exposure notification to protect a user's privacy, prevent data misuse and preserve our civil rights -- and this bill offers a roadmap for doing all three," Public Knowledge Policy Counsel Sara Collins said in a statement. "The bill marks a valuable first step in the long road ahead to protecting Americans' data."

Food delivery services like Grubhub should be thriving, especially during the pandemic. But they're not, The Markup reports: In August 2019, analysts from the investment firm Cowen estimated that Uber Eats was losing $3.36 on every order and would continue to lose money on every order for the next five years. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi acknowledged that Uber Eats is not yet profitable in an email to employees in March after its parent company laid off more than 3,700 employees.... In early March, DoorDash filed to go public despite losing an estimated $450 million in 2019, according to The New York Times. DoorDash declined to comment on that estimate or its path to profitability, but regarding the latter CEO Tony Xu told Fortune in February that "we're working our way there...."

Meanwhile, other companies have been ditching the food delivery business: Yelp sold Eat24 to Grubhub, Square sold Caviar to DoorDash, and Amazon shut down its Amazon Restaurants delivery service.

Grubhub, which also owns Seamless, is publicly traded and the only one of the big four that has achieved profitability. Still, it lost more than a third of its value after revenue fell below investors' expectations in the third quarter of 2019. In a letter to shareholders, the company revealed two things: Customers were "promiscuous," or not loyal to the Grubhub platform, and the delivery part of the business was fundamentally not profitable. Instead, delivery was just a "means to an end" — getting restaurants to sign up on the Grubhub platform and then upselling them on "marketing" benefits, like greater visibility in Grubhub's search results. In other words, like many tech companies, GrubHub is primarily an advertising company.

"Bottom line is that you need to pay someone enough money to drive to the restaurant, pick up food and drive it to a diner. . . ," the company wrote. "At some point, delivery drones and robots may reduce the cost of fulfillment, but it will be a long time before the capital costs and ongoing operating expenses are less than the cost of paying someone for 30-45 minutes of their time."

wyattstorch516 writes: Comcast has spun off its blockchain division and is now partnering with Spectrum Reach (the advertising sales division of Charter Communications) and Viacom. Customized ad delivery in the TV space has significantly lagged the technology for online video providers such as Youtube. Blockgraph holds out the promise that will allow advertisers to target key demographics while safeguarding subscriber information. Can this help prop up the declining broadcast video market? One-third of Blockgraph will now be owned by each company. Blockgraph Chief Executive Jason Manningham says the platform will help brands and ad-inventory sellers match data sets without sharing too much personal data on the viewers.

"For instance, if a car maker buys a data set of people in the market for a car, it could use Blockgraph's technology to match that list up with cable subscribers based on their home address," reports The Wall Street Journal, citing Manningham. "The car company could use this data either to learn which programs and time of day draw more viewers from their desired audience, or to buy ads targeted only at households on the in-market list."

Google, facing an advertising slump caused by the pandemic, has rescinded offers to several thousand people who had agreed to work at the company as temporary and contract workers. From a report: "We're slowing our pace of hiring and investment, and are not bringing on as many new starters as we had planned at the beginning of the year," Google said in an email to contracting agencies last week that was seen by The New York Times. The company told the firms that it "will not be moving forward to onboard" the people that the agencies had recruited to work at Google. The move affected more than 2,000 people globally who had signed offers with the agencies to be a contract or temp worker, according to three people familiar with the decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak publicly on the matter. Google employs more than 130,000 contractors and temp workers, a shadow work force that outnumbers its 123,000 full-time employees. Google's full-time staff are rewarded with high salaries and generous perks, but temps and contractors often receive less pay, fewer benefits and do not have the same protections, even though they work alongside full timers.

Google has been hit by a lawsuit filed by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, alleging the search giant deceived its users in order to collect location data from their phones. From a report: The company generates the vast majority of its revenue through its massive advertising operation, which is buttressed by personal information Google collects when people use its products. But users were "lulled into a false sense of security" because Google led users to believe they disabled settings for location data gathering, when they were still turned on, Brnovich wrote on Twitter. "Google collects detailed information about its users, including their physical locations, to target users for advertising," Brnovich wrote. "Often, this is done without the users' consent or knowledge." The lawsuit seeks damages, but the amount is unclear. Brnovich's office didn't respond to a request for comment.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Internet-based advertising has been a boon for both political campaigns and disinformation campaigns, which love to take advantage of the ability to slice and dice the electorate into incredibly tiny and carefully targeted segments for their messaging. These ads -- which may or may not be truthful and are designed to play very specifically on tiny groups -- are incredibly difficult for regulators, researchers, and anyone else not in the targeted group to see, identify, analyze, and rebut. Google prohibits this kind of microtargeting for political ads, while Twitter tries not to allow any political advertising. Facebook, on the other hand, is happy to let politicians lie in their ads and continue microtargeting on its platform. Members of Congress have challenged Facebook and its CEO to explain this stance in the face of rampant disinformation campaigns, but to no avail.

Lawmakers now want to go further and make this kind of microtargeting for political advertising against the law. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) today introduced a bill (PDF) that would amend federal election law to do just that. The proposed Banning Microtargeted Political Ads Act would do exactly what it says. Platforms and campaigns covered by the law, and their agents, would be prohibited from targeting "the dissemination of a political advertisement" to "an individual or specific group of individuals on any basis." The text includes a few exceptions. For example, geographic targeting -- aiming for people in a certain region, instead of matching a certain demographic profile -- would be fair game. But the proposed bill also includes a loophole you could fit the White House through: anyone who has provided "express affirmative consent" to receive microtargeted political advertising would be subject to it. In other words, anyone who ticks off a check box somewhere without actually reading the terms and conditions -- which is everyone -- could find themselves added to an "opt in" list.

Expedia Group's new CEO isn't mincing words about one of the company's biggest challenges: Google's dual role as a rival in online travel, and a key source of customers through search traffic and paid advertising. From a report: "I think Google's a problem -- it's a problem for everyone who sells something online, and we all have to struggle with that," Peter Kern said during an appearance on CNBC on Friday morning, following his first earnings report as the CEO of the Seattle-based online travel giant. His comments come amid reports that U.S. antitrust regulators are preparing a case against the search giant, focusing on its dominance of digital ads. This Google conundrum is a recurring topic for Expedia Group, but Kern appears to be taking a different approach than his predecessor Mark Okerstrom did before he was ousted from the role last fall. Appearing on CNBC this morning, Kern says Expedia needs to learn to rely less on performance marketing, a form of advertising in which the cost is based on a specific outcome such as a click or sales lead.

AT&T says it will stop advertising its wireless network as "5G Evolution" after a division of the Better Business Bureau determined that its language was misleading. The Associated Press reports: While AT&T and other wireless carriers in the U.S. have now begun rolling true 5G wireless networks, AT&T in December 2018 began talking about a "5G Evolution" service that was already available in hundreds of markets, and placed a "5G E" icon on phones when they connected to the network. But it was not 5G. It was merely the existing 4G network with minor speed boosts, at least compared to the fastest type of 5G networks.

Now, a division of the Better Business Bureau that regulates the ad industry has recommended that AT&T stop using "5G Evolution" and "5G Evolution, The First Step to 5G" claims in its marketing. Rival T-Mobile had brought a complaint about AT&T's language. The panel found that this language "will mislead reasonable consumers into believing that AT&T is offering a 5G network." AT&T said it disagreed with the group's reasoning but will comply with the decision.

According to CEO Kyle Wiens, teardown and repair website iFixit has just posted "the most comprehensive online resource for medical repair professionals." The Verge reports: The new database contains dedicated sections for clinical, laboratory, and medical support equipment, in addition to numerous other categories of devices. It also provides more than 13,000 manuals from hundreds of medical device manufacturers. Wiens says the effort began with a crowdsourcing campaign to collect repair information for hospital equipment, with a focus on "ventilator documentation, anesthesia systems, and respiratory analyzers -- devices widely used to support COVID-19 patients." But the effort grew from there, spanning more than two months as iFixit added dozens more staff members to the project; began talking to more biomedical technicians, doctors, and nurses about their day-to-day needs; and started collecting and cataloging information from libraries and other sources.

The medical repair database is split up into nine categories, with each containing countless subcategories for basically any type of device you'd find in a medical setting. For instance, the clinical equipment category contains 53 subcategories for everything from anesthesia systems and Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure (BiPAP) machines to respiratory analyzers and ventilators. The database also has medical training manuals, information on medical furniture like decontamination systems and hospital beds, and an exhaustive section on surgical equipment repair and maintenance. Wiens explains in iFixit's announcement post that some medical device manufacturers make this information more easily available online than others. "But for their day-to-day work, biomeds have long relied on a rag-tag set of web resources to get the job done. Among the most popular is Frank's Hospital Workshop, a Tanzania-based site that hosts hundreds of medical device manuals -- it's the unofficial biomed bible," Wiens writes. The goal was not to outdo that website or try to overtake it in popularity, but to add new documents and manuals that weren't available before to a database including existing resources. Another bonus: the website will not make money on this project. "We are providing hosting and curation free of charge, and free of advertising, to the medical community," Wiens says.

The New York Times will no longer use 3rd-party data to target ads come 2021, executives tell Axios, and it is building out a proprietary first-party data platform. From a report: Third-party data, which is collected from consumers on other websites, is being phased out of the ad ecosystem because it's not considered privacy-friendly. This has forced several big publications to rely on their own first-party data, or data that they collect directly from their users. Beginning in July, The Times will begin to offer clients 45 new proprietary first-party audience segments to target ads. Those segments are broken up into 6 categories: age (age ranges, generation), income (HHI, investable assets, etc.), business (level, industry, retirement, etc.), demo (gender, education, marital status, etc.) and interest (fashion, etc.) By the second half of the year, The Times plans to introduce at least 30 more interest segments.

phalse phace shares a report from The Wall Street Journal: Both the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general are likely to file antitrust lawsuits against Alphabet's Google (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) -- and are well into planning for litigation. The Justice Department is moving toward bringing a case as soon as this summer, some of the people said. At least some state attorneys general -- led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican -- are likely to file a case, probably in the fall.

Much of the states' investigation has focused on Google's online advertising business. The Justice Department likewise is making Google's ad technology one of its points of emphasis. But it is also focusing more broadly on concerns that Google uses its dominant search business to stifle competition, people familiar with the matter said. The lawsuits -- if they are filed -- could pose a direct threat to Google's businesses and rank among the most significant antitrust cases in U.S. history, alongside the government's antitrust case against Microsoft in the late 1990s. The search giant's critics have called for a range of sanctions against Google, from changes to its business practices to a breakup of the company.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Privacy pressure group Noyb has filed a legal complaint against Google on behalf of an Austrian citizen, claiming the Android Advertising ID on every Android device is "personal data" as defined by the EU's GDPR and that this data is illegally processed. Based in Vienna, Austria, Noyb is a nonprofit founded by Max Schrems, a lawyer and privacy advocate, to focus on "commercial privacy and data protection violations." It says that "the core task of the office is to work on our enforcement projects and to engage in the necessary research for strategic litigation."

The complaint against Google, which was filed with the Austrian Data Protection Authority, is based on the claim that Google's Android operating system generates the advertising ID without user choice as required by GDPR. "In essence, you buy a new Android phone, but by adding a tracking ID they ship you a tracking device," said Noyb lawyer Stefano Rossetti. [...] The complaint can be viewed here [PDF] and raises key questions about privacy, choice, and tracking. It states that the complainant (the name is redacted) completed a Google contact form to withdraw consent to use of the advertising ID (if consent had been given, which is disputed), and to object to its processing. Article 7 of the GDPR states that "the data subject shall have the right to withdraw his or her consent at any time." Article 21 is a "right to object at any time to processing of personal data concerning him or her" for marketing and profiling, following which the law states that "the personal data shall no longer be processed for such purposes."

The complaint says that there is no opt-in "consent button" for the advertising ID. Although users have to agree to the general Google privacy policy, according to the complaint this consent "was neither informed, specific (the data subject has to agree to all Google services in a single step), nor free (the user cannot use a 800-euro phone without agreeing)." [...] The complaint requests that Google is ordered to "permanently delete the advertising ID", provide access to the data collected, and be fined based on various GDPR breaches.

According to The Information, two top executives left Google's Pixel team following the poor reception of the Pixel 4 and "rare internal criticism" of the phone. Ars Technica reports: Pixel general manager Mario Queiroz and "the mastermind behind Google's Pixel camera," Marc Levoy, have both left the Pixel team in the past year. Both Queiroz and Levoy have been visible members of the Pixel team at launch events, where they usually give lengthy presentations about the new features. Levoy, in particular, is cause for concern, since the Pixel's camera has been one of the major bright spots of the phone line. The Pixel 4 has not been a huge success. It has sold less than the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a in its first two quarters. Osterloh was not confident about the device in the leadup to launch, either. The report says that "ahead of the [Pixel 4] October launch in New York," Osterloh called an all-hands meeting and shared his misgivings about the phone. He reportedly "did not agree with some of the decisions made about the phone" and that "in particular, he was disappointed in its battery power." Osterloh runs the Pixel team, so this reporting gives some insight into his management style. For a Steve Jobs type, approving these kinds of broad directions would be a big part of his day-to-day decision making. Osterloh, apparently, is more of a hands-off delegator.

The report says that, following "sluggish sales and tepid reviews" for the Pixel 4, "the company's hardware division needs to maintain favor and funding as Google's top brass look to rein in costs because of a recent slowdown in advertising revenue." Seeing Google Hardware in the same sentence as Google's cost-cutting efforts is a bit scary -- Google has been aggressively killing products that don't regularly pull in millions of users, and it's hard to make an argument that the Pixel line has been doing well or is even getting better over its four years of existence. We've already seen some branches of Google Hardware get the ax: Osterloh has admitted the team has quit the tablet business after poor performance from the Pixel Slate.

Facebook is working behind the scenes to help launch a new political advocacy group that would combat U.S. lawmakers and regulators trying to rein in the tech industry, escalating Silicon Valley's war with Washington at a moment when government officials are threatening to break up large companies. From a report: The organization is called American Edge, and it aims through a barrage of advertising and other political spending to convince policymakers that Silicon Valley is essential to the U.S. economy and the future of free speech, according to three people familiar with the matter as well as documents reviewed by The Washington Post. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the group because it hasn't officially been announced. In December, American Edge formed as a nonprofit organization, and last month, it registered an accompanying foundation, according to incorporation documents filed in Virginia. The setup essentially allows it to navigate a thicket of tax laws in such a way that it can raise money, and blitz the airwaves with ads, without the obligation of disclosing all of its donors. Many powerful political actors -- including the National Rifle Association -- similarly operate with the aid of "social welfare" groups.

After the pandemic is over, "The tech giants could have all the power," warns Recode co-founder Kara Swisher, " and absolutely none of the accountability — at least all the power that will truly matter." This is the conclusion that many are coming to as the post-pandemic future begins to come into focus. Wall Street sure is signaling that the power lies with tech companies, vaulting the stock of Amazon to close to $2,400 a share earlier this week, from $1,838 at the end of January. While the price fell on Friday to $2,286 a share, after Amazon's chief executive, Jeff Bezos, said he would spend future profits on the coronavirus response, that still gives the company a value of $1.14 trillion. And all the other Big Tech stocks, which were hit in the first weeks of the pandemic, also are on an upward march to the top of the market-cap heap. Microsoft at $1.32 trillion. Apple at $1.26 trillion. Alphabet at $900 billion. And Facebook at $577 billion. This group now makes up just over 20 percent of the S.&P. 500, which is a flashing yellow signal of what is to come.

That is to say, we live in a country in which the very big tech firms will be the very big winners in the economy of the future, which still does not look like it will be so pretty for most people and many companies, too...

I neither hate tech nor think most people who work in tech are bad people. But when this crisis is over, I can say that we most certainly should fear Big Tech more because these companies will be freer than ever, with many fewer strictures on them from regulators and politicians. The effort to rein in tech companies had been building decent momentum before coronavirus outbreak, but it will be harder when focus needs to be on building up rather than breaking apart.

Now, as we turn to the healthy companies to help us revive the economy, it could be that the only ones with real immunity are the tech giants. In this way, Covid-19 has accelerated their rise and tightened their grip on our lives. And this consolidation of power, combined with Big Tech's control of data, automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, media, advertising, retail and even autonomous tech, is daunting.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Millions of people gave their email addresses to Quibi, JetBlue, Wish and other companies (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) -- and those email addresses got away. They ended up in the hands of advertising and analytics companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter, leaving the people with those email addresses more easily targeted by advertisers and able to be tracked by companies that study shopping behavior, according toa reportpublished on Wednesday. The customers unwittingly exposed their email addresses when signing up for apps or clicking on links in marketing emails, said the researcher Zach Edwards, who runs the digital strategy firm Victory Medium. In the report, he described the giveaway of personal data as part of a "sloppy and dangerous growth hack."

Mr. Edwards, a contributor to a recent studythat examined potential privacy violations by dating services like Grindr and OkCupid, wrote in the new report that one of the "most egregious" leaks involvedQuibi, a short-form video platform based in Los Angeles that is run by the veteran executives Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman. Quibi went live on April 6, long after new data privacy regulations went into effect in Europe and California. People who downloaded the Quibi app were asked to submit their email addresses. Then they received a confirmation link. Clicking on the link made their email addresses available to Google, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, according to the report. Quibi said in a statement on Wednesday that data security "is of the highest priority" and that "the moment the issue on our webpage was revealed to our security and engineering team, we fixed it immediately." "Mr. Edwards said customers were probably unaware of leaks at Wish, an e-commerce platform where hundreds of millions of email addresses were most likely exposed starting in 2018," the report adds. "When users clicked on links in marketing emails from the company, their email addresses were shared with Google, Facebook, Pinterest, PayPal and others, he wrote."

Other companies that suffered limited leaks included The Washington Post, JetBlue, and Mailchimp.

Facebook today reported earnings for its first fiscal quarter of 2020, including revenue of $17.74 billion, and net income of $4.9 billion, compared to revenue of $15.1 billion, and net income of $2.43 billion billion in Q1 2019. Year-over-year revenue is up 17%. From a report: In a call with analysts after the close of markets today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "For the first time ever, there are now more than 3 billion people actively using Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger each month." That's up from 2.99 billion people on March 31. Use of the main Facebook app grew 10% up from 2.38 billion in Q1 2019 to 2.6 billion. Daily active users are also up 11%. Facebook earnings beat analyst estimates that predicted Facebook would earn $17.5 billion in revenue and report earnings per share of $1.74. Alphabet, which also draws the majority of its revenue from advertising, also announced earnings above analysts estimates on Tuesday.