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Techmeme
April 17, 2025, 12:30 PM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
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Top News

David McCabe / New York Times:
A US judge says Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in some online advertising tech, the second time in a year a court found Google acted illegally  —  The ruling was the second time in a year that a federal court had found that Google had acted illegally to maintain its dominance.
Bloomberg:
In her ruling, Judge Brinkema says Google did not meet the monopoly definition for tools used to buy display ads, but did for ad exchanges and website ad tools  —  Google was found by a federal judge to have illegally monopolized some online advertising technology markets in a blow to a key part of the company's business.
Axios:
The DOJ and 17 US states that brought the antitrust case seek to force Google to sell off its “network” ad business, which is ~12% of Alphabet's total revenue  —  Google's dominance of the online advertising and ad-tech markets violates U.S. antitrust laws, a federal court ruled Thursday …
Financial Times:
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang arrived in China on April 16 and visited Beijing on April 17, a source says to meet officials to discuss Trump's new chip export rules  —  Meetings with Chinese vice-premier and DeepSeek founder come after US clamps down on chipmaker's sales to China
New York Times:
The US House opens a probe into whether Nvidia knowingly provided AI tech to DeepSeek in violation of US rules and asks Nvidia for details on its Asian clients
Financial Times:
Sources: Intel told its Chinese clients last week that some AI chip sales would require a license; Nvidia was blindsided by Trump's curbs on its H20 chips
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
The Wikimedia Foundation partners with Kaggle to release a dataset of “structured Wikipedia content in English and French” optimized for AI model training  —  Data science platform Kaggle is hosting a Wikipedia dataset that's specifically optimized for machine learning applications.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Perplexity is in discussions to integrate its AI assistant on Samsung's devices and has reached an agreement to preload Perplexity on Motorola's phones  —  Perplexity AI Inc., an artificial intelligence startup vying with Google and OpenAI, is ramping up efforts to get prime placement for its virtual assistant on smartphones.
Julia Shapero / The Hill:
FTC v. Meta: Mark Zuckerberg says he considers TikTok the “highest competitive threat” for Facebook and Instagram in the past few years  —  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized Wednesday that his social media company faces stiff competition from TikTok, as Meta seeks to fend off accusations …
Bloomberg:
The FTC challenges ex-Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg over past emails; she called Google+ a “real” competitor in 2011 and discussed blocking its Facebook ads in 2012
Wall Street Journal:
Former CISA Director Chris Krebs says he is resigning from SentinelOne to more freely challenge the White House, after Trump directed the DOJ to investigate him  —  Chris Krebs, the top cybersecurity official in Trump's first term, resigned from his private-sector job
Jakob McWhinney / Voice of San Diego:
US community colleges are battling a flood of fake, or bot, students who bilk financial aid by enrolling in online classes and submitting AI-generated work  —  Community colleges have been dealing with an unprecedented phenomenon: fake students bent on stealing financial aid funds.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google is making Gemini Live camera and screen sharing features free for all Android users in the coming weeks after launching them for Advanced users last week  —  Last week, Google started widely rolling out Gemini Live camera and screen sharing to Advanced subscribers …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
xAI announces a memory feature for Grok in beta that enables the AI chatbot to remember details from past conversations and give more personalized responses  —  Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, is slowly bringing its Grok chatbot to parity with top rivals like ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.
Dan Shipper / Every:
OpenAI o3 review: “deep research-lite”, giving thorough answers quickly, free from some old ChatGPT limitations, and powerful thanks to ChatGPT integration  —  The highest praise I can give is that I'm already using it all the time … o3 zoomed in correctly on the tiny arrow logo …
Steve Dickson / Bloomberg:
Global Payments acquires the 45% stake in Worldpay that Fidelity still owned and buys the 55% held by PE firm GTCR, in a deal valuing Worldpay at $24.3B  —  A trio of deals valuing Worldpay at $24.3 billion created a new behemoth in payment processing and cracked open a merger market that's …
Laura Rodríguez Salamanca / Rest of World:
Workers and researchers say data annotation jobs that many Venezuelans relied on have become scarce and poorly paid with the rise of generative AI  —  Venezuela has long provided the tech industry with cheap, educated workers.  But with the rise of generative AI, jobs have become less lucrative and harder to find.
Forums: Beehaw
Jeff Kauflin / Forbes:
Santiago, Chile-based Toku, which helps businesses accept consumer payments, send payment reminders, and more, raised a $39M Series A led by Oak HC/FT  —  Santiago-based Toku has secured $39 million in new funding to try to do for business payments what Brazil's Nubank has done for consumer banking …
More: FinSMEs

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UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
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From Mediagazer

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Memo: Business Insider is cutting staff by 21% to “endure extreme traffic drops outside of our control” and “exiting the majority of our Commerce business”

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Starz reports Q4 revenue down 6.2% YoY to $330.6M, an operating loss of $136.3M, up from $30.8M, and 13.04M streaming subscribers, up 470K from Q3

Pew Research Center:
Share of news influencers on Bluesky has doubled after the 2024 US election to 43%, but X remains popular, with 82% of news influencers maintaining an account

More News

Earlier Picks

Jane Lanhee Lee / Bloomberg:
TSMC reports Q1 net income up 60.3% YoY to $11.1B, beating estimates, as customers stockpiled chips anticipating global trade disruptions spurred by US tariffs
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
Auradine, which manufactures Bitcoin miners and offers AI infrastructure, raised a $153M Series C, with $138M in equity and $15M in debt, led by StepStone Group
Chris Scullion / Video Games Chronicle:
Discord requires some UK and Australian users to verify their age by scanning their face or ID to access sensitive material; Discord says it's “an experiment”
Eileen Guo / MIT Technology Review:
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirms the elimination of R/FIMI, an office aimed at tracking and countering foreign disinformation campaigns
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Indian EV ride-hailing startup BluSmart appears to have suspended service a day after regulators launched a probe into Gensol, which shares its co-founders
Bloomberg:
Source: OpenAI is in talks to acquire Windsurf, an AI coding tool formerly known as Codeium, for ~$3B; Windsurf was valued at $1.25B in a 2024 funding deal
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