Techmeme
April 17, 2025, 3:00 PM

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.
More: United States District Court E.D. Va., Reuters, Washington Post, TechCrunch, PYMNTS.com, Reuters, Gizmodo, Euractiv, MacRumors, Washington Examiner, CNN, Los Angeles Times, Android Police, 9to5Google, Engadget, The Hill, Reuters, PhoneArena, Wired, The Information, Yahoo Finance, Hindustan Times, Proactive, The Western Journal, SFist, Agence France-Presse, Wall Street Journal, Shacknews, MarTech, Irish Examiner, Washington Times, Newser, Search Engine Roundtable, UPI, Search Engine Journal, Wall Street Pit, Watcher Guru, Barron's Online, One America News Network, The Boston Globe, Deadline, New York Post, Variety, and Just The News
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  —  Sandberg Challenged Over Meta Business Moves During FTC Trial  —  Google's AI Overviews Echo Anti-Abortion Messaging, Report Finds
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:
Washington Post:
Sources: Tim Cook spoke to the US Commerce Secretary last week about how tariffs could affect iPhone prices before Trump exempted products from Apple and others  —  Apple's CEO Tim Cook spoke to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last week about the potential impact of the tariffs on iPhone prices.
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.
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
Global Payments shares plunge 15%+ and FIS shares jump 9%+ after Global Payments said it's buying Worldpay from FIS and GTCR and selling Issuer Solutions to FIS  —  Global Payments shares tumbled 17% on Thursday after the company said it is buying Worldpay for more than $24 billion …
Steve Dickson / Bloomberg:
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.
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.
Rachel Metz / Bloomberg:
LMArena says it's starting a company, whose corporate name will be Arena Intelligence, with plans to raise money, and releases a new beta version of its website  —  Chatbot Arena, an academic research project whose website has become a popular place for visitors to try out new artificial intelligence models, is turning into a company.
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:
Justin Ling / Wired:
New Jersey's AG sues Discord, alleging the platform's features to keep children under 13 safe from sexual predators and harmful content are inadequate  —  The New Jersey attorney general claims Discord's features to keep children under 13 safe from sexual predators and harmful content are inadequate.
Reuters:
China bans automakers from using “smart driving” or “autonomous driving” in ads for driver-assist tech and tightens scrutiny after a fatal Xiaomi EV crash  —  China is banning automakers from using the terms “smart driving” and “autonomous driving” …
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.
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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Jane Lanhee Lee / Bloomberg:
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
Chris Scullion / Video Games Chronicle:
Wall Street Journal:
Dan Shipper / Every: