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Techmeme
April 17, 2025, 12:55 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 …
@newsfromgoogle:
Google says “we won half of this case and we will appeal the other half” of the US antitrust ruling, and “we disagree” with the decision on its publisher tools  —  “We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half. The Court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don't harm competition. We disagree with the Court's decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options and they
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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 …
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 …
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
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  —  The only office within the US State Department that monitors foreign disinformation is to be eliminated, according to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio …
Fatima Hussein / Associated Press:
Sources: the Trump administration plans to eliminate the IRS' free Direct File tax program, after IRS staff were told in mid-March to stop working on it

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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”

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Paramount offers $15M to settle with President Trump, whose team wants $25M+, is seeking an apology from CBS News, and threatened another lawsuit

Ben Johansen / Politico:
Sources: all 800 full-time VOA staff are expected to receive reduction-in-force notices this week, after ~600 VOA contractors were dismissed earlier in May

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”
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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