Techmeme
August 6, 2024, 10:20 AM

Top News

Leah Nylen / Bloomberg:
US v. Google: a federal judge rules that Google illegally monopolized the search market, including through deals to be the default option on phones and browsers  —  Google's payments to make its search engine the default on smartphone web browsers violates US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday …
More: CNN, Ars Technica, BBC, Platformer, Reuters, HotHardware, Reuters, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, CNBC, Tom's Guide, Benzinga, Beyond Search, Spyglass, Wired, Search Engine Roundtable, The Mirror, Politico, TechCrunch, ITPro, Washington Post, Tech.co, Bizcommunity, Proactive, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg Law, GSMArena.com, WinBuzzer, Interesting Engineering, The Stack, One Man & His Blog, Silicon Republic, PaymentExpert.com, TipRanks Financial, Daring Fireball, iClarified, B&T, News/Media Alliance, The Week, AdExchanger, WAtoday, The Information, Constellation Research, Patently Apple, and Philip Elmer‑DeWitt
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
US v. Google: a judge says Google has a monopoly in “general search text advertising” and used exclusive agreements to raise prices without any competition  —  A federal judge ruled that Google violated US antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly in the search and advertising markets.
Jason Del Rey / Fortune:
Apple and Mozilla will take a big revenue hit if the Google search ruling is upheld; in 2021 to 2022, $510M of Mozilla's $593M revenue came from its Google deal  —  “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.”  —  With those words from United States District judge Amit Mehta …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
John Schulman / @johnschulman2:
OpenAI co-founder John Schulman departs to join Anthropic and focus on AI alignment, and says “I'm not leaving due to lack of support for alignment research”  —  I shared the following note with my OpenAI colleagues today: I've made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI. This choice stems from my desire to deepen my focus on AI alignment, and to start a new chapter of my career where I can return to hands-on technical work. I've decided
The Information:
OpenAI President Greg Brockman says he's taking a sabbatical through the end of 2024; a source says OpenAI product leader Peter Deng, who joined in 2023, left  —  Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president and one of 11 cofounders of the artificial intelligence firm, is taking an extended leave of absence.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Google unveils the $100 Google TV Streamer, with better performance than Chromecast with Google TV, Thread and Matter support, and more, shipping September 24  —  Google isn't waiting for its upcoming hardware event to announce the Chromecast's successor.  Alongside the new, sleeker Nest Thermostat …
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Wes Davis / The Verge:
A look at some of Apple's pre-prompt instructions for Apple Intelligence, including “do not hallucinate” for a text generation feature  —  Apple's latest developer betas launched last week with a handful of the generative AI features that were announced at WWDC and are headed to your iPhones …
Cherlynn Low / Engadget:
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:
Uber reports Q2 revenue up 16% YoY to $10.7B, Gross Bookings up 19% YoY to $40B, vs. $39.7B est., Mobility Gross Bookings up 23% YoY to $20.6B, and 7.4M drivers  —  - Results driven by better-than-expected growth in ridehailing  — Autonomous rides grew six-fold from year ago through partners
New York Times:
In an email to staff, Linda Yaccarino says X will close its San Francisco office and move workers to San Jose offices and a new Palo Alto office shared with xAI  —  Elon Musk, X's owner, has clashed with California's leaders and has said the social media platform would move its headquarters to Texas.
Anton Shilov / Tom's Hardware:
Samsung starts mass production of the world's thinnest LPDDR5X DRAM, claiming it is 9% thinner than most LPDDR5X and improves devices' heat resistance by 21.2%  —  The new package frees additional space.  —  Samsung has started mass production of the world's thinnest LPDDR5X DRAM packages featuring 12 GB and 16 GB capacities.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Google releases patches for 46 Android security vulnerabilities, including a kernel zero-day the company says “may be under limited, targeted exploitation”  —  Android security updates this month patch 46 vulnerabilities, including a high-severity remote code execution (RCE) exploited in targeted attacks.
Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:
UK filings: since 2023, Saudi Arabia's PIF has put $750M into Magic Leap, including $160M so far in 2024; Magic Leap says it needs to raise more by next month  —  - Startup says in filing that it must raise more funds soon  — Magic Leap cut its entire sales and marketing teams in July
More: Proactive
Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Red Ventures sells CNET, an early pioneer of online tech coverage, to Ziff Davis, which owns Mashable, PC Mag, and other brands, a source says for $100M+  —  Ziff Davis is acquiring CNET for more than $100 million.  Its chief executive thinks more acquisitions are on the horizon.

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Washington Post:
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Samantha Cole / 404 Media: