Google was in the EU antitrust spotlight again on Tuesday as regulators opened an investigation into whether its digital advertising business gives the Alphabet unit an unfair advantage over rivals and advertisers. The European Union competition enforcer’s move marks a new front against Google and follows more than EUR 8 billion (roughly Rs. 70,665.72 crores)
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Amazon destroys millions of unsold items, including premium electronics, books, and now even face masks, every year, a new investigation has revealed. Footage gathered by Britain’s ITV from just one of the 24 Fulfilment Centers that Amazon has in the UK shows unsold items packed in boxes marked “destroy”. Not just that, the sheer amount
President Vladimir Putin dismissed accusations that Russia was behind cyberattacks against the United States as “farcical” in an interview with NBC broadcast on Monday ahead of his summit with President Joe Biden. The Russian leader also said he was open to a prison swap with the United States – the fate of prisoners is set
India’s antitrust watchdog plans to expedite a restarted probe into allegations of anti-competitive behaviour at Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart, as it intensifies scrutiny of big-tech firms, two people close to the matter said. The comments come as major US technology firms including Twitter and Facebook are at loggerheads with the government over issues such as data privacy bills
Christie’s is to auction artwork by 18-year-old trans artist FEWOCiOUS in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) it said on Monday, as the world’s major auction houses ramp up their sales of NFTs. An NFT is a form of crypto asset, which records ownership of a digital object such as an image, video or text.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s tweet on June 13, where he wrote that the electric carmaker “will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions” if there’s “confirmation of reasonable (~50 per cent) clean energy usage by miners” did send the cryptocurrency price rising again. A day after the tweet, the value of Bitcoin rose more than 10 per cent.
Facebook and other Silicon Valley giants could face more scrutiny and sanctions in the European Union after the bloc’s top court backed national privacy watchdogs to pursue them, even when they are not their lead regulators. Consumer lobbying group BEUC welcomed Tuesday’s ruling by the EU Court of Justice (CJEU), which backed the right of
Small transfers of Bitcoin to El Salvador jumped over four-fold in May from a year ago but still represent a small amount when compared to remittances sent in dollars, data shared with Reuters showed. The Central American country last week became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, with President Nayib Bukele touting
Another spat between India’s government and US big tech has exacerbated disillusion among firms which have spent billions to build hubs in their largest growth market, to the extent some are rethinking expansion plans, people close to the matter said. The government on Saturday said Twitter had not indicated compliance with new rules aimed at making
Google doodle celebrates kick off for UEFA EURO 2020, the 16th UEFA European Championship. The doodle shows a football field in a park, and one of ‘o’ letters in Google is a football. It is not an interactive doodle as some have been in the past, but it links a UEFA EURO 2020 search results
Russian authorities on Thursday ordered Facebook and the messaging app Telegram to pay steep fines for failing to remove banned content, a move that could be part of growing government efforts to tighten control over social media platforms amid political dissent. A Moscow court fined Facebook a total of RUB 17 million (roughly Rs. 1.7 crores)
Leading Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX has received a show cause notice from the Enforcement Directorate for contravention of the FEMA, 1999, for cryptocurrency transactions worth Rs. 2790.74 crore, the enforcement agency shared in a tweet on Friday. The enforcement agency in a press release added that Chinese nationals had used the crypto exchange to launder
Euro 2020 is here — in 2021. Thank you, COVID-19. You might have thought they would have changed it to “Euro 2021” but no, UEFA — the European football body that organises it — is sticking to the Euro 2020 branding. Delayed a full year due to the pandemic, UEFA Euro 2020 will now run
Flexiple co-founder and CEO Karthik Sridharan shared a fascinating story on Twitter of No Code tools that helped him build a startup with $2 million (roughly Rs. 14.6 crores) revenue. Flexiple is a network of top freelance developers and designers. The No Code tools, Sridharan said, cost his company just $80 (roughly Rs. 5,800) a
15 GB of free storage with unlimited photo backup – Google Photos is undoubtedly an excellent cloud storage service, but now it is no longer free. Any photos and videos uploaded after June 1, 2021, will now be counted towards your 15 GB of free storage quota, and once you exhaust your free storage, you
Apple introduced a new iCloud+ service during the WWDC 2021 keynote speech. The service brings a bunch of new privacy features alongside the iCloud storage. These includes iCloud Private Relay, Hide My Email, and expanded support for HomeKit Secure Video cameras. The iCloud Private Relay feature brings added security to all the traffic leaving the
Following outrage against e-commerce giant Amazon after users claimed that a bikini having colours of the Karnataka flag and emblem was available for sale on its Canada site, state’s Kannada and Culture Minister Aravind Limbavali has said the government would take legal action. Calling it a matter of Kannadigas’ self-pride and that the government would not
The US and the European Union voiced concern over Nigeria’s decision to indefinitely ban Twitter after the US social media giant deleted a tweet from the president’s account for violating its rules. International human rights groups have also condemned the move, which followed previous attempts by the government of Africa’s most populous country to regulate
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said on Saturday that he will send a bill to Congress next week to make Bitcoin legal tender in the Central American nation, touting its potential to help Salvadorans living abroad send remittances home. “In the short term this will generate jobs and help provide financial inclusion to thousands outside
A slew of crypto-related accounts in China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform were blocked over the weekend, as Beijing stepped up a crackdown on Bitcoin trading and mining. More actions are expected, including linking illegal crypto activities in China more directly with the country’s criminal law, according to analysts and a financial regulator. Last month, China’s State
Google agreed to make changes to some of its widely used online advertising services under a settlement with France’s antitrust watchdog released on Monday. The authority also fined the Mountain View, California-based company EUR 220 million (roughly 1,950 crores) after a probe found it abused its market power in the intricate advertising business online, where