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The Atlantic [unpaywalled] – “…Nearly 30 years after the company was founded, we still don’t really know where its profits come from. The answer will loom large in the antitrust case against it. Under SEC rules, public corporations must file quarterly reports disclosing revenue, expenses, profits, and other metrics. Initially, only company-wide data were required. …
PopSci: “Our smartphones and smart speakers can listen for specific voice commands and take action accordingly, but maybe you don’t want your devices always having one digital ear open. Aside from privacy concerns, the smart assistants inside our gadgets can be triggered accidentally–by someone else in the house or even someone speaking on television. Turning …
The Verge: “Google has started rolling out “Help me write” — an experimental Gemini-powered generative AI feature for its Chrome browser that aims to help users write or refine text based on webpage content. Following the stable release of Chrome M122 on Tuesday, the new writing assistant is now available to try out on Mac …
“The Federal Trade Commission will require software provider Avast to pay $16.5 million and prohibit the company from selling or licensing any web browsing data for advertising purposes to settle charges that the company and its subsidiaries sold such information to third parties after promising that its products would protect consumers from online tracking. In …
And why you shouldn’t trust product recommendations from big media publishers ranking at the top of Google. “Google regularly launches updates to its algorithm to continuously improve search results quality. Think of these updates as a refresh of the system where rankings change: some websites see an improvement while others see a decline. At HouseFresh, …
Is Google Getting Worse? A Longitudinal Investigation of SEO Spam in Search Engines. Janek Bevendorff, Matti Wiegmann, Martin Potthast, and Benno Stein.”Many users of web search engines have been complaining in recent years about the supposedly decreasing quality of search results. This is often attributed to an increasing amount of search-engine-optimized but low-quality content. Evidence …
Fast Company: “You’ve probably already noticed your search engines are starting to evolve. Google and Bing have already added both AI-generated results and conversational chatbots to their respective search engines. The Browser Company, a startup that made a big early splash thanks to its mission statement of building a better internet browser, has launched an …
Ars Technica: “Amazon rigged its platform to “routinely” push an overwhelming majority of customers to pay more for items that could’ve been purchased at lower costs with equal or faster delivery times, a class-action lawsuit has alleged. The lawsuit claims that a biased algorithm drives Amazon’s “Buy Box,” which appears on an item’s page and …
Introducing Mozilla Monitor Plus – “Today, Mozilla Monitor (previously called Firefox Monitor), a free service that notifies you when your email has been part of a breach, announced its new paid subscription service offering: automatic data removal and continuous monitoring of your exposed personal information…“When we launched Monitor, our goal was to help people discover …
The Economist: “…TikTok, which has more than 1bn regular users, is making a mark on the world of publishing. Much of this is done through BookTok, the app’s community of users who comment on books. It is among the largest communities on the app; videos with this tag have been viewed 179bn times, more than …
Via LLRX – Each Facebook User is Monitored by Thousands of Companies – By now most internet users know their online activity is constantly tracked. No one should be shocked to see ads for items they previously searched for, or to be asked if their data can be shared with an unknown number of “partners.” But …
Libro.FM Blog: “Amazon’s impact on the book industry is no secret to most readers. From taking business from independent bookshops—business they depend on, unlike Amazon—to limiting accessibility of audiobooks with Audible Exclusives, the company’s dominance threatens diversity of the publishing ecosystem. According to WordsRated, Amazon “controls between 50% and 80% of the book distribution in …
