Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan are turning their attention to Google over concerns that the tech giant is censoring users and infringing on Americans’ free speech rights.
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Big Pharma Gravy Train Hits the Skids Under Trump, Panicking Revolving-Door Regulators, Investors
The Food and Drug Administration is “finished.” One of its leading boosters for accelerated approval of mediocre drugs left in a huff. Drug stocks are dropping.
The shared interests of regulators and the industry they often join after or between federal service became unmistakable in the past week amid the Trump administration’s extreme makeover of the federal public health workforce and leadership.
Read the full story‘Remedying These Harms’: Federal Government Weighs Breakup of $2 Trillion Tech Giant
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is considering recommending a federal judge to force Google to sell parts of its business in a bid to eliminate its alleged monopoly on online search, according to a court filing Tuesday.
A U.S. judge ruled in August that Google built and abused a “monopoly” by spending billions on exclusivity agreements to be the automatic search engine for browsers such as Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox. The DOJ could force Google to sell segments of its business, including its Chrome browser and Android operating system, which place Google as its default search engine, the DOJ filing showed.
Read the full storyArkansas Sues Major Platform over Allegations of Intentionally Encouraging Kids to Become Addicted
Arkansas filed a lawsuit Monday against YouTube and its parent entity, Alphabet, alleging that the platform intentionally promotes addictive behaviors that exacerbate mental health issues among youth.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin filed a lawsuit in Phillips County Circuit Court against Google LLC, YouTube LLC, XXVI Holdings, Inc., and their parent company, Alphabet, Inc for allegedly breaching the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by engaging in deceptive and detrimental business practices targeting young users, according to the complaint. It contends that the platform’s addictive nature has necessitated millions in state expenditures on expanded mental health services for young individuals.
Read the full storyYouTube Repeatedly Censors RFK Jr. as Democratic Leaders Demand Reinstatement of 2020 Censorship
The disputed 2020 election now appears in the rearview mirror for YouTube, which is now determining what users can see relevant to the next election.
The Alphabet-owned, video-sharing site and Google sibling has censored at least two videos, and may be throttling a third, featuring Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shortly after ending a two-and-a-half-year ban on questioning the “integrity” of the last presidential election, saying it accomplished little relative to the potential harm it caused.
Read the full storySenator Calls for Apple, Alphabet to Boot TikTok from App Stores
A U.S. Senator has called on the nation’s top tech companies to break up with the popular short-form video service TikTok.
U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, D-Colorado, asked Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai to remove TikTok from the company app stores immediately over national security concerns.
Read the full storyGoogle Parent Company Alphabet to Cut 12,000 Jobs from Global Workforce
Google parent Alphabet Inc. is cutting 12,000 jobs worldwide, roughly 6% of its global workforce.
The cuts, announced by CEO Sundar Pichai in a memo to Google employees, is the latest in Big Tech job cutbacks.
Read the full storyGoogle Co-Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin Step Down
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced Tuesday they are stepping down from roles at the tech giant’s parent company.
Read the full storyGoogle Parent Company to Open Treatment Center in Dayton, Ohio
Alphabet Inc., the multinational conglomerate that both was established by and currently owns Google.com, has announced that they will be establishing an opioid treatment center in Dayton, Ohio. While this could be good news for a community that is still deeply in the midst of an opioid epidemic, the recent revelations about data collection by Google and other digital tech companies raise questions about the new treatment center. The effort, dubbed OneFifteen, will be headed by Andy Conrad, Ph.D. (pictured above) and housed in a new “tech enabled campus.” It will be an initiative of Verily, the development wing of Alphabet that deals with life sciences. The new facility was announced Wednesday in a blog post on the company website. The post points out the alarming statistics regarding opioid abuse and the intent of this new campus to treat these problems. It also explicitly notes that one of the biggest challenges to healthcare is a severe lack of data, most notably the data gaps. While this is undoubtedly accurate, there are many concerns with greater data aggregation. In recent years, data companies have proven themselves to be at best wildly irresponsible and at worst explicitly malicious in aggregating and then selling the personal data of individuals. The notion of this…
Read the full storyCommentary: Break Up Google for the Public Good
by Ned Ryun It’s time for all of us to admit that Alphabet, Inc. is the 21st century equivalent of Ma Bell: it is an almost all-controlling monopoly that restricts consumer choice in order to maximize profit for the company. We all know what Ronald Reagan did to AT&T. He broke up that monopoly so Americans could have real choices and the free market could actually work. So it’s time for the Trump Administration to break up the Alphabet, Inc. monopoly. But unlike the Ma Bell monopoly, Alphabet, Inc.’s monopoly—which includes the search-engine behemoth Google—isn’t just about greater competition and more choices for the American people. It’s about so much more: free political discourse and our privacy rights as citizens. Last week in Washington D.C., the House called in Google CEO Sundar Pichai to question him about the bias against conservatives at his company, but also about data privacy and Google’s plans for working with China. Every last one of those issues should trouble every last American. The mainstream media, as the mindless propagandists of the deep state and Democratic Party, are still trying to maintain the miserable hoax of Russian collusion to cover up their own misdeeds and…
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