While Google parent-company Alphabet pours capital into self-driving vehicles with its Waymo unit, the company is making real money in transportation right now. CapitalG, the late-stage investing arm of Alphabet, has doubled the value of its investment in Lyft, after the ride-hailing company made its stock market debut on Friday.READ MORE...

Google is launching a global advisory council to consider ethical issues around artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. The council, which is expected to publish a report at the end of this year, includes technology experts, digital ethicists, and people with public policy backgrounds. The group is expected to provide recommendations for Google, and other companies and researchers, working in areas such as facial recognition software. "We want to have the most informed and thoughtful conversations we can," Walker said on stage at the MIT Technology Review event in San Francisco."

European lawmakers have approved sweeping copyright reforms that could have far-reaching consequences for the business models of tech giants like Google and Facebook. The law is aimed at bringing the EU’s rules on copyright into the 21st century to help artists and publishers whose works have been widely dispersed on the internet.READ MORE...

European regulators on Wednesday ordered Google to pay 1.49 billion euros ($1.69 billion) for stifling competition in the online advertisement sector. According to the EU competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, Google's business strategy had prevented its rivals from being able to “compete and innovate fairly” in the online ad market.She further added that with Google reinforcing its dominance in the online search advertising segment, the company shielded itself from competitive pressure by imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites – which is illegal under EU antitrust rules. This fine marks the third antitrust fine from Brussels to hit Google in recent times. Last July, EU regulators slapped Alphabet with a $5 billion fine for abusing the dominance of its Android mobile operating system, and did so again in 2017 ($2.7 billion) for favoring its shopping service over competitors. According to the European Commission, between

Google (GOOG, GOOGL) has unveiled its new gaming effort: Stadia, a platform that promises unifying the experience of playing, watching and building games. Read More...

The move come amidst the social networking company's strategies to apparently make its platforms more focused on and sensitive towards users' privacy. Cox was involved in leading product teams, running the Facebook app, and designing strategy for the company's various other apps, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg's blog post.while adding “At this point, we have made real progress on many issues and we have a clear plan for our apps, centered around making private messaging, stories and groups the foundation of the experience, including enabling encryption and interoperability across our services.” Cox has been at the company for more than 13 years. Zuckerberg also wrote that Chris Daniels would also be resigning.

Recently, the Commission has been tough regarding anti-trust laws specifically related to bug tech companies. Spotify reasoned that Apple has an ‘unfair advantage’ over its competitors as its control of its App Store limits customer choices and puts the pressure of fees on its rivals.Spotify has only approached the EU Commission after it failed to resolve the issue directly with Apple. Spotify’s CEO explained that since the recent introduction of new rules for the App Store, the company has been acting both as a player and referee to deliberately disadvantage other app developers. Due to these new rules, Spotify has to pay Apple a 30% tax on items purchased through Apple’s payment system.

Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) subsidiary Google has been making strides in consumer hardware, generating an estimated $3 billion in gross profit last year.In contrast, critics have mostly panned Google's laptop and tablet lineup, the Pixelbook and convertible Pixel Slate. Read More...

Facebook is facing a criminal probe into data-sharing deals it arranged with at least two other technology companies, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. Read More...

Sometimes too powerful. Last year, a spate of lynchings triggered by viral hoax messages on its service put the company at the center of a debate about misinformation in the country, where it has more than 200 million users.READ MORE...

Google is rolling out another app just for India, this time to help children learn to read. Bolo, an online reading tutor, was made available to Indian users of Google's Android operating system this week after months of testing, the company said.READ MORE...

Reporting a sharper loss and a weaker guidance than expected, Eventbrite saw its shares tumble in extended trading Thursday. The online ticketing and event management company incurred a loss of -17 cents a share in the fourth quarter, wider than a loss of -13 cents a share estimated by analysts surveyed by FactSet.Analysts’ expected $73.2 million. The company projects its first quarter net revenue to come in the range of $80 million to $84 million, below analyst forecasts of $91.3 million (based on FactSet survey of analysts). Eventbrite lost more than -20% in after-hourrs trading Thursday.

Gen Z, which makes up the demographic of ages 13 - 22, is abandoning old media altogether including TV, instead opting for digital content viewing in phones, tablets and laptops.For example, in 2015 Jack Davis along with horror master Eli Roth founded Crypt TV and have developed a slate of monster-centric IP that they distribute on YouTube and Facebook (FB) in the form of a short digital film and television series.

This may be seen to mark Google's entry into the Asian renewable energy market. Although this project is in a pretty small scale, Google became the first company to make a purchase under the 2017 Taiwan Electricity Act for the 10-megawatt solar array in Tainan City, Taiwan.‘Flotovoltaics,’ or building solar projects sited on water, is fast gaining popularity following the lead of Japan that built its first photovoltaic installation in 2007. The Company is currently focusing on poles that will hold the solar panels, a concept known as a "canopy" system.

With the reporting season being over for social media companies, it may be time to take stock of how the major platforms performed through the lens of key metrics. Read More...

The fintech start-up processes debit payments on behalf of businesses, and sees substantial opportunity in B2B and  subscription-based services among other recurring payment markets.Set up in 2011, it currently processes payments for more than 40,000 merchants, and more than $10 billion worth of transactions each year, according to the firm. CEO and co-founder Hiroki Takeuchi hopes to use the proceeds from the latest round of funding towards expanding operations in the U.S.

British online payments start-up GoCardless has landed a $75 million investment backed by U.S. tech giants Alphabet — the parent company of Google — and Salesforce. Read More...

India’s antitrust commission is looking into accusations that Alphabet Inc’s unit Google abuses its popular Android mobile operating system to block its rivals, four sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.READ MORE...

Online platforms including Google, Facebook and Apple should be regulated in how they distribute news content, according to a new U.K. government report.READ MORE...

Facebook partners with several third-party fact checkers in India to curb circulation of false news in social media.It will be extended to include news in regional languages as well like English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Malayalam and Marathi. Fact checks have a goal of moving false news to the bottom of users' News Feeds, which would significantly reduce their distribution.