Tag Archives: google

Chrome Begins Disabling uBlock Origin

Chrome,

If you’re a fan of uBlock Origin, don’t be surprised if it stops functioning in Chrome. The Google-owned browser has started disabling the free add blocker as part of the company’s plan to phase out older “Manifest V2” extensions, PCMag reported.

On Tuesday, the developer of uBlock Origin, Raymond Hill, retweeted a screenshot from one user showing the Chrome browser disabling the ad blocker. “These extensions are no longer supported. Chrome recommends that you remove them,” the pop-up from the Chrome browser told the user.

In response, Hill wrote: “The depreciation of uBO in the Chrome Web Store has started.”

This occurs when the Chrome Web Store has already been discouraging users from downloading uBlock Origin, or even delisting the extension, with a warning that says “it doesn’t follow best practices for Chrome extensions.” That said, PCMag was still able download and use the extension over Chrome.  So the disabling and delisting may not be as wide-scale at the moment. Google didn’t immediately respond for a request for comment.

PCWorld reported: The writing is almost literally on the wall for Chrome’s most popular ad blockers. After months of warnings that extensions like uBlock Origin would be removed after Chrome’s Manifest V3 extension update, Google is now telling Chrome users who try to download it from the Chrome Web Store that it “may no longer be supported.”

On a more recent Chromebook review unit, the download button is fully disabled. uBlock Origin cannot be installed at all. 

The new warning that uBlock Origin “doesn’t follow best practices for Chrome extensions” was spotted on Twitter and reported by Bleeping Computer. While the most popular commercial ad blocking solutions have been updated for Manifest V3 compatibility, the solo, unpaid developer of uBlock Origin has kept the extension on Manifest V2 as a way to highlight the issues with the updated standard.

An alternative version called uBlock Original — less capable but compatible with the newer standard —has also been released. The original uBlock Origin has 39 million users according to the Chrome Web Store (and there are many more when you count Firefox and alternative Chromium-based browsers) while the newer uBlock Origin Lite extension currently only shows 700,000 users.

Ghostery CEO Jean-Peal Schmetz recommends that users who care about ad blocking effectiveness should switch to Firefox, the only major third-party browser left that isn’t based on the open-source Chromium project controlled by Google. The original, unhobbled uBlock Origin is still working on Firefox, though developer Raymond Hill has run into some issues with Mozilla as well.

BoingBoing reported Manifest V3 is the new extensions framework for Google Chrome browser, and one notable outcome is that ad blockers can’t block so many ads. After years of delay, Google is reportedly “purging” such extensions and accelerating the framework’s rollout.

According to user reports, uBlock Origin is quickly disappearing from the Chrome Web Store. The official page for the ad-blocking extension now states that it is unavailable because it doesn’t comply with Chrome’s “best practices” for add-ons. However, we can confirm that the page is still accessible from our EU Windows client.

In my opinion, it appears that Google is very interested in removing uBlock Origin. It is not clear why the Google is doing this, or if it will put out an updated version.

 

 

U.S. Weighs Google Breakup In Historic Big Tech AntiTrust Case

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The U.S. Justice Department is considering asking a federal judge to force Google to sell off parts of its business in what would be a historic breakup of one of the world’s biggest tech companies, Bloomberg reported.

Antitrust enforcers are weighing a breakup to mitigate the Alphabet Inc. business’s dominance in search, the agency said in a court filing on Tuesday, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report. Judge Amit Mehta could also order Google to provide access to the underlying data it used to build its search results and artificial intelligence products, it said.

The Justice Department “is considering behavioral and structural remedies that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search and Google search-related products and features,” the agency said.

The DOJ said in the filing that Google gained scale and data benefits from its illegal distribution agreements with other tech companies that made its search engine the default option on smartphones and web browsers. Google’s Android business encompasses the operating system used on smartphones and devices as well as apps

The Verge reported: After winning a fight to get Google’s search business declared an unlawful monopoly, the Department of Justice has released its initial proposal for how it’s thinking about limiting Google’s dominance — including breaking up the company.

The government is asking Judge Amit Mehta for four different types of remedies to Google’s anticompetitive power in search engines. They include behavioral remedies, or changes to business practices, as well as structural remedies, which would break up Google.

And they’re focused particularly on generative AI. While AI might not be a substitute for search engines, the DOJ warns, it “will likely become an important feature of the evolving industry.” And it aims to prevent Google from using its power in the industry to regain unfair control.

The government sees four areas where it can constrain Google’s power. In these, it’s asking Judge Mehta to limit the kinds of contracts Google can negotiate, require rules for nondiscrimination and interoperability, and change the structure of its business.

“Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow,” the government says. 

Google, for it’s part, calls the government proposals “radical” and believes they’re “signaling requests that go far beyond the specific legal issues in this case.”

The Times reported: The term “structural remedies” doesn’t sound too intimidating for the uninitiated. In competition circles, however, it’s a corporate bombshell, giving it is shorthand for a forced-breakup.

The US Department of Justice has said it is considering pushing for this radical move to tackle the market dominance of Google, a $2 trillion business that processes 90 per cent of international searches in the United States.

If a break-up goes ahead — and that is far from certain — it would be the first such move in the US in more than 20 years when a move against Microsoft failed.

In my opinion, the potential break-up of Google will cause problems that Alphabet/Google didn’t want to face. 

Google Wins EU Antitrust Fine Fight

google

Alphabet unit Google won a legal challenge on Wednesday against a 1.49 billion euro ($1.7 billion) European Union antitrust fine, while Qualcomm failed to repeal a penalty, Reuters reported.

The rulings underscore outgoing EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager’s mixed record in defending her crackdown on Big Tech in court. She scored two major wins last week against Google in a separate case and against Apple’s tax deal with Irish authorities.

The European Commission in its 2019 decision said Google had abused its dominance to prevent websites from using brokers other than it’s AdSense platform that provided search adverts. The practices it said were illegal took place from 2006 to 2016.

The Luxembourg-based General Court mostly agreed with the European Union competition enforcer’s assessments of the case, but annulled the fine, saying that the Commission had failed to take into account all the relevant circumstances.

According to Reuters, the AdSense fine, one of a trio of fines that have cost Google at total of 8.25 billion euros, was triggered by a complaint by Microsoft in 2010.

CNBC reported The European Union’s second-highest court on Wednesday said a 1.5 billion euro ($1.7 billion) fine imposed on Google by regulators should be annulled, siding with the U.S. tech giant after it challenged the ruling.

The case stems from 2019 when the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said Alphabet owned Google had abused its market dominance in relation to a product called AdSense for Search. This product allowed website owners to deliver ads into the search results on their own pages.

Google acts as an intermediary allowing advertisers to serve ads via search on third-party websites.

But the commission alleged that Google abused its market dominance by imposing a number of restrictive clauses in contracts with third-party websites, which ultimately prevented rivals from placing their search ads on these websites.

The commission fined Google 1.49 billion euros at the time. Google appeals, sending the case to the EU’s General Court.

The General Court said Wednesday that it “upholds the majority of the findings” but “annuls the decision by which the Commission imposed a fine of” nearly 1.5 billion euros.

The court added that the commission “failed to take into consideration all the relevant circumstances in its assessment of the duration of the contract clauses” that it had deemed abusive.

TechCrunch reported Google has succeeded in overturning a $1.7 billion antitrust penalty handed down by the European Union back in March 2019.

The €1.49 billion fine, which Google appealed, was originally issued after the European Commission found the tech giant’s search ads brokering business had violated competition rules between 2006 and 2016 to cement a dominant position.

On Wednesday, the EU’s General Court upheld the majority of EU’s findings, but annulled the earlier decision in its entirety after finding that the Commission had failed to take into consideration all the relevant circumstances when assessing the duration of the contract clauses it deemed abusive.

In my opinion, this is an unexpected win for Google. It is unclear to me why EU’s General Court decided to overturn it’s previous decisions regarding Google’s AdSense.

Google Will Now Link To The Internet Archive To Add More Context

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Rolling out starting today, Google Search results will now directly link to The Internet Archive to add historical context for the links in your results, 9TO5 Google reported.

Google Search makes it easy to find information, but occasionally you need a historical context for a page that may have been recently updated. That was previously possible to a certain extent through cached pages in Search, but that functionality was removed earlier this year.

Starting today, thought, Google Search will make it possible to see a whole lot more historical context for a link. 

Google has partnered with The Internet Archive, a non-profit research library that, in part, stores and preserves massive portions of the web to be easily referenced later. This is done through the “Wayback Machine” which can show a website or specific page as it existed on a previous date.

Internet Archive posted: New Feature Alert: Access Archived Webpages Directly Through Google Search

In a significant step forward for digital preservation, Google Search is now making it easier than ever to access the past. Starting today, users everywhere can view archived versions of webpages directly through Google Search, with a simple link to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

How It Works

To access this new feature, conduct a search on Google as usual. Next to each search result, you’ll find three dots — clicking on these will bring up the “About this Result” panel. Within this panel, select “More About This Page” to reveal a link to the Wayback Machine page for that website.

Through this direct link, you’ll be able to view previous versions of a webpage via the Wayback Machine, offering a snapshot of how it appeared at different points in time.

The collaboration with Google underscores the importance of web archiving and expands the reach of the Wayback Machine, making it even easier for users to access and explore archived content. However, the link to archived webpages will not be available in instances where the rights holder has opted out of having their site archived or if the webpage violates content policies.

Gizmodo reported: What was once dead now lives again through the power of the Internet Archive. Seven months after killing the ability to see old versions of websites through Google, the search engine has partnered with the archive and is directly linking to its cached versions of websites on the Wayback Machine.

Websites change over time. The information on a URL constantly evolves. News stories are changed, blogs are stealth edited, and sometimes stuff just stops working. For more than 20 years, Google offered a way for users to view into the past and see stripped-down and archived versions of old sites.

In my opinion, it is good that the Internet Archive, in connection with Google, is going to continue allowing people to access older content from the Wayback Machine. 

Google’s Second Antitrust Trial Could Help Shape The Future Of Online Ads

google

A month after losing a landmark antitrust case brought by the Department of Justice, Google is headed back to court to face off for a second time against federal prosecutors, CNBC reported.

In August, a judge ruled that Google has held a monopoly in internet search, marking the biggest antitrust ruling in the tech industry since the case against Microsoft more than 20 years ago. This time, Google is defending itself against claims that its advertising business has acted as a monopoly that’s led to higher ad prices for customers.

The trial begins in Alexandria, Virginia, on Monday and will likely last for at least several weeks. It represents the first tech antitrust trial from a case brought by the Biden administration. The department’s earlier lawsuit was first filed in October 2020, when Donald Trump was in the White House.

The Washington Post reported Google makes lots of money but has a miserable year in court, and its judicial travails are far from over.

In the waining days of 2023, a federal jury in San Francisco declared Google’s app store an illegal monopoly. In August, a federal judge in D.C. made the same determination for the keystone of its more than $300 billion in annual revenue: the Google search engine. And on Monday, the company goes on trial again, in Virginia, this time on monopoly charges related to its online business.

Monopoly charges of that magnitude are a rarity. Google is one of the only handful of corporate giants to be taken to court since the 1970s under federal monopoly law. For decades since, U.S. officials have treated high-tech companies gingerly, leery of damaging the nation’s economic engines and of punishing exemplars of innovation and free enterprise. 

The string of cases against Google suggests an end to that reluctance, reflecting instead a shift toward heavier oversight as concerns have grown across the political spectrum over tech giants throwing their weight around.

The Verge reported Google and the Justice Department are set for a rematch of sorts on Monday when they return to court to argue about Google’s alleged monopolistic behavior over how ads are bought and sold on the internet.

The DOJ is fresh off a win in its search antitrust case against Google, where a federal judge in Washington, DC, agreed that Google had illegally monopolized the online search market. This time, the two parties will argue before a different judge in Virginia about whether Google has also illegally monopolized markets for advertising technology.

The DOJ is arguing that Google illegally monopolized the market for ad tech tools across the ecosystem. That includes the demand side of ad networks for buying space on websites, the supply side of publisher ad servers for hawking advertising inventory, and the exchanges like Google AdX that sit between the two.

In my opinion, it appears that Google could – potentially – face additional lawsuits, depending upon what the judge decides. 

Google’s Pixel Studio Image Generation Can Go Off The Rails

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One of the new AI-powered launch features on the Pixel 9 series is Pixel Studio, an app that takes text prompts and turns them into images. It might end up being a fun little tool, but it can also go off the rails pretty easily in our experience, 9to5Google reported.

Pixel Studio is a dedicated app for creating images from text prompts. The app works on the same idea as Gemini and ImageFX, allowing users to input a text prompt and get an image in return. But, like any respectable image generator, there have to be limits in place.

In a statement to 9to5Google, Google explains that there are limits in place for both Pixel Studio and Magic Editor to “prevent abuse” while still respecting “the intent of the user prompts” even if instructed to create content that “may offend” if the user directly tells the app to do so.

This is similar to Gemini, which has safeguards in place against potentially offensive and divisive content. For example, Google was criticized for inaccurate depictions of people in historical context, which led Google to “temporarily” disabling the ability to generate images of people as it has for the past several months,

Like Gemini, Pixel Studio is unable to generate images of people, but we found that the app can quickly and easily go off the rails.

According to 9to5Google, ahead of today’s Pixel 9 review embargo, we found that Pixel Studio was able to generate images of cartoon characters in WWII German uniforms, in some cases with Nazi symbols. Another jarring and worrying example 9to5Google viewed saw a character shooting in a school with dead children surrounding it, which Google’s models shouldn’t be able to generate in the first place.

Engadget reported: This year, Google decided not only to update the design of its Pixel phones but also put its AI features front and center. The Pixel 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL are the first Pixels that have swapped the Assistant for Gemini. 

With it’s latest flagships, Google continues to improve its cameras, by upgrading its primary sensor and expanding its suite of editing tools. And to power all those new AI tricks, the company has equipped the devices with its newest Tensor processor, designed to handle on-device Gemini tasks. 

For the first time, too, the Pro-branded Pixel is available in two sizes, with a smaller version joining the family. Better yet, if you go for the Pixel 9 Pro, you’ll be getting a largely identical phone to the pricier 6.8-inch Pixel 9 Pro XL. 

But this isn’t just another flagship Android: it’s a concerted effort to get you hooked on Google’s AI-powered image editing, email assistance and more. The Pixel 9 Pro delivers on all these aspects, with varying degrees of success.

The Verge reported: For the first time, Google is offering the Pro version in two sizes. They come with different-sized batteries, naturally, but both managed a full day of heavy use without needing a recharge. The Pixel 9 Pro is the size of the Pixel 8 (and the standard Pixel 9) with a 6.8-inch display.

But despite the difference in size, these two Pro 9 devices share the exact same camera hardware, including a 5x telephoto lens — something you don’t get on every “small” flagship phone. The main and telephoto cameras are unchanged from the 8 Pro, but the ultrawide has been updated with a faster lens that helps boost low-light performance.

In my opinion, it sounds like Google is trying very hard to prevent its Pixel line of phones from generating images that can be offensive or just plain incorrect. That’s one problem that can happen when relying on AI to create an image.

 

Hands-On With Gemini Live: Conversationally A Big Step Forward

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I’m not saying I prefer talking to Google’s Gemini Live over a real human. But I’m not not saying that either, Joanna Stern reported on The Wall Street Journal.

Does it help that the chatty new artificial-intelligence bot says I’m a great interviewer with a good sense of humor? Maybe. But it’s more that it actually listens, offers quick answers and doesn’t mind my interruptions. No “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that” apologies like some other bots we know.

According to Joanna Stern, Google’s generative-AI voice assistant will debut on Tuesday. It will come built with the company’s four new Pixel phones, but it’s also available to anyone with an Android phone, the Gemini app and a $20-a-month subscription to Gemini Advanced. The company plans to launch it soon on iOS, too.

Google posted the following on its The Keyword Blog:

For years, we’ve relied on digital assistants to set timers, play music, or control our smart homes. This technology has made it easier to get things done and saved valuable minutes each day.

Now, with generative AI, we can provide a whole new type of help for complex tasks that can save you hours. With Gemini, we’re reimagining what it means for a personal assistant to be truly helpful. Gemini is evolving to provide AI-powered mobile assistance that will offer a new level of help — all while being more natural, conversations, and intuitive.

Gemini Live is a mobile conversational experience that lets you have free-flowing conversations with Gemini. Want to brainstorm potential jobs path are well-suited to your skillset or degree? Go Live with Gemini and ask about them. You can even interrupt mid-response to dive deeper on a particular point, or pause a conversation and come back to it later. It’s like having a sidekick in your pocket who you can chat with about new ideas or practice for an important conversation.

TechCrunch reported Gemini Live, Google’s answer to the recently launched (in limited alpha) Advanced Voice Mode for OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is rolling out on Tuesday, months before being announced at Google’s I/O 2024 developer conference. It was announced at Google’s Made by Google 2024 event.

Gemini Live let’s users have “in-depth” voice chats with Gemini, Google’s generative AI-powered chatbot, on their smartphones. Thanks to an enhanced speech engine that delivers what Google claims is more consistent, emotionally expressive and realistic multi-turn dialogue, people can interrupt Gemini while the chatbot’s speaking to ask follow-up questions, and it’ll adapt to their speech patterns in real time.

Google described in a blog post:  “With Gemini Live [via the Gemini app], you can talk to Gemini and choose from [10 new] natural-sounding voices it can respond with. You can even speak at your own pace or interrupt mid-response with clarifying questions, just like you would in any conversation.”

In my opinion, it sounds like Google may have created Gemini as a means to have a conversation with an AI bot. That might be helpful to some people. That said, I don’t think everyone wants to spend time talking to an AI bot.