alphabet

Philipp Schindler, Google’s top sales executive, has his cellphone ringtone set to the “Star Wars” theme music. His office décor includes a collection of toy lightsabers, and he infuses presentations with references to the space epic.The props are fitting for a man tasked with convincing business partners and regulators that his employer’s huge influence over the digital economy is more a force for good than evil. As chief business officer, Mr. Schindler, 51 years old, leads sales for Google’s online advertising products…

Alphabet unit Google could face EU antitrust charges next year over its digital advertising business, putting the company at risk of its fourth fine in the EU of more than a billion euros, people familiar with the matter said. Google's ad business, which generated over $100 billion in sales last year, is Alphabet's biggest moneymaker. It accounted for about 80% of annual revenue, despite efforts over the past decade to push into selling hardware, subscription services and cloud computing technology. The European…

The top watchdog of American business is also home to Washington’s most active Wall Street investors.The Federal Trade Commission in recent years has opened investigations into nearly every major industry. It has launched antitrust probes into technology companies, examined credit card firms and moved to restrict drug, energy and defense-company mergers. At the same time, senior officials at the FTC disclosed more trades of stocks, bonds and funds, on average, than officials at any other major agency in a…

Alphabet unit Google could face antitrust charges next year over its digital advertising business, with EU regulators frustrated over the slow pace of settlement talks with the company, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.Google's ad business is Alphabet's biggest moneymaker, accounting for about 80 percent of annual revenue, despite efforts over the past decade to push into selling hardware, subscription services and cloud computing technology. The European Commission launched an investigation into Google's…

China is making new strides in its bid to join the U.S. as a leader in quantum computing, a promising but elusive technology that could one day supercharge scientific research and transform data-intensive industries ranging from finance and pharmaceuticals to logistics and green energy. Baidu Inc., a Chinese internet pioneer known for its Google-like search engine, said in late August that it had built its own version of a quantum computer, an experimental device that exploits the quirks of…

Facebook identified about 400 malicious apps that were available in the Google or Apple app stores. Photo: Jenny Kane/Associated Press…

The U.S. is starting to implement a deal with the European Union aimed at allowing information about Europeans to continue to be stored on U.S. soil, reducing a looming threat to thousands of companies with trans-Atlantic operations.President Biden on Friday issued an executive order giving Europeans new rights to challenge U.S. government-surveillance practices against them, a central element of the preliminary deal that the U.S. and the EU first outlined in March. Now the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm,…

Photo: Ben Stansall (Getty Images)It turns out Facebook isn’t just the place where your angry uncle goes to vent his irate political opinions and numb out to soft porn; it’s also one of the last viable avenues for pushing political ads on the internet in 2022.Other major social platforms like Twitter and TikTok have specifically turned their backs on political ads (officially, at least), in part, to avoid dealing with toxic communities ripe with misinformation, but Facebook’s quietly held the line. With the 2022 midterms…

Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG 3.13% Google will pay the state of Arizona $85 million to settle a 2020 lawsuit in which the search giant was accused of deceiving users by recording their locations even after they tried to turn off the company’s tracking on their smartphones and web browsers. Google used the location information to sell ads for billions of dollars in profits, the state said. The bulk of the settlement money will go toward a…

HONG KONG—Google discontinued its Google Translate service in mainland China citing low usage, marking another retreat by the U.S. tech giant from the country. The pullback from China by Google, owned by Alphabet Inc., GOOG 3.52% is the latest in a broad withdrawal by American internet companies from the country in recent years, as domestic competition, a tougher regulatory environment and a strict internet censorship regime complicate…