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Google will confront the US government's latest attempt to topple its internet empire in federal court on Friday as a judge considers how to prevent the abusive tactics that culminated in parts of its digital ad network being branded as an illegal monopoly. The courtroom showdown in Alexandria, Virginia, will pit lawyers from Google and the US Department of Justice against each other in closing proceedings focused on the complex technology that distributes millions of digital ads across the internet each day. After a lengthy trial last year, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled in April that pieces of Google's ad technology had been rigged in a way that made it an illegal monopoly. That set up another 11-day trial earlier this fall to help Brinkema determine how to remedy its anti-competitive practices. Friday's closing arguments will give both Google and the Justice Department a final chance to sway Brinkema before she issues a ruling that probably won't come until early next ..
Reliance Industries has built four high-powered growth engines of retail, digital services, media and entertainment, and new energy to propel the conglomerate's next phase of expansion, Chairman Mukesh Ambani said. Parallelly, Reliance is reshaping itself into a new-age deep-tech enterprise, he said in a message to shareholders in the firm's latest annual report. The firm, which traditionally had oil and petrochemicals as the growth drivers, has in the last few years ventured into retail - both online and physical stores - telecom and digital services, built a media empire around news and entertainment channels, and laid the foundation for giga factories for its clean energy foray. "Each of these (four) platforms is technology-first, innovation-led, and positioned to disrupt industries while delivering massive value to Indian consumers and the global market," Ambani said. On its mainstay cash-cow oil-to-chemicals (O2C) business, which houses the world's largest single location oil
The Australian government said Thursday it will tax large digital platforms and search engines unless they agree to share revenue with Australian news media organisations. The tax would apply from January 1 to tech companies that earn more than 250 million Australian dollars ($160 million) a year in revenue from Australia, Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones and Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said. They include Meta, Google, Alphabet and ByteDance. The tax would be offset through money paid to Australian media organizations. The size of the tax is not clear. "The real objective ... is not to raise revenue -- we hope not to raise any revenue. The real objective is to incentivise agreement-making between platforms and news media businesses in Australia, Jones told reporters. The move comes after Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, announced that it would not renew three-year deals to pay Australian news publishers for their content. A previous government ...
The Delhi High Court has observed that no public interest can be served by keeping information alive on the Internet after quashing criminal proceedings against a person and asked portals and search engines to mask the name of a man who has been acquitted in a case. The high court said the right to privacy is a fundamental right and forms an intrinsic part of Article 21 of the Constitution and the concept of right to privacy incorporates the right to be forgotten. "In the age of the internet, every piece of information that finds its way to the internet, gains permanence. The need to allow the masking of names of individuals acquitted of any offence or when criminal proceedings against such persons are quashed emanates from the most basic notions of proportionality and fairness," Justice Amit Mahajan said. The high court said while access to information is a fundamental aspect of democracy, the same cannot be divorced from the need to balance the right to information of the public .