Category Archives: Google

A former Google executive, who asked not to be identified because he was not permitted to talk about the deal, said the prospect of losing Apples traffic was terrifying to the company.

The Justice Department, which is asking for a court injunction preventing Google from entering into deals like the one it made with Apple, argues that the arrangement has unfairly helped make Google, which handles 92 percent of the worlds internet searches, the center of consumers online lives.

Online businesses like Yelp and Expedia, as well as companies ranging from noodle shops to news organizations, often complain that Googles search domination enables it to charge advertising fees when people simply look up their names, as well as to steer consumers toward its own products, like Google Maps. Microsoft, which had its own antitrust battle two decades ago, has told British regulators that if it were the default option on iPhones and iPads, it would make more advertising money for every search on its rival search engine, Bing.

Whats more, competitors like DuckDuckGo, a small search engine that sells itself as a privacy-focused alternative to Google, could never match Googles tab with Apple.

Apple now receives an estimated $8 billion to $12 billion in annual payments up from $1 billion a year in 2014 in exchange for building Googles search engine into its products. It is probably the single biggest payment that Google makes to anyone and accounts for 14 to 21 percent of Apples annual profits. Thats not money Apple would be eager to walk away from.

In fact, Mr. Cook and Mr. Pichai met again in 2018 to discuss how they could increase revenue from search. After the meeting, a senior Apple employee wrote to a Google counterpart that our vision is that we work as if we are one company, according to the Justice Departments complaint.

A forced breakup could mean the loss of easy money to Apple. But it would be a more significant threat to Google, which would have no obvious way to replace the lost traffic. It could also push Apple to acquire or build its own search engine. Within Google, people believe that Apple is one of the few companies in the world that could offer a formidable alternative, according to one former executive. Google has also worried that without the agreement, Apple could make it more difficult for iPhone users to get to the Google search engine.

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Apple, Google and a Deal That Controls the Internet - The New York Times

"The maintenance guy came in to look at it," Weiss said. "He told us pretty much to figure it out ourselves, like watch a YouTube video to learn how to fix it."

The Hub apartment complex promised luxury housing and amenities to tenants, but several prior and current residents said they didn't experience luxury at all.

The Hub has a rating of 4.5 stars from 412 reviews on Google; however, 304 reviews were made before the building was open to residents, according to data collected Oct. 18.

For Weiss, apartment issues only worsened on Aug. 28, when parts of his ceiling fell in, flooding the apartment kitchen, he said.

Weiss contacted the Hub's front desk to alert them of the emergency. After multiple emails and calls, he said the Hub addressed the flooding after the local health department became involved.

"The City of East Lansing said we couldn't live in this apartment anymore, which makes sense as the ceiling came down," Weiss said.

Weiss said his apartment failed the health department's inspection. The Hub's management told Weiss and his two roommates they would have to be relocated, he said.

"They only had two studios available," Weiss said. "So, that means if all three of us agreed to live there, the third person would have to be displaced with some random combination of people. ... They said either that or they could place one of us in a hotel, which I mean because of COVID and everything going on, why would any of us want to stay in a hotel?"

Weiss said the Hub would not let the three roommates out of their lease. Ultimately, Weiss decided to sign over the lease to a new tenant and moved home. When he left in late September, he said areas of the apartment had begun to mold.

In his last communication with the new tenant, Weiss said the apartment failed another health inspection almost two months later.

"The worst part is that not only did they not reimburse us for anything at all, but when they did communicate with us, they weren't nice to us," Weiss said.

Prior to move-in, the Hub's Google reviews averaged about 4.8 out of five stars. However, after move-in until the present, ratings averaged 3.4 out of five stars.

Of those who submitted reviews prior to opening, some mentioned not planning to live there. Others posted, alleging reviews were incentivized or fake. The Hub's management replied to these reviews, denying incentivizing or paying for reviews.

On the other hand, MSU students and prior residents Jack Eno and Vada Murray provided emails showing the Hub offered up to $750 for a Google review.

"A lot of them were from people who don't even live there," Murray, a MSU human biology senior, said. "So, it's kind of like, how can you even say that it's an amazing place to live because they were just trying to win prizes. ... I left a review before I even moved in.

When Murray lived at the Hub, she said dog urine and vomit would remain in the hallway for weeks and management was unresponsive.

"I think the reviews are skewed because I don't personally know anybody who enjoyed their experience there," Murray said.

Eno, an MSU athletic training senior, said he lived at the Hub between August 2019 and July 2020. He left a positive review before he moved in, then posted an updated version later.

"So pretty often, even the months before I had moved in, which was before it really even existed and no one had lived there yet, they (the Hub) would do little promos of where 'Hey, if you leave us a review on Google, we will enter you to win whatever gift card," Eno said.

Based on pictures and concept art, Eno said he had high expectations for the Hub.

Issues began with the Hub's 2019 move in, which began late and left tenants lined up along Grand River Avenue. Eno said he and his friends waited all day to move in.

"Right off the bat, me and some friends were like, OK this is maybe not what I expected," Eno said. "As soon as I walked into my room ... I was almost taken back, because I was like, 'Is this it?' My rent, I don't mind saying, was $1084 a month."

Eno said $1084 per month was his individual rent payment. Additionally, Eno said parking at the complex was difficult. There were not enough spots to support 10 floors of tenants.

"Overall, I'm pretty happy to be out of the Hub," Eno said.

Mouna Zarghami, a prior resident at the Hub, said she made a Google review prior to moving in to be entered for a prize. She said her original review does not reflect her experience.

"My experience was kind of 50/50," Zarghami said. "It wasn't great at the start. There were a lot of problems with move-in, and the management staff was absolutely horrible. I won't sugar coat anything, but as the year went by, they got new management (and) it got a little better."

When the pandemic began, management became unresponsive, Zarghami said. She described herself as an independent person but said she had to have her father call the Hub management to get a response.

Hanna Wilking has lived at the Hub since it opened. She said her experience has been good, but the complex's staff lacks communication.

Wilking said she has completed more surveys than reviews for the Hub.

"They send out an email, and they'll usually give incentives, like you (will) be entered to win a gift card or something like that," Wilking said.

Accounting senior Cole Ozbun lived at the Hub last year. He said issues began as soon as he moved in.

"As soon as we got into the room, there was leftover tape from painting, super dusty, the workers had left Gatorade bottles in our room," Ozbun said. "And extra screws that obviously weren't used. So, it was overall super messy."

Ozbun didn't remember how residents were contacted, but said they were invited to the Hub's lobby to spin a wheel for leaving a Google review.

Once residents showed they left a review, they could spin the wheel and receive a gift card, T-shirt or other prizes, Ozbun said.

"This was almost immediately after move-in, so they could buy our good reviews for when they started," Ozbun said.

Ozbun left a negative review while he was a resident at the Hub.

Anna Belden, a human biology senior, was a resident of the Hub during the 2019-2020 academic year.

Belden mirrored Murray's comments, she said the hallways were often dirty.

"There was literally a time where barf sat in my hallway for like a week straight," Belden said. "And, there was also a time where dog pee sat next to the elevators in my hallway until it evaporated because nobody cleaned it up."

Belden said her packages were often delivered to the Hub's lobby and lost.

"They'll lose your package or say they don't have it," Belden said. "The managers never can do anything to help you or nobody can ever help you."

After Belden moved out, she said management did not notify her of any pending charges. Instead, money was removed from her roommate's account without warning.

"It was just an overall terrible, terrible place to live, and I felt like I was being scammed and I did not want to give them any more money," Belden said.

Lily Mai, director of communications at Core Spaces, did not respond for an interview after questions were not provided in advance. The Hub East Lansing is a project of Core Spaces.

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The Hub residents reflect on inaccurate Google reviews - The State News

Starting today, Google is pushing a major update to its YouTube app on both platforms - Android and iOS. The update brings new functionalities, simplified UI and more importantly, gestures.

Now you can enter and exit full-screen mode more intuitively. By swiping up on a playing video, the latter rotates into landscape mode and enters full-screen. To minimize the video, you just swipe down.

The close captions button is no longer hidden in the three-dot menu and instead is now visible directly on the overlay menu. The same goes for the autoplay button. Both are now easier to reach while other buttons have been re-arranged for even more polished navigation.

The recently introduced Video Chapters feature on desktop is now making its way to the YouTube app too. It shows a list of all the chapters in a video along with a thumbnail preview for each chapter so you can navigate easily.

To further improve the navigation experience, new suggested actions are also included prompting you with a message to rotate your phone or play the video you are watching in VR. More suggested actions are coming in the near future, Google says.

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Google brings new functionalities and gestures to its YouTube app - GSMArena.com news - GSMArena.com

For the second time in as many years, Google is working to fix a weakness in its Widevine digital rights management (DRM) technology used by online streaming sites like Disney, Hulu and Netflix to prevent their content from being pirated.

The latest cracks in Widevine concern the encryption technologys protection for L3 streams, which is used for low-quality video and audio streams only. Google says the weakness does not affect L1 and L2 streams, which encompass more high-definition video and audio content.

As code protection is always evolving to address new threats, we are currently working to update our Widevine software DRM with the latest advancements in code protection to address this issue, Google said in a written statement provided to KrebsOnSecurity.

In January 2019, researcher David Buchanan tweeted about the L3 weakness he found, but didnt release any proof-of-concept code that others could use to exploit it before Google fixed the problem.

This latest Widevine hack, however, has been made into an extension for Microsoft Windows users of the Google Chrome web browser and posted for download on the software development platform Github.

Tomer Hadad, the researcher who developed the browser extension, said his proof-of-concept code was done to further show that code obfuscation, anti-debugging tricks, whitebox cryptography algorithms and other methods of security-by-obscurity will eventually by defeated anyway, and are, in a way, pointless.

Google called the weakness a circumvention that would be fixed. But Hadad took issue with that characterization.

Its not a bug but an inevitable flaw because of the use of software, which is also why L3 does not offer the best quality, Hadad wrote in an email. L3 is usually used on desktops because of the lack of hardware trusted zones.

Media companies that stream video online using Widevine can select different levels of protection for delivering their content, depending on the capabilities of the device requesting access. Most modern smartphones and mobile devices support much more robust L1 and L2 Widevine protections that do not rely on L3.

Further reading: Breaking Content Protection on Streaming Websites

Tags: David Buchanan, digital rights management, DRM, Google Widevine, L3, Tomer Hadad

This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2020 at 7:54 pmand is filed under A Little Sunshine.You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Google Mending Another Crack in Widevine Krebs on Security - Krebs on Security

Bitcoin has come a long way in the ten years since it was created but, for some, it still feels early.

The bitcoin price, climbing to year-to-date highs this week and recapturing some of the late 2017 bullishness that pushed it to around $20,000 per bitcoin, has found fresh support from Wall Street and traditional investors this year.

Now, Wall Street legend and billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, who made headlines when he revealed he was buying bitcoin to hedge against inflation earlier this year, has said buying bitcoin is "like investing with Steve Jobs and Apple AAPL or investing in Google early."

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs is credited with creating the iPhone and turning Apple into one of ... [+] the world's most valuable and influential companies.

"Bitcoin has a lot of characteristics of being an early investor in a tech company," Jones, who's known for his macro trades and particularly his bets on interest rates and currencies, told CNBC's Squawk Box in an interview this week, adding he likes bitcoin "even more" than he did when his initial bitcoin investment was announced in May this year.

"I think we are in the first inning of bitcoin," he said. "Its got a long way to go."

Back in May, Jones revealed he was betting on bitcoin as a hedge against the inflation he sees coming as a result of unprecedented central bank money printing and stimulus measures undertaken in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Jones compared bitcoin to gold during the 1970s and said his BVI Global Fund, with assets worth $22 billion under management, could invest as much as "a low single-digit percentage exposure percentage" in bitcoin futures.

"Ive got a small single-digit investment in bitcoin," Jones said this week. "Thats it. I am not a bitcoin flag bearer."

However, Jones said he sees great potential in bitcoin and people who are "dedicated to seeing bitcoin succeed in it becoming a commonplace store of value, and transactional to boot, at a very basic level."

"Bitcoin has this enormous contingence of really, really smart and sophisticated people who believe in it," he said. "I came to the conclusion that bitcoin was going to be the best of inflation trades, the defensive trades, that you would take."

The bitcoin price has climbed this year but remains far from its all-time highs of around $20,000 ... [+] per bitcoin.

Jones' latest comments come as payments giant PayPal PYPL has this week announced it will allow its 346 million users to buy and spend bitcoin and a handful of other major cryptocurrencies.

The development has been taken as vindication for long-time bitcoin believersmany of whom see PayPal as an enemy of bitcoin.

Alongside PayPal's support of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, a number of publicly-listed companies have added bitcoin to their treasuries in recent months, with U.K.-listed bitcoin-buying app Mode becoming the first publicly-traded British company to put bitcoin on its booksmaking the announcement hot on the heels of Jack Dorsey-led payments company Square SQ .

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Buying Bitcoin Like Investing In Google Early Or Steve Jobs And Apple, Predicts Wall Street Legend And Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones - Forbes

Turn lights off when you leave and back on when you return using Google Home's long-awaited presence sensing feature.

When Googleunveiled the new Home & Away location awareness feature for its Google Home and Nest smart speakers, I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe I can finally say goodbye to Alexa on my Amazon Echo ($34 at Amazon) once and for all.

I have an embarrassment of smart home devices, so I need them to do their job with as little involvement from me as possible. For example, rather than running around shouting at everything before I leave the house, I want all the lights and other devices in my home to automatically turn off when I leave. Same for when I come back home, I want my smart home to fire up again. Up until now, Google Home had no way of automating anything like that, so I had Alexa handle it.

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The first thing I noticed when setting up Home & Away on the Google Home app was that it uses more information than Alexa to determine whether someone is home. With the Amazon Echo, all you can do is create a routine that triggers when a specific device (like your phone) leaves or arrives at a particular location (like where you live). Google Home, on the other hand, can keep an eye on several devices belonging to anyone and everyone in your household. But not only that -- Google Home can have certain devices keep an eye on you as well.

Now that Home & Away has appeared to roll out to iPhones ($560 at Back Market) and Android phones everywhere, here's everything you need to do to set it up and start basking in home automation glory.

Google Home can use the motion sensor in your Nest Learning Thermostat to determine if anyone's home.

If you open the Google Home app and see a tab at the top that reads Set Up Home & Away Routines, tap that to get started. If you closed out that tab without setting it up, just tap the Routines tab on the Google Home app's home screen, then under Home Routines tap Home. (If you already set it up but want to make changes, skip ahead to the next section.)

The first time you set up Home & Away, the app will ask a bunch of permissions, prompt you to set up your home and away routines and add your home address. Go ahead and tap Agree, Set up and Next until you get to the Add your home address screen (there's an easier, better way to set up both presence setting and home and away routines once setup is complete, so skip those for now). Enter your home address, tap Next then Finish to exit setup. Now for the fun part.

From the Google Home app home screen, tap Routines then tap either Home or Away. Beneath How to start, it should say When someone comes home or When everyone's away. You can tap that to adjust presence settings (more on that in a bit), but for now let's look at what you want to happen when everyone leaves or someone comes home.

Google Home can monitor the location of your phone to trigger home and away routines.

Tap Add action to see a list of all the devices you can control with these routines. Smart bulbs will be listed first, under Lights. You can set them to turn off or on and you can change their brightness, but you can't, unfortunately, set what color you want them to be (at least not with the Philips Hue bulbs I have).

You should see smart plugs ($25 at Amazon) next under Plugs. I have a hodgepodge of brands, but they all can only be set to turn on or off. My Nest Learning Thermostat ($189 at Amazon) is next on the list -- it has an Eco mode to save on utility costs when you're not home, but I don't use it in case I leave my puppers behind. You should also see any Nest Aware cameras and any other smart home device you can control with this routine.

You can select multiple devices of the same kind if you want to, for example, have a whole set of lights turn on or off. Just tap the check boxes besides the gadgets you want to control, then tap next. Decide what you want them to do (on, off, brightness) then tap Add Action.

Google Home's new home and away routines create location triggers to control other smart home devices, like smart bulbs.

For any of this to work, your Presence sensing settings need to be on point. Open the Google Home app and tap the Settings tab, then tap Presence sensing. Make sure the tab is turned on for Allow this home to use phone locations. Under the heading Phones, you should see your own phone plus others (including tablets) associated with everyone in your household, each with a toggle. You may want to turn off the toggle for any devices that get left behind when everyone leaves -- Wi-Fi-only tablets, for example.

At the bottom of the screen you'll see a list of any Google Home or Google Nest smart home devices that can also help determine if anyone is home. For example, I have a third-gen Nest Learning Thermostat, which has a motion sensor, so I have a toggle for that. You may want to toggle some or all of these off if, for example, you have a free-range pet who might set them off. My dog either goes with me or in his crate, so I've left mine on.

For more tips and tricks to help make your life easier, here'show to use Google Home like an intercom,how to turn it into a speakerphone andall the ways Google Home is a wiz with words.

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Bye, Alexa. Google Home finally gets the Amazon Echo feature I've been waiting for - CNET

Whither the states: A coalition of almost every U.S. state has been probing Google since September 2019. Instead of joining the DOJs antitrust complaint, the 37 remaining states said Tuesday they planned to continue their investigation and hoped to reach a decision in the coming weeks.

Several state attorneys general, including many Democrats, opposed filing a suit so close to the election. While the states hope to finish by the end of October, any complaint wouldnt be filed until after Nov. 3, but could come as soon as that week or the week after, the three people said, speaking anonymously to discuss ongoing deliberations.

Whats the matter with Texas: The state took the lead on a probe by 48 states plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico investigating Googles conduct in the advertising technology market. But turmoil in Paxtons office has clouded the probes future.

Seven top aides to the Texas AG said in a letter to state officials that they had alerted law enforcement to concerns that Paxton may have violated laws against bribery and improper influence. Their concerns stem from Paxtons actions related to Austin real estate investor Nate Paul, who donated $25,000 to the attorney generals 2018 reelection campaign.

Paxton said he would not step down despite calls by Democratic attorneys general to do so and accused rogue employees of making false accusations.

Paxtons No. 2, Jeff Mateer, resigned after the allegations became public. Paxton told the Southeast Texas Record that he has placed two of the other employees on leave.

This week, two additional employees were fired, the Texas Tribune and other local news outlets reported, raising new concerns about whether Paxton may have violated state whistleblower laws by improperly terminating them.

The remaining two of the seven whistleblowers Ryan Bangert and Darren McCarty have been key players in Texas Google probe. McCarty, who worked as a litigation partner at law firm Alston & Bird before joining the attorney generals office, was expected to head Texas trial team in the Google advertising case.

As of Friday, both were still employed by the attorney general office, the individual said.

The Justice Department is separately probing Googles dominance of the ad markets, and the federal investigation remains ongoing.

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Turbulence in Texas AG's office to delay Google ad suit - POLITICO

(AP)

Google is being sued for allegedly protecting its monopoly illegally, and many believe the company simply has too much power. Geoffrey Fowler, a technology columnist with The Washington Post, joined Seattles Morning News to discuss the case.

I think the picture is emerging that the Google that we think about as the young upstart, the guys in the Stanford dorm room working on building a company, just doesnt exist anymore, he said.

Fowler has written about how Google search results can be very self-serving, often not providing the best information.

You see that over time Google has added a lot more advertisements to the top of search results, and those advertisements look more and more like actual search results. We have to do a lot more scrolling to actually get to the results of these days. Its a little bit like Wheres Waldo?, but for information, thats one problem that emerged, he said.

Looking at previous Amy Coney Barrett cases involving abortion, gun rights

Another problem that emerged is that Google increasingly puts at the top of search results information that leads you back to Google, he added. Im talking about Google YouTube results or Google Images or Google Maps, and theres a little bit of a conflict of interest there because, first of all, they dont necessarily always give you the best information, and second of all, Google makes more money from them and uses them to collect more of your data.

Is this being done deliberately? Or would it turn out if we did some research that the Google option in the search results was verifiably higher quality?

Now Google would claim, of course, that it always gives us the most useful and and helpful information at the top. Thats what they say theyre always doing. And they claim, of course, they have our interests at heart. But the truth of the matter is Google is a very profit maximizing corporation, he said.

Twitter to pay WA $100,000 following campaign finance violations

So whenever it has the opportunity to either make some money by putting more ads or kind of drive you back to the Google property as it tries to go deeper into things like video, and travel, and maps, its going to do that, too, Fowler said. My take is that at its core, Google has a conflict of interest now because its trying to get into so many things.

Fowler says this monopoly is potentially bad for consumers, bad for the economy, and stifles innovation.

The Department of Justice didnt actually call for Google to be split up per se, but I think that that were at a point where Google is just kind of the tip of the iceberg of Washington realizing that there are a couple of tech companies that frankly just have too much power over the internet economy, which increasingly is becoming our entire economy, he said.

And that is bad for consumers, but also just bad for our economy. It stifles innovation. I mean, good luck to anybody who wanted to start a rival search engine right now, Fowler added. It couldnt even gain any traction at all because Google has locked up these contracts with companies like Apple to be the default search engine on all those iPhones. And, you know, their core argument here is that, well, people choose Google because Google is great and everybody loves Google. But if that was the case, would it really be spending that much money with Apple to make sure its the default?

Listen to Seattles Morning News weekday mornings from 5 9 a.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to thepodcast here.

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Tech expert: Google search results are self-serving, and a conflict of interest - MyNorthwest.com

Your readers have questions. Theyre turning to Google to answer them.

In July, trending queries included what is a faithless elector, qualified immunity, corona is airborne disease or not? and brain eating amoeba florida. (Such a fun summer.) More recently, why is columbus day celebrated, how to watch 60 minutes, and presidential debate drinking game spiked.

Simon Rogers, a longtime data journalist who now serves as the data editor at Google News Lab, catalogs these in a regular Google Trends Newsletter. The illuminating, curious, and occasionally hilarious missive started as a breakdown for coronavirus-related topics but has continued even as our collective attention has grown to include Black Lives Matter protests, the general election, and an onside kick by the Dallas Cowboys. By publishing lists of breakout phrases and trending questions, reporters can see what readers are most interested in knowing. Ahead of the election, the newsletter also serves as a reminder of the top issues for voters (unemployment, wages, and health care) despite relative spikes in other topics.

In a recent issue focused on the final presidential debate, subscribers learned that swine flu mortality rate and did fauci say not to wear masks were both breakout searches within the first 30 minutes of the broadcast.

The trending data comes without context, which makes names, questions, and phrases susceptible to (mis)interpretation. (As Rogers regularly reminds readers, Search data is an indication of curiosity in the subject or candidate. It should not be considered an indication of voter intent.)

ButRogers said he doesnt see it as his job to say whysomething is trending. Instead, the information is intended as a launching point for journalists who may want to address a Googled question directly for readers or dig deeper to see if theres a story lurking behind a breakout term.

The newsletter also featured graphs and visualizations free for reporters to screenshot or embed. From their special debate edition:

The recently launched Journalist Studio, a collection that Google says will help reporters do their work more efficiently, creatively, and securely, includes another tool worth noting.

Pinpoint uses artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to help researchers sift through investigative materials. Built with journalists in mind, the tool can be used on public collections, like the trove of papers on Afghanistan released by The Washington Post, or private sets that you want to upload yourself.

Megan Chan, news ecosystem lead at Google, said the technology is exactly the type of resource-saving tool she was on the hunt for as director of digital operations at The Washington Post and, before that, director of product at Politico.

The tool is more than a super-powered Ctrl+F. Pinpoint uses optical character recognition and speech-to-text technologies to scour PDFs, photos, e-mails and audio files.

Chan showed me that Pinpoint could decipher a messily handwritten name on a scanned document and infer which Kennedy brother was being referred to on second reference. The tool also uses synonyms to help reporters locate the information theyre looking for; search for firearm and youll get gun and rifle references, too.

As Chan wrote:

The tool has already proven useful for investigative projects like USA TODAYs report on 40,600COVID-19-related deathstied to nursing homes and Reveals look into theCOVID-19 testing disasterin ICE detention centers, as well as a Washington Post piece about theopioid crisis. Pinpoints speed also helped reporters with shorter-term projects like Philippines-based Rapplersexaminationof CIA reports from the 1970s and breaking news situations like the Mexico-based Verificado MXs quickfact checkingof the governments daily pandemic updates.

Because you can filter documents by location, organization, or person, Pinpoint can show local journalists the documents that are most relevant to their readers. The Baltimore Sun, for example, used the tool to find letters showing that federal agents blamed Martin Luther King Jr. for violence in Baltimore among the tens of thousands of documents related to President John F. Kennedys assassination released by the National Archives.

You can request access to the Pinpoint tool and the rest of the Journalist Studio tools here.

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Google releases new tools for journalists and shares insider insight on what's trending on the search platform - Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard

Months before the Justice Department filed a landmark antitrust suit against Google this week, the internet companys adversaries hustled behind the scenes to lay the groundwork for a case.

Nonprofits critical of corporate power warned lawmakers that Google illegally boxed out rivals. With mounds of documents, economists and antitrust scholars detailed to regulators and state investigators how the company throttled competition. And former Silicon Valley insiders steered congressional investigators with firsthand evidence of industry wrongdoing.

An unlikely collection of lawyers, activists, economists, academics and former corporate insiders are now fueling the backlash against the worlds largest technology companies. Bolstered by millions of dollars from high-profile sponsors like the financier George Soros and the Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, they have coalesced to become a new class of professional tech skeptic.

To rein in Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, the tech opponents have employed a wide set of tactics. They have lobbied regulators and lawmakers about anticompetitive business practices, filed legal complaints about privacy violations, organized boycotts and exposed the risks of disinformation and artificial intelligence.

Their potency was cemented on Tuesday when the Justice Department filed its suit accusing Google of maintaining an illegal monopoly over internet search and search advertising. After years of making the same argument, the opponents claimed the action as a victory.

Its a moment of pride, said Cristina Caffarra, a London-based economist who advised state attorneys general on their Google investigation and worked on an earlier probe of Google in Europe that the Justice Departments case is similar to. We did it.

Their rise underlines the growing sophistication of opponents to the more than $5 trillion technology industry. Even if the Justice Departments suit against Google becomes mired in legal wrangling, their swelling numbers and activity suggests that the tech behemoths will face years of scrutiny and court battles ahead. That could eventually lead to new regulations and laws that reshape peoples digital experiences.

There is a counterweight growing in reaction to Big Tech similar to what weve seen in relation to Big Oil over these past decades, said Martin Tisn, managing director of Luminate, a foundation that has provided $78.3 million since 2014 to civil society groups and law firms focused on tech-accountability issues. I would hope the companies are concerned and watching.

Google declined to comment beyond its statements on Tuesday that the Justice Departments lawsuit was flawed and would do nothing to help consumers.

Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple have girded themselves for a long battle. Often outspending their critics, they have hired law firms, funded policy think tanks, built out their lobbying operations and started public relations campaigns. They have also argued that they behave responsibly and that consumers love their products.

Carl Szabo, the vice president of NetChoice, a trade group that represents Google, Facebook and Amazon, dismissed the tech critics as an industry for activists and an opportunity for rivals to put on the moniker of consumer protection.

The anti-tech professionals agree on many broad points: that the companies have too much power and have transformed commerce and communication. But they have sometimes found themselves at odds with one another and do not agree on the fixes. Some support using antitrust laws to take on the companies, potentially breaking them up. Others said tougher regulations were better to rein in the firms.

Sarah Miller, executive director of American Economic Liberties Project, a group focused on corporate concentration, favors breaking up the companies. She said there was jockeying to put forward ideas, but that the movement was a fairly aligned, functional ecosystem.

Many of the groups are increasingly well funded. Billionaires including Mr. Soros and Pierre Omidyar, the eBay co-founder who backs Luminate and other groups, have poured tens of millions of dollars into opposing the tech industry. Mr. Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, is funding think tanks and activists who pressure the companies.

Institutions like the Ford Foundation are also funding civil society groups and research efforts to study techs harms. And human rights groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Anti-Defamation League have devoted more resources to tech-accountability issues.

If you compare today to five years ago, there is a much different awareness among policymakers and the public, said Vera Franz, deputy director of the Open Society Foundations Information Program, an organization backed by Mr. Soros that has spent $24 million this year on groups focused on privacy, online discrimination and other tech topics. The key question is how to translate that awareness to real change and real accountability.

The anti-tech movements first signs of success came in the European Union about a decade ago when some of Googles rivals banded together to persuade regulators to investigate the company for antitrust violations. The resulting cases cost Google more than $9 billion in fines.

In 2016, the opponents scored another victory when the European Union passed a landmark data privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, which many lawyers and activists now use against the tech companies.

In the United States, few were alarmed by techs power until the 2016 presidential election, when Russia used social media to spread disinformation and sow political discord. In 2018, the Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed Facebooks weak privacy safeguards and added to the momentum.

Since then, the influence of industry critics has swelled. Antitrust lawyers and economists focused on tech accountability are in demand at law firms and think tanks. Civil society groups eager to investigate the industry are hiring data scientists and researchers. Universities are adding programs looking at techs harm.

Bookstores are also stocking titles like The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, by the Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff, about how companies like Facebook and Google try to predict and control human behavior. Netflix films like The Social Dilemma, which is critical of social media, have become surprise hits.

Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist, said few shared his concerns about tech five years ago. Now he speaks with American and European authorities about regulating the tech giants as public utilities. Mr. Harris, who starred in The Social Dilemma, said he wanted to mobilize a global movement of regular people and citizens, akin to what Al Gore did for the environment after releasing The Inconvenient Truth.

It took a long time to get here, said Mr. Harris, who in 2018 also co-founded the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit that raises awareness about techs dangers.

One clear impact of the anti-tech community was the 449-page report released on Oct. 6 by the House antitrust subcommittee, in one of Congresss deepest looks at the industry in years. House lawmakers concluded that Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook had abused their power to block competitors.

Tech critics played a central role influencing the direction of the report. Lina Khan, an antitrust and competition law scholar, was a counsel for the committee that drafted the report. Fiona Scott Morton, a Yale economist, and Gene Kimmelman, a former Justice Department antitrust official, provided legal and economic background to investigators. Roger McNamee, an early Facebook investor who later turned against the social network, also met so regularly with congressional staff members that he thanked several of them in his 2019 book, Zucked, about the damage Facebook was doing to society.

A similar coalition helped build momentum for the Justice Department and state attorneys general investigations of Google. Lawyers at the Justice Department built the case off theories developed by economists including Ms. Caffarra. Google has criticized Ms. Caffarras involvement in an inquiry led by Texas because she has done work for prominent rivals of the company, including News Corp.

There was a consensus that enforcement has not delivered, said Ms. Caffarra, who works at Charles River Associates, an economic consulting firm. Im in favor of really putting on pressure. Too little has happened.

But their criticism varies by company. While Ms. Caffarra and Ms. Scott Morton have raised alarms about Google and Facebook, they have also done work on behalf of Amazon.

Gary Reback, an antitrust lawyer who has battled Microsoft and Google, said the political momentum could evaporate. Two decades ago, he said, the government filed a landmark antitrust case against Microsoft but did not produce the safeguards to prevent misbehavior later.

We should have had a seminal moment 20 years ago, he said. Something happened that caused the momentum to dissipate, and thats the risk here.

For now, the mood is largely celebratory. After this months House report, Googles critics in Washington passed around a version of a meme that featured dancing pallbearers holding a coffin, essentially jubilant over the misfortune of the coffins occupant.

The pallbearers were Representative David Cicilline, the Rhode Island Democrat who chairs the House antitrust subcommittee, and Representative Ken Buck, a Republican member of the panel who agreed with parts of the report.

And the coffin? It bore Googles logo.

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Big Techs Professional Opponents Strike at Google - The New York Times