Category: Business

• Spain's data watchdog suspended Meta's election products ahead of an EU vote.
• The agency expressed alarm that products collected excessive data from Facebook and Instagram users.
• Though it disagreed, Meta, also facing an EU investigation, complied with the order.

A Spanish data watchdog has put the brakes on two election products from Meta that were meant to roll out ahead of the upcoming European election.

The Spanish Data Protection Agency suspended Meta's Election Day Information and Voter Information Unit products amid concerns that they collected unnecessary election data from Facebook and Instagram users, the agency announced on May 31.

The products would have provided reminders to Facebook and Instagram users about the European Parliament elections, which are set to begin June 6.

But the Spanish Data Protection Agency said Meta would be able to "process personal data such as, among others, user name; IP address; age and gender," potentially violating the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. The agency's suspension remains in effect for 3 months.

"The Agency considers that the data collection and storage planned by the company would put at serious risk the rights and freedoms of Instagram and Facebook users, who would see an increase in the volume of information Meta collects about them, allowing for more complex, detailed and exhaustive profiling, and generating more intrusive processing," a translation of the agency's statement read.

In a statement to Reuters, Meta said it was complying with the EU's data regulations.

"Our election tools have been expressly designed to respect users' privacy and comply with the GDPR. While we disagree with the AEPD's assessment in this case, we have cooperated with their request," a company spokesperson told Reuters.

A Meta spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

The suspension comes after the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, opened an investigation in April into Meta's "policies and practices relating to deceptive advertising and political content on its services." In response, a Meta spokesperson told Reuters that the company has a "well-established process for identifying and mitigating risks on our platforms."

• Trump has joined TikTok — nearly four years after he sought to ban the app in the US as president.
• "It's my honor," the ex-president said in his first video.
• Both Trump and Biden are looking to reach young voters through the popular video-sharing app.

As president, Donald Trump wanted to ban TikTok for its alleged ties to the Chinese government.

But on Saturday, the ex-president became one of the platform's newest users, expanding his online reach to young people ahead of November.

By early Sunday afternoon, Trump had amassed 2.1 million followers and his first video — taken at an Ultimate Fighting Championship event in Newark last night — had amassed over 2.5 million likes.

The video kicks off with remarks by UFC President Dana White as he points to Trump: "The president is now on TikTok."

Trump's response: "It's my honor."

The Trump campaign was just as ebullient over the development.

"We will leave no front undefended and this represents the continued outreach to a younger audience consuming pro-Trump and anti-Biden content," Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.

Trump's newfound fondness for TikTok comes nearly four years after he signed an executive order that would have forced TikTok to sell to an American company. TikTok sued and the order was struck down in courts.

President Joe Biden — whose reelection campaign also launched a TikTok account — similarly signed legislation in April that could lead to a national TikTok ban if China-based parent company ByteDance chooses not to divest itself of the app.

TikTok has roughly 170 million users in the United States, and both Biden and Trump are angling to reach its young-skewing audience ahead of November.

While Biden easily won over voters aged 18 to 29 in the 2020 presidential election, issues like inflation and Gaza have hampered his campaign this year.

• Google is a multi-billion-dollar tech company best known for its search engine.
• Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergei Brin, and is currently led by CEO Sundar Pichai.
• Google's products and services include productivity software, business tools, and AI programs.

Google is a global technology company best known for its search engine, which is the most widely used in the world.

Google's founders met as graduate students at Stanford University and set out to catalog every page on the internet.

However, in the years since, the multi-billion-dollar juggernaut company's offerings have expanded greatly, necessitating the creation of its parent company, Alphabet Inc.

Here's a look at Google's history and the array of products and services it offers today.

Google's history

Larry Page is the son of two academics and was enthralled with technology from an early age. A biography of Nikola Tesla that he read at the age of 12 instilled his drive to build something that would change the world. Page did his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan and then headed to Stanford to pursue his Ph.D.

Google's other founder, Sergey Brin, came from much humbler beginnings: He was born in the Soviet Union in August 1973. His father was an economist who dreamed of being an astrophysicist, but he wasn't able to pursue those dreams due to antisemitism in the USSR. Brin's family fled to the US when he was 6. Brin earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland and his Ph.D. from Stanford, where he met Page.

The pair didn't click at first — they found one another "obnoxious." But the classmates eventually grew to be close friends who could geek out about computer science together. They also had a shared love for Burning Man, which was the cause for the first Google Doodle (the temporary illustration on the search engine's homepage let visitors know the founders were out of office).

Brin and Page began working on the search engine that would become Google in 1996, initially calling the project "BackRub." The google.com domain was officially registered in September 1997, and the company was incorporated in 1998.

In the company's early days, Brin, Page, and Eric Schmidt, a veteran tech executive, operated as a triumvirate (though Page considered himself CEO). However, Google's investors felt the company needed more experienced management. As a result, Schmidt became the first official, solo Google CEO in 2001.

Page would again serve as chief executive after learning from Schmidt for 10 years, while Brin served as the president of technology.

Google's services

Google is, of course, best known for its search engine. At first, Google's search engine only indexed web pages. But in July 2001, Google Images launched in response to search interest in pictures of a green Versace dress Jennifer Lopez had worn in February 2000.

The tech giant has introduced numerous other internet-based services over the years, with the goal of enriching users' experience on the web.

An early introduction was Google Adwords (Google Ads, today), which lets brands, businesses, influencers, and other paying customers place advertisements on various surfaces on the internet. The type of ad internet users see, how often it's served, and the quality of its placement all depend on the user's behavior and how much the advertiser spent.

Another useful service for business owners is Google Business Profile, previously called Google My Business. This free tool allows entrepreneurs to influence how their company appears in Google search results. It's especially geared toward small, local establishments.

Many of those businesses may also accept contactless, mobile payments through Google Pay, a secure digital payment platform. Transactions are tokenized and customers' credit card information is protected behind a passcode or biometrics like a fingerprint or face ID.

Business owners and marketing professionals may also find value in Google Trends, which provides real-time data about Google users' search interest in billions of people, places, topics, and terms.

If there are particular people or topics you're interested in keeping tabs on, you can set up Google alerts to stay on top of the latest search results for each.

Google productivity tools

Google has a host of services designed to aid productivity.

Many people use Google Calendar to manage their days, whether at work or personally. The collaborative service allows users to create and manage multiple calendars, which can also be shared with others, ensuring that families, coworkers, and others can stay on top of their daily tasks.

Often used with the calendar program is Google Meet. The video communication app exploded during the pandemic, cementing itself as an essential service for remote workers and long-distance loved ones.

The company's online learning platform, Google Classroom, became another staple of pandemic life for millions of people worldwide while schools were closed. The system streamlines teachers' classroom management, allowing them to share announcements, host virtual lessons, distribute learning materials, and more.

Another helpful tool for students is Google Scholar, which provides a simple way to search for academic literature.

Google's productivity tools make real-time collaboration possible for students and workers alike.

Multiple contributors can work on a presentation simultaneously thanks to Google Slides.

If you need to collect feedback or information from your audience or create a survey, Google Forms is the right tool.

Google Forms creates charts based on respondents' answers, and you can dig deeper into the data by opening it in Google Sheets. The online spreadsheet editor is useful for calculations, statistical analysis, creating charts, and more.

Fun features

Of course, not all of Google's tools have such serious uses.

Emoji Kitchen lets you mash together some of your favorite icons to create custom combinations.

Google Doodles add some whimsy to your day by highlighting historical moments and celebrating notable figures and even everyday things like the accordion or chilaquiles. Some of these temporary illustrations have been animated and interactive. Two of the most popular Google games, Snake and Pac-Man, originated as Google Doodles, commemorating the date of the games' invention.

Travel tools

Some Google tools simplify your travel planning and even help you navigate the real world once you reach your destination.

Travelers find the cheapest airfare by comparing multiple airlines at once with Google Flights. The service even allows you to track prices and book your flight directly, without ever visiting the airline's website.

Google Street View will give you a view of your destination before you even set foot on the ground. The tech giant deploys a fleet of specially-equipped cars and even backpack-mounted cameras to capture panoramic images of many of the world's roads, even in some of the most remote, rural areas.

Google Earth takes things even further, allowing you to explore the world in 3D from satellite images. With Google Earth or Street View, you can virtually visit world-famous landmarks without ever leaving your couch.

If you're traveling to a destination where you don't speak the primary language, or even if you've just landed on a foreign webpage online, Google Translate will be super helpful. The free app supports 133 languages and can interpret text, audio, or images.

Google Lens is another handy tool for exploring the real world. For example, if you're trying to identify a beautiful plant you came across in your travels, simply point your camera at it and Google will pull up information about it.

Finally, use Google Photos to manage all the pictures you take of your trip and share them with loved ones.

Google AI

Like virtually every other tech company, Google is turning its attention to artificial intelligence. Google's Gemini AI, formerly known as Bard, is a family of multimodal large language models that can recognize and understand text, images, audio, video, and code to produce human-like responses.

Google's generative AI launched in December 2023 to rival OpenAI's ChatGPT. The company claims it can help with a variety of tasks ranging from summarizing information to helping with writing to analyzing massive datasets.

Google has been hard at work integrating its Gemini AI into nearly all of its products, from its productivity suite to the actual search engine itself. Sundar Pichai, the current CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet, declared that Google would be an "AI-first company" and said Gemini is "one of the biggest science and engineering efforts we've undertaken as a company."

Gemini's success remains to be seen. At Google I/O 2024, the company's annual development conference, a demo showed the tech's integration into a pair of smart glasses. The demo called to mind a failed Google product: Google Glass, a set of smart glasses launched in 2012 and discontinued nearly a decade later. Perhaps the product was just ahead of its time, and Google's Gemini AI can give it new life.

Google acquisitions

Not all Google products and services have been completely homegrown. The company has made numerous significant acquisitions over the years.

In 2006, Google acquired the video-sharing platform YouTube for $1.65 billion. It's a major revenue source for the company, with more than 100 million subscribers globally as of early 2024.

Another major purchase came in January 2013: Google bought Waze, the traffic and navigation app, for $1.3 billion. The key difference between Waze and Google's in-house navigation app, Maps, is that Waze users can report hazards like accidents, impaired vehicles, speed traps, and road closures so the app can adjust the suggested route in real time.

The following year, Google acquired DeepMind, an AI research lab based in London. Google DeepMind is working to create artificial general intelligence, often called AGI, which is different from generative AI products like Gemini, chatGPT, and CoPilot. These generative AI systems can produce human-like responses to a set of specific tasks. By contrast, artificial general intelligence is designed to mimic or even surpass human intelligence for a broader range of tasks.

In 2015, Google restructured and formed a holding company called Alphabet Inc. so Google could narrow its focus and allow these acquired companies to continue operating independently. Some research projects that began their development at Google get spun off as separate subsidiaries of Alphabet, as is the case with Waymo, which began as Google's Self-Driving Car Project.

Legal challenges

Google's leading-edge technological advancements and global dominance across so many industries have drawn criticism — and litigation. The company has faced hundreds of high-profile controversies and subsequent lawsuits over privacy, intellectual property, discrimination, advertising, and defamation. Despite being a multibillion-dollar juggernaut, it hasn't always won.

The most consequential lawsuits Google faces today were brought by the US government over antitrust concerns. One case alleging Google illegally suppressed competition in the search engine industry already went to trial in 2023 but is still awaiting a verdict.

The other case concerns Google's online advertising strategies and is set to go to trial in September 2024. In that lawsuit, the government claims that Google illegally abused its monopoly over the digital advertising market by acquiring competitors and forcing publishers to adopt Google's own advertising tools, thereby suppressing the growth of rival technologies.

Google has denied wrongdoing in both cases. Both lawsuits could have massive implications for internet users as well as the company. The internet as we know it could be greatly reshaped by the outcomes of these trials, especially as other major tech juggernauts Amazon, Apple, and Meta face similar litigation.

Also in 2024, a federal jury ordered Google to pay $12 million in damages for infringing on internet voice-calling patents with Google Voice, its service that lets you merge multiple phone numbers into a single number.

Google's financial history

Google's IPO took place in August 2004 at an initial share price of $85. Alphabet (Google) stock has undergone three splits in its history, most recently in 2022.

Google's earnings are reported quarterly. In its most recent earnings report, revenue was up 15% year over year to $80.5 billion. The company also issued its first-ever $0.20 per share dividend.

On the earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai credited the revenue bump to "strong" performance from Google Search, YouTube, and Google Cloud Platform, the company's pay-as-you-go cloud computing service vendor.

Despite these positive results, tens of thousands have lost jobs as part of Google layoffs in 2023 and 2024, with more job cuts expected. Pichai said in January that the company would continue "removing layers to simplify execution and drive velocity" in key areas.

Working at Google

Jobs and careers at Google are highly coveted in the tech industry.

Google has long reigned as one of the best companies to work for in the US. The Googleplex, Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, famously boasts luxurious amenities like swimming pools, massage rooms, whimsical art, and more. The company's other global offices feature similarly plush perks.

It's quite difficult to become a Google employee, though: Google is notoriously selective when it comes to hiring, and its multi-step process is highly competitive.

• Take-Two's CEO often gets asked about the release date for "Grand Theft Auto 6."
• When asked last week about a PC release date, he seemed entirely fed up.
• RockStar Games has said it plans to release 'Grand Theft Auto 6' on consoles next year.

Take-Two's CEO appears to be getting tired of answering questions about when — or if — "Grand Theft Auto 6" will be released.

Take-Two, which is the parent company of "GTA"-maker Rockstar Games, announced last month that "GTA 6" would be released next year. But the game's initial release will only be available on the PlayStation and Xbox. No release date for the PC has been set.

There is enormous hype around the release of this game. Its official trailer, posted in December, set the record on YouTube for views on a non-music video. And Take-Two's stock dipped after RockStar announced "Grand Theft Auto 6" would not come out until some time in 2025. "Grand Theft Auto V" is one of the highest-selling video games of all time, bringing in $8 billion in revenue.

In an interview Thursday, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick made sure to leave plenty to the imagination when asked whether the game will eventually have a PC release date. Giving essentially a long-winded non-answer, Zelnick said more announcements could come in the future.

"Well, the lack of an announcement is not something that could be set in stone as near as I could tell because the only thing that happens after the lack of an announcement is an announcement, I suppose, or a continuing lack of an announcement, I guess that could happen too," he said during an interview at a tech and media conference last week. "It doesn't seem to me that either would be set in stone."

Zelnick then pivoted the focus to Rockstar Games, adding that the studio "has an approach to platforms which we've seen before, and they will make more announcements in due time."

"I do believe that the right strategy for our business is to be where the consumer is, and historically what this company has done is address consumers anywhere they are, on any platform that makes sense, over time," Zelnick added.

Rockstar has historically released games on console first and PC versions later, including "Grand Theft Auto 5" and "Read Dead Redemption 2."

Take-Two did not immediately return a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed the Rubin platform at Computex in Taipei.
• The Rubin, named after astronomer Vera Rubin, comes just months after Nvidia unveiled Blackwell.
• Nvidia aims to expand its customer base across various industries amid rising AI demand.

Nvidia is on a roll.

CEO Jensen Huang hesitantly revealed Rubin, the company's latest AI platform, at the Computex conference in Taipei on Sunday. The announcement comes less than three months after Nvidia unveiled its predecessor, the Blackwell chip.

Huang didn't offer too many specifics. He described the Rubin as the company's "next-generation platform" and said it will rely on HBM4, the next iteration of the essential high-bandwidth memory. He also noted that Nvidia plans to develop chips on a "one-year rhythm" and that the Rubin would be followed by the Rubin Ultra. The new chip will begin shipping in 2026.

The platform was named after Vera Florence Cooper Rubin, an astronomer who established the presence of dark matter. Rubin also led studies of the structure of galaxies and their movements.

Nvidia has generated billions in revenue over the past several months as one of the biggest suppliers in the AI boom. Its processors are helping fuel an arms race between tech giants.

Now, Huang said the company is trying to broaden its customer base by supporting companies ranging from shipbuilders to drug developers to government agencies as they embrace AI, Bloomberg reported.

"We are seeing computation inflation," Huang said on Sunday.

• The New York Times removed details about union work from its staff's bios.
• Language about the union's effort to make the Times "fair and equitable" was scrubbed.
• The Times Guild said the edits to bios post-publication were 'petty.'

Some staffers at The New York Times say the company removed some mentions of their union work from their public-facing staff biographies.

It comes after the Times asked its reporters to tell the audience a little more about themselves — and then snatched the metaphorical mic away when reporters used the opportunity to detail their union work, according to reports.

"The new format, which we call enhanced bios, was designed to bolster trust with readers by letting them know who we are and how we work," read a January press release from two managing editors at the Times. "Research has shown that the more readers know about our reporters, the more likely they are to understand the rigors of our journalistic process and trust the results."

One reporter told The Washington Post that he intentionally included his membership with the Times Guild, which "advocates for members and works to ensure that The Times is a fair and equitable place to work."

After publication, his and other bios were edited last week to remove the "fair and equitable" language, the Post reported. Times Guild leaders called it "petty and absurd," according to the Post.

A spokesperson for the Times told Business Insider that of about 700 biographies, only five included the "fair and equitable" language that the Times later removed, adding that similar edits were also made to descriptions of other, non-union-related organizations.

A spokesperson for the Times Guild did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI on Sunday.

The Times Guild secured a contract last summer that raised the staff base salary to $65,000. The win came months after a daylong walkout, the first at the publication since the 1970s.

• Nvidia's Jensen Huang explained 'CEO Math' ahead of Computex in Taiwan.
• Huang said by investing in GPUs and CPUs, companies can drastically reduce time spent on AI tasks.
• "The more you buy, the more you save," he said. 

There's math, and then there's what Nvidia's Jensen Huang calls "CEO Math."

"The more you buy, the more you save," Huang said ahead of Computex, an annual technology exposition held in Taiwan. "That's called CEO math. It's not accurate, but it is correct."

Confused?

Huang explained the concept by describing why companies should invest in both graphics processing units (GPUs) and central processing units (CPUs). The two processors can work autonomously, reducing the time it takes to carry out a task from "100 units of time down to 1," he said.

So, the more you buy, the more you save. Sounds like a good sales pitch for a CEO who sells processors.

Combining the two processors is already common practice in the personal computing industry. "We add a GPU, a $500 GPU, to a $1,000 PC, and the performance increases tremendously," he said. "We do this in a data center. A billion-dollar data center, we add $500 million worth of GPUs, and all of a sudden, it becomes an AI factory."

Huang then presented a diagram showing that when companies use both, their speed will increase by 100, at just 1.5 times the cost. 

In March, Nvidia unveiled the Blackwell B200 GPU, a $70,000 chip it claims is the "world's most powerful AI chip." It is packaging the chip into larger designs like the GB200 NVL72, which combines 72 GPUs and 36 CPUs and is intended for the "most compute-intensive workloads" and reduces cost and energy consumption by up to 25 times. 

Over the past few months, the chipmaker has shot into headlines as a critical player in the AI boom. It raked in over $22 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023. Tech execs from Sam Altman to Mark Zuckerberg have become reliant on its chips to power their AI ambitions.

• Rupert Murdoch, 93, married Elena Zhukova, 67, on Saturday at his California vineyard.
• The couple announced their engagement in March.
• This is Murdoch's fifth marriage and sixth engagement.

Media titan Rupert Murdoch married Elena Zhukova, a retired molecular biologist, on Saturday.

The couple exchanged vows while surrounded by loved ones and friends, News Corp. confirmed to Business Insider. The wedding took place at Murdoch's Moraga Vineyards in California.

Photos obtained by Mail Online showed guests at the ceremony, including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

Murdoch, 93, and Zhukova, 67, announced their engagement in March after starting a relationship last summer. The nuptials mark Murdoch's fifth marriage and sixth engagement.

Murdoch's romantic life has made headlines throughout his career, including his last engagement to Ann Lesley Smith. He announced his engagement to Smith in March 2023, but the couple called it quits by April.

Murdoch became a household name as a conservative media mogul who founded News Corp. and Fox News. He retired from his roles at News Corp and Fox Corps in September 2023, handing over the position to his son, Lachlan.

• Gigi and Bella Hadid donated $1 million to aid groups supporting Palestinians in Gaza.
• The groups included Heal Palestine, Palestine Children's Relief Fund, and World Central Kitchen.
• It comes as violence in Gaza continues and Israelis stage protests  calling for hostage releases. 

Supermodels Gigi and Bella Hadid have donated a combined $1 million to aid groups supporting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Bella Hadid's agent has said.

A representative for Bella, 27, told the PA news agency that the money was set to be distributed between four organizations: Heal Palestine, Palestine Children's Relief Fund, World Central Kitchen, and United Nations Relief and Works Agency, per the MailOnline.

The sisters, whose father is the Palestinian real-estate developer Mohamed Anwar Hadid, have previously voiced their support for those affected by the conflict in Gaza.

The sisters are among the most high-profile celebrity supporters of the Palestinian cause.

Following Hamas' October 7 attacks on Israel, Gigi, 29, posted a statement on Instagram that got millions of likes, saying: "My thoughts are with all those affected by this unjustifiable tragedy, and every day that innocent lives are taken by this conflict – too many of which are children."

"I have deep empathy and heartbreak for the Palestinian struggle and life under occupation, it's a responsibility I hold daily," the statement continued.

"While I have hopes and dreams for Palestinians, none of them include the harm of a Jewish person," it added.

In May, Bella, 27, wrote on Instagram that she was "devastated at the loss of the Palestinian people and the lack of empathy coming from the government systems worldwide."

She also says in the post that she is the child of a Nakba survivor. According to the UN, Nakba means "catastrophe" in Arabic and is used to refer to "the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war."

Bella was also recently seen at the Cannes Film Festival wearing a dress resembling the Palestinian keffiyeh.

Mohamed Hadid has also used Instagram to make his position on the conflict clear.

In a post on Saturday, he called President Joe Biden "the butcher of Gaza" and claimed he would "never vote" for him again.

The donations follow a major Israeli assault on the southern Gazan city of Rafah, which led to the deaths of 45 people in a tent camp following an Israeli airstrike, prompting global outrage.

Biden has since announced a three-phase proposal to end the war in Gaza.

The plan calls for a cease-fire, an exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from populated areas of Gaza, among other things.

On Saturday, protesters gathered in Tel Aviv and around the world, demanding Israel's leaders accept the proposal.

Attendees of the Tel Aviv demonstration said that the protest was the largest since Hamas' October 7 attacks, per The Times of Israel. Roughly 1,200 people were killed in Israel during the attacks, and around a further 240 were taken hostage in Gaza.

More than 36,000 Palestinians have died in the following conflict in Gaza, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

• Trump is poised to lose a small — but significant — share of GOP voters over his conviction.
• A Reuters/Ipsos survey found that 10% of GOP voters were now less likely to vote for Trump.
• The tiniest shift in votes could have major implications this fall.

After a jury convicted former President Donald Trump last week on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a sex scandal, Republican lawmakers overwhelmingly threw their support behind their party's 2024 standard-bearer.

Most GOP voters also backed Trump. The former president's campaign said it raised $53 million in small donations since the conviction.

But in a recent Reuters/Ipsos survey, a small but potentially significant share of Republican voters indicated they were less likely to support Trump after his conviction. Taken over two days after the guilty verdict, 10% of GOP voters said the result would give them second thoughts.

That could be significant come November. The former president has continued to shed votes to former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in recent GOP primaries, especially in critical suburban areas. And in the battleground states that will be essential for Trump and President Joe Biden, any small shift could be a game changer.

The majority of Trump's staunchest supporters, meanwhile, said the conviction wouldn't impact their vote and about 35% said the verdict made them more likely to back Trump.

Among independents, 25% said Trump's conviction made them less likely to back the former president. That could also drag down the ex-president. It could also impact GOP candidates in critical Senate and House races.

Like Republicans, the majority of independents — 56% — said the conviction would have no bearing on their vote, while 18% of respondents said the conviction would make them more likely to support Trump.

The overall presidential race remains close. Over 40% of respondents said they would back Biden in November, while 39% said they would support Trump.