By Alex Plough December 5, 2014
The Google offices in Los Angeles © Trey Ratcliff
Curbing Google
The European Union ratcheted up pressure on Google last week with a non-binding resolution calling for the possible break-up of the search engine giant, which has a 90% share of the search engine market in the continent.
Despite last-minute concerns from US lawmakers that the EU’s actions are politically motivated, members of the European Parliament voted overwhelming in favor of potential antitrust measures. European legislators accuse Google of abusing its market position and stifling local firms. For more on the story, listen to NPR journalist Ari Shapiro discuss Google’s complicated relationship with the European bloc.
Even the UK, a historically friendly place for US technology companies, announced new laws targeting tax avoidance by multinationals that could hurt the tech giant.
On Wednesday Chancellor George Osborne announced a 25% tax on foreign companies’ profits derived from economic activity in the UK. Though Osborne declined to name any companies, after he singled out technology companies as particular abusers of the system, the British press promptly dubbed his new measures as the “Google tax.”
Elsewhere on the continent, Google continues to fight against paying fees to European media companies for snippets and headlines from their news sites. New EU commissioner for digital economy and society, Günther Oettinger, recently announced plans to reform European copyright law in 2015 to address the issue.
Tragedy Spurs Body-Camera Bonanza
Eric Garner protest, Rockefeller Center, New York City ©Tina Leggio
Protesters took to the streets in New York this week after a grand jury did not indict the police officer involved in the arrest of Staten Island resident Eric Garner, who died after being held in a chokehold by police in July.
The demonstrations have so far remained peaceful, unlike the violent scenes in Ferguson, Missouri, following the fatal police shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.
President Obama vowed concrete action to tackle the “simmering distrust” between minority communities and police departments, including a request for $263 million in the federal funds to respond to the crisis.
Civil rights activists have called for compulsory body-worn cameras for police and in his Monday address, Obama pledged to buy 50,000 new body cameras for law enforcement agencies at a cost of $75 million.
The news signals a potential bonanza for the body-camera industry, which is dominated in the US by Taser International. $75 million is more than seven times Taser’s revenue from body-camera’s last year and investors have taken note. The company’s stock has almost doubled since Michael Brown’s shooting in August.
However, making such cameras compulsory for all officers poses a number of ethical, legal and logistical problems. The Marshall Project, a news organization focused on criminal justice issues, has put together a guide of everything you need to know about body-cameras.
Sony Pictures Hack and Leak
Hackers who stole a trove of internal data from Sony Pictures have started leaking some of the highly sensitive material, such as upcoming products and executive pay packages.
A group calling themselves the Guardians of Peace broke into the Hollywood Studio’s computers over a week ago, disabled its internal systems and helped themselves to documents revealing long-held secrets.
Kim Jong Un ©thierry ehrmann
The cyber criminals have since published the salaries of some of the studio’s biggest stars, such as Seth Rogen’s $8.4 million-plus compensation for his upcoming film “The Interview,” as well as a spreadsheet allegedly containing salaries of some 6,000 employees and top executives.
The data breach also included high-quality versions of several films, including the upcoming new version of Annie, which quickly began circulating on file-sharing websites. Both Vox and Business Insider have compiled detailed examinations of who might be behind the hack and leak.
So far the strangest theory points the finger at state sponsored hackers from North Korea, who reacted badly to Sony Pictures’ upcoming film “The Interview,” which mocks the totalitarian regime’s ruler Kim Jong-un.
Microsoft Clip Art Farewell
Anyone born before the 1990s will likely remember Microsoft Clip Art, the library of images built into its software that server computer used for over 20 years.
This week Clip Art went the way of the floppy disk and the dial-up modem after Microsoft announced it was closing up its Clip Art shop and replacing it with Bing Image Search. Veteran tech watchers couldn’t decide if they were saddened or relieved by the demise of this often terrible but forever iconic medium.
Kickstarter Flubs
Kickstarter film festival, in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene park © Michael Tapp
Award-winning economics writer Tim Harford writes about Kickended, a project by artist and PhD student Silvio Lorusso, that tracks all the Kickstarter projects that never get funded. Harford said it is an important project because it promotes realism about Kickstarter. The crowd funding website benefits from the so-called availability heuristic, he says, which describes how we can become unconsciously tricked into believing something is better than it is. In this case, the chances of success for a Kickstarter project may seem greater than we estimate, as we rarely hear about the failures.
