Google is in trouble. As my colleague Dan Milmo reported, the US Department of Justice “has proposed a far-reaching overhaul of Google’s structure and business practices, including the sale of its Chrome browser, in a bid to end its monopoly on internet search”. The move follows a major court ruling last August in which a federal judge determined that Google had violated antitrust laws and held an illegal monopoly over search services. The justice department’s suggestion is blunt: “Google must divest Chrome ...

If it pays to have friends in high places, few among us can claim to be better placed than Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and one of the only people to have cosy relationships with both Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. His commercial and political connections to both may prove pivotal as the feud between the US and China plays out over the next four years, particularly as Trump promises steep tariffs.Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, once supported Joe Biden. But his relationship with the curre ...

The US Department of Justice has proposed a range of punchy remedies to address Google’s dominance of the internet search market, including the forced divestment of its Chrome browser.Google said the proposals represented a “radical interventionist agenda” that would harm America’s standing as a tech superpower.Big tech’s power, and whether and how it should be tamed, has become a political and regulatory talking point on both sides of the Atlantic. This will be one of the defining confrontations of that de ...

Alphabet’s Google must sell its Chrome browser, share data and search results with competitors and take a range of other measures to end its monopoly on searching the internet, US prosecutors have argued to a judge.Such changes would essentially result in Google being highly regulated for 10 years, subjecting it to oversight by the same Washington federal court that ruled the company maintained an illegal monopoly in online search and related advertising.Google controls about 90% of the online search market ...

The AI chipmaker Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company and the engine of the artificial-intelligence boom, rolled out another set of quarterly results on Wednesday to investors’ delight.The company, whose value has soared by $2.2tn this year to $3.6tn on the back of near-doubling of chip sales, said it had sales of $35.08bn, against expectations of $33.15bn.Analysts anticipated Nvidia to report earnings of $0.75 per share; the company reported $0.81. Shares of Nvidia fell about 5% in extended trading fo ...

US justice department officials plan to ask a judge to force Google to sell off its Chrome browser to dismantle the monopoly it has over the internet search market, in a major intervention against one of the world’s biggest tech companies.The Department of Justice (DoJ) last month filed court papers saying it is considering enforcing “structural remedies” to prevent Google from using some its products.The DoJ will reportedly push for Google, which is owned by Alphabet, to sell the browser and also ask a jud ...

General Motors’ self-driving car unit, Cruise, admitted on Thursday to submitting a false report to influence a federal investigation and will pay a $500,000 criminal fine as part of a deferred prosecution agreement, the justice department said.The department said Cruise failed to disclose key details of an October 2023 crash to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in which one of its robotaxis in San Francisco struck a pedestrian after she was hit by another vehicle and dragged her 20 ...

Walt Disney is trying to roll the credits on its years-long battle to reassure Wall Street and Hollywood that it can dominate a new era of entertainment.The Magic Kingdom, which rarely issues guidance on future profits, told shareholders it expects an acceleration over the coming years – with “double-digit percentage growth” in adjusted earnings in 2026 and 2027.Shares in Disney rallied more than 9% during pre-market trading on Wednesday after it beat analysts’ expectations in the fourth quarter, with sales ...

Tesla’s market value breached the $1tn mark in a sharp rally on Friday, on growing bets of a favorable treatment for CEO Elon Musk’s companies in return for his support for President-elect Donald Trump in his poll campaign.The electric automaker’s shares rose more than 6% to a more than two-year high of $315.56, after having gained 19.3% up to Thursday’s close. The company crossed the $1tn valuation for the first time in more than two years.The billionaire could push for favorable regulation of autonomous v ...

The US supreme court grappled on Wednesday with a bid by Meta’s Facebook to scuttle a federal securities fraud lawsuit brought by shareholders who accused the social media platform of misleading them about the misuse of user data.The justices heard arguments in Facebook’s appeal of a lower court’s decision allowing the 2018 class action suit led by Amalgamated Bank to proceed. The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages in part to recoup the lost value of the Facebook stock held by the investors. It is one ...