Could Google Lose Chrome in Antitrust Battle?
Google and the US Department of Justice offer closing arguments Friday in the remedy phase of a trial over the tech giant's search monopolization. It's just one in a string of cases that have loomed over large tech firms this year as antitrust pressure mounts. The DOJ has pushed for Google to spin off Chrome, but Google has fought back. Meanwhile, Apple, Meta and others are finding themselves targeted on both sides of the Atlantic. Bloomberg's Charlie Wells reports. (Source: Bloomberg)
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Google quietly released an app that lets you download and run AI models locally
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Trump Tariffs Face Threat at Supreme Court — Over Rulings That Blocked Biden
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'We're talking about the biggest trade war since the Great Depression.' Until they were partly suspended, Trump's April 2 'Liberation Day' tariffs marked the biggest increase in import taxes pushed by the US since the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs and took the US's average applied tariff rate to its highest level in more than a century. The prospect of that massive tax increase and the resulting economic shock roiled financial markets and prompted fears of imminent recessions in the US and other major global economies. Presidential Exception The administration contends the major questions doctrine doesn't apply when Congress gives authority directly to the president, rather than to an administrative agency. The government also says the doctrine is inapt when the subject is national security and foreign affairs – policy areas where the president has long been recognized to have broad powers. 'No one doubts the significance of the challenged tariffs, but significance alone does not implicate the major questions doctrine, otherwise, it would apply to countless government actions, including every emergency statute,' the Justice Department said in a filing at the Court of International Trade. The legal clash centers on Trump's power under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which says the president may 'regulate' the 'importation' of property to address an emergency situation. The Court of International Trade said those words weren't clear enough to legally justify Trump's taxes given that the Constitution gives the tariff power to Congress. In addition to major questions, the panel also invoked the nondelegation doctrine, a related conservative-backed legal theory that says lawmakers can't give away their constitutional legislative and taxing powers. 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'We 'typically greet' assertions of 'extravagant statutory power over the national economy' with 'skepticism,'' Roberts wrote, borrowing words from a 2014 ruling. Roberts said the court used similar reasoning, though without the 'major questions' label, when it blocked Biden's pandemic eviction moratorium and his vaccine-or-test mandate for workers. The court's liberals accused their conservative colleagues of creating a convenient exception to their usual laserlike focus on statutory text. 'The current court is textualist only when being so suits it,' Justice Elena Kagan said in dissent in the climate case. 'When that method would frustrate broader goals, special canons like the 'major questions doctrine' magically appear as get-out-of-text-free cards.' The sharp ideological divide masks a more subtle split among the court's conservatives about the purpose of the major questions doctrine. Justice Amy Coney Barrett has described it as a tool for ascertaining the most natural reading of a statute, while Justice Neil Gorsuch has cast it as a means of keeping Congress and the president in their proper constitutional lanes. The key question now is what the court will do with the major questions doctrine when it comes in the context of tariffs and a Republican president who appointed three of the justices. 'The court has not been at all transparent about the grounds on which it will invoke this doctrine,' said Ronald Levin, an administrative law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. 'It's left its options completely open.' --With assistance from Shawn Donnan. YouTube Is Swallowing TV Whole, and It's Coming for the Sitcom Millions of Americans Are Obsessed With This Japanese Barbecue Sauce How Coach Handbags Became a Gen Z Status Symbol Mark Zuckerberg Loves MAGA Now. Will MAGA Ever Love Him Back? 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Engadget
3 hours ago
- Engadget
A new Nebraska law wants to make social media less addictive for kids
Nebraska is the latest state to crack down on how kids can use social media. The state's governor, Jim Pillen, recently signed into law a package of bills aimed at restricting certain social media features that keep kids hooked on the platform. The final bill signed, called the Age-Appropriate Online Design Code Act, will require companies to offer time limits on usage, restrict certain categories of content and provide chronological feeds instead of algorithmic ones that promote infinite scrolling. The Age-Appropriate Online Design Code Act, also known as LB504, details that social media companies can only collect the minimum amount of personal data from younger users, and offers parents more tools to limit how their children use their accounts. Along with those restrictions, the law prohibits any ads related to gambling, alcohol, tobacco or drugs from reaching kids on social media. Alongside LB504, the signed package of bills includes LB140 that limits student use of smartphones in schools, LB383 that requires social media companies to verify the age of its users and require parental consent for creating accounts, and LB172 that creates criminal penalties for AI-generated pornography. "Collectively, all these bills have an incredible impact on helping our teachers and giving our schools the opportunity to teach our kids, instead of being disrupted in the classroom," Pillen said in a press release. "They also provide parents with the tools they need to protect our kids from big tech online companies and predators." The law is set to go into effect January 1, 2026, and any companies that violate these new regulations will face civil penalties. Nebraska is the latest state to restrict social media usage for minors, but Texas is also trying to pass a similar ban. With more efforts to regulate social media, NetChoice, an Internet advocacy organization whose members include Google, Meta and X, has voiced criticism of these states' efforts, arguing that they infringe on First Amendment rights and user privacy. In 2022, California signed a similar law meant to protect underage users, but it has since been in a legal battle following a lawsuit filed by NetChoice that claims a violation of free speech rights.
