Advertisers on Facebook who promote housing, employment or credit offers won’t be able to target ads by age, gender or ZIP code any longer.  This new ad policy applies to advertisers that target US users on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. On Tuesday, the company said that it will be launching a tool for users to search and […]

Google is now facing their third significant antitrust fine in the EU.  This fine is penalizing Google for 1.49 billion euros ($1.69 billion) for “abusive practices in online advertising” involving publisher contracts surrounding AdSense for search. The fine “takes account of the duration and gravity of the infringement. . . . [and] has been calculated on the […]

The European Union’s debated Copyright Directive is ready to become law.  There has been an agreement on the final language of the Directive, and all that is required now is the formal European Parliament and member-state approval, which is expected to happen. The idea behind the Directive is that it will govern copyright rules across Europe.  It […]

Google ran an experiment last month “to understand what the impact of the proposed EU Copyright Directive would be to our users and publisher partners.”  In the news search results, you could see links, but there wasn’t any descriptions or images, and there were incomplete story titles and site titles without any context. The experiment previewed changes in the […]

Supreme Marketing Group (d/b/a Small Business Solutions) is being put out of business following a lawsuit by Google claiming the firm falsely told local businesses in sales calls that it was affiliated with the search giant. A number of small business owners will receive misleading or fraudulent calls regarding Google My Business and SEO from […]

It seems Google is poised to win an appeal of the 2015 decision of French privacy watchdog decision that data can be removed from Google’s EU index under the “right to be forgotten” (RTBF) couldn’t remain in the Google index.  Anywhere. The Commission Nationale de l’informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), the French data-protection authority, demanded Google delist […]

According to Reuters, Russia has initiated a civil action against Google over the search engine’s alleged failure to censor search results in the country. The potential penalty is trivial: 700,000 roubles (approximately $10,450). Next month, a determination will be made on whether or not the fine will be imposed.  The main issue is that Google reportedly […]

In June, 2017 the European Commission (EC) fined Google roughly $2.7 billion for alleged abuse of market position in vertical (shopping) search.  After the decision was made, which Google is in the process of appealing, Google number of changes was implemented to provide “equal treatment” for rival Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs) in Europe. About a month ago, Margreth Vestager, the […]

On October 9, Google filed an appeal of the European Commission’s (EC’s) record €4.3 billion (roughly $5 billion) antitrust fine, which was imposed in July because of Google Play app pre-install requirements. In the eyes of the EC, the practice of requiring handset makers to pre-install specific Google-made apps as was counted as “an abuse of market position.”  […]

Most everybody has probably heard of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that has been sweeping across Europe, which is a data privacy legislation that went into effect end of May.  Even though it originates in Europe, it effects US companies because it governs all European Union (EU) members, no matter where their data is collected. Data […]