The spread of COVID-19 vaccines will power a stronger global economic recovery in 2021, the International Monetary Fund forecast Tuesday. After sinking 3.5% in 2020, the worst year since World War II, the global economy will grow 5.5% this year, the 190-country lending organization predicted. The new figure for 2021 is an upgrade from the […]
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An international debate over how countries tax big U.S. technology companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook is heating up, presenting a challenge for President Joe Biden’s new administration. A mid-year deadline is on the horizon for talks about a global deal to defuse trade disputes with France and other countries that are imposing go-it-alone […]
Apple says it will roll out a new privacy control in the spring to prevent iPhone apps from secretly shadowing people. The delay in its anticipated rollout aims to placate Facebook and other digital services that depend on such data surveillance to help sell ads. Although Apple didn’t provide a specific date, the general timetable […]
A lack of competition for Google and a lack of transparency in the digital advertising supply chain needed to be addressed because they were impacting publishers, advertisers and consumers, Australia’s competition watchdog said on Thursday. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission released its interim report on its inquiry into the Google-dominated digital advertising services industry […]
Gay dating app Grindr faces a fine of more than $10 million from Norwegian regulators for failing to get consent from users before sharing their personal information with advertising companies, in breach of stringent European Union privacy rules. The Norwegian data privacy watchdog said Tuesday that it notified Grindr LLC of its draft decision to […]
Walmart is enlisting the help of robots to keep up with a surge in online orders. The company said Wednesday that it plans to build warehouses at its stores where self-driving robots will fetch groceries and have them ready for shoppers to pick up in an hour or less. Walmart declined to say how many […]
The U.S.-Chinese trade war isn’t going away under President Joe Biden. Biden won’t confront Beijing right away, economists say, because he wants to focus on the coronavirus and the economy. However, Biden looks set to renew pressure over trade and technology grievances that prompted President Donald Trump to hike tariffs on Chinese imports in 2017. […]
Google says it’s making progress on plans to revamp Chrome user tracking technology aimed at improving privacy even as it faces challenges from regulators and officials. The company gave an update Monday on its work to remove from its Chrome browser so-called third-party cookies, which are used by a website’s advertisers or partners and can […]
The elite Russian hackers who gained access to computer systems of federal agencies last year didn’t bother trying to break one by one into the networks of each department. Instead, they got inside by sneaking malicious code into a software update pushed out to thousands of government agencies and private companies. It wasn’t surprising that […]
Google’s parent company is letting the air out of an internet-beaming balloon company that was providing online access from the stratosphere. The plan to shut down Loon was announced late Thursday, ending what started out nine years ago as one of Google’s secret projects in its so-called “moonshot factory,” a division now called X. Google, […]