Thursday, April 17, 2025

Google violated antitrust laws

Thursday, April 17, 2025

Welcome to TC PM! Today we have the ruling in the federal antitrust case against Google; we have the details on a controversial proposed bill in Florida; and we learn of a new, original feature on Instagram.

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Matthias Balk/picture alliance / Getty Images

🛑 Do not pass go: After a two-year saga, a federal judge found that Google violated antitrust laws by "willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power." Yikes! The court will set a different date to determine the appropriate remedy for the situation, which I'm sure will be must-watch viewing.

😬 Oh good: OpenAI's o3 "reasoning" model that was released earlier this week is apparently good at an unexpected task: determining the location of a photo just from subtle visual clues. Sure, that is neat if you live in a vacuum but potentially horrifying if you don't.

🤳 Well, yeah: The Federal Trade Commission's trial against Meta kicked off this week and has been filled with interesting nuggets. The latest is that Mark Zuckerberg admitted the release of TikTok in 2018 caused a dramatic slowdown in Meta's growth, which isn't surprising.

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: VCG/VCG / Getty Images

🛞 Accurate ads: China is cracking down on how automakers can advertise driver-assistance features. These rules include a ban on companies saying terms like "self-driving" and "autonomous driving." The rules also change how automakers can update software in cars that are already owned.

🤷 Light on the details: Google today published a technical report showing the results of its internal safety testing for its Gemini 2.5 Pro model that was released a few weeks ago. These reports aren't always flattering, and this one is noticeably light on the details.

🚪 The door is closed: Florida is drafting a bill that would require social media companies to have encryption backdoors so that a company could decrypt information if law enforcement obtains a subpoena. Obviously there are quite a few security concerns tied to this.

💭 An original thought? Instagram announced that it is releasing a new feature called Blend, which lets users create custom, personalized Reel feeds with their friends. In a break from tradition, this is not a feature already found on TikTok.

🏟️ In the arena, trying things: Chatbot Arena, which has been known as a crowdsourced benchmarking project that all the major AI labs rely on, is forming a company, Arena Intelligence. This makes a lot of sense, as morphing into a company gives it the resources to expand.

Around the web

👁️ Surveillance tech: Defense tech company Palantir is working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to help find people on their deportation list. The company seems to know this won't be popular with its employees or outsiders, so it wrote FAQs that can be sent to skeptics.

🐍 AI snake oil: There is a conspiracy theory going around that the measles outbreak in Texas is actually a bioweapon against the Mennonite community. These same folks are apparently peddling pseudoscience remedies that were formulated using AI. Great!