Google’s New AI Tool: Anti-Money-Laundering for Banks

Google Cloud has a new artificial-intelligence tool that tackles money laundering for banks. 

But how does this product differ from those already on the market? WSJ reporter Dylan Tokar joins host Julie Chang to discuss.

Why Google Is Merging Maps and Waze

Google plans to combine its mapping units, Waze and Maps, as its parent company Alphabet looks for opportunities to increase efficiencies. How will it affect employees and users of these apps?

Google Offers to Change Ad Business to Fend Off Antitrust Suit

Google has offered to make changes to its digital ad business in an effort to head off a possible antitrust lawsuit, according to people familiar with the matter. But will global regulators and critics think the concessions are enough? WSJ tech reporter Sam Schechner joins host Zoe Thomas to discuss what Google is offering and what the changes could mean for the digital ad market.

Why Microsoft keeps beating Apple and Google with Windows

 

Microsoft Windows debuted in 1985 and for the past two decades it has been the dominant PC operating system worldwide. In 2020, Windows had almost 83% market share by unit shipments, while Google Chrome OS had 10% and Apple’s Mac OS had 7%, according to Gartner. 

From solitaire to its iconic start button and start up sounds, productivity apps, gaming and corporate computing, Windows changed the way we use computers. The legendary Windows 95 helped propel the company to dominate the market in personal computing. Microsoft has introduced many versions of Windows since its inception with some more memorable than others. It’s competed with IBM, Apple, and Google for market space. According to Microsoft, there are more than 1.3 billion devices running Windows 10 worldwide on a monthly basis. Today, Windows only makes up 14% of Microsoft’s business but remains a critical part of it. The company just announced the latest version Windows 11. 

CNBC spoke with former Microsoft employees including Terry Myerson, Michael Cherry, Brad Silverberg and Tandy Trower to get a look back at over three decades of Windows.

Facebook Pay’s Expansion Plans Might Get No ‘Likes’ From Big Tech Rivals

The mobile wallet race officially became the mobile wallet war  last Wednesday, after Facebook announced plans to support the use of its Facebook Pay system on sites outside of its ecosystem. 

This first big step into the wider world of payments would have been less remarkable had it not involved Shopify’s 1.7 million merchants as its inaugural external test case. It was a move that gave the Facebook endeavor an immediate degree of credibility and surely caught the eye of wallet-space heavyweights like Apple, Google, PayPal, and more.

How to deal with big tech - The Economist

Senator Amy Klobuchar is leading a crusade against big-tech giants such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google. These companies dominate the S&P 500 and wield a huge amount of influence. Should they be broken up?

Is Google Pay Safe? What to Need to Know About This Payment App

Google Pay offers speed and convenience, but before you sign up, find out just how secure this contactless payment app really is.

The Google-verse, like the natural universe, is ever expanding. Not only can you use Google products to search for information, get directions, and manage your email and photos, but you can also now pay for almost anything (as long as it’s legal) using a mobile app called Google Pay. 

Google Pay is aimed primarily at Android phone users, but it’s available for iPhones and iPads, too. But is Google Pay safe and what exactly is a digital wallet? 

Find out all you need to know HERE.

How to Regulate Big Tech? Ideas from the BIS

The U.S. House Judiciary subcommittee, in a 449-page report last October characterized Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google as “gatekeepers” with “significant and durable market power.” The antitrust panel acknowledged open competition’s economic benefits and opportunities but compared the Big Techs to “the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons.”

“Big Techs have done something quite remarkable,” Agustín Carstens, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), said in a January talk, Public Policy for Big Techs in Finance. “Within less than two decades, they have gone from being startups to dominating a range of markets. This is unprecedented,” Carstens said, noting that financial services accounted for “only 11%” of Big Tech revenues “so far.” 

In Fintech Regulation: How to Achieve a Level Playing Field, a paper published in early February, Fernando Restoy, chairman of the BIS Financial Stability Institute (FSI), examines the straightforward “same activity, same regulation” principle alongside so-called entity-based regulation. 

The full article here; How to Regulate Big Tech? The BIS Has Some Ideas

 

Beijing has put online giants on notice - Chinese trustbusters’ pursuit of Alibaba is only the start

“Acting on information, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation [SAMR] has started investigation [into] Alibaba Group for alleged monopoly conduct including implementing an ‘exclusive dealing agreement’.” This brief note, posted by Xinhua, the state news agency, on December 24th, was all it took to cut China’s mightiest online titan down to size. Not even the announcement three days later of an additional $6bn in share buy-backs arrested the slide in its share price. By December 28th it had fallen by 13%, wiping $91bn off the firm’s market capitalisation. American regulators, whose detailed charge-sheets against tech giants such as Facebook and Google in recent weeks elicited a yawn from investors, must have looked on with envy.

Read more at The Economist

What happens in a single minute on the Internet?

Google's Chromebook Is Ready for Banks, But Not Vice Versa

From American Banker –

“Are banks ready to trade in their traditional Windows laptops for beefed-up Internet devices? Not yet, early results suggest.

Google and its partners recently announced that Chrome laptops, which in the past have been sold to consumers, are now ready for the workplace. They're made of tougher materials and now support popular desktop virtualization systems from Citrix and VMware, allowing even old applications to run on the devices. As proof of enterprise-worthiness, Google said Netflix and Starbucks are deploying Chrome notebooks.”

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The adblocking revolution is months away (with iOS 9) – with trouble for advertisers, publishers and Google

From The Overspill –

“Remember newspapers? In the old days, adverts appeared in print, on the radio and on the TV. Most ad-supported news organisations that have shifted to the internet began in print.

Ads in print were straightforward. Advertisers bought space, and editors could turn them down, or sometimes decide not to run them if a story broke that would bring about an awkward juxtaposition of, say, the advert for a shoe store on page 3 and the big breaking story now being placed on page 3 about people having feet crushed by a runaway steamroller. (The ad would get moved to another page.) Print ads were hard for advertisers to track, though they could use codes and so on that would clue them in to where someone had seen one if they responded directly.”

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Apple Pay Gets a High-End Competitor

From The Motley Fool –

“Silicon Valley is in a rush to replace your credit card - well, the actual card itself. The two largest mobile operating system vendors – Google and Apple - are looking to replace plastic with their spin on the mobile wallet: Android Pay and Apple Pay, respectively. But it appears there's a third new entrant to compete with Apple on the high end while starting an intra-device rivalry with Google's Android Pay.

That's right: Google Android's most-popular luxury vendor, Samsung is testing its version of a wallet/payment system, unoriginally dubbed Samsung Pay. Samsung Tomorrow, the company's official blog site, outlines its limited test for select customers in its home country of South Korea. When it comes to handset competitor Apple, however, the company does have a rather large advantage with its Samsung Pay technology.”

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