Yesterday, Apple made waves in the media when it revealed a partnership with OpenAI during its annual WWDC keynote. That announcement centered on Apple's decision to bring ChatGPT natively to iOS 18, including Siri and other first-party apps. During a followup interview on Monday, Apple executives Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea hinted at a possible agreement with Google Gemini and other AI chatbots in the future. 9to5Mac reports: Moderated by iJustine, the interview was held in Steve Jobs Theater this afternoon, featuring a discussion with John Giannandrea, Apple's Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, and Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering. During the interview, Federighi specifically referenced Apple's hopes to eventually let users choose between different models to use with Apple Intelligence.

While ChatGPT from OpenAI is the only option right now, Federighi suggested that Google Gemini could come as an option down the line: "We think ultimately people are going to have a preference perhaps for certain models that they want to use, maybe one that's great for creative writing or one that they prefer for coding. And so we want to enable users ultimately to bring a model of their choice. And so we may look forward to doing integrations with different models like Google Gemini in the future. I mean, nothing to announce right now, but that's our direction." The decision to focus on ChatGPT at the start was because Apple wanted to "start with the best," according to Federighi.

Four more U.S. states on Tuesday joined the Justice Department's lawsuit against Apple alleging the iPhone maker is monopolizing smartphone markets, the department said in a statement. From a report: The four states are Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada and Washington, the Justice Department said. The original lawsuit was filed in March, and 15 states and the District of Columbia joined the lawsuit at the time. The lawsuit alleges that Apple uses its market power to get more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses and merchants. The civil lawsuit accuses Apple of an illegal monopoly on smartphones, maintained by imposing contractual restrictions on, and withholding critical access from, developers. The Justice Department has previously said Apple charges as much as $1,599 for an iPhone and makes a larger profit than any rival. Officials also said Apple imposes hidden charges on various business partners - from software developers to credit card companies and even rivals such as Alphabet's, Google, in ways that ultimately raise prices for consumers.

A Chromebook refresh looms despite Google trying to extend the life of laptops by offering a decade of service updates for models sold since 2021. From a report: Sales of the hardware, which flew off the shelves during the pandemic, ran out of steam in 2022 after buyers had their fill. The US education market generally accounts for 70 to 80 percent of annual orders. The sharp downturn left some vendors holding excess inventory. Yet the refresh cycle may be starting again, according to HP boss Enrique Lores.

"So we have started to see a pickup of demand in education, and this, especially in the US, is a Chromebook opportunity," he told an audience of investors at Bernstein's 40th Annual Strategic Decision Conference. He forecast a flurry of activity in 2025 for "many million of units" from education but downplayed the impact on HP's balance sheet because the company pulled back from the product line after the pandemic. Lores said: "We are going after these deals because we think it's good, but it's not like ... a huge impact on the company."

After announcing a shut down date in February, Google's "GPay" app has officially stopped working for users in the U.S. "Starting on June 4, GPay -- as was the name of the app on Android homescreens -- automatically signed US users out," reports 9to5Google. "Attempting to login again explains how: 'The Google Pay US app is no longer available. You can still tap to pay using the Google Wallet app.'" From the report: Additionally, Google no longer offers peer-to-peer payments in the US. You can use the Google Pay website to view and transfer your balance -- money you've received or rewards -- to a bank account after June. The focus is now on Google Wallet and digitizing everything in your physical wallet. There's no equivalent finance tracking functionality. Meanwhile, "Google Pay" still exists as the name for what you're actually using when making a physical or online purchase with your phone.

In November Google agreed to pay Canadian news publishers $100 million annually "in order to be exempt from the Online News Act, which compels tech companies to enter into agreements with news publishers," writes the Canadian Press.

On Friday Google "named the organization it has selected to distribute the $100 million..." The Canadian Journalism Collective will be responsible for ensuring eligible news organizations get their share of the money. The collective is a federally incorporated non-profit organization that was created for this purpose. It was founded in May by a group of independent publishers and broadcasters... "We hope these next steps will be completed as quickly as possible, so Canadian publishers and journalists can soon begin to receive the proceeds of this new contribution model," Google said in a blog entry posted on their website Friday...

The money will be distributed proportionately based on how many full time-journalists the companies employ. Small print and digital outlets can expect to receive about $17,000 per journalist that they employ, an official with the Canadian Heritage Department has said.
Google's money will go to 1,520 news organizations, according to Google's blog post — which describes the arrangement as "addressing our concerns with the Online News Act" and "a viable path to an exemption at a clear and commercially acceptable commitment level..." As part of this transition, we have advised partners in our Google News Showcase program (our online news experience and licensing program for news organizations) will cease to operate in Canada later this year as we transition to this new contribution model. We will be maintaining some Google News Initiative programming in Canada. This includes a range of collaborative tools and resources that can support the advancement of quality journalism. However, with our monetary contribution in Canada now streamlined into the new single collective model, these investments will be non-monetary in nature.

Retailers are struggling to rein in the proliferation of scammers tricking Americans into buying thousands of dollars' worth of gift cards. From a report: The Federal Trade Commission estimates that Americans lost at least $217 million to gift card scams last year. That number is likely higher, given many victims are too embarrassed to report to law enforcement. Cracking down on gift card scams was a hot topic this week at the National Retail Federation's (NRF) cybersecurity conference in Long Beach, California.

Some gift card scams start with texts from people pretending to be tech support, your boss, the government or a wrong number. Eventually, those conversations lead to someone asking the victim to buy gift cards on their behalf and send the barcode number to them via text. Others involve criminals in physical locations, tampering with a gift card to access the barcode information and then stealing the funds without taking the actual card. Each scam targets vulnerable populations: elderly, less-tech savvy people; those who are lonely and work from home; and even young kids, experts say.

In an interview with PCWorld's Mark Hachman, Google's ChromeOS chief said the company is cautiously exploring a Recall-like feature for Chromebooks, dubbed "memory." Microsoft's AI-powered Recall feature for Windows 11 was unveiled at the company's Build 2024 conference last month. The feature aims to improve local searches by making them as efficient as web searches, allowing users to quickly retrieve anything they've seen on their PC. Using voice commands and contextual clues, Recall can find specific emails, documents, chat threads, and even PowerPoint slides. Given the obvious privacy and security concerns, many users have denounced the feature, describing it as "literal spyware or malware." PCWorld reports: I sat down with John Solomon, the vice president at Google responsible for ChromeOS, for a lengthy interview around what it means for Google's low-cost Google platform as the PC industry moved to AI PCs. Microsoft, of course, is launching Copilot+ PCs alongside Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite -- an Arm chip. And Chromebooks, of course, have a long history with Arm. But it's Recall that we eventually landed upon -- or, more precisely, how Google sidles into the same space. Recall is great in theory, but in practice may be more problematic.) Recall the Project Astra demo that Google showed off at its Google I/O conference. One of the key though understated aspects of it was how Astra "remembered" where the user's glasses were.

Astra didn't appear to be an experience that could be replicated on the Chromebook. Most users aren't going to carry a Chromebook around (a device which typically lacks a rear camera) visually identifying things. Solomon respectfully disagreed. "I think there's a piece of it which is very relevant, which is this notion of having some kind of context and memory of what's been happening on the device," Solomon said. "So think of something that's like, maybe viewing your screen and then you walk away, you get distracted, you chat to someone at the watercooler and you come back. You could have some kind of rewind function, you could have some kind of recorder function that would kind of bring you back to that. So I think that there is a crossover there.

"We're actually talking to that team about where the use case could be," Solomon added of the "memory" concept. "But I think there's something there in terms of screen capture in a way that obviously doesn't feel creepy and feels like the user's in control." That sounds a lot like Recall! But Solomon was quick to point out that one of the things that has turned off users to Recall was the lack of user control: deciding when, where, and if to turn it on. "I'm not going to talk about Recall, but I think the reason that some people feel it's creepy is when it doesn't feel useful, and it doesn't feel like something they initiated or that they get a clear benefit from it," Solomon said. "If the user says like -- let's say we're having a meeting, and discussing complex topics. There's a benefit of running a recorded function if at the end of it it can be useful for creating notes and the action items. But you as a user need to put that on and decide where you want to have that."

When buying a new smartphone, it's important to consider the duration of software updates, as it impacts security and longevity. In a rare public commitment on Monday, thanks to the UK's new Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure (PSTI) regulations, Apple said it guarantees a minimum of five years of security updates for the iPhone 15 Pro Max. "In other words, the iPhone 15 is officially guaranteed to receive security updates until September 22, 2028," reports Android Authority. From the report: This, as VP of Engineering for Android Security & Privacy at Google Dave Kleidermacher points out, means that Apple is no longer offering the best security update policy in the industry. Both Samsung and Google guarantee seven years of not just security updates but also Android OS updates for their respective flagship devices, which is two years longer than what Apple guarantees.

To Apple's credit, though, it has long provided more than five years of security updates for its various iPhone devices. Some iPhones have received security updates six or more years after the initial release, which is far more support than the vast majority of Android devices receive. So, while Samsung and Google currently beat Apple in terms of how long they're guaranteeing software support, that doesn't mean iPhone users can't keep their phones for just as long, if not longer. They'll just need to hope Apple doesn't cut off support after the five-year minimum.

Google will delete everything it knows about users' previously visited locations, the company has said, a year after it committed to reducing the amount of personal data it stores about users. From a report: The company's "timeline" feature -- previously known as Location History -- will still work for those who choose to use it, letting them scroll back through potentially decades of travel history to check where they were at a specific time. But all the data required to make the feature work will be saved locally, to their own phones or tablets, with none of it being stored on the company's servers.

In an email sent by the company to Maps users, seen by the Guardian, Google said they have until 1 December to save all their old journeys before it is deleted for ever. Users will still be able to back up their data if they're worried about losing it or want to sync it across devices but that will no longer happen by default. The company is also reducing the default amount of time that location history is stored for. Now, it will begin to delete past locations after just three months, down from a previous default of a year and a half. In a blogpost announcing the changes, Google didn't cite a specific reason for the updates, beyond suggesting that users may want to delete information from their location history if they are "planning a surprise birthday party."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Google parent Alphabet must face a lawsuit worth up to $17.4 billion for allegedly abusing its dominance in the online advertising market, London's Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) ruled on Wednesday. The lawsuit, which seeks damages on behalf of publishers of websites and apps based in the United Kingdom, is the latest case to focus on the search giant's business practices. Ad Tech Collective Action is bringing the claim on behalf of publishers who say they have suffered losses due to Google's allegedly anti-competitive behavior.

Google last month urged the CAT to block the case, which it argued was incoherent. The company "strongly rejects the underlying allegations", its lawyers said in court documents. The CAT said in a written ruling that it would certify the case to proceed towards a trial, which is unlikely to take place before the end of 2025. The tribunal also emphasized the test for certifying a case under the UK's collective proceedings regime -- which is roughly equivalent to the United States' class action regime -- is relatively low. "Google works constructively with publishers across the UK and Europe," Google legal director Oliver Bethell said in a statement. Bethell added: "This lawsuit is speculative and opportunistic. We'll oppose it vigorously and on the facts."

Nvidia has reached a market cap of $3 trillion, surpassing Apple to become the second-largest public company behind Microsoft. CNBC reports: Nvidia's milestone is the latest stunning mark in a run that has seen the stock soar more than 3,224% over the past five years. The company will split its stock 100-for-1 later this month. Apple was the first U.S. company to reach a $3 trillion market cap during intraday trading in January 2022. Microsoft hit $3 trillion in market value in January 2024. Nvidia, which was founded in 1993, passed the $2 trillion valuation in February, and it only took roughly three months from there for it to pass $3 trillion.

Nvidia's surge in recent years has been powered by the tech industry's need for its chips, which are used to develop and deploy big AI models such as the one at the heart of OpenAI's ChatGPT. Companies such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and OpenAI are buying billions of dollars worth of Nvidia's GPUs.

Google has acquired software virtualization company Cameyo to enhance ChromeOS's support for virtualized Windows apps. The acquisition follows a partnership between the two companies last year, which aimed to provide businesses with a seamless virtual application experience on ChromeOS devices. With Cameyo's technology, Google seeks to attract more enterprises to adopt ChromeOS by offering enhanced compatibility with legacy Windows applications while maintaining the simplicity and security of the ChromeOS ecosystem.

The companies didn't reveal the financial terms of the deal.

UPDATE 6/4/2024: Google has changed its repair policy in response to the controversial clause that was brought to light. Google says it will not keep phones sent in for repair and that it's changing the wording of its ToS agreement to reflect this. Here's a statement from a Google spokesperson: "If a customer sends their Pixel to Google for repair, we would not keep it regardless of whether it has non-OEM parts or not. In certain situations, we won't be able to complete a repair if there are safety concerns. In that case, we will either send it back to the customer or work with them to determine next steps. Customers are also free to seek the repair options that work best for them. We are updating our Terms and Conditions to clarify this."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Authority: Like many other phone makers, Google has a self-repair program for servicing your damaged or malfunctioning Pixel device. As its support site explains, there are options to get repair tools, manuals, and certified parts so you can fix up your Pixel like new. Owners can also choose to simply send their device in to have it repaired professionally. As replacement parts can be expensive, some DIYers choose to use parts from third-party suppliers. But if you go down this route, you may want to avoid sending your device to Google if there's a problem you don't have the skills to fix on your own.

As YouTuber Louis Rossmann discovered, Google's service and repair terms and conditions contain a concerning stipulation. The document states that Google will keep your device if a non-OEM part is found. Apparently, this rule has been in effect since July 19, 2023, as marked on the page. Last week, iFixit said they are parting ways with Samsung because the company "does not seem interested in enabling repair at scale."

A separate report from 404 Media found that Samsung requires independent repair shops to give them the name, contact information, phone identifier, and customer complaint details of everyone who gets their phone repaired at these shops. "Stunningly, it also requires these nominally independent shops to 'immediately disassemble' any phones that customers have brought them that have been previously repaired with aftermarket or third-party parts and to 'immediately notify' Samsung that the customer has used third-party parts," reports 404 Media.

Google Maps has introduced a new layer to help individuals find public restrooms in New York City. The Verge reports: As part of a new program called "Ur in Luck," the city has introduced a Maps view dotted with 1,000 public restrooms across the five boroughs. Users can view the map on their phones and locate the closest restroom that's accessible to the public. "Everyone -- seniors, parents with kids, anyone enjoying the day outdoors, needs access to a public bathroom without having to buy anything or beg for a code," Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi said in a press release. The city will also build 46 new restrooms and renovate 36 existing locations over the next five years.

A Google contractor used admin privileges to access private information from Nintendo's YouTube account about an upcoming Yoshi game in 2017, which later made its way to Reddit before Nintendo announced the game, according to a copy of an internal Google database detailing potential privacy and security incidents obtained by 404 Media. From the report: The news provides more clarity on how exactly a Redditor, who teased news of the new Yoshi game, which was later released as Yoshi's Crafted World in 2019, originally obtained their information. A screenshot in the Reddit post shows a URL that starts with www.admin.youtube.com, which is a Google corporate login page. "Google employee deliberately leaked private Nintendo information," the entry in the database reads. The database obtained by 404 Media includes privacy and security issues that Google's own employees reported internally.

Sarah Perez reports via TechCrunch: After a multi-hour outage that took place in the early hours of the morning, OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot went down again -- but this time, it wasn't the only AI provider affected. On Tuesday morning, both Anthropic's Claude and Perplexity began seeing issues, too, but these were more quickly resolved. Google's Gemini appears to be operating at present, though it may have also briefly gone offline, according to some user reports.

It's unusual for three major AI providers to all be down at the same time, which could signal a broader infrastructure issue or internet-scale problem, such as those that affect multiple social media sites simultaneously, for example. It's also possible that Claude and Perplexity's issues were not due to bugs or other issues, but from receiving too much traffic in a short period of time due to ChatGPT's outage.

A donation by former Google chief Eric Schmidt to Europe's top particle physics lab heralds a new way to fund frontier research just as the West's technological race with China quickens. From a report: The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, will use the previously unreported gift of $48 million [non-paywalled link] from the Eric & Wendy Schmidt Fund for Strategic Innovation to develop AI algorithms to analyze raw data from the lab's Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful energy particle accelerator. In 2012, it discovered the Higgs Boson, a particle that's key to understanding how the universe is built.

Now, CERN needs to reinvest to stay at the cutting edge of particle physics research. By the late 2030s, the LHC is expected to reach the end of its useful life and CERN needs $17 billion from European nations to fund the construction of a much bigger accelerator, known as the Future Circular Collider. But that funding has yet to be secured and, in the meantime, China has proposed its own collider. raditionally, CERN has relied on contributions from its 23 member states and observer partners like the US for funding pure research, while private investors focus on applied research, according to Charlotte Warakaulle, CERN's director of international relations. That makes the Schmidts' donation to pure research a private-sector first and may herald a different approach to funding the next collider, she says. "We're looking at all sorts of potential partners," Warakaulle said in an interview with Bloomberg last week. "How we could partner with the EU, private investments potentially."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese people know their country's internet is different. There is no Google, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. They use euphemisms online to communicate the things they are not supposed to mention. When their posts and accounts are censored, they accept it with resignation. They live in a parallel online universe. They know it and even joke about it. Now they are discovering that, beneath a facade bustling with short videos, livestreaming and e-commerce, their internet -- and collective online memory -- is disappearing in chunks.

A post on WeChat on May 22 that was widely shared reported that nearly all information posted on Chinese news portals, blogs, forums, social media sites between 1995 and 2005 was no longer available. "The Chinese internet is collapsing at an accelerating pace," the headline said. Predictably, the post itself was soon censored. It's impossible to determine exactly how much and what content has disappeared. [...] In addition to disappearing content, there's a broader problem: China's internet is shrinking. There were 3.9 million websites in China in 2023, down more than a third from 5.3 million in 2017, according to the country's internet regulator.

A group of current and former employees from OpenAI and Google DeepMind are calling for protection from retaliation for sharing concerns about the "serious risks" of the technologies these and other companies are building. From a report: "So long as there is no effective government oversight of these corporations, current and former employees are among the few people who can hold them accountable to the public," according to a public letter, which was signed by 13 people who've worked at the companies, seven of whom included their names. "Yet broad confidentiality agreements block us from voicing our concerns, except to the very companies that may be failing to address these issues."

In recent weeks, OpenAI has faced controversy about its approach to safeguarding artificial intelligence after dissolving one of its most high-profile safety teams and being hit by a series of staff departures. OpenAI employees have also raised concerns that staffers were asked to sign nondisparagement agreements tied to their shares in the company, potentially causing them to lose out on lucrative equity deals if they speak out against the AI startup. After some pushback, OpenAI said it would release past employees from the agreements.

Google has accidentally collected childrens' voice data, leaked the trips and home addresses of car pool users, and made YouTube recommendations based on users' deleted watch history, among thousands of other employee-reported privacy incidents, according to a copy of an internal Google database which tracks six years worth of potential privacy and security issues obtained by 404 Media. From the report: Individually the incidents, most of which have not been previously publicly reported, may only each impact a relatively small number of people, or were fixed quickly. Taken as a whole, though, the internal database shows how one of the most powerful and important companies in the world manages, and often mismanages, a staggering amount of personal, sensitive data on people's lives.

The data obtained by 404 Media includes privacy and security issues that Google's own employees reported internally. These include issues with Google's own products or data collection practices; vulnerabilities in third party vendors that Google uses; or mistakes made by Google staff, contractors, or other people that have impacted Google systems or data. The incidents include everything from a single errant email containing some PII, through to substantial leaks of data, right up to impending raids on Google offices. When reporting an incident, employees give the incident a priority rating, P0 being the highest, P1 being a step below that. The database contains thousands of reports over the course of six years, from 2013 to 2018. In one 2016 case, a Google employee reported that Google Street View's systems were transcribing and storing license plate numbers from photos. They explained that Google uses an algorithm to detect text in Street View imagery.