In an effort to make ride hailing safer and easier, Uber announced a new verification feature aimed at giving drivers more information about who is getting in their car.
Starting Wednesday, passengers will have their account information checked against third-party databases or have the option to upload an ID. Once verified, they will receive a blue “Verified” rider badge, similar to the ones that have long been common on social media platforms, visible to drivers right on the trip request.
Uber explains in detail how the process works in an FAQ section on its website. Existing members of Clear can use the identity-verification service in order to get the badge.
RUDE RIDERS: CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED
The ride-hailing service is also targeting passenger behavior, sending warnings to rude customers. Drivers already have the ability to block and un-match with riders who give them one star.
In April, Uber rolled out a slate of new in-app safety features aimed at female riders, including audio recording, pin-verification, and RideCheck, which helps detect if a ride ends early, stops unexpectedly, or changes direction. Over the years, the ride-hailing company has faced criticism over how it has handled assault and other safety concerns.
The news comes just days after Uber made two major announcements that will start early next year: It would offer driverless ride-sharing in Austin and Atlanta, and riders will be able to rent a car on Uber’s app.
You’re probably reading this over Wi-Fi. This month marks the 25th anniversary of this transformative technology—a milestone that reminds us just how integral Wi-Fi has become in our daily lives. For Gen Z, the idea of a world without Wi-Fi is nearly unimaginable, and even millennials struggle to remember a time when a wired connection was necessary to get online. Today, Wi-Fi is the world’s most popular way to access the internet. It’s a standard element of computers, phones, TVs, smartwatches, and countless other devices, and its reach continues to grow.
Yet unlike other groundbreaking technologies with well-documented origins, Wi-Fi’s beginnings are clouded by myth and misinformation. Search the internet or ask ChatGPT about Wi-Fi’s inventors, and you’ll likely read about a team of Australian scientists at CSIRO. But while many can claim to have contributed to the original Wi-Fi standard, that team is not on the list.
Wi-Fi’s official launch occurred on September 15, 1999, when a coalition of industry players committed to ensuring that wireless connectivity would work seamlessly across devices from different manufacturers. The name “Wi-Fi” may have seemed quirky at first, but it was certainly more marketable than “IEEE 802.11b,” the technical standard underpinning the technology.
While it’s tempting to think Wi-Fi was born from a singular genius’s eureka moment, the truth is far more interesting. Imagine the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)—the world’s largest technical professional organization, with more than 325,000 members—embarking on a yearslong political and technical process to develop a wireless networking standard. Vic Hayes, often called the “father of Wi-Fi,” led an international committee that included hundreds of engineers from more than 100 competing companies. The resulting standard took nearly a decade and the work of many hands.
However, the IEEE standard alone wasn’t enough to create Wi-Fi. Simply adhering to the standard didn’t ensure that devices would communicate flawlessly—often, they didn’t. That’s where a group representing six companies, ultimately called the Wi-Fi Alliance, came in. Their mission: to guarantee wireless devices could connect reliably and that this compatibility would endure as the technology evolved. These pioneers promoted their vision at a sparsely attended press event on Wi-Fi’s launch day.
The story goes even deeper, with the path to the original standard making unexpected stops in Hollywood, Hawaii, and the Netherlands. During World War II, actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil pioneered spread-spectrum radio, later to become a critical pillar of Wi-Fi. In 1971, professor Norm Abramson spearheaded ALOHAnet, a wireless network that linked the Hawaiian Islands. Later, a skilled Dutch team from National Cash Register integrated these technologies and advocated for the IEEE to establish a wireless networking standard.
So, who invented Wi-Fi? The answer is not a “who” but a “they”—a long list of contributors, including many unsung heroes.
Wi-Fi’s incredible success as a global standard is due to continuous innovation. Over the past 25 years, new technologies have been layered onto the original Wi-Fi standard, always maintaining backward compatibility. That’s why your modern laptop can still connect to a decades-old router. The IEEE has issued 30-plus specification amendments, and the Wi-Fi Alliance—now with more than 900 member companies—has ensured not just interoperability but also spearheaded global initiatives to maintain seamless connectivity across generations of Wi-Fi. These enhancements, often cloaked in an alphabet soup of acronyms, have improved Wi-Fi’s performance by more than 4,000 times since its inception.
What about the Australian team at CSIRO? Led by John O’Sullivan, it explored wireless networking in the 1990s but did not participate in the creation of the IEEE standard. CSIRO became famous for a legal battle started in 2005, winning upwards of $400 million in payments from Wi-Fi vendors for a patent related to a specific technology with the acronym OFDM. However, OFDM wasn’t included in Wi-Fi until its second version in 2003—meaning the CSIRO team had no hand in the original 1999 release.
WI-FI’S GALACTIC OPPORTUNITY
At the Wi-Fi Alliance’s recent silver anniversary celebration, original inventors, current implementers, and visionaries shared stories highlighting Wi-Fi’s transformative impact on nearly every aspect of modern life. Some surprises? Wi-Fi’s invisible waves can now detect the presence of people in a room, and plans are in motion for Wi-Fi hotspots on the moon. Wi-Fi was lauded not only as a global treasure, but a galactic opportunity.
Reflecting on Wi-Fi’s journey, the inventors marveled at its profound societal impact, far beyond their wildest expectations. From connecting the unconnected in emerging markets to enabling remote work during a global pandemic, Wi-Fi has changed the world in ways they never imagined.
No one knows exactly how Wi-Fi will further transform our lives over the next quarter century, but at least the internet should understand how it all began.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Abramowitzwas an author of the IEEE 802.11/802.11b standards, a founder of the Wi-Fi Alliance, and has held executive roles in the Wi-Fi industry for 30 years. His oral history of Wi-Fi is chronicled in the Computer History Museum. Abramowitz is cofounder and chief commercial officer of Ept AI, and is writing a book on the history of Wi-Fi.
Hyperloop, a new form of mass transit involving capsules whizzing on magnetic fields through depressurized tubes, has achieved significant liftoff in the northern Netherlands, a company developing the technology said Monday.
A test vehicle was levitated and zipped through a tube at a testing facility for the high-speed transit system once promoted by Elon Musk.
“So today, with the first successful test, we were able to levitate the vehicle, also turn on the guidance system and the propulsion system,” Marinus van der Meijs, the technology and engineering director at hyperloop company Hardt, told The Associated Press late last week before Monday’s formal announcement.
The European Hyperloop Center’s 420-meter (460-yard) tube is made up of 34 separate sections mostly 2½ meters (more than eight feet) in diameter. A vacuum pump sucks out the air to reduce the internal pressure. That reduces drag and allows capsules to travel at high speeds.
Hyperloop developers aim to have capsules speeding through tubes at up to 700 kph (435 mph). Its backers say it’s far more efficient than short-haul flights, high-speed rail and freight trucks, but it will involve significant investment in infrastructure.
So far, in the limited space offered by the test center, the speed has been modest.
Once the capsule was in place in the tube, “we launched it with an acceleration similar to that of a metro, up to a top speed of about 30 kph (18 mph), about 100 meters (more than 300 feet) in the pipe,” Van der Meijs added.
Even so, it’s a milestone that required some careful conducting.
“The most difficult things that we are doing now is to test all of these functions together. Levitation, propulsion, guidance, all of those functions we are now capable of executing as an orchestra, making them work together,” said Roel van de Pas, commercial director of Hardt Hyperloop.
Musk first proposed the idea more than a decade ago, suggesting it could shuttle passengers the nearly 400 miles (645 kilometers) between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 30 minutes. Since then, teams around the world have been working to bring the idea to fruition.
“To deliver Hyperloop as a mobility system, we have a very complicated puzzle which requires technology, which requires policy, which requires public-private collaboration, and that is what is needed most,” Van de Pas said. “At Hardt, we are ready for passenger operations by 2030.”
Some analysts are skeptical. When the hyperloop test facility opened in March, Robert Noland, distinguished professor at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, told The Associated Press that building the necessary infrastructure is too costly, calling it “another example of policymakers chasing a shiny object.”
In 2016, Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, signed a deal with Los Angeles-based Hyperloop One to study the potential for building a hyperloop line between the city-state and Abu Dhabi, the Emirati capital.
The announcement of the deal took place atop the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, with a panoramic view of the skyline of the futuristic city-state serving as both a backdrop and a sign of Dubai’s desire to be the first to rush toward the future.
But like many flashy announcements in the city-state, the hyperloop idea faded in recent years with no track being built. Hyperloop One shut down in December.
As South Africa steps into Heritage Month and embraces the vibrant energy of spring, Yassir, a globally recognized on-demand grocery delivery service, is thrilled to celebrate these occasions bhese occasions by highlighting its commitment to convenience, affordability, and long operating hours”
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A Global Leader with Local Impact
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Convenience, Affordability, and Quality
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Creating Jobs and Supporting Communities
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Join Us in Celebrating Heritage and Innovation
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Apple lost a long-running court battle with the European Union on Tuesday, resulting in the company being forced to pay 13 billion euros ($14.4 billion) in back taxes to Ireland, as part of a wider crackdown on so-called “sweetheart deals”.
WHAT HAPPENED?
In 2016, the European Commission’s competition chief Margrethe Vestager accused Ireland of having granted Apple illegal tax benefits, unfairly diverting investment away from other countries.
Both Apple and Ireland, whose low tax rates helped it attract Big Tech companies to set up their European headquarters, successfully challenged the EU ruling.
But the European Court of Justice has now sided with Vestager, agreeing Apple had unduly benefited from unfair loopholes in Ireland’s tax regime, and that the company must now hand Ireland 13 billion euros in back payments.
WHAT WAS THE ‘DOUBLE IRISH’ SCHEME?
Part of Ireland’s success in luring tech giants was a result of its old tax regime, under which multinational businesses were able to cut their overseas contributions to single digits.
The arrangement involved a complex corporate structure whereby a multinational could channel untaxed revenues to an Irish subsidiary which then pays the money to another company registered in Ireland but taxed elsewhere, such as tax haven Bermuda.
Both companies being Irish led to the term “Double Irish”.
Apple used a version of the Double Irish scheme until around 2014 when, under sustained pressure from the EU and U.S., Ireland closed the loophole.
WHAT DID APPLE SAY?
Apple expressed disappointment with the ruling, which is final and cannot be appealed.
“The European Commission is trying to retroactively change the rules and ignore that, as required by international tax law, our income was already subject to taxes in the U.S.,” the company said.
HOW IS IRELAND GOING TO SPEND THE CASH?
In its initial statement, the Irish government did not say. It will likely be placed into a new sovereign wealth fund that Dublin set up last year to invest surging corporate tax receipts that have handed it one of the few budget surpluses in Europe.
The government already plans to cut taxes and increase spending again in a pre-election Oct. 1 budget. Opposition parties have repeated calls that the Apple tax receipts should be used to further boost spending now on strained services.
WILL OTHER COMPANIES BE FORCED TO PAY BACK TAXES?
The Commission’s case against Ireland was helped by its ability to secure access to documents in which Irish officials were unusually frank about the agreement they made with Apple.
Amazon has been investigated for its tax arrangements in Luxembourg, but last year won an ECJ hearing which ruled the company did not have to pay 250 million euros in back taxes.
In 2019, Starbucks won its fight against an EU demand to pay up to 30 million euros in Dutch back taxes, while Fiat Chrysler Automobiles lost its challenge against an order to stump up a similar amount to Luxembourg.
Safe Superintelligence (SSI), newly co-founded by OpenAI‘s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has raised $1 billion in cash to help develop safe artificial intelligence systems that far surpass human capabilities, company executives told Reuters.
SSI, which currently has 10 employees, plans to use the funds to acquire computing power and hire top talent. It will focus on building a small highly trusted team of researchers and engineers split between Palo Alto, California and Tel Aviv, Israel.
The company declined to share its valuation but sources close to the matter said it was valued at $5 billion. The funding underlines how some investors are still willing to make outsized bets on exceptional talent focused on foundational AI research. That’s despite a general waning in interest towards funding such companies which can be unprofitable for some time, and which has caused several startup founders to leave their posts for tech giants.
Investors included top venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, DST Global and SV Angel. NFDG, an investment partnership run by Nat Friedman and SSI’s Chief Executive Daniel Gross, also participated.
“It’s important for us to be surrounded by investors who understand, respect and support our mission, which is to make a straight shot to safe superintelligence and in particular to spend a couple of years doing R&D on our product before bringing it to market,” Gross said in an interview.
AI safety, which refers to preventing AI from causing harm, is a hot topic amid fears that rogue AI could act against the interests of humanity or even cause human extinction.
A California bill seeking to impose safety regulations on companies has split the industry. It is opposed by companies like OpenAI and Google, and supported by Anthropic and Elon Musk‘s xAI.
Sutskever, 37, is one of the most influential technologists in AI. He co-founded SSI in June with Gross, who previously led AI initiatives at Apple, and Daniel Levy, a former OpenAI researcher.
Sutskever is chief scientist and Levy is principal scientist, while Gross is responsible for computing power and fundraising.
NEW MOUNTAIN
Sutskever said his new venture made sense because he “identified a mountain that’s a bit different from what I was working on.”
Last year, he was a part of the board of OpenAI’s non-profit parent which voted to oust OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over a “breakdown of communications.”
Within days, he reversed his decision and joined nearly all of OpenAI’s employees in signing a letter demanding Altman’s return and the board’s resignation. But the turn of events diminished his role at OpenAI. He was removed from the board and left the company in May.
After Sutskever’s departure, the company dismantled his “Superalignment” team, which worked to ensure AI stays aligned with human values to prepare for a day when AI exceeds human intelligence.
Unlike OpenAI’s unorthodox corporate structure, implemented for AI safety reasons but which made Altman’s ouster possible, SSI has a regular for-profit structure.
SSI is currently very much focused on hiring people who will fit in with its culture.
Gross said they spend hours vetting if candidates have “good character”, and are looking for people with extraordinary capabilities rather than overemphasizing credentials and experience in the field.
“One thing that excites us is when you find people that are interested in the work, that are not interested in the scene, in the hype,” he added.
SSI says it plans to partner with cloud providers and chip companies to fund its computing power needs but hasn’t yet decided which firms it will work with. AI startups often work with companies such as Microsoft and Nvidia to address their infrastructure needs.
Sutskever was an early advocate of scaling, a hypothesis that AI models would improve in performance given vast amounts of computing power. The idea and its execution kicked off a wave of AI investment in chips, data centers and energy, laying the groundwork for generative AI advances like ChatGPT.
Sutskever said he will approach scaling in a different way than his former employer, without sharing details.
“Everyone just says scaling hypothesis. Everyone neglects to ask, what are we scaling?” he said.
“Some people can work really long hours and they’ll just go down the same path faster. It’s not so much our style. But if you do something different, then it becomes possible for you to do something special.”
Radio inspired will.i.am’s career. Now, the musician and entrepreneur is eager to innovate on the dying medium with Radio.fyi, a new interactive AI model. Will shares his philosophy about AI development, the dawn of “intelligent media,” and why he believes Radio.fyi will likely be a big part of radio’s future.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
You’ve been on Masters of Scale as a guest, sharing lessons from your career. For now, I want to ask you right now about how you’re managing in this crazy world of ours. You’ve been on tour with The Black Eyed Peas, but at the same time, you recently launched Radio.fyi to reimagine radio as a media experience. Can you explain what Radio.fyi is?
Radio.fyi is text to station. So we know what text-to-action is. And in this case, the action in our architecture is the format of radio. So I could ask any question about any topic that is presented to me. Where, you know, this AI host is speaking over this mood music, then throwing to song, then grabbing information as information is unfolding in the internet, and then presenting it back in the form of radio and then throwing to song and then asking you along the way if I have any questions on anything that is presented, and then it could then answer those questions.
It’s part AI assistant and part listening experience. It’s like this blend of information and entertainment?
It’s what we call the dawn of intelligent media—where the media itself is interactive, engageable media rather than a passive leanback experience. It’s the lean-in, dig-in, dive-deep media experience.
So I don’t have to just read it? I can have a conversation with the DJ, I guess, about the things that are there, right?
Exactly. What we’ve been able to do with our architecture is allow for humanlike banter. If you were to be on a radio station and you could call in and talk to a person, you’re able to talk to the information itself. And that’s pretty profound to be able to say, like, “Yo, what do you mean you’re able to talk to the information? That sounds freaking ludicrous.” Bro, you could talk to the information, bro, you could literally have a conversation with silicone freaking lithium now because of the technology that we’re living in.
So you’ve got your library that you have curated from other places and you’re paying for the rights to that as opposed to through a separate streaming service?
Yeah. We’re not a streaming service like Spotify. It’s radio-like radio. You can’t fast-forward or rewind. Most you can do is pause. It’s not streaming. It’s not à la carte. It’s not on demand like that. It’s like radio.
And because I love radio so much, I want to innovate and help out the realm that changed my life. And what changed my life is radio. What changed Lionel Richie’s life is radio. What changed Stevie Wonder’s life is radio. And so innovating around the space that urgently needs innovation, for our community of music, the artists that make it . . . Radio, radio, radio.
You were the first one to tell me about Udio, which is this amazing AI-based music generator that you’re invested in. You prompt it to create an original song for you. It’s amazing. The record labels are suing it for infringement. How do you think about squaring this sort of awesome tech for creative work and the kind of creative work that underlies it, that trains it? How do you think about those things fitting?
So, say for example, Spotify had no users, the record companies wouldn’t have sued them. So, the reason why they sued them is because there’s like growth. The reason why they sued Udio is because Udio has growth. So it’s a good thing because that means they’re going to come to some type of agreement faster with artists, and how they trained their stuff on.
It’s going to be resolved, but we’re in tricky grounds now. For example, let’s say, Prince was alive, and you went to Prince and said, “Hey, Prince, who’s your inspiration?” Prince is going to obviously tell you James Brown, Sly and The Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix. If you would ask Michael Jackson, “Hey, Mike, who’s your inspiration?” Michael Jackson’s going to say James Brown, Fred Astaire, Sammy Davis Jr., and Gene Kelly. What they both have in common is James Brown.
And it’s clear that James Brown is their big inspiration. You could see it. So in this case, from human to human, we call it inspiration. Machines call it data set and training, what you trained on. If you would ask like an artist, you’re like, “Yo, who’s your inspiration?” It’s the same shit because we have a neural network, and that neural network was based off of our neural network. So now we’re in touchy ground here because last time I checked, Prince did not give James Brown royalties because he was inspired by him. Like, his pathways were part of his data set. So that’s where it gets blurry, where we are now.
What do most people misunderstand about AI?
This is the worst it’s ever going to be because it just gets better from here. And that’s being optimistic in every sense of the way: ethically, morally, business practice, legally, compensation-wise . . . This is the worst it’s ever going to be. Being optimistic, let’s be optimistic that the powers that be don’t lead with greed. This is the worst it’s ever going to be . . . That sentence’s it: Let’s be optimistic that the powers that be don’t lead with greed. This is the worst it’s ever going to be.
You’re straddling these sort of multiple careers in music, in tech, you do TV, and I wonder how you manage all that? Like Jack Dorsey was CEO of Twitter and Square at the same time, and he had designated days for each company, right? Like, how do you prioritize all the different things that are part of your world?
It’s really on the teams you build. The premise is to build a Warriors-type of team. You want a Stephen Curry, but then you need Draymond Green. You need the squad. So the same is here for FYI, where my squad allows me to go out and hunt and find other partners that complement the things that we’re trying to do.
When I’m working with Mercedes, Mercedes needs to know, “We thought Will was just a musician, but he’s more than that. He’s great in our workshops. He always has good ideas.” And then when I’m there, I can’t flood them with my idea faucet. I have to be super strategic and aim it. You could drown somebody with “and then, and then, and then, and then!” You don’t want to ‘and then’ people. So you have to go in there with being super focused.
I worked with someone once who had a ton of ideas and I felt like my job was like to say, “No, no, no, no, no. Yes, that one I like!” Do you do that for yourself where you’re going through your own ideas? You’re writing them down and you’re putting them down and then you’re saying, “No, no, no. Oh yes. That’s the one to strategically push?” Or do you use other people around you to help you do that?
You have to have a different sounding board. I have a great sounding board outside of FYI because if it’s FYI, a lot of times, like, you could get lost on your own sauce. And what’s grounding, you need an outside team of trusted truth-tellers, and you have to be super you.
French prosecutors on Wednesday freed Telegram CEO Pavel Durov from police custody after four days of questioning over allegations that the messaging app is being used for illegal activities.
Durov was detained on Saturday at Le Bourget airport outside Paris as part of a judicial inquiry opened last month involving 12 alleged criminal violations.
“An investigating judge has ended Pavel Durov’s police custody and will have him brought to court for a first appearance and a possible indictment,” a statement from the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
Allegations against the Russia-born Durov, who is a French citizen, include that his platform is being used for child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, fraud and abetting organized crime transactions, and that Telegram refused to share information or documents with investigators when required by law.
Durov’s arrest in France has caused outrage in Russia, with some government officials calling it politically motivated and proof of the West’s double standard on freedom of speech. The outcry has raised eyebrows among Kremlin critics because in 2018, Russian authorities themselves tried to block the Telegram app but failed, withdrawing the ban in 2020.
In Iran, where Telegram is widely used despite being officially banned after years of protests challenging the country’s Shiite theocracy, Durov’s arrest in France prompted comments from the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei weighed in with veiled praise for France for being “strict” against those who “violate your governance” of the internet.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that Durov’s arrest wasn’t a political move but part of an independent investigation. Macron posted on X that his country “is deeply committed” to freedom of expression but “freedoms are upheld within a legal framework, both on social media and in real life, to protect citizens and respect their fundamental rights.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says senior Biden administration officials pressured Facebook to “censor” some COVID-19 content during the pandemic and vowed that the social media giant would push back if it faced such demands again.
In a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg alleges that the officials, including those from the White House, “repeatedly pressured” Facebook for months to take down “certain COVID-19 content including humor and satire.”
The officials “expressed a lot of frustration” when the company didn’t agree, he said in the letter.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg wrote in the letter dated Aug. 26 and posted on the committee’s Facebook page and to its account on X.
The letter is the latest repudiation by Zuckerberg of efforts to target misinformation around the coronavirus pandemic during and after the 2020 presidential election, particularly as allegations have emerged that some posts were deleted or restricted wrongly.
“I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today,” he said, without elaborating. “We’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”
In response, the White House said in a statement that, “When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this Administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety. Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present.”
Experts warn this year’s U.S. election could be swamped by misinformation on social media with the proliferation of artificial intelligence and other tools to produce false news stories and content that could mislead voters.
Facebook in early 2021 appended what Zuckerberg called labels with “credible information” to posts about COVID-19 vaccines. That’s after it moved in April 2020 — just as the virus had led to global shutdowns and radical changes in everyday life — to warn users who shared misinformation about COVID-19.
Conservatives have long derided Facebook and other major tech companies as favoring liberal priorities and accused them of censorship.
Zuckerberg has tried to change the company’s perception on the right, going on podcaster Joe Rogan’s show in 2022 and complimenting Republican nominee Donald Trump’s response to an assassination attempt as “badass.” He sent Monday’s letter to the House Judiciary Committee, whose chairman, Jordan, is a longtime Trump ally.
Zuckerberg also said he would no longer donate money to widen election access for voters through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the company that runs the philanthropy for him and his wife, Priscilla Chan.
The couple previously donated $400 million to help local election offices prepare for voters in the 2020 presidential election, with funds used for protective equipment to prevent the spread of the coronavirus at polling sites, drive-thru voting locations and equipment to process mail ballots.
“I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other” despite analyses showing otherwise, he said. “My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another – or to even appear to be playing a role. So I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.”
Google will soon give California millions of dollars to help pay for local journalism jobs in a first-in-the-nation deal, but journalists and other media industry experts are calling it a disappointing agreement that mostly benefits the tech giant.
The agreement, which was hashed out behind closed doors and announced this week, will direct tens of millions of public and private dollars to keep local news organizations afloat. Critics say it’s a textbook political maneuver by tech giants to avoid a fee under what could have been groundbreaking legislation. California lawmakers agreed to kill a bill requiring tech to support news outlets they profit from in exchange for Google’s financial commitment.
By shelving the bill, the state effectively gave up on an avenue that could have required Google and social media platforms to make ongoing payments to publishers for linking news content, said Victor Pickard, professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania. California also left behind a much bigger amount of funding that could have been secured under the legislation, he said.
“Google got off easy,” Pickard said.
Google said the deal will help both journalism and the artificial intelligence sector in California.
“This public-private partnership builds on our long history of working with journalism and the local news ecosystem in our home state, while developing a national center of excellence on AI policy,” Kent Walker, president of global affairs and chief legal officer for Google’s parent company Alphabet, said in a statement.
State governments across the U.S. have been working to help boost struggling news organizations. The U.S. newspaper industry has been in a long decline, with traditional business models collapsing and advertising revenues drying up in the digital era.
As news organizations move from primarily print to mostly digital, they have increasingly relied on Google and Facebook to distribute its content. While publishers saw their advertising revenues nosedive significantly in the last few decades, Google’s search engine has become the hub of a digital advertisement empire that generates more than $200 billion annually.
The Los Angeles Times was losing up to $40 million a year, the newspaper’s owner said in justifying a layoff of more than 100 people earlier this year.
More than 2,500 newspapers have closed since 2005, and about 200 counties across the U.S. do not have any local news outlets, according to a report from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
California and New Mexico are funding local news fellowship programs. New York this year became the first state to offer a tax credit program for news outlets to hire and retain journalists. Illinois is considering a bill similar to the one that died in California.
Here’s a closer look into the deal California made with Google this week:
WHAT DOES THE DEAL ENTAIL?
The deal, totaling $250 million, will provide money to two efforts: funding for journalism initiatives and a new AI research program. The agreement only guarantees funding for a period of five years.
Roughly $110 million will come from Google and $70 million from the state budget to boost journalism jobs. The fund will be managed by UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Google will also kick in $70 million to fund the AI research program, which would build tools to help solve “real world problems,” said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who brokered the deal.
The deal is not a tax, which is a stark departure from a bill Wicks authored that would have imposed a “link tax” requiring companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft to pay a certain percentage of advertising revenue to media companies for linking to their content. The bill was modelled after a policy passed in Canada that requires Google to pay roughly $74 million per year to fund journalism.
WHY ARE TECH COMPANIES AGREEING TO THIS NOW?
Tech companies spent the last two years fighting Wicks’ bill, launching expensive opposition campaigns and running ads attacking the legislation. Google threatened in April to temporarily block news websites from some California users’ search results. The bill had continued to advance with bipartisan support — until this week.
Wicks told The Associated Press on Thursday that she saw no path forward for her bill and that the funding secured through the deal “is better than zero.”
“This represents politics is the art of the possible,” she said.
Industry experts see the deal as a playbook move Google has used across the world to avoid regulations.
“Google cannot exit from news because they need it,” said Anya Schiffrin, a Columbia University professor who studies global media and co-authors a working paper on how much Google and Meta owes to news publishers. “So what they are doing is using a whole lot of different tactics to kill bills that will require them to compensate publishers fairly.”
She estimates that Google owes $1.4 billion per year to California publishers.
WHY DO JOURNALISTS AND LABOR UNIONS OPPOSE THE AGREEMENT?
The Media Guild of the West, a union representing journalists in Southern California, Arizona and Texas, said journalists were locked out of the conversation. The union was a champion of Wicks’ bill but wasn’t included in the negotiations with Google.
“The future of journalism should not be decided in backroom deals,” a letter by the union sent to lawmakers reads. “The Legislature embarked on an effort to regulate monopolies and failed terribly. Now we question whether the state has done more harm than good.”
The agreement results in a much smaller amount of funding compared to what Google gives to newsrooms in Canada and goes against the goal to rebalance Google’s dominance over local news organizations, according to a letter from the union to Wicks earlier this week.
Others also questioned why the deal included funding to build new AI tools. They see it as another way for tech companies to eventual replace them. Wicks’ original bill doesn’t include AI provisions.
The deal has the support of some journalism groups, including California News Publishers Association, Local Independent Online News Publishers and California Black Media.
WHAT’S NEXT?
The agreement is scheduled to take effect next year, starting with $100 million to kickstart the efforts.
Wicks said details of the agreement are still being ironed out. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has promised to include the journalism funding in his January budget, Wicks said, but concerns from other Democratic leaders could throw a wrench in the plan.
