Tag Archives: Alphabet Inc

Google’s YouTube to pay $170 million penalty for collecting data on kids

FILE PHOTO: Silhouettes of mobile device users are seen next to a screen projection of Youtube logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

By Diane Bartz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Google, which is owned by Alphabet Inc and its YouTube video service will pay $170 million to settle allegations that it broke federal law by collecting personal information about children, the Federal Trade Commission said on Wednesday.

YouTube had been accused of tracking viewers of children’s channels using cookies without parental consent and using those cookies to deliver million of dollars in targeted advertisements to those viewers.

The settlement with the FTC and the New York attorney general’s office, which will receive $34 million, is the largest since a law banning collecting information about children under age 13 came into effect in 1998. The law was revised in 2013 to include “cookies,” used to track a person’s internet viewing habits.

It is also small compared with the company’s revenues. Alphabet, which generates about 85% of its revenue from sales of ad space and ad technology, in July reported total second-quarter revenue of $38.9 billion.

YouTube said in a statement on Wednesday that in four months it would begin treating all data collected from people watching children’s content as if it came from a child. “This means that we will limit data collection and use on videos made for kids only to what is needed to support the operation of the service,” YouTube said on its blog.

FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection director Andrew Smith said at a news conference Wednesday the settlement “is changing YouTube’s business model, that YouTube cannot bury its head in the sand, YouTube cannot pretend that it is not aware of the content on its platform and hope to escape liability.”

Once the settlement takes effect, the FTC plans to “conduct a sweep of the YouTube platform to determine whether there remains child-directed content” in which personal information is being collected, Smith said. The FTC could take actions against individual content creators or channel owners as a result.

In late August, YouTube announced it would launch YouTube Kids with separate niches for children depending on their ages and designed to exclude disturbing videos. It has no behavioral advertising.

YouTube allows companies to create channels, which include advertisements that create revenue for both the company and YouTube.

In its complaint, the government said that YouTube touted its popularity with children in marketing itself to companies like Mattel and Hasbro. It told Mattel that “YouTube is today’s leader in reaching children age 6-11 against top TV channels,” according to the complaint.

“YouTube touted its popularity with children to prospective corporate clients,” FTC Chairman Joe Simons said in a statement. “Yet when it came to complying with (federal law banning collecting data on children), the company refused to acknowledge that portions of its platform were clearly directed to kids.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James said the companies “abused their power.”

“Google and YouTube knowingly and illegally monitored, tracked, and served targeted ads to young children just to keep advertising dollars rolling in,” said James.

In addition to the monetary fine, the proposed settlement requires the company to refrain from violating the law in the future and to notify channel owners about their obligations to get consent from parents before collecting information on children.

The two Democrats on the FTC, Rebecca Slaughter and Rohit Chopra, dissented from the settlement. Slaughter, who called the violations “widespread and brazen,” said the settlement fails to require YouTube to police channels that provide children’s content but do not designate it as such, thus allowing more lucrative behavioral advertising, which relies on tracking viewers through cookies.

Senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal, both Democrats active in online privacy matters, criticized the settlement in separate statements.

“A financial settlement is no substitute for strict reforms that will stop Google and other tech companies from invading our privacy,” Blumenthal said. “I continue to be alarmed by Big Tech’s policies and practices that invade children’s lives.”

(Reporting by Diane Bartz Additional reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Marguerita Choy)

Study shows cute kids are YouTube clickbait; child advocates concerned

FILE PHOTO: 2019 Kids Choice Awards – Arrivals – Los Angeles, California, U.S., March 23, 2019 – YouTube star Ryan ToysReview. REUTERS/Danny Moloshok/File Photo

By Arriana McLymore

NEW YORK (Reuters) – YouTube videos featuring young children drew nearly triple the average viewership of other content, according to research released on Thursday that provided ammunition for child advocates who want Alphabet Inc. (Google) to take more aggressive steps to make it’s streaming service safer for kids.

Pew Research Center said its findings show videos aimed at or featuring children are among YouTube’s most popular materials, attracting an outsized audience relative to the number uploaded.

Lawmakers and parent groups have criticized YouTube in recent years, saying it has done less than it should to protect minors’ privacy.

Last year, the Center for Digital Democracy and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), saying YouTube’s parent company violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

The groups complained that the company “has not only made a vast amount of money by using children’s personal information” and has “profited from advertising revenues from ads on its YouTube channels that are watched by children.”

YouTube, which announced 2 billion monthly users in May, shares limited data about its service. But music, gaming and kids’ content generally have been known to rank highly in viewership.

Other groups have called on YouTube to take more steps to block access to age-inappropriate content and prevent predators from getting to clips that could allow them to sexualize minors. Complaints also prompted YouTube to introduce punishments for parents uploading videos in which kids are placed in dangerous situations.

The video unit has become a major driver of revenue growth at Alphabet Inc, and it has said that it is weighing additional changes to how it handles content related to kids.

Pew researchers said in a report that they used automated tools and human review to analyze activity during the first week of 2019 on nearly 44,000 YouTube channels with more than 250,000 subscribers.

Just 2% of the 243,000 videos those channels uploaded that week featured at least one individual that looked under 13 years old to human reviewers. But the small subset received an average of 298,000 views, compared with 97,000 for videos without children, according to the report. The median viewership figures were about 57,000 and 14,000.

Channels that uploaded at least one video featuring a child averaged 1.8 million subscribers, compared to 1.2 million for those that did not, Pew said.

YouTube said it could not comment on Pew’s survey methods or results. It maintained that the most popular categories are comedy, music, sports and “how to” videos.

“We have always been clear YouTube has never been for people under 13,” the company added.

Popular videos with children included those with parenting tips or children singing or dressing up.

YouTube’s policies ban children under 13 from using its main service and instead direct them to its curated YouTube Kids app. But many parents use the main YouTube service to entertain or educate children, other research has found.

(Reporting by Arriana McLymore in New York; Additional reporting by Paresh Dave in San Francisco; Editing by David Gregorio)

U.S., China bicker over ‘extravagant expectations’ on trade deal

A surveillance camera is seen next to containers at a logistics center near Tianjin Port, in northern China, May 16, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee

By Ben Blanchard and David Lawder

BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – China accused the United States on Monday of harboring “extravagant expectations” for a trade deal, underlining the gulf between the two sides as U.S. action against China’s technology giant Huawei began hitting the global tech sector.

Adding to bilateral tension, the U.S. military said one of its warships sailed near the disputed Scarborough Shoal claimed by China in the South China Sea on Sunday, the latest in a series of “freedom of navigation operations” to anger Beijing.

Alphabet Inc’s Google has also suspended business with China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd that requires the transfer of hardware, software and technical services, except those publicly available via open source licensing, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday, in a blow to the company that the U.S. government has sought to blacklist around the world.

Shares in European chipmakers Infineon Technologies, AMS and STMicroelectronics fell sharply on Monday amid worries the Huawei suppliers may suspend shipments to the Chinese firm due to the U.S. blacklisting of it last week.

The Trump administration’s addition of Huawei to a trade blacklist on Thursday immediately enacted restrictions that will make it extremely difficult for it to do business with U.S. counterparts.

In an interview with Fox News Channel recorded last week and aired on Sunday night, Trump said the United States and China “had a very strong deal, we had a good deal, and they changed it. And I said ‘that’s OK, we’re going to tariff their products’.”

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said he didn’t know what Trump was talking about.

“We don’t know what this agreement is the United States is talking about. Perhaps the United States has an agreement they all along had extravagant expectations for, but it’s certainly not a so-called agreement that China agreed to,” he told a daily news briefing.

The reason the last round of China-U.S. talks did not reach an agreement is because the United States tried “to achieve unreasonable interests through extreme pressure”, Lu said.”From the start, this wouldn’t work.”

China went into the last round of talks with a sincere and constructive attitude, he said.

“I would like to reiterate once again that China-U.S. economic and trade consultation can only follow the correct track of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit for there to be hope of success.”

No further trade talks between top Chinese and U.S. trade negotiators have been scheduled since the last round ended on May 10 – the same day Trump raised the tariff rate on $200 billion worth of Chinese products from 10 percent.

Trump took the step after the United States said China backtracked on commitments in a draft deal that had been largely agreed to.

STERNER TONE

Since then, China has struck a sterner tone, suggesting that a resumption of talks aimed at ending the 10-month trade war between the world’s two largest economies was unlikely to happen soon.

Beijing has said it will take “necessary measures” to defend the rights of Chinese companies but has not said whether or how it will retaliate over the U.S. actions against Huawei.

The editor of the Global Times, an influential tabloid run by the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily, tweeted on Monday that he had switched to a Huawei phone, although he said his decision did not mean that he thinks it is right to boycott Apple and said he was not throwing away his iPhone.

“While the U.S. spares no efforts to subdue Huawei, out of personal belief, I chose to support the well-respected company by using its product,” Hu Xijin tweeted.

Trump, who said the interview with Fox News host Steve Hilton had taken place two days after he raised the tariffs, said he would be happy to simply keep tariffs on Chinese products, but said that he believed that China would eventually make a deal with the United States “because they’re getting killed with the tariffs”.

But he said that he had told Chinese President Xi Jinping before the most recent rounds of talks that any deal could not be “50-50” between the two countries and had to be more in favor of the United States because of past trade practices by China.

(Reporting by David Lawder and Ben Blanchard; Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Richard Borsuk, Robert Birsel and Nick Macfie)

U.S. bill seeks to give Americans more control over online data

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) speaks to reporters before a series of votes on legislation ending U.S. military support for the war in Yemen on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., December 13, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Marco Rubio introduced a bill on Wednesday aimed at giving Americans more control over information that online companies like Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google collect on their location, financial data, job history or biometric data like fingerprints.

Lawmakers from both parties have criticized the tech giants and others over data breaches, a lack of online privacy options and concern about political bias.

Congress has been expected to pass some sort of online privacy bill to pre-empt a stringent law passed by California.

Rubio’s bill, which would pre-empt the California law if passed by Congress, would require consumer protection regulator the Federal Trade Commission to draw up rules for companies to follow that are based on the Privacy Act of 1974, with a goal of having them in place within 18 months of the Republican senator’s bill becoming law.

The bill won early praise from Marc Rotenberg, president of the independent Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Senator Rubio has put forward a very good proposal to address growing concerns about privacy protection. The federal Privacy Act is also the right starting point,” he said.

The 1974 measure requires government agencies to give public notice of what records they keep, prohibits most disclosures of records unless the person gives written consent and gives people a way to fix inaccurate records.

Three lawmakers on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee – Republicans John Thune and Jerry Moran and Democrat Richard Blumenthal – talked about potential privacy legislation last year.

The Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology proposed a bill in December that strictly limits the collection of biometric and location information and calls for punishment by fines.

In November, Intel Corp began seeking public comment on a bill it drafted that would shield companies from fines if they attest to the FTC that they have strong data protection measures.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

Kroger begins tests of driverless grocery delivery in Arizona

Nuro's R1 driverless delivery van is seen packed with bags from Kroger's Fry's Food Stores, which will begin a test of the vehicle in Scottsdale, Arizona, U.S., this autumn in this undated photo provided August 15, 2018. Courtesy of Kroger/Handout via REUTERS

(Reuters) – U.S. supermarket operator Kroger Co said it will start testing driverless grocery delivery on Thursday with technology partner Nuro at a single Fry’s Food Store in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Kroger and rival Walmart Inc each have teamed up with autonomous vehicle companies in a bid to lower the high cost of “last-mile” deliveries to customer doorsteps, as online retailer Amazon.com rolls out free Whole Foods delivery for subscribers to its Prime perks program.

“Kroger wants to bring more customers the convenience of affordable grocery delivery,” said Kroger Chief Digital Officer Yael Cosset, who added that the test will also gauge consumer demand for the service.

The first phase of the test will use a fleet of Toyota Prius cars equipped with Nuro technology. Those cars have seats for humans who can override autonomous systems in the event of an error or emergency. Nuro’s R1 driverless delivery van, which has no seats, will begin testing this autumn, the companies said.

“While we compete final certification and testing of the R1, the Prius will be delivering groceries and helping us improve the overall service,” a Nuro spokeswoman said.

Self-driving car delivery from the Fry’s store will cost $5.95 with no minimum order. It is only available at addresses within the store’s zip code of 85257, Kroger said.

Walmart and Alphabet Inc’s self-driving car company Waymo are partnering to test a service that shuttles Phoenix shoppers to stores to collect online grocery orders.

(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

Apple sees its mobile devices as platform for artificial intelligence

An Apple employee showcases the augmented reality on an iPhone 8 Plus at the Apple Orchard Shop in Singapore September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su

By Jess Macy Yu

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Apple Inc  sees its mobile devices as a major platform for artificial intelligence in the future, Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams said on Monday.

Later this week, Apple is set to begin taking pre-orders for its new smartphone, the iPhone X – which starts at $999 and uses artificial intelligence (AI) features embedded in the company’s latest A11 chips.

The phone promises new facial recognition features such as Face ID that uses a mathematical model of a person’s face to allow the user to sign on to their phones or pay for goods with a steady glance at their phones.

“We think that the frameworks that we’ve got, the ‘neural engines’ we’ve put in the phone, in the watch … we do view that as a huge piece of the future, we believe these frameworks will allow developers to create apps that will do more and more in this space, so we think the phone is a major platform,” Williams said.

He was speaking at top chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s 30th anniversary celebration in Taipei, which was attended by global tech executives.

Williams said technological innovations, especially involving the cloud and on-device processing, will improve life without sacrificing privacy or security.

“I think we’re at an inflection point, with on-device computing, coupled with the potential of AI, to really change the world,” he said.

He said AI could be used to change the way healthcare is delivered, an industry he sees as “ripe” for change.

Williams said Apple’s integration of artificial intelligence wouldn’t be just limited to mobile phones.

“Some pieces will be done in data centers, some will be on the device, but we are already doing AI in the broader sense of the word, not the ‘machines thinking for themselves’ version of AI,” he said referring to the work of Nvidia Corp, a leader in AI.

Global tech firms such as Facebook, Alphabet Inc, Amazon, and China’s Huawei are spending heavily to develop and offer AI-powered services and products in search of new growth drivers.

Softbank Group Corp, which has significantly invested in artificial intelligence, plans a second Vision Fund that could be about $200 billion in size, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

At Monday’s event, TSMC Chairman Morris Chang described his company’s relationship with Apple as “intense.”

Williams said the relationship started in 2010, the year Apple launched the iPhone 4, with both parties taking on substantial risk.

He credited Chang for TSMC’s “huge” capital investment to ramp up faster than the pace the industry was used to at the time. Apple decided to have 100 percent of its new iPhone and new iPad chips for application processors sourced at TSMC, and TSMC invested $9 billion to bring up its Tainan fab in a record 11 months, he said.

 

(Reporting by Jess Macy Yu, additional reporting by Eric Auchard, Editing by Miyoung Kim and Adrian Croft)