Google may have to sell Chrome to address antitrust issues
The latest batch comes thanks to Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, which shows the growing power struggle between cofounders Musk, Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, and Greg Brockman as their views on how to responsibly harness artificial general intelligence—AGI, or the machine that outwits the man—diverge.
I’d go on, but it’s too complicated to outline here. Or as Musk wrote: “This is very annoying. I’ve had enough.” —Andrew Nusca
P.S. Interested in attending our fast-approaching Fortune Brainstorm AI in San Francisco? (Yes, even you, Elon.) Please register your interest ASAP. We’re quite literally running out of room, and you don’t want to miss this.
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Google may have to sell Chrome to address antitrust issues
Leading antitrust officials in the U.S. Justice Department have reportedly asked a judge to force Google to sell Chrome, currently the world’s most popular web browser.
The officials will also recommend that the judge impose data licensing requirements on the Alphabet-owned company and force it to unbundle its Android mobile operating system from its Search and Google Play products, according to a Bloomberg report.
The U.S. district court judge in question, Amit P. Mehta, issued a landmark ruling in August that Google enjoyed an illegal monopoly in the search business. (Google says it plans to appeal.) The case was first filed during the first Trump administration.
If accepted, the proposals would leave lasting effects on the established search market and the rapidly growing artificial intelligence category that threatens to replace it.
Chrome is an important access point for its search product, which in turn drives the ad business that underpins the entire company. More recently, Google has used Chrome to direct users to Gemini, its AI model.
Amazon’s next Alexa is plagued by latency issues
Amazon’s race to create an AI-based successor to its voice assistant Alexa has hit more snags after a series of earlier setbacks over the past year.
Employees have found there is too much latency—the delay between asking the technology for something and the new Alexa providing a response or completing a task, according to an internal memo obtained by Fortune.
If released as is, customers could become frustrated and the product could end up as a failure, some employees fear.
An updated Alexa is a major priority at Amazon because it could open a new door to selling subscriptions to access the new voice assistant and may supercharge sales of the company’s Echo line of smart devices.
An Alexa successor is also a key barometer for Amazon’s standing in the race among Big Tech companies to dominate consumer-facing AI. Many industry observers consider Amazon to be trailing peers Alphabet and Microsoft, along with buzzy newcomers such as OpenAI and Perplexity AI, in creating breakthrough generative AI applications for consumers. —Jason Del Rey
Someone messed with two undersea cables in Baltic Sea
An investigation is underway after local telecom companies reported that two underwater Internet cables in the Baltic Sea were suddenly “disrupted” over the weekend.
One of the cables runs between Lithuania and Sweden. The other links Finland and Germany. The disruptions were about 60 to 65 miles apart, CNN says. The “sudden” nature of the outages suggests physical damage to the cables.
Who would do such a thing? Unsurprisingly, U.S. officials point to the country that rhymes with “Mussia.” An uptick in Russian military activity near deepsea telecom cables has been observed in recent weeks, stoking fears of sabotage and “hybrid warfare.”
One reason for relief: “The most important data flows are usually routed through several different cables, to avoid overreliance on a single link,” CNN says. The damage is expected to be repaired in a week or two.
Perplexity wants to be a shopping recommendation destination
The popular AI search engine Perplexity will introduce new shopping tools that it hopes will make its service a destination for product recommendations, if not purchases.
Users who enter a query in the company’s new search experience, such as “What’s the highest-rated coffee machine under $500?,” are shown a top product recommendation as a response, along with a short summary explaining its positive attributes.
Below that, the AI system displays a few rectangular tiles, each displaying another recommended product with key information like a product’s image and pricing. In some cases shoppers will be able to easily buy one of the recommended items thanks to an integration with the e-commerce software company Shopify.
Announced yesterday, the new tools are part of a major push by Perplexity to turn the 100 million weekly search queries it handles into a business. They’re also another effort by the company to challenge search leader Google, which has been adding AI-powered shopping tools to its search results in recent months.
How does Perplexity’s system decide to recommend one product over another? CEO Aravind Srinivas is as perplexed as the rest of us. “We don’t understand it fully ourselves today,” he told me. —Jason Del Rey
So, about that FCC chair pick
For Big Tech, one of the most consequential effects of the second Trump era could be what the President-elect does with Section 230, the rule that gives social networks immunity, both for the content of user posts and for removing objectionable posts.
Here’s a clue as to what will happen: Trump will make Federal Communications Commission commissioner Brendan Carr the agency’s new chairman.
Carr, a co-author of the infamous Project 2025 handbook for the incoming administration, is a vocal opponent of Big Tech’s “censorship cartel” and is very likely to seek fights with the likes of Meta and Google.
He also has an intriguing array of other stances: ban TikTok; scrap net neutrality; punish TV networks for alleged anti-conservative bias (the FCC regulates broadcast licenses); and support Elon Musk’s Starlink in its efforts to deliver satellite broadband to rural America. —David Meyer
More data
—Donald Trump will attend today’s SpaceX launch, many people are saying.
—Social media’s hottest club is Bluesky. This place has everything: news, links, a distinct lack of trolls. (For now.)
—VC profits are at a historic low. American VCs returned $26 billion in shares back to investors, the lowest amount since 2011.
—Goldman Sachs wants to spin-out its digital assets platform in the next 12 to 18 months.
—Roblox adds new parental controls. The tools come after criticism that the company prioritized growth over child safety.
