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Google to Block Political Ads After U.S. Election Polls Close

Google will halt election advertising after the polls officially close for the U.S. presidential election, the company said on Friday.

The largest internet company said advertisers will not be able to run ads referencing candidates, the election or its outcome, according to an email viewed by Bloomberg News. The policy, which is designed to block all ads related to the election, also applies to YouTube, the biggest online video service.

Google also said advertisers should expect to wait at least two days for political ads to be approved in the lead up to the election. Axios reported the new policy earlier. (Read more from “Google to Block Political Ads After U.S. Election Polls Close” HERE)

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Google Admits It’s Trying to Monopolize the Ad Market; Conservatives List Allegations of Big Tech Bias

By The Federalist. . .CEOs from Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google each sat before members of Congress who grilled the California captains of the tech industry over a wide range of issues from conservative censorship online to privacy concerns, but targeted their questioning with animosity against the companies’ apparent monopolization in a rare scene of bipartisanship in an era of historic polarization.

Google for example, was questioned over its phasing out of third-party tracking cookies by 2022 while Apple was criticized for removing parental control apps after introducing its own “screen time” feature.

At one point, North Dakota Republican Rep. Kelly Armstrong criticized Google CEO Sundar Pichai for the company’s threats to de-platform The Federalist over content on the website’s comment sections, despite its ownership of YouTube which is notorious for its nefarious comments. . .

“There were threats of demonetizing The Federalist and numerous other complaints of viewpoints and aggression,” Armstrong said. “It’s a legitimate question as to whether Google’s market power insulates it from loss of revenue normally associated with offending half the people who use your product. I also think it’s a legitimate question to ask if other attempts to regulate your industries have worked.” (Read more from “Google Admits It’s Trying to Monopolize the Ad Market” HERE)

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Conservatives List Allegations of Big Tech Bias Amid Tense Hearing Appearance

By Fox News. House Republicans took tech CEOs to task over allegations that their companies intentionally blocked or otherwise censored conservative ideas. . .

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., also piled on the tech giants, asking Zuckerberg why he fired Facebook exec Palmer Luckey after Luckey gave $10,000 to an organization opposing Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“When you fire people as a consequence of their politics, do you think that impacts the culture and perhaps empowers some of the content moderators to also treat people worse as a consequence of their politics?” Gaetz asked. Zuckerberg denied that he did this.

Later in the day, Jordan told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson what could happen to the tech companies if they engage in censorship.

“You got to work on Section 230, we’re looking at that,” Jordan said, referring to the law that says platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are not publishers and thus cannot be sued for statements other people make on their sites. (Read more from “Conservatives List Allegations of Big Tech Bias Amid Tense Hearing Appearance” HERE)

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Election Interference: Google Busted Suppressing Content

A few days after the 2016 election, at an internal meeting later leaked to Breitbart News, top Google executives, including Sundar Pichai, Sergey Brin, and Kent Walker, lamented President Trump’s victory, comparing Trump voters to “extremists” and discussing their desire to make Trump’s election and the populist movement a “blip” in history.

True to their word, four years later, Google is deliberately working to interfere with the reelection of Trump in 2020.

There are several ways in which Google is interfering in the 2020 election, but this article will focus primarily on one of them: political search bias. . .

After Google’s May core search update on or about May 5, 2020, Google search impressions and search traffic to Breitbart for “Joe Biden” and other Biden-related search terms has gone to zero. Zero. . .

On May 1, Google searches for “Joe Biden” generated approximately 30,000 impressions (views, used as a metric for advertisers) for Breitbart links. After May 5, both impressions and clicks went to zero. (Read more from “Election Interference: Google Busted Suppressing Content” HERE)

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Senator Presses DOJ to Investigate Google

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) is pushing the Department of Justice (DOJ) to probe whether search giant Google is in violation of antitrust laws on a number of fronts, a new letter he wrote to Attorney General Bill Barr provided to Breitbart News exclusively shows.

“In recent weeks, news outlets ​have reported ​that the Department of Justice is nearing a decision about whether to take enforcement action against Google for anticompetitive behavior that violates U.S. antitrust law,” Cotton wrote to Barr, citing a recent Politico report on looming DOJ action against Google. “I ask that the Department also investigate whether Google’s dominance of online searches violates antitrust law”[.]

Cotton wrote to Barr that Google dominates search volume, citing a report from Business Insider on how the Silicon Valley powerhouse currently has 90 percent of online searches worldwide conducted through its platform. He noted that while the mere fact Google is engaged in “monopolistic behavior” is troubling and warrants Justice Department action, what is “even more alarming” is the fact that Google is using that power for political goals.

“More than ​90% of global searches​ ​are conducted through Google’s search engine, suggesting that Google has a monopoly of internet searches by any objective standard,” Cotton wrote. “While monopolistic behavior alone should warrant Department action, it’s even more alarming that reports suggest Google is using that monopoly to achieve political goals and influence American elections.” (Read more from “Senator Presses DOJ to Investigate Google” HERE)

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Google Appears To Test Its Ability To Blacklist Conservative Media Ahead Of Election

Google appeared to test its ability to blacklist conservative media Tuesday from its monopolized search engine which garners at least 3.5 billion online searches everyday making up 94 percent of the internet’s search share.

Websites targeted, according to NewsBusters which itself was temporarily de-platformed, included the Washington Free Beacon, The Blaze, Townhall, The Daily Wire, PragerU, LifeNews, Project Veritas, Judicial Watch, The Resurgent, Breitbart, the Media Research Center, and CNSNews among others.

Chuck Ross, a reporter with the Daily Caller News Foundation discovered that his outlet was also included in Google’s Tuesday blackout when searching for stories related to Stefan Halper, an FBI informant who spied on the Trump campaign over the course of Crossfire Hurricane and was unmasked by Ross at the Caller.

According to NewsBusters, websites impacted by Google’s apparent suspension test were still organically available on Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo. (Read more from “Google Appears to Test Its Ability to Blacklist Conservative Media Ahead of Election” HERE)

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EXPOSED: Google’s Go-To ‘Conservative’ Influencer List Who Claim ‘Big Tech Bias Is a Good Thing’

The National Pulse is today publishing a previously undisclosed “go to” list of “conservative” influencers that Big Tech firm Google uses to influence the political dynamics in Washington, D.C.

As the battle over Big Tech rages in Western capitals, The National Pulse was provided with an exclusive leak of the list of think tanks and activists who Google lobbyist Max Pappas reached out to on the back of the Federalist/Zero Hedge demonetization story.

. . .Featured in the list are high-profile “conservative” organizations which solicit conservatives in the public for donations, all the while promoting Big Tech talking points, and/or taking grants from Big Tech companies which continue to censor conservatives online.

The Heritage Foundation, the CATO Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, R Street, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and more were named. The National Pulse reached out to both Google and Max Pappas before publication, though neither responded to our queries. (Read more from “EXPOSED: Google’s Go-To ‘Conservative’ Influencer List Who Claim ‘Big Tech Bias Is a Good Thing’” HERE)

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Google Pulls ‘Remove China Apps’ From Play Store

Remove China Apps, an app that gained popularity in India in recent weeks and did exactly what its name suggests, has been pulled from the Play Store.

The top trending app in India, which was downloaded more than 5 million times since late May and enabled users to detect and easily delete apps developed by Chinese firms, was pulled from Android’s marquee app store for violating Google Play Store’s Deceptive Behavior Policy, TechCrunch has learned.

Under this policy an app on Google Play Store cannot make changes to a user’s device settings, or features outside of the app, without the user’s knowledge and consent, and it cannot encourage or incentivize users into removing or disabling third-party apps.

The app, developed by Indian firm OneTouch AppLabs, gained popularity in India in part because of a growing anti-China sentiment among many citizens as tension between the world’s two most populous nations has escalated in recent days over a Himalayan border dispute.

Several Indian celebrities in recent days have backed the idea of deleting Chinese apps. Yoga guru Baba Ramdev tweeted a video over the weekend that showed him deleting several apps that had affiliation with China. (Read more from “Google Pulls ‘Remove China Apps’ From Play Store” HERE)

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Google Faces Massive Lawsuit for Tracking People in Incognito Mode

Google faces a proposed class action lawsuit that accuses the tech giant of invading people’s privacy and tracking internet use even when browsers are set to “private” mode. The suit, filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that Google violates wiretapping and privacy laws by continuing to “intercept, track, and collect communications” even when people use Chrome’s incognito mode and other private web browser modes.

“Google tracks and collects consumer browsing history and other web activity data no matter what safeguards consumers undertake to protect their data privacy,” reads the complaint. The search giant surreptitiously collects data through Google Analytics, Google Ad Manager, website plug-ins and other applications, including mobile apps, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit seeks at least $5 billion from Google and its parent company, Alphabet, according to Reuters. The complaint says the proposed class may include “millions” of Google users and is looking for damages of at least $5,000 for each individual. (Read more from “Google Faces Massive Lawsuit for Tracking People in Incognito Mode” HERE)

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WATCH: Google Employee Who Allegedly Assaulted Pro-Life Activist Countersues Him for $5 Million

A senior Google employee who allegedly assaulted a pro-life activist countersued him for $5 million.

Twenty-eight-year-old engineer Michael Gribbin said he was chalking pro-life messages on the sidewalk near a Washington, D.C., Planned Parenthood on Aug. 31, 2019, when Quinn Chasan, the head of customer analytics for Google Cloud physically assaulted him.

Video footage of the incident posted to YouTube by Gribbin allegedly shows Gribbin following Chasan and demanding that Chasan give his chalk back. The footage then shows Chasan throw the chalk, walk to his bike and unlock it, and Gribbin grab the bike and say he will not allow Chasan to leave until police arrive. Chasan then punches Gribbin and pushes him to the ground, according to Gribbin.

A September 2019 police report obtained by the Daily Caller says that the victim called for police assistance “after he was punched and pushed by S-1 [suspect] after a heated argument turned physical in the 400 block of M street,” and that “N.E. M.P.D Officers arrived on scene where V-1 flagged Officers down to give his account of events.”

An MPD spokesperson told the Daily Caller at the time that no further information was available and that the case remained under investigation. (Read more from “Google Employee Who Allegedly Assaulted Pro-Life Activist Countersues Him for $5 Million” HERE)

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Google May Have Shared Your Private Videos With Strangers

Google announced this week that its data backup service, Google Takeout, experienced a technical issue that resulted in the leaking of thousands of private user videos.

According to a report by 9 to 5 Google, users that participated in the Takeout data backup program may have had their private videos leaked to other users. The service, which allows users to backup all of the data they are storing with the Internet giant, was established in 2011. This week, users on the service received a notification from the company that their private videos may have been shared with other users.

“Unfortunately, during this time, some videos in Google Photos were incorrectly exported to unrelated users’ archives,” the Silicon Valley titan wrote in an email to affected users. “One or more videos in your Google Photos account was affected by this issue.” (Read more from “Google May Have Shared Your Private Videos With Strangers” HERE)

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