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☆ Former Google workers fired for protesting Israel deal file complaint claiming protected speech
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-01 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN —Dozens of former Google workers filed a complaint with the US National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday after they were fired or placed on administrative leave last month for protesting the company’s cloud-computing contract with Israel’s government. We are confident in our position and stand by the actions we’ve taken.”Last month’s protests involved employee sit-ins inside Google’s offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California. No Tech for Apartheid said last week that 50 Google employees were terminated in connection with the protests. The group claimed that some of the workers fired were “non-participating bystanders” and not actively involved in the workplace activism. But affected workers say they should not have been fired for protesting the company’s actions.

Persons: “, Thomas Kurian, ”, Zelda Montes, Benjamin Sachs, Kestnbaum, that’s, Sundar Pichai, Pichai, ” Pichai, Googlers, –, Catherine Thorbecke Organizations: New, New York CNN, US National Labor Relations Board, Tech, Apartheid, Google, CNN, “, Labor, Industry, Harvard Law School, Hamas Locations: New York, New York City, Sunnyvale , California, Sunnyvale, Israel, Gaza, America

☆ Google earnings: Shares surge after Alphabet to buy back billions of dollars of its own stock
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-25 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New York CNN —Alphabet, the parent company of Google, bounced back from an absolutely dreadful day for tech shares, as its stock surged Thursday after the closing bell. Revenue from the quarter reached more than $80.5 billion, up 15% from the same period in the prior year and ahead of the $78.75 billion analysts had projected, according to FactSet estimates. Meta shares sank on Thursday after the company raised its annual expense forecast to fund its AI ambitions, despite better-than-expected earnings results Wednesday. But in addition to Google, multiple positive tech earnings reports on Thursday helped reverse what had been a sluggish day for tech stocks. Snap resultsSocial media company Snap, the parent company of social media platform Snapchat, also saw its stock climb after-hours on the heels of a rosy first-quarter earnings report that beat Wall Street’s estimates.

Persons: Sundar Pichai, ” Pichai, CNN’s Catherine Thorbecke Organizations: New, New York CNN, Google, Wall, Revenue Locations: New York

☆ Google has fired 50 employees after protests over Israel cloud deal, organizers say
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-23 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

CNN —Google has fired an additional 20 workers that it says were involved in protests last week over the company’s cloud-computing contract with the Israeli government, bringing the total number of workers fired to 50, according to the group organizing the demonstrations. No Tech for Apartheid, the organizers of the protest at Google offices last Tuesday, said in a statement Monday evening that Google had fired an additional 20 workers, on top of the 30 workers terminated last week. We carefully confirmed and reconfirmed this,” the Google spokesperson said. The organizers of the protest, meanwhile, say that some of the workers fired did not cause any disruption inside Google offices. Last week, in the wake of the protests at Google, CEO Sundar Pichai sent a company-wide memo to staffers urging them to keep “politics” out of the workplace.

Persons: ”, “, Sundar Pichai, ” Pichai, Googlers Organizations: CNN, Google, Tech, Apartheid, Hamas Locations: New York, Sunnyvale , California, Israel, Gaza, America

☆ Google CEO tells employees Gemini AI blunder ‘unacceptable’
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-28 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks in conversation with Emily Chang during the APEC CEO Summit at Moscone West on November 16, 2023 in San Francisco, California. In a memo Tuesday evening, Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the company’s artificial intelligence mistakes, which led to Google taking its Gemini image-generation feature offline for further testing. Google introduced the image generator earlier this month through Gemini, the company’s main group of AI models. Over the past week, users discovered historical inaccuracies that went viral online, and the company pulled the feature last week, saying it would re-launch it in the coming weeks. This has to be our approach for all our products, including our emerging AI products.”Read the full text of the memo here:

Persons: Sundar Pichai, Emily Chang, Pichai, “, ” Pichai, Bard, Gemini, “ We’ve, ” Organizations: APEC, Summit, Moscone West, Google, Semafor, Gemini Locations: San Francisco , California

Google is immediately releasing a standalone Gemini app for smartphones running on its Android software. Photos You Should See View All 15 ImagesThe Gemini app initially will be released in the U.S. in English before expanding to the Asia-Pacific region next week, with versions in Japanese and Korean. Besides the free version of Gemini, Google will be selling an advanced service accessible through the new app for $20 a month. Google is offering a free two-month trial of Gemini Advanced to encourage people to try it out. In a blog post, Google CEO Sundar Puchai predicted the technology underlying Gemini Advanced will be able to outthink even the smartest people when tackling many complex topics.

Persons: Bard, Siri, “, Sissie Hsiao, ”, Sundar Puchai, —, ” Pichai, Satya Nadella, ” Nadella, It’ll Organizations: FRANCISCO, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Gemini, Samsung, Inc, OpenAI Locations: U.S, Asia, Pacific, View , California, Mumbai, India, Europe

☆ Premarket stocks: Buybacks could rebound this earnings season
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-19 | by ( Krystal Hur | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

Stock buybacks struggled to recover last year after taking a hit in 2022, even as corporate earnings began to rebound. Investors view buybacks as an indication that a company’s leadership believes its own shares are undervalued and are confident about its future performance. Buybacks also tend to push up share prices due to the added demand. ONEOK, a natural gas company, on Wednesday unveiled a $2 billion share repurchase program. The week’s total for initial claims landed far below economists’ projections for 205,000 initial claims, according to FactSet estimates.

Persons: Stock buybacks, Buybacks, buybacks, “, ”, Howard Silverblatt, Dow, Sundar Pichai, Brian Fung, Pichai, ” Pichai, Read, —, Alicia Wallace Organizations: CNN Business, Bell, New York CNN, Deutsche Bank, Wednesday, Deutsche, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Dow Jones, Google, CNN, of Labor Locations: New York, Lennar, buybacks

☆ Google CEO’s internal memo warns of further layoffs ahead
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-18 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +1 min

Some parts of Google’s business will not be hit by this year’s changes, he said. “The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices …. The memo came as The New York Times reported Wednesday that Google-subsidiary YouTube was laying off 100 workers. CNN has not independently verified the YouTube layoffs. A Google spokesperson confirmed to CNN the existence of Pichai’s memo as well as the YouTube layoffs, which affect roughly 100 roles in the company’s partnerships organization that handles outreach to YouTube content creators.

Persons: Sundar Pichai, Pichai, “, ” Pichai Organizations: CNN, ”, Google, New York Times, YouTube

☆ Google CEO says more job cuts are needed in 2024 in order to reach ‘ambitious goals’
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-17 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, speaks on artificial intelligence during a Bruegel think tank conference in Brussels, Belgium, on Jan. 20, 2020. Google CEO Sundar Pichai is warning employees that more job cuts are coming this year as the company continues to shift investments toward areas like artificial intelligence. In a memo titled “2024 priorities and the year ahead” that staffers received Wednesday evening, Pichai said, “we have ambitious goals and will be investing in our big priorities this year.” In the memo, which was obtained by CNBC, Pichai said company leadership is gearing up to share its AI goals for the year this week and will publish its 2024 OKRs (objectives and key results). “The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices,” Pichai wrote. For some teams that means eliminating roles, which includes “removing layers to simplify execution and drive velocity,” he added.

Persons: Sundar Pichai, Pichai, ” Pichai Organizations: Google, ”, CNBC Locations: Brussels, Belgium

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — President Joe Biden and other global leaders have spent the past few days melding minds with Silicon Valley titans in San Francisco, their discussions frequently focusing on artificial intelligence, a technology expected to reshape the world, for better or worse. “The world is at an inflection point — this is not a hyperbole," Biden said Thursday at a CEO summit held in conjunction with APEC. None were more bullish than Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, whose software company has invested more than $10 billion in OpenAI, the startup behind the AI chatbot ChatGPT. That is, we finally have a technology that understands us, not the other way around,” Nadella said at the CEO summit. Musk had been scheduled to discuss his hopes and fears surrounding AI during the CEO summit with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, but canceled Thursday because of an undisclosed conflict.

Persons: Joe Biden, Biden, Satya Nadella, ChatGPT, Nadella, “, ” Nadella, Sundar Pichai, ” Pichai, we’ve, Pichai, ”, State Condoleezza Rice, ” Robert Moritz, Moritz, Elon Musk, Musk, Marc Benioff Organizations: FRANCISCO, Valley titans, Economic Cooperation, APEC, Microsoft, Google, Inc, State, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, “, PricewaterhouseCoopers Locations: San Francisco, Asia, OpenAI

☆ Alphabet CEO, in Play store trial, acknowledges some materials not retained
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-14 | by ( Greg Bensinger | Thomson Reuters | Greg Bensinger Joined Reuters As A Technology Correspondent In Focusing On The World'S Largest Technology Companies. He Was Previously A Member Of The New York Times Editorial Board | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

He largely stuck to one-word answers but was occasionally admonished by Epic Games' attorney for straying beyond simple answers. Pichai, in examination by a Google attorney, denied he had ever tried to keep any document hidden from a lawsuit. Epic Games has alleged in its lawsuit that app store policies amount to an illegal monopoly and have caused consumers to pay artificially high prices. Google has said changing its systems would cause its Android-based app store to be less secure and damage its ability to compete with Apple (AAPL.O). Google has settled claims over its app store with dating app maker Match Group and from U.S. consumers and U.S. states.

Persons: Sundar Pichai, Joe Biden, Narendra Modi, Evelyn Hockstein, Pichai, ” Pichai, Epic's, “ Fortnite ”, Cary, Greg Bensinger, Matthew Lewis Organizations: Google, U.S, India's, White, REUTERS, Alphabet's Google, Epic Games, Games, Apple, Supreme, Thomson Locations: Washington , U.S, San Francisco, North Carolina, U.S

Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday was summoned to federal court for the second time in two weeks to testify in an antitrust trial threatening to topple a pillar of an internet empire that he helped build. In his latest court appearance in San Francisco, Pichai spent more than two hours defending the business practices of the Google Play Store, which distributes apps for the company's Android software that powers most of the world's smartphones. Evidence submitted during Pichai's Tuesday testimony showed just how lucrative the Play Store has been for Google. During the first half of 2020, for instance, the Play Store generated an operating profit of $4.4 billion. “The way we designed Google Play is we do well only when developers do well,” Pichai said.

Persons: Sundar Pichai, Pichai, Department's, Lauren Moskowitz, District Judge James Donato, Donato, Moskowitz, Apple, ”, specter, ” Pichai Organizations: Google, Apple, Washington D.C, ., District, Samsung, Android, U.S, Supreme Locations: San Francisco, Washington, iPhones, U.S

☆ Google CEO Sundar Pichai testifies in Google antitrust trial
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-30 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

Pichai, whom Google called as a star witness, opened his testimony by recounting his journey from Chennai, India to Google and his path to becoming the tech company’s CEO in 2015. “The correlation was pretty clear to see,” Pichai said, before Google attorney John Schmidtlein presented an internal email from 2010 showing research that users who switched from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer performed 48% more Google searches. Users of Mozilla’s Firefox browser that switched to Chrome performed 27% more searches on Google, the email said. Google has paid Apple more than an estimated $10 billion a year to be the default on Apple devices and software. In 2021, Google paid $26.3 billion to secure default agreements with its partners worldwide, according to a slide introduced in the trial last week.

Persons: Sundar Pichai, Pichai, ” Pichai, John Schmidtlein, Chrome, Satya Nadella, Apple “, Eddy, Bing, ” Google Organizations: Washington CNN, Court, District of Columbia, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Justice Department Locations: Chennai, India

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google’s digital advertising sales growth accelerated during the summer, advancing a recent revival that helped its corporate parent Alphabet Inc. to deliver a quarterly profit that exceeded analysts' projections. The third-quarter results released Tuesday for the July-September period included a 9% increase in Google’s ad sales from the same time last year. Those gains were the main reason Alphabet’s total revenue rose 11% from a year ago to $76.69 billion. The upturn was even better than the 7% year-over-year increase in revenue that Alphabet produced in the April-June period when it reversed an unprecedented drop in Google’s ad revenue after nearly 20 years of growth. “While the traction it has among AI startups may bear fruit in the long run, it is not currently helping Google Cloud enough to satisfy investors.”The Cloud letdown appeared to take the luster off the third-quarter report for many investors.

Persons: stoking, Sundar Pichai, ”, Max Willens, “ We’re, ” Pichai, Department’s Organizations: FRANCISCO, Inc, Google's, Microsoft, Google, U.S . Locations: , California, East, Ukraine

☆ Read the internal memo Alphabet sent in merging A.I.-focused groups DeepMind and Google Brain
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Jeff Dean, head of artificial intelligence at Google LLC, speaks during a Google AI event in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020. The two divisions, DeepMind and Google Research, have also reportedly had tensions in the past, leading DeepMind to seek more independence. This group, called Google DeepMind, will bring together part of Google Research (the Brainteam) and DeepMind. Google DeepMind will operate as a nimble, fast-paced unit, with clear points of connection andcollaboration with Google Research and the PAs. Working closely with Jeff as ChiefScientist, Google Research will continue its focus on fundamental and applied research across abroad portfolio.

☆ Google CEO defends desk-sharing policy, says some offices are like a 'ghost town'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Google CEO Sundar Pichai defended the cloud unit's new desk-sharing policy for employees, describing some of the company's offices as practically empty and reminding staffers that real estate is pricey. Pichai's comments follow a CNBC report last month about Google's plan to ask cloud employees and partners to share desks at the division's five largest locations, which include New York and San Francisco. The company is calling the downsizing effort Cloud Office Evolution (CLOE). Pichai said the new policy is just for cloud employees at the moment, and added that the company is "giving teams freedom to experiment." During the meeting, Pichai addressed employee concerns regarding the rollout of the desk-sharing policy and how it was communicated to the workforce.

☆ Google execs tell employees in testy all-hands meeting that Bard A.I. isn't just about search
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +10 min

In the lead up to the Bard announcement, Google executives repeatedly said the technology it was developing internally would integrate with search. “We’re working to bring these latest AI advancements into our products, starting with Search,” the company said in a blog post. That same week, at an event in Paris, Google search boss Prabhakar Raghavan unveiled some fresh examples of using Bard within search. "You see the stories of ChatGPT coincides with an event that we’re having that was actually focused on search," Krawczyk said. Specifically, the question asked why Google lost so many key people who were listed on a paper about much of the AI technology behind Bard.

☆ Google CEO tells employees some of company's top products 'were not first to market' as A.I. pressure mounts
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at a panel at the CEO Summit of the Americas hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on June 09, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. “I know this moment is uncomfortably exciting, and that's to be expected: the underlying technology is evolving rapidly with so much potential,” Pichai wrote in a companywide email, which was viewed by CNBC. "Some of our most successful products were not first to market,” Pichai wrote. He said it's time to “embrace the challenge and keep iterating.”“Channel the energy and excitement of the moment into our products," Pichai wrote. “Pressure test Bard and make the product better.”WATCH: CNBC's full interview with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai

☆ Microsoft set to hold mystery event as ChatGPT competition heats up
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-07 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

Seattle CNN —Microsoft on Tuesday is set to hold a mystery event at its Redmond, Washington headquarters, weeks after it confirmed plans to invest billions in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Microsoft (MSFT) has not announced the topic of the event, which kicks off at 1 p.m. Excited for the event tomorrow.”On Monday, Microsoft publicly confirmed the event shortly after its online search rival Google (GOOGL) announced plans to roll out its own artificial intelligence tool similar to ChatGPT in the coming weeks. Many have speculated the AI technology behind ChatGPT could cause a massive shake-up in the online search industry. On Monday, Google unveiled a new chatbot tool dubbed “Bard” in an apparent bid to compete with the viral success of ChatGPT.

☆ Google and Microsoft’s AI arms race could have ‘unintended consequences,’ an AI ethicist warns
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Oliver Darcy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN —Google is officially set to confront OpenAI’s ChatGPT — and soon. Ammanath said that “unintended consequences” accompany every new technology and reluctantly expressed confidence that it too will occur with AI chatbots, unless significant precautions are taken. Ammanath stressed that computer scientists working on AI have yet to solve for bias, a years-long problem, as well as other worrisome issues that plague the technology. And in its wake, other outlets like BuzzFeed, are already embracing the robot-writing technology to help it generate content and quizzes. “This is a new dimension that generative AI has brought in,” Ammanath added.

☆ Google CEO issues rallying cry in internal memo: All hands on deck to test ChatGPT competitor Bard
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google Inc. speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022. Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees Monday the company is going to need all hands on deck to test Bard, its new ChatGPT rival. He also said Google will soon be enlisting help from partners to test an application programming interface, or API, that would let others access the same underlying technology. Pichai's note to employees also said search boss Prabhakar Raghavan will be "sharing progress" at an event in Paris later this week. Microsoft is reportedly planning to launch a version of its own search engine, Bing, that will use ChatGPT to answer users' search queries.

☆ Google CEO promises new AI features are coming to search 'very soon' amid competition from ChatGPT
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said Thursday that the company will soon add advanced AI features to its search engine. Pichai said that it will release the large language model "in the coming weeks and months" so the company can get more feedback. Weakness in the advertising business appeared in an 8% revenue decline in YouTube's advertising revenue and a 2% fall in Google's Search and Other revenue. Google's prime business is web search, and the company has long touted itself as a pioneer in AI. But generative AI products like ChatGPT could pose a threat to the entire model of internet search, as they can provide creative answers to more complicated queries.

☆ Google CEO defends job cuts in animated town hall as employees demand clarity on process
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +8 min

Google CEO Sundar Pichai led the companywide meeting and told employees that executives will see their bonuses cut. "I understand you are worried about what comes next for your work," Pichai said. Prior to the job cuts, Google had made the decision to pay out 80% of bonuses this month with the rest expected in March or April. Thomas Kurian, the CEO of Google Cloud, offered some perspective on the areas that saw cuts. Last month, Google employees asked executives at an all-hands meeting whether the AI chatbot ChatGPT represents a "missed opportunity" for Google."

☆ How Big Tech’s pandemic bubble burst
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-22 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

Microsoft’s customers, Nadella said, are now trying “to do more with less.”Microsoft isn’t the only company experiencing such a dramatic reversal. In recent months, higher interest rates, inflation and recession fears causing a pullback in advertising and consumer spending have all weighed on tech companies’ profits and share prices. “They’ve taken a more seemingly thoughtful approach to hiring and overall managing the company,” Kessler said. Notably, however, none of the Big Tech company CEOs now overseeing layoffs appear to have been hit with any change to their compensation or title. The tech layoff announcements are likely to continue into the upcoming earnings season, Kessler said, amid ongoing economic warning signs.

☆ Google parent Alphabet is cutting 12,000 jobs
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN —Google parent Alphabet is eliminating about 12,000 jobs, or 6% of its workforce, the company said Friday, in the latest cuts to shake the technology sector. “Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” Pichai said in the email. Google’s job cuts are just the latest in a bruising wave of tech layoffs, as inflation weighs on consumer spending and rising interest rates squeeze funding. “While layoffs from high-profile firms make the headlines, plenty of firms are desperate for more workers, especially tech workers. “The labor market is still so tight that many tech workers, and workers with other skills, are snapped up well before they need to collect an unemployment check.

☆ Google’s core business is slowing down amid recession fears
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-25 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New York CNN Business —Google may be the giant in the digital advertising world, but even it is not immune to the impact that the economic downturn and recession fears are having on the online ad market. It reported revenue of nearly $69.1 billion, up just 6% from the same period in the prior year. YouTube’s ad business, which competes with TikTok, was especially hard hit, with revenue declining nearly 2% from the year-ago quarter. High inflation, looming recession fears and the ongoing war in Ukraine have all continued to weigh on the industry. Growth in other areas of Google’s business also appear to be slowing.

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