Brian McCullough (0:04)

Welcome to the Techmeme ride home for Tuesday, November 19th, 2024. I'm Brian McCullough. Today we have an idea of how the DOJ wants to break up Google and it seems to hinge a lot on selling the Chrome web browser. Sony wants the Elden Ring franchise, the outgoing administration is racing to give out Chips act money and all the headlines from today's Microsoft Ignite event. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Sources are telling Bloomberg that DOJ antitrust officials are planning to ask a judge to force Google to sell Chrome also license search data, uncouple Android from search and Google Play, all as part of their antitrust remedy package, quote Antitrust officials, along with states that have joined the case, also plan to recommend Wednesday that Federal Judge Amit Mehta impose data licensing requirements, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing a confidential matter. The judge has set a two week hearing in April on what changes Google must make to remedy the illegal behavior and plans to issue a final ruling by August 2025. The agency and the states have settled on recommending that Google be required to license the results and data from its popular search engine and give websites more options to prevent their content from being used by Google's artificial intelligence products, said the people. Antitrust enforcers want the judge to order Google to sell off Chrome, the most widely used browser worldwide, because it represents key access point through which many people use its search engine, the people said. Owning the world's most popular web browser is key for Google's ads business. The company is able to see activity from signed in users and use that data to more effectively target promotions, which generate the bulk of its revenue. Google has also been using Chrome to direct users to its flagship AI product, Gemini, which has the potential to evolve from an answer bot to an assistant that follows users around the web. The government has the option to decide whether a Chrome sale is necessary at a later date if some of the other aspects of the route create a more competitive market, the people added. The Chrome browser controls about 61% of the market in the U.S. according to StatCounter, a web traffic analytics service. Quick question from me, although I'm sure minds smarter than me have this all figured out have already thought of this. But what is the value of Chrome as a business without a search component like Firefox would not exist without their search deal, right? Would the owner of Chrome be allowed to cut exclusive search deals? If not, who would buy Chrome? Just asking questions though, though this is further down in the piece. A forced spinoff, if it happens, would also hinge on finding an interested buyer. Those who could afford and might want the property, like Amazon, are also facing antitrust scrutiny that may prevent such a mega deal. My view is this is extremely unlikely, mandeep Singh, a Bloomberg intelligence analyst, said in an email. But he added he could see a buyer like OpenAI, the maker of artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, that would give it both distribution and an ads business to complement its consumer chatbot subscriptions, he said. End quote. Regarding data licensing, the antitrust enforcers plan to propose two options that Google sell the underlying click and query data and also separately syndicate its search results. According to the people, the company currently sells syndicated search results, but with restrictions such as preventing their use on mobile. Forcing Google to syndicate its search results would allow rival search engines and AI startups to quickly improve their quality, while the data feed would allow others to build their own search index. Slightly related But a source is telling Android authority that Google is working on a multi year project to fully migrate Chrome OS to Android to better compete with the iPad. Android as an operating system is designed for smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, TVs, cars and soon XR glasses, whereas Chrome OS is primarily designed for laptops. While the term Chromebooks encompasses tablets as well, it fair to say that Chrome OS isn't as suited for tablet use as Android is, at least when it comes to media consumption. On the flip side, it's also a fair assessment that Android isn't as suited for tablet use as Chrome OS is, at least when it comes to productivity. Google has tried to add features to both operating systems to bridge that gap, but even after a bit of convergence, neither platform managed to really eat Apple's lunch. To better compete with the iPad as well as manage engineering resources more effectively, Google wants to unify its operating system efforts instead of merging Android and Chrome OS into a new operating system. Like like rumors suggested in the past, however, a source told me that Google is instead working on fully migrating Chrome OS over to Android. While we don't know what this means for the Chrome OS or Chromebook brands, we did hear that Google wants future Chromebooks to ship with the Android OS in the future. That's why I believe that Google's rumored new Pixel laptop will run a new version of desktop Android as opposed to Chrome OS that you're likely familiar with. While Google hasn't publicly confirmed its intentions to turn Chrome OS into Android, it did mention back in June that Chrome OS would become more likely Android by embracing portions of the Android stack. Like the Android Linux kernel and Android frameworks, Chrome OS already makes use of some Android tech, such as the operating system's Bluetooth stack codenamed Fluoride, so the announcement that it would start to use even more of Android came as no surprise. However, Google's announcement didn't tell the full story, as we've since discovered that not only is Google building a new version of Chrome for Android with extension support, but also a terminal to run Linux apps for Android. The former is intended to achieve feature parity between Chrome and Android and Chrome os, while the latter is intended to deliver a Crostini like experience when Chromebooks transition to Android. End quote Sources say Sony is in talks to acquire Kadokawa, the Japanese media powerhouse behind the Elden Ring game. It might happen in the coming weeks. Kadokawa had around a $2.7 billion after this news hit. Quoting Reuters, Sony already has a 2% stake in Kadokawa and a stake in Kadokawa controlled from software, the developer of the hit fantasy action role playing game. The critically acclaimed title is a collaboration between veteran game director Hidetaka Miyazaki and Game of Thrones author George R.R. martin. The game, which depicts an atmospheric world where players battle monsters and quests to repair the Elden ring, has sold 25 million units and has been widely praised. The title is available on platforms including Sony's PlayStation. In expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree sold 5 million units in the three days after its release in June. Kadokawa began as a publisher in 1945, but has expanded into games, anime events and figures with franchises such as RE0, in which a teenage boy is summoned to a fantasy world. End Quote 2 Baltic Sea Internet cables connecting Lithuania with Sweden and Finland with Germany were suddenly disrupted recently, sparking concerns about Russian sabotage. Quoting CNN A communications cable between Lithuania and Sweden was cut on Sunday morning around 10am local time, a spokesperson from telecommunications company Telia Lithuania confirmed to cnn. Another cable linking Finland and Germany was also disrupted, according to Cinia, the state controlled Finnish company that runs the link, the Sea lion cable, the only direct connection of its kind between Finland and Central Europe. Both countries joined NATO in the after Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine. The area that was disrupted along the Finnish German Cable is roughly 60 to 65 miles away from the Lithuanian Swedish cable that was cut, a CNN analysis of the undersea routes shows. It is unclear what exactly caused the fault in the Sea lion cable. Cinia said in a statement that it is still investigating the issue. A physical inspection has not yet been conducted, Reuters reported, citing the company's chief executive, Ari Jusi Knappila, who told a press conference on Monday that the sudden outage implied that the cable was cut outside force. The foreign ministers of Finland and Germany said in a joint statement on Monday evening that they were deeply concerned about the severed Sea lion cable and raise the possibility of, quote, hybrid warfare. End quote. If you listen to this podcast, you care about what's going on in the world. Listening to us is great, but if you want even more great coverage of our crazy world, you should subscribe to the Washington Post. You don't really need me to tell you about the Washington Post when it comes to their tech coverage because, you know, I quote from them on the show all the time. But it's not just tech that they're good at, they're one of my personal go tos for all the Things Beyond Tech 2. I even signed up to get the Post's for your newsletter, which sends me my very own personalized roundup of stories every evening based on my interest and my reading history. Their app makes it easy for me to stay up to date on the latest news, save and share stories, and follow my favorite authors. The Post even offers a cool feature for audio lovers like you. You can actually listen to articles in addition to reading them, so you can tackle your to do list and catch up on the news at the same time. Now more than ever, it's important to stay up to date on the world, so go to washingtonpost.com ride to subscribe for just 50 cents per week for your first year. That's 80% off their typical offer, so this is truly a steal. Once again, that's washingtonpost.com ride to subscribe for just 50 cents per week for your first year. This episode is brought to you by Incogni. Incogni is a service that helps protect your personal data from data brokers who collect, aggregate and sell it. Incogni reaches out to data brokers on your behalf and requests your personal data removal with the Family and Friends plan. You can also add up to four members to your subscription. And since many data brokers continue collection of your personal information even after they've removed it, Incogni makes sure your data stays off the market by conducting repeated removal requests. Incogni will handle any objections from data brokers and keep you updated on their progress every step of the way. Take control of your data Privacy today. Visit incogni.com, sign up and enjoy a 30 day money back guarantee to ensure you're completely satisfied with their service. Take your personal data back with Incogni. Use Ride home at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan. Plan incogni.com ridehome that's incogni I n-c o g n I.com ridehome and use code ridehome to get 60% off their annual plan. Okay, because of the Google news, I decided to reserve this for the second half of the show, but Microsoft Ignite is today kicked off today and there are a slew of headlines from the keynotes. First up, a hardware announce Say hello to the 349 Windows 365 link, a mini PC companion for its Windows 365 cloud service that runs a small Windows based OS and it's shipping in April of 2025. So imagine the Mac Mini, but with not a lot inside it, because you don't need a lot inside it. This is all about the cloud. Quoting the Verge the Link device is designed to be a compact, fanless and easy to use cloud PC for your local monitors and peripherals. It's meant to be the ideal companion to Microsoft's Windows 365 service, which lets businesses transition employees over to virtual machines that exist in the cloud and can be streamed securely to multiple devices. We want the focus of Lync to be the Windows 365 part of it, explains Pavan Davoluri, Microsoft's head of windows and Surface, in an interview with the Verge. We want to make it as simple and efficient as possible for you to be able to access your cloud PC. Our goal really is for the device itself to be as transparent as possible, so we minimize the steps for you, from setup to login to handoffs and transitions. Windows 365 Link is secure by design, using all of Microsoft's previous work of locking down Windows and even the Xbox consoles to keep hackers out. That means it won't run anything local on device other than a lightweight OS that's designed to get you into a Windows 365 cloud PC as quickly and securely as possible. Link boots in seconds, can wake up instantly from sleep, and uses its own chips to process video for Microsoft Teams or WebEx by Cisco. Microsoft isn't detailing the exact specs of the Windows, Windows 365 link yet, but the internals won't really matter too much given it's designed as a portal to a more powerful cloud PC. It does have two USB A 3.2 ports and one USB C 3.2 port at the rear, alongside a single display port and HDMI port and Ethernet connectivity at the front. There is a single USB a 3.2 port and Microsoft has also included Wi Fi, 6e and Bluetooth 5.3 wireless connectivity. More headlines from Ignite in no particular order, Microsoft debuted the Windows Resiliency initiative to help avoid another crowdstrike like incident and a quick machine recovery feature for fixing PCs remotely. They unveiled new custom chips, the Azure Boost DPU, its first data processing unit, and the Azure Integrated HSM, a new in house cloud security chip. They announced that they're teaming with Atom Computing to ship quantum computers with more than 1,000 physical qubits to enterprises in 2020 and detailed a 24 entangled logical qubits record. They announced Zero Day Quest, a new black hat like hacking event that they say will be the largest of its kind at its Redmond headquarters in 2025. They are bringing the full capabilities of Windows 11 to the Meta, Quest 3 and Quest 3s in December in public preview quoting from TechCrunch full capabilities in this context means that you'll be able to access a local Windows PC or cloud instance of Windows via Windows 365 from a quest head headset. Microsoft says it only takes seconds to connect and likens the experience to a private, high quality, large multi monitor workstation will be the judge of that. Supported apps in this new Windows modality extend into 3D space, a capability enabled by what Microsoft is calling volumetric apps. During a demo in May, Microsoft showed off a digital exploded view of an Xbox controller from the perspective of a Quest 3 wearer, an object that the wearer could manipulate with their hands. They also announced Azure AI Foundry to make LLM switching easier and get this one a new AI interpreter inside of teams that can simulate voices and offer near real time voice interpretation in nine different languages. Launching into preview Quoting the Washington Post Microsoft unveiled Tuesday a new AI interpreter that can simulate speaker voices and offer near real time voice interpretation in nine languages on Microsoft Teams, the company's communications platform. The feature is being tested by a limited group of users and is expected to be more broadly available in 2025 for accounts with a Microsoft 365 copilot license. Users must provide consent via a notification during the meeting or switch their privacy settings for the interpreter to use voice simulation during the meeting. They can also opt out of voice replication by disabling it in settings for the interpreter to use a default interpretation voice instead. The initial nine languages the interpreter will support are Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Brazil and Spanish. Microsoft expects to add more languages in the future. Nicole Herskowitz, corporate vice president of productivity and collaboration for Copilot, said the new features in Teams aims to democratize access to interpreters. It can be expensive to hire a human interpreter for everyday functions like meetings. Some companies, quote, don't even have the option of an interpreter, she said. I look at this as a way to have a high quality translation experience. That said, like most AI and computer interpretations, the interpreter in Teams may not be 100% accurate, Herskowitz admitted. Microsoft said users will soon have the ability to enable Teams Multi Language Transcription Service, which will provide the content of the meeting in the language that was originally spoken alongside the interpreted version. Finally today, sources are telling the Journal that U.S. officials are racing to deliver billions of dollars in CHIPS act funding to intel and others before President Biden leaves. The Commerce Department has provisionally awarded most of the $39 billion of grant money allocated under 2022's Chips act to reenergize U.S. chip production. But nearly $30 billion of that is tied up in complex government negotiations, leaving those deals in limbo as a new administration prepares to take over. Intel was given the largest preliminary award, up to $8.5 billion in grants for factory projects, plus up to $3 billion for defense industry manufacturing facilities. It is counting on the funds to pay for massive facilities in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio and or. The company's core business, making chips for personal computers and servers, is struggling. The Commerce Department is aiming to complete as many of them as possible in the next two months, ahead of the incoming Trump administration, according to people familiar with the matter. Government and company officials say the legally binding completed awards would be impossible to pull back absent an act of Congress. Donald Trump threw the program's fate into question on the campaign trail, telling podcast host Joe Rogan that the government should encourage chip production in the US by taxing imported chips rather than offering the grants of the Chips Chips Act. That chip deal is so bad, trump said in the late October interview. When I see us paying a lot of money to have people build chips, that's not the way. You didn't have to put up 10 cents. You could have done it with a series of tariffs. What will happen under the new administration remains unclear. The CHIPS act passed with bipartisan support, and many of the chip projects it is supposed to fund are in the districts of Republican lawmakers. Some industry executives who have spoken to people within Trump's orbit expect the law to survive the transition of power. House Speaker Mike Johnson said before the election election that Republicans, quote, probably will work to repeal the act, although he later said it wasn't on the chopping block and instead could be streamlined to eliminate costly regulations and Green New Deal requirements. A Commerce Department spokesman pointed to the program's benefits, including the expected creation of more than 125,000 jobs and a surge in domestic investment worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Our team continues to implement this bipartisan law in accordance with statute and would have more announcements in the coming weeks, the spokesman said. End quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.