Tuesday, October 20, 2020

"Google to Donate Its Search Engine to the American Public" (GOOG)

 This is fāke news. The real news is after the jump.

From the Huffington Post:

Gift, valued by donor at over $1 trillion, is said to be the largest ever
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA - In a stunning announcement, Eric Schmidt, head of Alphabet, Inc., the holding company that owns Google, said today in a press conference at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, that at midnight on New Year’s Eve of this year, the iconic Google search engine will become property of a new nonprofit organization called Unlimited Years of Search, or UYS. 
“We consider this to be a well-earned gift to the American public,” said Schmidt. “We don’t own the internet, after all, and our search engine is just an index to what’s out there - just a kind of library catalogue. That catalogue should be owned by the public, not a private company. It’s pretty obvious when you think about it.”

In a joint statement issued by Stephanie Hannon, former Google executive and Chief Technology Officer for Hillary Clinton, and Megan Smith, former Google executive and Chief Technology Officer for Barack Obama, Schmidt’s announcement drew strong praise.
“Google has always given away everything for free without asking for anything in return except of course a trivial amount of information about its users (LOL),” wrote Hannon and Smith. “Now it’s making the ultimate contribution to society. It’s breathtaking and overwhelming and it really makes us want to cry, both together, like at the same time.”
Valued by the donor at $1.15 trillion, Schmidt said this is the largest charitable gift ever given by any corporation or individual anywhere in the world. Other large charitable gifts by Microsoft founder Bill Gates or Saudi Arabia’s Prince Al-Waheed bin Talal are in the mere tens of billions of dollars and pale in comparison to Google’s.
Asked specifically about Mr. Gates’ $10 billion gift to provide vaccines for people in Africa, Schmidt said, “Gates is an ass who doesn’t know how to dress, and everyone knows it.”....MORE

And from FT Alphaville:


The USA vs. Google
The first big tech antitrust lawsuit has landed.

Today marks the beginning of a war that everyone’s seen coming.

The Department of Justice, along with eleven Republican state attorneys, has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, a little-known business owned by a company called Alphabet. It’s the first in what’s widely expected to be a set of historic antitrust cases against the tech giants, which may threaten the dominance of these businesses as we know them today....
 
Yesterday: