Uber’s ‘God View’ tool allowed employees to access and track the location of Uber drivers and customers without their permission or their knowledge. The company ran into trouble with the tool in 2014 when an Uber executive tracked the whereabouts of a Buzzfeed journalist while she was not aware of it.
When the issue was brought out in the public, required action was taken against the executive. The concerned executive explained the act by saying the reporter’s location was monitored because she was 30 minutes late for a meeting. Uber later declared the act to be one of “poor judgement”.However, the cat was out of the bag now and had [...]
As The Wall Street Journal reports, Google has clinched a settlement in its high-profile case with European Union antitrust regulators to address concerns that it is abusing its dominance in online search.
EU Antitrust Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said that he’s “strongly convinced” the new proposals sufficiently address the competition concerns, marking a major milestone in the three-year-old case. “This is an important step forward,” he told reporters in Brussels.
Google had been accused of giving favourable treatment [...]
A U.S. judge has put a stamp of approval on a US$20 million fund for Facebook to settle a class-action advertising suit, despite objections from groups representing minors on the site.
The ruling was issued Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The class-action suit, which was first filed in 2011, challenged Facebook’s “sponsored stories” advertising program. A sponsored story is a type of promoted post appearing in users’ feeds that may include the profile name and picture of Facebook members who have “liked” that advertiser’s products or [...]
Google has agreed to pay a $7 million fine to settle claims from 37 states and the District of Columbia that the search giant improperly collected data from unsecured wireless networks across the United States using its “Street View” vehicles.
The announcement of the settlement is expected to be made by the states early next week, according to the person, though some of the final details of the deal were still being hammered out on Friday. Google has said the incident was a mistake.
A group of states, led by then-Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, began the [...]