Speaking of monopolists, Amazon wants to capture every purchase possible, even from customers standing in a retail store. To help things along, they’ve enhanced their Lens visual shopping tool with Lens Live, which lets users research a product by pointing at it with their camera. This removes the step of uploading an image. As TechCrunch points out, Google and Pinterest already have similar features.
It’s been a good week for Google, if not necessarily the rest of us. Fresh from a U.S. court ruling effectively preserving its search money, the company learned that European Union regulators have paused an expected fine for adtech abuses. No reason was given although fear of U.S. retaliation is suspected.
That whizzing noise you just heard was the bullet that Google dodged in the judge’s ruling on its search anti-trust case. The court won’t require Google to divest Chrome and lets it continue to pay device makers for loading Chrome on their systems. Google does have to share some search data with competitors but not on a regular basis. Appeals are certain.
ChatGPT is hoping to grab another slice of your attention with Pulse, a now-in-limited-preview feature that will proactively deliver daily updates on information it thinks you’ll find useful. The new service is positioned as a personal assistant that will select contents “based on your chats, feedback, and connected apps like your calendar.” Forget about privacy; the real question is whether this becomes a news source that gives ChatGPT the ability to shape your opinions.