Nonprofit watchdog Media Matters has filed suit in D.C. district court to block FTC investigation of its reporting on Elon Musk’s X. Media Matters very plausibly sees the FTC scrutiny as a Trump administration and/or Elon Musk-inspired attack on its First Amendment rights. This follows the FTC blocking holding company Omnicom from refusing to place media buys on political or ideological grounds.

In hopes of dodging threatened fines for giving preference to its own services, Google has unveiled a plan for vertical search services (VSS). VSS, selected on a non-discriminatory basis, would appear in a dedicated box at the top of the search results page matching Google’s own search in format and function, and featuring three direct links to services such as hotels, airlines or restaurants. Google is not conceding, of course, that there’s anything wrong with what it currently does.

The web search tool Perplexity looks like it’s taking on Google with its latest release, a web browser named Comet. Comet claims to move “from browsing to thinking,” surfacing information and search results in response to natural language queries. Comet is available immediately to Perplexity Max subscribers; others can join a wait list.