The European Union fined Google $2.7 billion for anti-trust violations by favoring its own shopping services in search results.

Using AI to generate insights and recommendations is a hot trend right now.  One example: Engagement Labs has added predictive analytics to measure the impact on sales of different social influence metrics and a simulator to show the sales results of possible changes. Second example: Unmetric has launched an artificial-intelligence-powered system that monitors competitive behavior on social media and identifies what worked best.

The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.