Turkish competition authority launches probe into Google's PMAX

ISTANBUL :Turkey's antitrust authority will launch a probe into Google's Performance Max (PMAX) to determine if the AI-powered ad campaign product violates competition laws, it said on Friday.
In a statement, the competition board said the probe will examine whether Google has engaged in unfair practices against advertisers and if it has hindered competition through data consolidation with PMAX.
Google's Performance Max uses AI and automatically finds the best placements for a brand's ads across Google services including email, search and YouTube.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

CNA

13 hours ago

• CNA

Europeans seek 'digital sovereignty' as US tech firms embrace Trump

BERLIN :At a market stall in Berlin run by charity Topio, volunteers help people who want to purge their phones of the influence of U.S. tech firms. Since Donald Trump's inauguration, the queue for their services has grown. Interest in European-based digital services has jumped in recent months, data from digital market intelligence company Similarweb shows. More people are looking for e-mail, messaging and even search providers outside the United States. The first months of Trump's second presidency have shaken some Europeans' confidence in their long-time ally, after he signalled his country would step back from its role in Europe's security and then launched a trade war. "It's about the concentration of power in U.S. firms," said Topio's founder Michael Wirths, as his colleague installed on a customer's phone a version of the Android operating system without hooks into the Google ecosystem. Wirths said the type of people coming to the stall had changed: "Before, it was people who knew a lot about data privacy. Now it's people who are politically aware and feel exposed." Tesla chief Elon Musk, who also owns social media company X, was a leading adviser to the U.S. president before the two fell out, while the bosses of Amazon, Meta and Google-owner Alphabet took prominent spots at Trump's inauguration in January. Days before Trump took office, outgoing president Joe Biden had warned of an oligarchic "tech industrial complex" threatening democracy. Berlin-based search engine Ecosia says it has benefited from some customers' desire to avoid U.S. counterparts like Microsoft's Bing or Google, which dominates web searches and is also the world's biggest email provider. "The worse it gets, the better it is for us," founder Christian Kroll said of Ecosia, whose sales pitch is that it spends its profits on environmental projects. Similarweb data shows the number of queries directed to Ecosia from the European Union has risen 27 per cent year-on-year and the company says it has 1 per cent of the German search engine market. But its 122 million visits from the 27 EU countries in February were dwarfed by 10.3 billion visits to Google, whose parent Alphabet made revenues of about $100 billion from Europe, the Middle East and Africa in 2024 - nearly a third of its $350 billion global turnover. Non-profit Ecosia earned 3.2 million euros ($3.65 million) in April, of which 770,000 euros was spent on planting 1.1 million trees. Google declined to comment for this story. Reuters could not determine whether major U.S. tech companies have lost any market share to local rivals in Europe. DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY The search for alternative providers accompanies a debate in Europe about "digital sovereignty" - the idea that reliance on companies from an increasingly isolationist United States is a threat to Europe's economy and security. "Ordinary people, the kind of people who would never have thought it was important they were using an American service are saying, 'hang on!'," said UK-based internet regulation expert Maria Farrell. "My hairdresser was asking me what she should switch to." Use in Europe of Swiss-based ProtonMail rose 11.7 per cent year-on-year to March compared to a year ago, according to Similarweb, while use of Alphabet's Gmail, which has some 70 per cent of the global email market, slipped 1.9 per cent. ProtonMail, which offers both free and paid-for services, said it had seen an increase in users from Europe since Trump's re-election, though it declined to give a number. "My household is definitely disengaging," said British software engineer Ken Tindell, citing weak U.S. data privacy protections as one factor. Trump's vice president JD Vance shocked European leaders in February by accusing them - at a conference usually known for displays of transatlantic unity - of censoring free speech and failing to control immigration. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened visa bans for people who "censor" speech by Americans, including on social media, and suggested the policy could target foreign officials regulating U.S. tech companies. U.S. social media companies like Facebook and Instagram parent Meta have said the European Union's Digital Services Act amounts to censorship of their platforms. EU officials say the Act will make the online environment safer by compelling tech giants to tackle illegal content, including hate speech and child sexual abuse material. Greg Nojeim, director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said Europeans' concerns about the U.S. government accessing their data, whether stored on devices or in the cloud, were justified. Not only does U.S. law permit the government to search devices of anyone entering the country, it can compel disclosure of data that Europeans outside the U.S. store or transmit through U.S. communications service providers, Nojeim said. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE? Germany's new government is itself making efforts to reduce exposure to U.S. tech, committing in its coalition agreement to make more use of open-source data formats and locally-based cloud infrastructure. Regional governments have gone further - in conservative-run Schleswig-Holstein, on the Danish border, all IT used by the public administration must run on open-source software. Berlin has also paid for Ukraine to access a satellite-internet network operated by France's Eutelsat instead of Musk's Starlink. But with modern life driven by technology, "completely divorcing U.S. tech in a very fundamental way is, I would say, possibly not possible," said Bill Budington of U.S. digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Everything from push notifications to the content delivery networks powering many websites and how internet traffic is routed relies largely on U.S. companies and infrastructure, Budington noted. Both Ecosia and French-based search engine Qwant depend in part on search results provided by Google and Microsoft's Bing, while Ecosia runs on cloud platforms, some hosted by the very same tech giants it promises an escape from. Nevertheless, a group on messaging board Reddit called BuyFromEU has 211,000 members. "Just cancelled my Dropbox and will switch to Proton Drive," read one post. Mastodon, a decentralised social media service developed by German programmer Eugen Rochko, enjoyed a rush of new users two years ago when Musk bought Twitter, later renamed X. But it remains a niche service. Signal, a messaging app run by a U.S. nonprofit foundation, has also seen a surge in installations from Europe. Similarweb's data showed a 7 per cent month-on-month increase in Signal usage in March, while use of Meta's WhatsApp was static. Meta declined to comment for this story. Signal did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment. But this kind of conscious self-organising is unlikely on its own to make a dent in Silicon Valley's European dominance, digital rights activist Robin Berjon told Reuters. "The market is too captured," he said. "Regulation is needed as well."

Business Times

20 hours ago

• Business Times

Apple executives have held internal talks about buying AI startup Perplexity

[SAN FRANCISCO] Apple executives have held internal discussions about potentially bidding for artificial intelligence (AI) startup Perplexity AI, seeking to address the need for more AI talent and technology. Adrian Perica, the company's head of mergers and acquisitions, has weighed the idea with services chief Eddy Cue and top AI decision-makers, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The discussions are at an early stage and may not lead to an offer, said the sources, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. Such a deal would help Apple develop an AI-based search engine, part of efforts to cope with the potential loss of a longstanding arrangement with Google. That partnership, which involves making Google the default browser on devices, generates roughly US$20 billion a year for Apple, and is now under threat from US antitrust enforcers. To date, Apple executives have not discussed a bid with Perplexity management. Bloomberg News reported earlier Friday that Meta Platforms tried to buy Perplexity earlier this year. 'We have no knowledge of any current or future M&A discussions involving Perplexity,' the AI startup said. Apple declined to comment. The Perplexity service provides real-time answers to questions using the latest information from the web. If Apple were to engage in talks to buy the startup, such a move likely would not happen until a decision is made in the Google antitrust trial. That's when Apple would know whether its lucrative Google agreement may have to be unwound. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Google shares reversed gains and fell nearly 1 per cent in late trading after Bloomberg reported on Apple's Perplexity discussions. Perplexity recently completed an investment round that valued it at US$14 billion. A deal anywhere near that level would be the largest acquisition in Apple's history. The company's biggest transaction until now remains the US$3 billion takeover of Beats in 2014 – though Apple made more recent billion US dollar deals for Intel Corp.'s modem unit and a stake in Chinese ride-sharing company DiDi. After Meta failed to reach an agreement with Perplexity, it bought a 49 per cent slice of Scale AI for US$14.3 billion. That deal is part of Meta's attempts to create a so-called superintelligence AI team, which will now include Scale co-founder Alexandr Wang. Perica and Cue, who both report to Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook, are leading the AI acquisition and recruiting efforts. The hunt for talent is part of a bid to catch up in generative AI. The company was slow to deliver its Apple Intelligence platform and still lags rivals in key features. A revamped Siri was delayed indefinitely this year, with the company now aiming to have it ready by next spring. Apple unveiled a relatively meagre slate of new AI enhancements at its Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month. The latest features include live translation capabilities and a deeper partnership with OpenAI on ChatGPT-based image generation. Buying Perplexity would give Apple an infusion of AI talent, a known brand in the AI space and a consumer product. A deal could also potentially assist with future recruiting efforts. Apple has also discussed an alternative plan: teaming up with Perplexity instead of buying it. A partnership would involve adding Perplexity as an AI search engine option in Apple's Safari web browser and integrating it into Siri. Apple has met multiple times in recent months with Perplexity, and its AI team has been actively evaluating the technology – a sign that it's at least considering a close relationship with the company. One major snag in the process could be an in-the-works deal between Perplexity and Samsung Electronics, which plans to announce a deep partnership with the startup. Samsung is Apple's biggest competitor in smartphones, and AI features have become a critical new arena for the two rivals. In its statement, Perplexity said it should not be surprising that top manufacturers want to offer the 'best search and more accurate AI for their users.' 'That's Perplexity,' the startup said. Cue, whose department includes Apple's streaming services and iCloud, previously expressed an interest in Perplexity. While testifying at the Google antitrust trial in May, he told jurors that the industry is shifting away from standard Internet searches to AI tools. He outlined a scenario in which AI search engines could quickly supersede Google's current offering. 'We have been pretty impressed with what Perplexity has done, so we have started some discussions with them about what they are doing,' he said. BLOOMBERG

Business Times

a day ago

• Business Times

AI and the disappearing pause

'IT'S interesting to see progress through the arc of time,' Google chief executive officer Sundar Pichai said recently on Lex Fridman's podcast. It aptly describes a huge shift happening in business right now; a change in how we even think about something as basic as time. Time used to be one of the few constants in global business. We had clear deadlines, synchronised news cycles, 'follow-the-sun' business models. New York would open for business as Singapore was winding down. The world had a predictable beat, even if not perfectly aligned. But something has shifted. We no longer share time. We consume it. And as we do, something else has stepped in to seemingly unify us: artificial intelligence (AI). Released recently, Apple's latest white paper, The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity, offered a timely warning about the limits of what we perceive as AI's true 'reasoning' capabilities, particularly when faced with increasing complexity. This research could not be more relevant, as we navigate a world where time itself feels fractured. Not just by time zone, but by our very experience of it. Our screens update instantly, yet our minds need more time to catch up. Trends explode in minutes, but decisions stretch across weeks. Some teams are 'on' 24/7, while others are experimenting with four-day weeks, all creating a fragmented sense of pace. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up The clock is dead; long live the code AI has replaced traditional time as the driver of business speed. It works across time zones, never sleeps and always responds. AI is becoming the first thing everyone relies on. It is global, immediate and relentlessly consistent. Feed a business challenge into an AI tool and in less than a minute, a well-structured response will appear. Discuss it with the team and I assure you that someone will say, 'That's actually good enough to run with.' But that is precisely the problem. Not because it is inaccurate, because it probably is not. But because it is almost always predictably coherent. It offers no friction, no doubt. There would not be a spark of tension. This is where the real shift is happening. AI is collapsing time while expanding output. We get more done in less time. But in doing so, it threatens to erase something businesses have not yet learnt how to measure – the value of shared deliberation. Even Bill Gates, during a recent visit to Singapore, admitted, 'If I had a switch to slow down AI, I might use it.' It was a rare concession from one of technology's most persistent optimists, and a reminder that just because something moves fast, does not mean we are ready to move with it at the same pace. The disappearance of productive discomfort When humans worked to the same clock, decisions took time. But that time created space for discussion, disagreement or even deep reflection. Not all of it was efficient, but much of it was productive discomfort. Productive discomfort is that critical pause before commitment; the challenge before reaching consensus. AI, by contrast, skips the pause. It generates answers before humans even begin to ask follow-up questions. I am not saying it is wrong, but it removes resistance – which is the very thing that often leads to better insight. With less shared time and more AI, companies might move quickly but without much deep thought. This is not an argument against AI. It is an argument for reasserting intentional rhythm in a world where machines are increasingly dictating the pace at which we need to move. If AI is the new constant, then leaders must become designers of pace, friction and flow. That begins with reintroducing cadence. For example, how does one create deliberate moments where teams step back from tools and re-engage with deeper thought. Not all tasks require instant answers. We know this from years of human experience and insight. Next, we need to embrace useful pauses. Taking a bit more time should not be seen as a weakness. This strategic lag can bring back important context, deeper understanding and clearer thinking into our decisions. Finally, we need to tell the difference between 'fast' and 'finished'. Just because AI gives an instant answer does not mean the discussion is over. Often, that is where the real thinking should just begin. In short, we need to create thoughtful counterbalances to the hyper-efficiency AI enables. Do not get me wrong. This is not to slow progress, but to ensure we still know what progress means. The new role of leadership In the past, when everyone largely shared the same work hours, great leaders were like timekeepers. They set the pace, coordinated schedules and organised how work flowed. Today, their role has changed. Leaders must now become guardians of how we use time. They need to decide not only what tasks are completed, but also when they are done, how quickly and how much thought goes into them. We used to organise business around time. Now, increasingly, we organise it around AI. Leadership today should not be about rejecting the technology. It is about knowing when to slow it down. Deliberately, and for the right reasons. Because AI moves in seconds, but strategy and orchestration still takes time. The writer is head of Singapore at Sling & Stone