Today’s top tech news: Cisco lays off thousands; Google offered to sell part of ad business; LinkedIn trained AI models on user data
Despite showing robust earnings in the previous quarter, the company said the layoffs were to restructure and invest in key growth opportunities and streamline. They are planning to merge their security, networking and collaboration segments into a single unit. Cisco was also looking to leverage the increasing scope of AI technologies and had set aside funds for it. The company hasn’t yet confirmed which departments will be impacted by the layoffs but a report said that the threat intelligence and security research unit, Talos Security would be affected.
The EU charged Google with favouring their own ad services, making a fourth case against the company. Google’s offer is unprecedented as it fights a U.S. antitrust trial too that wants the company to sell their Ad Manager product which contains AdX and the company’s publisher ad server, DFP. Sources told Reuters that the EU could instead order Google to stop alleged anti-competitive practices in the near future instead of the divestment. A majority of Google’s revenue (77%) came from advertising across Gmail, Google Play, search, Google Maps, YouTube, AdMob, AdSense and Google Ad Manager.
After the news broke, LinkedIn has updated its terms of service now. However, ideally users should have been updated much ahead of starting to collect the data. Most raised concerns around privacy and plagiarism after the finding. Stringent privacy laws in the EU still haven’t taken any action against the platform. Meanwhile, tech giant Microsoft which acquired LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in 2016, is also facing lawsuit over its alleged use of people’s data for AI training.
Published - September 19, 2024 04:16 pm IST
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
