YOUR WEEKLY TECH INSIGHT FROM ACROSS THE GLOBE
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The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, reached a preliminary conclusion Wednesday that Google is dominant in the European market for publisher ad servers and for programmatic ad-buying tools for the open web.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, will now have the chance to read the concerns raised by the commission and defend its position in writing, as well as request an oral hearing to present its comments.
Breaking up?
The commission suggested that Google might have to break up the business in order to address the concerns raised and thus comply with competition rules in the bloc.
“The Commission’s preliminary view is therefore that only the mandatory divestment by Google of part of its services would address its competition concerns,” EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.
This would be the first time that the commission would ask to split part of a business.
Conflict of interest
Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said there is an inherent conflict of interest. “Google is in every part of this supply chain.”
“We have the obligation to find the remedy that would be the less intrusive,” Vestager nevertheless added. “We don’t see that this inherent and inbuilt conflict of interest can be solved in other way by not having ownership of the entire value chain.”
Google was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
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The European Parliament has approved the bloc’s landmark rules for artificial intelligence, known as the EU AI Act, clearing a major hurdle for the first formal regulation of AI in the West to become law.
European Parliament members agreed to bring generative AI tools like ChatGPT under greater restrictions. Generative AI developers will be required to submit their systems for review before releasing them commercially.
Potential for generating harm
AI has become a key battleground in the global tech industry as companies compete for a leading role in developing the technology — particularly generative AI, which can generate new content from user prompts. The rules are the first comprehensive regulations for AI.
What generative AI is capable of, from producing music lyrics to generating code, has wowed academics, businesspeople and even school students. But it has also led to worries around job displacement, misinformation and bias.
Implications on developers
The laws have huge implications for developers of generative AI models, such as the Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.
Earlier in the day, Github CEO Thomas Dohmke called on European regulators to listen to the private sector, as it pushed ahead with rules for AI.
But Jens-Henrik Jeppesen, senior director of public policy at Workday, said the AI Act aims to “build safeguards on the development and use of these technologies to ensure we have an innovation-friendly environment for these technologies such that society can benefit from them.”
“Those are the right goals in my view,” he told CNBC after the vote.
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Michael Evans, president of Alibaba, said the company will bring one of its China e-commerce services Tmall into Europe, marking a significant step up in the Chinese tech giant’s international push.
The announcement comes just over two months after Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce firm, announced plans to split its business into six units, a move designed to give each unit more autonomy and faster decision-making powers.
Europe’s own Tmall
In China, Tmall is an Alibaba site and app that has a big focus on selling foreign brands to Chinese consumers.
“So you will see something called Tmall which we have in China, become Tmall in Europe, which means we will serve local brands and local consumers in the local market,” Evans said at the Viva Tech conference in Paris, France.
Evans revealed the company is currently doing a pilot project in Spain, which “will expand across Europe.”
Significant shift in strategy
Launching Tmall in Europe reflects a significant shift in strategy for Alibaba in its international e-commerce operations.
While Alibaba’s international push in online shopping is not new, it has focused on a site called AliExpress in Europe. However, AliExpress has goods shipped from China into Europe. Shipping times are often long though products may be cheaper than rivals.
However, Evans’ suggestion is that Tmall in Europe would focus on selling local brands to local shoppers. It’s unclear if this would be merged in any way with AliExpress.
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Chinese electric car brand Nio said Monday it is cutting prices for its cars by the equivalent of $4,200 effective immediately, and ending free battery swaps for new buyers.
The move is contrary to CEO William Li’s claim in April that Nio would not join a “price war.” Tesla and other electric car companies in China had cut prices earlier this year in a bid to attract buyers.
Delaying investment
The price cuts also follow Li’s comments Friday that the company was delaying its capital expenditure and some research and development projects, according to a FactSet transcript of Nio’s first-quarter earnings call.
Nio’s decision to “cut non-core projects is too slow,” analysts at China Merchants Bank International said in a note Monday.
“It now also faces a dilemma between brand positioning and profitability, as it has started to cut service benefits, which could dent its brand image and thus sales more severely than expected.”
Dropping deliveries
Li said the delay is part of an effort to address the impact on cash flow from fewer car deliveries.
The company reported cash and cash equivalents of 14.76 billion yuan ($2.07 billion) as of March, below what it disclosed for the end of 2021 and 2022.
The latest monthly figures show Nio’s deliveries fell to 6,155 cars in May, down from the first-quarter average of just over 10,000 vehicles a month. The monthly average in the fourth quarter was about 13,350 cars.
Looking ahead, Nio said that it aimed to deliver at least 20,000 cars a month in the second half of the year.
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Three decades after inventing the web, Tim Berners-Lee has some ideas on how to fix it
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The internet landscape is now disempowering for individuals, and its inventor Tim Berners-Lee and Inrupt CEO John Bruce share their visions for the future of the web.
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