On January 21, 2019, the French National Data Protection Commission (CNIL) fined Google Euros 50 million for not complying with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).   There will be a legal challenge, but this blog focuses on the policy considerations surrounding the decision.  There are at least three initial takeaways from the CNIL decision.  First, this enforcement action demonstrates that the GDPR should not be replicated word for word in a possible U.S. federal privacy law.  Some notion of consumer harm should enter the calculation when a fine is considered.  Second, DPAs should be more forthcoming with guidance on how to comply with the GDPR, especially when companies are making a good faith effort to comply with the law.  Third, there is a risk that the one-stop-shop is going to become effectively meaningless.  As U.S. policymakers consider a federal privacy law, this should be a key co ...

Newspack, a new content management system (CMS) from Automattic, the people behind WordPress, is still being developed, and it's already generating headlines. And publishers can apply now to become charter participants.

Last week, Google released a blog of seven ethical principles to guide their work in artificial intelligence.  The principles are:

Twenty years ago, Hal Varian and Carl Shapiro published what has become the classic introduction to network economics.  Called Information Rules it described and illustrated key economic concepts like network effects, positive feedback loops, standards wars, market tipping points and switching costs, using examples that are now so dated that would not be recognizable to today’s digital natives.  But the text drilled into a generation of entrepreneurs and policymakers the importance of understanding the basic economics of network industries before starting a network business or trying to throw a regulatory net around a network industry.   Today Hal Varian works as Google’s chief economist. In his personal capacity he delivered a crash course on AI and data to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s TecGlobal 2018 meeting on April 4. He illustrated the familiar advances in machine learning through pattern recognition in voice and images, noting that it was t ...

The 21st Century job landscape so far has been characterized by the rise in high-tech jobs to support the digital landscape.  The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that there are currently over six million job openings in the United States due to the lack of applicants that possess necessary technical skills.  With the increase in this type of job availability and the advent of automation, supporting career and technical education are becoming more important than ever. Just last week, Google announced its new initiative called “Grow with Google” where it will spend $1 billion in grants to nonprofits who will train American workers and also help to grow American businesses.  This announcement came in Pittsburgh, historic for its center as a manufacturing hub, showing its evolution into a major tech hub in the rust belt. The billion dollars in grants will mainly support high-tech jobs in an effort to train workers to meet the skill requirements necessar ...

In the wake of the tragic violence in Charlottesville earlier this month, it’s even more evident that online extremism continues to pose serious threats to society. While battling extremism is an important step in preventing the spread of hate and violence around the world, there are many inherent challenges, including the sheer volume of daily posts, complexity of purpose for videos, and the need to adhere to free speech rights.  In spite of these challenges, industry has been committed to this effort for many years—we’ve highlighted some of this in the past, including industry efforts to cooperate with law enforcement, and formation of a partnership to fight terrorism.

Terrorists and other hate groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis use social media and video streaming platforms to publish and spread their hateful and offensive content for radicalization, propaganda, or organizational purposes. After the recent tragic events in Charlottesville, the tech community has been figuring out ways to respond.  Platforms have increased the rate of which they either take down white supremacist content or make it harder to find.  But, many companies and platforms have been flagging and taking down such harmful for a long while, especially pertaining to terrorist content.

Amanda MacArthur is the co-founder and content director of Lantern Content Marketing Adventure Company. Because she is quite the expert on SEO and Google, we took advantage of her knowledge for a slightly longer Q&A.

Does the EU’s right to be forgotten extend to the whole world?  The French data protection authority, CNIL, says yes and wants search engines to delist search results which contain information that violates the European Union’s right to be forgotten – not just for French users, not just for European users, but for all users everywhere. Google is prepared to remove offending search results for European users, but balks at removing material globally just because European courts find that it violates European privacy rules. 

Online advertising is an increasingly important source of revenue for online content creators, who include professional journalists to web developers to bloggers and provide tremendous value to the Internet ecosystem. To remain afloat, these content creators rely on effective online advertising in order to continue to provide their service or business.