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Google sued by US Justice Department over digital ad monopoly
The DOJ and eight states have filed a lawsuit against the company for allegedly monopolizing its digital ad technologies.
It looks like things are going to get hot and heavy for Google, as the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), along with eight states, have now filed a lawsuit, alleging the company of "monopolizing multiple digital advertising technology products." The filing states that Google utilizes multiple different advertising technologies that websites rely and have become dependent on over the years, and this puts its competitors at a major disadvantage. The lawsuit aims to restore competition in the digital advertising space.
Apple reportedly looking to bolster its ad business through its new MLS deal
Apple is looking to capitalize on its recent MLS contract by working with ad partners for its exclusive broadcasts.
Several months ago, we reported that Apple was looking to increase its ad revenue by increasing the number of ads found in its App Store. While it rolled out these ads last month, it didn't go so well, with interesting ads popping up here and there on the platform. It was forced to pause the ads temporarily a day later amid outrage. Despite these issues, Apple is building a new advertising network in preparation for its Major League Soccer broadcasts that will go live starting in 2023.
Advertisements can soon show feeds in a Google Ads app campaign and deep link from YouTube and Gmail
Google recently announced some new tools for advertisers to bring customers to their products directly in apps from advertisements.
With all the devices and services that Google offers to consumers, it's easy to forget that a large part of what the company does revolves around advertisements. Google is responsible for a lot of the ads you see around the Internet, and it's also how people make money from ads. Google recently announced some new ways for customers to reach their marketing goals.
[Update: Google's Response] Cheetah Mobile is accused of committing Ad Fraud in several apps
The company behind several extremely popular Android apps, Cheetah Mobile, has been accused of committing fraudulent activities with respect to ads.
With over 2.6 million applications to account for in the Play Store, Google is constantly at war with fraudulent and malicious apps plaguing their ecosystem. At the same time, Google tries to promote high-quality apps for users to enjoy, although sometimes the apps they select are of dubious quality. Cheetah Mobile is perhaps one of the most infamous development companies among our users because of their practice of collecting data on users and serving tons of sketchy advertisements. Their acquisition of QuickPic led many XDA members to scramble for an alternative to the once highly-recommended gallery app. But despite the poor quality of Cheetah Mobile's products, we never had any reason to suspect them of anything truly malicious - until now. The latest research from Kochava has provided evidence to BuzzFeed News that several Android apps from Cheetah Mobile, and one from Kika, are allegedly engaging in ad fraud.
Samsung is still sending advertisements to users via push notifications
Samsung was caught sending ads with push notifications 3 years ago. Despite much critisicm, they are doing it again with Push Services.
Samsung phones have a reputation for having a lot of bloatware pre-installed. At one point, there used to be a Samsung equivalent application for every Google app pre-installed. Nowadays, the software situation is a bit better with a lot less bloatware preinstalled on the latest Galaxy flagship devices. One area where Samsung hasn't improved on is their penchant for sending advertisements via push notifications.
PSA: Enable Scroll Anchoring in Google Chrome to Prevent Annoying Page Jumps
Enable scroll anchoring to prevent annoying page jumps whenever you load a new page with lots of offscreen content. Go to chrome://flags to enable it.
There are a ton of awesome features hidden away in many Google apps that are rarely hyped up namely due to a lack of advertisement by Google. One such feature hidden away in Google Chrome's chrome://flags page is the Scroll Anchoring feature.