Lawyers for the United States on Monday said that Google had created a monopoly with its services to place ads online, closing out an antitrust trial over the company's dominance in advertising technology that could add to the Silicon Valley giant's mounting woes. From a report: The legal case concerns a system of software that is used by advertisers to place ads on websites around the internet. Aaron Teitelbaum, a lawyer for the Justice Department, told Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia that the company had linked its products together in a way that made it hard for publishers and advertisers to use alternatives.

"Google is once, twice, three times a monopolist," he said. "These are the markets that make the free and open internet possible." Google's lead lawyer, Karen Dunn, countered that the government had failed to offer the evidence to prove its case and was on shaky legal ground. "Google's conduct is a story of innovation in response to competition," she said. The arguments conclude U.S. et al. v. Google, an antitrust suit that the Justice Department and eight states filed against Google last year. (More states have joined the suit since then.) The agency and states accused the internet giant of abusing control of its ad technology and violating antitrust law, in part through the acquisition of the advertising software company Doubleclick in 2008. Next, Judge Brinkema will decide the merits of the case in the coming months.

Nvidia has introduced Fugatto, an AI music editor that can generate never-head-of audio combinations, including instruments mimicking animal sounds.

The tool processes both text and audio inputs to create music, sound effects, and modified speech. The system can isolate vocals, swap instruments, and alter voice characteristics.

Raspberry Pi has announced the Pico 2 W, a wireless version of its Pico 2 microcontroller board built for hobbyists and industrial applications. From a report: At $7, it's a relatively inexpensive way to control electronic devices like smart home gadgets and robots. With the new version, users will be able to securely link to remote sources to send and receive data, either via Bluetooth 5.2 or Wi-Fi 802.11n.

As with the Pico 2, the wireless variant is built around the RP2350 microcontroller built in-house by Raspberry Pi. it offers more speed and memory than the original RP2040 chip, along with a security model built around Arm's TrustZone for Cortex-M. Users can program it using C, C++ and MicroPython, and choose between Arm Cortex-M33 or RISC-V cores.

Leading technology companies are dramatically expanding their AI capabilities by building multibillion-dollar "super clusters" packed with unprecedented numbers of Nvidia's AI processors. Elon Musk's xAI recently constructed Colossus, a supercomputer containing 100,000 Nvidia Hopper chips, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims his company operates an even larger system for training advanced AI models. The push toward massive chip clusters has helped drive Nvidia's quarterly revenue from $7 billion to over $35 billion in two years, making it the world's most valuable public company.

WSJ adds: Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said in a call with analysts following its earnings Wednesday that there was still plenty of room for so-called AI foundation models to improve with larger-scale computing setups. He predicted continued investment as the company transitions to its next-generation AI chips, called Blackwell, which are several times as powerful as its current chips.

Huang said that while the biggest clusters for training for giant AI models now top out at around 100,000 of Nvidia's current chips, "the next generation starts at around 100,000 Blackwells. And so that gives you a sense of where the industry is moving."

U.S. software developer job listings have plummeted 56% since 2019, according to CompTIA data, as coding bootcamp graduates face mounting challenges from AI tools and widespread tech industry layoffs.

For entry-level positions, postings have dropped even further at 67%. The downturn has forced several bootcamps to adapt or close. Boston's Launch Academy suspended operations in May after job placement rates fell from 90% to below 60%. Meanwhile, AI coding tools like ChatGPT and GitHub's Copilot are transforming the industry, with Google reporting that AI now generates over 25% of its new code.

"This is the worst environment for entry-level tech jobs I've seen in 25 years," said Menlo Ventures partner Venky Ganesan.

Microsoft's controversial "Recall" feature (in a public preview of Windows 11) already has some known issues, Microsoft admitted Friday. For example:

- Recall can be enabled or disabled from "Turn Windows features on or off". We are caching the Recall binaries on disk while we test add/remove. In a future update we will completely remove the binaries.

- You must have Secure Boot enabled for Recall to save snapshots.

- Some users experience a delay before snapshots first appear in the timeline while using their device. If snapshots do not appear after 5 minutes, reboot your device. If saving snapshots is enabled, but you see snapshots are no longer being saved, reboot your device.

- Clicking links within Recall to submit feedback may experience a delay in loading the Feedback Hub application. Be patient and it will display.

CNBC adds that according to Microsoft Recall "won't work with some accessibility programs, and if you specify that Recall shouldn't save content from a given website, it might get captured anyway while using the built-in Edge browser..." But those aren't the only issues CNBC noticed: - While you might expect that your computer will be recording every last thing you look at once you've turned on Recall, it can go several minutes between making snapshots, leaving gaps in the timeline.

- Recall allows you to prevent screenshots from being made when you're accessing specific apps. But a few apps installed on my Surface Pro are not shown on that list.

- When you enter a search string to find words, results might be incomplete or incorrect. Recall clearly had two screen images that mention "Yankees," but when I typed that into the search box, only one of them came up as a text match. I typed in my last name, which appeared in eight images, but Recall produced just two text matches.

- Recall made a screenshot while I was scrolling through posts on social network BlueSky, and one contains a photo of a New York street scene. You can see a stoplight, a smokestack and street signs. I typed each of those into the search box, but Recall came up with no results...

- The search function is fast, but flipping through snapshots in Recall is not. It can take a couple of seconds to load screenshots as you swipe between them.

America's Justice Department "has ordered all consensual searches by drug enforcement agents conducted at the nation's airports stopped," reports Georgia's local TV station Atlanta News First — after their series of investigations "uncovered how the agents often search innocent passengers at airport gates, looking for cash." On Thursday, the department made public a November 12, 2024, directive from the deputy attorney general to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that it suspend "all consensual encounters at mass transportation facilities unless they are either connected to an ongoing, predicated investigation involving one or more identified targets or criminal networks or approved by the DEA Administrator based on exigent circumstances." The management advisory memorandum was issued by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

The memo specifically mentioned the case of an airline passenger interviewed by Atlanta News First Chief Investigator Brendan Keefe, author of the Atlanta News First investigation, In Plane Sight. The award-winning series uncovered how drug agents have been seizing anything over $5,000 if airline passengers can't prove — on the spot — that their own money didn't come from drug trafficking. The government seizes the cash when no drugs are found, without arresting the traveler or charging them with a crime, and the DEA gets to keep the money it seizes.

After witnessing the Atlanta News First series, the passenger in question — who was departing from Cincinnati and heading to New York, where he lives — refused consent to have his bags searched at the gate... "The DOJ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) further learned that the DEA Task Force Group selected this traveler for the encounter based on information provided by a DEA confidential source, who was an employee of a commercial airline, about travelers who had purchased tickets within 48 hours of the travel," the memo said. "The OIG learned that the DEA had been paying this employee a percentage of forfeited cash seized by the DEA office from passengers at the local airport when the seizure resulted from information the employee had provided to the DEA. The employee had received tens of thousands of dollars from the DEA over the past several years."
The news station's investigation "also revealed passengers selected for what the government calls 'random, consensual encounters' are actually profiled by the drug agents who search Black men far more often than any other group of passengers," according to the article.

"The reports analyzed data showing that, for drug agents to find just one passenger with money, they have to publicly search 10 departing passengers."

Meta wants to force Apple and Google to verify the ages of people downloading apps from their app stores, reports the Washington Post — and now Meta's campaign "is picking up momentum" with legislators in the U.S. Congress.

Federal and state lawmakers have recently proposed a raft of measures requiring that platforms such as Meta's Facebook and Instagram block users under a certain age from using their sites. The push has triggered fierce debate over the best way to ascertain how old users are online. Last year Meta threw its support behind legislation that would push those obligations onto app stores rather than individual app providers, like itself, as your regular host and Naomi Nix reported. While some states have considered the plan, it has not gained much traction in Washington.

That could be shifting. Two congressional Republicans are preparing a new age verification bill that places the burden on app stores, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans... The bill would be the first of its kind on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have called for expanding guardrails for children amid concerns about the risks of social media but where political divisions have bogged down talks. The measure would give parents the right to sue an app store if their child was exposed to certain content, such as lewd or sexual material, according to a copy obtained by the Tech Brief. App stores could be protected against legal claims, however, if they took steps to protect children against harms, such as verifying their ages and giving parents the ability to block app downloads.
The article points out that U.S. lawmakers "have the power to set national standards that could override state efforts if they so choose..."

CNN reports that investigators "are trying to crack the mystery of how two undersea internet cables in the Baltic Sea were cut within hours of each other." But there's now two competing viewpoints, "with European officials saying they believe the disruption was an act of sabotage and U.S. officials suggesting it was likely an accident." The foreign ministers of Finland and Germany said in a joint statement that they were "deeply concerned" about the incident and raised the possibility that it was part of a "hybrid warfare," specifically mentioning Russia in their statement. Their assessment was not plucked out of thin air. Russia has been accused of waging a hybrid war against Europe after a string of suspicious incidents, arson attacks, explosions and other acts of sabotage across multiple European countries were traced back to Moscow. And the disruption to the cables came just weeks after the US warned that Moscow was likely to target critical undersea infrastructure. This followed months of suspicious movements of Russian vessels in European waters and the significant beefing up of a dedicated Russian secretive marine unit tasked with surveying the seabed...

But two US officials familiar with the initial assessment of the incident told CNN on Tuesday the damage was not believed to be deliberate activity by Russia or any other nation. Instead, the two officials told CNN they believed it likely caused by an anchor drag from a passing vessel. Such accidents have happened in the past, although not in a quick succession like the two on Sunday and Monday.
Cloudflare's blog also reminds readers that the two cable cuts resulted in little-to-no observable impact
Cloudflare attributes this largely to "the significant redundancy and resilience of Internet infrastructure in Europe." (Their Cloudflare Radar graphs show that after the Sweden-Lithuania cable cut "there was no apparent impact to traffic volumes in either country at the time that the cables were damaged.") Telegeography's submarinecablemap.com illustrates, at least in part, the resilience in connectivity enjoyed by these two countries. In addition to the damaged cable, it shows that Lithuania is connected to neighboring Latvia as well as to the Swedish mainland. Over 20 submarine cables land in Sweden, connecting it to multiple countries across Europe. In addition to the submarine resilience, network providers in both countries can take advantage of terrestrial fiber connections to neighboring countries, such as those illustrated in a European network map from Arelion (formerly Telia), which is only one of the large European backbone providers.

Less than a day later, the C-Lion1 submarine cable, which connects Helsinki, Finland and Rostock Germany was reportedly damaged during the early morning hours of Monday, November 18... In this situation as well, as the Cloudflare Radar graphs below show, there was no apparent impact to traffic volumes in either country at the time that the cables were damaged...

Telegeography's submarinecablemap.com shows that both Finland and Germany also have significant redundancy and resilience from a submarine cable perspective, with over 10 cables landing in Finland, and nearly 10 landing in Germany, including Atlantic Crossing-1 (AC-1), which connects to the United States over two distinct paths. Terrestrial fiber maps from Arelion and eunetworks (as just two examples) show multiple redundant fiber routes within both countries, as well as cross-border routes to other neighboring countries, enabling more resilient Internet connectivity.
See also Does the Internet Route Around Damage?

"You can use any Linux distribution inside of the Windows Subsystem for Linux" Microsoft recently reminded Windows users, "even if it is not available in the Microsoft Store, by importing it with a tar file."

But being an official distro "makes it easier for Windows Subsystem for Linux users to install and discover it with actions like wsl --list --online and wsl --install," Microsoft pointed out this week. And "We're excited to announce that Red Hat will soon be delivering a Red Hat Enterprise Linux WSL distro image in the coming months..."

Thank you to the Red Hat team as their feedback has been invaluable as we built out this new architecture, and we're looking forwards to the release...! Ron Pacheco, senior director, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Ecosystem, Red Hat says:

"Developers have their preferred platforms for developing applications for multiple operating systems, and WSL is an important platform for many of them. Red Hat is committed to driving greater choice and flexibility for developers, which is why we're working closely with the Microsoft team to bring Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the largest commercially available open source Linux distribution, to all WSL users."
Read Pacheco's own blog post here.

But in addition Microsoft is also releasing "a new way to make WSL distros," they announced this week, "with a new architecture that backs how WSL distros are packaged and installed." Up until now, you could make a WSL distro by either creating an appx package and distributing it via the Microsoft Store, or by importing a .tar file with wsl -import. We wanted to improve this by making it possible to create a WSL distro without needing to write Windows code, and for users to more easily install their distros from a file or network share which is common in enterprise scenarios... With the tar based architecture, you can start with the same .tar file (which can be an exported Linux container!) and just edit it to add details to make it a WSL distro... These options will describe key distro attributes, like the name of the distro, its icon in Windows, and its out of box experience (OOBE) which is what happens when you run WSL for the first time. You'll notice that the oobe_command option points to a file which is a Linux executable, meaning you can set up your full experience just in Linux if you wish.

"The past 15 years were unique in ways that might be a bad predictor of our future," writes the Washington Post, with a surge in the number of internet users since 2010, and everyone spending more time online.

But today, "lots of smart people believe that artificial intelligence will upend how you find information. Googling is so yesterday." Sam Altman, the top executive overseeing ChatGPT, has said that AI has a good shot at shoving aside Google search. Bill Gates predicted that emerging AI will do tasks like researching your ideal running shoes and automatically placing an order so you'll "never go to a search site again." In defending itself from a judge's decision that it runs an illegal monopoly, Google says the company might be roadkill as AI and other new technologies change how you find information. (On Wednesday, the U.S. government asked the judge to overhaul Google to undo its monopoly.)

But predictions of Google's looming obsolescence have been wrong before, which calls for humility in fortune-telling our collective technology habits. We're devilishly unpredictable.... Maybe it's right to extrapolate from how people are starting to use AI today. Or maybe that's the mistake that Jobs made when he said no one was searching on iPhones. It wasn't wrong in 2010, but it was within a few years. Or what if AI upends how billions of us find information and we still keep on Googling? "The notion that we can predict how these new technologies are going to evolve is silly," said David B. Yoffie, a Harvard Business School professor who has spent decades studying the technology industry.

Amit Mehta, the judge overseeing the Google monopoly case, formed his own view on AI moving us away from searching Google. "AI may someday fundamentally alter search, but not anytime soon," he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VICE: It's early on a Sunday morning in late 1994, and you're shuffling your way through Fitzrovia in Central London, bloodstream still rushing after a long night at Bagley's. The sun comes up as you come down. You navigate side streets that you know like the back of your hand. But your hand's stamped with a party logo. And your brain's kaput. Coffee... yes, coffee. Good idea. Suddenly, you find yourself outside a teal blue cafe. Walking in is like entering an alien world; rows of club kids, tech heads, and game developers sit in front of desktops, lost in the primitive version of some new reality. Tentacular cables hang from the ceiling. Ambient techno reverberates from wall to wall. Cigarette smoke fills the air.

Welcome to Cyberia, the world's first internet cafe. Which, if you're too young to remember, are basically cafes with computers in them. It all began when Eva Pascoe, a Polish computing student living in London, crossed paths with Tim Berners Lee and other early internet mavericks at the dawn of the 90s. "I was very interested in cyberfeminism and wanted to figure out how women could reclaim tech," she recalls. The internet was still in its infancy. Diabolically slow dial-up modems only emerged around 1992; the World Wide Web was a pipe dream until 1993 and hardly anyone had the internet at home. But there wasn't just a lack of javascript; Eva remembers there being no good java, either. "There were no coffee shops in London," she says, which today seems ludicrous. "Just greasy spoons and everyone drank tea. I wanted a European-style cafe."

Linking up with like-minded pioneers David Rowe and husband and wife Keith and Gene Teare, Eva found a spot on the corner of Whitfield Street and launched Cyberia there in 1994. With Hackers-style aesthetics and futuristic furniture, it was based around a U-shaped layout that meant visitors could see each other's screens. "I wanted women to feel safe, because a lot of the stuff on the net was dodgy," she explains. Many of Eva's mates chipped in to help out -- architects, interior designers, graphic artists, publishers, and ravers among them.

And then there was the Amish community in Pennsylvania. Eva had to fly out there to negotiate for the "Cyberia.com" domain name they had bought. "It was a proper barn with horse carts and a wall of modems as they were running a bulletin board and an early ecommerce company. Apparently, there was always one family nominated to be the tech support," she remembers. Back in London, Cyberia quickly became a hotspot. "Virtually the second we opened, we had three lines deep around the block," she says. It's hard to imagine, but nowhere else in the world was doing what they were doing. It was the world's first cybercafe. "If you wanted to collect your emails, we were the only place in town," Eva says. Cyberia opened around 20 cafes worldwide, including branches in Bangkok, Paris, and Rotterdam. "For a fleeting moment it became like a sexier version of Richard Branson's Virgin empire: there was Cyberia Records, Cyberia Channel (a pioneering streaming service), Cyberia Payments, the Cyberia magazine, a Cyberia show on UK TV -- even a Cyberia wedding," writes VICE's Kyle MacNeill. He attended Cyberia's 30th birthday party in September and spoke with some of the cafe's original innovators, "shooting the shit about the good times and the not-so-good coffee."

Longtime Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis writes: Economist Phillip Kobernick makes the case that the emphasis on fast-charging stations for electric vehicles in the U.S. is misplaced. According to an article from CleanTechnica, he argues that, from an economic standpoint, what we should be doing is installing more slow chargers. All thing equal, who wouldn't choose a 10-minute charge over a 3-hour charge or a 10-hour charge? But all things are not equal.

Superfast chargers are far more expensive than Level 2 chargers, and Level 2 chargers are also significantly more expensive than Level 1 charging infrastructure, which consists of normal electricity outlets. He points out that we get 4-7 times more charging capability installed for the same cost by going with Level 1 charging instead of Level 2. And given that people often just plug in their electric vehicles overnight, Level 1 charging can more than adequately provide what is needed in that time. The case is examined in a podcast on the site.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Google has sued one of its former engineers in Texas federal court, accusing him of stealing trade secrets related to its chip designs and sharing them publicly on the internet. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday (PDF), said that Harshit Roy "touted his dominion" over the secrets in social media posts, tagging competitors and making threatening statements to the company including "I need to take unethical means to get what I am entitled to" and "remember that empires fall and so will you."

Google hired Roy in 2020 to develop computer chips used in Google Pixel devices like smartphones. Google said in the lawsuit that Roy resigned in February and moved from Bangalore, India to the United States in August to attend a doctorate program at the University of Texas at Austin. According to the complaint, Roy began posting confidential Google information to his X account later that month along with "subversive text" directed at the company, such as "don't expect me to adhere to any confidentiality agreement." The posts included photographs of internal Google documents with specifications for Pixel processing chips.

The lawsuit said that Roy ignored Google's takedown requests and has posted additional trade secrets to X and LinkedIn since October. Google alleged that Roy tagged competitors Apple and Qualcomm in some of the posts, "presumably to maximize the potential harm of his disclosure." Google's complaint also said that several news outlets have published stories with confidential details about Google's devices based on the information that Roy leaked. Google asked the court for an unspecified amount of monetary damages and court orders blocking Roy from using or sharing its secrets.

The latest Steam client drops support for operating systems older than Windows 10 or macOS 10.15 Catalina. "That means Mac users can't run 32-bit games anymore, as all macOS versions from Catalina onward only run 64-bit binaries," reports The Register. From the report: [I]f you have a well-specified older Mac, here is another reason to check out Open Core Legacy Patcher. For now, macOS 10.15 Catalina will do but we suspect it won't for long. This version of Steam uses the equivalent to Chrome 126: "Updated embedded Chromium build in Steam to 126.0.6478.183." However, versions since Chrome 128 require macOS 11 or newer. For now, Catalina will work -- but the next significant Steam update will update Chromium as well, and there's a high probability that that will drop support for 10.15.

So, if you're using OCLP to install a newer macOS, you should probably go directly to Big Sur. In The Reg FOSS desk's testing, we found that Big Sur ran reasonably well on a machine with Intel HD 520 graphics, although the same hardware ran very poorly with macOS 12 Monterey. Unfortunately, the inevitable end is in sight for older Macs. That said, the November 2024 Steam client update brings several "wins," including a built-in Game Recording feature, an upgraded Chromium browser engine, and the new "Scout" Linux runtime environment for improved compatibility and performance, especially on the Steam Deck and Linux distros. Additionally, it delivers bug fixes and enhancements for modern OS users.

Baidu's new Apollo Go robotaxi brings significant advances in affordability and scalability that should make U.S. competitors like Waymo a bit nervous, according to The Verge's Andrew J. Hawkins. From the report: The RT6 is the sixth generation of Apollo Go's driverless vehicle, which made its official debut in May 2024. It's a purpose-built, Level 4 autonomous vehicle, meaning it's built without the need for a human driver. And here's the thing that should make US competitors nervous: adopting a battery-swapping solution, the price for one individual RT6 is "under $30,000," Baidu CEO Robin Li said in an earnings call. "All the strengths just mentioned above are driving us forward, paving the way to validate our business model," Li added. [...]

We still don't know the net effect of Baidu's cost improvements. But bringing down the upfront cost of each individual vehicle to below $30,000 will go a long way toward improving the company's unit economics, in which each vehicle brings in more money than it costs. There are still a lot of outstanding costs to consider, such as hardware depreciation and fleet maintenance, but from what Baidu is signaling, things are on the right track. From the looks of it, the company is passing those savings along to its customers. Base fares start as low as 4 yuan (around 55 cents), compared with 18 yuan (around $2.48) for a taxi driven by a human, according to state media outlet Global Times. Apollo Go said it has provided 988,000 rides across all of China in Q3 2024 -- a year-over-year growth of 20 percent. And cumulative public rides reached 8 million in October.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: DirecTV is pulling out of an agreement to buy its satellite rival Dish after bondholders objected to terms of the deal. DirecTV issued an announcement last night saying "it has notified EchoStar of its election to terminate, effective as of 11:59 p.m., ET on Friday, November 22nd, 2024, the Equity Purchase Agreement (EPA) pursuant to which it had agreed to acquire EchoStar's video distribution business, Dish DBS."

In the deal announced on September 30, DirecTV was going to buy the Dish satellite TV and Sling TV streaming business from EchoStar for a nominal fee of $1. DirecTV would have taken on $9.75 billion of Dish debt if the transaction moved ahead. The deal did not include the Dish Network cellular business. Dish bondholders quickly objected to terms requiring them to take a loss on the value of their debt. DirecTV had said Dish notes would be exchanged with "a reduced principal amount of DirecTV debt which will have terms and collateral that mirror DirecTV's existing secured debt." The principal amount would have been reduced by at least $1.568 billion.

DirecTV last night said it is now exercising its right to terminate the acquisition because noteholders did not accept the exchange offer. "The termination of the Agreement follows Dish DBS noteholders' failure to agree to the proposed Exchange Debt Offer Terms issued by EchoStar, which was a condition of DirecTV's obligations to acquire Dish under the EPA," the press release said. DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow indicated his company wasn't willing to change the deal to satisfy Dish bondholders. "We have terminated the transaction because the proposed Exchange Terms were necessary to protect DirecTV's balance sheet and our operational flexibility," Morrow said.

Damage to two undersea fiber-optic cables in the Baltic Sea this month points to growing vulnerability of critical submarine infrastructure, with German officials suspecting sabotage and Swedish police investigating a Chinese cargo vessel's involvement.

The incident highlights escalating risks to the global submarine cable network, which carries 99% of international telecommunications traffic through 530 cable systems spanning 850,000 miles. These garden hose-thick cables facilitate trillions in daily financial transactions and vital government communications.

Security experts warn that Russia has increased monitoring of undersea cables amid tensions over Ukraine. Taiwan reported 36 cable damages by foreign vessels since 2019, while Houthi rebels denied targeting Red Sea cables this year. Though most of the 100-plus annual cable faults are accidental, deliberate sabotage remains a concern. Repairs are costly, with new transatlantic cables running up to $250 million.

An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI is preparing to launch a frontal assault on Google. The ChatGPT owner recently considered developing a web browser that it would combine with its chatbot, and it has separately discussed or struck deals to power search features for travel, food, real estate and retail websites, according to people who have seen prototypes or designs of the products.

OpenAI has spoken about the search product with website and app developers such as Conde Nast, Redfin, Eventbrite and Priceline, these people said. OpenAI also has discussed powering artificial intelligence features on devices made by Samsung, a key Google business partner, similar to a deal OpenAI recently struck with Apple, according to people who were briefed about the situation at OpenAI.

Mozilla has warned that the Justice Department's proposed breakup of Google could harm independent web browsers, pushing back against a key element of the government's antitrust remedy.

The maker of Firefox browser said in a statement the DOJ's blanket ban on search revenue-sharing deals would disproportionately impact smaller players that rely on such agreements, while failing to meaningfully increase competition in search.

Firefox and similar browsers account for a small share of US search queries but provide crucial alternatives for privacy-conscious consumers, Mozilla said. The DOJ's wide-ranging proposal, submitted to a federal court in Washington, includes forcing Google to sell its Chrome browser and prohibiting the company from paying other firms to set Google as their default search engine.

The plan follows an August ruling that found Google illegally monopolized the search market. In a statement, Mozilla argued that rather than an outright prohibition on search agreements, remedies should focus on "addressing the barriers to competition and facilitating a marketplace that promotes competition and consumer choice."