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EU fines Google $3.5 billion for anti-competitive ad practices

The European Commission has fined Google €2.95 billion ($3.5 billion) for abusing its dominance in the digital advertising technology market and favoring its adtech services over those of its competitors.

Google was also ordered by the EU’s top antitrust regulator to stop anti-competitive and “self-preferencing” practices and take measures to mitigate future conflicts of interest in the adtech market.

Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s Global Head of Regulatory Affairs, told BleepingComputer that the antitrust regulator’s decision was wrong and that the company will appeal it.

France slaps Google with €325M fine for violating cookie regulations

The French data protection authority has fined Google €325 million ($378 million) for violating cookie regulations and displaying ads between Gmail users’ emails without their consent.

During several investigations between 2022 and 2023, the National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) found that Google’s Gmail email service displayed advertisements in the “Promotions” and “Social” tabs without the consent of Gmail users, thereby breaching Article L. 34–5 of the French Postal and Electronic Communications Code (CPCE).

As explained in a press release issued on Wednesday, this fine was imposed because Google breached the French Data Protection Act (Article 82) by failing to inform users who created new accounts that they were required to allow the search giant to place cookies for advertising purposes to access its services.

Spouses show consistent similarities across nine psychiatric disorders over generations

A multinational collaboration of researchers report that psychiatric spousal resemblance across nine psychiatric disorders appears consistent and persists across birth cohorts for roughly 90 years in a sample of over 14 million.

Previous small-scale marriage registry studies have reported spousal similarities for several disorders and related psychiatric traits. A larger, population-based comparison across cultures and generations was needed to assess how widespread the phenomenon extends.

In the study, “Spousal correlations for nine are consistent across cultures and persistent over generations,” published in Nature Human Behaviour, researchers performed a large-scale analysis to quantify spousal correlations across nine psychiatric disorders and to test cultural and generational stability.

Canada Is at Risk: Scientists Uncover Hidden Megathrust That Could Trigger Massive Earthquakes

Scientists used advanced hydrophone technology to image the Queen Charlotte fault, confirming its potential for destructive megathrust earthquakes. New research on the Queen Charlotte fault system has produced the first images of its subsurface structure off the coast of Haida Gwaii, confirming t

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