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What happened
Shares of the Internet search giant Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) fly today, up 4.8% in the midday session, but it’s not immediately clear why. There is good news and bad news for Google’s parent company today, but bad news predominates.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
The good news: Reuters reports that Google is asking a federal judge to drop 10 state antitrust lawsuits against him and put them on trial in California, where jurors may be more favorable to the tech company. The bad news: Reuters also reports that 38 other states are suing Google over monopoly issues, and the European Union appears to be preparing to do the same.
Adding to the bad headlines, Axios today reports that Google – which in December may or may not have fired (the facts are disputed) one of its ethical artificial intelligence (AI) team members, Timnit Gebru – has discovered that a second member of her AI team, Margaret Mitchell, examined Gebru’s messages for examples showing discriminatory treatment of her.
Google responded to the apparent data hijacking by locking Mitchell’s accounts at the company and said it was “actively investigating the matter.”
Now what
It remains to be seen how badly this will become for Google and for Alphabet, but it is certainly a bad point, in the language of public relations. And the fact that Mitchell has started tweeting angered notes about the company suggests that this is a negative headline that won’t go away anytime soon, which could damage its reputation while pushing back multiple avenues. fact.
Why all of the above would add to a 4.8% share price gain for Google is beyond me.
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