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Google has won an appeal against a €1.5 billion competition fine from the European Commission in a victory for the Big Tech group as it comes under growing scrutiny from Brussels regulators.

The EU’s General Court said on Wednesday that while it accepted “most of the commission’s assessments” that the company had used its dominant position to block rival online advertisers, it annulled the hefty fine levied against Google in the case.

When launching the action against Google in 2019, Margrethe Vestager, the bloc’s competition chief, said that the search giant had imposed anti-competitive restrictions on third-party websites for a decade between 2006 and 2016. She justified the €1.5 billion fine by arguing that it reflected the “serious and sustained nature” of the infringement.

Enlarge / Amazon fulfillment center in Las Vegas, Nevada. (credit: Getty Images | 4kodiak)

Amazon has told staff they must return to the office five days a week from the start of next year, one of the strictest corporate crackdowns on remote working that has become commonplace since the pandemic.

“We’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID,” chief executive Andy Jassy wrote in a memo to employees globally on Monday. “We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective.

“Before the pandemic, it was not a given that folks could work remotely two days a week, and that will also be true moving forward,” Jassy said. He added exceptions would be made for employees with a sick child, family emergencies, or coding projects that needed a more isolated environment.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Dan Kitwood )

Elon Musk has lambasted Australia’s government as “fascists” over proposed laws that could levy substantial fines on social media companies if they fail to comply with rules to combat the spread of disinformation and online scams.

The billionaire owner of social media site X posted the word “fascists” on Friday in response to the bill, which would strengthen the Australian media regulator’s ability to hold companies responsible for the content on their platforms and levy potential fines of up to 5 percent of global revenue. The bill, which was proposed this week, has yet to be passed.

Musk’s comments drew rebukes from senior Australian politicians, with Stephen Jones, Australia’s finance minister, telling national broadcaster ABC that it was “crackpot stuff” and the legislation was a matter of sovereignty.

Enlarge / Google's booth at the Integrated Systems Europe conference on January 31, 2023, in Barcelona, Spain. (credit: Getty Images | Cesc Maymo )

Google is under investigation by Europe’s privacy watchdog over its processing of personal data in the development of one of its artificial intelligence models, as regulators ramp up their scrutiny of Big Tech’s AI ambitions.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, said it had launched a statutory inquiry into the tech giant’s Pathways Language Model 2, or PaLM 2.

PaLM 2 was launched in May 2023 and predates Google’s latest Gemini models, which power its AI products. Gemini, which was launched in December of the same year, is now the core model behind its text and image-generation offering.

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The cost of renting cloud services using Nvidia’s leading artificial intelligence chips is lower in China than in the US, a sign that the advanced processors are easily reaching the Chinese market despite Washington’s export restrictions.

Four small-scale Chinese cloud providers charge local tech groups roughly $6 an hour to use a server with eight Nvidia A100 processors in a base configuration, companies and customers told the Financial Times. Small cloud vendors in the US charge about $10 an hour for the same setup.

The low prices, according to people in the AI and cloud industry, are an indication of plentiful supply of Nvidia chips in China and the circumvention of US measures designed to prevent access to cutting-edge technologies.