The Stack: Latest Legal Moves in Ad Tech; Microsoft Takes On Google with New AI Features

by Aimee Newell Tarín on 4th Oct 2024 in News

This week on The Stack: Latest Legal Moves in Ad Tech; Microsoft Takes On Google with New AI Features; Today’s MadTech Daily

Legal affairs are certainly active in ad tech at the moment. Epic Games threw antitrust accusations at both Google and Samsung, saying they are conspiring to protect Google’s Play Store from competition. Epic made clear its intention to file a US federal lawsuit against Samsung’s Auto Blocker feature, which it believes is intended to discourage users from downloading Android apps from sources other than the Play Store and Samsung’s Galaxy Store.

Meanwhile, Google faces bigger hardships: its case with the DOJ wrapped up, with court proceedings coming to a close much sooner than expected. The tech giant finished laying out its defence; now, we wait. Following a break, the court will reconvene on 25th November for the closing arguments of both sides to be heard.

Zeroing in on California, a new law has been introduced with the objective of addressing the disappearance of purchased digital goods. The legislation will enforce digital storefronts to provide consumers with much more transparent information when it comes to buying digital content such as music, games and films.

Elsewhere, Microsoft made a big industry splash this week with a host of announcements. It introduced Bing Generative Overviews, its answer to Google’s AI Overviews. The feature began rolling out to all US users on Tuesday. Microsoft also announced it would start paying publishers for content used by another one of its newly announced features, Copilot Daily. The feature pulls insights from content sources to deliver users a summary of current events, including the weather.