Apple Inc AAPL.O, advertising giant GroupM and others asked the judge hearing the Justice Department's lawsuit against Alphabet's Google GOOGL.O on Friday to allow them to designate certain data used by the government as "highly confidential," to ensure that no-one from Google could see it.

The Justice Department, which sued the search and advertising giant in October, put at the core of its antitrust case the billions of dollars that Google paid to be the default search engine on Apple’s iPhones, and Apple noted in its filing that sensitive data was used to write the complaint.

The government is accusing Google of illegally using its market muscle to hobble rivals in a lawsuit that is the biggest challenge to the power and influence of Big Tech in decades.

Google had offered to ensure that any confidential information would be made available solely to two in-house attorneys at the offices of Google’s outside counsel or in another secure manner, adding that it would promptly report any disclosure.

Like Apple, companies including AT&T T.N, Microsoft Corp MSFT.O and Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O which assisted the government asked Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to create a tier of data deemed "highly confidential" and to prohibit any Google employee from having access to it. GroupM further asked that the information be "disclosed only on an 'outside attorneys' eyes only' basis."

Apple said that it had already given the government data on its relationship with Google, and expected to be asked for more, including potentially the terms of deals that Apple struck with other search engines and Apple’s internal deliberations around negotiating the deals.

Microsoft, Amazon and others said in a joint filing that if Google had access to some sensitive documents that it would gain leverage with the companies in any future negotiations.

Source: Reuters

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Google’s own engineers were troubled by the way the company secretly tracked the movements of people who didn’t want to be followed until a 2018 Associated Press investigation uncovered the shadowy surveillance, according to unsealed documents in a consumer fraud case.

The behind-the-scenes peek stems from a three-month-old lawsuit against Google filed by Arizona’s attorney general. The files, unsealed late last week, reveal that Google knew it had a massive problem on its hands after an AP article published in August 2018 explained how the company continued to track users’ whereabouts even after they had disabled the feature Google called “location history.”

The released documents include internal Google emails and a fresh version of the state’s civil complaint with fewer redactions than the original.

The same day the AP story was published, the company held what one unidentified email correspondent called an “Oh S—-” meeting to discuss its location tracking tools, according to the unsealed records in Arizona’s Maricopa County Superior Court. Google also began monitoring public reaction to the AP story, including how it was trending across Facebook, Twitter and other influential online services, the documents show.

The release of the emails is embarrassing for a company that tries to build trust with billions of users of free services such as maps and online search, which in turn provide the personal information Google can use to target ads. Those ads generated more than $130 billion in revenue last year alone.

Google is still fighting to keep many of the exhibits and key passages in the lawsuit redacted on the grounds that the contents contain confidential information.

Google is seeking to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the Arizona law only applies to goods and services that charge consumers. That would exclude free services that draw upon the tracking tools that are at the heart of the lawsuit.

The company also contends that Brnovich, a Republican, may have been prodded to pursue the investigation by Oracle, which has been involved in a long-running legal battle over the rights to some of the software code used in Google’s Android software for smartphones and other mobile devices.

“Privacy controls have long been built into our services and our teams work continuously to discuss and improve them,” Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said Wednesday. “In the case of location information, we’ve heard feedback, and have worked hard to improve our privacy controls.”

Source:AP

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Google Assistant support is coming to the Fitbit Sense and Fitbit Versa 3 thanks to a new update rolling out starting today in the US. Alongside it, Fitbit OS 5.1 also adds new blood oxygen monitoring features, support for audible replies from Alexa, and enhancements to the watches’ calling and messaging features.

Both smartwatches already support Amazon’s Alexa, but with the addition of Google Assistant Fitbit says they’re becoming the first smartwatches to offer a built-in choice between the two voice assistants. Support for Google Assistant has been on the cards since the company announced the smartwatches earlier this year. It’s unlikely that these will be the last Fitbit devices to support Google’s voice assistant, given the search giant is currently in the process of buying Fitbit. If you want to switch which voice assistant you use, Fitbit says you can do so from the companion app.

 

ALEXA IS ALSO GETTING SOME UPDATES

That doesn’t mean Fitbit is ignoring its Alexa functionality, however. Fitbit OS 5.1 also adds the ability for Alexa to audibly reply to your queries via the smartwatch’s speaker, rather than just displaying its responses onscreen.

The watches’ calling and messaging functionality is also being improved with the update. The Fitbit Versa 3 and Sense can now answer calls directly when a phone is nearby using their built-in speakers and microphones. Previously the watches could be used to accept or reject calls, but users still had to speak into the phone itself. Fitbit also says the watches will now support voice-to-text commands for responding to text messages on Android.

Finally, the watches’ SpO2 blood oxygen tracking is receiving some improvements, with Fitbit saying you’ll no longer need to use a special clock face to see blood oxygen data. However, if you’re someone that does want to get this information from a watch face, the company says it has new SpO2 clock faces coming to the watches by the end of the year.

Source: theverge

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