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  • Trump issues an executive order to suspend the US TikTok ban. But can it stick?

    Trump issues an executive order to suspend the US TikTok ban. But can it stick?

    President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday to keep TikTok operating for 75 days, a relief to the social media platform’s users even as national security questions persist.

    TikTok’s China-based parent ByteDance was supposed to find a U.S. buyer or be banned on Jan. 19. Trump’s order could give ByteDance more time to find a buyer.

    “I guess I have a warm spot for TikTok,” Trump said.

    Trump has amassed nearly 15 million followers on TikTok since he joined last year, and he has credited the trendsetting platform with helping him gain traction among young voters. Yet its 170 million U.S. users could not access TikTok for more than 12 hours between Saturday night and Sunday morning.

    The platform went offline before the ban approved by Congress and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court took effect on Sunday. After Trump promised to pause the ban on Monday, TikTok restored access for existing users. Google and Apple, however, still have not reinstated TikTok to their app stores.

    Business leaders, lawmakers, legal scholars, and influencers who make money on TikTok are watching to see how Trump tries to resolve a thicket of regulatory, legal, financial and geopolitical issues with his signature.

    TikTok’s app allows users to create and watch short-form videos, and broke new ground by operating with an algorithm that fed viewers recommendations based on their viewing habits. But concerns about its potential to serve as a tool for Beijing to manipulate and spy on Americans pre-date Trump’s first presidency.

    In 2020, Trump issued executive orders banning dealings with ByteDance and the owners of the Chinese messaging app WeChat. Courts ended up blocking the orders, but less than a year ago Congress overwhelmingly passed a law citing national security concerns to ban TikTok unless ByteDance sold it to an approved buyer.

    The law, which went into force Sunday, allows for fines of up to $5,000 per U.S. TikTok user against major mobile app stores — like the ones operated by Apple and Google — and internet hosting services like Oracle if they continued to distribute TikTok to U.S. users beyond the deadline for ByteDance’s divestment.

    Trump on Sunday said he had asked TikTok’s U.S. service providers to continue supporting the platform and app while he prepared to sign an executive order to stop the ban for now.

    “The order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order,” Trump posted on Truth Social, his social networking site.

    The law that Congress passed and now-former President Joe Biden signed in April allowed for a 90-day extension if there had been progress toward a sale before the statute’s effective date. Less certain is whether that provision can be applied retroactively, according to Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute.

    “Executive orders cannot override existing laws,” Kreps said. “It’s not clear that the new president has that authority to issue the 90-day extension of a law that’s already gone into effect.”

    Kreps also doubts the conditions for a delay exist at this point without so much as even a potential buyer being named to prove that a sale was moving along.

    But Alan Rozenshtein, a University of Minnesota law professor, has written that the law also empowers the president to decide what constitutes a “qualified divestiture” — suggesting Trump could have discretion to say whether or when ByteDance meets the terms of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.

    Although ByteDance spent months repeating it wasn’t interested in selling, Beijing on Monday also signaled a possible easing on China’s stance on TikTok to allow it to be divested from its Chinese parent company. China’s vice president held meetings with Vice President JD Vance and Tesla tech titan Elon Musk on Sunday.

    Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning, said Monday that business operations and acquisitions “should be independently decided by companies in accordance with market principles.”

    “If it involves Chinese companies, China’s laws and regulations should be observed,” Mao said.

    Until now, it was widely believed that Beijing would not allow the sale of TikTok, which had come to embody China’s defiance in the face of “U.S. robbery.” However, TikTok was among several issues brought up in a phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump on Friday, though details were not available.

    Trump later announced plans to delay the TikTok ban and suggested a joint venture in which the U.S. would get a 50% ownership of the app. Shou Zi Chew, TikTok’s CEO, attended Trump’s inauguration, seated with American tech heavyweights.

    The Justice Department is generally tasked with enforcing the laws of the federal government, so it’s possible that Trump will direct the DOJ to ignore the law. Such a move might itself be subject to legal scrutiny but would buy time for TikTok.

    Trump’s efforts to save TikTok may put him at odds with some of the House members and senators who voted for the law, which received broad bipartisan support. House Speaker Mike Johnson called ByteDance’s ownership “a very dangerous thing,” and said he expected a full sale to happen.

    “I think we will enforce the law,” Johnson told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

    Legislators now stand to “look a little bit silly” if the ban doesn’t last, Kreps said.

    “(The case) becomes about the separations of powers, and checks and balances, that we don’t have a king who decides what happens with the law,” Kreps said. “Enforcement isn’t only up to the executive branch.”

    Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, in a message posted on X, listed a number of state and federal agencies, and private entities, that might be willing to go to court to get the ban enforced.

    “Any company that hosts, distributes, services, or otherwise facilitates communist-controlled TikTok could face hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability under the law, not just from DOJ, but also under securities law, shareholder lawsuits, and state AGs,” Cotton noted.

    Despite the intense scrutiny and potential costs involved, the machinations over TikTok are in some ways just business as usual for the tech companies involved, according to Gus Hurwitz, a legal scholar with the International Center for Law and Economics.

    “The fines that we’re talking about are civil penalties and companies risk civil penalties all the time,” Hurwitz said.

    Still, the hard business calculus of complying with a law in limbo or risk defying a president who holds lucrative federal contracts over those companies could come into focus if shareholders sue.

    Oracle, for example, has a part of the Pentagon’s $9 billion contract to build its cloud computing network.

    “This actually could be the right business decision to make,” Hurwitz said. “That’s not necessarily a breach of duty to shareholders.”

    There’s been lots of questions about how companies such as Oracle and Akamai Technologies are powering TikTok’s servers to stay online, while others such as Apple and Google have made the app unavailable for new users to download.

    None of the companies have responded to requests for comment.

    Oracle in 2020 announced it had a 12.5% stake in TikTok Global after securing its business as the app’s cloud technology provider.

    Meanwhile, as of Monday night, a search for TikTok on Apple’s app store directs to an online statement that reads in part: “Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates,” while Google’s app store notes downloads for TikTok “are paused due to current US legal requirements.”

    ___

    Ho reported from Seattle. Maya Sweedler and Didi Tang in Washington contributed reporting.

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  • TikTok asks the Supreme Court for an emergency order to block a US ban unless it’s sold

    TikTok asks the Supreme Court for an emergency order to block a US ban unless it’s sold

    WASHINGTON — TikTok on Monday asked the Supreme Court to step in on an emergency basis to block the federal law that would ban the popular platform in the United States unless its China-based parent company agreed to sell it.

    Lawyers for the company and China-based ByteDance urged the justices to step in before the law’s Jan. 19 deadline. A similar plea was filed by content creators who rely on the platform for income and some of TikTok’s more than 170 million users in the U.S.

    “A modest delay in enforcing the Act will create breathing room for this Court to conduct an orderly review and the new Administration to evaluate this matter — before this vital channel for Americans to communicate with their fellow citizens and the world is closed,” lawyers for the companies told the Supreme Court.

    President-elect Donald Trump, who once supported a ban but then pledged during the campaign to “save TikTok,” said his administration would take a look at the situation.

    “As you know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” Trump said during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. His campaign saw the platform as a way to reach younger, less politically engaged voters.

    Trump was meeting with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, according to two people familiar with the president-elect’s plans who were not authorized to speak publicly about them and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

    The companies have said that a shutdown lasting just a month would cause TikTok to lose about a third of its daily users in the U.S. and significant advertising revenue.

    The case could attract the court’s interest because it pits free speech rights against the government’s stated aims of protecting national security, while raising novel issues about social media platforms.

    The request first goes to Chief Justice John Roberts, who oversees emergency appeals from courts in the nation’s capital. He almost certainly will seek input from all nine justices.

    On Friday, a panel of federal judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied an emergency plea to block the law, a procedural ruling that allowed the case to move to the Supreme Court.

    The same panel had earlier unanimously upheld the law over a First Amendment challenge claiming that it violated free speech rights.

    Without a court-ordered freeze, the law would take effect Jan. 19 and expose app stores that offer TikTok and internet hosting services that support it to potential fines.

    It would be up to the Justice Department to enforce the law, investigating possible violations and seeking sanctions. But lawyers for TikTok and ByteDance have argued that Trump’s Justice Department might pause enforcement or otherwise seek to mitigate the law’s most severe consequences. Trump takes office a day after the law goes into effect.

    The Supreme Court could temporarily put the law on hold so that the justices can give fuller consideration to First Amendment and other issues. They also could quickly schedule arguments and try to render a decision by Jan. 19.

    On the other hand, the high court could reject the emergency appeal, which would allow the law to take effect as scheduled.

    With that last prospect in mind, the companies’ lawyers asked for a ruling on their emergency request by Jan. 6 because they’d need the time “to coordinate with their service providers to perform the complex task of shutting down the TikTok platform only in the United States.”

    The case has made a relatively quick trip through the courts once bipartisan majorities in Congress approved the law and President Joe Biden signed it in April.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Colleen Long contributed to this report.

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  • TikTok files challenge against Canadian government order to dissolve its business in the country

    TikTok files challenge against Canadian government order to dissolve its business in the country

    TikTok has challenged a Canadian government order to shut down the Chinese video-sharing app’s business operations in the country that was imposed over national security concerns.

    The company said Tuesday that it filed an application for a judicial review with the Federal Court in Vancouver on Dec. 5, which seeks to set aside the order for TikTok to wind-up and cease its business in Canada.

    The Canadian federal government last month announced it was ordering the dissolution of TikTok Technology Canada Inc. after a national security review of its Chinese parent company ByteDance Ltd.

    The government is not blocking access to the TikTok app, which will continue to be available to Canadians. TikTok said it has 14 million users in Canada, which is about a third of the population. It has offices in Toronto and Vancouver.

    The wildly popular platform is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020, but is under increasing pressure in the West. It’s facing a possible ban in the U.S. and intensifying scrutiny in Europe over issues including election influence campaigns allegedly coordinated by Moscow.

    TikTok argues in its court application, which was posted online, that Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne’s decision was “unreasonable” and “driven by improper purposes.” It says the order is “grossly disproportionate” and the the national security review was “procedurally unfair.”

    The review was carried out through the Investment Canada Act, which allows the government to investigate foreign investment with potential to harm national security.

    Champagne said in a statement at the time that the government was taking action to address “specific national security risks,” but did not elaborate. His office said in response to the filling that the government’s decision was informed by a “thorough national security review and advice from Canada’s security and intelligence community.”

    TikTok said Champagne “failed to engage with TikTok Canada on the purported substance of the concerns” that led to the order.

    It argues the government ordered “measures that bear no rational connection to the national security risks it identifies” and that the reasons for the order “are unintelligible, fail to reveal a rational chain of analysis and are rife with logical fallacies.”

    The platform says there were “less onerous” options than shutting down its Canadian business, which it said would eliminate hundreds of jobs, threaten business contracts and “cause the destruction of significant economic opportunities.”



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  • Lionel Messi has inverted the old order of the sports business

    Lionel Messi has inverted the old order of the sports business

    Open this photo in gallery:

    Inter Miami forward Lionel Messi against Orlando City in the MLS on March 2, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.Rebecca Blackwell/The Associated Press

    When Lionel Messi first arrived in the United States, he didn’t bother to introduce himself. Instead, he just started playing.

    This was July, 2023. The Major League Soccer season was already half over. The team Messi joined – Inter Miami – was the worst in the league.

    This is sports. You’d figure some encouraging words were required. No need for promises, but lie to people a little. Tell them there’s hope. Nope. None of that.

    Messi finally got around to making public remarks in the middle of August. He said little on the topic of the MLS, and a lot about how much fun it was to be a retiree.

    “I’m enjoying this new stage of my career,” Messi said. “I’m enjoying the experience of living in this country.”

    It has continued in this way for all the time Messi has been in North America. He plays when and where he likes. Some of Messi’s dislikes – artificial surfaces, cold and long flights. He has become sports’ first remote worker.

    They built the whole team to his preference, from the manager to the roster. Inter Miami is Messi’s personal startup, but it hasn’t worked out.

    On Saturday, the L.A. Galaxy won the MLS Cup. Messi and Miami had already been home for a month after losing in the first round of the playoffs.

    To recap – you hired a guy at massive expense. You renovated the team for him. That team hasn’t won anything that matters. Now you have to remake the team again (it has already selected another old pal of Messi’s as the new coach), but people are still worried that the headliner might jump ship.

    By the ancient standards of sports, this is a bust.

    Except, in this case, it isn’t. Messi has taken the old order of the sports business – win first; headlines after – and inverted it.

    He is a story everywhere he goes, as well as everywhere he doesn’t. More so in the latter case, as Vancouver proved earlier this year. He’s not an athlete. He’s a pop star who can’t sing.

    As a result, MLS attendance is through the roof. The league is still second-rate in most people’s minds, but Messi isn’t. You can’t go anywhere without spotting a kid in one of those hot-pink Miami No. 10 jerseys. The right guy plus the right look equals a marketing miracle.

    Wherever Messi goes, the result is immaterial. The purpose of Messi’s presence is to create a happening, something that people will pay enormous amounts of money to say they were at.

    Attention no longer follows success. It follows hype.

    You still need success to create hype, but the system is adapting. We now know what the best players are doing in high school. Grade school, even.

    The American sports industrial complex got smart and conned colleges into paying their players. Now that they are a de facto minor league, they do the dirty work of letting people know who’s a winner and who isn’t. ‘Winning’ in this case is not a matter of victories versus losses, but monies earned from marketing and image rights. The market now tells us what a champion looks like (championships optional).

    By the time the student-athlete arrives at the pros, their legend can be fully formed. Caitlin Clark is the most shining recent example. Her teams haven’t won anything, but you know who she is.

    Twelve women did win a WNBA championship this year. Can you name two of them? Okay, one? Or maybe just the team?

    If you’re the WNBA, what’s the lesson here? Do you want winners, or do you want stars? Because the latter no longer need be the former and – this is the important part – being the former is no longer a guarantee of the latter.

    This is the result of so much sports. Too many winners, making it impossible to convince people they should all matter. What people react to now is a hard-to-predict mix of talent, memeability, back story, personality and aesthetics.

    By 2026, Toronto will have seven major-league clubs. That’s too many teams for most people with actual lives to keep track of, never mind follow closely.

    This doesn’t begin to take into account all the foreign teams that occupy the average sports fan’s mental real estate, plus a bunch of annual tournaments, plus an Olympics every two years.

    In that blizzard of elite performers – and we are beginning to stretch the meaning of ‘elite’ – many winners will not penetrate the public consciousness. But a star – a needs-a-police-escort-to-get-to-the-airport level star – has a shot.

    Messi is that sort. His boss, Inter Miami part owner David Beckham, is another. Beckham hasn’t hoofed a ball in anger in more than a decade and people still want to know what he’s up to. They watch his shows and buy the junk he’s shilling. Unlike most pro athletes, he earns back the money people pay him. And this is a guy who was more famous for losing than winning.

    The average role player on an average sports team could be replaced by an inflatable doll and most people wouldn’t notice. His job is to deflect interest and make five-million bucks a year.

    Beckham is worth infinity glue guys. Messi is worth a hundred Beckhams. The two of them together are changing the rules.

    The goal of any aspirational sports league is no longer to put a superior product on the field and to ensure that its best performers succeed. It’s to either create a Messi or steal him from someone else. Whether he then goes on to win anything is beside the point.

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  • Even Kentucky haters of the highest order will find themselves liking Mark Pope

    Even Kentucky haters of the highest order will find themselves liking Mark Pope

    The Champions Classic gives annual intel on four college hoops teams that usually matter — check out CJ Moore’s resulting film breakdown on Duke, Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan State — and that means worthwhile hints on the season at large as well. This year, the Champions Classic has confirmed an enormous shift in college basketball fandom.

    Hating Kentucky isn’t cool or fun anymore because Kentucky’s coach is both. Mark Pope is relentlessly likable, which means Kentucky basketball has become likable. Adjust accordingly.

    Now, “cool” doesn’t work in every sense of the word, not for a 6-foot-10 guy who gives off the energy of a chemistry teacher towering over his students while delivering gentle words of encouragement. Pope is Mr. Vargas in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” but with a dry-erase board and no hair.

    Just as Vargas was the one teacher who could get Jeff Spicoli enthused about learning something, Pope got his thrown-together first team to figure out how to beat Duke — arguably the most talented outfit in the land — 77-72 on Tuesday in Atlanta. Pope is a former Rhodes scholarship candidate and Columbia medical student who can obviously teach as well as learn.

    That might not sound cool, and in fact, his wife, Lee Anne, addressed that very word in Brendan Quinn’s profile of Pope, saying: “You know, somebody said to me, ‘He’s goofy.’ But no. He’s not goofy. He’s just — in a world where everyone is cool, he is not too cool. And there’s a big difference. He’s brilliant. He’s authentic. And he’s going to outwork everyone. I know it.”

    But authenticity and perspective are cool, and they spring forth from Pope, who told Quinn that if being the coach at Kentucky is “everything you are,” you won’t succeed at it. That story centers on Pope’s relationships with his wife and four daughters, adding to a public glimpse of Pope that makes more fascinating his new job in service of the most ferociously passionate fan base in … American sports?

    It adds to an interesting time for the blue bloods, too. Pope beat Jon Scheyer, who is embarking on a critical third season as the friendly, soft-spoken successor to hated (by non-Duke fans) basketball overlord Mike Krzyzewski. Non-North Carolina fans had very few nice things to say about Roy “Aw Shucks” Williams — Hubert Davis is much easier to like. Bill Self, himself an “aw shucks” purveyor extraordinaire, is the only old head left. As any non-Kansas fan will tell you, it won’t be hard to find someone less grating on the nerves than he is.

    Pope, meanwhile, replaces John Calipari, which is a leap in likeability. But it would have been a parasail across the Grand Canyon a decade ago. At the rate Cal’s going, he might be a beloved underdog by the time he’s done at Arkansas. He became a bit of a sympathetic figure in recent years (for non-Kentucky fans) because of early NCAA exits with loaded teams, betrayed in part by Calipari’s failure to modernize stylistically.

    Kentucky fans got angrier and angrier at him while everyone else connected better with his jokes when he wasn’t destroying the competition every night. Hey, he’s kind of cute when he loses! Now his pressers at Arkansas, where he will fade or prove he has a renaissance in him, are must-stream events. Compare that to a certain UMass presser from 30 years ago, when everyone (except UMass fans, I guess) wished John Chaney would have roughed him up a little.

    When Calipari got the Kentucky job in 2009, after breaking NCAA rules at Memphis that people didn’t know existed, the prevailing sentiment in the sport was “Kentucky sold its soul.”

    That’s where most of the dislike originated. Calipari was a handy rogue for all with his teams full of NBA players spending a forced year in college, when paying players was still seen as a felony and other coaches swimming in the same waters were able to “aw shucks” their way out of public scrutiny.

    If you lost a recruit back then, point at the cheaters. Now there’s no bogeyman. Just you and your collective. Same thing for fans. So much energy used to be spent on which renegades were getting one over on your team and your rule-abiding coach. We’re in an era of forced introspection. And talent fees.

    These are the conditions that make villains harder to manufacture. Save for the impossible-to-dislike Tubby Smith, and other than the very early Rick Pitino days when he should have upset Christian Laettner and the basketball overlord, and with all due respect to the parties Billy Gillispie used to throw, the Kentucky basketball coach is supposed to be a despised scoundrel.

    Pope is not that. And that goes beyond the era we’re in, and he’s instantly a refreshing change from Calipari, even the late-stage version known as Commiserative Cal.

    Pope isn’t just taking over a legendary program; he loves the place, having co-captained Pitino’s absurdly loaded 1996 national championship team. Pope clearly wasn’t Kentucky’s first — or second … or third — choice. He has to prove himself. Instant likeability points.

    Word from inside the program is that he’s as lacking in self-importance as he appears to be publicly. He’s emphasizing outreach to former players. He’s honoring history, showing his team clips of legendary Duke-UK matchups stretching back to the 1970s before Tuesday’s tilt.

    The fun of Pope is in the basketball itself. This roster, which was completely empty when he arrived, is not loaded with first-round picks. But it’s well-constructed. The Wildcats play a five-out system built around cutting, passing and long-range shooting. It’s a joy to watch. And to hear coached.

    Did you catch ESPN’s cut-in to a Pope huddle during Tuesday’s game? The guy is down 7 to Duke in his first huge game at Kentucky, he doesn’t have anyone who can realistically guard Cooper Flagg, and he’s calmly talking fundamentals. Cheerily, even.

    “We’re standing a little too much on offense, so let’s really make declarative cuts right now, OK?” Pope said to his players. “Declarative cuts.”

    A sentence is the only thing that can be declarative. That declarative sentence, as Professor Pope has demonstrated for us, is inaccurate. This guy is adding to the hoops lexicon and showing how cool basketball nerd-dom can be.

    And college basketball can’t help but like him. At least until he wins enough that Kentucky fans love him.

    (Photo: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)



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  • Judge delays order in antitrust case requiring Google to open up its app store

    Judge delays order in antitrust case requiring Google to open up its app store

    SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge on Friday delayed an order requiring Google to open up its Android app store to more competition until an appeals court decides whether to block the shake-up because of legal questions surrounding a jury’s verdict that branded Google as an illegal monopolist.

    The delay granted during a court hearing in San Francisco comes less than two weeks after U.S. District Judge James Donato issued a decision that would have forced Google to make sweeping changes to its Play Store for Android smartphones starting Nov. 1.

    The mandated changes included a provision that would have required Google to make its library of more than 2 million Android apps available to any rivals that wanted access to the inventory and also distribute the alternative options in its own Play Store.

    Google requested Donato’s order be stayed until the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals could examine the handling of a month-long trial that led to the December 2023 verdict, which framed the Play Store as an illegal monopoly that stifles innovation and drives up consumer prices.

    In Friday’s hearing, Donato scoffed at the notion that Google could succeed in overturning the trial verdict. “The verdict in this case was amply supported by a mountain of evidence about Google’s anti-competitive conduct,” the judge said.

    But he decided the Ninth Circuit should be given a chance to consider a postponement until a panel of judges can decide can consider Google’s appeal of the 2023 trial focused on antitrust claims lodged by video game maker Epic Games.

    Donato said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Ninth Circuit imposes an even longer delay on his ruling, “but that is for someone else to decide.”

    In a statement, Google said it was pleased Donato hit the pause button while it tries to extend the delay even further. “These remedies threaten Google Play’s ability to provide a safe and secure experience and we look forward to continuing to make our case to protect 100 million U.S. Android users, over 500,000 U.S. developers and thousands of partners who have benefited from our platforms,” Google said.

    Epic declined to comment.

    It’s unclear how long the Ninth Circuit will take to decide on Google’s request for a permanent stay of Donato’s ruling while its appeals unfolds — a process that could take more than a year.

    In 2021, the Ninth Circuit delayed a provision of another federal judge’s order mandating that Apple allow links to alternative payment systems with apps made for the iPhone as part of another antitrust case brought by Epic.

    Although Apple avoided being labeled an illegal monopolist in a trial involving the iPhone app store, it unsuccessfully fought the provision requiring the company to allow alternative payment links within apps. But delaying that requirement preserved Apple’s exclusive control of a payment system that has generated commissions ranging from 15% to 30% on some e-commerce occurring within apps. Apple exhausted its avenue of appeals in the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year.

    Google also pockets billions of dollars annually from a similar commission system within its Play Store for Android phones — a setup that is allowed to continue as long as Google can prevent Donato’s ruling from taking effect.

    In its arguments for delaying Donato’s order, Google said it wasn’t being given enough time to make the drastic changes it framed as “a Herculean task creating an unacceptable risk of safety and security failures within the Android ecosystem.”

    Google also argued the shake-up would saddle it with unreasonable costs, a contention Donato also brushed aside during Friday’s hearing.

    “I don’t want to be glib about it, but the expense that Google might incur appears to be a drop in the bucket compared to the profits it reaps annually from the Play Store,” Donato said.

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  • Viral: X User Shares Zomatos Response To Wrong Order, Internet In Disbelief

    Viral: X User Shares Zomatos Response To Wrong Order, Internet In Disbelief

    A Hyderabad student received an unexpected response from Zomato to a complaint about a food order placed on the delivery app. The woman took to X to share a screengrab of the texts she apparently exchanged with Zomato’s customer care. Through the chat, we came to know that she had ordered Chicken Manchurian and received Chicken 65. The person replying on Zomato’s behalf asks her to wait as they check with the restaurant regarding the alleged mix-up. The text sent after that is what the X user found rather bizarre. It reads, “We request you to please have it…. We are sure you will love it.” The Hyderabad woman captioned the screenshot, “Average Zomato experience.”

    Also Read:X User Compares Restaurant Bill With Zomato Prices, Company Responds

    The X post has received more than 530K views so far. Zomato Care’s official handle has also responded to the viral post, stating, “Hi Ananya, we’re truly sorry for the trouble you have faced. This is not the kind of experience we ever wanted for you. Shoot us a DM with your registered phone number/ order ID, and we’ll get things sorted at the earliest.”

    Several X users found Zomato’s chat response rather surprising and even funny. Check out some of the reactions below:

    Before this, social media users praised a Zomato agent who delivered food through the flooded streets of Ahmedabad some months ago. A widely circulated clip on X (formerly Twitter) shows the delivery agent wading through knee-deep water. People urged Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal to reward the agent for his outstanding work. Click here to read the full story.

    Also Read:Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal And Wife Grecia Munoz Turn Delivery Agents For A Day



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  • Swiggy Delivers 11,000 Vada Pavs In One Single Order, Sets Guinness World Record

    Swiggy Delivers 11,000 Vada Pavs In One Single Order, Sets Guinness World Record

    Online food ordering and delivery company Swiggy has set a new Guinness World Record in collaboration with actor Ajay Devgn and director Rohit Shetty. The new record has been made for delivering the largest vada pav order – 11,000 vada pavs – in a single delivery. The order was delivered using Swiggy’s newly launched XL EVs for bulk deliveries. The vada pavs were delivered to children from the Robin Hood Army, an NGO that focuses on fighting hunger through surplus food distribution across multiple locations in Mumbai.

    Mumbai’s iconic vada pavs were delivered by MM Mithaiwala, who collaborated with the upcoming film ‘Singham Again‘ team. Swiggy XL, a fleet of electric vehicles introduced to efficiently handle high-volume orders, played an instrumental role in achieving this Guinness World Record.
    Also Read:Swiggy Instamart User Complains About Free Tomatoes He “Cannot Remove”, Internet Gives Mixed Reaction

    The first stop was Airport High School and Junior College in Vile Parle, where Ajay Devgn, Rohit Shetty and Swiggy Co-founder Phani Kishan received the order, creating a Guinness World Record for the largest number of Vada pavs delivered in a single order. The vada pavs were distributed across Robin Hood Army-supported schools in Bandra, Juhu, Andheri East (Chandivali and Chakala), Malad, and Borivali.

    Swiggy XL, a fleet of electric vehicles for bulk orders.

    Swiggy XL, a fleet of electric vehicles for bulk orders.Photo: Swiggy

    Phani Kishan, Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer, Swiggy said, “In the 10 years of Swiggy, we have delivered millions of vada pavs across Mumbai, and other cities. We’re going XL by teaming up with ‘Singham Again’ to set a Guinness World Record for the largest single food order for vada pavs. This exciting event perfectly captures Swiggy’s commitment to delivering food whether big or small-and celebrates the love for Mumbai’s iconic street food in a truly spectacular Singham style.”
    Also Read:Watch: Man Sets World Record For Most Fried Rice Tossed And Caught In 30 Secs

    Speaking about the record, director Rohit Shetty said, “We are pleased to have collaborated with Swiggy for this record-breaking delivery of vada pav, bringing food and joy to children. Like Singham’s larger-than-life personality and strong ethics, this initiative has achieved a meaningful cause.”

    The event concluded with children enjoying the vada pavs, marking the success of this new Guinness World Record made by Swiggy and the ‘Singham Again‘ team. 

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  • ICYMI: McDonalds Concludes AI Drive-Thru Trials After Alleged Order Errors

    ICYMI: McDonalds Concludes AI Drive-Thru Trials After Alleged Order Errors

    Call it a boon or bane, artificial intelligence (AI) is gradually taking over the world. Today, you will find extensive use of technology, where human intelligence is being duplicated using machines, speeding up the overall workflow. So much so that the food and hospitality industry is investing hugely in AI for increased efficiency – one such instance being the fast food giant McDonald’s. Over the years, we came across news featuring how the chain is experimenting with technology to speed up its process. However, in a recent development, McDonald’s has reportedly pulled back one of their AI-based pilot projects after repeated errors.

    Also Read: How Popular Food Chains Use Artificial Intelligence (AI) To Deliver And Prepare Your Food Faster

    According to a report on CNN, McDonald’s has decided to pull back its AI drive-thru voice ordering system on trial at more than 100 restaurants in the United States. The report further states that this step was possibly taken after an alleged complaint by a social media user went viral, featuring the system picking up wrong orders from cars, producing bizarre food combinations and more.

    CNBC reports that in a statement, McDonald’s explained discontinuing their partnership with “IBM on AOT (automated order taking)”. “The technology will be shut off in all restaurants currently testing it no later than July 26, 2024,” the statement read, adding that they would be however continuing to utilise other IBM products across the system.

    Fox Business weighs in that McDonald’s partnered with IBM in 2021 to commence the AI drive-thru testing to determine if the technology can “simplify operations for crew and create a faster, improved experience”.

    Also Read: India Aims To Promote Artificial Intelligence In Food Processing Sector: Report

    Following McDonald’s announcement regarding concluding the AI drive-thru trials, people took to social media to share their thoughts on the use of AI-powered solutions.

    “McDonald’s halts its AI drive-thru trial. Over 100 locations are discontinuing the automated order systems. Are AI-powered solutions the future of fast food, or just a passing trend?” a post on social media platform X read.

    A comment read, “This is very disappointing on many levels.”

    A person wrote, “You can’t just replace everything with AI. Even if you use AI, there should be human intervention.”

    Another comment read, “A human touch is still the best option.”



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  • EU’s top court dismisses Apple’s final appeal against order to pay Ireland 13B euros in back taxes

    EU’s top court dismisses Apple’s final appeal against order to pay Ireland 13B euros in back taxes

    BRUSSELS — Apple on Tuesday lost its last bid to avoid paying 13 billion euros ($14.34 billion) in back taxes to Ireland, in a finale to a dispute with the European Union that centered on sweetheart deals that Dublin was offering to attract multinational businesses with minimal taxes across the 27-nation bloc. The final decision by the EU’s top court was quickly hailed as a landmark victory over corporate greed.

    “Today is a big win for European citizens and for tax justice,” said European antitrust Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, whose 8-year fight to impose the measure on the global tech behemoth brought her to tears when she finally heard she had won.

    The ruling “confirms the European Commission’s 2016 decision: Ireland granted Apple unlawful aid which Ireland is required to recover,” the European Court of Justice said in a press release summarizing its decision.

    The case drew outrage from Apple when it was opened in 2016, with CEO Tim Cook calling it “total political crap.” Then-U.S. President Donald Trump slammed Vestager, who spearheaded the campaign to root out special tax deals and crack down on big U.S. tech companies, as the “tax lady” who “really hates the U.S.”

    Vestager had accused Apple of striking an illegal tax deal with Irish authorities so that it could pay extremely low rates. The European Union’s General Court disagreed with that in its 2020 ruling, which has now been overturned.

    It did not leave Apple much happier on Tuesday. “We are disappointed with today’s decision as previously the General Court reviewed the facts and categorically annulled this case,” Apple said in a statement. “There has never been a special deal,” the company said.

    Vestager said she was stunned by the last-gasp legal turnaround. “I had prepared for a stiff upper lip, facing a possible defeat. But, you know, it was a win that made me cry. Because it is very important to show European taxpayers that once in a while, tax justice can be done.”

    Eight years ago, the ruling that found Ireland had granted a sweetheart deal that let Apple pay almost no taxes across the European bloc for 11 years dramatically escalated the fight over whether America’s biggest corporations are paying their fair share around the world.

    The EU head office said that Ireland granted such lavish tax breaks to Apple that the company’s effective corporate tax rate on its European profits dropped from 1% in 2003 to a mere 0.005% in 2014. Apple has disputed such figures.

    Vestager said that through the deals with the Irish government the company paid next to nothing in taxes while instead “Apple should have paid taxes worth 13 billion euros on all related profits in Ireland.”

    “This means that the recovered taxes, which have been in an escrow account for quite some years in Ireland during the ongoing court proceedings, now must be released to the Irish State,” she said.

    The government in Dublin said that “the Irish position has always been that Ireland does not give preferential tax treatment to any companies or taxpayers,” before adding that “Ireland will of course respect the findings of the Court regarding the tax due in this case.”

    Both Vestager and the Irish government noted that the country’s corporate tax residence rules have since been changed so the provisions that allowed Dublin to offer Apple the deal no longer exist.

    The ruling that has now been upheld was one of a number of aggressive moves by European officials to hold U.S. businesses, particularly big tech companies, accountable under the EU’s rules on taxation and fair competition.

    The commission has also previously targeted Amazon, Starbucks and Fiat with tax rulings, which were later overturned on appeal.

    The latest decision means corporations should still be on watch, said Varg Folkman, a policy analyst with European Policy Centre, a think tank.

    “This was the big one,” Folkman said. “It was the largest fine. By a long while. So the commission winning this is really saying that this is something that can happen to them as well.”

    With one EU member offering unfair tax concessions to attract multinationals that others could not or would not match, it not only skewed multinational investments in the bloc but also gave global corporations massive sway to keep their taxes to a fraction of their revenue.

    “Member states cannot continue the race to the bottom corporate tax policies that undermine European unity and social cohesion. Big tech companies like Apple should not be able to exploit their market power and avoid paying their fair share to society,” said EU MEP Kira Peter-Hansen.

    And Tuesday’s ruling showed that authorities still have a bite.

    “It shows taxpayers that there can be fairness,” said Vestager. “And it has shown big companies that they are also not above the law when it comes to taxation.”

    ___

    Kelvin Chan contributed to this report from London.

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