Google launched the program in June. It was later approved by the Federal Election Commission and launched last month.

The lawsuit alleges that Google “collectively relegated millions of RNC emails to the spam folders of potential donors and supporters at a critical time of election fundraising and community building.”

“The timing of Google’s most egregious filtering is particularly egregious,” the RNC asserted.” For most of each month, nearly all RNC emails make their way to users’ inboxes. At about the same time at the end of each month, Google sends almost all of the RNC’s emails to spam. Crucially, and suspiciously, this end-of-month period is historically the most successful time for fundraising for the RNC.”

The other side said, “As we’ve said repeatedly, we don’t filter emails based on political affiliation at all,” said Google spokesman Jose Castañeda.” Gmail’s spam filter reflects user behavior. We provide training and guidance to campaigns, we recently launched a Federal Election Commission-approved pilot for politically relevant senders, and we will continue to work to maximize email deliverability while minimizing unwanted spam.”

The lawsuit, filed just in time for the U.S. midterm election season, is part of a larger effort by Republicans to target technology companies for what they see as a false bias against their party online.

Last year, former President Donald Trump announced class-action lawsuits against companies like Facebook and Twitter.

The post RNC Sues Google, Claims Spam Filter Blocked Its Campaign Emails appeared first on TechGoing.

Paxton believes that Google’s casual collection of personal information from Texas residents, including very sensitive information, is intolerable.

One technology in particular that has caught the attention of the state of Texas is the photo grouping technology used by Google Albums, which the app uses to analyze the facial features of only the people in the photos and then group the photos according to the people in the photos after processing. The state of Texas believes that for photos uploaded to the platform, Google can obtain and store biometric information by personal characteristics, whether users or non-users do not have the opportunity to choose whether to let Google collect such data.

In addition to Texas, many other states in the U.S. are so offended by such practices that they have legislation prohibiting the use of biometric information collected for commercial purposes without the user’s permission, and can fine up to $25,000 per violation.

The post Texas sues Google for illegally collecting biometric information from users appeared first on TechGoing.

Google has not yet commented on this. According to research firm Counterpoint Research, 97 percent of the 600 million smartphones in India are powered by Google’s Android operating system.

Google is currently facing a series of antitrust cases in India, as well as stricter regulations for the entire technology industry. In addition to Android, CCI is also investigating Google’s business practices in the smart TV market, and its in-app payment system.

Back in May 2019, India’s CCI had announced an investigation into Google to assess whether Google was using its Android mobile operating system to suppress competitors. The CCI investigation found that Google had abused its dominant position in India by reducing the ability of device manufacturers to choose alternative versions of the Android mobile operating system.

CCI alleged at the time that by placing conditions on the pre-installation of Google’s proprietary applications, Google reduced device manufacturers’ ability and incentive to develop and sell devices running alternative versions of Android. The prima facie evidence showed that Google abused its dominant market position.

In addition, Google Android has been fined in the EU. in July 2018, the European Commission imposed a €4.34 billion (then about $5.15 billion) antitrust fine on Google. The European Commission said that since 2011, Google, by virtue of its dominant position in the Internet search market, had imposed a number of illegal restrictions on Android device manufacturers and mobile operators.

Specifically, it has required Android device manufacturers to pre-install the Google Search App and Chrome browser as a condition of licensing the Google Play Store app store; paid fees to specific large Android device manufacturers and mobile operators to exclusively pre-install the Google Search App; prevented device manufacturers that pre-installed Google apps from selling pre-installed “forked” versions of Android smart devices.

The post Google fined $160 million by India for Android-related monopolistic practices appeared first on TechGoing.

The lawsuit argues that even after users turn off location sharing, Google is running location tracking in the background to collect ad data and making privacy settings that keep location information private unnecessarily hard to find. Previously, a 2018 Associated Press report found that Google continued to track users through services such as Google Maps, weather updates and browser searches, even when location history was turned off on the user side.

The settlement is one of the largest per capita payments Google has made in consumer fraud lawsuits in years, according to Bloomberg.” In a statement, Brnovich said, “When I was elected attorney general, I promised Arizonans that I would fight for them and hold everyone, including companies like Google, accountable. I’m proud of this historic settlement, which proves that no entity, not even a large tech company, is above the law.”

Google spokesman José Castañeda claimed the case was based on outdated product policies that have long since been updated.” We offer straightforward controls and automatic deletion options for location data and have been working hard to minimize the data we collect, we are pleased that this matter has been resolved and will continue to focus our attention on providing useful products for our users.”

The post Google to Pay $85 Million Settlement to Arizona to Settle Lawsuit Over Tracking Users appeared first on TechGoing.

Games of skill are games in which the outcome of the game depends primarily on the user’s skills such as knowledge, training, attention, and experience, such as card games and fantasy sports.

Google has not offered a “real money game” service in India for years. As part of a year-long pilot program, Google said earlier this month that fantasy sports and card games could be added to its Play Store in India.

Games in both categories include those in which “entrants use their knowledge of sporting events and athletes to develop strategies or memorize playing cards,” Google said in a policy update. Also, Google doesn’t mention other game categories and how they’re treated.

And Winzo provides paid services for these categories of games and of course many other categories of paid games, such as board games, puzzles, and racing games. Obviously, Google’s new policy will affect Winzo’s business.

In a lawsuit filed in the Delhi High Court, Winzo said the company had contacted Google on September 10 to dispute its updated policy, saying it was “unfair”. But there was no response from Google, thus forcing court intervention.

Winzo said in the lawsuit that Google’s decision “equals unfair trade practices.” Google has yet to comment on this.

Winzo’s lawsuit comes as an Indian government panel seeks to create a regulator that would classify online games based on skill or luck components, introduce rules to block banned gaming categories and take a stricter stance against gambling sites.

Winzo has around 85 million users in India. On average, these users each spend about an hour a day on its platform. The lawsuit shows that Winzo’s 2020-21 revenue is about $13 million.

The post Google is sued in India for real money games: alleged unfair competition appeared first on TechGoing.