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Google appeals landmark antitrust verdict over search monopoly

Google has appealed a US district judge’s landmark antitrust ruling that found the company illegally held a monopoly in online search.

“As we have long said, the Court’s August 2024 ruling ignored the reality that people use Google because they want to, not because they’re forced to,” Google’s vice president for regulatory affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland said.

In its announcement on Friday, Google said the ruling by Judge Amit Mehta didn’t account for the pace of innovation and intense competition the company faces.

The company is requesting a pause on implementing a series of fixes – viewed by some observers as too lenient – aimed at limiting its monopoly power.

Judge Mehta acknowledged the rapid changes to the Google’s business when he issued his remedies in September, writing that the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) had changed the course of the case.

He refused to grant government lawyers their request for a Google breakup that would include a spin-off of Chrome, the world’s most popular browser.

Instead, he pushed less rigorous remedies, including a requirement that Google share certain data with “qualified competitors” as deemed by the court.

That data was due to include portions of its search index, Google’s massive inventory of web content that functions like a map of the internet.

The judge also called for Google to allow certain competitors to display the tech giant’s search results as their own in a bid to give upstarts the time and resources they need to innovate.

On Friday, Mulholland balked at being forced to share search data and syndication services with rivals as she justified the request for a halt to implementing the orders.

“These mandates would risk Americans’ privacy and discourage competitors from building their own products — ultimately stifling the innovation that keeps the U.S. at the forefront of global technology,” Mulholland wrote.

While the company has invested growing sums of cash into AI, those ambitions have come under scrutiny.

Last month, the EU opened an investigation into Google over its AI summaries which appear above search results.

The European Commission said it would probe whether Google used data from websites to provide the service and failed to offer appropriate compensation to publishers.

Google said the investigation risked stifling innovation in a competitive market.

This week, Google parent Alphabet became the fourth company ever to reach a market capitalisation of $4tn.

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01/17/2026
Police deny Bobi Wine abduction claims as Yoweri Museveni heads for victory

Anita Nkonge,BBC Africaand

Lucy Fleming

Getty Images

Bobi Wine, President Museveni’s main rival, has questioned the credibility of the results

Police in Uganda have denied allegations that presidential candidate Bobi Wine was abducted on Friday evening as vote counting continues in the East African nation amid an internet blackout.

Wine’s party said a helicopter landed in the grounds of his house in the capital, Kampala, and forcibly took him to an unknown location.

Initially Wine’s son, Solomon Kampala, said both his parents had been seized, but later claimed his father “escaped” and his mother was still under house arrest, leading to confusion over the whereabouts of the opposition leader.

The latest electoral figures from Thursday’s vote give Museveni 72% of the vote, with Wine on 24%, based on returns from 94% of polling stations.

Speaking at a press conference on Saturday morning, police spokesman Kituuma Rusoke said the National Unity Platform (NUP) party leader was still in his home in Kampala and that it was Wine’s family members who were spreading “untrue” and “unfounded” claims.

He said Wine’s movements were restricted because his home was an area of “security interest”.

“We have controlled access to areas which are security hotspots,” Uganda’s Daily Monitor paper quoted him as saying.

“We cannot allow people to use some places to gather and cause chaos. All our actions are intended to prevent anybody from creating violence or destabilising our security,” he said.

On Friday, Wine had told his supporters to ignore the “fake results” that have been announced, saying the authorities have been “stealing the vote”. He did not provide any evidence to back up his claim and the authorities have not responded to his allegations.

Wine’s son Solomon Kampala, who has been posting updates on social media, admitted overnight he was getting conflicting reports about the security situation at his parents’ home.

“Amidst the raid my father was able to escape, my mother is still currently under [house] arrest, still nobody is allowed to enter the house,” he posted on X on Saturday morning.

Difficulty accessing the internet in the country has made it hard for people to verify information.

News that at least seven opposition supporters were killed in disputed circumstances in Butambala, about 55km (35 miles) south-west of the capital, on Thursday only emerged later on Friday.

The US embassy then issued an alert to its citizens because of reports the security forces were “using tear gas and firing into the air to disperse gatherings”.

During Thursday’s vote, voting was delayed by up to four hours in many polling stations around the country as ballot boxes were slow to arrive and biometric machines, used to verify voters’ identity, did not work properly.

Some have linked the problems to the network outage.

Electoral chief Simon Byabakama said on Friday that the vote counting had not been affected by the internet blackout and the final results would be out before 17:00 local time (14:00 GMT] on Saturday.

Thursday’s election followed an often violent campaign, with President Museveni, 81, seeking a seventh term in office. He first took power as a rebel leader in 1986.

Wine, a 43-year-old pop star-turned-politician, who says he represents the youth in a country where most of the population is aged under 30, has promised to tackle corruption and impose sweeping reforms, while Museveni argues he is the sole guarantor of stability and progress in Uganda.

Although there are six other candidates, the presidential poll is a two-horse race between Museveni and Wine.

The campaign period was marred by the disruption of opposition activities – security forces have been accused of assaulting and detaining Wine’s supporters.

Rusoke, the police spokesperson, dismissed these complaints, accusing opposition supporters of being disruptive.

Internet access was suspended on Tuesday, with Uganda’s Communications Commission saying the blackout was necessary to prevent misinformation, fraud and the incitement of violence – a move condemned by the UN human rights office as “deeply worrying”.

Getty Images/BBC

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01/17/2026
OpenAI to Show Ads in ChatGPT for Logged-In U.S. Adults on Free and Go Plans

Jan 17, 2026Ravie LakshmananArtificial Intelligence / Data Privacy

OpenAI on Friday said it would start showing ads in ChatGPT to logged-in adult U.S. users in both the free and ChatGPT Go tiers in the coming weeks, as the artificial intelligence (AI) company expanded access to its low-cost subscription globally.

“You need to know that your data and conversations are protected and never sold to advertisers,” OpenAI said. “And we need to keep a high bar and give you control over your experience, so you see truly relevant, high-quality ads—and can turn off personalization if you want.”

The company has positioned advertising as a way to ensure that the benefits of artificial general intelligence – a term used to describe a stage in machine learning when an AI system can reach or surpass human-level intelligence – can be made more accessible to the masses. In addition, it can be “transformative” for small businesses and emerging brands trying to compete, it added.

It also emphasized that ads do not influence responses from the chatbot, user data and conversations are kept private from advertisers, and that users are in control of the ad experience. The ads will be clearly labeled and will show up at the bottom of a user’s conversation.

OpenAI did not detail exactly what data it will collect on users to serve relevant ads. Users will be able to learn more about why they are seeing specific ads, or dismiss them and submit feedback. Users on the more expensive Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise tiers will not see ads.

“To start, we plan to test ads at the bottom of answers in ChatGPT when there’s a relevant sponsored product or service based on your current conversation,” it said. “During our test, we will not show ads in accounts where the user tells us or we predict that they are under 18, and ads are not eligible to appear near sensitive or regulated topics like health, mental health, or politics.”

In a post on X, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman noted that the company will not “accept money” to influence the responses ChatGPT serves to the users. “It is clear to us that a lot of people want to use a lot of AI and don’t want to pay, so we are hopeful a business model like this can work,” Altman added.

The development marks a major departure for the company that had so far primarily relied on subscriptions. At an event at Harvard University in May 2024, Altman described ads “as like a last resort for us for a business model,” characterizing “ads plus AI is sort of uniquely unsettling.”

Altman’s softened stance is indicative of how OpenAI views advertising as a way to unlock a new revenue stream in order to sustain the costly endeavor. ChatGPT had 800 million weekly active users as of early October 2025.

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01/17/2026