The US Department of Justice has joined with 8 US states to take on Google’s ad platform. In a filing this week they announced the suit claiming that Google’s dominant position in the market affords them the ability to monopolize and eliminate their competition. Per Merick Garland, US Attorney General, Google controls the tech used to display ads, the tools used to buy that ad space, and the ad exchange that matches advertisers to publishers. The government wants Google to divest their ad management business from the rest of the company. This could be an issue for the tech giant as a reported 80% of their revenue comes from digital ads. The enterprise angle here involves what Google might be forced to do if they have to sell off the cash cow and how that could affect their service offerings, especially those that are free or insanely cheap thanks to being ad-supported.
0:33 | Intel Cools on Immersion Cooling Lab
Intel has decided to put their immersion cooling lab in Hillsboro, Oregon on ice. The 200,000 sq ft facility is seen as a cost-cutting measure for Intel as revenues from the chip market continue to chill. Immersion cooling has been seen as a way to combat the rising heat levels from CPUs and GPUs backed with transisitors with Intel rushing to the lead to try and set the as yet undefined standard. Girard, is this move by Intel going to freeze the market for these solutions? Or should we all just take a chill pill?
Read More: Intel kills $700M liquid cooling lab amid chip slump
2:16 | GoTo Hack Goes from Bad to Worse
You know those storeis about hacks in the news that just keep getting worse when you read into them? Well, GoTo is in the same boat now. You may recall that we discussed this hack last year on the Rundown as part of a story about LastPass having their shared cloud storage hacked and key information stolen. Well, GoTo, formerly known as LogMeIn, was the avenue for that hack and they have it much worse. Attackers were not only able to gain access to encrypted customer backups and exfiltrate them. You may say that it’s not too bad becaue they’re encrypted, right? Well, attackers were able to get away with at least one encryption key. That could be bad news indeed. Tom, what’s the outcome here for GoTo? Will they end up gone?
Read More: GoTo hack sees attackers get encrypted customer backups, and encryption key
6:19 | vRealize Log Insight Has Unintended Features Thanks to New Flaws
If you’re managing your log files with vRealize Log Insight Manager you are going to need to schedule a patch window. Announced this week are two new CVEs, both rated 9.8 on the Scary Meter. One is a directory traversal bug and the other is an access control exploit. VMware says that updating your installation to 8.10.2 should fix these two bugs as well as two other more minor attack vectors. Girard, how soon should people get this done?
Read More: Logfile management is no fun. Now it’s a nightmare thanks to critical-rated VMware flaws
8:28 | ChatGPT, Write Me A Prompt Where You Get Paid
As reported last week, Microsoft has decided to invest multiple millsions of dollars into ChatGPT, the AI system for writing term papers and performance reviews. Microsoft had already invested $1 billion into the platform and has added more cold hard cash to OpenAI, the parent company that runs ChatGPT. The investment, reportedly up to $10 billion, comes amid rumors that ChatGPT will start offering a professional tier subscription that costs around $42/month to provide faster, more stable responses and access to new features when they get added. No word yet on whether that amount is secretly the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
Read More: Microsoft confirms it’s investing billions in the creator of ChatGPT
13:13 | DoJ Says Google Doesn’t Ad Up
The US Department of Justice has joined with 8 US states to take on Google’s ad platform. In a filing this week they announced the suit claiming that Google’s dominant position in the market affords them the ability to monopolize and eliminate their competition. Per Merick Garland, US Attorney General, Google controls the tech used to display ads, the tools used to buy that ad space, and the ad exchange that matches advertisers to publishers. The government wants Google to divest their ad management business from the rest of the company. This could be an issue for the tech giant as a reported 80% of their revenue comes from digital ads. The enterprise angle here invovles what Google might be forced to do if they have to sell off the cash cow and how that could affect their service offerings, especially those that are free or insanely cheap thanks to being ad-supported.
Read More: Justice department alleges Google tried to ‘eliminate’ ad market rivals in lawsuit
21:09 | The Weeks Ahead
Cloud Field Day 16 – January 25, 2023
Cisco Live EMEA – February 7 – February 8, 2023
Edge Field Day 1 – February 22 through February 23, 2023
Tech Field Day 27 – March 8 through March 10, 2023
The Gestalt IT Rundown is a live weekly look at the IT news of the week. It broadcasts live on Facebook every Wednesday at 12:30pm ET. To watch along, “Like” our Facebook page. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.
