Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Google and the Department of Justice met one final time in an Alexandria, Virginia courtroom to debate the future of Google’s online ad tech juggernaut.Over about three hours of closing arguments, attorneys for each side delivered their last arguments before US District Court judge Leonie Brinkema, who is expected to rule on it by the end of 2024. If she declares Google’s ad tech system a monopoly, the case will progress to a second trial for remedies — a process currently playing out in a separate DC District Court case over Google search. Many of the arguments were familiar to any Google trial watcher. The DOJ argues Google used a suite of ad tech products, particularly Doubleclick For Publishers (DFP) and the AdX exchange, to s... Continue reading…

If you're looking to get a dock for your laptop this Black Friday, there's a good chance you also use a monitor. In that case, you may also need a monitor arm or stand to elevate the screen to your eye level, for better ergonomics. The Anker 675 caters to both of those needs with a single product. The dock itself provides 12 ports with support for a 4K display at 60Hz. Additionally, the Anker 675 also has a built-in wireless charger to keep your phone topped up and clear some clutter on your desk.

Chargers for rechargeable batteries arent known for being aesthetically pleasing. Theyre usually pretty boring to look at, and you have to plug in each of your precious NiMH cells tediously. However, that doesnt have to be the case, as one industrious RPi maker has proven. Let me introduce you to SPINC, an attractive Raspberry Pi Pico-driven retro style desk clock that is also an automatically-fed NiH battery charger.

The primary use case for a USB-C dock is connecting external devices to your laptop. Whether it's portable SSDs, monitors, or printers, most new laptops have limited ports, so you will probably need a dock or hub to plug them in. While the Anker Prime docking station facilitates that with a bunch of different ports, it goes one step further by outputting 160W of power via four USB ports. This makes it one of the best docks you can buy this Black Friday, especially since Amazon is offering a 30% discount on MSRP.

The Raspberry Pi landscape is filled with ingenious creations, ranging from simple yet effective DIY hacks to downright insane passion projects that are as unique as they are useful. Kiwix falls in the latter category, as this self-hosted solution can help you accommodate most of the open-source information databanks inside your local hardware. The best part? Kiwix is extremely easy to set up, and you can even get it working on your Raspberry Pi!

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Zoom is changing its name from Zoom Video Communications Inc. to just Zoom Communications Inc. In a post on the company blog, Zoom Communications CEO Eric Yuan writes that Zoom is now an “AI-first work platform for human connection” that delivers “modern, hybrid work solutions.” It’s a muddy, if vague, change compared to its 2020 rise when the classic Zoom Meetings product became synonymous with video conferencing and thrived as companies were forced to transition employees to work from home.Now, it no longer wants to be known for video as workers have returned to offices, and bigger, better-resourced competition from Google, Microsoft, and Slack offers video as a feature of the office suites companies already pay for.Allow us to... Continue reading…

When you think of sharing files these days, there's a good chance your mind goes to internet-based services and cloud storage, with products like OneDrive or WeTransfer. But many times, you may want to share files with people in the same room or space as you, and the internet isn't the fastest or most convenient option.

There cannot be a better time to build a high-end gaming setup. Black Friday sales have started early, which means you can get some insane deals on liquid coolers, storage devices, and otherwise. One such deal we came across that you absolutely cannot miss if you're in the market for a new monitor is $300 off the Asus ROG Swift OLED monitor.

When shopping for a new CPU, you're likely to come across many different CPU specifications, such as cores, clock speed, TDP, and manufacturing process. Another important aspect of CPU hardware is cache memory, which is responsible for speeding up CPU performance by storing frequently accessed data on the CPU itself.

Photo by Prince Williams/Wireimage Musically speaking, I’d say Drake lost the tit-for-tat feud this year between himself and Kendrick Lamar, which culminated in Lamar’s hit song “Not Like Us.” But Drake (real name: Aubrey Graham) doesn’t seem to want to accept defeat that easily. In a petition filed in New York’s state Supreme Court on Monday, Drake is accusing Universal Music Group — the label that’s represented him for his entire career and also represents Lamar — and Spotify of shady business practices aimed at making “Not Like Us” more of a hit than it already was: In 2024, UMG did not rely on chance, or even ordinary business practices, to “break through the noise” on Spotify, and likely other music platforms. It instead launched a campaign to manipulate and... Continue reading…

Illustration: The Verge The Google App for iOS can automatically convert some website text into links to Google Search results, as announced in a community post that SERoundtable spotted. Google calls the feature “Page Annotations” and says it “extracts interesting entities from the webpage and highlights them in line,” which can then take you out to Search results when you tap them — inserting links without explicitly asking the user or the site owner first. It seems like a curious move for a company embroiled in antitrust fights over both its search and advertising businesses. Image: Google A screenshot shows what the links, er, “Page Annotations” look like. Google has a form for web publishers to opt out of the links. According to... Continue reading…

Photo: Dennis Troper (Facebook) YouTube has shared a final blog post from Susan Wojcicki, the company’s former CEO and one of Google’s earliest employees, detailing her unexpected diagnosis and two-year battle with lung cancer. Wojcicki wrote the message in the last weeks of her life and had planned to publish it this fall, according to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan. Wojcicki died unexpectedly in August.In the blog post, Wojcicki discusses life with the disease, along with her efforts to support cancer research, both before and after her diagnosis. Wojcicki writes that women die from lung cancer more than any other cancer and says that two-thirds of non-smokers diagnosed with the disease are women. Her message begins:At the end of 2022, I was diagnosed with lung cancer. I... Continue reading…