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Google maintained steady user and traffic growth in June while rivals Claude and Gemini extended sharp gains, according to a new note from Bank of America.

BofA reiterated its Buy rating on Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), pointing to comments from Google executives describing an "expansionary moment" for Search that could support continued strength into 2026.

Global daily active users on Google's app rose 1% month-over-month to 2.2 billion in June, per Sensor Tower data cited in the note. ChatGPT held flat at 440 million daily users, while Gemini climbed 7% to 118 million and Claude gained 9% to 18 million.

Gemini added 8 million daily users during the month, more than any other AI app tracked, followed by ChatGPT and Claude, which each added 2 million. Meta AI lost about 200,000 daily users over the same period.

Web traffic data from Similarweb showed a similar pattern. Global daily visits to Google were up 4% year-over-year to 2.8 billion in June, while ChatGPT's web traffic was flat year-over-year at 179 million visits. Gemini's web visits surged 341% year-over-year and Claude's rose 736%, though both remain far smaller in absolute terms than Google or ChatGPT. Meta AI's web visits rose 98% year-over-year.

In the US specifically, Google web visits rose 3% year-over-year to 535 million, while ChatGPT's US visits climbed 19% year-over-year to 31 million, equivalent to roughly 6% of Google's US traffic.

Search market share data from Statcounter showed Google's global share up 79 basis points month-over-month and 171 basis points year-over-year, reaching 91.3%. Bing's global share ticked up 30 basis points month-over-month to 4.7%. In the US, Google's search share rose 86 basis points month-over-month to 86.7%.

BofA said the combination of stable Google traffic and strong ecommerce volumes in the second quarter points to potential upside to Street estimates for Search. The bank flagged new AI-driven ad formats and agentic search features announced at Google's I/O conference, along with broader rollout of Gemini 3.5 Pro, as potential catalysts. Risks cited included Alphabet's relatively elevated valuation compared with its recent history, OpenAI's advertising ramp, and emerging competition from new models.

When Mark Zuckerberg walked into a Los Angeles courtroom on 18 February flanked by an entourage bedecked in Meta Ray-Bans, some people laughed. If this was an attempt at product placement for the company’s newest range of smart glasses, it was jarringly ill-judged: Zuckerberg was about to testify before a jury in a landmark lawsuit that sought to prove that Instagram and YouTube are addictive by design, and he had passed a throng of bereaved parents on his way into the courthouse. But the prosecution team, led by Mark Lanier, were not laughing.

This was a serious trial. For the first time, the most powerful names in social media were being held to account for the inherent design of their platforms, rather than the content hosted on them. They were accused of deliberately and maliciously building products that keep children hooked, with disastrous consequences for the mental wellbeing of young people. It was a landmark case – a big tobacco moment for big tech.

But there were specific reasons why the prosecution was deeply disturbed to see Meta Ray-Bans in court. “We had fought hard for an anonymous jury. We didn’t want the names disclosed in a way where Google could go pull up their Gmails, where Meta could go pull up their Facebook accounts,” Lanier tells me in his warm Texas drawl. “Then Zuckerberg shows up with security guards wearing Meta glasses. They can easily do facial identification and figure out exactly who the jurors are.” This was not product placement, Lanier says – it was the deployment of the most relentless form of digital surveillance the world has ever known.

The prosecution appealed to the judge, pointing out that Zuckerberg’s entourage was breaking rules that forbade cameras in the courtroom. “The judge made them swear that they hadn’t taken any pictures.” Lanier says. “And then they took the glasses off.”

The case of KGM v Meta et al was always going to be as hi-tech as it was high stakes. KGM – also known by her first name, Kaley – claimed that an addiction to social media that had begun with YouTube at age six and Instagram at age nine had caused her to develop body dysmorphia, anxiety and depression. (Snapchat and TikTok, named in Kaley’s original complaint, had settled out of court for an undisclosed sum before the trial began.) Lanier’s team had to convince the jury that Meta and Google had engineered their products to be addictive. It was a test case that could blaze a trail for thousands more to come.

“I’d never been in court before,” Kaley, now 20, tells me in her first newspaper interview. “Seeing all those people, and having all their eyes on me, was very overwhelming.”

Mark Zuckerberg arrives at the Los Angeles court with two members of his entourage, who are wearing Meta glasses. Photograph: Jill Connelly/Getty ImagesLanier knew this was a case like no other – and that his opponents were prepared to use every power at their disposal to win it, including artificial intelligence. Google and Meta have their own AIs: Gemini and Meta AI, respectively. Lanier was determined to beat them at their own game. (A self-described “AI zealot”, his firm employs a team of five whose sole responsibility is to produce a weekly report for him on advances in AI over the previous seven days.) Lanier asked a company called BoodleBox to make him a bespoke AI incorporating a combination of Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT and other existing models. He used it in “30 different ways” for Kaley’s case, he says, but when he tells me about just one of them, my jaw drops.

The jury might have been anonymous, but the legal teams were able to gather a significant amount of data about each member during jury selection, Lanier explains. “We have questionnaires they filled out that tell us their age, their gender, their occupational history, their family status. But it gives us more insight: it asks, who are three people you most admire and why? Who are three you least admire and why? How do you feel about this or that on a scale of one to 10?” Armed with a dossier of information, Lanier’s AI created models of every juror, “a demographic and psychological exemplar” of each one that allowed him to try out potential arguments on individual members. At the end of each day in court, he would feed the transcripts to his AI shadow jury and ask questions. What did juror number 11 think of the witness? What did juror number seven think was important? Where did juror number three get confused? “Pretty cool,” he grins.

AI can be used for good or abused for evil, Lanier says – just like litigation, which he has been practising for 42 years, or religious faith, which guides everything he does. A devout Christian, Lanier believes he is on a divine mission to take on companies that enrich themselves by exploiting the vulnerable.

“The opposing side had unlimited resources. They had dozens of lawyers in the courtroom. To call it a David versus Goliath storyline is maybe giving too much credit to David, but it’s the best descriptor I can give,” he says; the disparity between him and his opponents was even larger than the biggest mismatch in biblical history. “This was a righteous case, without a doubt. It was a holy war.”

Lanier with his daughters Rachel (on left) and Sarah (right), who worked with him on the case, on the steps of the courthouse. Photograph: Ted Soqui/EPA/ShutterstockOn 25 March, when the (real, human) jury returned its verdict, Lanier stood on the steps of the courthouse alongside two of his five children – daughters Sarah and Rachel, who worked with him on the case – and hailed “a righteous moment”. The jury had found Google and Meta liable on all counts and had awarded Kaley $6m: $3m in compensatory damages and an extra $3m in punitive damages, because Meta and Google were found to have “acted with malice, oppression or fraud”. Meta will shoulder 70% of the bill, with Google picking up the rest. But these damages are only the beginning: more than 2,000 similar lawsuits are now being brought against social media companies, accused of harming the mental health of children with products that are addictive by design, using the legal route Lanier proved viable in Kaley’s case.

Ever since they stood behind Trump at his second inauguration, the power of the tech titans has seemed ever more unassailable. (Lanier tells me big tech now hires one lobbyist for every six members of the 441-strong US House of Representatives.) But Kaley’s legal victory is a reckoning – one that could threaten the entire social media business model.

“Politicians will never hold these people accountable. The only thing they fear is a jury,” Lanier says. “I get 12 ordinary people, and they’re empowered. And when they hear that evidence and they take their oath seriously – bam! – they can do something.”

I meet Lanier in Yarnton Manor, a grade II-listed estate in Oxfordshire, built in 1611 by Sir Thomas Spencer, a distant ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales. He lounges on a teal sofa in one of the wood-panelled rooms, sometimes with a leg dangling over the sofa’s arm, sometimes hugging one of the velvet cushions, often leaning forward to gesticulate in animated ­excitement as he shares a biblical reference or damning piece of trial evidence. It’s a swelteringly hot day in late May, and Lanier, 65, flew in from Houston yesterday, but he looks fresh as a daisy. He only needs four hours’ sleep a night. “Sleep’s a bonus, but not one that’s necessary.”

Lanier’s charitable foundation bought Yarnton in 2021 and turned it into a centre for religious study. He preaches in a Baptist church every Sunday; he has another study centre in Houston. “In the US at least, Christian faith has a bad reputation of being vibrant only among uneducated, unenlightened, bigoted, narrow-minded people. Those of us who hold on to a faith are responsible for trying to bring out the good that can come from it – not the holier-than-thou stuff that seeds division,” he says. “I’m a lawyer who has funded all of this by trying to grab hold of people whose conduct has been destructive.” He draws a rectangle in the air above his head, tracing the corners of the ornate coved ceiling. “It was the Johnson & Johnson case that bought this,” he grins. “My wife and I call this the J&J Manor House.”

Before he took on Google and Meta, Lanier was involved in some of the most high-profile landmark litigation cases in the history of big pharma. In 2018, he won $4.69bn (reduced on appeal to $2.12bn) for 22 women with ovarian cancer and their families after Johnson & Johnson failed to warn them of the carcinogenic risk associated with the talc in their Baby Powder. Natural talc is often mined within close proximity of carcinogenic asbestos; Lanier argued that Johnson & Johnson had known this for decades without warning the public. (Johnson & Johnson said in 2018: “J&J’s baby powder is safe and does not cause cancer. Studies of tens of thousands of women and thousands of men show that talc does not cause cancer or asbestos-related disease.”) In 2019, he won an 11th-hour $260m settlement from opioid manufacturers and distributors on the eve of what would have been the first federal trial in the history of the opioid epidemic.

Lanier’s “bread and butter”, he says, involves ubiquitous, household-name products that can cause serious harms, which the companies behind them know about but choose not to act on. “Normally, I want an eye-popping verdict that causes Wall Street to recoil and causes in-house lawyers to lose their jobs and companies to respond differently,” Lanier told a podcast recently.

When he began his career, at a big Houston law firm, he just liked winning. He learned the psychological skills and rhetorical techniques that helped him excel in court: how to make things memorable, how to read a room and change the energy in it, “how to make word choices that will trigger visceral reactions, how to use story to bypass people’s natural defences”. But after five years of straight wins, he lost – in a case where he knew his client was in the wrong. Licking his wounds on the drive home, he had an epiphany. “I thought, what am I doing? Did I almost take my gifts, my talents, my skills and wield an injustice?” Aged 29, Lanier started his own firm so he could pick what he considered to be “righteous” cases. “You can do horrible things with this power, or you can do good.”

Lanier estimates that settlements from drug companies following his landmark opioid litigation are now in excess of $10bn. His victory in the Johnson & Johnson case opened the floodgates to tens of thousands of claims from people with cancer and their families – including one currently in the high court of England and Wales, with more than 7,000 claimants. J&J deny the allegations.

In the wake of Kaley’s win against Google and Meta, the former Facebook employee turned whistleblower Frances Haugen claimed that Meta could be on the hook for $1tn in future damages from tens of thousands of people who have been harmed by the use of their platforms as children. This might be an overestimation, Lanier says. “But tens of billions, easy. Part of it also is: are they willing to make real change? Reasonable change is something that a lot of us would put a high value on.”

At the time of the Johnson & Johnson verdict, Lanier remarked that suing in an initial test case with only a small cluster of plaintiffs allowed him to maximise the emotional impact of claimants’ stories on the jury. “It’s easier to get justice in small groups,” he said. “In small groups, people have names, but in large groups, they’re numbers.”

Kaley was a lone plaintiff, and a reluctant trailblazer. It was her mother who brought her case to the attention of lawyers. (Kaley was identified only as KGM in court because the alleged harms took place when she was a child.)

“I was really scared,” Kaley tells me in a video call; she has chosen to keep her camera switched off. “I had a lot of anxiety around the thought of them deleting my accounts as a punishment. And that did end up happening, at least with Snapchat.”

There’s a duality to the way Kaley speaks: giving evidence in the trial has prepared her to be able to answer difficult questions about the most challenging parts of her life, and that, combined with her low voice, can make her sound older than her 20 years. But her responses are often brief and staccato, and she sometimes struggles to find the right words, like a teenager.

Brought up by a single mother in Chico, California, along with an older brother and sister, Kaley grew up with learning disabilities, in a household without much disposable income. By the time she was nine, she had uploaded hundreds of videos to YouTube, and soon had dozens of accounts on both YouTube and Instagram. “I liked that I could post my own stuff and see how many likes I got. I liked being able to see what my friends were up to.” When Kaley wasn’t posting, she was scrolling. She stopped engaging with her family. She no longer left her home. Once, she spent more than 16 hours on Instagram in a single day.

“I was on it every day from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed. I was on my phone during class – I would get in trouble, I got bad grades because I was not paying attention.” She was terrified at the thought of anything happening to her phone. “If I was walking next to a lake or something, I’d be so scared that I was going to drop my phone and lose my social media.”

Her mother tried to intervene, activating screen time limits or confiscating Kaley’s phone altogether. “But I would freak out,” Kaley says. “I had withdrawal symptoms. It was just so hard to do anything else.” She would get up in the middle of the night to search for her phone, or “beg and beg and cry” until she got it back. When her mother removed Instagram from Kaley’s phone, Kaley sneaked a hand-me-down phone from her older sister so she could download the app again without her mother knowing.

Almost as soon as she joined Instagram, Kaley started playing with filters, enlarging her eyes, shortening her nose. “I’d take a selfie with a filter on, and then see myself – how I actually looked – and I would just feel really ugly,” she says. “It made me get all these new insecurities, and to see myself in a way that others didn’t actually see me.” Aged 10, Kaley started to cut herself. She went on to be diagnosed with depression, anxiety and clinical body dysmorphia.

Lanier didn’t want Kaley to sit through the entire trial. She gets easily distracted, he says; plus, it was his job to convince the jury that she had been seriously harmed by Google and Meta’s products. He didn’t want her to come away from it believing she was irredeemably damaged.

Delivering his opening statement, Lanier stacked three wooden ABC toy blocks on top of each other. “I thought, I will tell the jury this case is as simple as ABC – Addicting the Brains of Children,” he explains. “There’s a principle in psychology and learning called cognitive ease: we automatically assign credibility to the things we more easily understand. There’s a principle in rhetoric: the power of threes. Threes just seem to resonate within our soul and minds. ABC, one, two, three.” (In his opening statement at the Johnson & Johnson trial, Lanier used ABC Scrabble tiles to impress upon the jury that “Asbestos, Breathed or internalised, causes Cancer”.)

Then Meta lawyer Paul Schmidt delivered his opening statement, pushing back. “Was it Instagram or other causes?” he asked. He told the jury the root of Kaley’s mental health issues lay in her chaotic upbringing; that her home life and learning disabilities meant these problems would be inherent in her life anyway. Lanier bats away this idea. “Just because someone has a headache doesn’t give you the right to bash them over the head with a rock and say, ‘They already had a headache! Don’t blame me!’”

Lanier was not allowed to respond to the defendants’ opening statement in court. But as he walked out of the courthouse that day, he spoke to the throngs of media waiting there. “The next morning we get to court, and the bad guys want to have a discussion with the judge off the record.” In the judge’s chambers, he says, Meta’s team complained that Lanier’s rebuttal to their opening statement was being widely reported in the press, and called on the judge to prevent him from speaking to journalists.

Once again, Lanier deployed the power of three. “I said, ‘First of all, I didn’t do it in court – I’m on the sidewalk outside. Second of all, you’ve instructed the jury not to read any of the media. Third of all, the defendants in this case are social media. They’re producing press releases! They’re putting posts on Instagram!” (While the trial was ongoing, Meta had worked hard to spread the message that the company took the welfare of young people seriously, both on their own platforms and in their wider communications with the public.) “It makes my little comment on the courthouse sidewalk pale in comparison.’” Meta’s lawyers ultimately backed down. “The judge said, ‘You do realise there are four billboards up around the courthouse with your ads on them talking about how you care for children in all you do – and you’re complaining about Mr Lanier?’”

Lanier photographed in the library of Yarnton Manor, Oxfordshire. Photograph: Gareth Iwan Jones/The GuardianThe bereaved families outside the courthouse each day – some waving placards that read “We are KGM” – wanted the wider context of Kaley’s struggles to be recognised. But the defendants had argued that Lanier should not be allowed to mention other young people who had suffered harm as a consequence of social media use. “They wanted to make her the exception,” he says. “The sad part is, we’ve got a generation of Kaleys. Go to a restaurant and look how many people are sitting there in her age range like this …” He takes his phone from the coffee table and hunches over it. “It’s such a waste of human capital. All to make money flow to a handful of rich white guys who want to run the world.”

Parents buy the phones those kids are hunched over, I say. Shouldn’t they be able to establish and maintain ground rules? Lanier smiles. “It’s very naive to think that we have such awesome parents in this world that they can stand up against the trillion-dollar companies – with their algorithms and their deceitful tools – and be well enough informed to fight the most aggressive technology in the history of human civilisation. Kids get on YouTube at school. Kids go over to their friends’ houses. Kids have lunch with other kids. Does parenting make a difference? Of course it does. Can parents beat the machine? No way.”

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Lanier was also not allowed to talk about the content hosted on social media; in the eyes of the law, YouTube and Instagram are not publishers, so are not responsible for the content they host. “But the content is part of what they use to addict you.” Imagine going into a bookshop and idly picking up a book from one of the display tables, he says, only to see every book on every table change to be something statistically proven to be interesting to people drawn to that kind of book – including some that might shock, enrage or titillate you. Touch another title, and all the books change again, as the bookshop narrows down your interests as effectively as it can. Unlike bookshops, the social media algorithms want you to browse for ever.

“The algorithms are amoral – they’re machines. They’re relentless. You’ll never find them wavering, or low on energy, or distracted. And their entire design is to try to keep your attention on their platform. They are scary.”

Meta and Google were damned by their own documents: the millions of pages of evidence the judge required them to hand over, and a few others leaked by whistleblowers. “Through the industrious hard work of a lot of young lawyers reading, and the industrious hard work of AI, we were able to find the lines of gold.” Lanier says it was an embarrassment of riches.

Internal documents showed the companies had deliberately sought out “casino science” to turn their products into what Lanier calls “addiction machines”. Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok all use intermittent variable rewards, giving their users little unpredictable dopamine hits, just like slot machines with their micro-payouts that keep you sticking around for a big jackpot that may never arrive, endlessly scrolling on your phone instead of pulling a handle. A 2012 Google memo about YouTube said its “goal is not viewership; it’s viewer addiction”. Another document from Google referred to its products as “slot machines”. “These are attention casinos,” it read. “The house always wins.”

There were documents from Google and Meta revealing the “dark patterns” they deploy to manipulate their users’ behaviour. Take the features Kaley’s mother wanted to use to protect her daughter: they were not easy to find, and were switched off by default. “You’ve got to determine there’s a protective feature, go find it and toggle it on,” says Lanier. “The toggle itself is subject to dark patterns: people will toggle differently if there’s a blue dot when you toggle, versus if it doesn’t change colour.”

This makes me think of my own efforts to control my Instagram feed, by toggling the button requesting that it doesn’t show me suggested content. I have to go into my settings and toggle it again every 30 days, and given that it doesn’t change colour, I’m never really sure that it has worked. “It’s insidious,” Lanier says. “And let’s say, as a parent, you do this for your kid. Did you set a calendar reminder to go back to your kid’s phone 30 days later when it defaults back?” Even if you were organised enough to do this, he adds, the platforms change their settings so often that it’s impossible to keep up.

There was a Meta document from 2018 that read: “If we want to win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens”; a YouTube slideshow featuring children as young as four and the suggestion that parents could use the platform as a “digital babysitter”; a 2019 research report commissioned by Meta that found teens had “an addicts’ narrative about their Instagram use”, and that “they wish they could spend less time caring about it”.

Then there was the testimony given on the stand. In a memorable exchange with Lanier, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said that 16 hours a day on the platform might be “problematic”, but he would not call it an addiction. “You can call it problematic use. You can call it tweedledee,” Lanier says. “The issue wasn’t the magic word ‘addiction’ – it was the harm.”

But the prosecution had to prove that Kaley’s use of social media caused the harm done to her mental health, and that was a challenge. “Social media companies have seeded the literature with stuff that says their product’s beneficial. For decades, big tobacco said, ‘Tobacco doesn’t really cause lung cancer – look at all these studies!’ And what you didn’t know is big tobacco had ghostwritten them or funded them,” Lanier says. A psychiatrist and a therapist both testified that, in Kaley’s case, her body dysmorphia was caused by her social media use. “The other side argued it was the residuals of bad parenting.” The sad part, Lanier says, is that Meta’s own documents show they know that when adolescent girls from low socioeconomic backgrounds with existing mental health challenges spend extended periods on social media, their mental health deteriorates.

When Zuckerberg took the stand – the first time he had testified in front of a jury – Lanier put it to him that he “saw dollar signs written on the backs” of vulnerable kids. He presented Zuckerberg with an internal document, which showed that, in 2015, a third of all 10- to 12-year-olds in the US used Instagram, even though under-13s were not supposed to have accounts, and an email from an executive that said, “Mark has decided the top priority for the company is teens.” Zuckerberg said this was no longer the way the company operated, and that he had worked for years to address “problematic use” of his platforms “because it’s the right thing to do”.

At the end of questioning, six prosecution lawyers unrolled a 50ft-wide collage of some of the hundreds of selfies Kaley had posted on Instagram. Urging Zuckerberg to look at the heavily filtered images, Lanier asked him if Meta had ever investigated Kaley’s account for problematic use. Zuckerberg did not answer.

Lanier had planned to question YouTube CEO Neal Mohan on the stand, but ran out of time – the judge had given the prosecution only 43 hours to try the case. “I decided I didn’t need him,” Lanier says. But Google is just as culpable as Meta in Kaley’s case, he adds. “YouTube was a gateway drug.”

Time pressure was one of the reasons why they decided to settle with Snapchat and TikTok before the case came to trial. “I could have hit a good verdict against them,” Lanier says, a little wistfully. He planned to compare the safety features that are present in the Chinese version of TikTok and that aren’t present in its international platform: a limit on night-time use, no infinite scroll, mandatory time-outs once users have been on the app for a certain amount of time, and the deployment of AI to determine if users are children, “based upon factors including what you’re looking at, the size of your finger when you’re scrolling, how fast you scroll. There are tons of ways that they are required to be safer over there.”

Google claimed that the entire case misunderstood YouTube; that it is a streaming platform, not a social media site. “You have an ability to message, to like or dislike, to comment, to follow. It’s not just media – it’s social media,” Lanier declares. But just in case that argument wasn’t enough, the prosecution team asked Google’s very own AI what it thought. Gemini’s response was unequivocal – YouTube is social media.

On hearing the verdict, Kaley’s overriding feeling was relief – for herself, and for all the people who can now follow her. “I knew it meant that other cases would get to go to court, so I was feeling happy for the other families.” The thousands of cases that were poised to be brought against social media companies should she win have now been set in motion. She hasn’t received any damages yet; Google and Meta are appealing, and Lanier says the process will take seven years. “However long it takes is however long it takes,” Kaley says. “I’m OK with it.” Despite her ongoing struggles with her self-image, Kaley’s victory has helped her recognise the contribution she can make to the world, and how much people value her.

Should the case end up at the supreme court, Lanier doesn’t think that the politically appointed judges will be swayed by seeing this as a partisan issue. “It crosses the political aisle. Typically, Republicans are friendly to big business in the US, but some of the most stalwart folks on this are Republicans. It matters to anybody who’s a parent.”

Photograph: Gareth Iwan Jones/The GuardianIn the meantime, Lanier is helping other legal teams who are bringing cases against social media companies, while his firm is fielding new inquiries from people who say they have been harmed by compulsive social media use. “Those that have legitimate cases that I can do, I’ll represent. It’s got to be a child that was addicted. We’ve got to have some counselling or psychiatric records. If it wasn’t bad enough to go see a professional, then it’s not bad enough to bring a case. Within the framework of that, I’ll take those cases.”

Why does the focus have to be on kids? “Children’s brains are still developing, and the last part to develop is that ability for self-control that sees future consequences. With adults, it’s going to be hard to win. The jury’s going to think, You’re an adult, you ought to be able to weigh the consequences,” Lanier replies. “The problem is, once you get addicted, addictive pathways are easily transferable to other addictions. The child who’s addicted to social media can easily become addicted to pornography, sex, gambling, pills. Your body’s ultimately just craving the dopamine.”

Of course, Lanier will not be the lead lawyer on the thousands of new cases being brought against Google, Meta, Snapchat, TikTok and other social media companies. He is clearly very good at what he does, with the skills to win against giants in big pharma as well as big tech. I wonder whether his trailblazing victory for Kaley can be replicated in other courtrooms, by other lawyers.

“That’s a fair question,” Lanier replies. “Embedded in it is a kind of compliment – so thank you, that’s kind. Does the skill of the lawyer make a difference in these cases? Yes, it does. Am I the only lawyer who can win these? Absolutely not. I’m not necessary – but I’m useful.”

In June, Keir Starmer announced a social media ban for under-16s, due to take effect in early 2027, after nine out of 10 respondents to a government survey supported it. Lanier thinks Starmer’s plans are “brilliant. It eats away at the fabric of our society if children have access to materials that they are not mature enough to handle.”

“I think it’s the first step in the right direction,” Kaley says. “But kids are sneaky and they might still find a way to get back on it.”

Some who oppose the ban – including the campaigner Ian Russell, whose 14-year-old daughter, Molly, took her own life after being deluged with suicide and self-harm content – say the only way to protect children is to force social media companies to change their business models, which rely on addictive features and algorithmically driven content. Litigation may be the only way to bring those changes, Kaley says. “They’re only going to change if somebody forces them to.”

Lanier’s firm is now working on a claim against OpenAI brought by bereaved parents who say ChatGPT was instrumental in their son’s suicide. He also has a forthcoming suit against Roblox, the most popular online game platform among eight- to 14-year-olds in the UK. “It’s a breeding ground for child exploitation, a forum that allows child predators to thrive and to connect,” he says. The addictive features of the platform will be part of that case, too.

Kaley tells me she has no idea what the future holds for her. She is still on social media, in the places that haven’t banished her in retaliation for taking legal action against them. She still posts selfies and videos; she thinks she always will, even though she hopes not to one day. “It’s very difficult.”

Lanier is considering writing a book about Kaley’s case. A documentary might be in the works. He has already starred as himself in a movie, the 2011 Chris Evans film Puncture (released as Injustice in the UK). It tells the true story of Michael Weiss, the Houston-based lawyer behind a class-action lawsuit against hospital syringe distributors in the US; after Weiss died from a drugs overdose in 1999, Lanier took on the case and won a landmark settlement in 2004.

Lanier is the first to admit that, in the past at least, he loved attention. “When I was a younger man, probably the quickest way to get hurt was to get between me and a camera,” he says, a twinkle in his eye. Perhaps that’s why, despite everything he has learned, Lanier is still on Instagram.

“I do a video thought for the day, five days a week, based on some biblical idea. They get posted on there for distribution and availability,” he says when I bring this up. “I’m not someone who thinks that social media is inherently evil. It’s like any tool: it can be used for good and it can be used for evil.”

His 15-year-old granddaughter watches his videos, he tells me. So how does Lanier see the future for her, and his 11 other grandchildren? Is the digital world going to be safer for them following Kaley’s victory?

“The optimist in me says yes. The realist in me says not so fast.” He leans forward. “Mark Zuckerberg has immense power, and power is as addictive as any drug. Do we really think that he’s going to readily abandon a portion of his power? The realist in me says this is going to be a war that will last my lifetime – and the lifetime of others.”

In the UK, the youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141 or email [email protected], and in the UK and Ireland Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In the US, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is at 988 or chat for support. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Visitors walk near a logo of Google at Bharat Mandapam, one of the venues for AI Impact Summit, in New Delhi, India, February 17, 2026. REUTERS/Bhawika Chhabra/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

SummaryCompaniesGoogle counts India as a key growth market for search, adsCourt said Google ad platform was allowing trademark breachGoogle says ruling has major consequences for digital ad marketNEW DELHI, July 9 (Reuters) - Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab has challenged an Indian ​court ruling that it infringed on a company's trademark rights by allowing rivals to use its ‌name as an advertising keyword, arguing the decision will hurt consumers, documents reviewed by Reuters show.

The May decision could reshape the online ads market in a country where Google last year earned $4.1 billion in gross advertising revenue but where it is also facing a raft of ​antitrust cases and court battles.

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To ensure their ads are promoted by Google and target the right customers, ​companies bid on keywords that online consumers type into the search engine.

Indian bathroom fittings maker ⁠Hindware, however, accused its rivals of purchasing keywords related to its brand on the Google ads platform, so that ​their websites appear at the top of searches when consumers typed in "Hindware".

The Delhi High Court ruled against Google in the ​case, ordering it to pay damages of $31,600 and other litigation costs.

In its 4,761-page challenge, which is not public but was reviewed by Reuters, Google said the decision makes India the "sole outlier" among global jurisdictions "with serious consequences for the digital advertising industry, online consumer choice, ​and competitive markets."

Researchers have observed that consumers may search for a brand in order to identify and assess alternatives, ​Google wrote in the July 7 filing, arguing the ruling will effectively grant trademark owners a "monopoly over advertising space to the detriment ‌of consumers."

In ⁠a response to a Reuters request for comment, Google confirmed it is appealing the order, which it said "diverges from established legal precedents in India". It added that its ads policies reflect standard practices that enable competition.

Google India's appeal will be heard in the coming days.

GOOGLE SELLING SOMETHING IT DOESN'T OWN, JUDGE SAYSIf upheld, Indian lawyers and tech experts ​say the original ruling will ​have wide-ranging ramifications for how ⁠the online ads market operates.

Indian matchmaking service Shaadi.com, for example, said that it would change the economics of online ads for millions of businesses that were suffering when their ​competitors bid on their name and Google took a fee.

Justice Mini Pushkarna noted in ​the decision in ⁠May that Google could not be permitted to shrug off responsibility after making a tool available that leads to trademark infringement.

"Google has attempted to sell something that it simply does not own," Pushkarna wrote.

Google's appeal rejects the position that it has ⁠infringed ​on trademarks, arguing that "a keyword is merely used as an internal and ​backend trigger to display an ad" and is simply "making advertising space available".

Google also faces antitrust cases in India as well as legal challenges over AI ​training and stricter-than-ever content takedown regulations that began applying to tech companies from February.

Reporting by Aditya Kalra; Editing by Joe Bavier

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Aditya Kalra is the Company News Editor for Reuters in India, overseeing business coverage and reporting stories on some of the world's biggest companies. He joined Reuters in 2008 and has in recent years written stories on challenges and strategies of a wide array of companies -- from Amazon, Google and Walmart to Xiaomi, Starbucks and Reliance. He also extensively works on deeply-reported and investigative business stories.

A year ago, Alphabet (GOOG 0.48%)(GOOGL 0.23%) traded under $180 per share and carried a market value less than half of today's. As of this writing, the stock sits at about $360 -- a clean double in 12 months, achieved by a company that was already one of the largest in the world when the run began.

A move like that leaves two groups of investors uneasy: those who own the stock and wonder whether to take profits, and those who don't and wonder whether they missed it. With shares about 12% below their 52-week high after an early July wobble in artificial intelligence (AI) trades, the question is worth asking properly. Is it too late to buy?

Image source: Getty Images.

It's not just the stock that's soaring The important thing about Alphabet's run is that it wasn't only the stock that soared. The earnings power underneath it transformed, too.

In the first quarter of 2026, Alphabet's revenue rose 22% year over year to $109.9 billion -- the company's 11th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Profits came with one caveat: earnings per share soared 82%, but a large slice of that jump reflected unrealized investment gains rather than operations. The cleaner signal was operating income, which rose 30% as operating margin expanded 2 percentage points to 36.1%.

The main engine behind the stock's run, however, is Google Cloud.

"Google Cloud revenues grew 63% with backlog nearly doubling quarter on quarter to over $460 billion," said CEO Sundar Pichai in the company's first-quarter earnings release.

A backlog isn't guaranteed revenue, and converting it will take years. But it gives Alphabet's growth a visibility few businesses this size can claim -- customers have effectively reserved hundreds of billions of dollars of cloud computing and AI infrastructure work in advance.

The quarter also showed a strong consumer business. Alphabet said paid subscriptions, led by YouTube and Google One, have reached 350 million -- and management called it the company's strongest quarter ever for its consumer AI plans.

And the core business has seen impressive momentum, too. Google Search and other revenue grew 19% last quarter, quieting the fear that hung over the stock through 2025 -- that AI chatbots would erode search advertising. So far, the opposite appears true, with search usage climbing alongside the new AI features.

Is there still room? A doubled stock naturally raises the suspicion that the price ran ahead of the business. The numbers, however, suggest something more balanced is happening. At about 26 times forward earnings, Alphabet trades near the valuation multiples many slower-growing defensive names command -- while compounding revenue at a 20%-plus rate. That isn't cheap in absolute terms, because nothing growing this fast is. But it's far from the valuations attached to the market's more speculative AI names.

Still, buyers today should keep three risks in view.

First, the growth requires staggering investment. Alphabet has lifted its planned 2026 capital spending to as much as $190 billion, and management expects the figure to rise significantly again in 2027. Returns on that capital could take years to prove out.

Second, the bar is high. After cloud revenue accelerated significantly in Q1 to an impressive 63% year-over-year rate, investors will likely expect further acceleration throughout the year. And the same cloud backlog that gives investors visibility also means they have high expectations.

Third, a stock that doubles in a year can retrace sharply on sentiment alone. Alphabet's own 12% slide from its high in recent weeks is a mild preview of what a broader AI-spending scare could do.

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So, is it too late?

I don't think so -- with an adjustment to expectations. The next double will almost certainly take far longer than 12 months, because the market has already repriced Alphabet from doubted search company to AI infrastructure leader. What remains is the slower, steadier compounding of a dominant business still growing faster than almost anything else its size.

For investors who watched the run from the sidelines, Alphabet, at 26 times forward earnings with accelerating growth, arguably beats most defensive names trading at similar multiples with single-digit growth. Starting a position here and building it gradually -- in case the AI trade's summer volatility offers better prices -- still looks reasonable for a long-term portfolio. The stock's rerating is likely over. But the compounding probably isn't.

Google logo is seen on a building during the opening of Google new office space in Krakow, Poland on June 22, 2026. Located in Tertium Business Park building, the offICE is a second location for Google in the city. (Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

NurPhoto via Getty Images

This article was written by Doug Nathman, with research by his team at Trefis.

Behind the "AI" excitement lies the underlying narrative: a growing order book that indicates demand is surpassing the company's capabilities.

Alphabet (GOOGL) shares have exhibited outstanding performance, achieving a gain of 104% over the last year. Following such a notable increase, a crucial inquiry arises regarding what could facilitate further advancement. The straightforward answer is "AI," but that has morphed into a catchphrase. The genuine story is more detailed, more concrete, and it comes with a significant figure attached.

Where Is The Expansion Concealed? In A $462 Billion Order Book.Beyond the lofty assertions of artificial intelligence, it is beneficial to examine the foundational infrastructure. Alphabet's genuine engine of surprise currently is Google Cloud. In the most recent quarter, Cloud revenue surged to a 63% increase, surpassing $20 billion for the first time. This stands impressive by itself. Yet the real narrative lies within the backlog, the quantity of future business commitments made by customers. It nearly doubled within a single quarter, soaring to $462 billion. For reference, that exceeds the company's total revenue from the past year. This is not mere hype; it reflects a substantial backlog of signed agreements, driven by what management identifies as their "primary growth driver for cloud for the first time": enterprise AI solutions.

But Is This A Beneficial Issue Or Just A Dilemma?Despite all this growth, management made a significant acknowledgment: "we are compute constrained in the near term." They noted that "cloud revenue would have been higher had we been able to meet the demand." In essence, demand is so robust that they are unable to fulfill it all at present. This type of challenge is a dream for most companies. It affirms the exceedingly strong demand but also introduces a vital tension: the company must now enhance its capacity before this remarkable demand becomes a limiting ceiling on growth.

Why The Investment Surge Is The Bull Scenario.Alphabet's countermeasure is to expand. Rapidly. The company is projecting $180 billion to $190 billion in capital expenditures for 2026 and anticipates a "significant increase" in spending for 2027 from that point onward. This expenditure is not aimless spending. It represents a direct, calculated endeavor to develop the capacity necessary to cater to the $462 billion backlog and seize the demand that is currently being overlooked. They are laying foundations and installing servers with a clear vision of who will finance it.

MORE FOR YOU

The market has valued Alphabet for its advancements in AI. However, the sheer, contractual volume of activities within Google Cloud indicates that the upcoming chapter may focus less on clever demonstrations and more on the straightforward economics of fulfilling an extraordinary influx of orders. The demand is no longer a projection; it is a reality, firmly displayed in the backlog. Investors should now observe how swiftly that capital expenditure is translated into recognized Cloud revenue.

Where Should You Look For The Next Narrative Like This?An opportunity of this nature only becomes significant once it manifests in the numbers, and the first solid indication appears in management’s guidance. Once a company can genuinely foresee the new revenue, it elevates its forecast, and an improved forecast that the market is already rewarding represents one of the clearest pieces of evidence that such a story is materializing. F5 (FFIV), Flex (FLEX), and Federal Realty Investment Trust (FRT) are currently signaling precisely that. Our Guidance Momentum screen monitors every S&P 500 entity where a rising forecast correlates with real price momentum, allowing you to seek out the next opportunity like this one while it is still in its infancy. Additionally, if you prefer to invest in the entire theme rather than wager on a single entity, a communication services ETF such as XLC encompasses the full spectrum.

Where Should A Stock Like This Reside In Your Portfolio?A compelling growth narrative is an excellent beginning. A well-organized collection of such narratives forms a strategy. An engine like this is important because it can continue to compound subtly over the years, and a stock that compounds is worthwhile to own, but focusing on any single entity is where well-conceived ideas can be penalized. A diversified assortment of equally well-researched stocks mitigates the risk associated with single-stock concentration. The challenging aspect is determining which stories truly deliver, and that ranking forms the core of the Trefis methodology.

The Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio assesses the overall quality across thousands of equities, not just one catalyst, incorporates the 30 strongest stocks, and rebalances them with rigor. It has a proven record of surpassing a benchmark that merges the three major indices – the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap, and Russell 2000.

A Google Cloud logo is pictured at a trade fair in Hannover Messe, in Hanover, Germany, April 22, 2024. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse//File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

JOHANNESBURG, July 1 (Reuters) - Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab has exceeded a five-year target to invest $1 billion in Africa, it said on Wednesday, ​as it made public initiatives on infrastructure and development ‌of AI to accelerate the continent's digital growth.

They follow on from Google's launch of a cloud for the Johannesburg region in 2025.

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Here are ​the details of the new initiatives that Google, ​owned by Alphabet, announced at the first Africa Cloud ⁠Summit in Johannesburg.

Google will establish a connectivity hub in South ​Africa's Eastern Cape, the first of four planned connectivity hubs ​on the continent.

The facility will link Africa to Australia via the Umoja subsea cable and to India through a new route, strengthening internet ​resilience and capacity.

Africa's first applied AI lab in Ghana will ​pair local startups with Google researchers and provide early access to its ‌AI ⁠models.

A more than $1 million programme in partnership with UK actor Idris Elba's Akuna Group will train underrepresented creators in AI-driven storytelling.

Google's Economic and Community Development programme and WeThinkCode have committed ​to build a ​3 million ⁠rand ($183,468) digital innovation centre in Soweto, Johannesburg.

Google also said its startup accelerator programme will back ​15 South African firms as part of Google's ​pledge ⁠to back 50 African ventures between 2024 and 2028.

"The AI opportunity for Africa is significant, and Google is committed to doing ⁠our ​part working with Africans to help Africa ​realise it," James Manyika, Google's senior vice president for research and technology, ​told reporters.

($1 = 16.3516 rand)

Reporting by Nqobile Dludla; editing by Barbara Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Nqobile is a Johannesburg-based reporter covering the South African retail, telecom and tech sectors. She has been a journalists for about 10 years. She joined Reuters in 2015 and has covered a variety of beats ranging from pharma, health to property and banking.

By PYMNTS  |  June 30, 2026

 | 

British regulators want Apple and Google to let developers steer users to payment methods beyond the company’s app stores.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) issued a proposal Tuesday (June 30) that would lift the restrictions imposed by the companies that prevent app developers from directing users to alternative methods of payment.

“We think it is important to give both app developers and users more choice about how they communicate and how they transact,” Will Hayter, executive director for digital markets at the CMA, said in the watchdog’s announcement.

“This is not only because choice is inherently valuable but also because we see this as the best way to introduce some competitive pressure in a vital part of the mobile ecosystem that is otherwise sorely lacking such pressure.”

The CMA says it would expect any steering fees to be lower than current app store charges, with savings returned to British consumers or invested into developers’ businesses.

The release added that the CMA had heard concerns from businesses that Apple’s “high fees and strict terms” had barred access to near field communication (NFC) functionality. Now the regulator said it is “designing a potential requirement” that would permit access for developers.

Unblocking the restriction would allow British FinTechs and developers to support contactless transactions, such as card-based payments via digital wallets, from within their iOS apps. 

“Doing so would help unlock innovation and competition by supporting future payment methods such as account-to-account, digital currency and stablecoin, as well as other non-financial uses, including digital ID and car keys,” the release added.

A report on the CMA proposal by the Financial Times includes a statement from Apple arguing that the policy would “undermine” the App Store’s consumer protections, “opening the door to scams, bait-and-switch tactics and the circumvention of parental controls.” Google told the news outlet it had already reduced its fees.

The CMA’s proposal comes one day after a report that Apple had intensified its legal battle with India’s competition regulator over the company’s app store policies. Apple has consistently denied breaking Indian antitrust laws.

The company’s app store policies have also faced pushback from developers in the European Union, and were the subject of a lawsuit in China last year. Apple is also facing antitrust litigation in the U.S. related to the app store.

Apple released findings earlier this month showing that the app store facilitated more than $1.4 trillion in developer sales/billings during 2025, and that those developers paid no commission to Apple for 90% of transactions.

“Developers are the heartbeat of the App Store, and this year’s incredible milestone is a testament to their boundless creativity,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a news release at the time.

Alphabet GOOG shares rose 4.1% in trading on Monday as the Google parent began its first trading session as a member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, replacing Verizon Communications in the 30-stock benchmark.

The index change, announced last week, marks a milestone for Alphabet.

However, because the Dow is a price-weighted index rather than one weighted by market capitalization, analysts do not expect the stock to receive the same boost from passive investment flows that typically accompanies inclusion in the S&P 500.

The stock also benefited from a broader rebound in technology shares after last week's sharp selloff.

The Roundhill Magnificent Seven exchange-traded fund, which had fallen 13% in June through Friday and was on track for its worst month since its launch in April 2023, traded higher alongside several of its largest constituents.

Meta Platforms, Amazon and Tesla each rose more than 2%, while Nvidia and Microsoft gained more than 1%. Apple lagged the group with a modest 0.1% gain.

Investor sentiment was also influenced by reports that Google has limited Meta's access to its Gemini artificial intelligence models because demand exceeded available computing capacity.

According to the Financial Times, Google informed Meta around March that it could not provide all the Gemini capacity the social media company wanted to purchase.

The restrictions remain in place and have delayed some of Meta's internal AI projects while prompting the company to encourage employees to use AI tokens more efficiently.

Several other Google customers have also been affected by the capacity limits, although to a lesser extent.

Meta has faced greater disruption because of its exceptionally high demand for Google's AI models.

The restrictions highlight growing infrastructure bottlenecks across the artificial intelligence industry, where surging demand for advanced models has outpaced available computing resources despite massive investment in chips, data centres and power.

Google has moved to expand its capacity, including signing a $920 million-per-month agreement with SpaceX earlier this month to lease additional computing resources.

During Alphabet's first-quarter earnings call in April, Chief Executive Sundar Pichai acknowledged the company's capacity limitations.

"Obviously, we are compute-constrained in the near term," Pichai said. "And as an example, our Cloud revenue would have been higher if we were able to meet the demand."

Alphabet reported 63% revenue growth in its cloud computing business during the first quarter, its strongest growth since it began disclosing the figure in 2019.

The company also reported that its cloud revenue exceeded $20 billion for the first time, while its backlog of signed but undelivered cloud contracts nearly doubled quarter over quarter to more than $460 billion.

Technical picture remains mixedDespite Monday's gains, Alphabet's technical outlook remains mixed.

The stock has climbed 96% over the past 12 months and continues to trade about 11% above its 200-day simple moving average of $314.41, suggesting that the longer-term uptrend remains intact.

However, near-term momentum remains weaker. Alphabet is trading 2% below its 20-day simple moving average of $359.34 and 4.9% below its 50-day simple moving average of $369.57, indicating that the stock remains in a recovery phase rather than a sustained breakout.

Google Technicals The 20-day moving average also remains below the 50-day moving average, a bearish crossover that suggests recent rallies have faced stronger selling pressure than earlier in the longer-term advance.

Last year, Warren Buffett corrected one of his previous investing mistakes. He initiated a sizable position in Google parent Alphabet (GOOG 2.15%) (GOOGL 1.73%), several years after admitting that he regretted not buying the stock earlier.

After Buffett stepped down as Berkshire Hathaway's (BRKA +1.60%) (BRKB +2.08%) CEO at the end of 2025, his successor, Greg Abel, more than tripled the conglomerate's stake in Alphabet. The stock now ranks as Berkshire's fifth-largest holding.

But Google's stock has fallen by double digits over the past few weeks. Are Buffett and Abel worried that they made a mistake buying the stock? I don't think so. If you own shares of Alphabet, here's why you shouldn't be worried, either.

Image source: Getty Images.

Why the stock's decline isn't really scary Three factors explain Alphabet's decline since May. None of them should be scary to investors, in my opinion.

First, Alphabet's first-quarter update revealed another significant increase in planned capital expenditures. The company provided capex guidance of $180 billion to $190 billion for full-year 2026. Some investors have become jittery over the sky-high spending on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure by Alphabet and other tech giants.

Second (and related to the first factor), Alphabet announced in June that it was raising $80 billion through private placement equity offerings. The company said that these offerings are part of the plan "to fund investments in its world-class AI compute infrastructure to meet its unprecedented customer demand."

Third, two high-profile defections last week caused the stock to experience its worst day in more than a year. Noam Shazeer, Google's vice president of engineering and one of the leaders of the Gemini AI models, announced he was leaving to join OpenAI. Two days later, Google DeepMind vice president and engineering fellow John Jumper announced that he was leaving to join Anthropic. Jumper received a Nobel Prize with Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis for developing AlphaFold, an AI system that predicts protein structures.

Anat Askkenazi, CFO of Alphabet and Google, said in the Q1 update that the company continues to see "unprecedented internal and external demand for AI compute resources." Ashkenazi pointed out that investments in AI infrastructure are driving record revenue and backlog growth.

What about the departures of key AI leaders? It is somewhat concerning. However, this kind of musical chairs is commonplace in the industry. Alphabet still has a huge level of AI talent and the money to recruit more people.

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I have no doubt whatsoever that neither Buffett nor Abel is losing sleep over the factors behind Alphabet's recent sell-off. For one thing, Abel led the charge for Berkshire's additional $10 billion investment in Alphabet that was part of the private placement. If he had any qualms about Alphabet spending more on AI infrastructure, he would never have committed such a significant amount of Berkshire's capital.

It's important to remember Buffett's perspective on stock declines. At Berkshire Hathaway's 2010 annual shareholder meeting, he said, "If you have a temperament that when others are fearful you're going to get scared yourself, you know, you are not going to make a lot of money in securities over time, in all probability."

What's more, the legendary investor gave a decidedly contrarian opinion. He stated that some investors buy a stock and then "think if it goes up it's wonderful, and if it goes down it's bad." Buffett explained, "We think just the opposite. When it goes down, we love it, because we'll buy more. And if it goes up, it kills us to buy more."

An opportunity for long-term investors As usual, Buffett was right. A pullback in a wonderful company's share price presents an excellent buying opportunity for long-term investors. And Alphabet remains a wonderful company.

The record Google Cloud backlog provides excellent revenue visibility. Google Search continues to grow, with generative AI serving as a tailwind rather than the "Google killer" some predicted. Waymo is the leader in autonomous ride-hailing. Alphabet is even now part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI 0.09%), reflecting how important it has become to the U.S. economy.

Don't be surprised if Berkshire's next 13-F filing reveals that the conglomerate took advantage of Alphabet's decline to load up on more shares. After all, that's the Warren Buffett way.

The Google logo is pictured at the entrance to the Google offices in London, Britain January 18, 2019. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

June 28 (Reuters) - Google has put limits on Meta’s (META.O), opens new tab use of its Gemini AI ​models after the social media company sought more ‌computing capacity than the rival tech group could provide, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

Google, owned by Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab, told Meta around March ​it could not meet the full Gemini capacity the ​company had sought to purchase, the newspaper said, ⁠adding that the shortfall disrupted and delayed some of ​Meta’s internal AI projects.

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Several other Google clients have also been ​affected, though to a lesser extent, according to the report. Meta has been particularly impacted due to its exceptionally high demand for Google’s ​models, the FT said.

Reuters could not immediately verify the ​report, which cited people familiar with the matter. Google and Meta did ‌not ⁠immediately respond to requests for comment outside business hours.

Due to the restrictions, Meta has encouraged staff to be more efficient with AI tokens, the units that measure AI usage, ​the FT report ​said.

Even as ⁠companies continue to spend billions on chips and data centres, they are still struggling to ​secure enough computing power to support the growing ​demand ⁠for AI services.

Revenue at Google Cloud grew to $20 billion in the first quarter ended March, but CEO Sundar Pichai said computing ⁠power ​constraints prevented even higher growth and ​contributed to the cloud unit's backlog nearly doubling quarter on quarter.

Reporting by Abu ​Sultan in Bengaluru; Editing by William Mallard and Sonali Paul

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Google is reportedly looking to bleed publishers yet again — threatening to exclude them from a lucrative new artificial-intelligence partnership unless they allow the tech giant to train its AI bots on their valuable content.

In recent months, Google has been pitching news and entertainment publishers on a new pilot program that would promote their content in Google’s AI Overviews – a big boost to organizations that have faced significant declines in web traffic, the Information reported.

But in exchange, Google wants broad access to the publishers’ content, including the right to potentially use it to train AI bots, a person familiar with the project told the Information.

Google is reportedly taking a tough stance in negotiations with publishers. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Google, which launched its Gemini chatbots in 2023, is driving a hard bargain.

It warned publishers that if they don’t agree to the new program, they will eventually lose out on payments from the current content-licensing arrangement, known as Showcase. Showcase is being ended, Google reportedly told some companies.

“This is Google’s game. They’re gonna dominate here,” said Jason Kint, chief executive of Digital Content Next, a trade group that represents online publishers including the New York Times, the Washington Post and News Corp, The Post’s owner.

“There’s no fair deal discussions that can happen with Google. It’s really a matter of how much money they want to drop on an individual organization,” Kint told The Post.

A spokesperson for Google told The Post: “As people’s news preferences change, we’ve been expanding our partnerships through our News AI pilot program, working with a wide range of publishers to explore how AI can drive more engaged audiences.”

The spokesperson added that Google has been “testing features” to “help people cut through information overload, easily decide where to click out, and connect with news in different formats.” 

Publishers have complained that traffic to their websites from search results has already plummeted – some by as much as half – since Google launched its AI Overview tool in 2024, which supplies an AI-generated summary of search results at the top of the page.

A Pew Research Center study found that when people see an AI Overview, they are half as likely to ever click a link from Google, and when they find an answer in an AI Overview, they are more likely to end their browsing session altogether.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai visits the company’s new AI hub in France on Feb. 15, 2024. REUTERS Google has said it continues to send billions of clicks to websites every day and that the Pew study’s methodology was flawed.

One year after Google launched its AI Overview tool to the public, CNN saw traffic to its website fall by 30%, while Business Insider and HuffPost’s sites saw traffic plunge about 40%, according to an NPR report citing data from Similarweb.

That is a big hit to news publishers, who are heavily dependent on advertising – which is tied to how many clicks they can drive to their website – as well as audience revenue streams, like subscriptions and other paywalls.

Meanwhile, several publishers have filed lawsuits accusing tech companies of scraping data from their sites for use in training their AI bots – which has sent AI giants racing to secure content-licensing agreements.

Google launched its Gemini chatbots in 2023. Ai – stock.adobe.com In 2023, the New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging the ChatGPT-maker had stolen content from its website to train its AI models. 

OpenAI has since signed more than a dozen content-licensing deals with news and entertainment publishers.

Kint said tech giants have been holding the reins in these discussions — Google controls 90% of the search-engine market and was ruled a monopoly in a landmark antitrust case in 2024.

Google asked a federal appeals court to reverse the decision in May.

Google is reportedly seeking broader access to use content to train its AI bots. prima91 – stock.adobe.com The company first announced the new AI pilot program in December, with initial partners including the Washington Post and the Guardian.

“They bundled the opt-out from AI training with the Search opt-out. So publishers, if they wanted to say, ‘Hey, you can’t train on my content for AI Overviews,’ then they had to opt out of Search,” Kint told The Post. 

“If you’re opting out of Search, then you’re opting out of the internet.”

Publishers that currently participate in Google’s Showcase program, which highlights their content across Google News features, receive a flat annual fee.

If partners do not sign on to the new pilot program, they will continue to receive annual payments as long as Showcase remains in place, but these will end if the program does, according to the Information. 

Google said it has been renewing Showcase agreements.

Those who sign up for the new pilot will be agreeing to broader content-use terms for the same flat annual fee, which is giving some publishers pause, the Information reported.

Alphabet (GOOGL 0.62%) (GOOG 0.58%) historically has had no shortage of growth opportunities to direct its capital toward. That's why it never paid a dividend in the past, as management felt the cash was better suited to reinvest in the business. This philosophy changed in June 2024, when the company paid its first quarterly dividend of $0.20 per share. That payout is now $0.22 per quarter. But the low dividend yield of 0.25% isn't enough to compel income investors to buy this Magnificent Seven stock.

The situation looks a bit different now. Alphabet is investing so much to expand its artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure that it has now tapped equity markets to raise fresh capital. As part of a nearly $85 billion raise, the company issued $16.75 billion of convertible preferred stock (GOOGM is the Class A equivalent, and GOOGN is the Class C equivalent). It offered a hefty 6.25% dividend yield at issuance.

That seems like a good deal, especially since the preferred stock comes from one of the most dominant tech companies. Before you rush to buy, read the fine print first.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Sitting between bondholders and common shareholders Preferred equity is a hybrid security that mimics both bonds, because they have a fixed dividend, and equities, since they represent ownership. And on the capital structure, it sits between bondholders and common shareholders. If a company goes bankrupt and has to liquidate assets, preferred holders get paid out before common equity holders.

These investment products are catered to a specific type of market participant. Investors who want to earn yield and limit downside will find preferred equities attractive.

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Bullish investors should pass on this Alphabet's preferred stock isn't perpetual. Instead, it will convert to common shares on May 15, 2029. So, the 6.25% dividend yield will be active for only about three years. After that, investors can expect to receive the common stock's low 0.25% yield.

The conversion details can be confusing for average investors. Your decision to buy the preferred stock comes down to your forecast of where Alphabet's common shares will be in the future. If the stock price doubles in five years, which is a reasonable view given the company's impressive profit growth relative to its current valuation, then it makes sense to keep things simple and own the common shares.

On the other hand, if you believe Alphabet's common shares will be flat or decline over the next five years, then owning the preferred shares is interesting. There's income to be made.

For long-term investors, however, it's best to pass on this financial instrument. While the dividend yield draws a lot of attention, the fine print presents a more complex situation.

© _ultraforma_ / Getty Images

Five researchers out of Google’s core AI team in seven days, and the market noticed. Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL | GOOGL Price Prediction) shares fell 5.09% over the past week to $345.29, and dropped another 1.14% Thursday morning to $341.34. The catalyst is talent, the subtext is product, and the spread between the two is where investors are getting nervous.

What Maggie Germain told CNBC On CNBC’s Closing Bell Overtime Wednesday, reporter Maggie Germain laid out why the exits look like a pattern rather than coincidence. When the host pressed whether pre-IPO equity alone explained the moves, Germain pointed at a hole in Google’s product lineup. “Google at this point doesn’t have something that competes with Codex and Claude Code, and that’s where researchers are really gravitating,” she said. Coding assistants are the wedge product for enterprise AI sales right now, and the labs building the best ones are hoovering up Google’s bench.

The standouts are real names. Noam Shazeer, a Gemini co-lead and one of the original authors of the Transformer paper, is heading to OpenAI. John Jumper, the Nobel laureate behind AlphaFold, is going to Anthropic. Two more DeepMind researchers are reportedly headed to Anthropic as well, and DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis acknowledged “the most ferociously competitive talent market the tech industry has ever seen.” The newer departures sit below Shazeer or Jumper in seniority, yet the cadence is the story.

Why pre-IPO equity changes the math Both Anthropic and OpenAI have confidentially filed S-1s, which converts a researcher’s grant from “maybe valuable someday” into “valuable on a defined timeline.” Polymarket traders are pricing the competitive gap quite directly. As of Thursday, the market gives Anthropic a 98.2% implied probability of holding the top model on Chatbot Arena by June 30, with Google at just 0.3%. Over one month, Anthropic’s odds rose 22.2 points while Google’s fell 17.7.

Compounding the mood, Gemini 3.5 Pro was reportedly pushed from a June release to July. Talent churn alongside a product slip compounds the credibility problem with enterprise buyers.

The numbers that complicate the panic Strip out the last week and the underlying business is still firing. Q1 FY26, reported April 29, delivered EPS of $5.11 against a $2.63 estimate on revenue of $109.90 billion, up 21.8% year over year. Google Cloud grew 63% to $20.03 billion, with backlog nearly doubling sequentially to over $460 billion. CEO Sundar Pichai told investors that Gemini’s API processed more than 16 billion tokens per minute, up 60% from the prior quarter, per Alphabet’s Q1 FY26 8-K.

So why the selloff. Capex hit $35.67 billion in Q1, more than doubling year over year, with FY26 guidance of $175 billion to $185 billion. Investors are being asked to fund a hyperscale build while watching the people who would justify that spend walk to competition. GOOGL’s composite sentiment score has fallen 19.16 points in seven days and 24.88 over thirty. Year to date, the stock is still up 10.46%, and over one year, up 107.64%. The selloff reflects positioning rather than a break in the business.

How the rivals are trading If you assumed talent flowing into the OpenAI and Anthropic camps was juicing their cloud backers, the price action disagrees. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is down 3.55% on the week and 24.10% year to date to $355.23, weighed by the same AI capex anxiety dragging Alphabet. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), which backs Anthropic and committed roughly 5 gigawatts of Trainium capacity to it, is down 1.36% on the week to $230.05, up just 1.49% year to date.

What to keep an eye on The July Gemini release is the readable catalyst. If 3.5 Pro lands and clears the 1500 Chatbot Arena threshold the market currently prices at 25%, the talent narrative softens. If it slips again or debuts middling, the question stops being about five researchers and starts being about whether enterprise customers stay parked in Vertex AI when Codex and Claude Code keep shipping. Polymarket is currently pricing an 80% chance GOOGL closes lower on June 25, which tells you where the very short-term crowd has placed its chips.

Children playground miniatures are seen in front of displayed Youtube logo in this illustration taken April 4, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

SummaryCompaniesTrial will go forward against Meta, Snap and TikTok in JulyCompanies face thousands of similar lawsuitsSeveral other trials are scheduled in the coming monthsJune 23 (Reuters) - Google's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab YouTube has settled a lawsuit brought by a minor who claimed the platform damaged his mental health, his lawyers said Tuesday, ahead of a ‌second California trial over social media's role in the youth mental health crisis.

The terms of the settlement of the state court lawsuit were confidential, the lawyers said on Tuesday. The suit named four defendants — YouTube, Meta's (META.O), opens new tab Instagram, Snap Inc's (SNAP.N), opens new tab Snapchat and ByteDance's TikTok — and the remaining three companies are still set to face trial in July.

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Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said ​in a statement that the lawsuit had been amicably resolved. "Our focus remains on building age-appropriate products and parental controls that deliver on ​that promise,” Castaneda said.

John Morgan and Emily Jeffcott, attorneys for the plaintiff, known by his initials R.K.C., said in ⁠a statement: "YouTube's decision to resolve this case before having to face a jury speaks for itself."

"We will continue fighting on behalf of all those ​affected by social media addiction to bring these companies to justice and compel them to prioritize the safety of their young users over their bottom ​lines."

R.K.C., a 16-year-old boy from Florida, said he started using social media when he was about eight, according to court filings. He became addicted to it, losing sleep and suffering from depression and anxiety, according to the filings.

R.K.C.'s lawsuit is set to be the second trial in California state court testing claims by individuals who say they were harmed by social media ​platforms deliberately designed to be addictive. The trial is scheduled to kick off July 27.

THOUSANDS OF CASES REMAINMore than 3,300 lawsuits involving addiction claims ​against social media companies are pending in California state court. Another 2,600 cases brought by individuals, school districts, municipalities and states are pending in California federal court.

The ‌companies ⁠have denied the allegations and say they take extensive steps to keep teens and young users safe on their platforms.

The first trial, which ended in March, was in the case of a woman who said she became addicted to YouTube and Meta's Instagram at a young age because of their attention-grabbing design. A jury found the companies negligent and ordered Meta to pay $4.2 million in damages and Google to pay $1.8 million. Earlier this month, the judge rejected ​the companies’ bid to set aside that ​verdict.

The first trial in federal ⁠court had been set to begin in June in a lawsuit brought by a Kentucky school district against Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube. All of the companies settled before trial, paying the district a combined $27 million.

In addition to the ​cases in Los Angeles and in federal court, nearly every state in the country has filed lawsuits ​in its local courts ⁠against the companies. The lawsuits accuse the companies of misrepresenting the safety of their platforms for young users and of designing them to addict children.

In the first of the lawsuits by states to go to trial, a jury in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay the state $375 million after finding the company misrepresented ⁠the safety ​of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. A judge is weighing whether to order the company to make ​changes to its platforms as part of a separate phase in the lawsuit.

Meta will face a trial in a lawsuit brought by Tennessee next month.

In August, a trial in federal court ​over the combined claims of multiple states will go forward against Meta.

Reporting by Diana Novak Jones; Editing by Jamie Freed, Alexia Garamfalvi and Cynthia Osterman

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Diana reports on product liability, litigation, mass torts and the plaintiffs' bar. She previously worked at Law360 and the Chicago Sun-Times.