What happened
Internet search giant actions Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) are flying today, up 4.8% in midday trading, but it’s not immediately clear why. There is good and bad news for the parent company of Google today, but bad news predominates.
Image source: Getty Images.
And
The good news: Reuters reports that Google is asking a federal judge to remove 10-state antitrust cases against him and bring them to trial in California, where jurors may be more favorable to the technology company. The bad news: Reuters also reports that 38 other states are suing Google for monopoly reasons, and the European Union appears to be preparing to do the same.
Adding to the bad headlines, Axios reports today that Google – which in December may or may not have fired (the facts are disputed) one of its members of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence (AI) team, Timnit Gebru – found that a second member from her AI team, Margaret Mitchell, has been looking at Gebru’s messages to find examples that show her discriminatory treatment.
Google responded to the apparent misappropriation of data by blocking Mitchell’s accounts at the company and said it was “actively investigating this matter”.
What now
How bad this is going to get for Google and Alphabet has yet to be seen, but it certainly is a bad one, in public relations language. And the fact that Mitchell has started tweeting angry notes about the company suggests that this is a negative title that will not go away anytime soon, potentially damaging its reputation while refusing several legal attacks.
Why any of the above would result in a 4.8% gain in share price for Google is beyond my understanding.