Analysts expected 12% year-on-year revenue gains, but company reports 15%, buoyed by performance in ads and cloud services Alphabet, parent of Google and YouTube, saw a third straight quarter of better-than-anticipated gains as it reported earnings on Tuesday. The tech giant had largely exceeded analyst expectations for the previous two quarters, and Tuesday’s results showed growth in both digital advertising and demand for Google Cloud. Shares rose in after-hours training. “The momentum across the company is extraordinary. Our commitment to innovation, as well as our long-term focus and investment in AI, are paying off with consumers and partners benefiting from our AI tools,” said the CEO, Sundar Pichai. Continue reading...

America Pac is targeting users interested in the Boy Scouts of America, Kelsey Grammer, Kid Rock and Joe Rogan Elon Musk’s Pac is spending far more on ads on Facebook and YouTube than on X, Musk’s own social network. America Pac paid $201,000 to run dozens of ads on X, formerly Twitter, during the past three months. However, it spent $3m on thousands of advertisements on Facebook and Instagram in roughly the same time period. Musk founded the pro-Donald Trump Pac in July and has funded it to the tune of $75m, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Continue reading...

The Dutch-Israeli author on a demonic club hit, her fish fixation, and her love of furniture restoration videos Born in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1987, Yael van der Wouden is a writer and teacher who lectures in creative writing and comparative literature in the Netherlands. Her work has appeared in publications including LitHub, Electric Literature and Elle.com, and she has a David Attenborough-themed advice column, Dear David, in the online literary journal Longleaf Review. Her essay on Dutch identity and Jewishness, On (Not) Reading Anne Frank, received a notable mention in the 2018 Best American Essays collection. The Safekeep, published by Viking earlier this year, is Van der Wouden’s debut novel and is shortlisted for the Booker prize. Continue reading...

Agency accuses Meta, Google, TikTok and other companies of sharing troves of user information with third-parties Social media and online video companies are collecting huge troves of your personal information on and off their websites or apps and sharing it with a wide range of third-party entities, a new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) staff report on nine tech companies confirms. The FTC report published on Thursday looked at the data-gathering practices of Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Discord, Reddit, Amazon, Snap, TikTok and Twitter/X between January 2019 and 31 December 2020. The majority of the companies’ business models incentivized tracking how people engaged with their platforms, collecting their personal data and using it to determine what content and ads users see on their feeds, the report states. Continue reading...

Platform will ensure algorithms do not keep pushing similar content to young viewers, even though it does not breach guidelines YouTube is to stop recommending videos to teenagers that idealise specific fitness levels, body weights or physical features, after experts warned such content could be harmful if viewed repeatedly. The platform will still allow 13- to 17-year-olds to view the videos, but its algorithms will not push young users down related content “rabbit holes” afterwards. Continue reading...

Found-footage horror about YouTube pranksters turns into an online phenomenon, giving its star and creator a Hollywood inroad 2024 is already becoming something of a banner year for horror, with Longlegs making over $100m and Late Night with the Devil earning a whopping 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And yet the breakout horror of the year might just be an $800 project currently available to watch free on YouTube. Milk & Serial is a 62-minute, found-footage horror by YouTuber Curry Barker, and it manages to be at once ruthlessly effective and wonderfully authentic. Racking up 348,000 views in the two weeks since its release, its popularity has been supercharged by raves on Reddit that have since crossed over into traditional media. Bloody Disgusting called it “one of the year’s best-kept secrets” and this week Barker found himself being interviewed by no less than Variety. Continue reading...

Wojcicki, one of the most prominent women in tech, had been living with cancer for two years Susan Wojcicki, the former YouTube CEO and one of the first Google employees, has died at the age of 56 after two years of living with cancer. Her husband, Dennis Troper, announced the news of her death on Friday. Continue reading...

The comedian, screenwriter and actor’s list includes a Jurassic Park melodica cover and Kristen Wiig’s Liza Minnelli impersonation * Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email I’m a breakfast radio producer, so I spend countless hours scouring the internet for comedy gold. I’d love to say outside work I’m decidedly offline, joyously pursuing real-world activities such as jogging, baking and not being perpetually afraid of the news. But that would be a dirty stinking lie. Nope, this 21st-century gal is hooked! And if compiling this list has taught me anything … it’s that I’ve been glued to the interwebs for quite some time. So, in honour of my crippling decades-long addiction, let’s start with a few gems from back in the good old days of dial-up. Cue old timey modem sound! Continue reading...