Tuesday, October 3, 2023

How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet | Netflix made zero dollars from popular ‘Wednesday’ merchandise—now it wants to fix that mistake | Opinion | Giving Workers a Raise Is Not Going to Make Inflation Worse - The New York Times | The drawdown of African peacekeepers from Somalia has stalled

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How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet - WIRED   

Recently, a startling piece of information came to light in the ongoing antitrust case against Google. During one employee’s testimony, a key exhibit momentarily flashed on a projector. In the mostly closed trial, spectators like myself have only a few seconds to scribble down the contents of exhibits shown during public questioning. Thus far, witnesses had dropped breadcrumbs hinting at the extent of Google’s drive to boost profits: a highly confidential effort called Project Mercury, urgent missives to “shake the sofa cushions” to generate more advertising revenue on the search engine results page (SERP), distressed emails about the sustained decline in the ad-triggering searches that generate most of Google’s money, recollections of how the executive team has long insisted that obscene corporate profit equals consumer good. Now, the projector screen showed an internal Google slide about changes to its search algorithm.

I was attending the trial out of long-standing professional interest. I had previously battled Google’s legal team while at the Federal Trade Commission, and I advocated around the world for search engine competition as an executive for DuckDuckGo. I’m all too familiar with Google’s secret games and word play. With the trial practically in my backyard, I couldn’t stay away from the drama.

This onscreen Google slide had to do with a “semantic matching” overhaul to its SERP algorithm. When you enter a query, you might expect a search engine to incorporate synonyms into the algorithm as well as text phrase pairings in natural language processing. But this overhaul went further, actually altering queries to generate more commercial results.

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The drawdown of African peacekeepers from Somalia has stalled - The Economist   

No peacekeeping mission anywhere has been as deadly, nor has any African-led one lasted as long. After almost 17 years of trying to stabilise Somalia and beat back jihadists, and perhaps 3,500 casualties among peacekeepers, many had been looking forward to the next phase in the winding down of an almost 18,000-strong African Union (AU) force. Yet plans to withdraw 3,000 troops at the end of September have just been shelved, The Economist has learned. This is because of concerns that Somalia’s army will be unable to hold territory that had previously been recaptured from al-Shabab, a jihadist group that America’s military command for Africa has termed “the largest and most deadly al-Qaeda network in the world”.

On September 30th the AU agreed to pause the drawdown for three months after a last-minute plea from Somalia, according to several people with knowledge of the matter. A statement may be released this week, possibly after a meeting between officials from the AU and UN Security Council. An extension needs the approval of the Security Council, which had previously said that the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) should number no more than 14,626 from October and be completely withdrawn by the end of 2024. (A first phase of the drawdown saw 2,000 going home in June).

Unanswered, however, is the question of who might stump up the necessary cash to keep them. The European Union, which has provided more than €2bn ($2.1bn) to ATMIS and its predecessor, AMISOM, since 2007, has long been reluctant to keep paying for what some of its members saw as a never-ending commitment. Yet it is tightening its purse strings at a particularly inopportune time. After years of deadlock the Somali army has made real progress.

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