ReportWire

Tag: marketing and advertising

  • California threatens Tesla with 30-day suspension of sales license for deceptive self-driving claims

    SAN FRANCISCO — California regulators are threatening to suspend Tesla’s license to sell its electric cars in the state early next year unless the automaker tones down its marketing tactics for its self-driving features after a judge concluded the Elon Musk-led company has been misleading consumers about the technology’s capabilities.

    The potential 30-day blackout of Tesla’s California sales is the primary punishment being recommended to the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles in a decision released late Tuesday. The ruling by Administrative Law Judge Juliet Cox determined that Tesla had for years engaged in deceptive marketing practices by using the terms “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” to promote the autonomous technology available in many of its cars.

    After presiding over five days of hearings held in Oakland, California in July, Cox also recommended suspending Tesla’s license to manufacture cars at its plant in Fremont, California. But California regulators aren’t going to impose that part of the judge’s proposed penalty.

    Tesla will have a 90-day window to make changes that more clearly convey the limits of its self-driving technology to avoid having its California sales license suspended. After California regulators filed its action against Tesla in 2023, the Austin, Texas, company already made one significant change by putting in wording that made it clear its Full Self-Driving package still required supervision by a human driver while it’s deployed.

    “Tesla can take simple steps to pause this decision and permanently resolve this issue — steps autonomous vehicle companies and other automakers have been able to achieve,” said Steve Gordon, the director of the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

    Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

    The automaker has already been plagued by a global downturn in demand that began during a backlash to Musk’s high-profile role overseeing cuts in the U.S. government budget overseeing the Department of Government that President Donald Trump created in his administration. Increased competition and an older lineup of vehicles also weighed on Tesla sales, although the company did revamp its Model Y, the world’s bestselling vehicle, and unveil less-expensive versions of the Model Y and Model X.

    Although Musk left Washington after a falling out with Trump, the fallout has continued to weigh on Tesla’s auto sales, which had decreased by 9% from 2024 through the first nine months of this year.

    Despite the slump and the threatened sales suspension in California, Tesla’s stock price touched an all-time high $495.28 during Wednesday’s early trading before backtracking later to fall below $470. Despite that reversal, Tesla’s shares are still worth slightly more than they were before Musk’s ill-fated stint in the Trump administration — a “somewhat successful” assignment he recently said he wouldn’t take on again.

    The performance of Tesla’s stock against the backdrop of eroding auto sales reflects the increasing emphasis that investors are placing on Musk’s efforts to develop artificial intelligence technology to implant into humanoid robots and a fleet of self-driving Teslas that will operate as robotaxis across the U.S.

    Musk has been promising Tesla’s self-driving technology would fulfill his robotaxi vision for years without delivering on the promise, but the company finally began testing the concept in Austin earlier this year, albeit with a human supervisor in the car to take over if something went awry. Just a few days ago, Musk disclosed Tesla had started tests of its robotaxis without a safety monitor in the vehicle.

    California regulators are far from the first critic to accuse Tesla of exaggerating the capabilities of its self-driving technology in a potentially dangerous manner. The company has steadfastly insisted that information contained in its vehicle’s owner’s manual on its website have made it clear that its self-driving technology still requires human supervision, even while releasing a 2020 video depicting one of its cars purportedly driving on its own. The video, cited as evidence against Tesla in the decision recommending a suspension of the company’s California sales license, remained on its website for nearly four years.

    Tesla has been targeted in a variety of lawsuits alleging its mischaracterizations about self-driving technology have lulled humans into a false of security that have resulted in lethal accidents. The company has settled or prevailed in several cases, but earlier this year a Miami jury held Tesla partly responsible for a lethal crash in Florida that occurred while Autopilot was deployed and ordered the automaker to pay more than $240 million in damages.

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  • PepsiCo to cut prices, eliminate products as part of a deal with an activist investor

    PepsiCo plans to cut prices and eliminate some of its products under a deal with an activist investor announced Monday.

    The Purchase, New York-based company, which makes Cheetos, Tostitos and other Frito-Lay products as well as beverages, said it will cut nearly 20% of its product offerings by early next year. PepsiCo said it will use the savings to invest in marketing and improved value for consumers. It didn’t disclose which products or how much it would cut prices.

    PepsiCo said it also plans to accelerate the introduction of new offerings with simpler and more functional ingredients, including Doritos Protein and Simply NKD Cheetos and Doritos, which contain no artificial flavors or colors. The company also recently introduced a prebiotic version of its signature cola.

    PepsiCo is making the changes after prodding from Elliott Investment Management, which took a $4 billion stake in the company in September. In a letter to PepsiCo’s board, Elliott said the company is being hurt by a lack of strategic clarity, decelerating growth and eroding profitability in its North American food and beverage businesses.

    In a joint statement with PepsiCo Monday, Elliott Partner Marc Steinberg said the firm is confident that PepsiCo can create value for shareholders as it executes on its new plan.

    “We appreciate our collaborative engagement with PepsiCo’s management team and the urgency they have demonstrated,” Steinberg said. “We believe the plan announced today to invest in affordability, accelerate innovation and aggressively reduce costs will drive greater revenue and profit growth.”

    Elliott said it plans to continue working closely with the company.

    PepsiCo shares were flat in after-hours trading Monday.

    PepsiCo said it expects organic revenue to grow between 2% and 4% in 2026. The company’s organic revenue rose 1.5%. the first nine months of this year.

    PepsiCo also said it plans to review its supply chain and continue to make changes to its board, with a focus on global leaders who can help it reach its growth and profitability goals.

    “We feel encouraged about the actions and initiatives we are implementing with urgency to improve both marketplace and financial performance,” PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Ramon Laguarta said in a statement.

    PepsiCo said in February that years of double-digit price increases and changing customer preferences have weakened demand for its drinks and snacks. In July, the company said it was trying to combat perceptions that its products are too expensive by expanding distribution of value brands like Chester’s and Santitas.

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  • Google and US government battle over the future of internet advertising

    Google will confront the U.S. government’s latest attempt to topple its internet empire in federal court on Friday as a judge considers how to prevent the abusive tactics that culminated in parts of its digital ad network being branded as an illegal monopoly.

    The courtroom showdown in Alexandria, Virginia, will pit lawyers from Google and the U.S. Department of Justice against each other in closing proceedings focused on the complex technology that distributes millions of digital ads across the internet each day.

    After a lengthy trial last year, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled in April that pieces of Google’s ad technology had been rigged in a way that made it an illegal monopoly. That set up another 11-day trial earlier this fall to help Brinkema determine how to remedy its anti-competitive practices.

    Friday’s closing arguments will give both Google and the Justice Department a final chance to sway Brinkema before she issues a ruling that probably won’t come until early next year.

    The Justice Department wants Brinkema to force Google to sell some of the ad technology that it has spent nearly 20 years assembling, contending a breakup is the only way to rein in a company that the agency’s lawyers condemned as a “recidivist monopolist” in filings leading up to Friday’s hearing.

    The condemnation refers not only to Google’s practices in digital advertising but also to the illegal monopoly that it unleashed through its dominant search engine. Federal prosecutors also sought a breakup in the search monopoly case, but the judge handling that issue rejected a proposal that would have required Google to sell its popular Chrome web browser.

    Although Google is still being ordered to make reforms that it’s resisting, the outcome in the search monopoly case has been widely seen as a proverbial slap on the wrist. The belief that Google got off easy in the search case is the main reason the market value of its parent company Alphabet surged by about $950 billion, or 37%, to nearly $3.5 trillion since U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta’s decision came out in early September.

    That setback hasn’t discouraged the Justice Department from arguing for a breakup of an ad tech system that handles 55 million requests per second, according to estimates provided by Google in court filings.

    The huge volume of digital ads priced and distributed through Google’s technology is one of the main reasons that the company’s lawyers contend it would be too risky to force a dismantling of the intricate system.

    “This is technology that absolutely has to keep working for consumers,” Google argues in documents leading up to Friday’s hearing. The company’s lawyers blasted the Justice Department’s proposal as a package of “legally unprecedented and unsupported divestitures.”

    Besides arguing that its own proposed changes will bring more price transparency and foster more competition, Google is also citing market upheaval triggered by artificial intelligence as another reason for the judge to proceed cautiously with her decision.

    In his decision in the search monopoly case, Mehta reasoned that AI was already posing more competition to Google.

    But the Justice Department urged the judge to focus on the testimony from a litany of trial witnesses who outlined why Google shouldn’t be trusted to change its devious behavior.

    The witnesses “explained how Google can manipulate computer algorithms that are the engine of its monopolies in ways too difficult to detect,” the Justice Department argued in court papers.

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  • What does ‘agentic’ AI mean? Tech’s newest buzzword is a mix of marketing fluff and real promise

    For technology adopters looking for the next big thing, “agentic AI” is the future. At least, that’s what the marketing pitches and tech industry T-shirts say.

    What makes an artificial intelligence product “agentic” depends on who’s selling it. But the promise is usually that it’s a step beyond today’s generative AI chatbots.

    Chatbots, however useful, are all talk and no action. They can answer questions, retrieve and summarize information, write papers and generate images, music, video and lines of code. AI agents, by contrast, are supposed to be able to take actions on a person’s behalf.

    But if you’re confused, you’re not alone. Google searches for “agentic” have skyrocketed from near obscurity a year ago to a peak earlier this fall.

    A new report Tuesday by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Boston Consulting Group, who surveyed more than 2,000 business executives around the world, describes agentic AI as a “new class of systems” that “can plan, act, and learn on their own.”

    “They are not just tools to be operated or assistants waiting for instructions,” says the MIT Sloan Management Review report. “Increasingly, they behave like autonomous teammates, capable of executing multistep processes and adapting as they go.”

    AI chatbots — such as the original ChatGPT that debuted three years ago this month — rely on systems called large language models that predict the next word in a sentence based on the huge trove of human writings they’ve been trained on. They can sound remarkably human, especially when given a voice, but are effectively performing a kind of word completion.

    That’s different from what AI developers — including ChatGPT’s maker, OpenAI, and tech giants like Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Salesforce — have in mind for AI agents.

    “A generative AI-based chatbot will say, ‘Here are the great ideas’ … and then be done,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Agentic AI at Amazon Web Services, in an interview this week. “It’s useful, but what makes things agentic is that it goes beyond what a chatbot does.”

    Sivasubramanian, a longtime Amazon employee, took on his new role helping to lead work on AI agents in Amazon’s cloud computing division earlier this year. He sees great promise in AI systems that can be given a “high-level goal” and break it down into a series of steps and act upon them. “I truly believe agentic AI is going to be one of the biggest transformations since the beginning of the cloud,” he said.

    For most consumers, the first encounters with AI agents could be in realms like online shopping. Set a budget and some preferences and AI agents can buy things or arrange travel bookings using your credit card. In the longer run, the hope is that they can do more complex tasks with access to your computer and a set of guidelines to follow.

    “I’d love an agent that just looked at all my medical bills and explanations of benefits and figured out how to pay them,” or another one that worked like a “personal shield” fighting off email spam and phishing attempts, said Thomas Dietterich, a professor emeritus at Oregon State University who has worked on developing AI assistants for decades.

    Dietterich has some quibbles with certain companies using “agentic” to describe “any action a computer might do, including just looking things up on the web,” but he has no doubt that the technology has immense possibilities as AI systems are given the “freedom and responsibility” to refine goals and respond to changing conditions as they work on people’s behalf.

    “We can imagine a world in which there are thousands or millions of agents operating and they can form coalitions,” Dietterich said. “Can they form cartels? Would there be law enforcement (AI) agents?

    Milind Tambe has been researching AI agents that work together for three decades, since the first International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems gathered in San Francisco in 1995. Tambe said he’s been “amused” by the sudden popularity of “agentic” as an adjective. Previously, the word describing something that has agency was mostly found in other academic fields, such as psychology or chemistry.

    But computer scientists have been debating what an agent is for as long as Tambe has been studying them.

    In the 1990s, “people agreed that some software appeared more like an agent, and some felt less like an agent, and there was not a perfect dividing line,” said Tambe, a professor at Harvard University. “Nonetheless, it seemed useful to use the word ‘agent’ to describe software or robotic entities acting autonomously in an environment, sensing the environment, reacting to it, planning, thinking.”

    The prominent AI researcher Andrew Ng, co-founder of online learning company Coursera, helped advocate for popularizing the adjective “agentic” more than a year ago to encompass a broader spectrum of AI tasks. At the time, he also appreciated that mainly “technical people” were describing it that way.

    “When I see an article that talks about ‘agentic’ workflows, I’m more likely to read it, since it’s less likely to be marketing fluff and more likely to have been written by someone who understands the technology,” Ng wrote in a June 2024 blog post.

    Ng didn’t respond to requests for comment on whether he still thinks that.

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  • From Bollywood to bodegas, Mamdani’s mayoral campaign found visual inspiration in unlikely corners

    NEW YORK — The vivid blue campaign signs with bold orange lettering were impossible to miss as Zohran Mamdani made his historic and improbable run for New York City mayor this summer.

    On storefront windows and telephone poles from Queens to the Bronx, the “Zohran for New York City” signs stood out from the standard red, white and blue campaign fodder. The lettering was seen by many as an intentional reference to old-school Bollywood posters — a subtle nod to Mamdani’s Indian heritage.

    But Aneesh Bhoopathy, the Philadelphia-based graphic designer behind the visuals, said the campaign also drew from the vibrant primary colors that help bodegas, yellow cabs, hot dog vendors and other small businesses stand out amid the city bustle.

    The stylized font — with its drop shadow effect and vintage comic book look — was meant to evoke the old school, hand-painted signs that can still be found in some neighborhoods, he said.

    “Succinctly, it’s New York,” said Bhoopathy, who previously lived in New York and helped on past campaigns for Mamdani and the Queens chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

    It was also trendsetting.

    Mamdani’s main adversary, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, even rebranded midcampaign. The Democrat initially launched his mayoral run using a red, white and blue color scheme and a decidedly unfussy font, reminiscent of bumper stickers used by President John F. Kennedy in 1960.

    But after his defeat to Mamdani in the June Democratic primary, Cuomo kicked off his general election run as an independent candidate by rolling out a new logo featuring the silhouette of the Statue of Liberty’s crown and a new color scheme: blue and orange — Mamdani’s colors, but also the colors of the Knicks and Mets.

    Mamdani, who will be the city’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor, is the son of two prominent Indian American luminaries, Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani and filmmaker Mira Nair, who is known for “Monsoon Wedding” and other Hollywood films.

    The campaign’s aesthetic wasn’t merely stylistic, observed David Schwittek, a professor of digital media and graphic design at Lehman College, a city-owned college in the Bronx.

    “They evoke the working-class fabric of New York City: the bodegas, taxi cabs, and halal carts that not only sustain the city but also reflect its cultural richness,” he said.

    The decidedly retro vibe also likely helped foster “positive associations to happier political times,” at least among Democratic voters, suggested Gavan Fitzsimons, a business professor at Duke University who studies the impact of branding on voters and consumers.

    “It has the feel of something from a prior era, an earlier time when politics was less divisive and the Democrats were perhaps more organized, more successful,” he said.

    The branding was reminiscent of the distinctive campaign font that became a calling card for U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another youthful liberal New Yorker who shot to political fame, said Richard Flanagan, a political science professor at the College of Staten Island.

    The Democrat’s posters during her stunning 2018 victory over U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley for a seat representing parts of Queens and the Bronx similarly drew on her heritage and working class New York.

    The brightly-colored, upward slanting lettering reminded some of prewar labor union designs and others of Mexican “Lucha libre” flyers, particularly since it incorporated the inverted exclamation mark used in written Spanish.

    Court Stroud, a marketing professor at New York University, said it’s difficult to quantify how much the campaign visuals contributed to Mamdani’s success, but they certainly made him recognizable and memorable in an initially crowded field of mayoral hopefuls.

    “The playfulness of his campaign design created a brand that supporters wanted to wear and share,” he said. “Mamdani’s team showed how using visual design as a secret handshake can make politics feel real and community driven.”

    Campaign experts said it’s also too early to say whether Mamdani’s campaign designs will ultimately have the same staying power nationally as Ocasio-Cortez’s distinctive look, which has since become a staple of progressive candidate branding.

    “It’s still rare for candidates to move away from the tried and true red, white, and blue,” said Lisa Burns, a professor of media studies at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. “I don’t see that changing any time soon.”

    The popularity of Mamdani’s designs were certainly felt during the New York City mayoral race, helping inspire off-beat, viral campaigns such as the “Hot Girls for Zohran” merch worn by model Emily Ratajkowski and other young celebs.

    Schwittek said the key takeaway from Mamdani’s visual coup was that effective branding isn’t generic or safe, but specific and deliberate.

    “In a sea of sanitized political messaging, Mamdani’s visuals stand out because they mean something,” he said. “That’s the lesson.”

    Good campaign design should also still ring true to the candidate, added Bhoopathy.

    “None of the boldness and vibrancy here works without a candidate that is as energetic and full of life as the city that raised him,” he said.

    ___

    Follow Philip Marcelo at https://x.com/philmarcelo

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  • Google’s corporate parent posts first-ever quarter with $100B in revenue in latest show of its power

    SAN FRANCISCO — Google’s corporate parent on Wednesday announced its first-ever quarter with more than $100 billion in revenue, a milestone that illustrates the unwavering power of its internet empire amid legal and competitive threats.

    The news of Alphabet Inc.’s accelerating growth in revenue and profit comes on the heels of a court ruling in the U.S. Justice Department’s landmark monopoly case against Google’s dominant search engine that was widely seen as a mild rebuke that wouldn’t hobble the company.

    Alphabet performed like a powerhouse during the July-September period, delivering a profit of nearly $35 billion, or $2.87 per share, a 33% increase from the same time last year. Revenue rose 16% from last year to $102.3 billion. Both figures easily exceeded the analysts’ projections that steer the stock market.

    Investors celebrated the third-quarter numbers by driving up Alphabet’s stock price nearly 5% in Wednesday’s extended trading.

    That’s on top of a 30% surge in Alphabet’s shares that has created nearly $770 billion in stockholder wealth since early September. That’s when U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta rejected a Justice Department proposal to break up Google to curb the abuses of a search engine that was declared an illegal monopoly last year.

    Mehta’s cautious handling of Google’s search monopoly largely reflected his belief that rapid advances in artificial intelligence technology have already been spawning conversational “answer engines” from rising tech stars such as ChatGPT and Perplexity that are giving consumers more options.

    ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI and Perplexity have released AI-powered web browsers to compete against Google’s industry-leading Chrome browser that the Justice Department had unsuccessfully tried to persuade Mehta to order to be sold.

    But Google has been implanting more AI features into both its search engine and Chrome, as well as its other products, as part of its effort to protect its turf while also expanding into new technological frontiers. In a sign of the inroads those efforts are making, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai disclosed Wednesday that Google’s AI-powered Gemini app now has 650 million monthly users.

    Like other major tech companies, Google has been bankrolling its AI ambitions with a spending spree that has raised worries about a potential bubble that will eventually burst. Alphabet now expects to budget $91 billion to $93 billion for capital expenditures this year, up from $85 billion in its previous quarterly report issued in July, with most of the money earmarked for the massive data centers needed to power AI.

    Alphabet has the luxury of drawing upon a lucrative ad network that Google has spent a quarter century building. Google’s ad sales totaled $74.2 billion in the third quarter, a 13% increase from last year.

    The AI craze has been a boon for Google’s Cloud division that oversees data centers for other companies, an endeavor that has turned into the fastest growing part of Alphabet. Google Cloud posted revenue of $15.2 billion in the past quarter, up 34% from last year.

    Although Google appears to have fared relatively well in the legal attack on its search engine, it still faces a potentially damaging blow in another case brought by the Justice Department against the technology underlying its ad network.

    After condemning parts of Google’s ad technology as an illegal monopoly earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema is considering ways to handcuff the company in the future. The Justice Department is seeking a court order to force Google to sell pieces of its ad network — an issue that Brinkema isn’t expected to rule on until early next year.

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  • Maryland tax on digital ads violated Big Tech’s free speech, judges say

    ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland’s first-in-the-nation tax on digital advertising violated the Constitution, a federal appeals court says, because blocking Big Tech from telling customers about the tax violates the companies’ right to free speech.

    Supporters say Maryland needed to overhaul its tax methods in response to significant changes in how businesses advertise. The tax focuses on large companies that make money advertising on the internet such as Meta, Google and Amazon, who say they’re being unfairly targeted.

    The ongoing legal fight is being watched by other states that are considering taxes for online ads. Maryland estimated the tax could raise about $250 million a year to help pay for a sweeping K-12 education measure.

    Maryland’s law says the companies must not only pay the tax, but avoid telling customers how it affects pricing, with no line items, surcharges or fees, said the appeals court Friday in siding with trade associations fighting the tax.

    Judge Julius Richardson cited the Colonial-era Stamp Act, which helped spark the Revolutionary War, and wrote that “criticizing the government — for taxes or anything else — is important discourse in a democratic society.”

    The plaintiffs contended Maryland lawmakers were trying to insulate themselves from criticism and political accountability by forbidding companies from explaining the tax to their customers.

    “A state cannot duck criticism by silencing those affected by its tax,” the judge wrote.

    The unanimous ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a decision by U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby and sends the case back to her with instructions to consider an appropriate remedy in light of the panel’s decision.

    Trade groups praised the decision.

    “Maryland tried to prevent criticism of its tax scheme, and the Fourth Circuit recognized that tactic for what it was: censorship,” said Paul Taske, co-director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, said in a statement.

    Maryland Comptroller Brooke Lierman, who is the defendant in the case, and the Maryland attorney general’s office, who is representing the state, declined to comment Monday.

    The law has been challenged in multiple legal venues, including Maryland Tax Court, where the case is ongoing.

    The law imposes a tax based on global annual gross revenues for companies that make more than $100 million globally.

    Under the law, the tax rate is 2.5% for businesses making more than $100 million in global gross annual revenue; 5% for companies making $1 billion or more; 7.5% for companies making $5 billion or more and 10% for companies making $15 billion or more.

    The Maryland General Assembly, which is controlled by Democrats, overrode a veto of the legislation in 2021 by then-Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican.

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  • Google begins its defense in antitrust case alleging monopoly over ad technology

    Google begins its defense in antitrust case alleging monopoly over ad technology

    ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.

    “The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years,” said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company’s first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.

    The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.

    Google counters that the government’s case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google’s lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.

    Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.

    Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.

    The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent publishers from making as much money as they otherwise could for selling their ad space.

    It also says that Google’s technology, when used on all facets of an ad transaction, allows Google to keep 36 cents on the dollar of any particular ad purchase, billions of which occur every single day.

    Executives at media companies like Gannett, which publishes USA Today, and News Corp., which owns the Wall Streel Journal and Fox News, have said that Google dominates the landscape with technology used by publishers to sell ad space as well as by advertisers looking to buy it. The products are tied together so publishers have to use Google’s technology if they want easy access to its large cache of advertisers.

    The government said in its complaint filed last year that at a minimum Google should be forced to sell off the portion of its business that caters to publishers, to break up its dominance.

    In his testimony Friday, Sheffer explained how Google’s tools have evolved over the years and how it vetted publishers and advertisers to guard against issues like malware and fraud.

    The trial began Sept. 9, just a month after a judge in the District of Columbia declared Google’s core business, its ubiquitous search engine, an illegal monopoly. That trial is still ongoing to determine what remedies, if any, the judge may impose.

    The ad technology at question in the Virginia case does not generate the same kind of revenue for Google as its search engine does, but is still believed to bring in tens of billions of dollars annually.

    Overseas, regulators have also accused Google of anticompetitive conduct. But the company won a victory this week when a an EU court overturned a 1.49 billion euro ($1.66 billion) antitrust fine imposed five years ago that targeted a different segment of the company’s online advertising business.

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  • Marketing exec wants to shift Verizon’s transactional image into one more tied to people’s lives

    Marketing exec wants to shift Verizon’s transactional image into one more tied to people’s lives

    NEW YORK — Verizon Communications has long enjoyed its position as the leading provider of mobile services in the U.S. But a new trend of price-conscious customers holding onto their old phones has hurt the bottom line for telecom companies seeking to capitalize off the sale of new mobile phone lines.

    Enter Verizon Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland, who joined the telecom giant in January. She was Twitter’s first chief marketing officer nearly a decade ago and spent about a year at Peloton after leaving the social media platform in 2022. She started at Verizon in January and announced the company’s first rebrand in nine years, including a bold update to the iconic checkmark logo.

    The rebrand has been paired with fresh promotion of Verizon’s myPlan platform, which allows customers to pick and pay for select services. Verizon also announced a partnerships with streaming services — such as Netflix and Disney — to offer promotional bundles.

    Berland spoke to The Associated Press about the strategy behind the rebrand, and why it was necessary to keep the company growing. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

    Answer: Verizon is an extremely known brand in this country. I think it’s about 99% awareness. And what the research will show you is that we are seen as a respected, trusted, reliable brand and company. And that is a dream state for any company, big or small, right?

    But what we also found is that because so much of what Verizon does is invisible. You don’t see it and you don’t feel it, (the service) just works. And so what we saw in the research, there is sort of a distance between the brand and the consumer. So yes, we’re a (telecom) company but we’re also a life company, but people don’t think about us in their day-to-day life. So the challenge for us is to make our invisible visible and bring forward the things that we do in a meaningful and authentic way and show the role we play in people’s lives.

    The other thing that we looked at from a marketing perspective and advertising perspective is the (telecom) space, where, over time, it’s become a sea of sameness. A lot of the language is the same. The formats are very similar, a lot of the creative is similar. So it is really our opportunity now to be very bold and really breakthrough in a way that is meaningful to the consumer.

    A: The checkmark came out about nine years ago. It was introduced with the intention to show and emphasize the reliability (of the Verizon brand). But for a brand that now very much needs and should reflect an emotional and personal connection, the check is a very transactional sort of symbol.

    The other thing that we found with the check mark is that because it’s a generic symbol there’s relatively low awareness from consumers of the check’s association with Verizon. Given how well known we are, our logo should be something that is very resonant. So we moved the check into the V.

    We really see this as hearkening back to the origins of the Verizon name — veritas and horizon — life and what’s possible with the potential of life. So we brought those two things together in the design. So we’re using a lighter red and then we have the glow of the horizon in the middle of the V. That’s how we transitioned to what we now call the glow V.

    A: Over the years, absolutely. And (social media) continues to change and evolve at a very rapid place, especially the creator economy. And so what you’re pointing to is really very much a fragmentation of channels where people are absorb information each and every day, often throughout their day.

    The opportunity is that you can really reach the right customer with the right message at the right time in the channel that makes the most sense. So I think what’s involved is that there needs to be a deep understanding of these platforms. This is not something that you can fake. You really need to live it. You need to use these platforms. You need to understand it. The teams working on it need to understand it. Because it’s a science but very much an art.

    The speed at which the conversation changes is absolutely dynamic and surely has changed everything we’ve done as marketers over the years and will continue to do so.

    A: The industry over the years has had to become much more sophisticated around misinformation — among many other things that are not in our control — and so our response has evolved very rapidly.

    So over time, there has been increased amount of tools and monitoring and tracking and assessment and even polices to to assess, track, evolve and be agile in our response to misinformation.

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  • Marketing exec wants to shift Verizon’s transactional image into one more tied to people’s lives

    Marketing exec wants to shift Verizon’s transactional image into one more tied to people’s lives

    NEW YORK (AP) — Verizon Communications has long enjoyed its position as the leading provider of mobile services in the U.S. But a new trend of price-conscious customers holding onto their old phones has hurt the bottom line for telecom companies seeking to capitalize off the sale of new mobile phone lines.

    Enter Verizon Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland, who joined the telecom giant in January. She was Twitter’s first chief marketing officer nearly a decade ago and spent about a year at Peloton after leaving the social media platform in 2022. She started at Verizon in January and announced the company’s first rebrand in nine years, including a bold update to the iconic checkmark logo.

    The rebrand has been paired with fresh promotion of Verizon’s myPlan platform, which allows customers to pick and pay for select services. Verizon also announced a partnerships with streaming services — such as Netflix and Disney — to offer promotional bundles.

    Berland spoke to The Associated Press about the strategy behind the rebrand, and why it was necessary to keep the company growing. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

    Question: What compelled Verizon to rebrand now?

    Answer: Verizon is an extremely known brand in this country. I think it’s about 99% awareness. And what the research will show you is that we are seen as a respected, trusted, reliable brand and company. And that is a dream state for any company, big or small, right?

    But what we also found is that because so much of what Verizon does is invisible. You don’t see it and you don’t feel it, (the service) just works. And so what we saw in the research, there is sort of a distance between the brand and the consumer. So yes, we’re a (telecom) company but we’re also a life company, but people don’t think about us in their day-to-day life. So the challenge for us is to make our invisible visible and bring forward the things that we do in a meaningful and authentic way and show the role we play in people’s lives.

    The other thing that we looked at from a marketing perspective and advertising perspective is the (telecom) space, where, over time, it’s become a sea of sameness. A lot of the language is the same. The formats are very similar, a lot of the creative is similar. So it is really our opportunity now to be very bold and really breakthrough in a way that is meaningful to the consumer.

    Q: What was the thinking going into integrating the iconic checkmark into the V in Verizon?

    A: The checkmark came out about nine years ago. It was introduced with the intention to show and emphasize the reliability (of the Verizon brand). But for a brand that now very much needs and should reflect an emotional and personal connection, the check is a very transactional sort of symbol.

    The other thing that we found with the check mark is that because it’s a generic symbol there’s relatively low awareness from consumers of the check’s association with Verizon. Given how well known we are, our logo should be something that is very resonant. So we moved the check into the V.

    We really see this as hearkening back to the origins of the Verizon name — veritas and horizon — life and what’s possible with the potential of life. So we brought those two things together in the design. So we’re using a lighter red and then we have the glow of the horizon in the middle of the V. That’s how we transitioned to what we now call the glow V.

    Q: Has the decentralization of social media affected your approach to branding and marketing at all?

    A: Over the years, absolutely. And (social media) continues to change and evolve at a very rapid place, especially the creator economy. And so what you’re pointing to is really very much a fragmentation of channels where people are absorb information each and every day, often throughout their day.

    The opportunity is that you can really reach the right customer with the right message at the right time in the channel that makes the most sense. So I think what’s involved is that there needs to be a deep understanding of these platforms. This is not something that you can fake. You really need to live it. You need to use these platforms. You need to understand it. The teams working on it need to understand it. Because it’s a science but very much an art.

    The speed at which the conversation changes is absolutely dynamic and surely has changed everything we’ve done as marketers over the years and will continue to do so.

    Q: Are you concerned about AI-generated misinformation involving the Verizon brand? And how do you scan for that?

    A: The industry over the years has had to become much more sophisticated around misinformation — among many other things that are not in our control — and so our response has evolved very rapidly.

    So over time, there has been increased amount of tools and monitoring and tracking and assessment and even polices to to assess, track, evolve and be agile in our response to misinformation.

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  • They look like — and link to — real news articles. But they’re actually ads from the Harris campaign

    They look like — and link to — real news articles. But they’re actually ads from the Harris campaign

    If you’re not looking too closely, some recent Kamala Harris ads may give the false impression that some leading news organizations are taking sides in the campaign for president.

    The advertisements, which have turned up in some Google search feeds, include links to legitimate news stories but feature — in words that appear to be headlines from the originating news organizations — pro-Harris messages written by the Democrat’s campaign. They were revealed in an article by Axios this week.

    Google and the campaign defend the practice as legitimate and legal, used in the past by both Democrats and Republicans. But it has raised concern from some of the outlets and others.

    Said Jane Kirtley, a media ethics professor at the University of Minnesota: “What it’s about is confusion and deception.”

    Assorted methods of advertising

    While television remains the dominant form of political advertising, the under-the-radar Google ads also indicate there will be many different ways political campaigns try to reach voters this fall.

    The Google ads have popped up for consumers making searches, usually in targeted geographic regions. One ad, for example, has the headline, “VP Harris’s Economic Vision — Lower Costs and Higher Wages.” Copy underneath reads, “a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by but to get ahead. We won’t go back to the failed trickle-down policies that hurt working families.”

    The ad includes a link to a story on The Associated Press’ website, where those messages do not appear. Similarly, an ad that links to a story by The Guardian says Harris “is a champion for reproductive freedom and will stop Trump’s abortion bans.”

    A spokesman for the Guardian said that “while we understand why an organization might wish to align itself with the Guardian’s trusted brand, we need to ensure that it is being used appropriately and with our permission. We’ll be reaching out to Google for more information about this practice.”

    The AP also said it was unaware that one of its articles was being used for this purpose. “AP’s journalism is independent, fact-based and non partisan and must not be misrepresented in any way,” spokesman Patrick Maks said.

    Other Google search ads have run using material from CBS News, CNN, Time, PBS and USA Today, according to the Google Ads Transparency Center.

    There is no indication that any of the linked articles were altered in any way. But Kirtley said she questioned how many people who see the advertisement will click on those links, and instead mistakenly think the ads were quoting from the articles. For news organizations, that’s crucially important at a time they’re fighting against perceptions of bias by some in the public.

    “Their brand is being co-opted for political advertising without permission or prior knowledge,” she said. “It’s fine if they chose to endorse someone, but you don’t want your reporting to be turned into an endorsement.”

    News content used outside of news spaces

    It’s not the only instance of news outlets needing to be cognizant of their work being used in a political context in an unauthorized way. The AP would not discuss on Thursday whether it has needed to take action to prevent unauthorized uses of its now-iconic photograph of former President Donald Trump following an assassination attempt this summer; it will reportedly be on the cover of Trump’s upcoming book.

    Google notes that the Harris ads are clearly labeled as “sponsored” so they are distinguishable from regular search results, and reveal that they are paid for by the Harris campaign. “It’s fairly common for advertisers to link out to or cite external websites, including news sites, in their ads,” Google said in a statement.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    Indeed, the campaigns of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn used similar Google ads during Republican primary campaigns. But in 2017, Facebook decided to ban a similar practice in its advertising after the Wall Street Journal raised questions about it.

    The Harris Google ad campaign seems limited in scope. The ads linking to Guardian and AP articles both appeared only in searches by users in the swing state of Pennsylvania, and both have appeared less than 2,000 times, according to the Ads Transparency Center. The Harris campaign said it had no plans to discontinue the ads.

    “I just don’t think it’s a big deal,” said Robert Shrum, a veteran Democratic political strategist and director of the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California.

    Harris’ Google effort is an indication that campaigns will be searching for new and creative ways to reach voters in the next few months, said Steve Caplan, who is teaching a class in political advertising at USC this fall. One expected trend: an explosion of commercials on streaming services like Netflix that never used to accept advertising.

    “You’re trying to find new and innovative ways to break through in a media environment that’s very cluttered, and that takes strategy and creativity,” Caplan said.

    Still, television ads — especially in swing states — are expected to dominate.

    ___

    Associated Press correspondent Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco contributed to this report. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder.

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  • Elon Musk’s X sues advertisers over alleged ‘massive advertiser boycott’ after Twitter takeover

    Elon Musk’s X sues advertisers over alleged ‘massive advertiser boycott’ after Twitter takeover

    WICHITA FALLS, Tex. — Elon Musk’s social media platform X has sued a group of advertisers, alleging that a “massive advertiser boycott” deprived the company of billions of dollars in revenue and violated antitrust laws.

    The company formerly known as Twitter filed the lawsuit Tuesday in a federal court in Texas against the World Federation of Advertisers and member companies Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted.

    It accused the advertising group’s initiative, called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, of helping to coordinate a pause in advertising after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 and overhauled its staff and policies.

    Musk posted about the lawsuit on X on Tuesday, saying “now it is war” after two years of being nice and “getting nothing but empty words.”

    X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a video announcement that the lawsuit stemmed in part from evidence uncovered by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee which she said showed a “group of companies organized a systematic illegal boycott” against X.

    The Republican-led committee had a hearing last month looking at whether current laws are “sufficient to deter anticompetitive collusion in online advertising.”

    The lawsuit’s allegations center on the early days of Musk’s Twitter takeover and not a more recent dispute with advertisers that came a year later.

    In November 2023, about a year after Musk bought the company, a number of advertisers began fleeing X over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content and hate speech on the site in general, with Musk inflaming tensions with his own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

    Musk later said those fleeing advertisers were engaging in “blackmail” and, using a profanity, essentially told them to go away.

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  • Amazon Prime Day deals are almost here. Should you take advantage of them?

    Amazon Prime Day deals are almost here. Should you take advantage of them?

    NEW YORK — It’s summertime, and the bargains seem easy at a time when many consumer prices are high.

    July sales events have become a seasonal revenue driver for the retail industry since Amazon launched its first Prime Day back in 2015. While consumers may be enticed by the advertised can’t-miss savings on some products, personal finance experts say shoppers should be careful not to fall for potentially misleading marketing or give in to impulse buys.

    Amazon has drummed up expectations in recent weeks for its 10th Prime Day event, which will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday and is open only to customers who pay $14.99 per month, or $139 per year, to receive free shipping and other perks as Prime members.

    Rival retailers tried in the past to capture some of the Prime Day excitement by offering their own discounts during the two-day event. This year, Walmart, Target, Kohl’s, and newcomers TikTok Shop and Temu launched summer promotions ahead of Amazon, hoping to siphon off some of the e-commerce giant’s savings-hungry shoppers. Meanwhile, Macy’s will be rolling out what it calls its “best summer deals” during an eight-day discount event that begins on Tuesday.

    July sales help retailers attract customers who are looking to get a head start on back-to-school shopping, which is the industry’s second-most important shopping season behind the winter holiday period. The markdowns also pull in some discretionary spending from shoppers who’ve had their eyes on gadgets, household products and seasonal items, such as a bikini or a new summer dress.

    Discounts can help retailers combat “a summer lull in retail spending” as consumers shift their spending to summer vacations and services, like going out to eat at restaurants, according to John Mercer, the head of global research at Coresight Research.

    “It drives a bit of excitement in that mid-year period,” when retailers may otherwise struggle to generate more revenue, Mercer said. Companies also have relied on discounts to drive consumer spending during the recent period of inflation and high interest rates, he said.

    Amazon doesn’t disclose how much revenue it pulls in from Prime Day, but it has given some indications of its success. The company said last year’s event resulted in the “single largest sales day” in the company’s history, with customers purchasing more than 375 million items.

    An estimate from market research firm Emarketer indicated Amazon’s global sales on Prime Day went up to $12.5 billion in 2023. The firm forecasts sales to jump roughly 7% this year.

    It depends on who you ask.

    Retailers hype up their promotions to pull people in. But the New York Times-owned product review website Wirecutter published an article this month saying most of Amazon’s early deals this year so far “stink.”

    Santa Clara University business professor Kirthi Kalyanam, who is writing a book about Amazon, said Prime Day offers have been good, historically. That’s because the company was able to source discounts from well-known brands such as Apple and to incentivize third-party sellers to lower their prices by promising to feature them prominently on the Amandon website, according to Halyanam.

    But Prime Day discounts may matter less these days because customers are getting accustomed to the ultra-cheap products sold by Amazon competitors Shein and Temu, which were both founded in China.

    “Many of (the) deals may not be as competitive compared to Temu and Shien,” Kalyanam said.

    At the same time, he noted rival retailers will most likely be looking at Amazon’s prices and trying to match them overnight. Last week, he said he saw Best Buy discount two products after Amazon revealed some of its early deals.

    Consumer data company Numerator reported that a majority of the roughly 5,000 Prime Day shoppers it surveyed after last year’s event saw product discounts of up to 40%. Survey respondents said they saw a quarter of items selling at a discount of 60% or more.

    Some shopping experts have said that some past Prime discounts were not as big as they appeared.

    If you’re watching your budget, personal finance experts say you should exercise caution before you buy.

    “Avoid the false sense of urgency of manufactured holidays,” advises Mark Elliot, chief customer officer at financial services company LendingClub. “The idea that ‘The more you spend, the more you save’ — that’s just definitionally not true.”

    Dan Egan, a vice president at financial advising and investment company Betterment, says shoppers should make a list of what they need before the sales begin to be intentional about purchases. He also encourages consumers to avoid shopping late at night or out of boredom.

    “Once you have a list, it’s less likely you’ll get distracted by things you don’t need,” Egan said. “If that list contains almost nothing, I would say to delete the (retailers’) apps off your phone for the next week or two. Or you’re going to get lots of notifications.”

    Any shopper already carrying a credit card balance should keep in mind that the interest paid on that balance could end up cancelling out any perceived savings from a summer sale purchase, he added.

    “A deal is not a deal if you have to pay interest on it,” Egan said.

    While it may make sense for shoppers to try out free or temporary memberships to qualify for the best deals during the summer sales, those programs typically charge a fee to the customer’s credit card on file after a short period of time, noted Erin Witte, the Consumer Federation of America’s director of consumer protection.

    “Set a calendar reminder to cancel if you don’t want to go through with that subscription,” Witte said. “Think about it right at the beginning. And remember that these companies design this product to make it easy to sign up, but more difficult to cancel.”

    Consumer Reports also offers a few tips: Download Amazon’s app, sign-up for invite-only deals available for a select group of shoppers, and join the waitlist on limited-time offers that are already sold out.

    Filling up an online Amazon cart is tempting for Prime members since they are paying for access to Prime Day deals. But it’s always a smart idea to compare prices across multiple websites before completing a purchase.

    Unlike Prime Day offers, Walmart’s discount event this month was open to everyone. However, the company sweetened the deal for its Walmart+ members by offering them early access.

    Target only offered discounts to shoppers enrolled in its Target Circle loyalty program and used the weeklong event to promote a new membership program that aims to rejuvenate sales and traffic.

    TikTok Shop, the e-commerce arm of the popular video-sharing app, opened its summer sales event to everyone. The event started on July 9 and runs until Wednesday.

    _______

    The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.

    ‘

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  • Want to feel special? Stores and restaurants with paid memberships are betting on it

    Want to feel special? Stores and restaurants with paid memberships are betting on it

    NEW YORK — How much does it cost to feel special?

    At Chuck E- Cheese, the family entertainment and pizza chain, the price is $7.99, $11.99 or $29.99 per month. At the other end of the spectrum, the founder of a shopping app called Long Story Short wants to charge members $1,000 monthly for anonymous access to such hard-to-get goods as a rare Keith Haring artwork.

    Paid loyalty programs are all the rage in the restaurant and retail worlds. Looking for reliable sales in an unpredictable spending environment, more companies have extended their points-based loyalty tiers to making their most dependable customers feel valued for an up-front fee.

    Consumers bombarded with membership offers are promised perks such as free deliveries and first dibs on new launches, but also in some cases the right to jump ahead of non-members on reservation lists and in customer service queues.

    It’s a method rooted in both the business case for treating big spenders well – it’s cheaper for businesses to keep an existing customer than to find a new one — and in the fundamental human need for belonging, said Valerie Folkes, a consumer psychologist and marketing professor emerita at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.

    “If they’re seated earlier than other people or there’s a special line for them at the registers, then they feel they’re special,” Folkes said. “It makes them feel that there’s a stronger link or a bond between themselves and the company.”

    In retailing, Target Corp. is taking on the Amazon Prime juggernaut with a paid loyalty program that will cost $49 a year between April 7 and May 18, and $99 annually thereafter. Members of Target Circle 360 can expect free two-day shipping and free deliveries of orders over $35 in as little as an hour, the company announced last week.

    Target executives said the 100 million-plus customers enrolled in the company’s free Target Circle loyalty plan already spend five times more than non-members. CEO Brian Cornell told The Associated Press the hope is the new paid membership “builds more relevance, more stickiness.”

    Chuck E. Cheese piloted a paid program with bronze, silver and gold tiers in Santee, California in December and launched it in the rest of the San Diego area in February. The program offers discounts on food and drinks and freebies like cotton candy. Members also receive free “play points,” which allow customers to play arcade games and get snacks, and e-tickets, which are typically earned from playing arcade games and redeemed for prizes. The tickets and points are automatically loaded on to the customer’s card.

    Gold tier members, for example, pay $29.99 per month, received 50% off their meals and earn 1,000 tickets. Bronze members, who pay $7.99 a month, have food and beverages discounted at 20% and get 200 tickets. The higher the tier, the better discounts and the more e-tickets and play points customers get.

    Mark Kupferman, the company’s chief insights and marketing officer, said the program offers good value for repeat customers at a time when families paying higher costs for basic necessities may feel financially stretched.

    “So this gives them options that they can come more often,“ Kupferman said. ”We want our members to feel special.”

    For companies concerned about churn rates, creating a fee-based loyalty program can seem like a win-win in terms of revenue. A 2020 McKinsey survey found members of paid loyalty programs were 60% more likely to spend more on the brand after opting in, while free loyalty programs only increased that likelihood by 30%.

    E-commerce site Hive Brands, a startup launched in 2020, wants to be the go-to online marketplace for eco-friendly cleaning products, toiletries and pantry staples from soup to nuts. But after finding shoppers not returning as frequently as hoped, it launched a loyalty program in January that costs $60 a year.

    Members get speedier shipping and a $120 credit for recurring deliveries. Hive also plans to tag them for priority treatment to ensure their inquiries or orders are dealt with first.

    “Customer care across the board for us is really important. And so we make that pretty democratic,” Hive co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer Katie Tyson said. “However, there’s lots of incremental opportunities that members are going to get with Hive in a way that nonmembers can not.”

    Tech entrepreneur Joseph Einhorn, the founder of Fancy, a shopping and scrapbooking site, is looking to take VIP rewards to a new level with Long Story Short. The $1,000 a month app still is in a testing phase, but several hundred potential power shoppers have created accounts to apply for membership, Einhorn said.

    Once admitted, they can view roughly 50,000 hand-selected luxury items, including rare watches and a private island. Members also can request to have items procured for them anonymously, and Einhorn’s team will serve as a go-between to get the best price, he said.

    “We are like a concierge,” he said. “We can get you anything and will be a buffer between you and wherever it has to come from.”

    As the number of loyalty programs with entry costs rises in the mass market, however, some experts think businesses run the risk of making customers who can’t afford to opt in feel left out and diminished.

    Alexander Chernev, a marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, said shoppers previously satisfied with the customer service they were getting may become dissatisfied when they see others getting more.

    “It’s about whether the extra benefits ( … ) are at the expense of someone else,” Chernev said.

    Walmart was the recent subject of complaints on social media from customers who noticed some self-checkout kiosks reserved for Walmart+ members, who pay $98 per year for free next-day and two-day shipping on many online orders.

    Walmart spokeswoman Kelsey Bohl said that during times of limited self-checkout access, some stores were designating select self-serve registers for Walmart+ members using the retailer’s Scan and Go app and for independent contractors who make deliveries and returns for the chain and other stores.

    “The decision is intended to better manage checkout availability,” she noted in an emailed statement to The Associated Press.

    Some skeptics think paid memberships might be a way for companies to disguise cost increases or to cheat their subscribers by changing the program perks down the road.

    Anna McDonald, a senior technical writer who lives in Valparaiso, Indiana, said she’s not happy that video streaming services have started adding charges for ad-free viewing. She’s noticed hotels increasingly charging an extra fee for a flexible reservation cancellations or cutting back on providing new sheets and towels daily.

    “If you’re providing a service, it should be providing the full customer service,” McDonald, 40, said. “There are some basics that come with that. And companies are just trying to nickel and dime to the basics.”

    ___

    AP Airlines writer David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.

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  • Hong Kong lifts curbs on property market, to spend more on tourism

    Hong Kong lifts curbs on property market, to spend more on tourism

    HONG KONG — Hong Kong’s government has lifted curbs on property deals after home prices fell to a seven-year low, adding to the Chinese territory’s woes.

    Finance minister Paul Chan announced the move in a speech presenting the territory’s budget, which also raised spending on tourism promotion. He said all curbs, such as extra taxes, imposed earlier to cool the property market would be lifted with immediate effect.

    Home prices have fallen for nine consecutive months and share prices have languished as a tightening of freedoms in the former British colony has rattled investors. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s tourism has not fully rebounded after it reopened to foreign travelers following the COVID-19 pandemic. China’s slowing economy has also impacted Hong Kong’s recovery.

    Chan said the limits on property transactions were “no longer necessary amid the current economic and market conditions.”

    The government lifted a 15% stamp duty imposed on non-permanent residents who buy property in Hong Kong and a 15% stamp duty charged on purchases of a second property.

    Homeowners also no longer must pay a separate duty on sales of homes purchased less than two years before.

    Chan said more measures might be taken to ease property lending.

    “We consider that there is now room to make further adjustments to the relevant measures and other supervisory policies pertinent to property lending where appropriate, under the premise of maintaining the stability of the banking system,” Chan said.

    Last year, the city reduced by half taxes charged on home purchases by non-permanent resident homebuyers and those buying additional properties.

    Shares of property developers in Hong Kong jumped after the scrapping of cooling measures was announced. Henderson Land’s shares rose 4.1%, while New World Development’s soared 5.9%. Sun Hung Kai Properties jumped 4.1%.

    As an additional tourist attraction, Chan said the city will revamp its light show on scenic Victoria Harbor and stage monthly pyrotechnic and drone shows over the waterfront.

    Another $100 million Hong Kong dollars ($12.8 million) will go to promoting big events in the city, highlighting activities like hiking and cycling and creating a new tourism brand to “soft-sell” Hong Kong, he said.

    The city also will collaborate with mainland Chinese cities to boost tourism in the Greater Bay Area surrounding Hong Kong.

    Mainland Chinese tourists are the majority of visitors to Hong Kong. Over the Lunar New Year holidays, Hong Kong recorded nearly 1.44 million visitors to the city, nearly 90% of them from the mainland.

    Britain handed control of Hong Kong back to Beijing in 1997, with an agreement that the territory would be allowed to keep many of its Western style freedoms, such as a separate legal system and freedom of the press, for a half century. However many of those civil liberties have been curtailed with the enforcement of national security legislation following a wave of mass pro-democracy protests in 2019.

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  • Why Apple is pushing the term ‘spatial computing’ along with its new Vision Pro headset

    Why Apple is pushing the term ‘spatial computing’ along with its new Vision Pro headset


    SAN FRANCISCO — With Apple’s hotly anticipated Vision Pro headset hitting store shelves Friday, you’re probably going to start to see more people wearing the futuristic googles that are supposed to usher in the age of “spatial computing.”

    It’s an esoteric mode of technology that Apple executives and their marketing gurus are trying to thrust into the mainstream. This while avoiding other more widely used terms such as “augmented reality” and “virtual reality” to describe the transformative powers of a product that’s being touted as potentially monumental as the iPhone that came out in 2007.

    “We can’t wait for people to experience the magic,” Apple CEO Tim Cook gushed Thursday while discussing the Vision Pro with analysts.

    The Vision Pro also will be among Apple’s most expensive products at $3,500 — a price point that has most analysts predicting the company may only sell 1 million or fewer devices during its first year. But Apple only sold about 4 million iPhones during that device’s first year on the market and now sells more than 200 million of them annually, so there is a history of what initially appears to be a niche product turning into something that becomes enmeshed in how people live and work.

    If that happens with the Vision Pro, references to spatial computing could become as ingrained in modern-day vernacular as mobile and personal computing — two previous technological revolutions that Apple played an integral role in creating.

    So what is spatial computing? It’s a way to describe the intersection between the physical world around us and a virtual world fabricated by technology, while enabling humans and machines to harmoniously manipulate objects and spaces. Accomplishing these tasks often incorporates elements of augmented reality, or AR, and artificial intelligence, or AI — two subsets of technology that are helping to make spatial computing happen, said Cathy Hackl, a long-time industry consultant who is now running a startup working on apps for the Vision Pro.

    “This is a pivotal moment,” Hackl said. “Spatial computing will enable devices to understand the world in ways they never have been able to do before. It is going to change human to computer interaction, and eventually every interface — whether it’s a car or a watch — will become spatial computing devices.”

    In a sign of the excitement surrounding the Vision Pro, more than 600 newly designed apps will be available to use on the headset right away, according to Apple. The range of apps will include a wide selection of television networks, video streaming services (although Netflix and Google’s YouTube are notably absent from the list) video games and various educational options. On the work side of things, videoconferencing service Zoom and other companies that provide online meeting tools have built apps for the Vision Pro, too.

    But the Vision Pro could expose yet another disturbing side of technology if its use of spatial computing is so compelling that people start seeing the world differently when they aren’t wearing the headset and start to believe life is far more interesting when seen through the goggles. That scenario could worsen the screen addictions that have become endemic since the iPhone’s debut and deepen the isolation that digital dependence tends to cultivate.

    Apple is far from the only prominent technology company working on spatial computing products. For the past few years, Google has been working on a three-dimensional videoconferencing service called “Project Starline” that draws upon “photorealistic” images and a “magic window” so two people sitting in different cities feel like they are in the same room together. But Starline still hasn’t been widely released. Facebook’s corporate parent, Meta Platforms, also has for years been selling the Quest headset that could be seen as a platform for spatial computing, although that company so far hasn’t positioned the device in that manner.

    Vision Pro, in contrast, is being backed by a company with the marketing prowess and customer allegiance that tend to trigger trends.

    Although it might be heralded as a breakthrough if Apple realizes its vision with Vision Pro, the concept of spatial computing has been around for at least 20 years. In a 132-page research paper on the subject published in 2003 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Simon Greenwold made a case for automatically flushing toilets to be a primitive form of spatial computing. Greenwold supported his reasoning by pointing out the toilet “senses the user’s movement away to trigger a flush” and “the space of the system’s engagement is a real human space.”

    The Vision Pro, of course, is far more sophisticated than a toilet. One of the most compelling features in the Vision Pro are its high-resolution screens that can play back three-dimensional video recordings of events and people to make it seem like the encounters are happening all over again. Apple already laid the groundwork for selling the Vision Pro by including the ability to record what it calls “spatial video” on the premium iPhone 15 models released in September.

    Apple’s headset also reacts to a user’s hand gestures and eye movements in an attempt to make the device seem like another piece of human physiology. While wearing the headset, users will also be able use just their hands to pull up and arrange an array of virtual computer screens, similar to a scene featuring Tom Cruise in the 2002 film “Minority Report.”

    Spatial computing “is a technology that’s starting to adapt to the user instead of requiring the user adapting to the technology,” Hackl said. “It’s all supposed to be very natural.”

    It remains to be seen how natural it may seem if you are sitting down to have dinner with someone else wearing the goggles instead of intermittently gazing at their smartphone.



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  • Bud brings back Clydesdales as early Super Bowl ad releases offer up nostalgia, humor, celebrities

    Bud brings back Clydesdales as early Super Bowl ad releases offer up nostalgia, humor, celebrities


    NEW YORK — Budweiser is bringing back some familiar characters this year in its Super Bowl ad.

    The perennial Super Bowl marketer is bringing back fan-favorite characters the Clydesdales and a Labrador — a nod to the Labradors that starred in earlier commercials during advertising’s biggest night.

    Some advertisers are releasing ads ahead of Super Bowl 58 in the hope of capitalizing on the buzz that builds as the game approaches. They hope to recoup some of the reported $7 million that’s the going rate for a 30-second spot by capturing pre-game attention. It’s a big challenge to stand out among the 50-plus advertisers vying for the eyes of the more than 100 million people expected to tune in to CBS (and Paramount+ and Nickelodeon) on Super Bowl Sunday (Feb. 11).

    Advertisers are mindful that it’s a presidential election year and that a number of conflicts are raging across the globe. So, they’re sticking to comforting themes of nostalgia, humor, and as always, tons of celebrities for the big game.

    In Anheuser-Busch’s nostalgic spot, a snowstorm threatens to derail a delivery of Budweiser to a small-town bar. But a team of Clydesdales and a Labrador retriever team up to help Budweiser make the delivery.

    Experts say the feel-good spot strikes the right chord for Anheuser-Busch, which is trying to win back consumer sentiment following last year’s conservative backlash against Bud Light after the brand sent a commemorative can to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Bud Light also angered supporters of transgender rights who felt it abandoned Mulvaney.

    “It’s paying tribute to its history, in America,” said Ray Taylor, marketing professor at the Villanova School of Business. “And I think for these big brands, if they’ve got these iconic themes like Budweiser with the Clydesdales, that’s just kind of a can’t miss strategy.”

    Anheuser-Busch will also run a Bud Light ad, but that ad hasn’t been revealed yet. The company has also tapped soccer star Lionel Messi for a Michelob Ultra ad.

    Other ads that have been released early focus on silly humor. A Kawasaki ad shows people riding in their Ridge “side by side” off-road vehicles growing mullets because the vehicle is “business in the front and a party in the back.” And a Hellmann’s ad focusing on food waste starring Kate McKinnon features a cat that becomes a celebrity and dates Pete Davidson.

    “The first Super Bowl spots to be released embrace light humor,” said Northwestern University marketing professor Tim Calkins. “This isn’t a surprise; safety is key when advertising on the Super Bowl so most advertisers will stay far away from controversial topics.”

    As always, commercials are stuffed — even overstuffed — with celebrities. A BetMGM ad released early shows Vince Vaughan saying Tom Brady has won too much to use the betting app and should let others have their turn winning, making Brady miffed. Wayne Gretzky also stars in the ad.



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  • Tuberville is ending blockade of most military nominees, clearing way for hundreds to be approved

    Tuberville is ending blockade of most military nominees, clearing way for hundreds to be approved

    Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama says he is ending his blockade of hundreds of military promotions, clearing the way for hundreds to be approved

    ByKEVIN FREKING Associated Press

    December 5, 2023, 1:35 PM

    FILE – Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, talks to reporters as he and other senators arrive at the chamber for votes, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

    The Associated Press

    WASHINGTON — Sen. Tommy Tuberville announced on Tuesday that he’s ending his blockade of hundreds of military promotions, following heavy criticism from many of his colleagues in the Senate and clearing the way for hundreds to be approved.

    Tuberville’s blockade of military promotions was over a dispute about a Pentagon abortion policy. The Alabama Republican said Tuesday he’s “not going to hold the promotions of these people any longer.”

    Almost 400 military nominations have been in limbo due to Tuberville’s blanket hold on confirmations and promotions for senior military officers. It’s a stance that has left key national security positions unfilled and military families with an uncertain path forward.

    Tuberville was blocking the nominations in opposition to new Pentagon rules that allow reimbursement for travel when a service member has to go out of state to get an abortion or other reproductive care. President Joe Biden’s administration instituted the new rules after the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to an abortion, and some states have limited or banned the procedure.

    Critics said that Tuberville’s ire was misplaced and that he was blocking the promotions of people who had nothing to do with the policy he opposed.

    “Why are we punishing American heroes who have nothing to with the dispute?” said Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska. “Remember we are against the Biden abortion travel policy, but why are we punishing people who have nothing to do with the dispute and if they get confirmed can’t fix it? No one has had an answer for that question because there is no answer.”

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  • Tokyo Olympics sullied by bid-rigging, bribery trials more than 2 years after the Games closed

    Tokyo Olympics sullied by bid-rigging, bribery trials more than 2 years after the Games closed

    TOKYO — The bid-rigging trial around the Tokyo Olympics played out Tuesday in a Japanese courtroom — more than two years after the Games closed — with advertising giant Dentsu and five other companies facing criminal charges.

    Seven individuals are also facing charges from Tokyo district prosecutors in the cases, including Koji Henmi, who oversaw the sports division at Dentsu at the time.

    Executives or management-level officials at each of the accused companies, and Tokyo Olympic organizing committee official Yasuo Mori, have been charged with violating anti-monopoly laws.

    Among the companies facing charges are Dentsu Group, Hakuhodo, Tokyu Agency and event organizer Cerespo. All deal with event organizing, sports promotion or marketing.

    Dentsu has a long history of lining up sponsorships and advertising with bodies like World Athletics, headed by Sebastian Coe, and the Switzerland-based International Olympic Committee, led by Thomas Bach.

    Genta Yoshino, the lawyer for Henmi, did not deny the bid-rigging took place. Speaking in Tokyo district court, he said no bid process was ever decided upon or set up by the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee.

    “Even if what happened gets categorized as bid-rigging, all my client did was abide by the organizing committee’s intentions, following their instructions,” Yoshino told the court, presided over by a panel of three judges.

    Yoshino said his client merely did his best to make the Olympics a success. Henmi was under pressure from the IOC, which repeatedly expressed doubts about the ability of the Tokyo organizers, Yoshino added.

    The organizing committee was headed at the time by Yoshiro Mori, a former Japanese prime minister who was eventually forced to resign as the head of Tokyo 2020. The CEO was Toshiro Muto, a former deputy director of the Bank of Japan.

    The maximum penalty for a company convicted of bid-rigging is a fine of up to 500 million yen ($3.3 million). An individual, if found guilty, faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to 5 million yen ($33,000).

    Trials take months in Japan, sometimes years. The next session in the trial was scheduled for Jan. 15, 2024. It’s unclear when a verdict may come.

    Dentsu was a key force in landing the Olympics for Tokyo in 2013. French prosecutors have looked into allegations that IOC members may have been bribed to vote for Tokyo.

    Once the Olympics landed in Tokyo, Dentsu became the chief marketing arm of the Games and raised a record $3.3 billion in local sponsorship. Dentsu received a commission on the sales — sales that were at least twice as large as any previous Olympics.

    The reports of corruption surrounding Dentsu also forced the resignation in 2019 of Tsunekazu Takeda, the head of the Japanese Olympic Committee and an IOC member who headed Olympic marketing.

    Tokyo organizers say they spent $13 billion to organize the 2020 Olympics, which were delayed a year by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a government audit suggests the expenditure might have been twice that. At least 60% was public money.

    The Tokyo scandal ruined the chances of the northern city of Sapporo of landing the 2030 Winter Olympics. It had been a strong favorite but was forced to withdraw. The IOC last week said it favored a French Alps bid for the 2030 Games with Salt Lake City the preferred choice for 2034.

    Earlier this year French police searched the headquarters of the 2024 Paris Olympics in an investigation over contracts linked to the Games.

    In the wake of the scandal, Dentsu has been restricted from bidding on contracts for the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and by the city of Osaka and the local prefecture, which is hosting the 2025 World Exposition.

    Tokyo prosecutors have also been investigating a separate bribery scandal centered around Haruyuki Takahashi, a former Dentsu executive. Takahashi was a member of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee and wielded powerful influence over the Olympic business.

    Takahashi’s trial opens Dec. 14. He has not publicly acknowledged guilt, or made any statement, and speculation is rife he will fight the charges.

    The scandal involving Takahashi involves bribery allegations over Olympic sponsorships that were won by companies such as Aoki Holdings, a clothing company that dressed Japan’s Olympic team, and Sun Arrow, which produced the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic mascots.

    Some company officials have already been convicted, but did not receive jail time. Almost all criminal trials in Japan result in guilty verdicts. The defense, including Henmi’s, is trying to salvage the client’s reputation and minimize any fines.

    ___

    AP coverage of the Paris Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

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  • Tiger Woods Fast Facts | CNN

    Tiger Woods Fast Facts | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at one of the most successful golfers in history, Tiger Woods.

    Birth date: December 30, 1975

    Birth place: Cypress, California

    Birth name: Eldrick Tont Woods

    Father: Earl Woods

    Mother: Kultilda (Punsawad) Woods

    Marriage: Elin Nordegren (October 5, 2004-August 23, 2010, divorced)

    Children: Charlie Axel and Sam Alexis

    Education: Attended Stanford University, 1994-1996

    Won the Masters Tournament five times, the US Open three times, the PGA Championship four times and the British Open three times.

    Woods is the PGA career money list leader.

    With 82 PGA Tour wins, Woods is tied with Sam Snead for most all-time career victories.

    His father nicknamed him “Tiger” after a South Vietnamese soldier with whom he had fought alongside during the Vietnam War.

    1978 – At the age of 2, wins a putting contest with Bob Hope. The match was staged for the “Mike Douglas Show.”

    1980 – Appears on the TV show “That’s Incredible.”

    1991 – Wins his first US Junior Amateur golf championship. At 15 years of age, Woods was the youngest champion in history until 14-year-old Jim Liu broke his record in 2010.

    1992 – Wins his second US Junior Amateur golf championship.

    February 27, 1992 – Competes in his first PGA tournament at the age of 16. He is given a sponsor’s exemption in order to play and is the youngest player ever to play in a PGA tournament at that time.

    1993 – Wins his third US Junior Amateur golf championship.

    1994-1996 – Wins three consecutive US Amateur golf championships.

    August 27, 1996 – Turns professional.

    August 1996 – Signs a five-year endorsement deal with Nike worth $40 million.

    October 6, 1996 – Wins his first tournament as a professional at the Las Vegas Invitational.

    1996 – Forms the Tiger Woods Foundation for the promotion of minority participation in golf and other sports. In February 2018, the charity is renamed TGR Foundation to reflect its growth and scope.

    April 13, 1997 – Wins his first Masters Tournament.

    May 19, 1997 – Signs an endorsement deal with American Express worth between $13 and $30 million.

    June 1997 – Becomes the No. 1 ranked golfer in the world after his 42nd week on the PGA Tour. At 21 years, 24 weeks, he is the youngest player ever to hold the No. 1 spot.

    August 15, 1999 – Wins his first PGA championship.

    June 18, 2000 – Wins his first US Open by 15 strokes, the largest margin in US Open history.

    July 23, 2000 – Wins his first British Open.

    September 14, 2000 – Signs a five-year endorsement contract with Nike. It is worth an estimated $85 million, making it the richest endorsement contract in sports history, at the time.

    June 16, 2002 – Wins his second US Open.

    December 8, 2003 – Named PGA Player of the Year for the fifth straight year.

    May 13, 2005 – Woods fails to make the cut at the Byron Nelson Championship in Irving, Texas. It is the first time since 1998 that Woods is eliminated from a tournament.

    November 23, 2005 – Wins the PGA Grand Slam of Golf for a record-breaking sixth time.

    February 10, 2006 – Opens the Tiger Woods Learning Center in Anaheim, California.

    May 3, 2006 – Woods’ father, Earl Woods, dies of prostate cancer.

    July 23, 2006 – Wins his third British Open.

    August 20, 2006 – Wins his third PGA Championship.

    August 12, 2007 – Wins his fourth PGA Championship.

    April 15, 2008 – Undergoes arthroscopic surgery on his left knee. He had two prior surgeries on the same knee, first in 1994 to remove a benign tumor, and another arthroscopic surgery in December 2002.

    June 16, 2008 – Wins the US Open in sudden death, defeating Rocco Mediate.

    June 18, 2008 – Woods announces that he will undergo reconstructive anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) surgery on his left knee and will miss the remainder of the PGA tour season.

    February 26, 2009 – After an eight-month hiatus from golf due to knee surgery, Woods plays the second round of the World Golf Championships Match Play and loses to Tim Clark.

    November 15, 2009 – Wins the Australian Masters.

    November 27, 2009 – Is taken to a hospital after being injured in a car accident in front of his home in Florida. He is released later the same day.

    December 2, 2009 – Woods apologizes for “transgressions” that let his family down – the same day a gossip magazine publishes a report alleging he had an affair. He does not admit to an affair and offers no details about the “transgressions” in his statement.

    February 19, 2010 – Makes a televised statement apologizing for being unfaithful to his wife and letting down both fans and family. “I had affairs, I cheated. What I did was not acceptable, and I am the only person to blame,” he says. Responding to rumors, Woods says that his wife never hit him, as some media reported in connection with the car crash on November 27, 2009, and that there has “never been an episode of domestic violence” in his relationship with his wife. Woods also says that he entered a rehabilitation center for 45 days, from the end of December to early February, and that he will continue to receive treatment and therapy.

    October 31, 2010 – After 281 straight weeks, the longest in Official World Golf Ranking history, Woods loses his No. 1 ranking to Lee Westwood.

    2010 – Loses about $20 million from estimated endorsements after sponsors including Gatorade, AT&T and Accenture end ties. Other sponsors including Nike, Upper Deck and EA Sports remain with Woods.

    June 7, 2011 – Announces he will miss the US Open due to knee and Achilles tendon injuries.

    July 19, 2011 – Woods announces that after a 12-year relationship, he and caddie Steve Williams will no longer be working together.

    August 4, 2011 – Returns to golf at the Bridgestone Invitational, after a nearly three-month break.

    August 11, 2011 – Plays one of his worst first rounds of golf in a major championship. He fails to make the cut at the PGA Championship for the first time in his career.

    October 3, 2011 – For the first time in 15 years, Woods does not make it onto golf’s top 50 players list, according to the official World Golf Ranking.

    October 5, 2011 – Signs a new endorsement deal with Swiss watch-maker Rolex.

    March 25, 2012 – Earns his first PGA Tour win since September 2009, in the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando.

    June 3, 2012 – With his win at the Memorial Tournament, ties Jack Nicklaus with 73 PGA Tour victories.

    July 2, 2012 – Beats Nicklaus’ PGA Tour record with the AT&T National win. Woods’ 74th PGA Tour win ranks him in second place on the all-time list.

    September 3, 2012 – Becomes the first PGA tour participant to earn $100 million.

    March 25, 2013 – Woods wins the Arnold Palmer Invitational for the eighth time, and regains the No. 1 spot.

    March 31, 2014 – Woods undergoes back surgery for a pinched nerve.

    August 23, 2015 – Posts a top 10 finish at his debut at the Wyndham Championships but ends his season as the 257th ranked player in the world. His finish was four shots off eventual winner Davis Love III. Woods has now missed the cut for three majors in a row.

    December 1, 2015 – Announces that he underwent his third microdiscectomy surgery last month – a procedure to remove bone around a pinched nerve to allow space for it to heal – and admits he has no idea when he will be back on the course.

    July 20, 2016 – It is announced that Woods will miss the PGA Championship due to his continued recovery from back surgery. This marks the first time in his career that he has missed all four major championships.

    December 4, 2016 – Woods finishes 14 shots behind the winner in the Hero World Challenge, his first competitive event in more than a year.

    May 29, 2017 – Woods is arrested on suspicion of DUI in Jupiter, Florida. He says in a statement that he had “an unexpected reaction to prescribed medications” and that alcohol was not involved.

    June 19, 2017 – Woods announces that he is receiving professional help to manage medication for back pain and a sleep disorder.

    July 3, 2017 – Announces that he has completed an intensive program for managing his medications.

    October 27, 2017 – Woods pleads guilty to reckless driving. His 12-month probation is contingent on completing any recommended treatment including DUI school, 50 hours of community services and random drug and alcohol testing.

    December 3, 2017 – Making his long-awaited return from a fourth back surgery – his first tournament for 301 days since pulling out of the Dubai Desert Classic in February – Woods finishes in a tie for ninth place in the Hero World Challenge tournament in the Bahamas.

    September 23, 2018 – Wins the Tour Championship at Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Club, for his first PGA Tour victory since August 2013 and his 80th overall.

    April 14, 2019 – Wins his fifth Masters and 15th major title.

    May 6, 2019 – President Donald Trump presents Woods with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, during a White House ceremony.

    October 27, 2019 – Wins his record-equaling 82nd PGA Tour title at the Zozo Championship in Chiba, Japan. Woods is tied with legendary golfer Sam Snead, who won 82 titles throughout his more than 50-year career.

    May 24, 2020 – Woods and Peyton Manning defeat Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady by one stroke in “The Match: Champions for Charity” golf tournament at the Medalist Golf Club in Hobe Sound, Florida. The event raises over $20 million for coronavirus relief efforts and captures an average of 5.8 million viewers to become the most-watched golf telecast in the history of cable television.

    February 23, 2021 – Woods is hospitalized after a serious one-car rollover accident in Los Angeles County, according to the LA County Sheriff’s Department. Wood’s agent Mark Steinberg said the golfer suffered “multiple leg injuries” and was in surgery following the accident. The next day, Woods is “awake, responsive, and recovering” in the hospital after emergency surgery on his lower right leg and ankle at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. The leg fractures were “comminuted,” meaning the bone was broken into more than two parts, and “open,” meaning the broken bone was exposed to open air, creating risk of an infection, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anish Mahajan says in the statement.

    November 29, 2021 – In an exclusive interview published in Golf Digest, Tiger Woods speaks publicly about his golfing future for the first time since his car crash. “I think something that is realistic is playing the tour one day, never full time, ever again, but pick and choose, just like Mr. (Ben) Hogan did,” Woods tells interviewer Henni Koyack.

    March 9, 2022 – Woods is inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame at the PGA Tour headquarters in Florida.

    April 7, 2022 – Tees off in the first round of the Masters, his first tournament in 14 months, completing a remarkable comeback after sustaining serious leg injuries in his February 2021 car crash.

    October 2022 – Erica Herman, a former girlfriend of Woods, files a complaint in Martin County, Florida after their six-year relationship comes to end. Herman alleges a trust owned by Woods violated the Florida Residential Landlord Tenant Act by breaking the oral tenancy agreement. On March 6, 2023, Herman files a second complaint aimed at nullifying the NDA she signed in 2017. On May 17, 2023, a Florida judge rules against Herman, calling her claims that the NDA is invalid and unenforceable “implausibly pled.” In June 2023, Herman drops her lawsuit alleging a trust owned by Woods violated the Florida Residential Landlord Tenant Act. In November 2023, Herman drops her appeal to nullify the NDA.

    April 19, 2023 – Announces he has completed “successful” surgery on his ankle following his withdrawal from The Masters earlier this month.

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