Latest news with #DavidMcCabe
Chicago Tribune
08-07-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Aurora firefighters respond to four separate structure fires over July 4 weekend
The Aurora Fire Department responded to four separate structure fires across the city over the Fourth of July weekend, the department said in a news release Monday. Three of the four buildings were occupied at the time of the fires, but none of the incidents resulted in any fatalities, the department said. The first fire occurred on July 4, with crews responding at around 4:39 p.m. to a trash fire that had spread to a wooden fence and brick exterior of an apartment building on the 1300 block of Monomoy Street on Aurora's West Side, per the release. A male resident sustained minor injuries during the fire and was treated on scene. Later that day, Aurora firefighters responded at around 10:25 p.m. to calls that a residence on the 1100 block of Pearl Street on Aurora's East Side was fully engulfed in flames, with possible explosions and people trapped inside, according to the release. Crews conducted an aggressive fire attack and search efforts, bringing the fire under control in about 30 minutes, the release said. The nine occupants of the residence escaped without injury, and a total of 10 residents were displaced. Victim Services and the Red Cross provided assistance. The following day at around 1:33 p.m., Aurora firefighters responded to a report of heavy smoke and flames coming from the garage of a home on the 2400 block of Blue Spruce Lane, per the release. No one was inside during the fire, the release noted, and the home was deemed habitable. That evening at around 9:48 p.m., crews responded to another fire in the garage of a home, in which firefighters rescued a woman, 35, from a second-floor bedroom of the home on the 900 block of Four Seasons Boulevard. She was taken to the hospital with smoke inhalation, and the home was deemed uninhabitable, with residents finding temporary housing on their own, officials said. Aurora Fire Chief David McCabe said in the release that it was 'an extremely busy holiday weekend' for Aurora's firefighters, medics and dispatchers, and cautioned residents to exercise caution when using grills, open-flame equipment and other ignition sources, particularly in hot and dry weather. The causes of all the fires remain under active investigation, officials said.
New York Times
29-04-2025
- Business
- New York Times
An Antitrust Hearing That's Low on Drama Has High Stakes
David McCabe, who covers technology policy for The New York Times, is in a Washington courthouse this week to report on a hearing that may change the future of Google. A federal judge, Amit P. Mehta, ruled last year that Google had acted illegally, breaking antitrust laws to maintain an internet search monopoly. Now the federal government argues that the company must sell Chrome, its popular web browser. Google has asked Judge Mehta to consider a narrower set of changes, and sometime this summer he will determine which measures are necessary. It is not the only antitrust case the federal government is pursuing against Google, or a handful of other large technology companies including Meta and Apple, Mr. McCabe explained in an interview. 'We are in a moment where the scrutiny of these companies is cresting,' Mr. McCabe said. 'We're going to see if it has any effect on changing their behavior, and changing the law.' The following conversation has been edited and condensed. Can you bring us up to speed on how Google got here? In 2020, the first Trump administration sued Google, arguing that it had illegally maintained a monopoly in online search. It's not necessarily illegal to be a monopoly, but it is illegal to maintain it by excluding your competitors. In 2023, the case went to trial under the Biden Justice Department; last year, the judge ruled that Google had in fact broken antitrust laws to entrench its dominance in online search, a field where Google has become synonymous with looking for information online. Now, because the judge ruled against Google, they are in what is called a remedies hearing to determine what measures the judge should take, if any, to resolve the issues that he raised in his ruling last year. Both sides have proposed measures: The Justice Department has proposed a pretty wide range of ideas, including going as far as asking a court to force Google to divest Chrome, its popular web browser, which would essentially be a breakup. Google has proposed a much narrower set of remedies. A judge already ruled that Google acted as an illegal monopoly. Does that mean that Google, this ubiquitous presence in our digital lives, is going to change? It's fair to expect that the court will implement some remedies. The questions are: What does that look like, and will those remedies actually effect significant change at Google, and in the internet ecosystem? The other thing that I would note here is that Google has said that they will appeal this case, but they are waiting for this remedies phase to be over before they appeal the judge's ruling. Can you put the antitrust moment in context? How long has Google drawn concerns? It has been a long time coming. The last time a major American company was broken up for monopoly concerns was in the 1980s, when AT&T was divided into a number of smaller companies. Concerns about Google go back more than a decade. In fact, antitrust regulators had looked into some of these issues during the Obama administration and decided not to bring a case. So for Google, it's been a long time coming, and there have been similar concerns about many of the other tech giants. Meta — which owns Facebook — Amazon and Apple are also facing antitrust cases. What has the government accused Google of doing? This case is about the search business. The central allegation is that Google has paid billions of dollars to companies like Apple, Samsung and Mozilla, which makes the Firefox browser, to be the preselected search engine in your browser or on the home screen of your smartphone. The government argued successfully that those agreements denied any opportunity for Google's competitors to reach consumers at the level that Google was reaching them, and that Google then had this massive advantage that they were able to use to improve their product, which allowed them in turn to attract more customers and make more money and those deals. In a separate case in federal court in Virginia, which was tried last year, the government argued that Google had monopolized part of the technology that places ads on websites. A federal judge ruled this month that in fact Google had violated the law. So the company is also facing the prospect of a remedies phase in that trial as well. What's taken place so far in the remedies hearing, which is in its second week, and what are you paying close attention to? A lot of these witnesses are here to deliver facts, not opinion. You're listening to the information they are sharing about a competitor's search engine or A.I. product in relation to Google's, or about Google's business, and you're trying to understand why each side is asking the questions that they are asking, what picture they are trying to paint. There are not a lot of big, 'Perry Mason' dramatic moments. These witnesses have been deposed already and there has been an immense discovery of documents. You're watching to see how the judge is responding. Largely he responds in the form of questions. He'll ask a witness to clarify a technical thing they are describing, or ask a more direct question. You're trying to understand where the judge stands in response to the arguments.
Indian Express
23-04-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
U.S. asks judge to break up Google
Written by David McCabe The Justice Department said Monday that the best way to address Google 's monopoly in internet search was to break up the $1.81 trillion company, kicking off a three-week hearing that could reshape the technology giant and alter the power players in Silicon Valley. Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in August that Google had broken antitrust laws to maintain its dominance in online search. He is now hearing arguments from the government and the company over how to best fix Google's monopoly and is expected to order those measures, referred to as 'remedies,' by the end of the summer. In an opening statement in the hearing Monday, the government said Mehta should force Google to sell its popular Chrome web browser, which drives users to its search engine. Government lawyers also said the company should take steps to give competitors a leg up if the court wants to restore competition to the moribund market for online search. Google's lawyers countered that Mehta should narrowly target his remedies. Specifically, they said, the court should look only at a group of deals that the company makes with Apple, Mozilla, Samsung and others to be the search engine that automatically appears in web browsers and smartphones. These deals were at the heart of the government's case against the company. Google's proposal 'directly responds to this court's legal determinations, but it also does much more,' said John Schmidtlein, Google's lead trial lawyer. The outcome in the case, U.S. v. Google, could drastically change the Silicon Valley behemoth. Google faces mounting challenges, including a breakup of its ad technology business after a different federal judge ruled last week that the company held a monopoly over some of the tools that websites use to sell open ad space. In 2023, Google also lost an antitrust suit brought by the maker of the video game Fortnite, which accused the tech giant of violating competition laws with its Play app store. The legal troubles could hurt Google as it battles OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta to lead a new era of artificial intelligence. Google has increasingly woven AI into its search. But the Justice Department has told Mehta he should make sure Google cannot parlay its search monopoly into similar dominance in AI.
