The company joins Facebook, TikTok, X, YouTube in a list of 23 “very large online platforms”, which have more than 45 million monthly active users in the European Union.

From the end of August, four months after the designation, Shein will have to apply the tougher rules under the Digital Services Act (DSA), one of the EU’s landmark new laws against online platforms.

These include implementing measures to “protect consumers from purchasing unsafe or illegal goods, with particular focus on preventing the sale and distribution of products that could be harmful to minors”, the European Commission said.

Shein has said it has around 108 million monthly active users in the 27-nation EU. 

Reacting to the announcement, Shein said it would comply with the rules.

“We share the commission’s ambition to ensure consumers in the EU can shop online with peace of mind, and we are committed to playing our part,” said Leonard Lin, global head of public affairs at Shein.

Beyond the EU, Shein has faced fierce criticism with a long litany of accusations from alleged exploitation of its factory workers with low pay to promoting hyperconsumerism to causing damage to the environment.

Brussels has flexed its legal muscle against the world’s biggest digital platforms, launching investigations against TikTok, X and Chinese retailer AliExpress.

Another Chinese shopping app, Temu, is expected to be added to the EU’s list after announcing in April that it has around 75 million monthly active users after entering the EU market a year ago.

Under the DSA, the platforms must assess the specific risks posed to Europeans’ rights and safety by the content they publish — or the products on sale in the case of online marketplaces like Amazon and Shein — and to submit a report to regulators.

They must also provide, at their own expense, an external audit once a year to verify they comply with the rules.

The largest platforms are also subject to increased transparency, with the obligation to provide access to their data to researchers approved by Brussels. 

– Taking on Chinese tech –

The EU has taken tougher action against Chinese companies in recent months.

Popular video sharing app TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, has faced intense scrutiny in the EU — and beyond. 

While it faces a ban in the United States, TikTok is the subject of two investigations by the European Commission over alleged harm to minors.

On Wednesday, TikTok suspended its reward programme on its spinoff Lite app after the commission started a probe into its possible addictive features.

Brussels has also not shied away from wielding its trade weapons against China despite angering Beijing, which accuses the EU of protectionism.

On Wednesday, the EU announced a probe into China’s medical device market as Brussels takes on Beijing over green tech subsidies suspected of undermining fair competition.

That follows other investigations in the past few months into Chinese wind turbine suppliers, solar panel manufacturers, trains and electric car subsidies.

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US lawmakers set the nine-month deadline on national security grounds, alleging that TikTok can be used by the Chinese government for espionage and propaganda as long as it is owned by ByteDance.

The Information, a tech-focused US news site, reported that ByteDance was looking at scenarios for selling TikTok without the powerful secret algorithm that recommends videos to its more than one billion users around the world.

ByteDance denied it was considering a sale.

“Foreign media reports about ByteDance exploring the sale of TikTok are untrue,” the company posted Thursday on Toutiao, a Chinese-language platform it owns.

“ByteDance does not have any plans to sell TikTok.”

TikTok has been a political and diplomatic hot potato for years, first finding itself in the crosshairs of former president Donald Trump’s administration, which tried unsuccessfully to ban it.

It has forcefully denied any link to the Chinese government, and said it has not and will not share US user data with Beijing.

TikTok says it has also spent around $1.5 billion on “Project Texas”, under which US user data would be stored in the United States.

Its critics say the data is only part of the problem, and that the TikTok recommendation algorithm — the “secret sauce” for its success — must also be disconnected from ByteDance.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has said the company will take the fight against the new law to the courts, but some experts believe that for the US Supreme Court, national security considerations could outweigh free speech protection.

– Bullish investors –

The estimated valuations of TikTok are in the tens of billions of dollars, and any forced sale would present major complications.

Among those with deep enough pockets, US tech giants such as Instagram-parent Meta or Google would likely be blocked from buying the app over competition concerns.

Further, many investors consider TikTok’s recommendation algorithm to be its most valuable feature.

But any sale of such technology by a Chinese company would require approval from Beijing, which designated such algorithms as protected technology following Trump’s attempt to ban TikTok in 2020.

Beijing has so far vocally opposed any forced sale of TikTok, saying it will take all necessary measures to protect Chinese companies.

While TikTok is a global phenomenon, it represents a small fraction of ByteDance’s revenue, according to analysts and investors.

ByteDance has enjoyed explosive growth in recent years, becoming one of the most valuable companies in the world. Its international investors, including US firms General Atlantic and SIG as well as Japan’s SoftBank, have stakes worth billions.

“TikTok US is a very small part of the overall business. It is an exciting part of the story, for sure, but… relative to the overall size, it’s a very small part,” ByteDance investor Mitchell Green, of US-based Lead Edge Capital, told CNBC television last month.

“If it was kicked out of the US, we would not sell.”

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The results were cheered by Wall Street investors who pushed up Alphabet’s share price more than 11 percent and Microsoft shares up nearly 4 percent in after-market trades.

Google parent Alphabet reported profit of $23.7 billion on revenue of $80.5 billion, crediting growth in cloud computing, YouTube, and online search advertising.

Artificial intelligence helped drive the Silicon Valley tech giant’s business, according to Alphabet and Google chief Sundar Pichai.

“We are well under way with our Gemini era and there’s great momentum across the company,” Pichai said, referring to the Gemini AI model that powers services across the Google platform.

“Our leadership in AI research and infrastructure, and our global product footprint, position us well for the next wave of AI innovation.”

Some $9.5 billion was brought in by Google’s cloud computing unit, compared with $7.5 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.

Google also reported its first-ever dividend of 20 cents per share.

“Things are looking good for Google,” said Emarketer senior analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf.

However, the future of Google’s core search business is not assured, the analyst cautioned.

Google faces an antitrust case in the United States, and the incorporation of AI-generated content into the company’s leading search engine “will arguably be the biggest change to the search advertising market since its inception,” Mitchell-Wolf said.

The earnings come as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other rivals competing in the hot field of AI face scrutiny from regulators in the US and Europe.

The US Federal Trade Commission early this year launched a study of AI investments and alliances as part of an effort to make sure regulatory oversight can keep up with developments in the sector and stop major players from shutting out competitors in a field promising upheaval in multiple areas of business.

Amazon — through its Amazon Web Services arm — Microsoft and Google are the world’s biggest providers of cloud-based data centers, which store and process data on a vast scale, in addition to being some of the world’s richest companies.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said sales in the January to March period rose by 17 percent from a year earlier to $61.9 billion, with net profit up by 20 percent to $21.9 billion.

Microsoft has been hugely rewarded by investors since it aggressively pushed into rolling out generative AI, starting with its $13 billion partnership with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, in 2023.

The embrace of AI has boosted sales of its key cloud services, such as Azure, which have become the core of Microsoft’s business under Nadella’s leadership.

Cloud giants Amazon and Google are also looking to beef up cloud sales by rolling out AI features to clients and prove that the AI revolution is more than just hype.

In its push, Microsoft has moved beyond OpenAI and signed partnerships with other promising AI startups such as Mistral AI, as well as investing heavily internationally.

In March, Microsoft also announced that it hired DeepMind AI and Inflection AI co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to lead up its AI unit, poaching one of the industry’s key figures from a promising startup.

– Unleashed revolution –

The succession of moves has often taken archrival Google by surprise and seen Microsoft pip Apple as the world’s biggest publicly traded company.

“Microsoft’s earnings show the company is well-positioned to profit from the AI revolution it helped unleash,” said Emarketer senior director of briefings Jeremy Goldman.

“While monetizing AI as effectively as Google remains a challenge, Microsoft has positioned itself in the realm of consideration for ad buys — something that wasn’t necessarily the case even a few years ago.”

Meta’s results on Wednesday however were a first sign of AI fatigue.

The Facebook parent said its quarterly profits soared last quarter but worries over its spending on artificial intelligence saw its share price take a hit.

A potential dark cloud for AI is government regulators that are taking a closer look at Microsoft’s ties with OpenAI and others amid fears that the giant is using its huge financial war chest to thwart the emergence of rivals.

Britain’s competition watchdog on Wednesday was the latest to begin examining tie-ups between artificial intelligence firms and their US big tech partners, including Microsoft.

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Alphabet reported profit of $23.7 billion on revenue of $80.5 billion, crediting growth in cloud computing, YouTube, and online search advertising.

Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai credited artificial intelligence with helping drive the Silicon Valley tech giant’s business.

“We are well under way with our Gemini era and there’s great momentum across the company,” Pichai said, referring to an AI model that powers services across the Google platform.

“Our leadership in AI research and infrastructure, and our global product footprint, position us well for the next wave of AI innovation.”

Alphabet shares that ended the formal trading day down slightly leapt more than 12 percent to $177 in after-market trades that followed release of the earnings figures.

Google ads brought in a total of $61.7 billion in the quarter, compared with $54.5 billion in the same period the prior year, according to the earnings report.

Ads served up at YouTube accounted for $8 billion in revenue, up from $6.7 billion in the first quarter of 2023, earnings figures showed.

Some $9.5 billion was brought in by Google’s cloud computing unit, compared with $7.5 in the same quarter a year earlier.

The earnings come as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other rivals competing in the hot field of AI face scrutiny from regulators in the US and Europe.

The US Federal Trade Commission early this year launched a study of AI investments and alliances as part of an effort to make sure regulatory oversight can keep up with developments in artificial intelligence, and stop major players shutting out competitors in a field promising upheaval in multiple sectors.

“Our study will shed light on whether investments and partnerships pursued by dominant companies risk distorting innovation and undermining fair competition,” said Lina Khan, head of the Federal Trade Commission, in a statement.

One major concern is that generative AI, which allows for human-level content to be produced by software in just seconds, requires a massive amount of computing power, something that big tech companies are almost uniquely capable of delivering.

Amazon — through its Amazon Web Services arm — Microsoft and Google are the world’s biggest providers of cloud-based data centers, which store and process data on a vast scale, in addition to being some of the world’s richest companies.

Microsoft has moved the fastest in the generative AI revolution with a reported $13 billion investment in OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.

Microsoft just weeks ago announced a $2.9 billion investment over the next two years in Japan to bolster the country’s push into artificial intelligence and strengthen its cyber defenses in the face of threats from China and Russia.

Meanwhile, Facebook-owner Meta on Wednesday said its quarterly profits soared last quarter, but worries about the cost of artificial intelligence saw its share price take a hit on Wall Street. 

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The company founded by Mark Zuckerberg said that net profit in the January to March period rose to $12.4 billion with total revenue, mainly from selling ads, up an impressive 27 percent, at $36.5 billion.

According to analyst Debra Williamson of Sonata Insights, Meta’s growth is due in particular to its sophisticated advertising tools and the success of “Reels”, the algorithm-fueled short videos to be scrolled through in succession, copied from TikTok.

In another potential boost to its business, by the end of the year, Meta could also start selling advertising on Threads, its text message platform similar to X (formerly Twitter).

With ads on Threads, “advertisers who are looking to reach audiences during real-time moments will finally have a viable alternative to X,” said Mike Proulx, vice-president at Forrester.

The rise in sales and profit continued Meta’s rebound of 2023, which came thanks to drastic cost-cutting, including massive layoffs in what Zuckerberg dubbed the “year of efficiency” that saw tens of thousands of employees let go after a miserable 2022.

Meta said its global workforce now stood at 69,329, slightly more than last quarter, but down from a peak of more than 87,000 employees in 2022.

– Business ‘humming’ –

The company ended last year with record revenues and since then, its share price has been soaring on Wall Street, thanks in particular to enthusiasm for AI with its stock almost tripling last year, and up another 40 percent in 2024.

But shares for Meta were down sharply in after hours trading on Wall Street on Wednesday, with investors concerned about expenditure creeping back up.

“For all the recent scrutiny of its effectiveness, Meta’s ad business is humming,” said Max Willens, senior analyst at EMARKETER.

“It will need to continue that upward momentum in the face of rising costs,” he added.

As for the metaverse (mixing real and virtual worlds via high-tech glasses and headsets), which CEO and founder Zuckerberg describes as the future of the internet, the group’s dedicated branch once again posted a substantial losses of $3.8 billion, even if this was less than expected.

Another subject that interests the market is Meta’s progress in generative AI, the ChatGPT-style production of text, images and other content, based on a simple query in everyday language.

Last week, Zuckerberg unveiled the latest version of Meta AI, which is now being deployed as a beefed up smart assistant across its apps, which include Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook. 

“This means users just start inherently using Meta AI without the friction of having to download and learn a new app experience,” said Forrester’s Proulx, referring the rival chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude. 

The technology is being rolled out in more than a dozen countries, including Australia, Canada, Singapore and the United States.

The AI is powered by LLaMA 3, the company’s most powerful large language model, which the company makes available to developers as an open-source product to create their own tools.

The tech giants are locked in a race to emerge as a leader in AI, with Microsoft, thanks to its partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, seen as the frontrunner.

AI is giving a lift to Microsoft’s core cloud computing  business, a service that Meta does not provide, leaving some doubt over the high costs of deploying the technology. 

Meta has fallen behind on AI, but “thanks to its platforms it has a massive user base to test AI experiments … and quickly evaluate those its users gravitate towards,” commented Williamson.

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The popular video-sharing social media platform, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, said the suspension would remain  “while we address the concerns that they have raised”.

The European Commission’s top tech enforcer, Thierry Breton, said the EU investigation would continue, stating: “Our children are not guinea pigs for social media.”

TikTok Lite arrived in France and Spain — the only EU countries where it is available — in March. Users aged 18 and over can earn points to exchange for goods like vouchers or gift cards through the app’s rewards programme.

TikTok Lite is a smaller version of the popular TikTok app, taking up less memory in a smartphone and made to perform over slower internet connections.

The European Commission on Monday announced an investigation into TikTok Lite, and threatened to have the rewards programme suspended, raising concerns about the risk to users’ mental health.

The commission demanded TikTok provide more information by a Wednesday deadline, along with any defence against the threatened suspension.

Breton said in a statement that “our cases against TikTok on the risk of addictiveness of the platform continue”.

“We suspect that this (rewards) feature could generate addiction and that TikTok did not do a diligent risk assessment and take effective mitigation measures prior to its launch,” he said.

The probe is the EU’s second against TikTok under a sweeping new law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), that requires digital firms operating in the 27 nations to effectively police online content.

In February, the commission opened a formal probe into TikTok over alleged violations of its obligations to protect minors online.

– TikTok squeezed –

TikTok is also under pressure across the Atlantic.

A bill to ban TikTok cleared the US Congress after the Senate on Tuesday approved legislation requiring TikTok to be divested from ByteDance.

TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, said the company would fight the law — which he said amounted to a ban — in US courts.

The European Commission has refused to comment on the United States’ move. Instead it has focused on the EU’s legal arsenal to bring big tech into line with its rules.

The move against the TikTok Lite rewards scheme was the latest instance of the EU flexing that legal muscle against online platforms.

It is also investigating tech billionaire Elon Musk’s X, the former Twitter, over alleged illegal content.

TikTok Lite users can win rewards if they log in daily for 10 days, if they spend time watching videos (with an upper limit of 60 to 85 minutes per day), and if they undertake certain actions, such as liking videos and following content creators.

TikTok is among 22 “very large” digital platforms, including Amazon, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, that must comply with stricter rules under the DSA since August last year.

The law gives the EU the power to hit companies with heavy fines as high as six percent of a digital firm’s global annual revenues. Repeat offenders can see their platforms blocked in the EU.

The post TikTok suspends rewards programme after EU probe appeared first on Digital Journal.

The legislation gives TikTok nine months to divest from its Chinese parent company ByteDance or be shut out of the American market.

US and other Western officials have alleged the social media platform allows Beijing to collect data and spy on users. It has 170 million users in the United States alone, many of them young.

Critics say TikTok is also a conduit to spread propaganda. China and the company strongly deny the claims.

“Make no mistake, this is a ban. A ban on TikTok and a ban on you and your voice,” TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew said in a video posted on TikTok moments after President Joe Biden signed the bill into law.

“Politicians may say otherwise, but don’t get confused. Many who sponsored the bill admit a Tiktok ban is the ultimate goal.”

Chew called the move “ironic” given that the “freedom of expression on TikTok reflects the same American values that make the United States a beacon of freedom.”

“Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere,” Chew told the platform’s users. 

“We will keep fighting for your rights in the courts. The facts and the Constitution are on our side.”

The ban measure was included in a $95 billion foreign aid package, including military assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

The bill, which could trigger the rare step of barring a company from operating in the US market, passed the Senate by a 79-18 vote three days after it cleared the House of Representatives with strong bipartisan support.

Under the bill, ByteDance would have to sell the app or be excluded from Apple and Google’s app stores in the United States.

TikTok for years has been in the crosshairs of American authorities, who say the platform allows Beijing to snoop on users in the United States. 

The bill passed by Congress also gives the US president the authority to designate other applications as a threat to national security if they are controlled by a country deemed hostile.

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, formerly Twitter, came out last week against banning TikTok, saying “doing so would be contrary to freedom of speech and expression.”

The post TikTok to fight US ban law in courts appeared first on Digital Journal.

It is the final day of a two-week course on selling products abroad via the short video app — which despite being blocked in China is a platform more and more Chinese vendors are turning to. 

Succeeding on TikTok requires tools for bypassing internet restrictions as well as foreign-language skills, challenges that have prompted a boom in courses and consulting services. 

At the school in Guangzhou in southern Guangdong province, an instructor holds up the Middle Eastern-inspired garments to the camera and rattles off prices and sizing information for Muslim buyers in the UK.

“This is chiffon, it’s really breathable!” she gushes in English as her proteges model the goods and sort through racks of satin robes under stark studio lights.

“We teach people which products are selling better, and which markets are more suitable for their current stages,” 27-year-old Wang Yaxuan, another instructor at the school, tells AFP.

Guangdong is home to thousands of factories making a mindboggling variety of products, from the abayas to espresso machine parts to wigs made of human hair.

After decades of producing goods for export, Chinese companies are increasingly seeking to cut out the middleman and market themselves at lower prices, directly to overseas consumers.

Shein, the China-founded fast fashion giant, has effectively taken over the lower-end Western market using this strategy, with TikTok a key facet of its selling network. 

TikTok Shop launched in the United States late last year, and e-commerce features have previously been rolled out in places like Britain and Southeast Asia. 

A casual scroll on the hugely popular app’s “Live” tab can land users on multiple shopping livestreams within minutes.

But with TikTok unavailable in China — parent company Bytedance operates the more strictly censored sister app Douyin domestically — smaller businesses there are at a disadvantage. 

Courses like the one at Mede Education Technology’s e-commerce school help by covering everything from the basics of creating a TikTok account to handling shipping and analysing sales data.

Fees start at around 9,000 yuan ($1,244) for a six-day course.

Students, who range from factory owners to fresh graduates, often take classes for multiple foreign shopping platforms including Amazon and Southeast Asia’s Shopee.

– Information gap –

Qiu Zhouwen, a course participant in his 30s, works for a Guangzhou cosmetics company.

He says his company enrolled him because they are hoping to eventually sell their skincare range through TikTok.

“Information is part of the cost (of doing business) now, and if you don’t have the information that’s appropriate to the market, your cost will be way too high,” Qiu says.

Wang, the Mede instructor, attended university in the United States and says it can be challenging for Chinese sellers to adapt to different consumer tastes abroad. 

Chemical manufacturer Donghua Jinlong spawned viral memes on TikTok this month after overseas social media users found absurdist humour in the company’s matter-of-fact videos about industrial-grade glycine featuring AI-generated voiceovers.

There are also significant technical hurdles. 

Accessing TikTok from China requires VPN software to bypass the country’s virtual “Great Firewall”, while dodging the app’s own curbs on users manipulating their IP addresses.

VPNs are a legal grey area in China, with authorities occasionally cracking down while generally tolerating their use for business purposes.

TikTok is also caught up in global geopolitical tensions — the US Congress is threatening to ban the app entirely over concerns it could share personal data with the Chinese government.

Wang is unfazed by the prospect of a US TikTok ban.

“Our students are not just selling to the US market… the current trend for TikTok for Southeast Asia is also very good,” she tells AFP.

Wang says it’s not the first time this situation has happened, adding that she feels the United States was trying to “take this huge cake and split up the market”.

– Catchphrases and clicks – 

Mede is one of many organisations running TikTok classes, including others based in Guangdong, where authorities have hung up propaganda banners promoting international e-commerce.

Those not willing to shell out steep course fees can also seek advice from e-commerce veterans who have built a following on Chinese social apps by sharing TikTok tips.

Molly Zhao, a 23-year-old TikTok livestreamer, has been selling products including clothing and electronics online since 2022.

Zhao, who studied in Italy and speaks Italian and English, told AFP her foreign-language skills have earned her livestreaming jobs paying as much as 20,000 yuan ($2,760) each month.

She regularly posts videos for domestic viewers on Douyin, covering topics including common English phrases and how to explain shipping rates clearly.

“You must build up the atmosphere,” she explains in one video, adding that using a catchphrase can “make a deeper impression on customers”.

In another video, a smiling, dancing Zhao shares her warmup routine before a livestream session selling gemstones and crystals to US viewers.

“Time to earn Americans’ money,” she says in a deadpan caption. “I’ll put on some music to hype myself up.”

The post Chinese sellers go to TikTok school to reach buyers abroad appeared first on Digital Journal.

A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch.

Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Monday.

“I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm,” Anwar said in a speech, referring to the British chip design giant.

The park will be located in Selangor state, he said, without offering any details on costs and timelines.

AFP has reached out to Arm for comment.

The project would mark a significant step for Malaysia, which has long been a chip manufacturing hub, with its northern island of Penang home to a number of facilities and is often dubbed the country’s Silicon Valley.

Tensions between Washington and Beijing over advanced tech, especially semiconductors, in recent years have forced many firms to look into relocating their manufacturing from China to other countries including Malaysia, Vietnam and India.

The Malaysian government is actively pursuing investment in its semiconductor industry, and Anwar has said the country should have done better with past opportunities to grow the sector.

“The fact is that we have experienced missed opportunities in technology investments, making it imperative for us to re-strategise,” he said Monday.

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The medics are seeking 1.4 million yen ($9,000) in total damages from Google in a bid to hold the US tech titan accountable for inaction over the reviews.

They sued the company on Thursday, saying they are powerless to reply to, or refute, reputation-damaging reviews because of their obligation to patient confidentiality.

“People who post online can say anything anonymously, even if it’s nothing but slander or verbal abuse”, one of the participating doctors told reporters.

“It’s like I’m a punching bag”, he said under anonymity.

The case at Tokyo District Court is believed to be the first class-action lawsuit in Japan to target a platform over negative online reviews, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said.

“Despite the ease with which they are posted, it has become extremely difficult to get the reviews taken down,” lawyer Yuichi Nakazawa told AFP.

“This can lead to doctors doing their job under the constant fear of receiving horrible reviews”, he said.

The objective of many medical institutions is not to satisfy patients, but to deal with their illnesses from a professional standpoint, the plaintiffs’ complaint said.

“Clinics that give patients only a perfunctory diagnosis and prescribe medicines as requested would be inappropriate medically, but highly appreciated by patients,” it said.

The nature of the job can also sometimes leave doctors susceptible to ad hominem online attacks by patients holding a grudge, plaintiffs argued.

If the situation remains unaddressed, doctors “may find themselves hesitant to be firm and refuse medically unnecessary examinations or medicines requested by patients,” Nakazawa warned.

That ultimately does society a disservice, he argued.

Google Maps is so widely used in Japan that it serves as “infrastructure” for daily life, according to the complaint.

So Google should be able to “easily recognise” the disadvantages to medical businesses if unfair reviews are left unaddressed, it said.

The plaintiffs acknowledged that Google takes down some Maps reviews under its own guidelines, but criteria for removal is opaque and “few” are deleted, they alleged.

Google told AFP it is “making efforts to reduce inaccurate and misleading content on Google Maps”.

“With the combination of human operators and computers, we are protecting the profile of companies around the clock, and removing unjust reviews”, the company said. 

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