The tech industry witnessed significant developments this week, particularly in antitrust matters, AI innovations, and corporate leadership changes.
A pivotal ruling emerged from a two-year battle involving Google, as a judge determined that the company violated antitrust laws in the ad tech market. This ruling followed complaints from eight states against the tech giant. Remedies could potentially include a breakup of Google’s advertising business, possibly leading to the sale of Google Ad Manager. Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, stated, “We won half of this case, and we will appeal the other half.”
In a parallel vein, Meta’s antitrust suit commenced this week, featuring explosive testimonies. Among the notable points, it was revealed that Mark Zuckerberg had suggested a controversial strategy of “wiping everyone’s graphs and having them start again” to regain Facebook’s relevance. Additionally, around the time TikTok was impacting Meta’s growth, the company ceased reporting Facebook’s user numbers in its quarterly reports, suggesting internal concerns about user engagement.
Meanwhile, in the world of AI, OpenAI is reportedly in discussions to acquire Windsurf, previously known as Codeium, which has established itself as a popular coding assistant. Prior to this, OpenAI also explored options with Anysphere, the creator of another coding assistant, Cursor. This indicates OpenAI’s strong ambition to capture a portion of the rapidly growing code-generation market.
Additionally, Grok has launched a new “memory” feature that enables the AI to retain information from previous conversations. This feature is currently available in beta on Grok.com and its iOS and Android applications in the U.S. Notably, competitors like ChatGPT and Gemini already offer similar memory functionality.
Innovations continue to expand as users leverage ChatGPT for identifying locations shown in images. This emerging trend illustrates the combination of AI’s image-analysis capabilities with web-searching abilities, providing a novel tool for users.
In the corporate arena, Bolt’s CEO Ryan Breslow, after reclaiming leadership, recently announced a plan for a “one-click crypto and everyday payments” solution. This initiative aims to consolidate these services into a single “super app,” marking a new chapter in Breslow’s leadership at the company.
On the hardware front, Nvidia disclosed that it has been informed by the U.S. government about the need for a license to export its H20 AI chips to China. Earlier, Nvidia had indicated plans to dedicate hundreds of millions of dollars towards the production of some of these chips domestically, although details regarding this move remain sparse.
A notable conflict arose this week when Figma issued a cease-and-desist order against the no-code AI platform Lovable, demanding it stop using the term “Dev Mode” for its new product feature. This term is already associated with a Figma product, which was trademarked last year, highlighting the often-contentious nature of tech branding.
In a dramatic turn of events, Rippling filed a lawsuit against Deel, accusing the company of employing one of its workers to spy on Rippling. Complicating matters, Rippling has struggled to serve legal papers to Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz, who is currently in Dubai, known for its relaxed extradition policies.
Moreover, Notion launched Notion Mail, an AI-enhanced email client designed to integrate with Gmail to streamline email organization, response drafting, meeting scheduling, and message searching, further enhancing productivity tools in the marketplace.
Lastly, Abigail Bassett provided an insightful review of the Lucid Gravity, an electric SUV that seems poised to compete effectively against luxury EVs and traditional combustion SUVs, like the Rivian R1S, Cadillac Escalade IQ, BMW X7, and Audi Q8. She noted, “The Lucid Gravity may just be over-engineering at its best.”
As the week concludes, innovations and legal battles continue to shape the landscape of the tech industry, setting the stage for further developments in the coming weeks.
image source from：https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/19/week-in-review-google-loses-a-major-antitrust-case/
