Around the world, government organizations are calling out Google for monopolistic practices. The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) will reportedly announce Google is in violation of the country's antitrust laws in regards to its search engine, Chrome, and issue a cease and desist letter, Nikkei Asia reported. The watchdog started an investigation into Google's practices last October.The JFTC reportedly accuses Google of requiring smartphone manufacturers to sign a contract stating Chrome will be not only pre-downloaded on all devices, but that it will be placed in a certain spot on the screen. The manufacturers are allegedly forced to do this in order to have the Google Play available on their devices.In the US, federal judge Amit Mehta ruled in November that Google "is a monopolist" in the search engine industry. The Department of Justice (DoJ) then called for Google to sell Chrome as it "will permanently stop Googles control of this critical search access point and allow rival search engines the ability to access the browser that for many users is a gateway to the internet." The DoJ also called for Google to cease favoring Chrome on Android. Google recently released a proposal to appease the DoJ, but stated it will appeal the judge's ruling before a hearing scheduled for April.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-could-be-accused-of-antitrust-practices-in-japan-130039793.html?src=rss

Trick your ears into hearing more speakers

The Apple HomePod could soon be joined by a smart home lock and doorbell with Face ID.

SetMe is a remote support solution for businesses of all sizes that allows IT teams to easily secure a connection to remote computers, allowing for ad-hoc or unattended support that was designed with years of experience in remote support software from the team behind FixMe.IT.

Generative AI technology has become Meta's priority, directly impacting the company's business and potentially paving the road to future revenue opportunities.

Of the 439,000 bitcoin that MicroStrategy owns, more than one-third have been purchased since Trump's election victory last month.

With smartphones and social apps taking over, the way we connect with each other has totally changed. Were always on and somehow still feeling alone. On top of that, with more of us working remotely or in hybrid setups, loneliness is hitting record highs. Theres no getting around it: real, face-to-face connection is essential for our well-being. Period. Maybe its time we take a page from the past and bring back more traditional ways of connecting to fight that feeling of isolation.All signs are pointing to 2025 as the year we head back into the office. Sure, leaving the comfort of your home and rejoining a shared workspace might feel like a hassle at first. But this shift comes with a silver lining. Its our chance to rediscover the everyday social buzz thats so important for our mental health and sense of belonging. Instead of dwelling on how annoying it might be to return to the office, why not focus on how it can actually make your day-to-day life richer and more connected?Why the office still mattersWe are communal creatures at heart, but in recent years, we have lost our access to and sense of community. Along the way, its been fairly easy to forget that our office environments once fulfilled a huge portion of our social lives. But what does it mean to be socialparticularly in an effective and intentional way? It comes down to the three categories of people we tend to interact with at work.The first is our support system, which is usually a group of less than five people in your life who want the best for you with no strings attached, and are available to you for various kinds of support when you need it. Next are the newbies, people who come into our lives, potentially driving some discomfort at first, but challenge us to communicate, grow, or be vulnerable, and may or may not evolve into different or more meaningful relationships. The last group are those with whom we have micro interactions,whether thats a doorman, the cashier at the supermarket, a guest speaker, or a contractor. These exchanges remind us we are a part of something bigger and help reinforceor challengeour belief system.These relationships and interactions are essential to our social health, and are often found when our lives push us out of the confines of our home. It just so happens that work is one of the most obvious and common modalities that can achieve that. Growth rarely happens in a comfort zone. So, while its easy to stay tucked away at home, over time, this can lead to a sense of stagnation and even loneliness.Being around others, even if it feels awkward or inconvenient at first, pushes us out of our bubble and enriches our perspective. Its in these moments of discomfortsharing a meeting room with someone you dont know well or attending a workplace social eventthat we develop resilience and new social skills. Plus, these experiences can make the comfort of home even sweeter when the workday is done.This doesnt mean we have to become best friends with everyone in our department, but sharing a laugh over coffee, collaborating face-to-face, or commiserating about shared challenges can be a surprisingly effective way to combat feelings of isolation. The beauty of these interactions is their simplicity. A casual chat in the break room or a shared lunch can inject a little dopamine into the day and remind us of the humanity behind the emails and Slack messagesand of the fact that we control our attitude and perspective.Making the office work for youMuch of the resistance to return-to-office mandates stems from a sense of obligation: I have to do this. But what if we reframed that mindset to: How do I want to make this work for me? This shift puts us back in the drivers seat. Instead of focusing on whats being asked of us, focus on how we can make the experience more enjoyable and beneficial. Schedule coffee meetups with coworkers, propose a team lunch, or even turn commuting time into a chance to listen to a favorite podcast or audiobook. Viewing the office as an opportunity rather than a chore can transform the entire experience.Lets put it into practice. How do we tangibly embrace work-related opportunities to improve our social wellness?First, start small. You dont need to overhaul your social habits overnight. Begin with small gestures, like saying hello to a coworker in the hallway or complimenting someone on a job well done. These small steps build confidence over time.Next, identify barriers. If the thought of being social at work causes anxiety, take a moment to identify whats holding you back. Is it fear of rejection? Uncertainty about how to start a conversation? Once youve pinpointed the issue, you can work to address it.Lastly, make it work for you. Tailor your interactions to what feels authentic. If large group settings feel overwhelming, focus on one-on-one connections. Set up a coffee date or invite a colleague to lunch. Think of workplace interactions as a chance to expand your personal and professional horizons. Each connection you make could lead to new opportunities or simply make your workday more enjoyable.The power of a Good MorningHeres the big takeaway that probably wont surprise anyonein-person social interaction is the cure to the loneliness epidemic still haunting so many. Workplaces, by nature, provide a readily available avenue to practice these behaviors and attitudes. With that in mind, its time to reframereturn-to-office mandates as opportunities, shifting from viewing them as a burden and instead seeing them as an invitation to connect with others and rediscover the value of in-person collaboration.Being in an office environment is a chance to open ourselves up to the benefits of traditional methods of building community, and to reclaim a sense of belonging in a world where weve become severely isolated from one another. While the idea may seem rudimentaryand maybe even unappealing at firstmaybe when it comes to our own well-being, taking it back to the basics gives us the best shot at happiness.

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages ofInc.andFast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you cansign up to get it yourselfevery Monday morning.During his prolific acting career, Idris Elba has played a homicide detective, a drug lord, an all-seeing Marvel superhero, and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela. But the British actor, who also runs a production company and has cofounded a creative agency and a skincare line, appears particularly at ease playing a CEO in a new marketing campaign for ServiceNow, the cloud-based software company.A new commercial, debuting on Christmas Day, features Elba as a fictional chief executive walking through his company, highlighting all the different ways ServiceNows artificial intelligence (AI) technology is supporting employees in human resources, IT, and customer service. The campaign is the latest product to come out of a partnership Elba has forged with the tech company and CEO Bill McDermott, which also includes a commitment to work together to bring energy and clean water resources to Sherbro Island off the coast of Sierra Leone.From introduction to actionIn an interview with Modern CEO, Elba underscored that hes not merely a spokesperson for the product. When the [ServiceNow] team came to my offices, I said, I need to use the product, he recalls. I have a small workforce across various different verticals. And I needed to understand the product so that I can be a part of a genuine partnership. So, Im integrating it into IE7 and the Akuna Group, which are my parent companies, so that when Im in these commercials I have a much better sense of what Im saying and why Im saying it.[Photo: ServiceNow]The collaboration between Elba and ServiceNow reflects the changing nature of the relationship between celebrities and brands. Actors, athletes, and even influencers dont just endorse products, they are frequently customers and shareholders in the brands they representand they often seek support from those brands for their charitable endeavors. LeBron James was an early role model, investing in bicycle maker Cannondale in 2007 and securing donated bikes for an annual charity bikeathon. Travis Kelce is an investor in Kodiak and joined forces with the food company to donate meals to school children in Kansas City.Aligned in purposeElba and ServiceNows McDermott quickly bonded over Elbas work to develop Sherbro Island in West Africa as an eco-friendly, self-sustaining community. The Elba Hope Foundation has announced plans to build a wind farm on the island to provide electricity and collect data to support additional renewable energy projects. The project aligns with ServiceNows efforts to bring infrastructure to parts of Africa in the hope of stoking economic development. ServiceNow also has a partnership with GivePower, a sustainable energy nonprofit, which aims to provide clean water to up to 600,000 Kenyans for 20 years. Its like magic when were together, McDermott says of spending time with Elba. Were both purpose-driven people, and ServiceNow is a purpose-led company. Bill McDermott [Photo: ServiceNow]The new marketing campaign attempts to bring to life McDermotts push to turn ServiceNow into the control tower for AI transformation from its humble roots as an IT service management company. The ads featuring Elba highlight ServiceNows AI agents, which use generative AI to identify and automatically solve problems. ServiceNow, which integrates with major AI players such as Google and Microsoft, promises to help AI agents collaborate across departments.A life-changing golf gameMcDermott was a surprise pick to run ServiceNow in 2019 after a 17-year career at software giant SAP. (ServiceNows annual sales at the time were $3.5 billion, compared to SAPs 2019 annual revenue of about $27.5 billion.) McDermott recalls playing golf with ServiceNows then-CEO John Donahoe, who asked if hed ever leave SAP. Donahoe subsequently announced that he was becoming CEO of Nike, and ServiceNow named McDermott as Donahoes successor. (Donahoe retired from Nike in October after a rocky tenure at the sporting gear maker.)After he was approached for the ServiceNow job, McDermott put together a five-year plan for the company. He recently celebrated his five-year anniversary in the role. The plan I shared is the plan weve executed, he says. Analysts expect the company to report 2024 revenue of nearly $11 billion, and the companys market capitalization of about $220 billion makes it the second most valuable software-as-a-service company, behind Salesforce.McDermott says Elba, who has long been a fan favorite to play the next James Bond, is the ideal person to be the face of ServiceNows AI latest initiative. Its his presence and his persona, he says. Hes our secret agent man.Your brand as a personWho personifies your brand? What marketing campaigns have done a good job communicating another companys products as well as its values? Send your favorite spots to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Id love to feature your top picks in a future newsletter.Read more: beyond celebrity endorsementsMeet the L.A. investor advising LeBron James and Billie EilishHow Shaquille ONeal made himself bigger than everKim Kardashians Skims is an Inc. 5000 company

In 2024, the job market slowed. Tech layoffs continued: an estimated 100,000 jobs were lost according to Crunchbase News. While the unemployment remained low at 4.2% (for context, unemployment rates reached about 14% during the pandemic and about 10% during the Great Recession) hiring rates also remained low. Its taking an average of 24 weeks for unemployed people to find jobs, a 22% increase from the same time last year.Fast Company asked job search platform Indeed for a list of the top ten fastest growing jobs of 2024. Some of the jobs on the list might be a surprise: despite the hype around AI, the jobs that are still seeing massive growth are jobs that require a human touch.Above all, employers prize soft skills. Communication remains the single most requested skill, Jennifer Herrity, a career trend expert at job searching platform Indeed, noted. While technical abilities matter, employers are seeking candidates who can effectively communicate and collaborate. This has become especially paramount in the age of remote and flexible work. In a report by Indeed, analysts found that employers were more concerned about employees having basic computer skills than having AI chops. GenAI jobs only made up about 0.2% of all postings.Specialized expertise and human connectionHerity pointed out that the roles that saw the most growth in 2024 are jobs that combine specialized expertise with human connection, particularly jobs in healthcare. Were also noticing that traditional professions in the legal and healthcare industries are growing and evolving, but not being replaced by technology. Instead, theyre incorporating new tools while maintaining their core focus on human expertise, Herrity noted.While it may be tempting as a job seeker in a slow market to jump on the latest trends and reskill accordingly, Herrity warns that trends may look more dramatic from the outside than they really are. Sure, technology is evolving, but what makes people successful in their careersthe ability to problem solve, work well with others, and learn new thingsthats incredibly consistent, she wrote.Job seekers who looking to get back in the market are best served by focusing on their strengths and passions while also learning about new tools and approaches and figuring out a way to combine both. Herrity also points out employers are shifting towards valuing skills-first hiring rather than credentials or education. Employers increasingly value job seekers who can demonstrate both technical expertise and emotional intelligence, she said.Below is the list of the top ten jobs with the most growth in postings on Indeed from December 2023 to December 2024.Behavior AnalystDemand increased by 383%Median salary: $79,846Insurance BrokerDemand increased by 346%Median Salary: $94,948 ParalegalDemand increased by 298%Median salary: $125,000Regional Sales DirectorDemand increased by 241%Median salary: $133,396Gas EngineerDemand increased by 183%Median salary: $105,098Vascular SurgeonDemand increased by 163%Median salary: $300,000Mechanical Project ManagerDemand increased by 151%Median salary: $110,000Delivery SpecialistDemand increased by 142%Median salary: $71,058Real Estate AdvisorDemand increased by 140%Median salary: $127,885Allergy SpecialistDemand increased by 138%Median salary: $127,700

Here are the prettiest pieces of furniture we saw this year:Panter & Tourron's ANC stool, CNC-machined from an aluminum slab. Max Lamb's deceiving-looking 005 Lounge Chair for Vaarnii. Industrial designer David Raymond's aluminum Rounded Edges Chair. The Peace Outdoor Lounge Chair, Faye Toogood's brutal & sophisticated Finnish-British take on the Adirondack Chair. A series of stunning pieces by Australian furniture designer Brodie Neill. These pieces with wood and stone joinery by Maine-based furniture designer Ethan Stebbins. Austrian designer Laurids Galle's "Metropolis"-inspired resin furniture. German architect Gustav Dsing's Chair23D is an actually good-looking CNC-cut flatpack chair. Belgian designer Peter Donders' Wind Bench, which combines digital fabrication with hand shaping. South Korean sculptor/furniture designer Soo Joo's biophilic Dynamic Mirrors. Studio Toda's Cocoda Chair is Mid-Century-Modern-meets-Japan. This gorgeous walking stick/folding stool, by Danish designer/builder Anker Bak, is what he calls "everyday assistive furniture." Architect Deniz Aktay's handsome Fibonacci-inspired wall mirror. Icelandic industrial designer Hlynur Atlason's rotomolded Limbo Chair. Danish architect/furniture designer Leif Jrgensen's LJ Spider Chair is simple and complicated at the same time. And lastly, a design classic with a muddy history: Kaare Klint's Propellor Stool.