Google parent Alphabet recommits to infrastructure investment plans amid Trump tariff turbulence
Google’s parent company Alphabet has pledged to spend $75 billion on increasing data centre capacity this year, despite uncertainty being driven by Donald Trump’s tariff agenda.
Sachin Gupta, who heads Google Cloud’s infrastructure division, said customer demand meant the search engine and cloud giant needed to continue to grow its computing power, even if the cost of importing hardware climbs dramatically.
“We’re all processing what’s happening with tariffs,” he told Reuters.
Trump has initiated plans to place huge tariffs on America’s trading partners, although, at the time of writing, the President had paused many of these tariffs for a month while other countries tried to negotiate trade agreements.
Gupta’s comments come in the same week that Microsoft also re-emphasised its pledge to invest $80 billion in AI infrastructure this year, while Meta has also reiterated its plans to spend up to $65 billion.
Meta introduces Teen Accounts for Facebook and Messenger
Meta has introduced Teen Accounts to both its Facebook and Messenger services, offering extra protections and restrictions to teenage users, following a similar move on Instagram.
Meta says that its family of Teen Accounts has been developed with parents in mind, offering “protections to limit inappropriate content and unwanted contact, as well as ways to ensure teens’ time is well spent.”
The social media giant will initially launch teen accounts in the US, UK, Australia and Canada, and they will apply automatically to any teens setting up an account, with parents required to give permission to relax these settings for users aged under 16.
Musk defends Tesla and attacks Trump’s trade advisor
Elon Musk has leapt to the defence of his car firm Tesla, labelling Trump administration trade advisor Peter Navarro a “moron” over comments he made about the company.
Musk, who is also a member of the Trump administration, called Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks” in a post to his social media platform X.
Musk’s comments came in response to an interview Navarro gave over Trump’s controversial trade sanctions, in which the trade adviser labelled Tesla a “car assembler” rather than a manufacturer.
The dispute is one of the first major fallings out since Trump regained the Presidency and comes after Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency, called for a return to free trade in a week when Trump flip-flopped over imposing massive sanctions on global trading partners.
UK tax agency blocked 100 million malicious emails in the past three years
The UK tax service HMRC says it has blocked over 100 million malicious emails in the last three years, showing a sharp rise in the number of cyber-attacks against the government.
His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs revealed that from November 2021 to September 2024, it blocked 105,002,094 malicious emails – with the most coming between November 2023 to September 2024 (40,903,820 emails).
That was a 600,000 rise on the previous year, which itself was up by more than 16 million from November 2021 to October 2022.
The figures were revealed as part of a Freedom of Information request.
