As the holding company model continues to face threats on numerous fronts, the five biggest ones should consider going private, said S4 Capital's Sir Martin Sorrell. In an interview during the Cannes Lions Festival of International Creativity last week, Sorrell said the holding companies were stuck in outmoded ways of working. Sorrell also said that ad agencies his new company S4 Capital is trying to provide advertisers with an alternative by focusing on data, digital and being better, faster and cheaper than traditional agencies. Click here for more BI Prime stories . In their heyday, ad holding companies allowed agency groups to serve an array of clients with various marketing functions while achieving economies of scale. But with the holding company model facing threats and shares of big players like WPP, Publicis, and IPG continuing to slide , they may be better off going private, said former WPP chief and S4 Capital head Sir Martin Sorrell. "There's a serious question to be asked as to whether the 'big five' would be better off private," Sorrell told Business Insider during an interview during the Cannes Lions Festival of International Creativity last week. "Do they need more scale?

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Changes that YouTube is considering to protect children aren’t going over too well with some parents whose kids star in the site’s videos. YouTube is considering moving all content that stars children to YouTube Kids, an app that Google, which owns YouTube — created in 2015. The possible move is partly a response to the…

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Google is now rolling out a feature that lets you force it to automatically delete all of the location history it has saved on you.

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The Daily Wire reported on June 24 that Google is manipulating search results in order to determine what users see. The source of the report was a video from Project Veritas, which seeks to expose corruption. Their team believes Google […] The post Google Manipulating Search Results To Defeat Trump In 2020 Elections appeared first on ValueWalk .

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President Donald Trump threatened Google and Facebook with potential lawsuits, and claimed Silicon Valley's tech giants are biased against Republicans, in an interview with Fox Business on Wednesday morning . "We should be suing Google and Facebook, which, perhaps we will," he said. Trump also claimed that tech companies are "trying to rig" the 2020 US presidential election. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. President Donald Trump threatened to sue Google and Facebook on Wednesday morning during an interview with Fox Business News . "We should be suing Google and Facebook and all that," he said. "Which, perhaps we will." Trump didn't specify why he believes the government should be suing Google and Facebook, but mentioned it in the context of fines the European Union has levied against companies like Apple and Google in recent months. Most recently, the EU fined Google $1.7 billion for its third breach of EU antitrust rules in three years. Trump claimed that Google specifically is attempting to "rig" the 2020 US presidential election, calling Google "totally biased." He cited a congressional hearing on Tuesday where Senator Ted Cruz asked Google user experience director Maggie Stanphill about political bias at Google.

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SoundCommerce, an e-commerce data analytics tool, announced on Wednesday that it raised $6.5 million in seed funding led by Defy Ventures . The company was started by two Amazon veterans that worked on third-party seller features for the e-commerce giant. Cofounder and CEO Eric Best told Business Insider that SoundCommerce gives everybody access to the same ways of looking at data that have helped Amazon grow into the behemoth it is today . Best said the funds will be used to roughly double his 15-person team, with a focus on data analytics and machine learning engineers as they continue to expand access to SoundCommerce's platform. Click here for more BI Prime stories . After several years leading Amazon's third-party seller strategy, Eric Best knew what made or broke a company trying to turn a profit on the e-commerce giant's platform. Now, he's putting that insider knowledge to good use. Best's company SoundCommerce is a data analytics startup that lets e-commerce sites access and act on the type of data that has made Amazon such a massive success .

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President Donald Trump lambasted Twitter, Google and other technology giants on Wednesday for what he sees as their efforts to repress his messaging.

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Pres. Trump not a help The USDJPY backed off as stocks in pre-market trading dipped (still positive) on comments from Trump in his interview with Fox (US might sue FB and Google, tariffs of 10% (not 25%) could be imposed on additional China exports). The comments from Mnuchin (90% of the deal complete) was dialed back (that was where they were before the breakdown). By Greg Michalowski

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Shares of Facebook Inc. and Google-parent Alphabet Inc. swung to losses in premarket trading Wednesday, after President Trump suggested in an interview on…

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The IT marketplace Spiceworks surveyed 452 businesses on how they use cloud from providers like Amazon , Microsoft , and Google . These businesses rated Amazon Web Services as the best cloud for maximum uptime, Microsoft Azure as the best for compatibility, and Google Cloud the best for simplicity of management. Over a third of businesses also told Spiceworks that they're open to using smaller, local cloud providers. Click here for more BI Prime stories. When IT professionals representing 452 businesses were asked to rate the clouds from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, they said each of those vendors have different strengths. In this survey , conducted by IT marketplace Spiceworks , the three clouds — Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud — all ranked similarly for most of their core technological features. Still, each stands out for a different reason. Amazon Web Services earned the top marks for maximum uptime, data security, and value for money -- all of which customers see as some of the most critical things they will think about when picking a cloud.

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Alphabet is pledging not to sell any data that it collects as part of its proposal for neighborhoods in Toronto. Yahoo Finance's Dan Roberts, Melody Hahm and Myles Udland speak to Jeff Lagerquist.

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A new study from Princeton revealed that many online shopping sites use so-called "dark patterns" — manipulative design techniques intended to coerce customers into buying, even if it's something they don't actually want or need. Researchers investigated over 10,000 sites, and found more than 1,200 e-commerce websites that manipulate customers by using fake customer testimonials, shaming customers who try to leave, and running a meaningless countdown clock. Dark patterns are nothing new: Some iPhone apps have employed similar techniques to trick users into paying for subscriptions, and even Facebook has been accused of using dark patterns to get people to share data. Today, Senators Mark Warner and held a hearing to discuss legislation that would ban the use of these dark patterns in websites with over 100 million monthly users. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Researchers at Princeton released a new study on how many online shopping sites use coercive so-called "dark pattern" techniques to trick people into spending more money. "This is manipulating users into making decisions they wouldn't otherwise make and buying stuff they don't need," Gunes Acar, a research associate at Princeton who helped run the study, told Business Insider. "Showing a timer and saying you only have 5 minutes left — there's a sense of urgency that's questionable at best." Acar and his team created a tool that crawled over 10,000 e-commerce sites.

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US Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts has released a public letter calling for stricter regulations on YouTube to ensure child safety. YouTube is reportedly under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for its handling of children's videos and could face fines for breaking children's privacy laws. YouTube has been rocked by a series of controversies that called attention to how children are using the video platform and revealed gaps in YouTube's moderation process. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. As the Federal Trade Commission reportedly enters the final stages of an investigation into YouTube, US Senator Edward Markey is calling for major changes to how the Google -owned video site handles children's content. In a letter dated June 25, Markey asked the FTC to "take all necessary steps to hold YouTube accountable" for potential violations of children's privacy laws. Markey is the author of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a federal law introduced in 2000.

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Google searches for the Democratic presidential candidates are spiking as the candidates gear up for the first two 2020 presidential debates in Miami.

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With concern growing over the power of Google , Facebook , and the other tech industry behemoths, people have been looking back to the Microsoft antitrust trial for possible insights. But an earlier investigation into the company may have a more important lesson, said Rick Warren-Boulton, an economist who served as an expert witness for the government in that trial. That investigation, led by the Federal Trade Commission nearly a decade before the antitrust trial, looked into the tactics Microsoft used to maintain its operating system dominance in the pre-Windows days. Had the FTC acted quicker, the second trial may have been unnecessary, Warren-Boulton said. Click here for more BI Prime stories. In trying to figure out what to do about today's tech giants, many antitrust experts and public policy pundits have drawn on the lessons of the Microsoft trial 20 years ago. Economist Rick Warren-Boulton thinks there's perhaps an even more important lesson to be learned from a separate, little-remembered antitrust investigation of the software giant that took place nearly a decade earlier than that momentous case.

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