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Google CEO Sundar Pichai testifies before the House Judiciary Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building on December 11, 2018 in Washington, DC.

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A federal judge narrowed the case that states and the Department of Justice can make in the antitrust trial against Google beginning in September, according to a newly-released decision.

It’s a significant win for Google, though it will still need to face other claims brought by the enforcers when the trial begins September 12.

D.C. District Court Judge Amit Mehta granted, in part, Google’s motion for summary judgment in the cases brought by the Department of Justice and a coalition of state attorneys general. The cases both alleged that Google illegally maintained a monopoly by cutting off rivals from search distribution channels.

While the judge mostly allowed that shared argument from the enforcers to move forward, he notably threw out the states’ claim that Google unfairly hurt search rivals like Yelp and Tripadvisor through the design of search results pages that lowered their visibility.

Mehta also narrowed the DOJ’s case to remove arguments over certain agreements Google made for its Android mobile operating system, Google Assistant and internet of things devices. He also removed arguments pertaining to how Google managed its Android Open Source Project. After Google filed the motion on summary judgement against those portions of the suit, the DOJ chose not to offer an opposition on those particular points, the filing notes.

Mehta denied Google’s motion for summary judgement on both enforcers’ claims that Google used exclusive dealing arrangements to violate anti-monopoly law, writing, “There remain genuine disputes of material fact that warrant a trial.”

As for the states’ claims about Google’s alleged anticompetitive behavior around its search ad tool SA360, Mehta wrote that there also remains a “genuine dispute of material fact with regard to the anticompetitive effect of Google’s disparate development of SA360’s ad-buying features,” meaning that claim is allowed to move forward.

The DOJ and a bipartisan group of AGs from 38 states and territories, led by Colorado and Nebraska, filed similar but separate antitrust suits against Google in 2020. Though they are separate complaints, they were combined for pretrial purposes, such as discovery of evidence.

The DOJ’s complaint focused on the ways Google allegedly used exclusionary contracts to tie up important channels to distribute search engines. In doing so, the agency alleged, Google maintained its monopoly power by denying rivals the chance to reach a similar scale and challenge its dominance.

The coalition of states made similar arguments but added additional points that aimed to address core arguments that Google’s longtime opponents have made against the tech giant.

In addition to the allegedly exclusionary contracts for search distribution, the states alleged that Google also violated antitrust law through its product to buy search ads and the way it designed its search results pages.

The states will still be allowed to bring claims that Google used its search ad product to disadvantage advertisers by not allowing them interoperate between its own tools and competitors’ to buy general search ads. But they will no longer be able to bring the claim that Google harmed competition by designing its search results to push down search engine competitors’ results, the judge decided.

That part of the complaint was most similar to the focus of a Federal Trade Commission investigation that closed a decade ago. The FTC decided to close the investigation without charges after probing whether the company gave its own content on its search results page an unfair advantage at rivals’ expense. But The Wall Street Journal later revealed that FTC staff had recommended filing suit against Google in connection to the search bias allegations, concluding that “conduct has resulted—and will result—in real harm to consumers and to innovation in the online search and advertising markets.”

The judge’s decision to throw out the states’ claims of search result bias is a blow to companies like Yelp, which have fought for more than a decade to have regulators around the world challenge the webpage design of Google’s search results.

“We appreciate the Court’s careful consideration and decision to dismiss claims regarding the design of Google Search,” Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer, said in a statement. “Our engineers build Search to provide the best results and help you quickly find what you’re looking for. People have more ways than ever to access information, and they choose to use Google because it’s helpful. We look forward to showing at trial that promoting and distributing our services is both legal and pro-competitive.”

“I am pleased that the multistate attorneys general lawsuit challenging Google’s monopoly in the search engine market and search advertising will proceed to trial in September,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement. “We will continue to evaluate how to best press forward and establish Google’s pattern of illegal conduct that harms consumers and competition.”

The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This story is developing. Check back for updates.

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Astronomer HR chief Kristin Cabot resigns following Coldplay ‘kiss cam’ incident

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Astronomer HR chief Kristin Cabot resigns following Coldplay 'kiss cam' incident

Chris Martin of Coldplay performs live at San Siro Stadium, Milan, Italy, in July 2017.

Mairo Cinquetti | NurPhoto | Getty Images

Days after Astronomer CEO Andy Byron resigned from the tech startup, the HR exec who was with him at the infamous Coldplay concert has left as well.

“Kristin Cabot is no longer with Astronomer, she has resigned,” a company spokesperson wrote in an email to CNBC Thursday. Cabot was the company’s chief people officer.

Cabot and Byron, who is married with children, were shown in an intimate moment on the ‘kiss cam’ at a recent Coldplay show in Boston, and immediately hid when they saw their faces on the big screen. Lead singer Chris Martin said, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.” An attendee’s video of the incident went viral.

Byron resigned from the company on Saturday. Both Cabot and Byron have been removed the company’s leadership team webpage.

Pete DeJoy, Astronomer’s interim CEO, wrote in a post earlier this week that recent and unexpected national attention has turned the company into “a household name.”

In May, the New York-based company, which commercializes open source software, announced a $93 million investment round led by Bain Ventures and other investors, including Salesforce Ventures.

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Musk’s Starlink hit with outage day after rollout of T-Mobile satellite service

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Musk's Starlink hit with outage day after rollout of T-Mobile satellite service

Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Elon Musk‘s satellite internet service Starlink said it had a “network outage” on Thursday. The company said it was working on a solution.

There were more than 60,000 reports of an outage on Downdetector, a site that logs issues.

Starlink is owned and operated by SpaceX, which is also run by Musk.

Musk apologized for the outage on his social media platform X and said, “Service will be restored shortly.”

Musk posted earlier Thursday that the company’s direct-to-cell-phone service was “growing fast” following the announcement that T-Mobile‘s Starlink-powered satellite service was available to the public.

T-Mobile said the T-Satellite service was built to keep phones connected “in places no carrier towers can reach.”

Starlink didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Starlink internet speeds and reliability decrease with popularity, a recent study found.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the T-Satellite service was affected by or involved in the outage.

Read more CNBC tech news

CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this story.

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Intel beats on revenue, slashes foundry investments as CEO says ‘no more blank checks’

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Intel beats on revenue, slashes foundry investments as CEO says 'no more blank checks'

The Intel logo is displayed on a sign in front of Intel headquarters on July 16, 2025 in Santa Clara, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Intel reported second-quarter results on Thursday that beat Wall Street expectations on revenue, as the company’s new CEO Lip-Bu Tan announced significant cuts in chip factory construction. The stock ticked higher in extended trading.

Here’s how the chipmaker did versus LSEG consensus estimates:

  • Earnings per share: Loss of 10 cents per share, adjusted.
  • Revenue: $12.86 billion versus $11.92 billion estimated

Intel said it expects revenue for the third-quarter of $13.1 billion at the midpoint of its range, versus the average analyst estimate of $12.65 billion. The chipmaker said that it expects to break even on earnings while analysts were looking for earnings of 4 cents per share.

For the second quarter, Intel reported a net loss of $2.9 billion, or 67 cents per share, compared with a $1.61 billion net loss, or 38 cents per share, in the year-earlier period. Earnings per share were not comparable to analyst estimates due to an $800 million impairment charge, “related to excess tools with no identified re-use,” the company said. That resulted in an EPS adjustment of about 20 cents.

The report was Intel’s second since Lip-Bu Tan took over as CEO in March, promising to make the chipmaker’s products competitive again, and to reduce bureaucracy and layers of management, including slashing staff in Oregon and California.

In a memo to employees published on Thursday, Tan said that the first few months of his tenure had “not been easy.” He said that the company had “completed the majority” of its planned layoffs, amounting to 15% of the workforce, and that it plans to end the year with 75,000 employees. Intel previously said it was trying to reduce operating expenses by $17 billion in 2025.

Intel shares are up about 13% this year as of Thursday’s close after plummeting 60% in 2024, their worst year on record.

Tan also announced several other spending cuts in the memo, particularly in the company’s costly foundry division, which makes chips for other companies and is still looking for a big customer to anchor the business.

Intel said its foundry business had an operating loss of $3.17 billion on $4.4 billion in revenue.

Tan said that Intel had cancelled planned fab projects in Germany and Poland, and will consolidate its testing and assembly operations in Vietnam and Malaysia. He added that the company would slow down the pace of its construction of a cutting-edge chip factory in Ohio, depending on market demand and if it can secure big customers for the facility.

“Over the past several years, the company invested too much, too soon – without adequate demand,” Tan wrote. “In the process, our factory footprint became needlessly fragmented and underutilized.”

Tan wrote that the company’s forthcoming chip manufacturing process, called 14A, will be built out based on confirmed customer commitments.

“There are no more blank checks. Every investment must make economic sense,” Tan wrote.

The company’s client computing group, which is primarily comprised of sales of central processors for PCs, had $7.9 billion in sales, down 3% on an annual basis.

Revenue in the data center group, which includes some AI chips but is mostly central processors for servers, rose 4% to $3.9 billion. Tan wrote in his memo that Intel wants to regain market share in data center chips, and is looking for a permanent leader for the business. Longtime rival Advanced Micro Devices has increasingly been winning server business from cloud customers.

Tan added he would personally review and approve all chip designs before they are taped out, which is the final step of the design process before a new chip is manufactured.

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