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Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat.

Adam Galica | CNBC

Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said in a memo Wednesday that Google is restructuring its finance organization, a move that will include layoffs and relocations, as the company pushes resources to favor investments in artificial intelligence.

“The tech sector is in the midst of a tremendous platform shift with Al,” Porat wrote in the memo, obtained by CNBC, that was sent to employees in finance. “As a company, this means we have the opportunity to make more helpful products for billions of users and provide faster solutions to our customers, but it also means we collectively have to make tough decisions, including how and where we work to align with our highest priority areas.”

The latest cuts follow a broader effort by Google to rearrange its workforce and resources to accommodate further investment in new technologies such as AI as advertising growth slows. CEO Sundar Pichai told employees in January that more job cuts were likely coming in 2024, though he did not specify which teams would be affected.

The restructuring will affect finance teams domestically and abroad, including in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Porat noted. 

Porat also wrote that the company would create “hubs” for more centralized operations including in Bangalore, Mexico City, Dublin, Chicago and Atlanta. The company plans to maintain a significant presence in the San Francisco Bay Area, she noted.

“Over the past year, we have talked about creating hubs of Fin’ooglers around the world that are vibrant and have a strong culture,” Porat wrote. “This strategy will help us be a more efficient organization and enables us to run 24 hours a day while respecting Fin’ooglers worktimes.”

Fin’oogler is the company’s term for a Google employee in finance.

Porat ended her note saying, “We are sad to say goodbye to some talented teammates and friends we care about, and we know this change is difficult.”

“As we’ve said, we’re responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” a Google spokesperson told CNBC in an email. “To best position us for these opportunities, throughout the second half of 2023 and into 2024, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, remove layers and align their resources to their biggest product priorities.”

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Meta hit with major EU probe into disinformation handling ahead of European elections

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Meta hit with major EU probe into disinformation handling ahead of European elections

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on January 31, 2024 in Washington, DC.

Alex Wong | Getty Images

Meta on Tuesday was hit by the European Commission — the executive body of the European Union — with a major investigation into its compliance with the EU’s strict internet content rules.

The Commission said it is investigating Meta over concerns the company hasn’t done enough to ensure effective combatting of disinformation ahead of upcoming European Parliament elections.

The European Parliament elections are due to take place on June 6-9.

In the Commission’s statement Tuesday, it said it suspects Meta is incompliant with DSA (Digital Services Act) obligations regarding tackling deceptive advertisements, disinformation campaigns, and coordinated inauthentic behavior in the EU.

The Commission also said Meta may have infringed the DSA by demoting political content in the recommendation systems of Instagram and Facebook, which it said may have violated transparency requirements.

“We have a well-established process for identifying and mitigating risks on our platforms,” a Meta spokesperson told CNBC via email.

“We look forward to continuing our cooperation with the European Commission and providing them with further details of this work.”

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The bloc also took issue with the lack of availability of an effective third-party, real-time civil discourse and election-monitoring tool ahead of upcoming elections to the European Parliament, plus other votes in various individual member states.

It said Meta is in the process of depreciating its CrowdTangle tool, which is a public insights tool enabling real-time election monitoring by researchers, journalists, and civil society through visual dashboards.

For its part, Meta maintains that CrowdTangle is an inefficient election monitoring tool as it lacks enough publicly available data. The company is building new tools on its systems to provide access to more comprehensive data from its platforms.

Potential big fine

Meta is accused of infringing the Digital Services Act, which is a ground-breaking EU law introduced in late 2020 to set out how regulators take a closer eye on tech giants’ content moderation measures as well as efforts to tackle manipulation of elections.

The DSA, which entered into force on Feb. 17, 2024, requires internet giants to give users information on why they’re being recommended certain websites or other details, and the possibility to opt-out.

Ads on those platforms also have to include a label on who paid for them.

The rules also include provisions for ensuring that platforms mitigate risks of election misinformation and manipulation.

Last week, the Commission conducted a “stress test” to test platforms’ readiness to address manipulative behavior in the run-up to elections.

The regulator said it “detected gaps and areas of improvement,” and identified ways to enhance and strengthen cooperation between stakeholders.

Meta qualifies as a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) under the EU’s DSA law, meaning it faces stricter controls from regulators and potentially heftier fines if it deviates from the rules in the region.

Failure to comply with the rules could lead to fines of up to 6% of the firm’s global turnover and, ultimately, could lead to a temporary ban from operating in the region.

The Commission said it will continue to gather evidence from Meta, for example by sending additional requests for information or conducting interviews and inspections.

The bloc said it can take further enforcement steps including interim measures and non-compliance decisions, if it deems such a step necessary, or accept commitments made by Meta to remedy issues raised in the proceedings.

It hasn’t set a legal deadline for bringing the formal proceedings to an end.

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ISS endorses most of activist Ancora’s nominees for Norfolk Southern board

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ISS endorses most of activist Ancora's nominees for Norfolk Southern board

Alan Shaw, CEO, Norfolk Southern

Scott Mlyn | CNBC

Influential proxy advisory firm ISS recommended on Tuesday that Norfolk Southern shareholders support five of activist Ancora’s seven board nominees, withholding an endorsement from CEO pick Jim Barber but describing him as a “credible director and CEO candidate nonetheless.”

ISS’ endorsement, in a report viewed by CNBC, comes one day after Glass Lewis endorsed most of activist investor’s slate of nominees and days after two unions came out in support of Ancora’s proposed management team.

The proxy advisor recommended shareholders support CEO Alan Shaw’s reelection to the board over Barber, but in a rebuke of NSC’s existing governance, it said shareholders should not support current board chair Amy Miles.

Ancora is seeking to oust both current CEO Shaw and newly appointed COO John Orr. The activist holds Shaw accountable for NSC’s historic underperformance relative to peers, and for a disastrous derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, just a few months into his tenure.

Glass Lewis, the other influential proxy advisory firm, said shareholders should support Barber over Shaw in its recommendation Monday. While neither endorsement suggests giving Ancora full control of the board, both provide the dissident with a clear mandate to implement change.

Investors, especially passive index-fund giants like Vanguard and BlackRock, pay close attention to proxy advisors’ recommendations when deciding how to vote their millions of shares. The top three shareholders at Norfolk Southern control more than 16% of shares outstanding.

ISS said in its report that it was clear “that the dissident has presented a balanced slate consisting of qualified nominees, and has generally targeted the appropriate management nominees.”

ISS recommends shareholders support Ancora nominees William Clyburn, Sameh Fahmy, Gilbert Lamphere, Allison Landry and John Kasich.

The proxy advisor said that Norfolk Southern’s governance problems were “most evident” in the board’s failure to communicate with investors and prioritize their “best interests.”

“As board chair, Amy Miles arguably bears the most responsibility for this state of affairs,” ISS’ report read.

Norfolk Southern has taken steps to address investor concerns, including appointing Orr as COO and adding two new directors, former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp and former Delta CEO Richard Anderson. ISS endorsed Anderson’s election but said shareholders should not support Heitkamp.

“There is no evidence suggesting that Heitkamp is in any way unfit to serve, but dissident nominee John Kasich has comparable regulatory and administrative experience,” the ISS report said, mentioning the latter’s “proven ability” to foster compromise.

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Watch CNBC's full interview with Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw

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Microsoft to invest $1.7 billion into AI infrastructure in Indonesia, CEO Satya Nadella says

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Microsoft to invest .7 billion into AI infrastructure in Indonesia, CEO Satya Nadella says

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (C) arrives for a meeting with Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo at the Merdeka Palace in Jakarta on April 30, 2024. (Photo by BAY ISMOYO / AFP) (Photo by BAY ISMOYO/AFP via Getty Images)

Bay Ismoyo | Afp | Getty Images

Microsoft on Tuesday said it will pump $1.7 billion into Indonesia over the next four years to build new cloud and AI infrastructure. The announcement came as CEO Satya Nadella met with Indonesian President Joko Widodo on the same day.

Microsoft said the funds will also go toward training 840,000 Indonesians in AI skills and supporting the local community of developers.

“This new generation of AI is reshaping how people live and work everywhere, including in Indonesia,” Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft, said in a statement.

“The investments we are announcing today – spanning digital infrastructure, skilling, and support for developers – will help Indonesia thrive in this new era,” said Nadella.

Microsoft also said it will partner with governments, organizations and communities to provide AI skilling opportunities for 2.5 million people in Association of Southeast Asian Nations member states by 2025.

Nadella met with Jokowi in Jakarta on Tuesday to discuss topics including technological and AI breakthroughs that will help Indonesia progress, according to Indonesian news agency Antara.

Indonesia wants to become a developed country as set out in its Golden Indonesia 2045 Vision, which aims to make the country into a global economic powerhouse by 2045.

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Microsoft’s investment will allow it to capitalize on the increasing demand for cloud computing services in Indonesia, as well as enabling the nation to capture economic and productivity opportunities arising from AI, the tech giant said.

Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture Muhadjir Effendy in January said that Indonesia faces huge challenges in leveling up its workforce to compete in a technological and globalized era.

Indonesia has a growing, young and tech-savvy population with Generation Z – those born between 1997 and 2012 – making up nearly 28% of the population, or 75.49 million people. The number of millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, reached 69.9 million people, or 25.9% of the population.

Microsoft opened its first data center region in Indonesia in 2021 to meet customer needs for data to be stored in the country.

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