Google began cracking down against companies gaming its search algorithm to push up rankings for other sites in March last year

International News via Reuters:

Alphabet’s Google was hit with an EU antitrust investigation into its spam policy on Thursday following complaints from publishers who say it has hurt their revenues, putting the U.S. tech giant at risk of yet another hefty fine.

Google began cracking down against companies gaming its search algorithm to push up rankings for other sites in March last year.

Its site reputation abuse policy targets the practice of publishing third-party pages on a site in an attempt to abuse search rankings by taking advantage of the host site’s ranking signals, commonly referred to as parasite SEO.

The European Commission said its monitoring indicated that Google is demoting news media and other publishers’ websites and content in Google search results when those websites include content from commercial partners.

It said Google’s policy appears to directly impact a common and legitimate way for publishers to monetise their websites and content.

“We are concerned that Google’s policies do not allow news publishers to be treated in a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory manner in its search results,” EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera said in a statement.

“We will investigate to ensure that news publishers are not losing out on important revenues at a difficult time for the industry, and to ensure Google complies with the Digital Markets Act (DMA),” she said.

TECH GIANT CALLS EU INVESTIGATION ‘MISGUIDED’

Google pushed back against the EU competition enforcer, saying the EU move risks degrading the quality of search results.

“The investigation announced today into our anti-spam efforts is misguided and risks harming millions of European users,” Pandu Nayak, chief scientist at Google Search, wrote in a blog post.

“And the investigation is without merit: a German court has already dismissed a similar claim, ruling that our anti-spam policy was valid, reasonable, and applied consistently,” he said.

He said Google’s anti-spam policy helps level the playing field to thwart websites from using deceptive tactics to outrank websites competing on the merits with their own content.

German media company ActMeraki in April complained to the Commission, saying that Google’s spam policy penalises websites.

The European Publishers Council, the European Newspaper Publishers Association and the European Magazine Media Association also have voiced similar grievances.

The EU investigation is under the DMA which seeks to rein in the power of Big Tech where violations can cost companies as much as 10% of their global annual sales.

Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, Editing by Louise Heavens

U.S. stock futures meandered from slightly negative to 0.2% firmer, although MSCI’s 47-country All World Index was firmly on course for its fourth consecutive daily gain

International News via Reuters:

World stocks were eyeing a return to record highs on Thursday at the end of the longest government shutdown on record, while an increasingly squeezed Japanese yen hit a record low versus the euro and a nine-month trough against the dollar.

Europe’s STOXX 600 made a steady start with a near 1% jump from France’s CAC 40 nudging both indexes to all-time peaks and offsetting a more than 4% dive from German engineering giant Siemens after it reported underwhelming earnings. [.EU]

U.S. stock futures meandered from slightly negative to 0.2% firmer, although MSCI’s 47-country All World Index was firmly on course for its fourth consecutive daily gain as it edged to within 4 points of October’s all-time high.

U.S. President Donald Trump signed the bill to end the government’s shutdown in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

Delayed economic data is expected to start trickling out next week. October’s payrolls figures could be the first to land with the focus on whether they will back up private surveys that have shown softness in the job market.

   “We are waiting for the data fog to clear, but the one thing we can say from PriceStats data is that inflation is rolling over so it will be all about the jobs data, and that will be the driver of risk sentiment,” State Street Global Markets’ Michael Metcalfe, said.

SQUEEZED YEN

There had been action in Asia overnight too, including in the currency markets where Japan’s yen came under renewed pressure after the new premier’s latest push for the central bank to go slow on rate rises. 

The yen hit a record low of 179.49 per euro and was near a nine-month trough on the dollar at 154.92.

That was despite the country’s finance minister reminding traders just the previous day that the government was watching the currency closely.

Japan’s Nikkei had closed up 0.4% and the broad Topix set an all-time high as investors shifted portfolios from the frothiest artificial intelligence firms to buy exposure to other parts of the economy. [.T]

“There is still a debate about whether the BoJ will tighten rates by year-end. Our inclination is that they will, but there is a strong market narrative that is proving hard to break that policy settings will encourage a weaker yen,” State Street’s Metcalfe added.

Elsewhere, gold hung on to recent gains and traded above $4,200 while benchmark government bonds were largely quiet with the U.S. 10-year yield at 4.09% and Germany’s 10-year yields at 2.65%.

OIL SPILLS

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng retreated slightly from a one-month high and the Shanghai Composite rose 1% ahead of credit and retail sales data due later this week.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Index notched a record high overnight while the tech-heavy Nasdaq retreated. [.N]

In London, the mining-heavy FTSE 100 drooped fractionally on Thursday after an all-time high the previous day. Europe’s tech stocks led sectoral gains, however, as ASML and Infineon showed signs of recovery from steep losses incurred last week. [.L][.EU]    

Elsewhere in foreign exchange trade Britain’s pound briefly touched a session low after data showed its economy barely grew in Q3, while the Australian dollar ticked higher after a surge in employment figures bolstered a view that the rate-cutting cycle there may have run its course.

Brent crude futures inched down to a three-week low of $62.42 a barrel after OPEC shifted its projection to forecast a small surplus to demand in the world oil market for 2026. They had slumped 3.8% a day earlier. [O/R]

“Recent (price) weakness seems to be driven by OPEC’s revision of supply-demand balance in 2026 in its monthly report, which confirms the group is now acknowledging the possibility of a supply glut in 2026,” said Suvro Sarkar, DBS Bank’s energy sector team lead.  

Reporting by Marc Jones; editing by Sharon Singleton

Brent crude futures fell $2.55, or 3.91%, to $62.61 a barrel by 1:13 p.m. CST (1913 GMT) after gaining 1.7% on Tuesday

International News via Reuters:

Oil prices fell more than $2 a barrel on Wednesday, weighed down by an OPEC report saying global oil supply will match demand in 2026, marking a further shift from its earlier projections of a supply deficit. 

Brent crude futures fell $2.55, or 3.91%, to $62.61 a barrel by 1:13 p.m. CST (1913 GMT) after gaining 1.7% on Tuesday. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was down $2.58, or 4.23%, at $58.46 a barrel, after climbing 1.5% in the previous session.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries noted that world oil supply would match demand next year due to the wider OPEC+ group’s production increases – a shift from its earlier projections of a supply deficit in 2026.

“The prospect that the market is in balance is definitely what drove down prices,” said Phil Flynn, senior analyst with Price Futures Group. “The market wants to believe it’s balanced. I think the market took OPEC more seriously than IEA.”

The International Energy Agency forecast in its annual World Energy Outlook on Wednesday that oil and gas demand could continue to grow until 2050. 

The projection was a departure from the IEA’s previous expectation that global oil demand would peak this decade, as the international body moved away from a forecasting method based on climate pledges back to one that takes into account only existing policies.

John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital, said the OPEC outlook comes as some crude sellers cannot find buyers.

“There are cargoes going begging,” Kilduff said. “The very front of the market is forming a new price curve. There’s just a general sense of weakness in the U.S. economy.”

Analysts have previously highlighted that crude oversupply is curbing price gains. OPEC+ agreed this month to a pause in increasing its output in the first quarter of next year, after having unwound its cuts to production since August this year.

US GOVERNMENT REOPENING

The reopening of the U.S. government, however, could boost consumer confidence and economic activity, spurring demand for crude oil, IG Market analyst Tony Sycamore wrote in a note.

The U.S. Republican-controlled House of Representatives is set to vote later on Wednesday on a bill, already signed off by the Senate, that would restore funding to government agencies through January 30.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration will release its outlook on Thursday.

Reporting by Erwin Seba in Houston, Seher Dareen and Enes Tunagur in London, Colleen Howe in BeijingEditing by Jane Merriman, Hugh Lawson, Rod Nickel

Operators will also expand the fibre optic network to cover areas still lacking mobile or internet network coverage

International News via Reuters:

Portuguese telecoms operators plan to spend 4.2 billion euros ($4.9 billion) on high-speed 5G networks and satellites over the next five years to support major projects such as data centres and AI, the Infrastructure Ministry said on Wednesday.

Operators will also expand the fibre optic network to cover areas still lacking mobile or internet network coverage, as well as road, rail, port and airport infrastructure, the ministry said in a statement.

In Portugal, the three largest telecom operators — Altice, NOS and Vodafone — control more than 90% of the market and account for the bulk of investment.

Microsoft on Tuesday announced a $10 billion investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure at the Start Campus data centre in the port city of Sines, where Portugal has large investment projects lined up to produce green energy to power data centres.

“Portugal’s geostrategic location … is now central to intercontinental connectivity. This is an opportunity that Portugal cannot, nor will it, waste, with the largest technological investment of all time underway in our country,” Infrastructure Minister Miguel Pinto Luz said.

Portugal’s Atlantic coastline positions it as a prime hub for subsea cables connecting Europe, Africa and the Americas and forming the backbone of the world wide web.

($1 = 0.8575 euros)

Reporting by Sergio Goncalves; editing by Andrei Khalip and Leslie Adler

The collaboration is a potential boost for WeightWatchers as it emerges from bankruptcy and highlights its commitment to sell branded obesity drugs

International News via Reuters:

WeightWatchers’ CEO said on Wednesday it plans to sell Novo Nordisk’s much-anticipated Wegovy in pill form if it is launched next year in the United States, deepening its tie-up with the Danish obesity drugmaker.

The collaboration is a potential boost for WeightWatchers as it emerges from bankruptcy and highlights its commitment to sell branded obesity drugs, unlike rivals that push cheaper copies in a highly competitive market.

“We have been working with Novo Nordisk ahead of time to support the launch of oral weight-loss medication,” WeightWatchers CEO Tara Comonte said in an interview.

“A lot of people don’t want an injection. And the convenience of a pill is going to be huge,” she said.

Weight loss pills from Novo and rival Eli Lilly are under consideration for a new, speedy U.S. review pathway that can shave months from the normal approval process.

WeightWatchers could keep more customers on its platform than telehealth rivals, as doctors expect U.S. patients to switch to the branded medicines once prices come down under a deal announced last week by the White House. 

Lilly and Novo agreed to slash prices of their popular GLP-1 injectable drugs for U.S. government health programs and cash-paying customers. 

Starter doses of the weight-loss pills, if approved, will cost $149 a month for Medicare and Medicaid enrollees and for cash payers through the U.S. administration’s new TrumpRx site. 

“Anything that brings pricing down for these medications is good for WeightWatchers,” Comonte said. 

WeightWatchers is also trying to gain a stronger foothold in women’s health, including through tailored programs that offer GLP-1 medicines and hormone replacement therapy.

Outside of the U.S., Germany and the UK are major markets for WeightWatchers, which had 4 million subscribers worldwide at the end of 2023. 

Reporting by Bhanvi Satija in London; Editing by Bill Berkrot

The European Democracy Shield strategy expects them to go the extra mile

International News via Reuters:

Europe is looking to online platforms and influencers to help fight disinformation and promote democracy according to a European Commission strategy presented on Wednesday amid concerns over interference by foreign governments in national elections.

Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Elon Musk’s X, TikTok and other online platforms already have to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content under the EU’s Digital Services Act in force since 2022.

The European Democracy Shield strategy expects them to go the extra mile, with the EU executive setting up a DSA incidents and crisis protocol to facilitate coordination between authorities and react swiftly to large-scale operations.

Signatories to a voluntary Code of Conduct on disinformation, among them Google, Microsoft, Meta and TikTok, may be required to make a greater effort to detect and label AI-generated and manipulated content on their platforms.

“The Democracy Shield connects the dots, making sure Europe’s tools and actors work together effectively in defence of our shared values. The challenge is clear and let us make no mistake, the stakes are indeed very high,” EU Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath told a news conference.

The Commission also singled out influencers’ role in online political campaigns, saying it would set up a voluntary network of influencers to raise awareness of relevant EU rules.

A newly set-up European Centre for Democratic Resilience will coordinate EU countries’ expertise and resources and facilitate information sharing.

Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Alexandra Hudson