Susan Wojcicki, the former YouTube chief executive officer and longtime Google executive, has died.

A federal judge has branded Google as a ruthless monopolist bent on suffocating it competitors.

If government regulators prevail in the biggest U.S. antitrust trial in a quarter century, it’s likely to unleash drastic changes designed to undermining the dominance of the Google search engine that defines the internet for billions of people.

Google is confronting a threat to its dominant search engine as federal regulators launch an attempt to dismantle its internet empire in the biggest U.S. antitrust trial in a quarter century.

The U.S. government is taking aim at what has been an indomitable empire: Google’s ubiquitous search engine.

Susan Wojcicki, a longtime Google executive who played a key role in the company’s creation, is stepped down as YouTube’s CEO after spending the past nine years running the video site that has reshaped entertainment, culture and politics.

Facebook Inc. says it is changing its name to Meta Platforms Inc., joining a long list of companies that have tried to rebrand themselves over the years.

Philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs is gearing up to invest $3.5 billion into climate initiatives through her foundation in the next 10 years.

Apple’s and Google’s cooperation with the Russian government’s efforts to suppress an app opposed to the ruling regime is escalating concerns about whether Big Tech’s pursuit of ever-higher profits has trampled their commitment to protecting civil rights.

Google co-founder Larry Page has gained New Zealand residency, officials confirmed, stoking debate over whether extremely wealthy people can essentially buy access to the South Pacific country.

What's in a name.

FILE - This Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013, file photo shows Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on Friday, Dec. 18, 2020, set a tentative trial date of Sept. 12, 2023. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on Friday set a tentative trial date of Sept. 12, 2023 for the landmark case that the Justice Department filed two months ago. He estimated that once the trial begins it will last about 5 1/2 weeks in his Washington, D.C., courtroom. Another antitrust case filed Thursday is seeking to preempt Google's dominance in other still-emerging fields of technology such as voice-activated devices in the home and internet-connected cars.

This photo provided by Google shows Fiona Cicconi, right, who is leaving the biotech firm AstraZeneca to become the head of Google's people operations, effective Jan. 5, 2021. (Courtesy of Google via AP)Google has hired a top executive from pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to oversee its personnel policies amid ongoing tensions with many employees who are upset with the company's policies. The hiring of Fiona Cicconi also comes while Google sets up plans to allow people to continue to work from home for at least eight more months. The rift incensed hundreds of Google employees who have signed a public letter of protest. Pichahi last week told employees that Google is beginning a thorough review into Gebru's exit, a process that now seems likely to involve Cicconi.

That pledge is now a distant memory as Google confronts an existential threat similar to what Microsoft once faced. They focused on creating a database of everything on the internet through a search engine that almost instantaneously listed a pecking order of websites most likely to have what anyone wanted. Google's promotion of Chrome on its search engine helped the browser supplant Explorer as the market leader. Google began reining in its spending and even created a new holding company, Alphabet, to oversee some of its unprofitable projects, such as internet=beaming balloons and self-driving cars. —-Liedtke first interviewed Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 2000 when he began covering Google for the AP.