US consumers pined for pre-pandemic pleasures in Q4 2021, with the delta wave receding and omicron just entering the frame—and it showed in their search behavior. Organic Google search visits to travel sites increased 41% year over year that quarter. Meanwhile, retail and consumer goods took a hit: Visits to those sites decreased 14% as the prospects of in-store shopping improved.

Google and Meta head toward another major showdown with Europe’s regulators: A new investigation alleges the two companies made a deal to block competition against Google’s ad system.

Major brands weigh the benefits of staying in the Russian market: Airbnb wins the brand reputation game, while Uniqlo and Shell may have misjudged the situation.

Tide is turning for tech unionization: The rise of digital media alongside a tight labor market, inflation, and wage stagnation prompts news tech workers to organize. How far behind is Big Tech?

Ukraine conflict presents a chance for social media to amend a history of misinformation: American tech firms clashed with Russia over the weekend, often rebuking its requests.

On today's episode, we discuss how connected TV (CTV) advertising will scale and how AI is poised to help TV advertisers. Then for "In Other News," we talk about Google curbing cross-app tracking on Android phones and what to expect from the WarnerMedia/Discovery merger. Tune in to the discussion with chief product officer at MNTN Marwan Soghaier and our analyst Paul Verna.

Apple's introduction of AppTrackingTransparency in iOS 14.5 changed how the mobile app industry approaches monetization and measurement. Here’s what you should know about the changes, along with best practices for mobile publishers and advertisers.

Unionization efforts pose a challenge to brands’ images: Labor efforts at Amazon, Apple, REI, and Starbucks show a side of these popular brands that could turn off consumers.

On today's episode, we discuss Google's insane Q4 performance and what stood out the most. Then for "In Other News," we talk about what will happen when the dust settles on the TV measurement wars and how concerning the viewability challenges of connected TV (CTV) really are. Tune in to the discussion with our analyst Paul Verna.

Twitter invested in Bitcoin payment provider OpenNode’s $20 million funding round.

New Samsung devices haven’t changed much from old Samsung devices: The key difference is deeper integration with popular services such as Google Duo, Microsoft OneDrive, and Snap add more value for users.

Google, Meta find themselves in Europe’s regulatory crosshairs once more: As increased scrutiny drives up the cost of doing business, Big Tech tries to fight back.

Payments Ecosystem: This year will reveal how providers must adapt to lasting pandemic-driven digitization across payments channels, ranging from in-store retail to B2B ecommerce.

Google’s EU antitrust woes multiply: Sweden’s PriceRunner sues Google for skewing search results toward its own shopping service. The move could prompt more legal action from European shopping services.

Amazon lifts the veil over its advertising business: The retailer’s 2021 ad revenues outpaced YouTube’s and are poised for continued growth.

Google Cloud is losing billions of dollars: Feature parity with AWS and Azure, greater global availability, and pivoting toward enterprise customers could help it regain momentum in the cloud services segment.

As retail’s digital dominance grows, Google successfully captures retail ad dollars: Its investments in social commerce on YouTube and improvements to Google Shopping appear to have paid off.

Meta’s earnings miss shows the vulnerability of its ad revenue model: The company could be in for a $10 billion hit from Apple’s privacy changes, and the rise of TikTok isn’t helping.

Insider Intelligence spoke with Bill Ready, president of Commerce, Payments, and Next Billion Users at Google.