Concerned co-conspirators tell Guido they spotted Angela Rayner taking an inordinate number of pear drops from a pick n’ mix stand at Google’s summer party on Monday night. The party was held at the swanky Garden Museum, with canapés, champagne and confectionary aplenty for the distinguished guest list. Pornstar martinis were served in teacups, and an entire pick n’ mix station offered a smorgasbord of sweet treats…

Guido’s sources say Rayner approached the stand as a co-conspirator was picking their own sweets. “What’s your favourite?” she asked. “Pear drops”, replied the hungry co-conspirator…

With that, the sweet-toothed Deputy Leader of His Majesty’s Opposition grabbed the jar of pear drops and emptied “almost three-quarters” of the sugared contents into her bag. Below is a picture of the remaining drops after Rayner had tipped out her generous supply. Note how few remain relative to the other sweets…

Given Rayner’s habit of fudging the numbers with all those AirPods receipts, maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise to see her taking advantage of a corporation like this. Some might argue Guido’s comparing apples and pears with this mallow-drama.

After nearly a year locked in a legal fight with the tech giants, Red Wall heavyweight fighter Lee Anderson has finally walked away victorious after Google issued a formal High Court apology to the MP for serving a defamatory advert falsely accusing him of protecting a paedophile. An advert which was targeted at Guido readers…

It was bought via Google’s programmatic network and was unseen by our commercial representatives, nor indeed ourselves, until it popped up. Google has a near monopoly on this type of advertising, where publishers offload unsold advertising inventory to Google to fill. Scam adverts get through frequently, though this is the first time we have ever seen a defamatory attack via this method:

While the terms of the settlement are confidential, Google finally apologised in court. They also accepted that they should not have allowed this advert to appear. Guido would argue that they were negligent in allowing this advert to appear and they should be held liable for any damages arising in this situation. Guido argued before the case began that we should not be a party to it because we had no knowledge of the advert prior to it appearing in a space that Google had effectively rented and published to without our active involvement. We were akin to the paper supplier to a newspaper, not the printer or publisher. This settlement avoided the arguments being heard, though no doubt lawyers will study this for future cases. 

Lee tells Guido that

“I am pleased that Google has publicly apologised in Court and put an end to this very difficult and distressing time for me and my family.

I do however think it is a real shame that it has taken so long for this to happen and that I had to get lawyers involved and threaten Google with legal action to get here.

I want to thank Guido for swiftly taking down this ad once they were made aware and for their ongoing support through a difficult time.”

M’learned friends can read and study the official Statement (Anderson v Google). We’re just glad that Lee fought and won justice in his battle against the trillion dollar plus Google behemoth…

Read Lee’s full statement below:

Read More

When the government proposed the Digital Services Tax, Rishi Sunak and other Treasury ministers emphasised that

“The Digital Services Tax will apply to a group’s businesses that provide a social media service, search engine or an online marketplace to UK users. These businesses will be liable to Digital Services Tax when the group’s worldwide revenues from these digital activities are more than £500 million and more than £25 million of these revenues are derived from UK users.”

They stressed to Parliament that British small businesses would be exempt, that only the big bad (American) tech behemoths would be liable, and that it would raise £2 billion from the likes of Amazon, Google, and Facebook who would otherwise avoid being taxed. Guido pointed out that, in the end, people pay taxes. Ultimately, it’ll be the customers – us – who end up footing the bill.

This was meant in a theoretical sense; that costs would eventually be passed on, through raised prices, to maintain the same returns for the corporations. Amazon saw it in a practical sense and ruthlessly whacked it straight on to the bills of customers. British businesses, who rely on goods being shipped by Amazon, now have to fork out for the rise, with the government not getting a penny from Amazon – just their British customers. The message was clear: your government did this to you. Today, Google have emailed customers saying they will do likewise.

Neither Amazon nor Google are paying the tax, the small British businesses that ship goods on Amazon that they advertise via Google are getting clobbered by it. These businesses will have to put up prices to customers as a result. Thanks a lot Rishi…

A London-based Google advertising sales executive, Adriano Amaduzzi, boasted he had declined to respond to the Conservative Party while being filmed by an investigation by American investigative journalism organisation Project Veritas. Undercover footage revealed technical account manager Amaduzzi, boasted of ignoring requests to do business from the Conservative Party, because he was opposed to Brexit. Video footage revealed Amaduzzi saying:

“Funny enough about Brexit, I had a guy, linked to, me, for no reason –, I don’t know why, contacted me from LinkedIn and say: ‘Hi I’m head of digital infrastructure of the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom, we would like to do advertising with Google, could you help me with that?’ I was like—I didn’t answer”

“You’re telling an Italian that lives in London that you want to advertise Brexit. It’s like, seriously?”

Despite obvious Big Tech hostility the Tories went on to win an 80 seat majority. How much bigger would it have been had the tech giants not been hostile?