Lawsuit accuses Google of fostering systemic bias against Black employees

A new lawsuit against Google accuses the company of fostering a “racially biased corporate culture” that offers Black employees lower pay and fewer opportunities to advance than their white counterparts, reports Reuters. Filed on Friday with a federal court in San Jose, California, the complaint alleges the company subjected former diversity recruiter April Curley and other current and former Black employees to a hostile work environment.

In 2014, Google hired Curley to design a program to connect the company with Black colleges. Shortly afterward, she claims she was subjected to denigrating comments from her managers, who allegedly stereotyped her as an “angry” black woman while passing her over for promotions.

“While Google claims that they were looking to increase diversity, they were actually undervaluing, underpaying and mistreating their Black employees,” Curley’s lawyer told Reuters. The complaint notes Black people make up only 4.4 percent of employees at Google and approximately 3 percent of its leadership.

We’ve reached out to Google for comment.

Curley is not the first person to accuse Google of fostering a work environment hostile to Black employees and other people of color. In the aftermath of Timnit Gebru’s controversial exit from the company, Alex Hanna, a former employee with the tech giant’s Ethical AI research group, said she decided to leave Google after becoming tired of its structural deficiencies. “In a word, tech has a whiteness problem,” Hanna wrote on Medium at the time. “Google is not just a tech organization. Google is a white tech organization.”

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Judge dismisses lawsuit accusing Amazon of antitrust violation over third-party pricing

On Friday, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia threw out a complaint that Attorney General Karl Racine had filed against Amazon accusing the retailer of anticompetitive behavior, according to The Wall Street Journal. Last June, Racine’s office alleged that Amazon had used a variety of contract provisions to prevent third-party sellers from offering their wares for less elsewhere.

“We believe that the Superior Court got this wrong, and its oral ruling did not seem to consider the detailed allegations in the complaint, the full scope of the anticompetitive agreements, the extensive briefing and a recent decision of a federal court to allow a nearly identical lawsuit to move forward,” a spokesperson for the attorney general told the outlet.

At the center of Racine’s suit was Amazon’s Fair Pricing Policy. In 2019, amid antitrust scrutiny, the company stopped telling third-party sellers they couldn’t offer their wares at lower prices on competing marketplaces. The complaint alleged that Amazon added a near-identical clause under its Fair Pricing Policy. The suit said that those guidelines allow the company to impose sanctions on merchants that sell their products for less money elsewhere.

When Racine’s office first filed its complaint, Amazon argued that many retailers employ pricing restrictions in their contracts. “The DC Attorney General has it exactly backwards — sellers set their own prices for the products they offer in our store,” a spokesperson for the company told Engadget at the time. “Amazon takes pride in the fact that we offer low prices across the broadest selection, and like any store we reserve the right not to highlight offers to customers that are not priced competitively. The relief the AG seeks would force Amazon to feature higher prices to customers, oddly going against core objectives of antitrust law.”

Racine’s office said it was weighing whether to appeal the ruling. “We are considering our legal options and we’ll continue fighting to develop reasoned antitrust jurisprudence in our local courts and to hold Amazon accountable for using its concentrated power to unfairly tilt the playing field in its favor,” it told The Journal.

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Eufy's RoboVac X8 is $200 off today only

If you’ve been waiting for an excuse to pick up a robot vacuum, you’ll want to turn your attention to Amazon. The retailer has discounted one of the best mid-range models: the Eufy RoboVac X8.

Buy Eufy RoboVac X8 at Amazon – $400Buy Eufy RoboVac 30C at Amazon – $170

For today only, it’s $200 off, so you can purchase one for $400 instead of $600. The X8 is missing some features you’ll find on more expensive robot vacuums. Most notably, it doesn’t come with a clean base. It also doesn’t include the mop functionality found on Eufy’s X8 Hybrid model. However, if you can do without those two features, the X8 represents excellent value, particularly at $400. It comes with four cleaning modes and four suction levels. Even running the vacuum at its lowest setting, we found it could still thoroughly suction up dust and dirt. We also found it was easy to set up, with a mobile app that offers a handful of valuable features, including a “tap and go” one that lets you pinpoint any spot in your home for cleaning.

If you’re looking for a more affordable option, consider the RoboVac 30C. It’s not as powerful as the X8 and it features a less advanced navigation system but at its current price of $170, down from $300, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better robot vacuum for the price.

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