Global Tech News Roundup (Sept 3-4, 2025): Fines, Launches & Big Tech Moves

by Marcin Frąckiewicz
in Business, News, Technology
on 4 September 2025

Google dodges breakup: A U.S. judge refused to split up Google, sparking a 9% surge in Alphabet stock reuters.com.
Privacy payout: A jury hit Google with a $425 million verdict for tracking users after they opted out reuters.com.
Europe cracks down: France fined Google €325 million over Gmail ads reuters.com and Shein €150 million for illicit cookies reuters.com.
Tech titans meet Trump: President Trump hosted Silicon Valley CEOs in a flashy Rose Garden dinner reuters.com.
Instagram’s big app launch: Meta rolled out an iPad-optimized Instagram app centered on Reels reuters.com.
EV boom cooling: China’s BYD cut its EV sales target 16% amid slowing growth reuters.com.
Enterprise moves: JPMorgan expanded its digital bank to Germany reuters.com and HPE smashed earnings on server demand reuters.com.
Market surprises: Figma’s first post-IPO earnings underwhelmed, sinking shares reuters.com reuters.com.
Crypto lifeline: Venezuela’s currency exchanges embraced Tether (USDT) to cope with dollar shortages reuters.com reuters.com.
Cyber victory: Cloudflare thwarted a record 11.5 Tbps DDoS attack – the largest ever recorded tomshardware.com.
Space doubleheader: SpaceX launched 28 Starlink satellites from Florida hours after a California launch, topping 8,000 satellites in orbit space.com.

Google Dodges Antitrust Breakup, Shares Soar

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, won a major reprieve in its landmark U.S. antitrust case. On Sept 2, Judge Amit Mehta ruled against breaking up Google, allowing it to retain control of Android and Chrome reuters.com. The decision lifted a huge cloud of uncertainty: Alphabet stock rocketed over 9% in one day, adding about $210 billion in value reuters.com. The ruling permits Google to keep paying partners like Apple to make Google the default search, though it bans some exclusive deals reuters.com. Analysts cheered the “pragmatic” remedy. “This outcome removes a significant legal overhang and signals the court is favoring pragmatic remedies rather than scorched-earth tactics,” said Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Matt Britzman reuters.com. Another expert noted relief that lucrative Apple search payments can continue reuters.com. The judge pointed to rising AI chatbots like ChatGPT as emerging competition – a factor in deciding against a breakup reuters.com. Google still faces data-sharing mandates to help rivals, but its core search empire remains intact reuters.com. For Google, which was sued in 2020 for abusing its search monopoly, this was a huge win – and markets responded in kind reuters.com.

Jury Slaps Google with $425 Million Privacy Verdict

Google’s legal woes didn’t end in antitrust. In California, a federal jury found Google liable for breaching user privacy and awarded a $425 million payout reuters.com. The class-action lawsuit centered on Google collecting data from millions of users who thought they had turned off tracking (via the “Web & App Activity” setting) reuters.com. Over an eight-year span, Google accessed and used data from users’ phones even with that setting off, violating privacy promises reuters.com. Jurors ruled Google invaded privacy on two claims (while clearing it on a third) reuters.com. Google was spared punitive damages since the violation wasn’t deemed “malicious” reuters.com. Still, the verdict is a black eye for Google’s reputation on data consent. Google insists it did nothing wrong and plans to appeal reuters.com. “This decision misunderstands how our products work,” argued Google spokesman José Castañeda, claiming Google honors user choices reuters.com. Plaintiffs’ attorney David Boies hailed the outcome, saying they were “obviously very pleased with the verdict” reuters.com. The class action, covering ~98 million users, originally sought a staggering $31 billion reuters.com, but the jury’s award still ranks among the largest privacy payouts on record. It adds to Google’s other privacy headaches – like a recent $1.4 billion settlement in Texas reuters.com – underscoring mounting pressure on Big Tech’s data practices.

Europe Fines Tech Giants: Google and Shein Punished in France

European regulators delivered a one-two punch to tech companies on Sept 3. France’s data watchdog CNIL hit Alphabet’s Google with a €325 million (≈$381 million) fine for consumer protection failures reuters.com. CNIL found Google showed personalized ads in Gmail and planted tracking cookies for account sign-ups without users’ consent reuters.com. It ordered Google to stop displaying ads in Gmail without prior opt-in and to obtain explicit consent before creating accounts with ad trackers reuters.com. If Google doesn’t comply within six months, it faces €100,000 in daily penalties reuters.com. Google says it’s reviewing the decision and noted it already made changes, like easier opt-outs for personalized ads reuters.com. This French fine comes on top of a series of EU penalties testing Google’s compliance with privacy and consumer laws.

On the same day, CNIL also cracked down on Chinese-founded fast-fashion giant Shein. Shein was fined €150 million (~$176 million) for sneaking cookies onto users’ devices even after they opted out reuters.com reuters.com. Regulators said Shein’s website violated EU data rules by placing tracking cookies without consent and ignoring user choices reuters.com. The fine equals roughly 2% of Shein’s 2023 European revenue reuters.com reuters.com. Shein blasted the decision as unfair. The company “firmly contests” the CNIL’s findings and vowed to appeal, calling the hefty penalty “wholly disproportionate” and “politically motivated” reuters.com. Shein claims it’s now fully compliant and had cooperated with French authorities reuters.com. Nevertheless, CNIL emphasized Shein’s massive scale (12 million French visitors a month) in justifying the fine reuters.com. These twin French actions underscore Europe’s aggressive stance on digital privacy – even as companies push back hard.

EU Court Upholds Transatlantic Data Transfer Pact

In a closely watched decision, Europe’s second-highest court approved the latest EU–US data transfer deal, bringing relief to thousands of companies. The General Court ruled on Sept 3 that the 2023 “Data Privacy Framework” for sending personal data to the U.S. provides adequate protection reuters.com reuters.com. This pact replaced two previous EU–US data agreements (Safe Harbor and Privacy Shield) that were struck down over U.S. surveillance concerns. The court’s green light “provides legal certainty to thousands of companies” – from banks to cloud providers – that rely on moving data across the Atlantic reuters.com. The case arose from a French lawmaker’s challenge, arguing the deal still lacked sufficient privacy guarantees and recourse for Europeans reuters.com. But judges disagreed, noting new safeguards like the U.S. Data Protection Review Court to oversee intelligence agencies reuters.com. They concluded the U.S. now ensures an “adequate level of protection” for EU citizens’ data reuters.com. Privacy activists, including Max Schrems (who led prior successful challenges), remain skeptical and hinted at further appeals reuters.com reuters.com. For now, however, the crucial data flows underpinning EU–US business – from social media to payroll processing – can continue without disruption reuters.com. The decision eases a major transatlantic tech tension, even as debate over U.S. surveillance and EU privacy standards persists.

Trump Hosts Tech CEOs in Rose Garden Debut

Washington and Silicon Valley had a high-profile meetup on Sept 4, as President Donald Trump wined and dined tech titans at the White House. More than two dozen tech and business leaders gathered for an exclusive dinner on the newly renovated Rose Garden patio reuters.com. The guest list was a who’s who of Big Tech: Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Oracle’s Safra Catz, and even OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, among others reuters.com reuters.com. “The president looks forward to welcoming top business, political and tech leaders for this dinner and the many dinners to come on the new, beautiful Rose Garden patio,” said White House spokesman Davis Ingle reuters.com. The gathering signifies a thawing (or at least pragmatic realignment) of Trump’s relationship with Big Tech. In his first term, Trump often clashed with tech companies over content moderation and antitrust. But since his 2024 re-election, industry leaders have sought to mend fences reuters.com. Executives have aligned with some administration priorities – for example, easing diversity initiatives and discussing AI regulation – to stay in favor reuters.com. The Rose Garden soirée capped a day when these CEOs also attended a White House forum on AI hosted by First Lady Melania Trump reuters.com. Notably absent was Elon Musk; despite Musk’s past advisory role, he didn’t make the invite list amid a rumored rift reuters.com. The spectacle of tech’s elite dining at Mar-a-Lago-inspired umbrella tables at the White House reuters.com underscores how political influence and tech leadership are increasingly intertwined.

Instagram Launches iPad App Focused on Reels

After years of user clamoring, Instagram finally landed on the iPad – with a twist. On Sept 3, Meta’s Instagram launched a dedicated iPad app, completely revamped around its TikTok-style Reels videos reuters.com reuters.com. The new app addresses a long-running gripe: previously, iPad users had to suffer a blown-up iPhone app, lacking key features and looking blurry reuters.com. Now Instagram offers a native tablet experience, and it’s leaning into entertainment. The app opens straight into a full-screen Reels feed (Instagram calls it “lean-back entertainment”), with Instagram Stories accessible at the top reuters.com. Meta clearly wants to seize more user attention in the short-video wars. Reels already account for over 20% of time spent on Instagram reuters.com, and the iPad rollout puts that addictive content front and center. Other features got tablet optimizations too: there’s a Following tab with flexible viewing options (like chronological or recommended posts), the ability to reorder your feed tabs, and a split-pane layout for multitasking (e.g. browsing posts while seeing your messages side-by-side) reuters.com. Commenting has been refined so you can expand threads without pausing the video playback reuters.com. The app requires iPadOS 15.1 or later and is available globally via Apple’s App Store reuters.com reuters.com. (Meta says an Android tablet version is coming soon reuters.com.) By prioritizing Reels on big screens, Meta is directly targeting TikTok’s dominance in the lean-back video space. The move shows Instagram’s evolution from a photo-sharing app to a video entertainment hub – now finally tailored for the tablet crowd.

China’s EV Champion BYD Slashes Sales Target as Growth Cools

In a reality check for the electric vehicle boom, China’s EV juggernaut BYD dramatically cut its 2025 sales target amid signs of a slowdown. The Shenzhen-based automaker has internally lowered its vehicle sales goal by up to 16%, from 5.5 million down to about 4.6 million for the year reuters.com. The revised target – shared with suppliers last month – would mark BYD’s slowest annual growth in five years reuters.com reuters.com. It also falls below many analysts’ forecasts (some expected ~4.7–4.8 million) reuters.com. BYD offered no public explanation for the cut, but insiders say competition and market headwinds are mounting reuters.com. White-hot EV demand in China is showing cracks: BYD’s domestic rivals like Geely and Leapmotor are eroding its share with aggressive pricing reuters.com. Last week, BYD shocked investors with a 30% drop in quarterly profit, its first decline in over three years reuters.com. Its once meteoric sales are now hitting speed bumps – especially in China, which makes up ~80% of BYD’s volume reuters.com. A fierce EV price war there has forced discounts and trimmed margins. BYD’s sales of its budget EV models fell nearly 10% in July year-on-year reuters.com, even as competitors gained ground reuters.com. The company has reportedly slowed production and delayed factory expansions in response reuters.com. BYD’s new 4.6M target would still be ~7% higher than last year’s sales reuters.com, but for a company used to double- or triple-digit growth, it’s a notable downshift. Investors reacted swiftly – BYD’s shares fell over 3% after Reuters broke news of the target cut reuters.com. The EV pioneer is hardly in crisis (it’s now rivaling GM and Ford in scale reuters.com), but this is a clear signal that the era of effortless, record-setting growth in the EV sector may be cooling off.

JPMorgan Chase Expands Digital Banking to Germany

Global finance met fintech on Sept 4 as JPMorgan Chase announced plans to launch its digital retail bank in Germany reuters.com. Starting in Q2 2026, German consumers will be able to bank with JPMorgan’s app-based Chase brand, which the U.S. giant first rolled out in the UK in 2021 reuters.com. This marks the first expansion of an American megabank into German retail banking in the digital era – a bold move into Europe’s largest economy reuters.com reuters.com. JPMorgan has quietly been gearing up for this push, hiring staff in Germany for years while keeping the exact timeline under wraps reuters.com. Germany’s banking market is notoriously crowded and low-margin, dominated by big domestic players and countless regional banks reuters.com. Foreign banks historically struggled to crack it, but JPMorgan is betting that a branchless, mobile-first approach can lure younger and affluent customers. The bank is drawn by Germany’s wealthy population, stable regulation, and vibrant fintech scene reuters.com. In fact, Germany is already JPMorgan’s third-largest revenue source globally (after the U.S. and UK) thanks to its investment banking presence reuters.com. The new consumer bank will be based in Berlin reuters.com. JPMorgan acknowledges it’s entering a tough fight. CEO Jamie Dimon famously said, “This is going to be a battle,” when discussing overseas retail banking ventures reuters.com. They face local stalwarts like Deutsche Bank (which itself is cutting costs to boost retail profits) reuters.com. Notably, Spain’s BBVA also plans a digital bank launch in Germany, adding to the competitive fray reuters.com. For German consumers, the influx of big-name digital banks could mean more choice and perks. And for JPMorgan, success in Germany would validate that in the digital era, big banks can venture beyond home turf – and perhaps foreshadow further European expansion down the line.

HPE Rides Server Boom to Earnings Beat

Enterprise hardware isn’t often buzzy, but Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) turned heads with a strong quarterly report on Sept 3. The IT infrastructure provider beat Wall Street estimates for revenue in its fiscal Q3, pulling in $9.14 billion vs $8.53 billion expected reuters.com. The driver? Soaring demand for data center servers and networking gear, as companies invest in more horsepower and cloud infrastructure reuters.com reuters.com. HPE’s server division revenue jumped 16% year-on-year to $4.9 billion, while its networking segment (bolstered by HPE’s recent $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks) surged 54% to $1.7 billion reuters.com. The CEO, Antonio Neri, said “Customer demand stretched broadly across our portfolio and was particularly strong in our Server and Networking segments.” reuters.com. A notable portion of that demand is coming from generative AI – training and running AI models requires “immense computing power,” fueling a spike in orders for HPE’s AI-optimized servers loaded with Nvidia chips reuters.com. (HPE integrated Nvidia’s latest GPUs into its servers this year to meet that need reuters.com.) In fact, HPE credited the “surge in GenAI” for boosting its server sales reuters.com. Beyond hardware, HPE also made moves on the corporate front: it settled differences with activist investor Elliott Management by adding tech veteran Robert Calderoni to its board reuters.com. Looking ahead, HPE dramatically raised its growth outlook – now projecting 14–16% revenue growth for fiscal 2025, up from a 7–9% forecast earlier reuters.com. It also guided a higher-than-expected revenue range for next quarter reuters.com. Those bullish signals suggest that despite economic uncertainties, enterprise tech spending – especially on AI and cloud infrastructure – remains robust. HPE’s strong quarter stands in contrast to some software-focused peers and shows the “picks and shovels” of the tech world (servers, switches, etc.) are in high demand.

Figma’s First Earnings Disappoint After Hot IPO

Design software darling Figma faced a reality check in its debut earnings report as a public company. The collaborative design platform, which went public with great fanfare in July, posted Q2 results on Sept 3 that just beat expectations – but not by enough to justify its sky-high valuation reuters.com reuters.com. Revenue for the quarter jumped 41% year-on-year to $249.6 million, slightly topping forecasts (which were $248.8 M) reuters.com. Adjusted earnings came in at $0.09 per share, a penny above estimates reuters.com. Normally that’s a solid beat, but Figma’s stock had been “priced for perfection” after its IPO, one analyst noted reuters.com. Shares had skyrocketed 250% on Figma’s first trading day, reflecting massive optimism about its growth reuters.com. Since then, the stock cooled, and this earnings release sent it tumbling 13% in after-hours trading reuters.com. “The stock had been priced for perfection at over two hundred times expected earnings, which means even solid numbers cannot carry that many layers without some flattening,” quipped Michael Ashley Schulman of Running Point Capital reuters.com. In other words, Figma’s strong growth was already baked into its lofty share price – any hint of underperformance was punished. Investors also zeroed in on Figma’s guidance and spending. The company is aggressively expanding its product lineup: this year it launched four new products, including Figma Make (an AI-powered tool that turns text prompts into app prototypes) reuters.com. Such innovation is promising, but comes with high R&D costs. For fiscal 2025, Figma projected revenue of $1.02–$1.03 billion, just a hair above analyst estimates of $1.01 billion reuters.com. With Figma’s valuation still elevated, that outlook didn’t wow Wall Street. The post-IPO honeymoon appears to be over – now Figma will need to consistently deliver (or beat) ambitious targets to win back investor enthusiasm, all while fending off rivals in the booming design collaboration space.

Venezuela Turns to Crypto as Dollars Dry Up

Facing a severe dollar crunch due to U.S. sanctions, Venezuela is increasingly leaning on cryptocurrency to keep its economy afloat. Reports emerged that since June, President Maduro’s government has quietly allowed private sector currency exchanges to use Tether (USDT) – a dollar-pegged stablecoin – to meet demand for hard currency reuters.com reuters.com. U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry have choked off the country’s access to dollars, which businesses desperately need to import goods reuters.com. Normally, firms swap local bolívars for dollars supplied by the central bank (sourced from oil revenues and remittances). But with oil income down and Washington barring direct payments to Caracas (even after easing some oil export limits) reuters.com, the dollar well is running dry. Enter crypto: Venezuela’s central bank has started inserting USDT into the exchange market, effectively to compensate for the missing greenbacks reuters.com. A handful of government-authorized banks now sell USDT for bolívars to businesses, who load the tokens into approved digital wallets reuters.com. Companies can then hold the tethered crypto or use it to pay suppliers abroad, many of whom accept stablecoins as equivalent to dollars reuters.com. It’s a stopgap measure, but apparently an effective one. One local business figure described it as finding alternative “operations” when one channel closes reuters.com. Private estimates say Venezuelan exchanges sold $119 million worth of crypto (mostly USDT) to businesses in July alone reuters.com. Meanwhile state-owned oil firm PDVSA has also increased its use of digital currency for oil sales, routing around banking restrictions reuters.com. The government hasn’t publicly acknowledged the pivot, but Vice President Delcy Rodríguez hinted in August about “non-traditional mechanisms” to manage exchange markets reuters.com. All this underscores how Venezuela, once hypercritical of cryptocurrencies, is now embracing them as a lifeline. By adopting USDT, Maduro’s regime essentially created a parallel dollar system that Washington can’t easily freeze. It’s helping stabilize the bolívar’s value and keep imports flowing amid sanctions. However, this strategy isn’t without risks – from crypto volatility to transparency concerns – but for now, it’s a novel workaround in an economy starved for dollars.

Cloudflare Thwarts Record 11.5 Tbps Cyberattack

In cybersecurity news, internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare revealed it stopped the largest Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack ever recorded. The massive assault blasted its target with 11.5 terabits per second of traffic at its peak tomshardware.com – equivalent to over 12,000 full-length HD movies flooding a network in seconds. Cloudflare said the deluge lasted about 35 seconds and was automatically detected and mitigated by its defense systems tomshardware.com. “Cloudflare’s defenses have been working overtime,” the company noted on X (formerly Twitter), stating it had blocked “hundreds of hyper-volumetric DDoS attacks” in recent weeks, including this record-breaker tomshardware.com. The attack was initially reported to originate largely from hijacked cloud servers on Google Cloud Platform via a UDP flood tomshardware.com. (Cloudflare later clarified that multiple cloud and IoT sources contributed, not just Google tomshardware.com.) The 11.5 Tbps milestone comes just two months after a previous record DDoS (~10 Tbps) was logged, highlighting how quickly these cyberattacks are growing in scale tomshardware.com. Such “hyper-volumetric” DDoS barrages aim to overwhelm online services by bombarding them with more traffic than they can handle, often using networks of malware-infected devices. Cloudflare’s ability to absorb an attack of this size without downtime is a positive sign for internet resilience. The company plans to release a detailed report on the incident, which will shed more light on the tactics and sources behind this unprecedented cyber onslaught tomshardware.com. The takeaway for security pros and website operators: DDoS attacks are reaching truly staggering bandwidths, so robust mitigation – often via cloud-based providers like Cloudflare – is more critical than ever tomshardware.com. For now, Cloudflare can claim a victory in the ongoing arms race between cyber attackers and defenders.

SpaceX Launches 28 Starlink Satellites in 8 Hours, Topping 8,000 in Orbit

Space exploration saw a burst of activity as SpaceX pulled off a rapid-fire double launch of its Starlink satellites. On Sept 3 at dawn, a Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying 28 Starlink internet satellites to orbit space.com. Impressively, this launch came less than 8½ hours after SpaceX had launched another 24 Starlinks from California the night before space.com. The frenzied pace set a near-record for SpaceX’s turnaround between missions, underscoring its cadence of near-daily launches. The Florida mission (nicknamed Starlink 10-22) deployed its 28 satellites successfully about an hour after liftoff space.com. SpaceX confirmed the batch reached the intended orbit, joining the company’s ever-growing “megaconstellation” of broadband satellites space.com. With this launch, SpaceX has now fielded over 8,000 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit space.com – by far the largest satellite fleet in history. The Falcon 9’s first-stage booster (on its 14th flight) nailed another landing as well, coming down on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic space.com. Such reuse and rapid relaunch are key to SpaceX’s strategy. This week’s Starlink deployments further expand global coverage of SpaceX’s satellite internet network, which is serving over 60 countries. They also highlight SpaceX’s dominance in launch frequency – executing two orbital launches within a workday. Elsewhere in space news, Israel quietly launched a new Ofek-19 spy satellite on Sept 2, causing a stir when residents mistook the rocket for a potential missile space.com space.com. And NASA confirmed that an interstellar comet, 3I/ATLAS, is inbound for a Mars flyby next month space.com, a rare cosmic visitor that has scientists buzzing. All told, early September has been eventful both in the skies and in space, as humanity’s activities in orbit – from satellite swarms to scientific marvels – continue to accelerate.