Democracies are fragile, and hardware is hard

Welcome to the TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Journalists and readers love scoops. But sometimes it’s important to state the obvious. This week, I’m reminded that democracies are fragile but that technology…

News publisher files class action antitrust suit against Google, citing AI’s harms to their bottom line

A new class action lawsuit filed this week in the U.S. District Court in D.C. accuses Google and parent company Alphabet of anticompetitive behavior in violation of U.S. antitrust law, the Sherman Act, and others, on behalf of news publishers. The case, filed by Arkansas-based publisher Helena World Chronicle, argues that Google “siphons off” news…