Cloudflare Fights Google While Microsoft Lawyers Cry Into Their £2B Tissues

If your goals are spooky, your Slack is scarier, and your inbox is a crime scene—hi 👋 and welcome back to ByteSize!

Twenty-eight years ago today, Rockstar Games dropped the first Grand Theft Auto on an unsuspecting world. Little did we know we were witnessing the birth of a franchise that would teach an entire generation that the best way to handle traffic jams is with a rocket launcher.

Thanks, Rockstar, for giving us a socially acceptable outlet for our road rage and explaining why my Uber driver keeps muttering about "five stars" under his breath.

Cloudflare CEO Declares War on Google's AI Overviews (And We're Here for It)

CEO Matthew Prince at Cloudflare has basically decided to play David versus Goliath, except David has control over 20% of the internet and Goliath is busy training AI models on everyone's content without asking nicely. Prince is updating millions of websites' robots.txt files faster than a Game of Thrones character can betray their family, all to force Google's hand on AI Overviews.

The drama is that Google's AI summaries are cutting website referrals in half, which is like having a friend who retells all your jokes but never mentions where they heard them. Publishers are watching their traffic disappear faster than Severance employees' memories, while Google insists everything is fine (which is something my ex-would always said when things were, in fact, NOT fine)!

Cloudflare’s new Content Signals Policy lets websites opt out of being AI training fodder, BUT Google bundles search indexing with AI training like a cable package nobody wanted. Want to appear in search results? Congratulations, your content is now AI food. It's the digital equivalent of "nice website you got there, would be a shame if nobody could find it."

Microsoft Gets Slapped with £2B UK Lawsuit (Couldn't Happen to a Nicer Monopoly)

The UK is coming for Microsoft's wallet with a £2 billion lawsuit over cloud licensing practices that make airline baggage fees look reasonable. Apparently, running Windows Server on AWS, Google Cloud, or Alibaba costs up to four times more than on Azure, which is like charging extra for using your toaster with non-Wonder bread.

Dr. Maria Luisa Stasi is leading this digital rebellion against what amounts to the tech industry's protection racket. Microsoft's response is basically "this is opportunistic," which translates to "we got caught being monopolistic, and we're big mad about it." The Competition and Markets Authority already confirmed Microsoft's licensing practices are shadier than a Breaking Bad money laundering operation.

This is Microsoft's legal department's worst nightmare—multiple lawsuits sprouting up like mushrooms after rain, or like new streaming services nobody asked for.

Google Pitches Itself as Microsoft's Backup Plan (The Audacity!)

Google has unveiled its "Business Continuity" plan, which is basically corporate insurance for when Microsoft 365 inevitably crashes again. Their pitch: "It's not if Microsoft fails, it's when.” … And honestly, they're not wrong.

Google's offering to run Gmail and Google Meet in parallel with your Microsoft setup, like having a backup generator for your backup generator. The search giant is capitalizing on Microsoft's outage frequency with all the subtlety of a Rick and Morty fan explaining why the show is genius. They're literally pointing to Microsoft's own status page as evidence, which is just like screenshotting your ex's Instagram stories to prove they're still a mess.

This public tech company beef is giving us serious nostalgia for Microsoft's "Scroogled" campaign days, when tech companies threw shade harder than my Aunt Carol on Thanksgiving. Google's essentially saying "we'll be your side piece when Microsoft inevitably disappoints you," and frankly, that's the kind of petty energy we didn't know we needed.

⚙️ TOOL TIME

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👨‍💻 JOB OPPORTUNITIES

IT Engineer @ Verkada wants someone to provide technical support and troubleshoot issues like a digital paramedic. You'll be administering more SaaS applications than a startup burns through venture capital, all while maintaining the customer service smile of someone who definitely doesn't want to throw laptops out windows.

IT Infrastructure Manager @ Corporate Tools is seeking a network whisperer who can coax stubborn routers back to life without excessive profanity. You'll lead a team of engineers, plan capacity growth, and handle vendor relations.

Technology Support III @ JP Morgan Chase needs someone to ensure operational stability for banking applications, because apparently "have you tried turning the global financial system off and on again" isn't an acceptable troubleshooting method. Must have 3+ years of experience explaining to executives why the thing that worked yesterday suddenly doesn't work today.

Senior Director, IT @ Crunchyroll is hiring someone to lead IT operations for the anime empire while managing a hybrid workforce that's probably more organized Inosuke’s headspace in Demon Slayer. You'll need 15+ years of experience and the ability to ensure IT services run smoother than a Studio Ghibli animation sequence.

🛩 INDUSTRY MOVES

• Capita gets hit with £14M fine for data breach affecting 6.6M people - took them 58 hours to isolate an infected device (aka 58 hours of someone repeatedly asking, “Have we tried unplugging it?”)

• Indian quick-commerce startup Zepto raises $400M at $7B valuation because apparently delivering groceries in 10 minutes is worth more than some countries' GDP

• Eightfold co-founders launch Viven with $35M for AI digital twins of coworkers, proof that the only thing more dystopian than your boss is your boss talking to your clone.

• Microsoft, Nvidia and friends drop $40B on datacenter deal because the future is now, and it needs 7 football fields of cooling fans.

Hey, it's your favorite silicon sidekick here with another round of "Help, My Technology is Broken and So Is My Soul!” This week's support requests are spicier than a Nathan Fielder business plan:

• Someone wants to build their entire security infrastructure from scratch instead of buying proven solutions—because why buy a working car when you can reinvent the wheel and call it innovation?

• Another soul is wondering if upgrading from SATA HDDs to SSDs will help their 10-year-old systems run faster

• And we've got a request for building a low-power Linux NAS server that'll probably end up consuming more electricity than a small European nation

That's the news! Back next Tuesday, assuming we don’t get summoned by a cursed API. Now, go touch grass - or whatever spooky moss is growing near your server closet.

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