Good morning,
American Airlines wants to shame you out of jumping the line when you board your next flight.
Just in time for the holiday travel season, the carrier is cracking down on what’s known as “gate lice,” or travelers who cut the line ahead of their assigned boarding time. The airline said this week that it’s rolling out new boarding pass scanning technology at more than 100 U.S. airports. If a traveler tries to jump ahead of their assigned group, it rejects the boarding pass and sounds an audible alert.
It’s not surprising that people clamor to board and claim limited overhead bin space for their baggage. In fact, American Airlines was the first to charge for checked bags, and earned roughly $1.4 billion from baggage fees last year.
Photo Illustration by Idrees Abbas/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Google parent Alphabet’s shares fell nearly 5% on Thursday after the Justice Department proposed that Google sell its Chrome browser to “permanently stop” the company’s monopoly over the search engine market. A judge ruled in August that Google is a “monopolist” and acted to maintain a monopoly with its search engine, and JPMorgan said in a note Thursday that the DOJ’s proposal represents the “worst possible remedies” for Google’s antitrust case.
MORE: The DOJ also proposed Google sell any stakes in AI companies with technology that could compete in search, which could hobble Google in the competitive race to control the future of AI. If the judge agrees, that could mean forcing Google to sell off its investment in Anthropic, the firm founded by OpenAI defectors in 2021 and could reportedly be valued at up to $40 billion.
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ramped up enforcement action against fintech and financial services companies under President Joe Biden, ordering $3.1 billion in fines and refunds for consumer relief in 2023. But with a second Donald Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress, many predict lighter regulation and oversight—plus the CFPB’s funding structure could be at........