Microsoft and Google pleaded with U.S. regulators on Monday to preserve strong net neutrality rules, while AT&T and Verizon Communications backed weakened oversight and said Congress should settle the issue that’s burned for more than a decade.

The tech pillars and the broadband providers are trying to sway the Federal Communications Commission, which is moving toward gutting rules against interfering with web traffic. Monday was a deadline for comments on the FCC proposal advanced by Republican Chairman Ajit Pai entitled “Restoring Internet Freedom,” which already has attracted more than 8 million comments.

The rules passed by an Obama-era, Democratic-led FCC bar broadband providers from blocking or slowing data — to hinder rivals, for instance, or to favor affiliated services — and from setting up “fast lanes” that would cost more. Under Pai’s proposal announced in April, the FCC would end its claim to strong legal authority to enforce the rules, and the chairman asked whether the FCC should retain the ban on paid fast lanes.

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For years, Google has poured time and money into one of the most ambitious dreams of modern technology: building a working quantum computer. Now the company is thinking of ways to turn the project into a business.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google has offered science labs and artificial intelligence researchers early access to its quantum machines over the internet in recent months. The goal is to spur development of tools and applications for the technology, and ultimately turn it into a faster, more powerful cloud-computing service, according to people pitched on the plan.

A Google presentation slide, obtained by Bloomberg News, details the company’s quantum hardware, including a new lab it calls an “Embryonic quantum data center.” Another slide on the software displays information about ProjectQ, an open-source effort to get developers to write code for quantum computers.

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Governments around the world are enlisting “cyber troops” who manipulate Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets to steer public opinion, spread misinformation and undermine critics, according to a new report from the University of Oxford.

Adding to growing evidence of government-sponsored efforts to use online tools to influence politics, researchers found 29 countries using social media to shape opinion domestically or with foreign audiences. The tactics are deployed by authoritarian regimes, but also democratically-elected governments, the authors said.

“Social media makes propaganda campaigns much stronger and potentially more effective than in the past,” said Samantha Bradshaw, the report’s lead author and a researcher at Oxford’s Computational Propaganda Research Project. “I don’t think people realize how much governments are using these tools to reach them. It’s a lot more hidden.”

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So you may have seen the recent news that Facebook, according to Facebook, is more essential and dominant and ubiquitous than ever.

Awesome, right?

I’m sorry, what’s that? You’d like some specifics—some quantification? Of course, happy to oblige.

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Rubicon Project said Monday that it has acquired nToggle for $38.5 million in a move to bolster its header bidding tech and differentiate itself as consolidation in its sector looms.

The 23-person team at nToggle will join Rubicon Project and the company itself will close.

NToggle used machine learning to automatically filter out available impressions that weren’t relevant to marketers making ad buys through header bidding tech — culling as much as 80% of the flood.

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China, the world’s biggest ecommerce market, knows what its consumers want: super-friendly customer service. That’s why its ubiquitous chatbots, working in tandem with real customer services agents to drive sales online, are a chipper lot. On Nike’s and Apple’s shops on Alibaba Group ecommerce platform Tmall, chat bots say “Hello,” out themselves as robots and offer to answer questions or pass customers on to a human.

Apple’s smart assistant introduces itself as TIMI and then adds, “I serve you wholeheartedly!” (Incidentally, it says it doesn’t know when the iPhone 8 is coming out.)

China’s emphasis on real-time customer service is something that sets it apart from the West. It was a factor in Alibaba Group’s ability to make China comfortable with ecommerce, and a reason why Alibaba beat out eBay in the early days of online shopping in China, said Michael Zakkour, VP of the China and Asia Pacific practice at consulting firm Tompkins International.

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Credit: Illustration by Gabriela Zurda for Advertising Age

Since she began working for the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas hotel in January, Rose has received dozens of marriage proposals. And so much for “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”: Some guests who found her help indispensable when it came to free drinks or planning outrageous evenings continued to text her long after they split town. There’s only one difference that separates Rose from the hotel’s 5,000 other staffers: She isn’t human.

The Cosmopolitan launched Rose, a chatbot, with its core agency R/GA last winter to better interact with customers in a fun and playful way. Accessible via text, Rose functions as both a concierge and a housekeeping aide in guest services. But her missives are anything but robotic. One guest recently called her a “sultry siren”—-she often uses the kiss emoji. When once asked about free champagne, she replied, “Do I look like a sugar daddy?” The hotel purposefully branded Rose to engage in a cheeky way in keeping with its slogan, “Just the right amount of wrong.”

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AT&T is planning major changes to follow its planned $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner, including a redefined role for CEO Randall Stephenson, as the telecommunications giant morphs into a media company.

Stephenson will oversee a pair of CEOs who will independently manage the company’s telecommunications and media businesses, according to people familiar with the matter. Stephenson, 57, will still be the top executive of the company, focused on charting the company’s new course as a media powerhouse, the people said.

Stephenson will remain chairman and CEO of AT&T, the company said in a statement, denying an earlier report by Bloomberg that he would relinquish the CEO title.

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So it turns out the president of the United States can exercise some restraint when it comes to Twitter.

As his son Donald Jr. got pulled deeper and deeper into the Russian collusion scandal, with The New York Times publishing a series of explosive, incriminating stories, the president went curiously silent on Twitter about Don Jr.’s predicament. For more than 48 hours. Which is an eternity in POTUS Twitter Time.

Sure, he tweeted about other stuff — like the Olympics … and his DAUGHTER … but nada about his oldest boy.

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Later this year, Apple Inc. will put augmented reality software in as many as a billion mobile devices.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google beat Apple by three years in releasing AR tools, but its features are on very few phones and haven’t gained wide acceptance. By contrast, Apple can easily pair its software and devices, an advantage that will help it quickly make up lost ground, developers say.

“When they make it available, my apps will be in millions of phones,” said Alper Guler, who makes AR programs. “It’s a major update which enables us to push forward far further.”

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