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U.S. Climate Control Change Report; History of Black Friday; Protests in France Over Gas Prices; Is Google A Monopoly?
Aired November 26, 2018 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CARL AZUZ, CNN 10 ANCHOR: It`s great to be back on air at CNN 10 and we`re happy to see you and hope you enjoyed the Thanksgiving weekend. I`m Carl
Azuz. Our first down the middle report today focuses on a new study by the U.S. government concerning the issue of climate change. A Federal climate
assessment has been required by Congress since 1990. The latest one came out Friday. It reportedly involved 13 government agencies, the help of
1,000 people, 300 of them being scientists from inside and outside the government. And it included a number of warnings about what could happen
as a result of climate change.
The report says cities could get hotter. Sea levels could rise higher covering land with water. Hurricanes could get more destructive.
Wildfires would scorch more land. Thousands of more people could die every year because of higher temperatures and more widespread diseases. And all
of this could cost the U.S. alone hundreds of billions of dollars per year. A scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says
that increasing temperatures world wide quote "can only be explained by human activities."
Many scientists blame fossil fuel emissions for contributing to warmer temperatures. That`s a controversial part of the issue of climate change
because not everyone agrees with it. Last month before this report came out, U.S. President Donald Trump said he thinks something`s changing in the
climate but that it would change back again and he wasn`t convinced that people caused the changes. And the Heartland Institute, a non-profit
American think tank that supports skepticism about the human impact on climate change, suggests the new government report is similar to its
previous reports except that this one is more exaggerated and less scientific. The government`s climate assessment comes out every four
years. It doesn`t give specific recommendations on how to deal with the issue.
10 Second Trivia. The Black Friday Gold Scandal of 1869 occurred during the administration of what President? Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant,
Rutherford B. Hayes, or Grover Cleveland. It was in the fall of 1869 under the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant that Black Friday took place.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Black Friday. Sounds kind of scary and it was. Black Friday first referred to the collapse of the U.S. gold market in
1869. A century later Philadelphia police used Black Friday to describe chaos and congestion. Downtown streets were clogged with hoards of
shoppers headed to the big department stores. Retailers hated the term but then tried to reinvent it. It was the day their profits went from red to
black, so they said. Black Friday really started catching on in the 80s` and 90s` pushed by the growth of big box stores. Today, it`s all about
bargains. And Black Friday`s dark roots are for the history books.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARL AZUZ: So today Black Friday traditionally refers to America`s busiest shopping day of the year. And retail analysts believe this year`s holiday
shopping season which runs from November 1st through Christmas Eve could set records. Some reasons, the U.S. economy is doing well. Unemployment
is very low. There have been some increases in American`s average income and all that likely factors into a projection from the financial services
company MasterCard. It estimates that American`s spent $23 billion on Black Friday alone. That`s more than $70 for every person in the country.
The day after Black Friday was another day of large scale protests in France. It started last month as a campaign against rising gas prices.
That was one of the effects of the increase in crude oil prices seen in October and many French are also upset about tax increases on diesel and
gas. That discontent grew to be in opposition to the government and policies of French President Emmanuel Macron. A protest organizer blames a
small group of the extreme left and extreme right for the reason why some protests turned violent.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not exactly the kind of scene you`d expect along the Champs-Elysees the day after Black Friday. In fact, nobody is here this
evening on a Saturday night. Basically because the police have cleared everybody out. It`s after a day of some very heavy demonstrations here.
Some very violent protests began a week ago. These were the protests brought on, called the "Yellow Jackets". These are the yellow vests.
These are the vests that all motorists are required to have in their cars for safety reasons.
It`s very simple for people to join this movement just by getting their - - going to their car and getting out their yellow vest. And so numbers of
people have, according to the Interior Minister, there were about 106,000 protestors today. That compares to about 250,000 or 80,000 last week. So,
in some ways, the government had a success in that they weren`t so many protestors out there. But in other ways, the violence of this protest
today was unmatched - - anywhere along the line.
In fact, one of the - - one of the most violent demonstrations the Champs- Elysees has ever seen, I think, as these protestors went up and down the avenue. Set a light to barricades and all sorts of vehicles along the
avenue, including a police car. There were in fact, about 130 people arrested across France and about 42 arrested here in Paris. So a violent
day here in Paris. It seems to be over for now but in fact we`ll have to see how well it plays with the demonstrators going forward.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARL AZUZ: Chances are, you`ve used a Google product today. If you checked your email, stopped for a deal on Cyber Monday or just gone online,
which we`re banking you have. You`ve probably used something built by Google. But a big question being asked is whether the company has grown to
become a monopoly. A business with so much control that it dominates a market.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is Google a monopoly? Let`s talk about why some people think that it is. And when you talk about monopolies, the first thing you
want to do is define what the market is. Let`s take it`s ad business. Google currently controls 37 percent of all digital ad sales in the U.S.
and that`s almost double the next biggest company which is Facebook. That is a huge number for what is the single highest growing sector in all of
advertising.
So if you look at the market of online ad revenue, Google is dominant. But if you ask Google, it will tell you that no. The market isn`t digital ad
revenue. It`s actually all ads. It`s TV. It`s print. It`s billboards. So Google controls 37 percent of the digital ad market in the U.S. But if
you expand it out to include the broader market of all ads in the U.S., it`s only about 14 percent but that`s still more than the entire print
industry.
And every year, digital ads are taking a larger and larger slice of the overall pie. We`re not comparing Google to single companies here. We`re
comparing it to entire industries. That`s how big Google is and that size is exactly what anti-trust critics are pointing to when they say that
Google is too big. They also say that Google highlights it`s own products and it`s search results over that of other companies. The real estate of a
Google search page is some of the most valuable in all of the internet. And over the last few years, Google has added more and more Google products
to it here.
Let`s take an example. Let`s type in mattress. Literally the entire screen is either Google ads or Google shopping page. Now Google says it
does this because this helps people find information faster and that it`s products are better than it`s competitors but other`s say that it makes
competition with Google impossible. And those Google products that Google happens to highlight, they also happen to make Google billions of dollars
in revenue. Helping users but also helping Google.
You can see that same dynamic play out with Chrome because Chrome is by far the biggest browser. Safari Internet Explorer, Firefox all combined make
up about 20 percent of the browser market. Chrome alone has three times that number and controlling how the majority of people access the internet
gives Google power. Power to do things like flip a switch and turn ad block on. Now Google says they did this because this is something that
users want and it protects them. But Google`s ad block doesn`t filter out all ads, just harmful ones.
And Google ads? They`re still acceptable. So did Google put ad block on Chrome because it helps it`s customers? Or because it helps it`s ad
business? Look, people like Google and the products that they make and a lot of Google`s moves do make it easier for people to get information
quickly and clearly. But this is the touch situation that anti-trust regulators find themselves in. Actions that might help users in some ways
can also be a threat to fair competition. But here`s the question. With Google being so dominate, is there any room for the next Google? Is Google
just too big?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARL AZUZ: An award winning designer has envisioned a sort of self-driving hotel room. After undocking from a larger hotel that has a pool and a gym,
your own mobile unit with a workspace, a mattress, sitting shower and tiny kitchen would then be able to get you where you`re going while you stayed
put. But all this could be decades away. Fully self-driving cars aren`t expected to be ready until 2021 and roads won`t be ready for them for at
least 10 years.
So only time will "hotel" if the rules of the road will make room on the road for a room on the road. If this is the "Best Western" way to travel,
if folks will want to travel while spending "Days Inn" a hotel room, guess it depends on whether the "mobill" suggests a deal on wheels or leaves
little room in the "Budget" for staying anywhere else. I`m Carl Azuz for CNN 10.
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