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Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is expected to pay a fine and change some business practices to settle an antitrust case with the French government over its online advertising business, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

France’s Competition Authority has alleged that Google’s advertising tool DoubleClick, which online publishers use to sell ad space, gave an advantage to Google’s own online ad auction system over other companies, according to the paper, which cited people familiar with the matter. 

To settle the charges, Google has reportedly offered to remove obstacles faced by competitors within its ad exchange. The changes would only be legally binding in France but could be adopted companywide to appease critics in other countries.

The alleged settlement talks come as regulators around the world have ramped up scrutiny of Google’s ad business, which brought the company about $23.7 billion in revenue last year. 

Ten US states sued Google in December, accusing the company of offering Facebook special treatment in exchange for the social media site reducing competition in the advertising space, the Journal reported. Antitrust authorities in Britain and the European Union are also investigating various aspects of the company’s ad practices. 

Regulators around the world have ramped up scrutiny of Google’s ad business, which brought the company about $23.7 billion in revenue last year.REUTERS

The French antitrust inquiry, which the government has not discussed publicly, originated with a 2019 complaint brought by News Corp., French newspaper Le Figaro and Belgian-French newspaper publisher Groupe Rossel, according to the Journal. News Corp. publishes The Post as well as the Journal.

Le Figaro removed itself from the antitrust complaint after it reached an agreement in November to license its work to Google for a fee, the Journal reported. 

A settlement in the French antitrust case could reportedly be announced within weeks, although it could also be rejected by the Competition Authority’s board. 

Google and News Corp. did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Le Figaro and Groupe Rossel could not be reached. 

Workers in states that are scrapping the extra $300-a-week in federal unemployment benefits started searching for jobs on the day their states announced the moves, according to a new report.

On the day states said they would end the checks, which critics say are making it hard for businesses to hire workers as they struggle to recover from the pandemic — clicks for job postings spiked by 5 percent, compared to the last two weeks of April, according to a Friday report from Indeed.com.

From announcement day to three days later, the states in which benefits are ending early received a 3- to 4-percent boost in job search clicks compared to the national average, according to the report. By the eighth day after the announcement, search interest had “vanished,” it said.

The most sought-after jobs were in marketing, sales, hospitality and tourism. But searches for high-paying jobs, including physicians and surgeons, also spiked, according to the report.

Two dozen states are ending the $300 weekly unemployment benefits as soon as June — and well before Sept. 6 when they officially run out nationwide. Some states, including Arizona, Oklahoma and Montana, are also offering bonuses for residents who return to work.

An Indeed.com report found job search activity rose, relative to national trends, in states that announced they’d prematurely end federal unemployment insurance benefits. Indeed.com

The generous US benefits, when combined with state unemployment funds, can exceed what many employees earn by working. The tight labor market has resulted in a rash of hiring bonuses ranging from $500 for hourly workers to thousands of dollars for highly sought-after employees including warehouse workers and truck drivers.

The Indeed.com report, however, said the “disincentive effect” of the federal benefits is hard to measure, because there are other factors affecting the labor supply, including consumers’ fear of COVID-19, caregiving challenges and even Americans’ “eagerness to enjoy a vaccinated, reopened summer.” 

Ellen Booth, 57, of Rhode Island, studies to become a certified medical coder, new employment she decided to go for after her restaurant job ended last year during the pandemic. She says she’s living off her retirement funds since her unemployment benefits have run out.AP

All of the states that are ending the program early are led by Republican governors, but according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 54 percent of American agree with the move to stop the benefits. Just 38 percent of the respondents thought it is the wrong decision.

There are some 3.5 million people collecting unemployment in the states that are ending the $300 checks, according to Daniel Zhao, a senior economist at Glassdoor, CNBC reported. 

British cops who were searching for a pot farm ended up uncovering a bitcoin mining operation that was illegally stealing electricity. 

Officers from the West Midlands police say they found a huge bank of around 100 computers trying to create cryptocurrency at a site they had been told was a marijuana farm outside Birmingham on May 18.

The facility, which cops said they “understood to be a bitcoin mining operation,” had stolen thousands of dollars worth of electricity to operate the hunt for online riches, police said. 

“It’s certainly not what we were expecting!” Sandwell police Sgt. Jennifer Griffin said in a statement. “It had all the hallmarks of a cannabis cultivation set-up and I believe it’s only the second such crypto mine we’ve encountered in the West Midlands.”

Police said they seized the mine’s IT equipment, but no arrests have been made. West Midlands Police

The cops were initially searching for a marijuana farm before stumbling on the mining site.West Midlands Police

Police said they seized the mine’s IT equipment, but no arrests have been made. 

So-called bitcoin “mining” involves using computers to solve complex math problems in an effort to be rewarded with freshly minted units of the popular cryptocurrency, which was worth around $36,000 per coin as of Friday.

The process, however, consumes a huge amount of power and has increasingly come under scrutiny for its impact on the environment. 

Police said they suspected a cannabis farm in part because of the large amount of visible electrical wiring. They added that ventilation ducts were visible and a police drone picked up a major heat source from above, leading cops to investigate it as a pot farm. 

“My understanding is that mining for cryptocurrency is not itself illegal but clearly abstracting electricity from the mains supply to power it is,” Griffin said. 

“We’ve seized the equipment and will be looking into permanently seizing it under the Proceeds of Crime Act,” she said. “No one was at the unit at the time of the warrant and no arrests have been made — but we’ll be making enquiries with the unit’s owner.”

Trade groups representing Facebook, Twitter and Google have sued Florida over a new state law governing social media that Gov. Ron DeSantis claims will protect free speech.

The legislation, which DeSantis signed on Monday and is slated to take effect July 1, would allow the Florida Election Commission to fine social-media companies $250,000 per day if they “de-platform” candidates running for statewide office and $25,000 for candidates running for local office. It also prevents them from banning any “journalistic enterprise doing business in Florida.” 

DeSantis first came up with the idea in January after Twitter and Facebook banned then-President Donald Trump for inciting violence and spreading conspiracy theories about his election loss to President Joe Biden, which they cited as violations of their terms of service, the Tampa Bay Times reported. 

Tech trade groups NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association — which also represent Amazon, PayPal, TikTok, Airbnb and a slate of other firms — paint the law as violation of their First Amendment rights and a step toward a dystopian, government-controlled internet. 

“We cannot stand idly by as Florida’s lawmakers push unconstitutional bills into law that bring us closer to state-run media and a state-run internet,” said Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel of NetChoice. “By weakening the First Amendment rights of some, Florida weakens the First Amendment rights of all.”

Gov. DeSantis reportedly got the idea for the new law after Facebook and Twitter banned former President Trump from their platforms.AP

The Florida law punishes tech companies “for taking virtually any action” to address “even highly objectionable or illegal content, no matter how much that content may conflict with their terms or policies,” the trade groups alleged in a Thursday complaint.  

DeSantis, widely considered a potential 2024 Republican candidate for president, claims the bill actually defends free speech. 

“When big tech censors enforce their rules inconsistently to discriminate in favor of the dominant ideology in Silicon Valley, they will be held accountable in the state of Florida, and all Floridians treated unfairly by big tech platforms will have the right to sue companies who violate this law,” DeSantis said the day he signed the bill.

The Florida law does not apply to internet platforms “operated by a company that owns and operates a theme park or entertainment complex” — an exception critics say shows its political nature by placating companies like Disney and NBCUniversal that are crucial to the state’s tourism sector. 

In a statement to the Post, DeSantis Press Secretary Christina Pushaw said the governor expected the bill to spark a court battle. 

“We have no comment on any specific lawsuit, but we anticipated legal challenges,” she said. “We are confident that this new legislation has a strong legal basis and protects Floridians’ constitutional rights.”

Conservatives and some liberals have levied accusations of political bias against social media companies like Twitter and Facebook for years, gaining steam after Trump’s ban and other high-profile incidents.

This week, Facebook caught heat over its content moderation policies after it reversed a ban on articles questioning whether COVID-19 escaped from a Chinese lab. 

Gov. DeSantis’ new law exempts theme park operators as well as any “journalistic enterprise doing business in Florida.”AP

In February 2020, Facebook slapped a “false information” tag on a Post opinion article arguing that the coronavirus may have escaped from a lab and that the Chinese government could not be trusted. Later on, the social media company outright banned any posts about the lab leak theory. 

The ban remained in place until Wednesday, when Facebook changed its policy after a Wall Street Journal report showed that US intelligence services allege that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized with COVID-19-like symptoms in November 2019. 

A key inflation indicator rose 3.1 percent in April from a year ago as costs continued to grow in the US economy just as it’s mounting a comeback from the pandemic, the feds said Friday.

It is the most since July 1992 that the core personal consumption expenditures index has risen over 12 months.

The so-called core PCE index, which excludes food and energy, rose 0.7 percent from March, the highest month-over-month rise since October 2001, the Commerce Department reported.

The index tracks prices across a variety of goods and services and is considered a broader measure for inflation than the Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index, which rose 4.2 percent in April from a year ago.

Including food and energy, which are more volatile than other goods, the Commerce Department’s index jumped 3.6 percent from a year ago and 0.6 percent from March.

Anu Gaggar, senior global investment analyst for Commonwealth Financial Network, noted that the big year-over-year numbers are likely warped because at this time last year the pandemic shuttered large swaths of society, driving prices down.

The PCE index, which excludes food and energy, rose 0.7 percent from March.Alamy Stock Photo

She added that some of the price increases are probably temporary as the economy gets going over the next couple of months. But others, she warned, could be here to stay.

“Rise in prices of some of the underlying components like travel services, used motor vehicles, etc. could be transitory and reflective of pent-up demand, but there are others such as medical care services where the rebound might be more structural and worth keeping an eye on,” she said after the data came out.

She noted that some prices in housing goods like lumber and agricultural commodities have fallen in recent weeks, but the new data “will keep the inflation chatter alive and kicking for longer.”

Economists predict a spending boost this summer.Alamy Stock Photo

Despite higher prices, Americans kept on spending.

Consumer spending rose 0.5 percent in April, much slower than the 4.7 percent gain in March, but that was partly fueled by federal stimulus checks, the report showed.

The report also showed a 13.1 percent drop in household income, which was likely driven down by the earlier burst of income caused by the latest round of $1,400 stimulus checks that came in March.

The rise in the index is the most since July 1992 that the core personal consumption expenditures index has risen over 12 months.Alamy Stock Photo

Despite that drop, many economists estimate that most Americans managed to squirrel away savings during the pandemic that will lead to a spending boost this summer.

But a variety of factors are causing problems for businesses that could hold back the recovery or drive prices even higher. A nationwide labor shortage has left many businesses short staffed and unable to operate at full capacity.

Other businesses have had trouble getting supplies delivered quickly enough to meet demand, in part because of labor tightness in trucking and transportation.

Shares of AMC Entertainment continued to soar Friday morning — even outpacing fellow so-called meme stock GameStop.

AMC was up more than 17 percent, trading at over $30 per share in the premarket, extending gains of about 35 percent from the day before. The stock has seen a dazzling rally this week that’s sent shares up more than 120 percent since Monday. 

The recent rally has given AMC a market cap of almost $12 billion, up from less than half a billion dollars last year. Shares are up more than 1,200 percent since January. 

GameStop, which led the market rally in January that seemingly pitted a massive community of traders on Reddit against hedge funds that were betting against the stock, has risen this week, too. 

Shares of GameStop were up more than 2 percent in the premarket, trading at $259 per share, after gaining almost 5 percent Thursday. The stock rallied about 15 percent Wednesday. 

With this week’s rally, AMC may have unseated GameStop as the favorite among Reddit traders. 

In the WallStreetBets Reddit forum, users shared countless posts cheering the movie theater chain. “Invested all my savings into AMC!!! Wish me luck guys,” one trending post read, while others shared images of their holdings. 

Retail investors on Twitter also rooted for the stock, with #AMCSTRONG, #AMC500k and #OccupyWallstreetAMC all trending on Thursday.

AMC is a heavily shorted stock, meaning that many investors are betting shares of the company will drop in value. Almost 20 percent of AMC shares are currently sold short, compared with an average of 5 percent short interest in a typical US stock, according to data from Ortex Analytics.

An AMC theater is seen in Times Square as the company’s stock continues to rise.Christopher Sadowski

When a heavily shorted stock spikes in value, short sellers are forced to buy back borrowed shares at a loss to close their position and stymie losses. That forced buying can further fuel the rally in what’s referred to as a “short squeeze.” 

Short sellers betting against AMC have lost about $1.75 billion just this week, according to the data from Ortex.

As reddit traders fuel the rally, Wall Street analysts focused on the underlying value of AMC’s assets are likely looking on in confusion. 

While the movie-going business is picking up as Americans emerge from the pandemic, AMC suffered substantial losses over the past year. The company has some $5.4 billion in debt, it announced in its first-quarter earnings report, and has $1 billion in liquidity. 

The rally in the company’s stock price has helped it raise fresh cash to fund ongoing operations. But the company has yet to make a profit on a quarter since the pandemic struck.

For the first quarter of 2021, AMC posted a net loss of $567.2 million compared with a loss of $2.18 billion a year earlier as the pandemic took hold.