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According to statements from the Department of Justice, Google may be forced into breaking up and selling off its business assets.
Two months after a federal judge found Google to be in violation of US antitrust law, The Verge reports that DOJ lawyers are still mulling over exactly what should be done about it in terms of regulatory action. But some of the options initially put forward are drastic, including the possibility of forcing Google to sell or otherwise divest itself of the Chrome browser, the Android mobile operating system, or its Google Play default app store.
These steps would be so massive that it'd be the biggest antitrust action in the United States since the breakup of the AT&T/Bell telephone monopoly in the 1980s. Any one of those changes would send shockwaves through the tech world as Google's Chrome is currently the number one browser in market share by a huge margin and ditto for Android on mobile platforms.
Effectively kicking Google out of these areas would spur enormous worldwide competition, both from its gigantic tech rivals (like Microsoft and Apple) and from smaller players who hope to gain ground and establish themselves in the power vacuum left behind.
One of the immediate actions is that Google will be
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Baker and the University of Washington's Institute for Protein Design led the team to create fold.it, an online puzzle game in which players actually design synthetic proteins. Originally, the game was coded to allow players to help determine the structure of existing proteins, beginning in 2008. In 2019, the project expanded to allow gamers to actually design new proteins that had never before existed.
The game essentially puts the tools in place for gamers to come up with novel proteins, and when "solved," allows scientists to check them.
"The scientists tested 146 proteins designed by Foldit players in the laboratory. 56 were found to be stable," the university said then. "This finding suggested the gamers had produced some realistic proteins. The researchers collected enough data on four of these new molecules to show that the designs adopted their intended structures."
The game (and the work) continue today. Users can take "chains" of amino acids and fold them up into their proper shape. This shape allows the protein to carry out its assigned function. Examples of proteins include insulin and hemoglobin. Foldit has expanded to take on small molecules that aren't protein, such as aspirin.
"If a protein researcher is struggling with a particular problem, they will create a Foldit puzzle for their problem," the Foldit page says. "By playing Foldit puzzles, you help to solve protein research problems."
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