Google is putting its foot down on “back button hijacking,” an infamous deceptive practice where users are kept on a long loop of pressing the back button but are either not brought anywhere or redirected to other pages instead of the previous one.

While some may deduce that ads are preventing them from going back, the website itself that hosts the ads is the one locking them on that specific page and not allowing them to return.

Google Says No to Back Button Hijacking on Browsers

Google has explained in their latest blog post on the Google Search Central that they are now introducing a new spam policy on back button hijacking, which is now considered by the platform as a deceptive practice.

According to Google, back button hijacking is a practice where users click the “back” button, but instead of being brought to the previous page, they are directed to other pages, made to stay on the current one, or bombarded with unwanted ads.

Google expects that websites should make the back button work as intended, and when users click on it, they should be taken back to the previous page they saw.

With this, Google is now categorizing it as part of malicious practices under the spam policies of the platform, saying that websites that continue these practices in the future will violate its guidelines.

Google Will Punish Back-Button Hijackers, Websites

According to Google, pages that practice back button hijacking “may be subject to manual spam actions or automated demotions,” which will impact the site’s performance in Google Search results.

The company said that it is now giving site owners time to make the necessary changes as the new policy will take effect in two months, specifically on June 15, 2026.

Google said that sites that practice this should ensure that they are not “doing anything to interfere with a user’s ability to navigate their browser history” or else face the punishments that the company has laid out.

Should back button hijacking stem from the site’s included libraries or ad platform, Google still wants them to remove or disable any code to prevent the malicious practice.

The latest policy change came after Google allowed AI-generated headlines from Discover to Search.

Originally published on Tech Times

Bitcoin rose to its highest level in four weeks as risk assets rallied on hopes that the US can strike a deal with Iran to end their conflict.
The largest cryptocurrency climbed as much as 2.4% to $74,945, its highest since March 17, before paring gains to trade around $74,400. Smaller tokens also advanced, with Ether up 5.5% to over $2,370.

The moves followed President Donald Trump’s claim that Iran had reached out to his administration for potential peace talks, even as the US began a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Asian stocks also climbed on optimism that a deal would help ease oil prices and boost economic growth.

Since its crash from an all-time high of $126,000 in October, Bitcoin has been trading in a tight range for the past two months.

However, the token has fared better than many traditional assets since the US war with Iran started at the end of February. It is up more than 10% since Feb. 27, while gold has fallen nearly 10%. The S&P 500 index is roughly flat for the same period.

Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, is a survivor.

A childhood of poverty in China. Flipping hamburgers to pay his way through college before the self-described computer nerd entered the cutthroat world of high-frequency trading.

Soon came his nascent bet on something called bitcoin, the first and most popular decentralized digital asset, the creation of the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, navigating more than a few crypto winters, plus a stint in jail after being targeted during what many believe was the Biden administration’s over-zealous crackdown on all things crypto.

CRYPTO EXPERT EXPLAINS WHY BITCOIN MAKES ‘PERFECT RECORD’ FOR TRACKING DOWN CRIMINALS

His new book, “Freedom of Money,” details his life journey, a survivor’s tale, he tells me in an exclusive interview for FOX Business. The book explains how he is still standing, quite nicely, I should add, following a pardon from President Donald Trump and with his enormous net worth estimated at more than $100 billion.

CZ is no longer with Binance, having left when the feds came calling back in 2023, though he remains its largest shareholder. Now a free man, he is looking to be a thought leader for the crypto business. “Freedom of Money,” will certainly help in that regard.

Those looking for stylistic prose in this 364-page tome will be disappointed. English isn’t CZ’s first language, of course, and he wrote this book in federal prison, he said, which is no easy task.

COINBASE CEO: BIG BANKS ARE TRYING TO ‘KILL THE COMPETITION’ THROUGH CRYPTO REGULATION

“There’s a terminal… You can get on there for 15 minutes. You can type, [but] there’s no cut and paste… if you cut one paragraph and want to move it to a different place… So, I just do a brain dump. Just type as fast as I can, and then I have to get off, and I wait for an hour to get back on the computer.”

That said, this is a book worth reading for the simple fact that CZ explains the rise of crypto (it’s now a $3 trillion business being embraced by the biggest banks and financial firms in the world) as well as his own journey in a clear, relatable narrative. He name-drops a ton, which is where this book shines, particularly his description of his last meeting with another famous crypto player known by his initials.

SEN RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: CRYPTO IS A GAMBLE OUR FINANCIAL SYSTEM DOESN’T NEED

That would be SBF, or Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the now-defunct FTX crypto exchange serving a 25-year sentence after being convicted of multiple fraud charges tied to the collapse of his company, when $8 billion in customer funds went missing. In CZ’s telling, as FTX was imploding, SBF came to him hat in hand for a loan in such a way that made him think something was up, and it wasn’t good.

“He was just like he was just mumbling, like, can you give me a billion or whatever?” CZ tells me. “We’re talking about billions, right? I would expect him to say, look, I needed 4.387 billion, right?… He was like, it’s two, six is four. I was like, what’s going on? I think there was a lot of lying involved.”

CLICK HERE TO GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO

CZ decided against the loan, and not long after FTX went bust, as did SBF’s career.

CZ would face his own issues. In my interview, he explains the charges against him, the Biden administration’s approach to regulation – why he thinks it went so hard against crypto and how former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler went from an industry supporter to what he believes is an adversary – and his controversial pardon by Trump.

The White House released a study on Monday that found diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies hinder productivity by leading to inefficient management that undercuts economic growth.

The authors of the report used federal data broken down by industry, state and year to track the representation of Black, Hispanic and indigenous people in management roles – though its analysis didn’t cover gender, sexual orientation or Asian representation. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the study.

It found that the representation of those minority groups covered by the study increased less than 1% from 2005 to 2015, but went on to jump by nearly four times that amount from 2015 to 2023. 

Further, it found that industries which pursued DEI heavily by promoting minority managers were about 2.7% less productive than those which did not as of 2023. By contrast, the uptick among minority nonmanagers throughout the study period showed the productivity impact wasn’t significantly different from zero.

DEI DISCLOSURE PARTICIPATION PLUMMETS AMONG MAJOR COMPANIES AS CORPORATE PULLBACK CONTINUES

“A natural takeaway from these two figures is that there is nothing inherently less productive about minority workers or minority managers. The issue is rapidly promoting unqualified workers in order to meet racial quotas set forth by DEI,” the authors wrote.

“There are clearly many qualified minority managers; the nonnegative effect of the minority manager share on productivity before 2017 attests to this,” the report explained. 

It added that it’s “worth observing that DEI actually does a disservice to these qualified minority managers, as they may experience a stigma if they are viewed as being DEI hires,” which the report noted was a phenomenon studied in a 1993 report.

IS CORPORATE AMERICA BREAKING UP WITH DEI OR JUST TAKING ITS RELATIONSHIP UNDERGROUND

“These estimates imply that DEI promotion has led to inefficient management, raising the cost of doing business. These costs lead the companies practicing DEI to hire fewer people and pay their workers less. In the aggregate, this implies meaningfully reduced gross domestic product (GDP) in recent years, because a reduction in output per hour implies a reduction in aggregate output,” the study said.

It estimates that compared to a counterfactual with no DEI, U.S. GDP in 2023 was $94 billion or 0.34% lower than it otherwise would have been. That amounts to an average drag of about $1,160 in 2023 alone for a household with two working adults, according to the report.

CHRISTIAN INVESTORS WITH $4B+ LAUNCH CAMPAIGN TO STRIP ‘WOKE’ AGENDAS FROM MAJOR CORPORATIONS

The White House’s report noted those findings are similar to those of other studies that showed the reduction in labor market discrimination under the Civil Rights Act significantly increased productivity and GDP by improving the ability of employers to match workers to jobs that best suit their abilities.

“In this way, reductions in discrimination served as a boon to the U.S. economy. Unfortunately, the reimposition of discriminatory practices through DEI initiatives reversed some of these gains,” the study explained.

The report noted that the Trump administration’s efforts to push companies to rollback DEI requirements and companies have referenced DEI less frequently in regulatory filings and earnings calls. Some of that decline was attributed to the risk of litigation over DEI policies.

GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE

“In sum, American corporations have increasingly begun to roll back their DEI programs in response to the revival of American meritocracy under the leadership of the Trump administration, curtailing DEI and the economic losses that came with it,” the White House study concluded.