The name Google is synonymous with online searches, but over the years the company has grown beyond search and now builds multiple consumer products, including software like Gmail, Chrome, Maps, Android, and hardware like the Pixel smartphones, Google Home, and Chromebooks. Its name can also be found on internet services such as Google Fi, Flights, Checkout, and Google Fiber. Here is all of the latest news about one of the most influential tech companies in the world.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, that is, re: the Nvidia Shield TV, likely the most supported Android gadget ever at over a decade. Nvidia’s Andrew Bell tells Ars Technica a new model isn’t in active development, but hints at what he’d add (like AV1 and YouTube HDR). He says Nvidia doesn’t profit off its Netflix button, BTW.
The latest batch of documents released by the DOJ reveals that Brin had corresponded with Maxwell as early as 2003, and was invited to dinner at Epstein’s townhouse that year. The files also contain testimony that places Brin and his then fiancée, Anne Wojcicki, at the private island in 2007. It’s not a great look for one of the authors of “Don’t Be Evil.”
Google says you can now use the AI chatbot to ask questions while using walking or cycling directions in Google Maps, which already worked for driving directions.
When you’re exploring around town and navigating with Maps, Gemini can be your personal walking tour guide. Just ask, “OK Google, what neighborhood am I in?” If you’re hungry, follow up with “What are top-rated restaurants nearby?” and Gemini will recommend delicious options along your route based on Maps’ fresh, comprehensive information about the real world.
Update: Google’s blog post says it’s rolling out now on both iOS and Android.
At least in the UK, where the walkback comes after the country’s CMA opened a consultation on forcing Google to do just that, having given the company “strategic market status” last year. Ron Eden, Google’s principal for product management, says:
“We’re now exploring updates to our controls to let sites specifically opt out of Search generative AI features. Our goal is to protect the helpfulness of Search for people who want information quickly, while also giving websites the right tools to manage their content.”
The plan is rolling out in 35 new countries and territories. It includes access to tools like Gemini 3 Pro and the Nano Banana Pro image model. There’s also 200GB of storage.
It’ll cost $7.99 a month, compared to $19.99 for AI Pro, but new US subscribers can get half off the first 2 months.
It follows Snap in reaching an agreement to resolve the first of several cases slated to go to trial this year about social media’s alleged harm to users, an attorney for the 19-year-old plaintiff confirmed. That leaves Meta and YouTube as defendants in the case going to jury selection today.
When creating a new event in Google Calendar, Gemini will now find “suggested times” based on invitees’ calendar availability, similar to a Gmail feature announced in October. The Gemini-powered meeting time suggestions are rolling out now, but currently only available for Google Business, Enterprise, and AI Pro for Education users.
Parents since the ‘80s Satanic Panic have worried that kids playing Dungeons & Dragons wouldn’t be able to tell reality from fantasy, but maybe it was AI they should have been worried about all along.
cowboyxboombap:
I’m getting a kick out of this, honestly. I use Gemini as a D&D DM copilot and for some of the roleplaying moments with the players and now it thinks that’s all my actual life. I had to give it instructions that all of that stuff was made up. It’s hilarious
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According to a post from earlier this month, you can set a form to stop taking responses after receiving a certain number of them or on a certain date and time. Previously, you had to close forms manually. Handy update!
Chrome 151, which Google tentatively plans to launch on July 28th, will be the first to require support for macOS 13 Ventura or later.
“Older versions of Chrome will continue to work, but there will be no further updates released for users on this operating system,” Google says.
[Google Chrome Help]
And we’re done! Lawyers for Epic and Google have asked for a few weeks to talk amongst themselves and file one more brief by early March. Judge Donato says yes “just so long as we are clearly duel-tracked and the order is going forward.” He wanted to be sure Google is actually complying, and Google says it is. Epic says the court-ordered technical committee, where Google and Epic must hammer out the details of store-within-a-store and catalog access, is up and running too.
Sweeney, earlier today: “Every store will be able to do a much better job of serving US users if it can reach a worldwide audience.”
Epic’s lead attorney has continued to push on that with Dr. Rose, who says she was not assigned or resourced to explore “all of the fundamental economic issues,” but admits she doesn’t know if other app makers would think the whole world is as important to their business as Sweeney suggests Epic does. (Again, the Epic Google proposed settlement would change things globally, but the current injunction only applies in the US, while Epic and Google continue to fight elsewhere in the world.)
He tried a few other questions with Dr. Rose as well, but I didn’t catch anything particularly interesting. She has now stepped down, and we’re going into Epic and Google’s logistics for the next steps going forward, presumably before the judge gives us his final thoughts for the day.
When we return from the short break, Epic’s lead attorney gets to ask Dr. Rose more questions, and the judge has asked he doesn’t use that time to come up with “800 more.” Dr. Bornstein, Epic’s CEO, and both Bornstein and colleague Yonatan Even seemed to be in a tight huddle drafting one or two, though, which Bornstein seemed to jot down. Now, Google lead attorney Glenn Pomerantz is whispering in Bornstein’s ear as well.
“You’ve got a hike to tell me that something has changed so much in the world that I should change that injunction, and I’m not hearing it,” he tells Epic and Google here in the courtroom.
We’re taking a 10-minute break, because the court reporter says she’s already typed 140 pages today and the fingers need a sec. Wow.
Epic lead attorney Gary Bornstein is seemingly suggesting that that because the injunction doesn’t specifically stop Google from adding more friction, the proposed settlement where Google removes that friction would be better (by creating explicit programs for registered rival app stores).
Dr. Rose says she isn’t assuming Google’s behavior will stop, but thinks it’s in Google’s best interests not to get hauled back before the court. She says the court has to balance the pluses and minuses of the proposals before it, she’s just here to say that the settlement doesn’t seem to fix the network effects that led to Google’s firm grip over Android apps.
Epic’s lead attorney is asking Dr. Rose whether her analysis took proper account of whether having rival appstores available worldwide on Android might be more helpful than only mandating US app stores. The court’s existing injunction would mandate that rival stores would have the whole catalog of Android apps from day one.
Dr. Rose says “you can go to users and say we have all the apps you want to see when you join our app store, and similarly you can say to app developers that we’re going to have the whole catalog.”
Bornstein: “It does provide immediate access to a very small subset of those users.” But “it’s just the 4-5 percent of Android users who happen to live in this country,” he argues.
Both Dr. Rose and Judge Donato agree that we don’t know how much revenue that 4-5 percent generates. Donato rejects Epic’s offer to bring up a Google witness with a revenue figure, because Epic and Google are now working together and so there’s no lawyer here who can properly cross-examine that witness.
Google lead attorney Glenn Pomerantz says “it’s a lot” and seemingly wants to go point by point with her on a future date. The judge says they can do it right here and now in the courtroom. Epic lead attorney Gary Bornstein is going first.
You’ll have to scroll down in our Epic v. Google StoryStream until I have time to go find the link, but Dr. Rose is showing up Dr. Bernheim’s earlier ideas here.
She says it’s “problematic to assume that Google will go back to the behavior that a jury found violated the antitrust laws” after the current three-year injunction ends, and that Epic could simply come back to the court to say so if it does, and perhaps ask for a three-year extension after the first three years are up. She’s also not sure why Google wouldn’t revert to bad behavior after six years if we’re assuming it would do so after three.
She says the court-ordered technical committee between Google and Epic can enact the other ideas in the settlement if they want. She also says that “decades of analysis in rate regulation” show that Google lowering its app store fees are not a substitute for creating a competitive market.
She tells the court it’s like a market owner who bars the doors and locks the gates after customers arrive, then a ditch outside fills with water “too deep and wide for anyone to cross.”
“It’s not going to help to tell the market owner to unlock the doors,” she says. “You have to lower the drawbridge for a while.” She says Judge Donato’s original injunction, which forces Google to crack open its app store by letting the apps out, is that drawbridge, and that Epic and Google are now trying to get rid of the drawbridge part.
