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.
ChatGPT processes one-fifth the volume of search queries as Google, per OpenAI.
Students in schools that reject Google’s AI will see notices that Search isn’t available.
The latest Google Home update fixes an issue where Gemini “could occasionally say ‘Sorry, I didn’t understand’ unprompted when no one had spoken to the device.” It also improves Gemini’s ability to distinguish between sleep alarms and regular timers, as well as understand requests to transfer music to a device in another room.
[Google]
The latest Google Play Services changelog reveals the feature, which uses Quick Share to automatically back photos up to a Windows PC, no cloud storage required. There’s no word yet on how quickly it will actually roll out across devices, but Android Authority has the details on how it should work, based on previous leaks.
The new icons trade the flat blue look for a gradient style in line with the updates across Google’s other logos.
As a nod to this week’s Ocarina of Time release, you can click the Master Sword that pops up to be transported back to a classic list of blue links, complete with a retro “Google!” logo. I wish this was an option for every search.
Chrome used to support tab scrolling with an experimental flag, but removed it earlier this year. Now it’s coming back in the latest Canary build for Chrome Desktop. It lets you navigate crowded tab bars using the scroll wheel, gestures, or arrow controls.
[Google Chrome Community]
No, you can’t buy it. It’s a “just for fun” project to show off Google AI Studio. But it’s also undeniably cute. Sprout wanders autonomously to find the best sunlight and sends an alert when the plant needs watering.
We saw a post on Bluesky today about how Google is apparently now turning off AI Overviews “by default,” with one reply speculating that AI Overviews appeared if you phrased a query as a question.
But Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels tells The Verge that “We haven’t reduced the triggering of AI Overviews, and we’ve always said that AI Overviews are dynamic and won’t show on every query.” Schottenfels also notes that keyword or navigational queries may not trigger AI responses.
Are you noticing anything different?
Android Authority spotted code in a beta version of the Android Google app (v17.71.17) referencing the new mode, with the tagline, “Use Gemini Live without an internet connection.” They say the code doesn’t hint at how the local-only Gemini Live mode would work, though, or whether it would support camera and screen-sharing features.
The company launched Jules in December 2024, positioning it as a tool that can complete coding jobs “you don’t want to do.” But now, Jules is shutting down, and Google says it will bring its learnings from the tool into its AI coding platform, Antigravity:
We’re working on bringing our learnings from Jules into @antigravity so you get the best of both worlds: autonomous remote background task execution and an agent-first development environment. As we focus on this unified experience, Jules will be winding down.
However, the company has seen “promising results” with its ad experiments, chief business officer Philipp Schindler said on yesterday’s earnings call.
It’s also turning on AI Mode ads for more people and in more scenarios: ahead of that call, Google announced that it’s bringing ads in AI Mode to new countries and launching ads in follow-up queries in AI Mode in the US.
Reuters reports that Finnish police said the criminal probe will look into “ambiguities and shortcomings in the drainage and water management at the construction site.” Google also reportedly cleared forests around the data center site near Muhos, Finland before completing required environmental impact assessments.
The company launched a new Gemini agent for enterprise earlier this month, and Google will bring that “same experience” to consumers later this year, starting with the Gemini app, CEO Sundar Pichai said on today’s Q3 2026 earnings call.
I’m curious how it will differ from Google’s Gemini Spark agent, which I tested in May, but given the launch window provided by Pichai, we may not have to wait too long to find out.
“The Gemini app answers this question more fully but this isn’t the most helpful response on Search,” Google says in a response to the Bluesky user who posted the unhelpful search answer. “We’re looking into this and working to address it.”
A few of us at The Verge weren’t able to recreate it, but Ars Technica has a good rundown of the situation with some of its own testing.
With the new “Connected Apps” platform, developers can submit apps for people to use within Gemini and Search. This will allow developers to launch integrations similar to the ones OpenTable and Instacart built into Google’s AI tools.
Developers in the US can join the public beta waitlist starting today, which also offers ways to track metrics like traffic and latency.
The author of The AGI Chronicles and co-host of Machine Gods on going all-in on YouTube and the AI race.
Developer Charlie Gerard has released a fun Chrome extension that makes digital plants grow over your tabs when you’re not actively looking at them, at a timescale of your choosing. Once a page is more than 5 percent overgrown, you can’t click, select, or drag anything until you clear the vines.
After adding the option to annotate Kindle ebooks with handwritten notes on its new Alexa Tablets, Amazon has brought the same functionality to the Kindle Android app, as some users in the Kindle subreddit have discovered. It currently appears limited to Android tablets and phones that support a stylus, and it hasn’t come to the iPadOS version of the app yet.
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Instead, their money went to a political action committee that funneled the money to the reelection campaign of Colorado’s Democratic Senator John Hickenlooper. According to The Atlantic:
The mix-up wasn’t all AI’s fault. The link led to a misleading donation page that carried Talarico’s name and picture, and specified only at the bottom that the money would go to Hickenlooper. But Google’s AI tool evidently didn’t read the fine print. And perhaps no one would have clicked on it had Google not highlighted the page in an authoritative-sounding AI response.
Our collective reviews of every Googlebook at launch: very good laptops hobbled by beta-level software.
Some Android users are reporting receiving a Google Play system update dated “1 January 2027,” which really seems to be getting ahead of itself. Sadly, all my Android phones are still stuck on September 2026, which now feels entirely old fashioned.
[Android Police]
As announced last year, Chrome will now show a warning when you visit public websites without an encrypted HTTPS connection. The new warnings will appear the first time you visit a site without a secure connection. If you continue to the site, Google won’t present the warning for another two weeks.
The Wall Street Journal published a big profile of the Google DeepMind co-founder, who says his timeline for the arrival of artificial general intelligence (AGI) is becoming “nearer and nearer.”
He adds that “winning” the AI race “means helping humanity steward AGI into the world safely and securely for the benefit of everyone.”
[The Wall Street Journal]
