SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY
Search headlines
Find the stories shaping the conversation.
Results for " Google’s " 304 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle
Google’s next Genie AI model generates more realistic experiences
Do you want to explore a realistic AI-generated world?
Android Find Hub app reveals how ‘Left Behind’ and ‘Ring your phone’ alerts work on Pixel Tag
We’re just weeks away from the launch of Google’s first Android Find Hub tracker, the Pixel Tag, and that’s also...
📈 Monday data: The bottleneck isn’t intelligence
In the AI Investment Brief today: CapEx updates and lease commitment breakdowns Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark recently said in a speech at the IMF that the singularity has begun: For many years, researchers and science fiction authors have forecast a future in which AI systems drastically increase the pace of overall scientific and technical progress, making things move so quickly that it is hard for humans to keep up. They call this the singularity. I believe that this year we have gained convincing evidence that it has now begun. This follows Anthropic’s claim that in August, 26% of its AI R&D was led by Claude, with a human supervising its work. In October, OpenAI posted 719 math manuscripts1 made by its internal model. Math and coding are two fields where a research loop can close without leaving the desk. But can the loop close in the rest of science? Subscribe The loop is real The idea is not new. Mathematician Irving John Good, who had worked with Alan Turing at Bletchley Park, argued that a machine smarter than us “could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind.” The Gödel machine, a self-improving computer that can rewrite its own code better than its prior, was first proposed in 2003. In 2025, researchers at Sakana AI and the University of British Columbia set out to show that this was possible. Their agents iteratively improved their own code through a feedback loop, resulting in gains of 30 pp on SWE-bench and more than 15 pp on Polyglot, testing coding skills beyond Python. The idea has since been tested in other labs. A Gemini-powered agent called AlphaEvolve found a faster matrix multiplication kernel used for training Gemini, speeding up the kernel by 23% and cutting Gemini’s training time by 1%. In China, MiniMax reported that its M2.7 model worked on improving its own agent’s harness, skills, sampling and memory. Over 100 rounds of rewriting led to a 30% gain, per its internal evaluations. In each case, what was being rewritten was not the model itself but everything around it. Is it better than human work? In September this year, in what seemed like a milestone, an AI-built agent proved as good at improving other AI agents as a human-built one. It did that in what appeared to be half the steps. But the result was inconclusive: the differences between runs were greater than the difference between the AI- and human-built agent results. Nonetheless, this is increasing the chatter around recursive self-improvement (RSI) in AI. Google’s Sundar Pichai said that “you have RSI loops along with AI researchers in various aspects of model development.” Sakana AI published a paper on RSI through multi-agent collaboration, finding that after two cycles its system scored 1.2–1.6x better per output token than the base model across four research benchmarks. Ramez Naam challenges that view. He splits AI self-improvement into five overlapping types. The first four describe how autonomous the AI is; so far, only types 1 and 2 have been observed. The fifth type describes accelerating returns, and he notes that greater autonomy doesn’t guarantee a takeoff scenario. Instead, each round of self-improvement would need to deliver at least as much as the last. The results from Sakana, AlphaEvolve and MiniMax above might look like type 3 or type 4 autonomy. But in each case, the AI wasn’t updating its own weights directly, only the ancillary parts — the harness, the memory. And where Claude leads its own R&D, for now a human still supervises.
Google’s AI search changes upended online publishing
Some publishers are preparing for a future without Google.
Google Pixel’s solution to using Face Unlock in the dark seems to be just blinding you
Google’s Face Unlock feature on Pixel phones works really well, until the lights go out. The company appears to be...
Google’s more personalized Gemini AI is heading to your car
Personal Intelligence is available in Android Auto starting today.
Sundar Pichai: Google’s Frontier Imperative, Compute Scarcity Dilemmas, Future AI Products and Businesses
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has little patience for doubts about Google’s willingness or capacity to compete at the frontier of AI. His company’s latest Gemini 4 Argon model — long-promised and recently delivered — beats OpenAI and Anthropic’s latest public models on coding, math, science, and knowledge-work benchmarks and has placed Google’s AI back among the world’s best. Amid chatter that Google was fine with good-enough lightweight ‘Flash’ models, Pichai pushed back hard against any suggestion that company is limiting its research ambitions. “We won’t do it any other way,” he told me in a Big Technology Podcast interview recorded this week at Google’s Mountain View headquarters. Pursuing cutting-edge research is costly for Google, requiring compute and chips that otherwise could be sold at a high markup by its cloud business. But Pichai said allocating resources to frontier AI development is “ground zero” for Google. “Our cloud business is at any given moment in time forgoing short-term revenues because we are making compute trade-offs to support frontier AI development,” Pichai told me. In our conversation, we discussed Argon (which Pichai says processed three times as many tokens as Gemini 3 in the 72 hours after launch), AI’s role in developing better models, the AI interface of the future, competition with OpenAI, Google’s partnerships with Anthropic and Apple, data centers in space, and the nature of his optimism. You can read the full conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, below, or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice. Alex Kantrowitz: Google is back at the frontier with Gemini 4 Argon, which beats OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s public models on benchmarks spanning coding, math, science, and knowledge work. The conventional wisdom was that Google had given up on the frontier to focus on fast, good-enough models for its products. That was wrong? Sundar Pichai: Very wrong. Look, we are so committed to being at the frontier. It’s in our DNA. We won’t do it any other way. We’ve been thinking about the AI frontier for well over a decade now. The frontier is very dynamic. It’s very competitive. It’s very exciting. I couldn’t be more pleased with how Argon has come together. We took our time with it. We made sure we tested it safely and deployed it carefully. We took a bit longer than our other models, given its capabilities. Across the board, be it for agentic work, knowledge work, coding, creative tasks, Argon is one of the really good frontier models. The first 72 hours since we launched, it’s almost up to 25 trillion tokens used, which is about three times what Gemini 3.0 had in the first 72 hours. And we are capacity constrained as we are serving it. Excited, but there are always areas….. You know, the frontier is very dynamic, and you have to keep evolving the models. There are areas which we can see we need to improve as well. We’ll be at work on all of that as well. Which areas? On any given model, Argon would be across the board better at everything if you just look even two months back. But the space is so evolving. Even on coding, for example, there are pockets where we know we need to do better, and there’s clear feedback. We’ll make it better. The argument for standard models is that they’re already good enough to build great products, with the frontier valuable only for certain tasks. Meta built Muse with good models rather than the best, and Google could put standard models into Maps, Gmail, and Search. Why isn’t that sufficient? It’s definitely not how I have thought about it at all. We are deeply committed to driving the state of the art and actually pushing where this technology can go, all the way from transformers. That’s a journey we’ve been on. You will see us continue to do that. When you’re at the frontier, you get an earlier look into the emerging capabilities, earlier than others, which helps you better prepare for the future. We are fortunate to have a wide set of opportunities across consumer and enterprise. Some of our cloud customers, for sure, want the model at the frontier. The frontier models will be better at developing the next set of models in an era of recursive self-improvement. I would argue it matters there. Internally, we have definitely seen a steep point of inflection by deploying Argon to our developers. It definitely tackles problems which our previous models could not do. Being at the frontier puts you at the innovation frontier and helps you drive that as well. There is room for models of all sizes and capabilities. That’s why we did Flash, Flash-Lite, etc. I agree with you that you can develop very good product experiences with not necessarily the most frontier model, because they tend to be slower and more expensive too. But we care about the Pareto frontier, and we’re committed to doing all of that. You said developing frontier models gives you a look at what’s coming. What do you see on the horizon? What makes this moment so exciting is you build something which you think is a culmination of months of work, and you put it out. You already see clear headroom ahead. We’ve all been working on these agentic, long-horizon capabilities, but clearly the frontier is going to have multiple of these agents working together to do things. That’s an example of an exciting paradigm underway. It’s also clear to me that users, both in consumer and enterprise, will have access to some multi-agent framework for them, working all the time doing things. It feels like a moment of infinite possibilities. Sergey Brin said one of Argon’s core innovations was relying more on the model to help develop the model. Yet incidents involving OpenAI’s bots breaking containment and Google’s bots accessing a site they shouldn’t have suggest these systems still aren’t perfectly aligned. Isn’t there reasonable cause for concern about accelerating toward recursive self-improvement? There are three parts to your question. Let’s first talk about RSI itself. You’re right, Sergey mentioned RSI being a critical contributor as we are developing Argon. But to be very clear, today, in a continuum, we are pretty far from the end state of RSI or something like that. The right way to describe it is you have RSI loops along with AI researchers in various aspects of model development. You almost have agents helping AI researchers in some automated way work together to build these models. It’s good to at least understand where we are today, and it’s super exciting. I expect that continuum to keep making progress as we go into next year. The second question is around safety. Security comes from defense in depth. You’re talking about alignment, obviously. We all are doing a lot of work to make sure the models are as aligned as possible. But it’s an active area of research, and there are clear gaps. That’s not the only thing we rely on. You have the work you do on alignment, but beyond that, we put a lot of effort into real-time monitoring as these models are working. Making sure you have good telemetry into what’s happening so that you can intervene in real time if you see unexpected behaviors. How you do that, the architecture with which you do that, how you make sure it’s all sandboxed and isolated in a way that it can continue doing its job during real-time monitoring — these are all areas of investment. Obviously, when we deploy these models, giving customers, enterprises, control, both with real-time monitoring, but their ability to decide where they deploy, what type of data which models ever have access to, etc. All that work is very, very important, and we are doing a lot of that. As an industry, we need to constantly up our game and take the time to do all this stuff, including dedicating the compute required to make sure you can safely deploy these models. The third part is: Is it all enough? This is why there are a lot of conversations in the industry, and I think it’s reasonable to be worried. The right way to approach something you worry about is early on thinking about what more we can do. As an industry, you’re definitely seeing increased levels of work on alignment, testing for safety, etc., as we deploy these models. The next step would be developing better standards so there are cross-industry standards of how we do these things, including the ability to evaluate using independent evaluators. If you look at areas like financial controls, we have accounting standards, we have independent auditors. Those are all the next natural steps for us as an industry to work toward, and regulation will end up playing a role as we go through all of that as well. Google pursues both language models and world models, while some other AI companies like OpenAI have focused more heavily on LLMs as the path to AGI. Why is world-model research important to you? As humans, you obviously perceive the world around you, and you’re taking all those inputs. Making sure these models are able to understand the laws of physics, simulate the world in high fidelity. All that, I think, are key enabling blocks for intelligence. We are working across all possible applications of this. Take an area like robotics. It’s not an accident: If you look at embodied reasoning benchmarks, Argon is state of the art. That all comes from our experience building world models. Inherently, I would expect there will be architectures which will converge all of this in the future. But for us, we view this as, today, this jagged frontier that is intelligence. We want to be at the frontier of all the possible approaches, and that will help us both drive better research, better insights, and develop a much better AGI model, is how we think about it. Some people argue Google should focus on selling its computing resources rather than using them for AI research. Cloud wants to sell compute at a high markup, while researchers need a very big computer to build the best models. How do you balance those demands? Ground zero for us is making sure we are investing in the compute that’s needed to be at the AI frontier. In 2015, I set the company to be AI-first. AI is that key horizontal ingredient across everything we do, all the way from Search to Cloud to Waymo. That is ground zero for us, making sure both for research and developing the models that we have enough compute needed. Beyond that, we have these independent businesses which each have their own long-range plans. They’re using those long-range plans to project forward, and we plan for compute for all of them. The cloud team, they have a business and they have a projection and they have demand signals. They have committed contracts. With that help, we can plan on a long-term compute trajectory for them. We’re fortunate to have this wide set of opportunities. There’s no company in the world which isn’t making trade-offs at any given moment in time. But the first principles we operate on is making sure we have enough compute to invest in the frontier, and that’s non-negotiable, and everything else works on top. Remember, we are building our own compute, our own data centers. There are long lead times. The compute we have today is a function of decisions I made in 2024. Even if you think back to a year from today, last year the agentic coding takeoff hadn’t happened. Today, obviously, when you sit and look at anything, everyone is short—not just us, other companies—and everyone wishes you had two times what you had planned for. That comes with the territory. At any given moment in time, we are planning for what we would need two to three years out in the future. You’re going to find some decisions you make may look suboptimal two years out, depending on where the state of the art is. I don’t spend too much time thinking about it. The way I think about compute allocation is making sure Google DeepMind, both for research and frontier model development, is cutting edge in terms of compute access. After that, we plan for all our businesses. It’s great we can provide our compute to other people too, like we have done. It allows us to scale that up, get real tests for it in the widest application set possible, test it in the real world, and make sure we are at the cutting edge of technology at every layer of our AI stack as well. Ben Horowitz relayed on a podcast that Andy Jassy had said compute was sold out until 2028. Are you seeing the same thing? If today a customer is coming out and asking us for compute in ’27, that is incredibly difficult to do. Even last year we went out and leased some short-term compute to accommodate some customers and help them out. But yes, we are all dealing with similar timelines. Every major technology shift seems to involve overbuilding, from railroads to fiber. Do you think that’s happening here? It depends on the time frames you’re looking at. This level of build, if I take a long enough time frame, it makes complete sense to me. We are at early stages of the most consequential technology ever, and this is not like fiber. It’s not dark. We are using it. We are capacity constrained on a daily basis. The applications, the underlying technology is improving rapidly. But running a company, the way I work through the moment is you look at your demand signals. You look at your committed revenue opportunities that you’re getting in the form of contracts. You balance that with the underlying technical capability, or internally you balance how we are using it internally, the model trajectories. Based on all that, you take a disciplined approach—a confident, aggressive, but disciplined approach—to plan out compute. But when you talk about the broader economy as a whole, you’re having people operate with various levels of risk. I focus on what I can control as a company and plan through it. If your question is, can there be an overbuild? Yes, because you can have some constrained components. Remember, what matters is a set of everything you need to build out that compute. Memory, electricity, electricians…. Land. Like 2,000 components or more. You could get constrained at some point. There could be things which cause bottlenecks, and then you could have overbuilds. There could be external shocks to the economy. There are macro risks. All that is possible at any given time. But am I confident that the compute we are planning for, we will have uses for it given enough time? Absolutely, yes. I was in the room when you said AI would be as profound as fire and electricity. If you believe that, shouldn’t you give researchers the biggest possible computer, even at the expense of today’s cloud profits? We’re all doing some form of that. Our cloud business is at any given moment in time forgoing short-term revenues because we are making compute trade-offs to support frontier AI development. What you’re seeing is true already. But you want to be thoughtful. Even our AI researchers have some constraints, which are also good. That’s what inspires creativity. That’s what helps you come up with a more efficient algorithmic breakthrough, maybe to use less memory. What we are committed to is to invest what’s needed to stay at the frontier. OpenAI President Greg Brockman told me a few months ago that the ideal AI product might have no interface at all—just as natural as conversation. What do you think the interface looks like in the age of AI? Computing historically has been humans adapting to computing. With AI, it’ll be the other way around. The technology will adapt seamlessly to how humans live and go about their day-to-day life. You want to be able to speak to that AI when you want to. It has context. It can be persistently running somewhere, give you continuity. You’re not dealing with a lot of complexity. It’s natural. All that makes sense to me. That doesn’t mean it won’t have any interface, however. Nowadays, even on my phone, Gemini voice models are so good. I can just press the microphone button. I can just ramble. That’s why we call it Rambler. I can ramble. It intelligently corrects with my personal context. Even my friends’ names, weird names, it gets it right, even if it first guesses it wrong. It’s amazing. I’m not going in, backspacing, editing once I finish saying it. It’s remarkable how good it’s gotten. But there are going to be moments you will need an interface. You may want to entertain yourself. You may want to watch a video. You may ask your AI to create something, and you want to watch it, consume it. The way I think about it is, you want it to be as seamless and as natural as possible, and that you are not doing the hard work adapting to whatever the interface is. The technology is adapting to how you’re working at any given moment in time. When I asked Sam Altman about competition from Google, he argued that OpenAI was building AI-native products and implied Google was bolting AI onto existing ones. Do you accept that framing, and can a “bolt-on” compete with an AI-native product? First of all, it’s a very dynamic moment. We are all pushing each other. OpenAI has pushed us as a company too. This is not just we are doing something to them. Far from it. Yes, Google went into its own version of a code red too. In the AI moment, all of us have to respond with varying levels of urgency at any given moment in time. We are constantly building new products as well. Gemini was built from the ground up as a product—the Gemini app I’m talking about. Or tomorrow, as all of us are adapting to agents, are you bolting agents onto ChatGPT, or are they building it natively? How would you think about that? You can always put these questions back. I don’t think of it that way. I think of it as you want to build world-class product experiences that are AI-native and they are winning. Some of it is adapting products, some of it is rethinking new experiences. They will all be part of how you approach this moment. How do you expect to make money from these AI interfaces? If an agent recommends a product and I buy it, should it take a cut of the sale, even if that’s disclosed? I’m going to put enterprise aside. Consumers are going to increasingly value this technology. Take software developers today. Developers are willing to pay for these coding models because it really helps make them more productive. Nobody would want to code the way they were coding three years ago, or even the same time last year. When you’re delivering value, there’s value to be had. I’ve never seen examples where consumer products really scale to billions of users, where people are using it intensely, and haven’t had monetization to go along with it. If you’re providing value to people, there is inherent value to be had. The nature of it may change. You’re asking a scenario in which agents are doing stuff for you. At the end of the day, you will have commercial needs. The agents need to fulfill those commercial needs. The providers on the other side are going to see value in that. There’s going to be some mechanism by which it gets fleshed out. That’s what an efficient system does. But what matters is that you’re building those world-class consumer experiences. I promised myself one product feature request: Can you make Gemini-powered search in Gmail as good as searching Gmail through ChatGPT? What’s going on here? One of the exciting things we announced recently is the unified Gemini agent for enterprise, and we’re bringing that to consumers. These are persistent agents which run 24/7 in the cloud. We’re spinning up a micro VM effectively for every query, and from the runtime, the harness, the model—it’s all a headless service. It’ll work everywhere, and it has your context with you. You can address this agent whether you’re in Workspace, in Search, in Gemini. Agents are going to drive this unification from a customer experience, which people are looking for. When you have a broad product portfolio and you’re moving forward fast, there are always areas where you’re moving forward faster than some other areas. That’s valid feedback. But we are putting a lot of time and effort into making sure, as we build out our agentic experience, that unification and that capability works well across all these services. People have asked where Google’s equivalent of Muse or Dots is. Do you anticipate creating a new product to compete with them? Our goal with Gemini is to be a personal, proactive, and powerful assistant. That’s what we are working toward. You saw us describe the early versions of it at Google I/O this year with Spark. Effectively, already, if you open the Gemini app as a Pro or an Ultra user, you see Chat and Task, and they start giving you that agentic experience. With Argon now, that capability is dramatically accelerated. What we announced recently in our enterprise event, we are bringing that to consumers as well. Soon in Gemini, you will be able to ask something, and it’s a continuum. You don’t need to think about whether you’re asking a chat or an agentic task. It’ll just automatically do the right thing, and it can work persistently in the background securely and get things done for you. Already, empirically, when I look at what’s coming into Gemini in our app, last year you would have tagged them and most of them would have been chats. But a steadily growing percentage is already agentic tasks in Gemini. Yes, we are going to bring personal agents to our consumers. It’ll work in the Gemini app. It’ll work in Google Search. It’ll work in Gmail. You can address it, call it, etc. We want to make sure we’re getting it right. It’ll be powered by Argon, and we are very excited to bring it to our users. Google has invested and committed tens of billions of dollars to Anthropic. What do you see in Dario Amodei that makes you want such a deep investment and partnership? Very early on, when we looked at the founding team of Anthropic, it was very clear to us this was a world-class team which was involved in some of the earliest GPT models. We were quickly able to assess that they would be at the frontier. We’ve always tried to identify and partner with companies which would be at the cutting edge of technology. We’ve done that with SpaceX. We’ve done that with Anthropic. That’s what we saw, and we had a chance to partner. Is your partnership with Apple to license Gemini for Siri expanding, contracting, or standing still? For both us and Apple, that partnership was about translating the capabilities of AI into better experiences for users. I thought Apple has done a phenomenal job of incorporating—they customize these models and build it into Siri—and it’s been great to see the reception. We are committed to doing more. You’re going to do more with them? There’s nothing specific to comment, but it’s a partnership. It’s working well. What have you learned so far about the feasibility of data centers in space? It’s a very exciting project. Projects like this remind me—I still recall that moment in the desert for the DARPA Grand Challenge, watching the Stanley car compete in it, which ended up being the basis for Waymo. With all these technologies, you’re at a moment in time where it looks a bit like sci-fi, but 10 to 20 years down the line, it’s actually working in a meaningful way. I feel the same in space. We’ve always believed in betting big on these technologies. Quantum has been a great example of it. We’re probably 10 years into the journey. Waymo, we are almost 20 years into the journey. Space, we are two to three years into the journey. It’s clear to me that it’s an approach which will make a lot of sense in the future. Being in sub-synchronous orbits with 24/7 access to the most abundant form of energy we have access to will make a lot of sense for this exponential increase in compute that we are going to need. Having said that, this is a challenging project. The team has disciplined milestones. It was a super exciting milestone to send the TPUs up to space. Sometime, as we are speaking, we are expecting a “hello world” moment from them. I look forward to seeing that happen, and we’ll continue investing here too. You previously said 25% of the code written within Google was written by AI. What’s the number today? That number in our world today is meaningless in the sense that every part of what we now touch is influenced by AI deeply. What we are tracking with Argon, for example, it’s been a point of inflection. People are using Argon to really go tackle complex projects, including projects which affect millions of lines of code. In the four weeks since we have launched Argon, we have seen a 30% increase in CLs, and more importantly, almost a similar increase—a one-third decrease in rollbacks. People are writing code more productively and better code with it. We are tracking it with newer metrics now. How are you dealing with opposition to data centers? If you can’t build in the U.S. the way you want to, where else do you go? We’re very committed to building our data centers very responsibly. When I look at our largest data centers in some of the communities where we have been the longest, I visit them, I talk to people. There are people who come and tell us their kids have gone to college because of our investments in these communities, and we’ve grown in those communities. To me, this is about doing it right. Engaging with the communities early, doing it transparently. We are committed to making sure we are bringing incremental power, and we cover 100% of the cost of our power needs for these projects. It’s understanding the impact on neighborhoods and making sure you’re working thoroughly to address them. Done rightly, you can continue making progress. But we are constantly taking feedback into account. I do worry not everyone operates the same way. People have been surprised by data centers showing up in their backyard. Those are all important. As an industry, we should continue to do better. But part of the reason, in a 20-year time frame, we are thinking about things like data centers in space is making sure we are able to put these data centers where maybe the trade-offs will be different. What unproven area of AI is Google working hardest to crack? Is it continual learning—getting models to keep updating after release—or something else? There are multiple parallel paths. You saw with Argon we have a million output tokens. With our Gemini models early on, we had a one-million context window on the input side. These are all examples of breakthroughs we are constantly working on. How do you think about synthetic data? How do you think about continual learning? How do you think about more efficient architectures? We do dedicate a meaningful percentage of our compute to these research bets too. It always goes hand in hand, including our world models. Those are all bets we are placing. Sometimes, as part of these bets, there are ideas that emerge which just make their way into the mainline models. Maybe we don’t fully talk about it, but we have multiple steps in these areas. Working in technology requires optimism that building something will improve the world, but those bets can leave real consequences when they fail. I recently returned to a town in El Salvador where enthusiasm for Bitcoin had given way to unfinished construction and something resembling a ghost town. How do you maintain the optimism you spoke about in your Stanford commencement address while accounting for those risks? I genuinely have a deep conviction that improving technology and improving access to technology makes people’s lives better. It’s been my personal experience in my life, out of which comes that deep conviction, optimism. But with that, I’ve always felt humanity’s journey is always about working hard to harness that technology to make it work well for society. The optimism is not an optimism that you just build whatever you want, whenever. You work hard to make sure you’re building technology in the service of humanity, to make the human condition better. That’s got to be the defining goal as we are approaching it. With that framework, I’m very, very optimistic. We are in very early stages of the kind of progress that we are going to see on many areas. We’re all talking about areas like healthcare. A lot of the progress is ahead. The ability to make things in a fundamentally cheaper way on many things where things have been getting expensive for a long, long time, discovering new materials, etc., which really bend the curve—it’s tough to step today and understand the impact of all that, but they’re going to be very profound. I’m very optimistic, but we have to be rightfully concerned about all the ways this technology can go wrong. Sundar, I know you don’t do many of these. Thank you. Thanks, Alex. Appreciate it.
Entergy, Google announce second phase partnership
Entergy Arkansas announced Monday (Oct. 19) as part of its continued partnership with Google, a second phase of its service to support Google’s $4 billion data center project in West...
Entergy, Google announce second phase partnership
Entergy Arkansas announced Monday (Oct. 19) as part of its continued partnership with Google, a second phase of its service to support Google’s $4 billion data center project in West...
Top business leaders sound the alarm over skilled worker shortage
From the people who keep us safe on the roads to those who wire our homes and are building the infrastructure powering the AI boom, America needs skilled workers. But a new report finds that the nation isn’t doing enough to keep up with demand. NBC’s Christine Romans sits down exclusively with BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Ford’s Jim Farley, Google’s Ruth Porat and Carhartt’s Linda Hubbard, who have come together with an urgent message.
Android's brand-new 3D emoji are rolling out more widely
After initially being limited to the Pixel 11 series, Google’s Noto 3D emoji set is now rolling out to more Android smartphones.
US teens can access ‘nudify’ apps despite Apple and Google’s parental controls, report finds
Exclusive: Using test accounts, Tech Transparency Project downloaded 135 apps with features to generate nonconsensual nude imagery
Google’s $180 Fitbit Edge makes a bet on smartwatch fatigue
Google draws a sharper line between Fitbit and Pixel Watch.
I’ve Tested Echo Shows and Nest Hubs. Here’s How Apple’s HomeView Display Stacks Up
Apple’s new HomeView faces steep competition from Amazon and Google’s well-established smart displays. Here’s what I think, based on my past reviews.
Google Fitbit Edge hands-on: Pixel Watch Lite, take two
Google’s new Fitbit Edge tracker launches later this month and, as we get our review together, here’s a quick hands-on...
Google’s new ‘Shop devices’ tab sells Pixel and Samsung Galaxy devices side by side
Google has launched a new “Shop devices” portal that lets interested buyers pick up a Samsung Galaxy smartphone from the...
Google unveils new Fitbit Edge tracker as tech giant expands health monitoring ambitions
Google on Monday its debuted its second Fitbit tracker of the year, the Fitbit Edge, which sits between the screenless health tracker Fitbit Air and the more advanced Pixel Watch. | The new device also builds on Google’s health tracking ambitions by combining advanced health sensors with AI-powered insights designed to identify changes in a user’s health and translate those signals into personalized guidance.
Google’s Fitbit Air is getting a shiny new Metal Mesh band and better automatic tracking
The Fitbit Air is finally getting another band option that isn’t fabric or polyurethane. Instead, the Metal Mesh band might...
Fitbit Edge is Google’s middle ground between Fitbit Air and Pixel Watch
Google’s newest wearable costs $179.99 and has a sleek feel like the Fitbit Air but with an OLED display.
Someone ported Pixel 11’s Rambler voice-to-text to other Android phones
One of the best new features of Google’s Pixel 11 (and Googlebook) is support for Rambler voice-to-text, and it’s now...
Google TV Streamer’s sequel showcases a struggling smart home
We broke the news this week that a next-gen Google TV Streamer is incoming, but it also arrives as Google’s...
I Made Terrible Games With Google’s AI Playground
A long day’s haul in the video game slop mines.
Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce voices support for controversial Pine Island data center
The Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce, the second largest chamber in the state, announced it is formally backing Google’s massive and controversial data center proposal, known as Project Skyway.
Google Fitbit Edge: Official Teaser, Launch Date Arrives
Google confirmed today that the Fitbit Edge is indeed real and is launching much sooner than we expected. In a short teaser posted to Twitter, Google told us to get our wallets ready on Monday. For those not familiar with Fitbit Edge, this is expected to be Google’s new fitness tracker that lands somewhere between...
Google releases a new local-first Granola competitor
Google’s new AI Edge Foresight app takes on Granola with an offline meeting note-taker that can transcribe conversations, generate notes, and answer questions using on-device AI.
Google’s Pixel Buds update will put them to sleep along with you
Plus new voice controls, and one-tap microphone muting and live translation, for the Buds 2A and Pro 2.
At $1,279, Google’s Xreal Aura will go head-to-head with Meta’s VR Glasses
The first transparent Android XR glasses are “weeks” away — if you made a reservation.
Our first five impressions of Googlebooks
Google’s new laptop OS shows lots of promise for Android phone owners, but there’s a long road ahead.
New leaks reveal more details about the Fitbit Edge including its price
Google’s next fitness tracker with a screen could arrive soon.
Google ‘Fitbit Edge’ reportedly costs around $180 as specs & features leak
A new leak reveals that Google’s upcoming Fitbit Edge tracker will probably have a price somewhere around $180 and offer...
Gemini Call for Me might tell your mom you’re running late
Would you call your parents with Google’s AI?
The Googlebook era is here: some first impressions of the hardware and a whole new OS
Today is the day. After months of tracking code commits, dissecting leaks, and getting that unforgettable first taste at Google’s media showcase in New York City, Googlebooks are officially landing...
The new Fitbit Edge leaks
Google’s midrange Fitbit Edge shows off is many sides and colors in leaked images.
‘Fitbit Edge’ leaks as Google’s next fitness tracker with ‘Apps’ & ‘Notifications’
Following an accidental marketing leak in August and FCC listing last month, retail listings for the “Fitbit Edge” have now emerged.
The forgotten Chromebook that started it all
On Version History: Marques Brownlee and Nilay Patel relive the release of the Cr-48, Google’s prototype laptop.
Google’s overdue Gemini 4 Argon reaches the frontier with mixed results for science
Google’s Gemini 4 Argon brings competitive AI performance at introductory prices, but independent tests show uneven results against leading rivals.
Google’s new Guided Vision feature can help you read the fine print
Can you trust AI to see what’s going on around you?
Google’s new Android sideloading rules are live — and here are all the ways to already bypass them
Google’s developer verification rules are now live, but users can bypass new APK sideloading blocks using ADB, Shizuku, and Advanced Flow.
Google Antigravity Googlebook app hits the Play Store
Ahead of the Googlebook launch, Google Antigravity is now available in the Play Store. Antigravity is Google’s agent-first...
Pixel 11a looks mostly unchanged in first leak, reportedly brings purple color back [Gallery]
The first leak of Google’s upcoming Pixel 11a just hit the web, revealing a virtually unchanged design, as well as...
Pixel Watch update adds Google’s new 3D emoji
Google’s latest Pixel Watch software updates have also transitioned the entire lineup over to the new 3D emoji design also...
Can Apple Home’s AI camera features outsmart Amazon and Google’s? I put them to the test
Apple, Google, and Ring are teaching security cameras what matters
Gemini 3.8 Live with Live Avatar gives Google’s AI a face
The AI avatar can transition between 97 languages.
Google’s Gemini Can Now Make Calls for You on Pixel Phones
Call for Me—a feature that’s exclusive to the Pixel 11 series—gives robocalls a new meaning.
Googlebooks will get full GeForce Now support ‘later this year’
Nvidia says Google’s new Gemini-infused laptops are slated to get GeForce Now support before the year is up, which is...
Gemini can now clone your voice and perform scripts like an actor
Google’s Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS can create custom voices, replicate authorized voices, and control accents, pacing, emotion, and dialogue.
Google is reinventing the Thompson Center. Hear from the team making it happen.
Crain’s will explore what Google’s investment could mean for the future of downtown Chicago at a live event on Oct. 14.
Got an Android Phone? Google Thinks You’ll Probably Want a Googlebook Laptop
Apple lovers have long enjoyed seamless connectivity between their iPhones and Macs. Now, Google’s bringing that experience to Android.
I got to see Google’s wild ideas about the future of laptops
Googlebooks are here, starting at $899.
A Deep Dive into the Antitrust Remedies that Spared Google's Ad Tech Business
Read alongside the Google Search remedies ruling, the Google Ad Tech case changes very little for Google’s monopolies, writes Karina Montoya.
5 phones to buy instead of the Google Pixel 11 Pro
The Pixel 11 Pro is one of Google’s strongest flagships yet, but these five phones offer better value, more performance, or a completely different form factor.
Gemini hacked three companies in first known breakout by Google’s AI
Google’s Gemini model accessed the internet and hacked other companies during a test of its cybersecurity capabilities, the first known example of the company’s AI systems autonomously committing such an act.
Google’s Pixel VIPs redesign starts rolling out to users
Pixel VIPs is getting a visual refresh with swipe navigation, redesigned profile pages, and the removal of activity recommendations.
Android Bench 2.0 focuses on long-horizon tasks, agent evaluations
Google’s development of Android Bench continues today with a version 2.0 that reflects how AI can handle more complex development tasks.
Claude comes for Gemini with its own take on Docs and Slides
Claude’s getting its own version of Google’s productivity tools.
Google’s Thompson Center debut delayed to 2028
The tech giant dropped the news in a blog post revealing new details of public spaces planned for the revamped former state office building.
Google’s September Pixel Drop upgrades VIP contacts, scam detection, and Pixel Watch
Google's September Pixel Drop makes VIP contacts one tap away.
Google’s official Pixel 11 series cases are already on sale
Following last month’s launch, Google’s official Pixelsnap cases for the Pixel 11 series are already on discount at Amazon.
Broadcom’s Anthropic Ramp Puts Google’s TPU Business in a Different Light
Broadcom’s September 2 results show custom AI hardware turning into substantial sales. On the accompanying call, management said it expected to accelerate Ironwood shipments to Anthropic in the fourth quarter. That puts Google’s TPU technology at the center of a relationship whose economics differ for Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL). Broadcom can sell […]
Here's how some Chicago small businesses are ramping up their use of AI
Mary Nguyen Aregoni, owner of the West Loop restaurant Saigon Sisters, started using Gemini, Google’s AI tool, early this year. She took free online courses about AI and a webinar from Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses program. “It's pretty easy and intuitive to use, but you have to know how to ask the right questions or prompt,” she says.
The weather app on your Pixel Watch is adding new watch face modules
Google’s Pixel Weather app is adding three new complications to join the Sunrise and sunset, UV Index, and Weather options.
Google’s next Pixel Fold reportedly adopting the same crease-less display as Apple
We’re still a few days out from the debut of Apple’s first iPhone foldable which, as many have expected for...
In landmark ruling, court declines to break up Google’s advertising business
In landmark ruling, court declines to break up Google’s advertising business - SiliconANGLE
Judge Rejects DOJ Request to Break Up Google’s Ad Business | What’s News for Sept. 2
Plus, the Trump administration backs OpenAI in a copyright suit and our inside look at an uber rich divorce
US judge rejects bid to break up Google’s ad business
Justice Department had argued Google could not be trusted to run the online advertising exchange.
Judge orders changes to Google’s digital ads business but spares it from a breakup
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Google to retool the system powering its monopoly in digital advertising, sparing the company from a wrenching breakup soug
Federal Judge Declines to Break Up Google’s Ad Technology Business
In a long awaited ruling, the judge said Google must make some changes to its ad tech business to handle antitrust issues, but did not disclose the measures publicly.
Lenovo’s ‘Pen Pro for Googlebook’ hits Bluetooth SIG with wireless charging and gestures
With Google’s private media event in New York City just around the corner, the hardware surrounding the launch of Googlebook continues to leak out left and right. While we’ve spent plenty of time...
Google’s hyper-personalized ‘Dreambeans’ feed is now free to test
After previously requiring a subscription, Dreambeans is now available for free Google Accounts in the US to test.
People are sticking the Fitbit Air to their bodies, literally, and it works [Gallery]
The Fitbit Air might be one of Google’s most versatile products in a while not just because it’s so simple,...
Google’s AI note-taking app now allows you to interact with books
Coming soon to scholarly articles, newspapers, and more.
Google’s new Fitbit Air brings Pokémon Sleep to your wrist
Google teamed up with the Pokemon Company to introduce a special-edition Fitbit Air that works with the Pokémon Sleep app.
Google’s new AI transcription edits out your ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’
It also removes “ums” and other filler words for you.
Pixel 11 Pro XL review: Snappier cameras can't hide an iterative upgrade
Google’s Pixel 11 Pro XL brings snappier cameras and genuinely useful AI features like Rambler, but its iterative upgrades may not be enough to tempt recent Pixel owners.
Pixel 11 Pro vs. iPhone 17 Pro: Can a re-run contend with a re-do [Video]
How close does the Pixel 11 Pro get to the iPhone 17 Pro? Does Google’s best of 2026 contend with...
Googlebook leak reveals ‘Continue On’, Google’s built-in answer to Apple Handoff
While the steady stream of Googlebook leaks over the past few weeks has centered almost entirely on silicon benchmarks and chassis materials, we have not seen much of the actual desktop user...
Google’s Pixel Watch 5 Pumps Up Its Fitness Smarts
With smarter gym tracking, new health alerts, and offline Gemini, the Pixel Watch 5 fine-tunes a winning formula—for a price.
The A.I. in Google’s New Pixel 11 Is Not Very Helpful
The phone’s artificial intelligence can order groceries, book tables and take photos on a user’s behalf. But is it something people really want?
Google’s Pixel Watch 5 is promising — but it isn’t finished
Think of this as part one of the Pixel Watch 5 review as most of the new features aren’t out yet. That said, GPS rocks.
Google’s Pixel 11 Pro Fold feels like the end of an era
Google has some catching up to do.
Google makes it official: Googlebook launch event set for September in NYC
For months, we’ve tracked code commits in the Chromium Gerrit, analyzed hardware benchmark leaks, and pieced together Google’s ambitious plans to bridge the worlds of ChromeOS and Android under a...
Growing threat to free speech: Bogus copyright claims are making political stories disappear
Google’s removal of stories underscores mounting concern that federal copyright law is being used by people relying on automated, AI-driven and anonymous complaints to file fraudulent takedown notices, all in the name of suppressing headline news.
Google’s best new camera feature is only for the Pixel 11 series
Camera Looks are an exclusive feature.
Pixel 11 tidbits: The key details you should know about Google’s latest phones
While not as major of a release as most years, Google’s Pixel 11 devices bring a lot of new things...
Google Play will make rival Android app stores easier to find after judge says it is ‘not acceptable’ yet
Following the arrival of third-party Android app stores on Google Play earlier this week, a judge in Google’s ongoing court...
‘That is not acceptable’: Judge orders Google to make rival app store installs easier
Judge Donato was not having Google’s “anticompetitive friction.”
Google’s Gemini 3.7 Flash targets coding and agents with a 50% introductory price cut
Google's own results do not show 3.7 Flash universally displacing higher-priced competitors. They instead suggest a model that has become substantially more competitive in coding and agent workloads while occupying a lower price tier.
Google’s Tensor G6 in Pixel 11 isn’t the first 2nm smartphone chip after all
It was rumored that Google’s new Tensor G6, debuting in the Pixel 11, would be the first smartphone chip using...
Google’s Pixel 11 phone preorders come with up to $350 in gift cards
We’ve got the details on how to preorder the new phones.
Google’s Pixel 11 trade-ins top out at $1,000 with great values for older phones
Amid a price hike on the Pixel 11 series, Google has delivered some solid trade-in values across the board on...
Google takes on AirTag with the new $29 Pixel Tag
Google’s new Pixel Tag taps into its Find Hub network to help users track lost keys, bags, and other items.
The Pixel Tag is Google’s answer to the AirTag
But not every phone will support its best features.
Google’s Pixel 11 series pairs a little new hardware with a lot of new software
More helpful features, less AI slop.
How to watch the Made by Google event stream and Pixel 11 announcement
You might think you know everything about Google’s next-gen Pixel 11 lineup, but the company is still hoping to surprise...
Google’s free streaming service now lets you pick shows and movies to watch
More free stuff to watch.
Google’s upcoming Pixel phones are for the fans, even if its launch event isn’t
Notification lights are back back back.
Google’s base Pixel 11 probably won’t have ‘HiLight’ but will actually have enough RAM
With just hours left to go for Google’s Pixel 11 launch event, details keep on leaking out, with some clarification...
Someone Made a Terrific Deal in the Peacock/YouTube Premium Partnership…But Who?
(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.) I hope everyone around the world suffering from record heat waves is doing okay. The temperature is already up in Southern California, but obviously not nearly as bad as parts of Europe. With a super El Nińo coming this year, I worry it will get even worse. Yes, we know what’s causing this heat—it’s the carbon, duh—but we really aren’t making enough progress. I’m not “environmental strategy guy”, but if I were, I’d have some ideas of what I’d try. Honestly, for years I’ve been intrigued by the work of the folks at MEER—whose plan, super simply, is to put up mirrors to reflect heat (while continuing the important work of decarbonization)—but I’m frustrated this idea hasn’t made more progress. (Other geo-engineering groups seem to get better press.) With heat like this—cancelling events, hurting economies and, most importantly, killing people—it seems like the time to push solutions! The “mirrors on the ground” solution has barely been tried.1 While entertainment companies may not “feel the heat”, lots of outdoors/experiential industries—concerts, theme parks and so on—will. Even movie theaters could benefit, since mirrors could help lower AC costs, which I imagine is not an insignificant expense, especially in the hotter areas of the country. So I do think the entertainment industry should prioritize this issue. Anyways, let’s get back into the entertainment strategy. I was about to write, “Hey, this week we don’t have any mergers and entertainment news to dive into,” but that’s not really true, since we had more updates on Paramount-Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. But the big story of the week involves a streamer and a Big Tech platform bundling their respective streamers. So I’ll write about the updates on Paramount buying Warner Bros., Versant making some moves, and a whole lot more. But we start with a surprising deal: Peacock licensing their content to YouTube Premium. Let’s dive in! Subscribe Most Important Story of the Week - Peacock’s Pricey Premium Partnership The story of the week is Comcast’s2 NBC-Universal’s Peacock making a deal with Google’s YouTube’s YouTube Premium subscription product to embed their content. And I’ll say this up front: Someone made a terrific deal. The question is who. And I’ll be honest: I don’t know. Let me explain why, including why this deal exists, the pros and cons for each side, the biggest unknown, and what that says about the streaming wars. Customers Love Bundles (But YouTube Has Its Own Issues) We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… Why customers love bundles… But why I’m worried about YouTube’s integration... How Peacock is trading scale for control… And the reason they likely made this deal... The odd budget math for this deal... Whether or not I think the Paramount-Skydance/WBD deal is more likely after the latest settlement... Versant making moves and why that’s good for Hollywood… Another distributor going out of business… ...and a whole lot more! ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support.
What to expect from Google’s 2026 Pixel hardware launch event
It’s Pixel launch season again.