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.
In the teardown, it got a 9/10 for repairability. Most smartwatches score a 3 or a 4. Where there was glue and heartbreak, there’s now screws and gaskets. This is monumental for the category and a big reason why I wrote this is the Android smartwatch to beat.
It only took nine months, but the Competition and Markets Authority has designated Google Search with “strategic market status,” meaning it’s eligible for extra UK regulation. AI Mode has been factored in, but not AI assistants like Gemini. Similar decisions on Android and iOS are due this month.
Google published a deeper dive on the Pixel 10 Pro Fold’s new folding mechanism, highlighting the work of the hingeneers and as MKBHD christened them. The blog post offers a few more details on the process to create the gearless mechanism, which instead relies on CAMs to turn the rotational motion of the hinge into linear motion. It’s interesting stuff, and the beefed up dust resistance is no joke.
According to the companies, these will be secure AI workspace systems that can be tailored to draw only from internal documents and information. Google’s Gemini Enterprise and AWS’s Quick Suite both offer AI agents, chatbots, and automated workflows to take on repetitive tasks.
It’s been a while since a major software update hit the Pixel Watch 2 and 3, but Google’s October update that’s rolling out now is a big one. The update introduces Wear OS 6, which features the new “youthful” Material 3 Expressive design language, plus other features.
Vivo is teasing OriginOS 6, its latest take on Android, and I can’t help but notice that it’s looking very... wet. And glassy. Funny that. It arrives along with the X300 phones next week, and for the first time it’s rolling out globally, killing off Vivo’s cursed international offering, Funtouch OS.
The company has... let’s just say a rep for killing its products off. So I’m going to celebrate the fourth Pixel Watch turning out to be the best Android smartwatch around, and hope Google learns that there are upsides to seeing something through.
Ollieollieollie:
Amazing what happens when you actually stick with a product, isn’t it?
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Google’s latest folding phone isn’t afraid of a little sand. Ask me how I know.
After years of false starts, the promise of ambient intelligence has arrived, but will it be worth the price?
Beginning today, AI Mode is launching in “more than 35 new languages and over 40 new countries and territories,” Google says, meaning it will be available in “over 200 countries and territories total.”
The plan, which includes perks like higher generation limits for its Nano Banana image model in Gemini, is expanding to 36 more countries, Google says. You can see the full list here.
Last month, Google launched Google AI Plus in Indonesia and then brought it to 40 more countries.
Google and the DOJ just wrapped their two-week remedies trial until closing arguments on November 17th. Judge Leonie Brinkema is still holding out hope for a settlement to avoid the tricky technical issues of a court-ordered remedy.
That’s what Brinkema wanted to know as the case wound down. She wants the parties to consider what kind of committee should be appointed by the court. “That is part of the key of making whatever the final remedy is work,” she said. “I would be very concerned about any monitor who might have any stake in the outcome.”
Google brought back its technical expert Jason Nieh for a brief response to the DOJ’s rebuttal. Nieh claimed that Wheatland’s conception of how the open-sourced final auction logic would work was new and not technically feasible. Brinkema pushed back, saying that her understanding was that all that functionality is “already there” inside DFP and “all they want you to do basically is open the box.” Nieh said that wouldn’t work since the code is always evolving and it would be harder to stick back together with Google’s system.
If the court only imposes behavioral restrictions on Google, Daily Mail Chief Digital Officer Matthew Wheatland warned in the DOJ’s rebuttal, there would still be a “gray area on our decision making process” to switch ad servers since they’d need to be sure the remedies would have “lasting effects” on Google’s actions.
A court-ordered sale of Google’s ad tech tools could backfire on publishers, the company warned.
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Crummy speakers aside, this is the convertible Chromebook to get.
We heard more testimony from Google’s technical expert Jason Nieh this afternoon about why he thinks divesting AdX and DFP would be much harder than the DOJ’s experts said. On Monday, the DOJ will bring DailyMail.com chief digital officer Matthew Wheatland in to testify in its rebuttal case, and may add an expert or two.
Former News Corp ad tech executive Stephanie Layser worries that even if Brinkema limits Google’s bad conduct, it will simply find a new way to make things difficult for publishers in ways that will be hard to detect. Layser said she felt like a “conspiracy theorist” about her suspicions Google was harming her business — until discovery in this case.
Amazon and Google just launched a bunch of new smart home hardware and software features this week, and I know you have questions. I haven’t tested any of them yet, but I got some hands-on time with the new gadgets and spoke with folks at both companies about the new features, so come ask me anything! I’ll go live at 1 PM ET.
