Google on IT News

Google Cloud Adds NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs to Confidential Computing Lineup

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

Google is betting that hardware-level encryption will set its cloud apart in the AI race. On Monday, the company announced a major upgrade to its Confidential Computing lineup on Google Cloud — new virtual machines powered by NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, an open-source SDK for encrypting AI prompts, and beefed-up attestation features for multi-party data collaboration.

Google's AI boom pushed electricity usage up 37% — but carbon emissions still fell

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

There’s a paradox at the heart of Big Tech’s AI buildout, and Google’s latest environment report lays it out in stark numbers.

The company’s electricity consumption surged 37% in 2025, hitting an all-time high. The culprit is obvious: the massive expansion of AI infrastructure — more data centers, more TPUs, more GPUs running around the clock. Yet Google’s operational carbon emissions went in the opposite direction, falling 2% from the previous year.

Google Is Still Building Android's Native App Lock — And It Might Finally Ship

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

Android 17 landed last month with smoother animations and better multitasking — but one thing conspicuously didn’t make the cut: a native app lock.

That’s been the Pixel crowd’s persistent ask for years. For a while it looked like Google was about to deliver — a working version popped up in the Canary 2603 build. Then it vanished in the next preview, with no explanation.

Google explains Android Halo — the status bar gets a dedicated spot for AI agents

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

There’s a quiet tension in how we interact with AI on our phones. You open an app, ask a question, and then what? The AI does its work somewhere in the background, and you either sit watching a spinner or swipe away and hope it finishes. Google’s answer, first teased at I/O in May, is called Android Halo — and the company just explained exactly how it works.

In a developer video posted Tuesday, Sameer Samat, Google’s president of Android, laid out the details. Halo gives AI agents a permanent spot in the status bar, a designated slot where they can signal they’re running, show task progress, and accept new instructions.

Google ordered to pay $13.5 billion in Swedish antitrust ruling over shopping search bias

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

A Stockholm court handed down one of the largest antitrust judgments against Google on Wednesday, ordering the company to pay 143 billion Swedish kronor — roughly $13.5 billion — to PriceRunner, a price comparison platform owned by the buy-now-pay-later giant Klarna.

Google-backed Apptronik built a 'robot school' — and it's the size of two basketball courts

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

There’s a warehouse in Austin, Texas, where robots go to school. Not the kind of school where they memorize facts or recognize images. The kind where they learn to pick up a box and put it on a conveyor belt, over and over, until they get it right.

Google's Gemini Spark AI Agent Lands on Mac With Real-Time Tracking

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

Google’s Gemini Spark AI agent is now available on the Mac, and it can do a lot more than chat.

Vint Cerf, Co-Creator of the Internet, Is Retiring Next Week

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0800

In 1973, Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn started sketching out a way for different computer networks to share information. Fifty-three years later, that blueprint — TCP/IP — still carries almost every packet on the internet. Next week, Cerf is retiring.

Google now lets Gemini free users generate AI images of themselves

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0800

Google is making its most personal AI image feature available to everyone in the US, no subscription required. Starting Tuesday, free Gemini users can generate images that reflect their individual tastes — the kind of feature that was previously locked behind Plus, Pro, and Ultra tiers.

The technology, which Google calls “Nano Banana,” powers what the company describes as personalized image generation. The key shift is in how much you have to tell the AI to get what you want. Instead of writing a detailed prompt — “an illustration of me sitting in a coffee shop, holding a croissant, wearing a blue sweater” — you can say something like “create an illustration of me and my hobbies” and Gemini fills in the details on its own.

Five years with a Google Pixel 6 — one owner's unfiltered goodbye to Google phones

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0800

There’s a special kind of frustration that builds over five years. And for one Reddit user who went by “PresentSpecific5666,” those five years were spent with a Google Pixel 6 — a phone they got for free and still felt ripped off by.

Google Restructures AI Coding Task Force to Close the Gap With Anthropic After Key Researchers Defect

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 23:50:00 +0800

Google is restructuring its recently established AI coding task force in an effort to narrow the widening technical gap with Anthropic, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Google DeepMind Invests $75 Million in A24 to Co-Develop AI Filmmaking Tools

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 04:16:00 +0800

A new kind of alliance is taking shape in Hollywood — one that pairs the creative muscle of an iconic independent film studio with the artificial intelligence expertise of one of the world’s leading AI research labs. Google DeepMind has invested $75 million (approximately ¥509 million) in A24, the studio behind breakout hits such as Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Backrooms, and Marty Supreme, with the two companies set to collaborate on building next-generation AI tools for filmmaking.

Google DeepMind Distinguished Engineer: To Land a Top AI Lab Job, You Need to 'Work Like a Dog'

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 01:04:00 +0800

If you’re aiming for a research role at OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google DeepMind, you’d better be ready to sacrifice your nights, weekends, and possibly your social life. That’s the candid message from Vladimir Feinberg, a Distinguished Engineer at Google DeepMind and the head of Gemini pretraining, who told aspiring AI researchers they’ll need to “work like a dog” to have a shot.