At Google I/O on Tuesday, Google previewed a feature that will alert users to potential scams during a phone call. TechCrunch reports: The feature, which will be built into a future version of Android, uses Gemini Nano, the smallest version of Google's generative AI offering, which can be run entirely on-device. The system effectively listens for "conversation patterns commonly associated with scams" in real time. Google gives the example of someone pretending to be a "bank representative." Common scammer tactics like password requests and gift cards will also trigger the system. These are all pretty well understood to be ways of extracting your money from you, but plenty of people in the world are still vulnerable to these sorts of scams. Once set off, it will pop up a notification that the user may be falling prey to unsavory characters. No specific release date has been set for the feature. Like many of these things, Google is previewing how much Gemini Nano will be able to do down the road sometime. We do know, however, that the feature will be opt-in.

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Google is shaking up Search. On Tuesday, the company announced big new AI-powered changes to the world's dominant search engine at I/O, Google's annual conference for developers. From a report: With the new features, Google is positioning Search as more than a way to simply find websites. Instead, the company wants people to use its search engine to directly get answers and help them with planning events and brainstorming ideas. "[With] generative AI, Search can do more than you ever imagined," wrote Liz Reid, vice president and head of Google Search, in a blog post. "So you can ask whatever's on your mind or whatever you need to get done -- from researching to planning to brainstorming -- and Google will take care of the legwork." Google's changes to Search, the primary way that the company makes money, are a response to the explosion of generative AI ever since OpenAI's ChatGPT released at the end of 2022. [...] Starting today, Google will show complete AI-generated answers in response to most search queries at the top of the results page in the US. Google first unveiled the feature a year ago at Google I/O in 2023, but so far, anyone who wanted to use the feature had to sign up for it as part of the company's Search Labs platform that lets people try out upcoming features ahead of their general release. Google is now making AI Overviews available to hundreds of millions of Americans, and says that it expects it to be available in more countries to over a billion people by the end of the year.

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Apple and Google have launched a new industry standard called "Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers" to combat the misuse of Bluetooth trackers for stalking. Starting Monday, iPhone and Android users will receive alerts when an unknown Bluetooth device is detected moving with them. The move comes after numerous cases of trackers like Apple's AirTags being used for malicious purposes. Several Bluetooth tag companies have committed to making their future products compatible with the new standard. Apple and Google said they will continue collaborating with the Internet Engineering Task Force to further develop this technology and address the issue of unwanted tracking.

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Google announced on Monday that it is preparing to bring its experimental Project Starline videoconferencing technology to the market. The company is collaborating with HP to integrate the system, which creates 3D projections of participants, into existing platforms like Google Meet and Zoom. The move aims to make the technology more accessible for offices and conference rooms, potentially transforming the way people communicate and collaborate remotely.

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"Google's business is growing at its fastest rate in two years," reports CNBC, "and a blowout earnings report in April sparked the biggest rally in Alphabet shares since 2015, pushing the company's market cap past $2 trillion. "But at an all-hands meeting last week with CEO Sundar Pichai and CFO Ruth Porat, employees were more focused on why that performance isn't translating into higher pay, and how long the company's cost-cutting measures are going to be in place." "We've noticed a significant decline in morale, increased distrust and a disconnect between leadership and the workforce," a comment posted on an internal forum ahead of the meeting read. "How does leadership plan to address these concerns and regain the trust, morale and cohesion that have been foundational to our company's success?" Google is using artificial intelligence to summarize employee comments and questions for the forum. Alphabet's top leadership has been on the defensive for the past few years, as vocal staffers have railed about post-pandemic return-to-office mandates, the company's cloud contracts with the military, fewer perks and an extended stretch of layoffs — totaling more than 12,000 last year — along with other cost cuts that began when the economy turned in 2022. Employees have also complained about a lack of trust and demands that they work on tighter deadlines with fewer resources and diminished opportunities for internal advancement. The internal strife continues despite Alphabet's better-than-expected first-quarter earnings report, in which the company also announced its first dividend as well as a $70 billion buyback. "Despite the company's stellar performance and record earnings, many Googlers have not received meaningful compensation increases" a top-rated employee question read. "When will employee compensation fairly reflect the company's success and is there a conscious decision to keep wages lower due to a cooling employment market?"

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Google announced on Tuesday that it will be exiting One Market Plaza, a prominent office complex in San Francisco that it had been occupying since 2018. The company's lease for the 300,000-square-foot-office will expire next April. The San Francisco Chronicle reports: Many of Google's employees are already working outside of the giant waterfront office, in light of the company's flexible approach to office attendance. As one of the city's largest office properties and a prominent feature on its skyline, the 1.6-million-square-foot One Market Plaza complex features two high-rise towers and a 11-story office annex building known as the Landmark." Ryan Lamont, a spokesperson for Google, said the company will be moving out of One Market's Spear Tower, but will continue to occupy the smaller Landmark building. He declined to comment on how long Google plans to remain in the latter." As we've said before, we're focused on investing in real estate efficiently to meet the current and future needs of our hybrid workforce," Lamont said in an email to the Chronicle. "We remain committed to our long-term presence in San Francisco." Real estate market participants who spoke with the Chronicle indicated that Google plans to consolidate much of its operations from One Market to nearby 345 Spear St., where the company leases about 400,000 square feet. These individuals said that Google will likely renew its lease at that property once it expires next year.

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The Pixel 8A is officially here. The 8A gets Google's latest processor, adds a bunch of new AI features, and still starts at $499 in the US. But the very best news is that the 8A adopts the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro's seven years of software support, which is just unheard of in a midrange phone. From a report: The 8A retains the same general shape and size as its predecessor. But its 6.1-inch screen gets a couple of significant updates: the top refresh rate is now 120Hz, up from 90Hz, and the panel gets up to 40 percent brighter, up to 2,000 nits in peak brightness mode. They're important upgrades, especially since the 8A's main competition in the US, the OnePlus 12R, comes with an excellent display. It comes with the same generative AI photo and video features that made a splash on the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro, including Best Take, Magic Editor, and Audio Magic Eraser. Circle to Search is also available, and the 8A will be able to run Google's mobile-optimized on-device AI model, Gemini Nano. As on the Pixel 8, it'll be a developer option delivered via feature drop. Other specs are either unchanged or slightly boosted compared to the last generation. There's still 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, though there's now a 256GB option. Camera hardware is unchanged from the 7A, including a stabilized 64-megapixel main sensor. There's an IP67 rating, consistent with the 7A, and battery capacity is a little higher at 4,492mAh compared to 4,385mAh. Wireless charging is available via Qi 1.3 at up to 7.5W -- no Qi2 here.

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Abner Li reports via 9to5Google: Since the launch of Health Connect in 2022, Google has been winding down the Google Fit developer APIs. Earlier this week, the company fully detailed how the "Google Fit APIs have been deprecated and will be supported until June 30, 2025." Fitness and exercise apps that previously used Google Fit have until the June 2025 deadline to switch to Health Connect, with Google broadly referring to it as the "Android Health platform." Google's migration guide for developers lists what they're supposed to switch to on Android phones and Wear OS. However, there is no replacement for the Goals API that lets Google Fit users set "how many steps and heart points they want to aim for each day." Google says it will "share more details about what's next for Android Health" at I/O later this month. As of this API shutdown announcement, Google has said nothing about the Google Fit apps on Android, Wear OS, and iOS. They still work to track activity and house your full archive. [...] At this point, it's clear that Google Fit is not the future. On the Pixel Watch, Fitbit is the default, while Samsung and other Wear OS manufacturers have their own health tracking solutions. If Google were to announce a deprecation of the Fit app, having it coincide with the June 2025 developer deadline makes sense.

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Google has asked a U.S. judge not to impose sweeping changes to the Alphabet unit's app store Play that were proposed by "Fortnite" maker Epic Games in the companies' closely-watched antitrust fight. From a report: Google made its filing late on Thursday in San Francisco federal court, where Epic last year persuaded a jury that the tech giant unlawfully stifled competition with its controls over apps downloads on Android devices and payments to developers for in-app transactions. Epic's proposal "would make it nearly impossible for Google to compete," Google's filing said. The gaming company in March asked U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco to force Google to make it easier for users to download apps from other sources and to allow developers more flexibility in offering and charging for purchases. The Cary, North Carolina-based company also said it should be allowed to bring its Epic Games Store to Android "without delays and barriers." Google agreed in December to pay $700 million to resolve the states' case and, among other reforms, will allow more alternative billing options for in-app purchases.

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Google is making its last attempt to fight back against a historic effort by the US Department of Justice to break the tech giant's grip on online search, as the most significant antitrust trial in 25 years comes to a close in Washington. From a report: A federal court in Washington began hearing closing arguments on Thursday after a 10-week trial in which the DoJ accused Alphabet, the parent company of Google, of suppressing search rivals by paying tens of billions annually for anti-competitive agreements with wireless carriers, browser developers and device manufacturers. During the hearing on Thursday, John Schmidtlein, a lawyer from Williams & Connolly representing Google, sought to push back on claims that it had hindered rivals' efforts to gain a foothold in online search, and argued that users had plenty of alternatives. Unsealed court documents revealed this week that Alphabet paid Apple $20bn in 2022 alone to be the default search engine for its iPhone and Safari browser on its other devices. "Google winning agreements because it has a better product is not a harm to the competitive process, even if it gives it scale to improve its product," Schmidtlein told the court. A lawyer for the government, Kenneth Dintzer, told the court that Google's "anti-competitive conduct harms competition and is self perpetuating." Defaults "are a powerful way to drive searches, otherwise Google wouldn't pay billions of dollars for them," he added. Amit Mehta, the judge hearing the case, noted that search "today looks a lot different than it didâ 10 to 15 years ago. He pushed back on the DoJ's contention that the quality of search had suffered due to the lack of competition, although he also noted that only two "substantial competitors" had entered the search market in the past decade. "Doesn't that tell us all we need to know in terms of barriers of entry," he asked.

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Alphabet paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 for Google to be the default search engine in the Safari browser, according to newly unsealed court documents in the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit against Google. From a report: The deal between the two tech giants is at the heart of the landmark case, in which antitrust enforcers allege Google has illegally monopolized the market for online search and related advertising. The Justice Department and Google will offer closing arguments in the case Thursday and Friday, with a decision expected later this year. Google and Apple had hoped to shield the payment amount from public disclosure. At the trial last fall, Apple executives testified that Google paid "billions," without specifying a number. A Google witness later accidentally disclosed that Google pays 36% of the revenue it earns from search ads to Apple. Court documents filed late Tuesday ahead of the closing arguments mark the first public confirmation of the figures by Apple's senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue. Such numbers aren't disclosed by either company in their securities filings. The documents also revealed the importance of the payments to Apple's bottom line. For instance, in 2020, Google's payments to Apple constituted 17.5% of the iPhone maker's operating income.

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The US could lose out on valuable AI and tech talent if some of its immigration policies are not modernized, Google says in a letter sent to the Department of Labor. From a report: Google says policies like Schedule A, a list of occupations the government "pre-certified" as not having enough American workers, have to be more flexible and move faster to meet demand in technologies like AI and cybersecurity. The company says the government must update Schedule A to include AI and cybersecurity and do so more regularly. "There's wide recognition that there is a global shortage of talent in AI, but the fact remains that the US is one of the harder places to bring talent from abroad, and we risk losing out on some of the most highly sought-after people in the world," Karan Bhatia, head of government affairs and public policy at Google, tells The Verge. He noted that the occupations in Schedule A have not been updated in 20 years. Companies can apply for permanent residencies, colloquially known as green cards, for employees. The Department of Labor requires companies to get a permanent labor certification (PERM) proving there is a shortage of workers in that role. That process may take time, so the government "pre-certified" some jobs through Schedule A. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services lists Schedule A occupations as physical therapists, professional nurses, or "immigrants of exceptional ability in the sciences or arts." While the wait time for a green card isn't reduced, Google says Schedule A cuts down the processing time by about a year.

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Apple has poached dozens of AI experts from Google and has created a secretive European laboratory in Zurich, as the tech giant builds a team to battle rivals in developing new AI models and products. From a report: According to a Financial Times analysis of hundreds of LinkedIn profiles as well as public job postings and research papers, the $2.7tn company has undertaken a hiring spree over recent years to expand its global AI and machine learning team. The iPhone maker has particularly targeted workers from Google, attracting at least 36 specialists from its rival since it poached John Giannandrea to be its top AI executive in 2018. While the majority of Apple's AI team work from offices in California and Seattle, the tech group has also expanded a significant outpost in Zurich. Professor Luc Van Gool from Swiss university ETH Zurich said Apple's acquisitions of two local AI start-ups -- virtual reality group FaceShift and image recognition company Fashwell -- led Apple to build a research laboratory, known as its "Vision Lab," in the city.

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Tutao, known for the encrypted email service Tuta Mail, has filed a Digital Markets Act (DMA) complaint to the EU over an alleged de-ranking in Google Search. From a report: Google Search rankings are all too familiar to search engine optimization (SEO) specialists charged with ensuring web pages rise to the top of search results. In the case of Tutao's products -- Tuta Mail and Tuta Calendar -- all was going well until the beginning of March 2024, when the company claims tuta.com was abruptly de-ranked in Google Search. Rather than being displayed as a search result of thousands of keywords, the count dropped to the hundreds, the developer alleges. Matthias Pfau, co-founder of Tuta Mail, said: "This reduction in Google Search took us by surprise as we did not change anything on our website during that time. We tried to reach out to Google about this issue, but were met with radio silence." Google denies the claims. It told The Reg: "Search ranking updates absolutely do not aim to preference Google products, or any other particular website. The email provider in question is easily accessible globally on Search. We appreciate the feedback and will look into how we can ensure Search continues to return the most helpful, relevant results." Tuta Mail's Pfau claims a change in results mean that when a user searches for "encrypted email," Tuta's products no longer show up. However, he went on to allege that if you search for "Tuta" or "Tutanota," the company appears in the results.

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Edward Zitron, citing emails released as part of the Department of Justice's antitrust case against Google, writes about Prabhakar Raghavan: And Raghavan -- a manager, hired by Sundar Pichai, a former McKinsey man and a manager by trade -- is an example of everything wrong with the tech industry. Despite his history as a true computer scientist with actual academic credentials, Raghavan chose to bulldoze actual workers and replace them with toadies that would make Google more profitable and less useful to the world at large. Since Prabhakar took the reins in 2020, Google Search has dramatically declined, with the numerous "core" search updates allegedly made to improve the quality of results having an adverse effect, increasing the prevalence of spammy, search engine optimized content. It's because the people running the tech industry are no longer those that built it. Larry Page and Sergey Brin left Google in December 2019 (the same year as the Code Yellow fiasco), and while they remain as controlling shareholders, they clearly don't give a shit about what "Google" means anymore. Prabhakar Raghavan is a manager, and his career, from what I can tell, is mostly made up of "did some stuff at IBM, failed to make Yahoo anything of note, and fucked up Google so badly that every news outlet has run a story about how bad it is." This is the result of taking technology out of the hands of real builders and handing it to managers at a time when "management" is synonymous with "staying as far away from actual work as possible." And when you're a do-nothing looking to profit as much as possible, you only care about growth. You're not a user, you're a parasite, and it's these parasites that have dominated and are draining the tech industry of its value. Raghavan's story is unique, insofar as the damage he's managed to inflict (or, if we're being exceptionally charitable, failed to avoid in the case of Yahoo) on two industry-defining companies, and the fact that he did it without being a CEO or founder. Perhaps more remarkable, he's achieved this while maintaining a certain degree of anonymity. Everyone knows who Musk and Zuckerberg are, but Raghavan's known only in his corner of the Internet. Or at least he was. Now Raghavan has told those working on search that their "new operating reality" is one with less resources and less time to deliver things. Rot Master Raghavan is here to squeeze as much as he can from the corpse of a product he beat to death with his bare hands. Raghavan is a hall-of-fame rot economist, and one of the many managerial types that have caused immeasurable damage to the Internet in the name of growth and "shareholder value." And I believe these uber-managers - these ultra-pencil-pushers and growth-hounds - are the forces destroying tech's ability to innovate.

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Google has fired another 20 workers for participating in protests against its $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government, according to an activist group representing the workers. From a report: In total, the company has now fired around 50 employees over sit-in protests held in Google offices last week that were part of yearslong discontent among a group of Google and Amazon workers over claims that Israel is using the companies' services to harm Palestinians. Google has denied those claims, saying Project Nimbus, the cloud-computing contract, doesn't involve "highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services," and that Israeli government ministries that use its commercial cloud must agree to its terms of services and other policies. No Tech For Apartheid, the group representing the workers, claimed in a statement that Google is attempting to "quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them." "That's because Google values its profit, and its $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and military, more than people. And it certainly values it over its own workers," it said. The group said it will continue organizing until Google cancels Project Nimbus. Further reading: Google To Employees: 'We Are a Workplace'.

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Google, once known for its unconventional approach to business, has taken a decisive step towards becoming a more traditional company by firing 28 employees who participated in protests against a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government. The move comes after sit-in demonstrations on Tuesday at Google offices in Silicon Valley and New York City, where employees opposed the company's support for Project Nimbus, a cloud computing contract they argue harms Palestinians in Gaza. Nine employees were arrested during the protests. In a note to employees, CEO Sundar Pichai said, "We have a culture of vibrant, open discussion... But ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: this is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics." Google also says that the Project Nimbus contract is "not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services." Axios adds: Google prided itself from its early days on creating a university-like atmosphere for the elite engineers it hired. Dissent was encouraged in the belief that open discourse fostered innovation. "A lot of Google is organized around the fact that people still think they're in college when they work here," then-CEO Eric Schmidt told "In the Plex" author Steven Levy in the 2000s. What worked for an organization with a few thousand employees is harder to maintain among nearly 200,000 workers. Generational shifts in political and social expectations also mean that Google's leadership and its rank-and-file aren't always aligned.

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced substantial internal reorganizations on Thursday, including the creation of a new team called "Platforms and Devices" that will oversee all of Google's Pixel products, all of Android, Chrome, ChromeOS, Photos, and more. From a report: The team will be run by Rick Osterloh, who was previously the SVP of devices and services, overseeing all of Google's hardware efforts. Hiroshi Lockheimer, the longtime head of Android, Chrome, and ChromeOS, will be taking on other projects inside of Google and Alphabet. This is a huge change for Google, and it likely won't be the last one. There's only one reason for all of it, Osterloh says: AI. "This is not a secret, right?" he says. Consolidating teams "helps us to be able to do full-stack innovation when that's necessary," Osterloh says. He uses the example of the Pixel camera: "You had to have deep knowledge of the hardware systems, from the sensors to the ISPs, to all layers of the software stack. And, at the time, all the early HDR and ML models that were doing camera processing... and I think that hardware / software / AI integration really showed how AI could totally transform a user experience. That was important. And it's even more true today."

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Google said on Thursday it had terminated 28 employees after some staff participated in protests against the company's cloud contract with the Israeli government. From a report: The Alphabet unit said a small number of protesting employees entered and disrupted work at a few unspecified office locations. "Physically impeding other employees' work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior," the company said in a statement. Google said it had concluded individual investigations, resulting in the termination of 28 employees, and would continue to investigate and take action as needed. In a statement on Medium, Google workers affiliated with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign called it a "flagrant act of retaliation" and said that some employees who did not directly participate in Tuesday's protests were also among those Google fired.

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