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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.

Android’s Find My Device app can now show you where people are, too

An update to Google’s Android app for finding things now shows contacts who are sharing their location with you.

Umar Shakir
What Gmail did to email

Google gave us room for infinite email. What did we get? Infinite email.

Barbara Krasnoff

Latest In Google

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Jay Peters
Disco Elysium, TikTok-ified.

The game is getting an Android port, and ZA/UM studio head Denis Havel says it will get changes to “captivate the TikTok user with quick hits of compelling story, art, and audio, ultimately creating an all new, deeply engaging form of entertainment,” according to Eurogamer.

It’s set to launch this summer.

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Umar Shakir
Some Chromecast with Google TV users have issues after Android 14 update.

Users on Reddit reported problems with USB storage and ethernet adapters not working, an unexpected color profile change, a weird Settings scrolling bug, and other minor issues, according to 9to5Mac. Separately, Google is also dealing with casting issues on many older Chromecast devices, but a fix is rolling out.

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Umar Shakir
Schools are using AI to monitor students on provided laptops.

An anonymous Vancouver school guidance counselor told Associated Press that the Gaggle monitoring software “is good for catching suicide and self-harm” risks, but students then look for workarounds once they’re caught. An AP investigation found that many students’ Gaggle incident documents shared by the district weren’t protected and could be read by anyone with a link.

All this bad AI is wrecking a whole generation of gadgets

We were promised multimodal, natural language, AI-powered everything. We got nothing of the sort.

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Emma Roth
Researchers spotted North Korean spyware on the Google Play Store.

One of the malicious apps masqueraded as a file manager and had more than 10 downloads, according to the cybersecurity firm Lookout. The app contained Android spyware called KoSpy, which Lookout attributes to the North Korean hacking group APT37. It’s capable of collecting a device’s SMS messages, call logs, location, files, and more.

Lookout says the apps it found have since been removed from the Google Play Store.

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Dominic Preston
Google lets you delete data from Password Manager.

Android Authority spotted a new beta feature to delete all your passwords, passkeys, and other data from the tool in one go, rather than removing them individually.

In October Google made it easier to use third-party password managers in Chrome on Android, and this change should help users move from Google’s option to another without leaving a load of data behind.

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Dominic Preston
Google Photos adds ‘Undo backup’ to Android too.

The app now lets you remove every photo uploaded to the cloud from a specific device, without deleting the images from local storage. It turns off backup too. That’s better than previous options, which only let you remove photos individually, or delete them from both the cloud and your device.

iOS and iPadOS users got the option in December 2024.

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Emma Roth
Google has a 14 percent stake in Anthropic.

That’s according to legal filings seen by The New York Times, which says Google can’t own more than 15 percent of the AI startup, and has no voting rights, board seats, or board observer rights. Google has invested a total of $3 billion into Anthropic so far, and it plans to invest $750 million more in September, the NYT reports.

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Wes Davis
Gemini extensions are now Gemini “apps.”

Google made the change to the feature, which adds app integrations to Gemini, in a beta version of the Google app for Android last week, later mentioning it in a Workspace weekly recap published Friday.

The recap adds that Gemini Apps are now powered by Gemini Flash 2.0, Google’s latest small on-device AI model, bringing “improved performance and better advanced reasoning capabilities with efficiency and speed.”

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Lauren Feiner
DOJ says it will let Google pay Apple for services unrelated to search.

That’s one of the minor changes the Justice Department made to its proposed final judgement in its antitrust case. The DOJ Antitrust Division is still operating under an acting chief as President Donald Trump’s nominee Gail Slater awaits confirmation. But so far, the government made only small tweaks to its asks based on discovery. It’s no longer asking that Google divest AI investments, for example, but that it give a heads up on future ones.

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Dominic Preston
Purple Pixel 9A appears again.

Google’s new affordable phone has leaked repeatedly already, but it’s back again in new images shared by Evan Blass on X. They’re mostly marketing images and renders of the purple model — supposedly dubbed “Iris” — and closely match the design we’ve seen before, complete with an almost perfectly flat camera bump.

The 9A is rumored to launch this month with a bigger battery, new cameras, and a $499 starting price.

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Dominic Preston
WhatsApp is getting an AI widget.

Meta AI fans on Android will soon be able to get to the chatbot more quickly via WhatsApp. A widget is in the works offering direct shortcuts to open the chat with the AI, send an image to it, or begin a voice chat. Some WhatsApp beta users already have the widgets available, though no date’s been set for an official launch.

Meta is reportedly working on a standalone AI app too.