Google launches Project Suncatcher, a step towards AI data centers in space : NPR

"The sun puts out almost all of the power in our solar system. All of the other power sources that humanity has tapped into are just a tiny fraction of a percent," said Travis Beals, senior director and lead of Project Suncatcher. "So in some sense, this project is about tapping into the best way to use solar power to run AI compute."…

 https://www.npr.org/2026/10/01/nx-s1-5983697/project-suncatcher-google-ai-data-center-space

 

You Won't Look At Apple's Siri AI The Same Way After Watching This

For five months, there was one story about Apple and AI. Apple fell behind. Apple panicked. Apple cut a deal with Google. When a much smarter Siri showed up at WWDC, the explanation was obvious: Apple outsourced the whole thing. Siri was now just Gemini with an Apple logo. The narrative was everywhere. It was also wrong. 

I was in a room at WWDC that the public never saw. A closed-door technical briefing with Craig Federighi and his team. No cameras. No stream. And in that room, Federighi said something that should have been the headline all along: "The amount of Google Assistant we use is none." Apple built five of its own foundation models. It used Gemini to help train them. It did not put Gemini inside Siri. There is no Google code running on your iPhone when you talk to Siri. The whole thing is a lot more interesting than the story everybody agreed on. 

In this video, I walk through the whole architecture: the five Apple Foundation Models, the System Orchestrator that decides where every request goes, the on-device model that runs on your phone without killing your battery, and the encryption system that keeps your data private even when it touches Google's hardware. The Gemini wrapper story made for a good tweet. The truth is a better video.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87e13yQbJSM

Google co-founder spends $45m in fight against California billionaire tax

Sergey Brin gives $25m on top of $20m he's already given to Super Pac trying to block state's proposed 5% wealth tax…

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/18/google-sergey-brin-california-billionaire-tax

 

Raskin probes DOJ after Apple, Google blocked ICE tracking app - POLITICO

"The coercion and censorship campaign, which ultimately targets the users of ICE-monitoring applications, is a clear effort to silence this Administration's critics and suppress any evidence that would expose the Administration's lies, including its Orwellian attempts to cover up the murders of Renee and Alex," Raskin wrote…

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/06/raskin-probes-doj-after-apple-google-blocked-ice-tracking-app-00767914 

 

How Google’s shift to AI has upended the online news model

Media sites are taking action on several fronts as traffic referrals dry up and AI companies plunder their content…

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/sep/06/existential-crisis-google-use-ai-search-upended-web-publishers-models

 

How do you “Google competently”?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb-M-4gb_mM

Try these tricks to opt out of AI overviews or hide AI images - The Washington Post

How to turn off AI in Google and DuckDuckGo web search results -- plus a no-AI nuclear option...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/07/22/opt-out-ai-google-search-duckduckgo/

 

Google GAVE Gemini Access to Your Apps on Android! Do THIS to Block it!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdThsNhoP8Y

 

Google Calendar removes Black History Month, Pride and other cultural events

Company says listed holidays were not 'sustainable' for its model in latest move to roll back diversity efforts…

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/11/google-calendar-black-history-pride-month

 

US immigration is gaming Google to create a mirage of mass deportations

Thousands of press releases about decade-old enforcement actions topped search results, all updated with a timestamp from after Trump's inauguration…

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/06/ice-us-immigration-deportations-google

Google's AI chatbot gives unsettling response to Michigan student

"This is for you, human. You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die. Please," the program Gemini said to Reddy...

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4998868-google-ai-gemini-response/

Data brokers are selling the ability to track women at abortion clinics

Finally, it's notable that the vast majority of the phones tracked by Babel Street's Locate X tool used Google's Android operating system. Though Apple changed its privacy settings in 2021 to make it far easier for users to stop apps from hoovering up and selling their personal information, Google has failed to do the same. As a result, people who use Android phones are far more vulnerable to surveillance than people who use iPhones. It doesn't take a genius to understand why the largest online advertising company in the world does not want to make it easy for users to stop tracking by advertising companies and their data broker partners. Google could act immediately to limit data broker access to location information and cut this slimy industry off at the source…

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/abortion-data-brokers-phones-google-apple-wyden-rcna178479

Missouri Republican says he is investigating Google for ‘censoring conservative speech’

"I am launching an investigation into Google for censoring conservative speech during the most consequential election in our nation's history," Andrew Bailey said in a post on X, without citing any example or evidence for his censorship claim. 

Bailey added in a statement to Fox: "We have reason to believe that Google is manipulating their search results to de-emphasise information about the Trump campaign prior to election day. I will not allow Google to interfere in the most consequential election in our nation's history."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/25/missouri-republica-investigating-google-alleged-censoring-conservative-speech

Google is an illegal monopoly, federal judge rules in antitrust lawsuit - The Washington Post

Judgment delivers a victory to the Justice Department as it takes on a string of federal antitrust lawsuits against Big Tech...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/05/doj-google-monopoly-trial-judgment/

Google Just Introduced 20 Major AI Updates - Google IO

Google just announced 20 new updates during the Google I/O event that change almost everything about their services. 

These updates include massive changes to search, a brand new large language model, AI agents, AI Teammate, new text-to-image and text-to-video models, and much more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh0Ws4Q6MO4

No, Google didn’t confirm that the 1969 US moon landing was fake - PolitiFact

Google's press office told PolitiFact in a statement that Google's AI did not discover that the footage from the moon landing was fake. And Google was not involved in the Russia demonstration depicted in the post's video, the statement said…

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/feb/16/instagram-posts/no-google-didnt-confirm-that-the-1969-us-moon-land/

Google to pay $93m in settlement over deceptive location tracking

Tech giant 'continued to collect and store a user's location data' even if users turned off their location history, according to suit…

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/14/google-location-tracking-data-settlement

Mac users hit by Atomic Stealer malware via malicious Google Search ads - 9to5Mac

The good news is this specific attack is very preventable…

https://9to5mac.com/2023/09/06/mac-hit-by-atomic-stealer-malware-with-search-ads/

Surveillance Capitalism -- Shoshana Zuboff & Roger Mcnamee (A Franken podcast)

The Existential Threat of Big Tech’s Predatory Business Models.

Interview: 

https://alfranken.com/listen/shoshana-zuboff-roger-mcnamee-on-surveillance-capitalism

Google targets low-income US women with ads for anti-abortion pregnancy centers, study shows

While pregnancy crisis centers offer pregnant women resources such as diapers and pregnancy testing, they have also been known to employ a number of shady tactics to convince women seeking an abortion to keep their pregnancies. Those include posing as abortion clinics online though they do not offer abortion care, refusing pregnancy tests for women who say they intend to have an abortion and touting widely disputed research about abortion care to patients. Crisis centers, which go largely unregulated despite offering medical services, have been known to target low-income women precisely because they find it harder to travel out of state for abortion care…

Last year, Google came under fire after a Tech Transparency Project investigation found the company was serving people with ads for pregnancy crisis centers suggesting they offer abortions even though they do not – violating the platform's own rules on misleading advertisements…

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/07/google-targets-low-income-women-anti-abortion-pregnancy-center-study