Google

The proposed class action suit alleged Google had illegally profited by not refunding commissions it collected from Google Play gift card scams, according to Reuters.

... U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman said the plaintiff Judy May lost money because scammers induced her to buy gift cards, and failed to show that Google caused her losses or knew it was receiving stolen funds.

Notably, Apple settled a similar lawsuit in January.

9to5Google spotted the handy feature quietly added to the app on both Android and iOS.

Whoever you send a link to needs to have the app installed on their device, or else it’ll just send them to the app store listing (or the Google TV site if they’re on a computer.)

Aparna Pappu, who has led Workspace since 2022, will be an adviser before moving to a new job at Google, Business Insider reports.

President of cloud applications Jerry Dischler will become the new leader of Workspace.

Entertainment outlet Giant Freakin Robot will stop publishing new content to its site and instead focus on YouTube, citing plummeting Google traffic.

It’s not the first small publisher who’s been vocal about how changes to Google’s search algorithm has made it all but impossible to keep the lights on. And Google has said it “can’t guarantee” traffic to independent sites will ever recover.

Google’s Gemini will be accessible from the side panel in Google Chat, meaning you can ask for things like summaries or generate action items. Could be a useful way to catch up on things, but you might not want to rely on it too much for important work.

not in 2024 if you were holding out hope. The apparent delay of the AI-infused eXtended Reality (XR) headsets manufactured by Samsung comes courtesy of a slide from Sammy’s official earnings release. Qualcomm’s CEO is particularly excited by mixed reality smart glasses being developed by the partnership, and Google is getting the Play Store ready for whatever does arrive.

During the Web Creator summit, Google Search VP Pandu Nayak responded to concerns about smaller sites getting outranked on the search engine, as reported by Mountain Weekly News founder Mike Hardaker:

Our goal is to surface great content for users. I suspect there is a lot of great content you guys are creating that we are not surfacing to our users, but I can’t give you any guarantees unfortunately. We are focused on things for our users, that is not going to change.

On Google’s Q3 earnings call, Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski asked:

Why doesn’t it make sense to have two completely different search experiences? One, an agent-like answers engine and then, two, a links-based more traditional search engine? You could innovate on both and let the consumer decide.

Sundar replied: “I do think having two surfaces for us allows us to experiment more.”

But Google rep Chris Pappas tells us he’s referring to two different AI surfaces — AI Overviews and the Gemini App — not good ol’ link-based search.

I reported last week that Google is aiming to release its next big Gemini AI model in December. On the company’s earnings call today, CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed that it’s coming:

We’ve had two generations of Gemini model. We are working on the third generation, which is progressing well.

Relatedly, The Information reported after my scoop that Google is working to bring agent-like behavior to the next Gemini. The idea is that the model can take over a computer screen in a way that would work similarly to what Anthropic recently released.

That new figure, shared today during Google’s Q3 earnings, comes soon after the robotaxi hit the 100,000 paid trips per week marker in August.