Google Archive

Today we’re rolling out new accessibility features and updates that make accomplishing daily tasks faster and easier — like taking selfies, getting walking directions or searching the web. We recently launched Lookout image Q&A mode and accessibility updates on Android 14 and Wear OS 4. Now we have even more accessible features across our products that are built with and for people with disabilities. Accessibility is so often overlooked, or underreported, and I hope I can start changing that a little bit by paying more attention to it.

Mustafa Suleyman, the British entrepreneur who co-founded DeepMind, said: “The business model that Google had broke the internet.” He said search results had become plagued with “clickbait” to keep people “addicted and absorbed on the page as long as possible”. Information online is “buried at the bottom of a lot of verbiage and guff”, Mr Suleyman argued, so websites can “sell more adverts”, fuelled by Google’s technology. Anyone who has tried to find anything on Google in recent years knows that Suleyman is 100% correct. Google’s search results have become so bad because website makers play the SEO game, and that means creating content that Google’s algorithm likes – but, and here’s the kicker, what Google’s algorithm likes, is not really what people like. Writing an article to please a computer is entirely different from writing an article to please a human. There are very clear and well-understood and thoroughly studied rules about writing in a way that makes things easy to read, but Google’s algorithm doesn’t optimise for that. And now “AI” is being trained on this crap content, so that they will also produce crap content. We’re not far away from a future where bots are writing content for other bots that teach other bots to write content for bots. In fact, that future may already be here, judging by some of the style of writing I’ve been seeing even on otherwise venerable outlets. This is also why so many websites have started posting basic, simple how-to articles. You see stuff like “How do I move my apps on an iPhone?” or “How do I delete a folder in Windows?” or “The best neckband headphones of 2023” all over the place now, even on websites where they clearly don’t belong and don’t fit the audience, not just on content farms – these articles are not designed for readers, they’re designed to catch Google search queries and generate traffic. It must be absolutely soul-crushing and mind-numbing to write stuff like that and optimise it for SEO, but you know – fish’ gotta swim, bird’s gotta eat. Here’s a little inside hockey for you: on several occasions over the past year or so, both OSNews as a whole, and me individually, have been approached by serious parties to effectively turn OSNews into one of those content farms. Some have even tried to get me to write such “content” for their own content farms. Clearly, we’ve never accepted such offers – I’m no cheap date – but the pressure is there, and not everyone can resist. It’s why so many tech websites that used to have a clear identity and tone have become so much more bland and repetitive. They are all tiny cogs in massive content networks now, with their original stated goals and interests shoved to the wayside – all to chase the SEO. We’ve clearly not yet fallen victim to this – OSNews is still just me posting news – but that also means we’re not making any money in the ways other tech websites do, and in fact, why we’re not making enough to keep things going without OSNews’ owner footing the bill out of his own pocket. That’s why I’ve been more active and persistent in promoting our Patreon, Ko-Fi, merch store, and Liberapay, since it allows us to not worry about the financials as much. It always feels awkward to do, but I also realise that if I want OSNews to keep going for another 25 years, that’s really the only thing I can do. Because Google has thoroughly ruined every other avenue for websites like ours to make money. I’m so sorry for the headline.

This means the next time you sign in to your account, you’ll start seeing prompts to create and use passkeys, simplifying your future sign-ins. It also means you’ll see the “Skip password when possible” option toggled on in your Google Account settings. To use passkeys, you just use a fingerprint, face scan or pin to unlock your device, and they are 40% faster than passwords — and rely on a type of cryptography that makes them more secure. But while they’re a big step forward, we know that new technologies take time to catch on — so passwords may be around for a little while. That’s why people will still be given the option to use a password to sign in and may opt-out of passkeys by turning off “Skip password when possible.” I just don’t know how to feel about this universal, cross-corporate push from tech companies towards passkeys. I feel like when making the switch to passkeys, you’re giving something up. Something about it just doesn’t sit well with me, and for now, I’m going to be sticking to my trust password manager.

I don’t necessarily agree. These new editing tools in smartphones are nothing a semi-decent Photoshop user can’t do in an afternoon, and editing photos is as old as photography itself. All these tools do is further democratise photo editing, and this was always going to happen, smartphones or not. Adding watermarks or other markers is never going to work, since even if it’s entirely unfalsifiable – a big if – the vast majority of people encountering edited photos would not go and look at the metadata or whatever to check of the photo is real or not. If people still fall for obvious bullshit like antivax talking points or flat earth hoaxes, a bunch of technobabble metadata isn’t going to stop them.

Google likely alters queries billions of times a day in trillions of different variations. Here’s how it works. Say you search for “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a different query that just happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate results you weren’t searching for at all. It’s not possible for you to opt out of the substitution. If you don’t get the results you want, and you try to refine your query, you are wasting your time. This is a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, if true (the author used to work at DuckDuckGo). Pushing Google Search users towards stores that also advertise on Google just makes sense for the company. It is yet another contributing factor as to why Google Search has become so bad.

All Chromebook Plus laptops offer faster processors and double the memory and storage, giving you the power to get more done, easily. All Chromebook Plus laptops also come with a Full HD IPS display — which means you get a full 1080p HD experience when watching streaming content, and crisp, clear viewing for reading, creating content or editing photos and videos. Finally, there’s a 1080p+ webcam with temporal noise reduction for smoother, more lifelike video calls. So basically, because the Chromebook market is dominated by cheap crap, Google has had to create a new category of Chromebooks that are slightly less crap, so that buyers who don’t want crap but instead want slightly less crap can distinguish the slightly less crap from the crap so they end up buying the crap they want. Like gaming Chromebooks, I give this like two years before Google sees something shiny and this whole Chromebook Plus thing is dead and gone.

Google is rolling out ChromeOS 117, and it’s a very big update for Chromebooks that adds Material You, as well as other usability enhancements. A pretty big update to ChromeOS, and the Material You is definitely welcome – perhaps it fixes up some of the issues I had with ChromeOS when I reviewed it a few months ago. The quick settings panel has been completely redesigned, too, this update adds specific colour correction settings for people with certain eye conditions, and a whole lot more. The update will roll out over the coming days.

Google will send Gmail’s basic HTML view sailing into the great beyond starting in January 2024, after which time everyone who uses it will be switched to the service’s far more modern “Standard” view. The change appears to have been announced around September 19th in a Google support article. Though the vast majority of people use the Standard view on their PCs without question, the HTML version of Gmail has its perks. The stripped-down Gmail experience loads quickly, and users can access it even on very outdated machines or with much slower connections. Its leaner nature makes it useful in situations where the best you can muster is a 3G connection (3G died last year in the US, but still). I’m sure the HTML version also made tracking a lot more difficult.

Security is our number one priority. Chromebooks get automatic updates every four weeks that make your laptop more secure and help it last longer. And starting next year, we’re extending those automatic updates so your Chromebook gets enhanced security, stability and features for 10 years after the platform was released. A platform is a series of components that are designed to work together — something a manufacturer selects for any given Chromebook. To ensure compatibility with our updates, we work with all the component manufacturers within a platform (for things like the processor and Wi-Fi) to develop and test the software on every single Chromebook. Starting in 2024, if you have Chromebooks that were released from 2021 onwards, you’ll automatically get 10 years of updates. For Chromebooks released before 2021 and already in use, users and IT admins will have the option to extend automatic updates to 10 years from the platform’s release (after they receive their last automatic update). A good thing… Without any additional strings other than are already attached to a Chromebook? This can’t be. In all seriousness, ten years of updates for laptops that are often quite cheap and disposable is simply good news, and ensures that Chromebooks can be passed on for longer than they could before.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google is on trial in Washington DC over US allegations that it illegally maintained a monopoly in the online search business. Executives of the Mountain View, California-based behemoth have known for years that the company’s practices are under a microscope, and have encouraged its employees to avoid creating lasting records of potential problematic conduct, government lawyers allege. Googlers often communicate with one another internally using the company’s Google Chat product. Under a policy called “Communicate with Care,” the Justice Department asserts, Googlers receive training that instructs them to have sensitive conversations over chat with history off — meaning the conversation is auto-deleted after 24 hours. As far back as 2003, Google managers circulated unambiguous instructions on phrases to avoid to ensure they don’t come across like monopolists. It’s one thing that we all innately understand Google to be an abusive monopolist – it’s another thing to actually legally prove it. Antitrust hasn’t exactly been the strong suit of the US government as of late, so I’m hoping this one will turn out different than some of the other halfhearted attempts over the past few decades. We need some honest-to-god trust-busting or Bell cutters.

With the introduction of the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro back in 2021, Google also announced a new subscription service called Pixel Pass. This Pixel Pass would allow you to pay a monthly fee to cover the newest Pixel phone, your YouTube Premium subscription, storage with Google One, and Google Play Pass. Today, Google quietly discontinued the Pixel Pass (effective August 29), so I hope you weren’t expecting to take advantage with the Pixel 8 series in a couple of months. So, Google launches a subscription service for Pixel phones, and cancels it right before their new Pixel phone launches. Scummy, and potentially scammy. I am getting a new phone this October. I’m incredibly hesitant to spend any money on the Pixel 8 because what if Google gets bored of it and just cancels the whole thing two months from now? Samsung has been doing a great job keeping recent Galaxy devices up to date, so I’m not entirely sure what the Pixel even offers anymore at this point.

From Google’s Workspaces Blog: Today we’re making Duet AI for Google Workspace generally available, and you can get started now with a no-cost trial. With over 3 billion users and more than 10 million paying customers who rely on it every day to get things done, Google Workspace is the world’s most popular productivity tool. Our pioneering technology makes collaborating with people easy, fun, and ubiquitously available. With the introduction of Duet AI, we added AI as a real-time collaborator. Since its launch, thousands of companies and more than a million trusted testers have used Duet AI as a powerful collaboration partner that can act as a coach, source of inspiration, and productivity booster — all while ensuring every user and organization has control over their data. None of this stuff even remotely interests me, but to be fair – I don’t work in a large organisations with dozens of meetings to remember, endless emails to read, and countless shared documents to keep track of. I have no idea if these features make any of those tedious things any easier, or if it’s just something users who do live the office, collaborative life shove to the side as a nuisance.

Last year the European Union enacted a new set of regulations known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), designed to harmonize content regulations across the EU and create specific processes for online content moderation. The DSA applies to many different online services – from marketplaces and app stores to online video sharing platforms and search engines. As a result, we have adapted many of our long-standing trust and safety processes and changed the operation of some of our services to comply with the DSA’s specific requirements. We look forward to continued engagement with the European Commission and other stakeholders, including technical and policy experts, as we progress this important work. This blog post lists some of the steps Google is taking to comply with the DSA, which mostly come down to more transparency and giving researchers more access to how Google’s products work. It seems a tad on the vague and light side, so we’ll see if these steps are enough to bring Google in line.

Google is further strengthening its protections around Gmail, and from now on, you’ll have to verify it’s you through whatever 2FA method you prefer. It covers changing settings related to filters, forwarding, and IMAP access. When these actions are taken, Google will evaluate the session attempting the action, and if it’s deemed risky, it will be challenged with a “Verify it’s you” prompt. Through a second and trusted factor, such as a 2-step verification code, users can confirm the validity of the action. If a verification challenge is failed or not completed, users are sent a “Critical security alert” notification on trusted devices. Seems like a good move.