Latest news and articles about Google
Total: 41 articles found
The Hundred-Year Bet: Alphabet’s Century Bond and the Audacity of AI Ambition
Alphabet has issued a landmark 100-year bond to fund its massive $185 billion AI infrastructure expansion. The move leverages the company's near-sovereign credit status to attract institutional investors, despite historical warnings of corporate obsolescence in the tech sector.
Silicon Valley’s Tobacco Moment: Meta and Google Held Liable for Social Media Addiction
A California jury has awarded $6 million in a landmark case against Meta and Google, finding their platform designs responsible for a young woman's social media addiction. This verdict signals a precarious shift for Silicon Valley as courts begin to treat addictive algorithms as defective products rather than protected speech.
Silicon Valley’s Triad of Reckoning: Liability, Layoffs, and the New Tech Cabinet
Big Tech faces a paradigm shift as Meta and Google are held liable for social media addiction, while simultaneously purging thousands of staff to fund an AI-first future. Meanwhile, new AI algorithms are disrupting hardware markets, and industry titans are being formally integrated into the U.S. government's strategic advisory council.
Google Visits China to Vet Liquid‑Cooling Suppliers as AI Server Demand Surges
Google sent a procurement team to mainland China to evaluate liquid‑cooling systems for data‑centre servers, according to Chinese media. The move underscores the growing importance of liquid cooling for AI infrastructure and highlights the tension between operational needs and geopolitical pressures on supply chains.
Pentagon’s ‘Supply‑Chain’ Move Against Anthropic Splits Silicon Valley and Exposes Governance Gap
The Pentagon’s decision to label Anthropic a supply‑chain risk has split major US tech firms: Microsoft publicly backed Anthropic’s lawsuit, while Google and OpenAI expanded Pentagon ties. The episode exposes gaps in procurement and governance for AI, raising questions about politicization of national‑security designations and the future of private safety constraints on dual‑use technology.
Google’s Groundsource: AI that Turns Public Clues into Historical Disaster Maps — and Raises New Questions
Google has introduced Groundsource, an AI method that converts public information into structured historical disaster records, initially targeting urban flash floods. The tool could improve risk modelling and preparedness in data‑poor settings but raises concerns about coverage bias, data quality and governance.
Google Pays $4.75bn to Buy Intersect, Moves From Power Contracts to Ownership in Clean Energy
Google has acquired wind and solar developer Intersect from TPG Rise Climate for $4.75 billion, taking on the company’s debt. The deal signals a shift by big tech from relying mainly on power purchase agreements to owning generation assets, aiming to secure long‑term, controllable clean power for energy‑intensive operations such as data centres and AI.
Google Pivots to Robotics as a Long‑Term Bet — Chinese Robot ETF and Suppliers Rally
Google has elevated robotics to one of three long‑term growth engines, prompting a rally in China’s Robot ETF (159770) and several supplier stocks. The ETF has seen meaningful asset and share growth over the past year, reflecting investor interest in a sector moving from research to industrial deployment.
Google Unveils Low‑Cost Gemini 3.1 'Flash‑Lite' to Drive High‑Volume AI Use
Google has launched Gemini 3.1 Flash‑Lite, a cheaper, lightweight variant offered to developers via Google AI Studio and to enterprises via Vertex AI. Priced at $0.25 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens, the release targets high‑volume, latency‑sensitive applications and signals a push to broaden adoption by lowering operational costs.
Meta Retreats on Ambitious In‑House AI Chip — Turns to AMD, Nvidia and Google to Fill the Gap
Meta has paused work on a high‑end internal AI training chip, Olympus, after design and stability issues, opting instead for a simpler internal design and large purchases from AMD, Nvidia and Google. The move underscores the difficulty of competing with Nvidia’s performance and software ecosystem and signals a pragmatic industry shift toward external partnerships to secure AI compute capacity.
Google’s Nano Banana 2 Halves Image Costs and Pushes AI Visuals from Toy to Tool
Google’s Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image) lowers the cost of AI image generation to about $0.067 per image while improving text rendering, multi‑panel consistency and real‑time reference via web search. The model consolidates Flash‑level speed with many Pro‑class features, positioning it as a production‑grade tool for enterprises, even as open‑source and lower‑cost competitors press on price and deployment flexibility.
Google Pushes Pro Image Capabilities Down the Stack with Nano Banana 2 — Faster, Cheaper, Default in Gemini
Google has launched Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash), a faster, cheaper image-generation model that brings many Pro-tier capabilities to the baseline offering and is now the default in Gemini, Search and Flow. The release reduces per-image costs by roughly half, broadens access to advanced features previously reserved for paying subscribers, and tightens Google’s grip on the creative AI stack while raising moderation and policy challenges.