Daily updates on AI news and trends worldwide
Google is a major US technology company spanning search and cloud, and home to its AI research division Google DeepMind. It develops the Gemini family of large language models and integrates them across its products and developer APIs.
GitHub made Gemini 3.7 Flash available in Copilot on August 13, 2026 for Pro, Pro+, Max, Business, and Enterprise, billed at provider list pricing under usage-based billing. Org admins must enable the policy first.
Google said on August 11, 2026 that the Gemini app has surpassed 1 billion monthly users. The post also shared usage figures: 63% of users talk directly to Gemini, more than 150 million images are generated daily, and there are over 100 million active users on iOS.
Google announced on August 6, 2026 that Ask Maps can now assemble takeout orders, compare hotel prices, and surface events, plus a Gmail-connected Personal Intelligence. Ordering runs through Square and Toast in the U.S. first; Ask Maps itself adds six countries and over 150 in English.
A memo from CEO Sundar Pichai published on August 5 makes Demis Hassabis Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet, with Koray Kavukcuoglu taking over day-to-day leadership. Jeff Dean is leaving to start Discovery Loop, with Google as a founding investor.
Google's July 28 update to Gemini API managed agents adds environment hooks that run scripts before and after tool calls, a max_total_tokens cap, cron-based scheduled triggers, free-tier access, and Gemini 3.6 Flash as the default model.
Q2 2026 earnings locked in Big Tech's AI infrastructure spending: Alphabet raised 2026 capex guidance to $195-205B, Amazon lifted its plan to about $220B, Meta guides $130-145B, and Microsoft's fiscal 2026 spend was reportedly $115.95B. A breakdown of the numbers, the funding behind them, and the Anthropic gains flowing back.
Google rolled back the Nano Banana 2 image generation feature it added to Google Earth on the web just a day after launch, after critics showed it could fabricate satellite imagery. What it means for shipping AI features and the limits of watermarks.
Claude Opus 5 lands at Opus 4.8 prices, OpenAI slashes GPT-5.6 Luna by 80%, SSI-NVIDIA and Nscale-Anyscale redraw the infrastructure map, and the open-weights debate heats up — this week's 11 stories in context.
DeepMind announced Gemini Robotics 2, ER 2, and On-Device 2 on July 30, extending control from the upper body to full-body motion. ER 2 is now open to developers via the Gemini API.
The US Department of Energy announced the first 278 projects under the Genesis Mission, its national AI-for-science initiative. Google commits $40M in AI tokens, Meta deploys SAM 3 and DINOv3 at national labs, with nuclear, critical minerals, chip design, and fusion in scope
Google released three Flash-tier Gemini models on July 21: the workhorse 3.6 Flash uses 17% fewer output tokens, Flash-Lite runs at 350 tokens/sec at a lower price, and Flash Cyber targets vulnerabilities. Pricing, benchmarks, availability, and why 3.5 Pro was held back.
A side-by-side 2026 pricing comparison of six major AI coding tools - free tiers, individual, team/enterprise plans, and pay-as-you-go - plus how to pick the right one.