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The name Google is synonymous with online searches, but over the years the company has grown beyond search and now builds multiple consumer products, including software like Gmail, Chrome, Maps, Android, and hardware like the Pixel smartphones, Google Home, and Chromebooks. Its name can also be found on internet services such as Google Fi, Flights, Checkout, and Google Fiber. Here is all of the latest news about one of the most influential tech companies in the world.

Is YouTube Music testing Google’s Hum to Search feature?

A Reddit commenter posted a screenshot today showing what they said is the Hum to Search option in the YouTube Music on iOS

Google has let you search by humming a tune for years and started testing it in the Android YouTube app in August. Like 9to5Google, I’m not seeing it on my own iOS or Android devices. Are you?


A screenshot showing a new icon of a waveform next to the search field
Is Hum to Search coming to YouTube Music?
Image: Izmir_Stinger / Reddit
Google’s annual I/O puzzle is back.

As usual, Google has chosen to reveal the date of its I/O developer conference through a collaborative puzzle. For I/O 24 it’s a Pipe Dream-style game, guiding a marble from point A to point B.

Completing your levels helps the overall progress (and probably trains generative AI models somehow), which you can monitor on the main event page. Or, just wait for others to finish it while you dig through the I/O 23 announcements to see what has or has not shipped yet.

Update (5:03PM ET): The puzzle’s done, and we have a date (May 14th).


Screenshot of the I/O 24 date reveal progress page, showing the progress of a ball through a maze to gauge how close players are to finishing.
Google I/O 24 date reveal puzzle
Image: Google
The Xiaomi 14 Ultra photography kit is a beaut.

I’m busy testing the Xiaomi 14 Ultra’s camera but please take a minute to appreciate this gorgeous photography accessory kit. It updates last year’s version with a beefier battery that can power the phone. Just feast your eyes on that gorgeous two-stage shutter button!

One thing I’m noticing so far? It’s heavier than the previous version. That’s not so hot.


Xiaomi 14 Ultra with photography kit.

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Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
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YouTube Music may be laying the groundwork for a “trim silence” podcast feature.

It appears Google is further optimizing YouTube Music for podcasts as it prepares to sunset Google Podcasts at the end of this month.

9to5Google reports spotting a line of code that indicates it is building out a “trim silence feature,” which is standard on Google Podcasts and other podcast listening apps. It automatically skips long stretches of silence that appear in an episode, saving the listener a bit of time.


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Samsung’s new Galaxy A55 is skipping the US.

The company has confirmed to Android Police that only the Galaxy A35 will be coming to the US, and that “we will not be carrying Galaxy A55 5G at this time.” It’s unfortunate given that we rated last year’s Galaxy A54 as one of the best affordable handsets.


Slack gives the gift of GIF selection.

Slack has started rolling out a GIF picker that uses the Tenor search engine owned by Google.

This is a true blessing for anyone who has never fully trusted that they wouldn’t send their dumb search term, rather than the GIF itself, when using the “/giphy” command.


Animated GIF of Slacks animated GIF searching feature.
Imagine it, a built-in GIF search!
Image: Slack
Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft teamed up on a new web browser benchmark test.

Gecko (Firefox), Blink (Chrome / Edge), and WebKit (Safari) are the engines behind most web browsers, and the developers who make them have collaborated on a new benchmark to measure performance with browsing and web apps.

Announced in December 2022 and already used to optimize the browser engines listed above, Speedometer 3.0 is now available to test “key scenarios” like rendering a news site — if that’s the kind of thing you enjoy doing.

Correction March 11th, 4:29PM ET: An earlier version of this post incorrectly swapped the browser engines for Chrome and Firefox, it has been correct. We regret the error.


Screenshot of Speedometer 3.0 browser benchmark showing a simulated news site titled The Daily Broadcast, with placeholder text articles and blank spaces for images.
The Daily Broadcast, a test news site browsers render as part of the Speedometer 3.0 test.
Image: WebKit.org
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Merry Dexmas, Pixel 8 owners.

Okay, it’s not exactly Dex, but Mishaal Rahman reports that the latest Android 14 beta allows Pixel 8 phones to use DisplayPort over USB-C for screen mirroring. Plug your phone into a monitor or TV and you’ll be able to output your phone’s display to the big screen — no adapter required. You can’t run a whole desktop environment ala Dex just yet, but that might be in the works.


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Google admits what we all expected — there’s a Pixel 8A on the way.

Continuing its lack of secrecy around new phones (remember when it tweeted out a picture of the Pixel 4 months ahead of launch?), Google has seemingly confirmed that a Pixel 8A is on the way in a bug tracker, 9to5Google reports. We’ve already seen leaks of its design, specs, and packaging, but now we know it’ll get a new battery stats feature.


WhatsApp is testing identifying when chats are end-to-end encrypted on Android.

That’s according to WABetaInfo, which spotted that a new “end-to-end encrypted” indicator that appears briefly at the top of chat threads was under development in late January. Yesterday, the outlet reported that the test is now rolling out to beta testers.

The change is being tested as Meta rolls out third-party chat interoperability in the EU.


A picture of a WABetaInfo screenshot showing the new badge.
What the new “end-to-end encrypted” status message will look like.
Screenshot: WABetaInfo

The perfect music streaming app does not exist

Plus, in this week’s Installer: the new Nothing Phone, Rivian’s upcoming crossover, the M3 MacBook Air, and much more.

Google Wallet can now import movie tickets and boarding passes automatically.

Google’s release notes say that passes will be transferred to the Wallet without user action when confirmation emails show up in Gmail from “some global movie chains and airlines.” (The company says it’s “working to expand this.”)

Wallet users can also now manually archive “most passes.” Check out a screenshot below from Android expert Mishaal Rahman.


Google’s new Bay View campus has a big Wi-Fi problem.

Reuters reports “inoperable” or “spotty” Wi-Fi has been an issue for months — which can happen with new construction. Besides trying new laptops with better Wi-Fi adapters, employees are using phones as hotspots, plugging in, or even going outside for better signal. Google confirmed it’s working to fix the problem, but it could take weeks.

Google opened the campus just before its return-to-office push started in 2022 — but perhaps fixing the Wi-Fi will be a better incentive than a $99 per-night hotel.


Aerial overhead view of the massive Google Bay View Campus and its geometric roof
Google’s Bay View campus.
Image: Google
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Google’s union filed an unfair labor complaint over firing of YouTube Music workers.

The Alphabet Workers Union alleges Google and subcontractor Cognizant “unlawfully terminated” a group of YouTube Music contractors in February, who had been working for months for Google to recognize them as employees. The union claims Google fired the contractors “in retaliation” for organizing.


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Who among us can’t relate to being in “cloud storage hell”?

Charlie Warzel has written a piece at The Atlantic that will likely resonate with many of you. He’s got years worth of photos and videos spread between Apple’s iCloud Photo Library and Google Photos and now feels indefinitely beholden to these services as a result.

In my case, you can add Lightroom to the mix. What’s the endgame in these situations? Do we just keep paying a handful of companies forever? I don’t have a great answer.


Google Chrome will soon let you install any webpage as a desktop web app.

A Chrome Canary update spotted by X user Leopeva64 (via Android Police) introduces a new “install page as app” button in the settings menu for all the websites you visit. You can try out the feature before it’s rolled out by downloading Canary and enabling these flags:

• chrome://flags/#web-app-universal-install

• chrome://flags/#shortcuts-not-apps


Image: Leopeva64
The Pixel 8 won’t get Gemini Nano because of “reasons.”

Google is hosting its quarterly show for Android developers and the ever-watchful Mishaal Rahman caught the response to a great question: will the regular Pixel 8 be able to run Google’s mobile-optimized language model? Google’s answer: No, because of “hardware limitations.”

The thing is, the Pixel 8 uses the very same chipset as the Pixel 8 Pro, which can run Gemini Nano. What the heck, Google?


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Google experiments with a tool to enable on-device AI.

Google’s new demo MediaPipe LLM Inference API lets developers run AI models on devices like laptops and phones that don’t have the same computing power as servers.

This new release enables Large Language Models (LLMs) to run fully on-device across platforms. This new capability is particularly transformative considering the memory and compute demands of LLMs, which are over a hundred times larger than traditional on-device models. Optimizations across the on-device stack make this possible, including new ops, quantization, caching, and weight sharing.

Google says MediaPipe supports four models: Gemma, Phi 2, Falcon, and Stable LM. It can run on the web, Android, and iOS, but Google plans to expand into more models and platforms this year.


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Google seems to be aggressively de-listing spammy search results.

Search VP Pandu Nayak told me the other day Google is dead serious about enforcing its policies against content designed to game search results. Looks like that’s already happening:

Many SEOs and site owners are saying their sites are no longer showing in the Google Search index, even for a site command, after receiving the manual actions.

Google helped make the web a mess. Now it has to fix it.


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Some Google One plans now include Fitbit Premium and Nest Aware

It looks like Google’s trying to create an all-in-one-subscription bundle similar to Apple One. The company confirmed Google One Premium plans in the UK, which start at £7.99/$9.99 per month, now include Fitbit Premium and Nest Aware.

That’ll save users a good deal of money, as a monthly Fitbit Premium subscription by itself costs £7.99/$9.99.


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Now you can make Gemini’s AI responses more precise.

9to5Google points out a recent update to Google’s Gemini chatbot that lets people edit and fine-tune its responses directly on the chatbox.

The Gemini update page explains the addition from March 4th:

We’re launching a more precise way for you to tune Gemini’s responses. Starting in English in the Gemini web app, just select the portion of text you want to change, give Gemini some instruction, and get an output that’s closer to what you are looking for.


Screenshot of the new updates to Gemini
Users can modify Gemini’s response.
The Verge
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Google will still get a cut of EU app transactions, even if made without its billing system.

The company has published new rules to comply with the EU Digital Markets Act. For the first two years, Google Play developers will pay an “initial acquisition” fee of 5 percent for subscriptions and 10 percent for other in-app services.

There’s also an “ongoing services fee” of 7 percent for subscriptions and 17 percent for other in-app services. Opting out of the latter will axe security scanning, app updates, and more.


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It’s the end of the (software support) road.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite and Note 10 Lite were the final two members of the S10 series still getting security updates — until now. 9to5Google notes that their promised four years of updates are up, and they’re no longer on Samsung’s security scope page; just last month they were still listed for quarterly updates. It was a good run, guys.


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Google Fi’s Simply Unlimited plans are getting a price hike (if you have three or more lines).

The first price hike since 2022, it takes effect April 4th, and as 9to5Google points out, it will add at least $10 to your monthly bill. That number increases the more lines you have, with a $30 increase (to $150 monthly) for six lines.

If you’re still receiving promotional credits or paying on a device financed prior to today, Google says you’ll be grandfathered into the older rate as long as those commitments last.