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Installs of DuckDuckGo are soaring amid Google’s AI search push

DuckDuckGo has become popular with the anti-AI crowd. (Picture: generated)

Google has made it clear that they are no longer a search company, but an AI company — further expanding AI Mode, extending AI overviews, and changing the iconic search box. Some people aren’t having it.

One practical effect of this can be seen in downloads of alternative search engine DuckDuckGo, which have greatly increaesed in the last few weeks, TechCrunch writes.

From May 20 to May 25, just after Google unveiled a new search box, weekly installs went up 18.1%, peaking at 30% on May 25. It grew even stronger on iOS, peaking at 70% week on week in the same period.

— Google is force-feeding AI with no way to opt out, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg tells TechCrunch, — We want to be the place that puts users in charge and allows them to decide how much or how little AI they want.

The search engine does use some AI to filter out images, and offers an AI chat product at duck.ai, but is famously privacy-focused, doesn’t store a thing, and also provides the AI-free noai.duckduckgo.com.

Go read the full story at TechCrunch

Recapping Google I/O: New Gemini, video generator and search box

Google I/O produced a flurry of AI announcements, as expected, and since it’s hard to keep up with everything they launched, here is a small recap.

Read on for the news in short on the new Gemini, the Omni video model, new subscription plans, the Gemini Spark agent and the revamped search box…

Continue reading “Recapping Google I/O: New Gemini, video generator and search box”

Google reimagines the mouse pointer with AI-enabled commands

Commands are simple once the mouse knows where it is pointing. (Picture: Google)

The common mouse pointer hasn’t changed in half a century, Google says — so it has infused it with context-aware AI to let you simply speak to it.

The general idea is to have an AI system be aware of where or what you are pointing at, and then use the microphone on your computer to give simple commands without careful prompting.

This should allow for easier AI interactions like «show me directions» when looking at a building, or «book a table» while hovering over a restaurant.

This sort of pointer needs the OS or app to be context-aware, and there is no system like this yet. It is, however, rolling out in Gemini in Chrome «starting today,» and will roll out «soon» as Magic Pointer, a major feature of the freshly announced Googlebook.

It is also available to test in AI Studio, where you can use it to edit an image or find places on a map. Do note that the system uses your microphone.

Read more: Google’s blog, 9to5Google.

The European Union starts process to open up Android to AI competitors

Gemini is basically enjoying a monopoly for integrated system access on Android. The EU wants to change that. (Picture: generated)

Google has been aggressively implementing AI and Gemini on its platforms, such as web search — and Android. Right now, Gemini is basically the only AI with system access on the platform, and the EU sees room for improvement.

Under the Digital Markets Act, Google isn’t just another vendor — it’s one of seven dominant platforms, deemed «gatekeepers» to other services. That means it has to behave like a platform, like Windows, and offer equal access to its services.

The European Commission lists letting competing AI assistants have easy access to functions like sending emails, sharing and editing photos — and have system level access to control apps. It should also provide Android API access and support for free, they say.

Continue reading “The European Union starts process to open up Android to AI competitors”

Google signs on to Pentagon contract for classified work

All top labs except Anthropic are now available to the Department of War. (Picture: Shutterstock)

Joining OpenAI and xAI, Google’s contract follows the controversial «all lawful government use» rules for classified work at the DoD, The Information (paywalled) was first to report.

The contract is quoted by Reuters to include specific language against use for «domestic mass surveillance» and autonomous weapons «without appropriate human oversight and control,» but Google doesn’t get to second guess or outright ban this usage of their models, The Verge reports.

Anthropic famously defected from its Pentagon contract over precisely these issues, but OpenAI quickly signed on to a contract with better language.

Rumors of a coming deal sparked protest internally at Google, with 600 Googlers signing a letter demanding that Google refuse any classified use, as they also did over Israel contracts.

Read more: The Information (paywalled), Reuters, The Verge, and TechCrunch.

Google to invest up to $40 billion in rival/partner Anthropic

Google and Anthropic are rivals in the chatbot arena, but partners in compute. (Picture: Anthropic)

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has reached an agreement to initially invest $10 billion in Anthropic, increasing to $40 billion on reaching «performance targets,» Reuters reports.

The deal comes hot on the heels of Amazon’s investment of $25 billion this week, also contingent on «commercial milestones.»

Google’s investment comes as Anthropic is seeking to expand its compute capacity after several reports of throttling and downtime for its Claude service, amid rising popularity.

Earlier this month, Google and Broadcom secured a «partnership» with significant compute for Anthropic, as the company announced it had hit a $30 billion annualized run-rate revenue.

Read more: Reuters, CNBC, and TechCrunch.

Google’s AI Overview is wrong tens of millions of times per hour, NYT finds

Google gets it right more often than not, but 1 in 10 queries result in errors. (Picture: Adobe)

Sure, the measured accuracy by AI lab Oumi ticks in at a decent 90% — but when you scale it up to the sheer mass of Google’s traffic of more than five trillion searches per year, you get mind-boggling numbers of hundreds of thousands of «inaccuracies» per minute, the New York Times writes.

The test, conducted on the Gemini 3 generation of AI Overviews, was made using the SimpleQA dataset intended to probe for chatbot accuracy. It contains more than 4,000 questions with real, verifiable answers, that was made by OpenAI in 2024, Ars Technica reports.

Google’s AI answer machine pops up on every query these days, but it is difficult to tell precisely which model it uses for each task. For simple web searches, it might well opt for one of the faster Flash models rather than the more advanced Pro. It might also give different answers to the same question just milliseconds apart.

Google also doesn’t like the measurement being used, telling the NYT that «This study has serious holes. It doesn’t reflect what people are actually searching on Google.»

Read more: New York Times, Ars Technica.

Anthropic reaches $30B revenue, gets compute from Google and Broadcom

Anthropic continues to diversify its compute needs. (Picutre: Anthropic)

Anthropic now says it has a run-rate revenue of $30 billion, up from $14 billion in February during their last fundraising.

They are also announcing that they are brining in new compute capacity, based on next generation Google TPUs that will start coming online in 2027.

The companies offer no detail the cost of the «partnership» or how much compute they are actually buying, but Broadcom Is hinting it’s around 3.5 GW, according to CNBC.

Anthropic also say they have doubled the rate of customers spending more than $1 million per year to 1,000, in just two months.

Claude now runs on Amazon’s Trainium chips, Google TPUs and Nvidia GPUs. The latter are more used, and Amazon remains their primary cloud provider, Anthropic says.

Read more: Anthropic’s announcement, CNBC adds numbers.

Google launches open model Gemma 4, claims best intelligence-per-parameter

With their latest open models, Google is taking a stab at building agents. (Picture: Google)

After Gemma 3 got more than 400 million downloads and 100K variants, they are swinging again with the multimodal Gemma 4 family, released under an Apache 2.0 license.

It comes in 2 billion, 4B, 26B and 31B variants and works on anything from high powered hardware (high parameters) to edge computing and mobile phones (lower parameters).

The 31B edition ranks third on the Arena AI leaderboard for open source models, and the 26B one is sixth, «outperforming models 20x its size,» as Google puts it.

The new models have also been strengthened with agent workflows, and let you build agents to «interact with different tools and APIs and execute workflows,» Google says.

The models are available today for download on Hugging Face and online at Google AI Studio.

Gemini introduces chat and memory imports from competing chatbots

It now seems easier to switch to Gemini, but finding the files to do it can sometimes be difficult. (Picture: Google)

Switching from a chatbot with lots of history to a fresh one can be a pain, which is why Google is now launching new switching tools, that lets you import from other chatbots, with hopes of snagging some extra users from others.

The first step is to simply prompt the bot you are switching from to output your preferences, or its memories, and it will provide them in a prompt reply. This can then be pasted into Gemini.

The second feature will import your entire chat history — up to 5GB of it. Doing this is a little more complicated and involves a trip to the settings panel, but it should result in getting a zip file from your provider, which can be uploaded to Google.

From there on, Gemini promises to pick up right where you left off with the other chatbot, and you won’t have to train a whole new AI. Anthropic already does this.

Read more: Google’s presentation, step-by-step tweet, writeups on Engadget and The Verge.

«Vibe design» by Gemini — Google updates Stitch for the AI age

Design help from Google? If it floats your boat. (Picture Google)

Promising to let «anyone» create layouts with natural language prompts and turn them into «high-fidelity UI designs,» Stitch is supposed to let you «vibe design» your projects.

It is intended to let you «explore ideas quickly» with a «high quality outcome.»

The app can take input from text, images, or code, and provides you with an entire design language that you can pick and choose from, with an «infinite» canvas storing your ideas.

It should be equally good at designing for the web and apps, but does come out as somewhat boilerplate and generic.

I tried to get it to brainstorm a little about improving the design of this webpage, and the results were terrible, but it might be worth it for other projects.

The improved Stitch is available at stitch.withgoogle.com and can be accessed for free anywhere Gemini is available.

Read more: Google’s introduction, launch tweet.

Google’s «Personal Intelligence» now available for free users in the U.S.

Shopping for a bag to go with your shoes? Google already knows. (Picture: Google)

It seems the tie-in between Google’s Calendar, Gmail, Photos, YouTube and Search and Gemini has been popular — and they are now expanding the service to free users.

— People are appreciating the highly tailored help they’re getting in AI Mode in Search and the Gemini app, Google says.

Personal intelligence can be useful for anything that involves your history with Google, like searching for another pair of sneakers you already bought, shopping for a bag to go with said shoes — or are planning a travel itinerary based on past preferences.

You need to be signed into a personal Google account for it to work, and it is not available for Workspace business, Enterprise, or Education users, TechCrunch notes.

The feature is also explicitly opt-in, and you have to choose to turn it on. There are also granular controls for disabling each app or service, so you can opt out of having Gemini scour your previous web searches and use them in replies, for instance.

Read more: Google’s announcement, TechCrunch and 9to5Google.

«Ask Maps» brings Gemini 3 intelligence, personalization to Google Maps

You can now get pretty comprehensive natural language answers from Google Maps. (Picture: Google)

With the latest Maps upgrade, you can ask questions in natural language and have Gemini answer with map-specific information.

The feature is supposed to work great for questions of where to find the nearest restroom, or a cozy vegan restaurant nearby — and it even lets you book a table right from the app.

To achieve this, Gemini will scan information from the Maps database consisting of some 300 million places and reviews from over 500 million contributors to find you just the right spot.

Ask Maps also remembers your previous saved spots or queries, so it will know that you are vegetarian, say, or if you have any special needs or preferences.

Of course, once you find a spot, Maps will help you navigate to get there — and in the biggest update in a decade, you now get a 3D driving experience.

Ask Maps is only available on mobile in the USA and India, with desktop support «coming soon.»

Read more: Google’s announcement, The Verge, Engadget.

Gemini on Chrome expands to more countries and languages

Gemini is offering AI integration in the Chrome browser for even more markets. (Picture: Google/generated)

With som features previously only available for Pro and Ultra subscribers in the USA, the AI features for Chrome are now launching on desktop and mobile in India (the second largest market for American AI), New Zealand and Canada, with promises of more to come.

Gemini in Chrome adds a new side panel, letting you chat with Gemini without opening up a new tab, and can do things like summarize or interact with web pages. It can connect to Gmail, Calendar, YouTube, Shopping and flights information.

It also comes with Nano Banana features, so you can try an apartment listing picture with your own furniture, for example.

In addition to the three new countries, which are mostly English-speaking, Google is announcing support for another 50 languages.

This of course includes Hindi, but there is also support for French, Spanish, Chinese and lots of other European languages.

Read more: Google’s announcement. Writeups on TechCrunch and Engadget.

Google announces slew of Gemini improvements to Workspace

Workspace got smarter, and can now draw on files, emails, chats and the web. (Picture: Google)

Sheets, Slides and Docs are getting some extra help from Gemini in a huge update to the service.

— Today, we’re making Gemini in Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drive more personal, capable and collaborative to help you get things done, faster, Google says.

All these apps can now draw on information from your Drive, Gmail, Chat and web search to draft things like emails and docs, or pull numbers for spreadsheets based on, say, an email conversation, meeting notes or separate sources in Drive. All it takes is a single prompt.

Google is especially proud of their agentic performance on Sheets, getting very close to the human expert benchmark on the SpreadsheetBench dataset.

The features are rolling out to all Ultra and Pro subscribers globally today, but is only available in English. Google is looking to bring on «more languages soon.»

Read more: Google’s announcement, launch thread. Writeups on 9to5Google and TechCrunch.