Tag: google

«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.

NotebookLM introduces «cinematic video overviews» feature

The AI learning and note-taking app can now illustrate your research through «rich, detailed visuals» in full bore video.

Previously, it could only make a slide show of your notes, in addition to the killer feature of creating podcasts from them.

The new videos are possible through a combination of Gemini 3, Nano Banana Pro and Veo 3 — with Gemini «acting as a creative director.»

The Gemini model makes «structural and stylistic» decisions on the fly, illustrating content word by word and in context to create something like the video above.

The feature is only available through the $300/month Google AI Ultra subscription, but it is sure to trikle down at a later stage

Read more: Google’s announcement, Android Police and The Verge.

Google debuts Gemini 3.1-Flash Lite, for developers needing speed and scale

Not for everyone; Flash Lite is built for high volume cost efficiency. (Picture: Google)
Positioning the model as a purely developer-focused one, Google is touting the price, latency and the sheer amount of work it can do.

Costing $0.25 for 1M input tokens and $1.50 for 1M output tokens, it is one of the cheapest models out there.

Compared to Gemini 2.5 Flash, it is 2.5x faster to the first answer, and 45% quicker in output speed, while maintaining quality.

This benefits high-frequency workloads, such as mass translations and content moderation where price is a priority, Google says.

Users of AI Studio and Vertex AI can also adjust its thinking levels, making it possible to balance speed and complexity.

Read more: Google’s announcement, Android Central, Tom’s Guide.

Pentagon and Trump unloads on Anthropic, agrees with OpenAI on same safeguards

The Pentagon wants AI to be open for spying, but hardly any frontier lab will agree to this. (Picture: generated)
Calling Anthropic «leftwing nut jobs» and an «out-of-control, Radical Left Woke AI company,» both President Trump and Hegseth at the Pentagon have taken steps to bar the company from Government use.

The spat started when Anthropic refused new terms in their Pentagon contract, saying they would not use their AI for autonomous killing and mass surveillance.

In a stunning reversal, these safeguards are written into an agreement offered just hours later to OpenAI (see below).

Continue reading “Pentagon and Trump unloads on Anthropic, agrees with OpenAI on same safeguards”

Google launches Nano Banana 2 with Pro-level reasoning at Flash speeds

Prompt: «A brightly colored image of Museum Clos Lucé in the style of synthetic cubism.» (Picture: Google)
Rolling out across the entire Gemini landscape today, the new image generator offers «advanced world knowledge» powered by Gemini 3.

That should make it able to use web searches and other images in order to understand and reason its way into better pictures.

Like with Nano Banana Pro, you could create diagrams from notes, make infographics from text, and «generate data visualizations,» only a whole lot faster — and cheaper.

It should also be better at subject consistency, more precise in following instructions and can create high fidelity images at up to 4K resolutions.

It instantly leapt to the top of LMArena’s (now just arena.ai) text-to-image leaderboard.

Read more: Google’s presentation. Writeups on 9to5Google, Ars Technica, and TechCrunch.

Google brings Gemini automation to third-party apps on Android

Just three apps will be available on Gemini automation, but Google says they are just getting started. (Picture: Google)
Gemini on Android will soon be able to order up food and rides from Uber, DoordDsh, and Grubhub for you, launching yesterday at Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event.

That means you can «order a ride home» or «order my last meal,» and let Gemini control your Uber app in the background just like any human would. But when it comes to tapping the «buy»-button, it will need your attention.

The beta is only available in the USA and Korea, arriving in March on the latest phones from Samsung and Google, specifically the S26 and Pixel 10.

It works within a «virtual window» on the phone, and does not have access to anything else, 9to5Google writes.

— This beta feature will be initially available for select apps in the food, grocery and rideshare categories, Google says.

Gemini already has automation features for standard Google apps, like Gmail and Calendar.

Read more: Google’s blog, writeups on 9to5Google, The Verge and TechCrunch.

Google’s next data center in Minnesota will have the world’s largest battery

Google’s energy in Minnesota won’t lead to higher electricity costs for consumers, they say. (Picture: Google)
The data center in Pine Island will have 1.9 gigawatts of capacity, sourced from new wind and solar power from Xcel Energy.

This will then be attached to a 300 megawatt iron-air battery from Form Energy, ensuring continuous service to operations.

That will be the world’s largest commercially deployed battery, and can provide power to the data center for a whopping 100 hours, TechCrunch notes.

As part of their buildout, Google is announcing that they will pay for their electricity in full, and will also invest $50 million in Xcel Energy’s green energy program to place batteries across their grid.

— Google’s partnership with Xcel Energy reimagines how data centers can be served, Google writes.

Read more: Google’s announcement, Xcel’s presser, CNBC and TechCrunch.

Google announces Gemini 3.1 Pro: «a step forward in reasoning»

Expect more, rapid one-point releases from the frontier labs going ahead. (Picture: Google)
The new model is a «smarter, more capable baseline for complex problem-solving,» Google says.

It’s the new leader on the benchmarks, almost solving ARC-AGI with 98% and hitting 77% on ARC-AGI 2, the problem solver benchmark, more than doubling Gemini 3’s results.

It also scores 44.4% on Humanity’s Last Exam, which is the best yet and definitly makes it the new state-of-the art.

Gemini 3 Pro was only released last November, so this new point-release might well signal where frontier labs are heading next — incremental updates every few months rather than full blown giant steps every six months to a year.

Gemini 3.1 Pro is rolling out today «in preview» to Pro and Ultra plans, and it’s also in NotebookLM for those users. Developers should also get a taste soon. Pricing is the same as Gemini 3 Pro.

Read more: Google’s announcement, launch thread. See also 9to5Google, Ars Technica and TechCrunch. Discussion on r/Singularity.

Google launches custom music generation in Gemini with Lyria 3 model

Gemini can now make you thirty seconds of music based on prompts or photos, and will even use Nano Banana for custom art for it.

They say the feature is for fun and games, and very specific music requests that can be personal, like making a tune about your mum’s home cooked plantains.

Continue reading “Google launches custom music generation in Gemini with Lyria 3 model”

Alphabet set to double AI spending as Google owner hits record revenue

AI spending increases twofold at Alphabet this year. (Picture: generated)
The Google owner is set to join Amazon and Meta in spending more than $100 billion on AI this year, as its 2025 revenue tops $400 billion.

The headline capex number of $175 to $185 billion is in comparison to a spend of $91 billion in 2025, as their cloud VP, Amin Vahdat, has said they need to double capacity every six months.

In 2026, Meta will spend $135 billion, Microsoft expects a decrease from $37 billion last quarter, and Amazon clocks in at $146 billion, according to CNBC.

Combined, Big Tech looks set to cross $500 billion in AI spending this year, Reuters reports.

As for Google’s AI push, it seems on the rise, having sold 8 million enterprise subscriptions in 2025 and now reaching 750 million monthly active users, up from 650 million last quarter.

Read more: Alphabet’s numbers, writeups at CNBC, Reuters, TechCrunch.

Gemini on Chrome gets massive update

Gemini in Chrome goes big on agentic browsing. (Picture: Google)
Pro and Ultra users on Chrome in the USA are getting a huge update today, on everything from shopping to Personal Intelligence.

The new side panel (no longer a pop-up) is powered by Gemini 3 and goes big on agentic browsing. It can connect to your Gmail, Calendar, Youtube, Shopping and Flights information and can multitask to do things like booking flights from an email invitation.

It can even use your browsers stored passwords to log into shopping sites and complete your order, after finding your purchase in an embedded image.

It’s also getting Nano Banana to manipulate images right from the websites you are reading.

Everything should be ready to go in the new update for U.S. subscribers, and Google says Personal Intelligence will likely come in a few months.

Read more: Google’s announcement and thread, The Verge, Gizmodo.

The EU wants equal access for other AI models on Google’s Android

The EU wants other AI labs to have the same hooks in Android that Gemini has. (Picture: generated)
— The aim is to ensure that third-party providers have an equal opportunity to innovate and compete in the rapidly evolving AI landscape on smart mobile devices, their statement says, per Engadget.

It’s an investigation («proceeding») started under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), made to ensure major platform owners don’t abuse their power, and Google now has six months to find a workable solution.

Gemini enjoys system-level and app-level access on Android, and many competitors have flagged this as a violation of the DMA.

— We are concerned that further rules which are often driven by competitor grievances rather than the interest of consumers, will compromise user privacy, security, and innovation, says Clare Kelly, Google’s Senior Competition Counsel to Reuters.

If no relief is found on the issue, the DMA allows for fines of up to 10% of a company’s global revenue.

Read more: The Commission’s statement, Engadget, Reuters.