All news with #google tag

🔊 Google acknowledged a software bug that causes volume buttons to control the device's Accessibility volume instead of the Media volume when the Select to Speak accessibility service is enabled. The issue also prevents using volume keys as a shutter shortcut in the Camera app. Google has not specified which Android versions or how many users are affected, nor provided an ETA for a permanent fix. A temporary workaround is to disable Select to Speak via Settings → Accessibility.

🔍 Google Public Sector commissioned a Government Executive survey of 250 federal IT leaders, finding nearly 90% of agencies are planning to or already using AI. Respondents cited common use cases such as document and data processing, workflow and process automation, and decision support systems. Security and adversarial risk were identified as the top adoption barrier, with reliability and workforce disruption also noted. Google highlights Gemini for Government, GSA OneGov pricing, and expanded training programs as measures to address cost, legacy, and skills constraints.

🔒 The CSO 2025 Security Priorities Study asked more than 640 senior security executives to rank leaders in AI-enabled security, and established, name-brand vendors dominated the results. CISOs prioritized product innovation but heavily weighed reputation, breach history, business value, cost, time to integrate, and peer adoption. The top-ranked providers included Cisco, Microsoft, and Google, while MSSPs and cloud-native service providers also gained visibility as teams seek managed incident response.

🟢 Apple and Google confirmed a multi-year collaboration that will bring Google's Gemini models and Google Cloud hosting to future versions of Siri and Apple Foundation Models. The move aims to address performance gaps after Apple’s in-house Siri models lagged behind rivals. Apple says Apple Intelligence will run on-device and on its Private Cloud Compute while foundation models are hosted on Google Cloud, and that user privacy remains a priority.

🔍 Threat actors have been probing misconfigured proxy servers to access paid large language model (LLM) endpoints, generating over 80,000 sessions since late December, according to GreyNoise. Attackers used low-noise queries to fingerprint models without triggering alerts and targeted vendors such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Mistral and others. While GreyNoise reports no observed exploitation or data theft, the scale of enumeration indicates reconnaissance with possible malicious intent. Recommended mitigations include restricting Ollama model pulls to trusted registries, applying egress filtering, blocking known OAST callback domains at DNS, rate-limiting suspicious ASNs, and monitoring JA4 fingerprints.

📝 Google is introducing an AI Inbox in Gmail that uses Gemini to surface prioritized briefings and summarize conversation threads with new AI Overviews. The feature appears above the traditional Inbox as a personalized briefing that highlights to-dos and VIP contacts inferred from email signals. AI Overviews are rolling out to all users at no cost, while AI Inbox is available to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the United States. Google says users can opt out and reiterated it will not train its AI models on user emails.

🚀 The preview release of a fully managed, remote MCP server for BigQuery (Jan 2026) lets developers connect LLM-powered agents directly to analytics data via a standard HTTP endpoint without managing infrastructure. The blog demonstrates step‑by‑step integration with the Agent Development Kit (ADK) and the Gemini CLI, including OAuth client creation and Gemini API key setup, and loading a sample cymbal_pets dataset. It highlights compatibility with popular frameworks (ADK, LangGraph, Claude code, Cursor IDE) and reminds readers to follow AI security and production best practices.

🔍 Google Cloud has enhanced Gemini CLI telemetry with pre-configured Google Cloud Monitoring dashboards that provide immediate visibility into adoption, usage patterns, and performance. By exporting data via OpenTelemetry, teams can use out-of-the-box visualizations or analyze raw logs and metrics to build custom views. Setup is simplified through direct GCP exporters and a three-step flow—project ID, authentication and IAM roles, and updating .gemini/settings.json—so telemetry can be live quickly.

🔎 Google has posted a job for AI Answers Quality engineers to verify and improve the accuracy of its AI Overviews, an implicit admission that AI-driven answers on Search can hallucinate and produce contradictory responses. The role aims to validate AI-generated content, improve citation fidelity, and enhance answer quality across the Search results page and AI Mode. The listing arrives as Google increasingly routes users into AI-driven experiences, including updated Discover feed summaries and AI-rewritten headlines. Reported issues range from fabricated company valuations to misleading health advice, highlighting the need for targeted quality work.

🤖 Google Public Sector summarizes a year of AI, cloud, and security milestones, spotlighting Gemini for Government, Vertex AI, and FedRAMP High authorizations for productivity and analytics offerings. The post highlights DoD IL6 and CMMC Level 2 certifications, partnerships with DLA and GDIT, and large-scale deployments such as GenAI.mil. It emphasizes secure, agentic workflows, edge-capable deployments, and a focus on delivering accredited commercial cloud services to accelerate mission impact.

🔐 Federated Identity Management (FIM) enables a single authentication to span multiple applications or organizations, letting users sign in once and reuse identity assertions across services. It improves user experience and resilience while introducing architectural complexity, potential vendor lock-in, and additional service costs. Implementations commonly rely on cloud identity providers such as Google, Microsoft, or Okta and use protocols like SAML, OAuth 2.0, and OpenID Connect.

⚡ Google is testing a new image AI called Nano Banana 2 Flash, positioned as the fastest model in the Gemini Flash lineup. It aims to deliver quicker, more affordable image generation and editing than the existing Nano Banana Pro, though it will not match the Pro’s top-end capability for complex, high-accuracy creative tasks. The model was spotted on X by leaker MarsForTech and appears to prioritize speed and cost over fidelity.

✉️ Google is rolling out a new option that lets users change their @gmail.com address or add a new @gmail.com alias from Account Settings. The capability appears to be in a limited rollout and was spotted via a support document currently visible in Hindi, suggesting regional testing. When applied, the original address will continue to receive mail and the account may effectively retain multiple active @gmail.com addresses. Google has not provided a public timeline for wider availability.

🔒 Passwd is a Google Workspace–focused password manager that emphasizes practical, business-oriented credential storage and seamless integration with Google Workspace. It uses client-side AES-256 encryption and a zero-knowledge design so only users can decrypt stored secrets, while SOC 2 and GDPR readiness support regulated environments. Administrators gain centralized controls, role-based permissions, audit logs, and scalable deployment options including hosting inside a customer Google Cloud project. Cross-platform access via web, browser extensions, and mobile apps plus autofill, password generation, and activity tracking make it a low-friction choice for teams committed to Google tools.

⚖️ Google has filed a lawsuit against the scraping company SerpApi, alleging it circumvented security measures to copy and resell copyrighted content that appears in Google Search. The complaint says SerpApi cloaks its bots, rotates false crawler identities, and bombards sites with large bot networks, overriding websites' directives. Google states it follows industry-standard crawling protocols and uses legal action as a last resort to stop malicious scraping.

🔒 Google has filed a lawsuit against the scraping company SerpApi for circumventing security measures and taking copyrighted content that appears in Search results. The complaint alleges SerpApi cloaks its bots, rotates identities, and bombards websites to harvest licensed images and real‑time Search data, which it then resells for a fee. Google says it resorted to legal action after technical protections were repeatedly bypassed in order to protect publishers and rightsholders.

🛡️ Google Cloud has integrated Cloud API Registry into Vertex AI Agent Builder, giving administrators centralized governance over agent tools and a curated catalog developers can access via a new ApiRegistry ADK object. The update broadens ADK support — including Gemini 3 Pro/Flash and TypeScript — and improves state management, interactions, and recovery. An early A2UI toolkit and Interactions API support aim to simplify multimodal I/O and shared UI components. Agent Engine features such as Sessions and Memory Bank are GA, regional availability is expanding, and several pricing adjustments take effect in December 2025 and January 2026.

🚀 CHNA 2.0 combines Wayne State’s PHOENIX data warehouse with Syntasa Sentiment Analytics and Google Vertex AI to automate Community Health Needs Assessments. The solution ingests EHR, social and environmental data alongside real‑time search and social signals to surface community concerns and priorities. By decomposing reporting tasks and embedding human oversight, CHNA 2.0 delivers comprehensive, updateable CHNA reports in weeks rather than months.

🔒 Google has announced it will retire its Dark Web report feature, stopping new dark‑web scans on January 15, 2026 and fully discontinuing the tool on February 16, 2026. The company said feedback showed the report provided only general information and lacked clear, actionable next steps, so it will delete related data when the feature is retired and offers users an option to remove their monitoring profile immediately. Google launched the service in March 2023 and expanded it to all account holders in July 2024, and it now recommends stronger protections such as passkeys for phishing‑resistant MFA and using Results about you to manage personal information in Search.

🔔 Google is discontinuing its Dark Web Report, halting new monitoring on January 15, 2026 and removing stored results on February 16, 2026. The feature notified users when their email addresses or other personal data appeared on the dark web and consolidated potential exposures for faster response. Google said user feedback indicated the report did not provide clear, actionable next steps, and it will instead focus on tools such as Google Password Manager, Password Checkup, Security and Privacy Checkups, Passkey, and 2-Step Verification. Users can also use the Results about you tool to find and request removal of personal information from Search.