All news with #google tag

🚀 Today Google announced 14 startups selected for the Google for Startups Accelerator: AI First program serving the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey. The cohort addresses challenges across finance, real estate, healthcare, industrial safety, TradeTech, and education, and will receive targeted mentorship, technical training, and product and business support. Participants include Abwab.ai, COGNNA, Distichain, xBites, and Navatech, and the program emphasizes responsible AI to accelerate regional scaling and commercialization.

🔒 Google confirmed that a fraudulent account was created in its Law Enforcement Request System (LERS) portal and has been disabled. The company said no requests were made with the account and no data was accessed. The claim follows posts by a group calling itself "Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters", which also asserted access to the FBI's eCheck system. The actors have previously targeted Salesforce-related infrastructure and taunted security teams.

🔒 Google has confirmed that a fraudulent account was created in its Law Enforcement Request System (LERS) and has been disabled. The company says no requests were made and no data was accessed. The claim was posted by a group calling itself Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters, which also alleged access to the FBI's eCheck system; the FBI declined to comment. The group has a history of high-profile Salesforce-related thefts and has publicly taunted law enforcement and security researchers.

🔬 Google funded and collaborated on open-source DDR5 Rowhammer test platforms and academic research to evaluate current in-DRAM mitigations. Working with Antmicro and ETH Zurich, the team produced FPGA-based RDIMM and SO‑DIMM testers and used them to discover the Phoenix attack family, which includes a self-correcting refresh synchronization technique that can bypass enhanced TRR on some DDR5 modules. Google also led JEDEC standardization work on PRAC to enable deterministic row-activation counting and continues to share tools and findings to improve defenses.

🔧 Google has open-sourced XProf, an upgraded ML profiler, and published the Cloud Diagnostics XProf library to simplify profiling and optimizing models on xPUs. The release brings unified XLA-based profiling across JAX, PyTorch/XLA and TensorFlow/Keras, and supports programmatic and on-demand trace capture. The Cloud Diagnostics library packages dependencies, stores profiles in Google Cloud Storage for retention, provisions TensorBoard on VMs or GKE for faster loading, and produces shareable links for collaborative analysis with tunable machine types for performance.

📸 Google has added support for the C2PA Content Credentials standard to the Pixel Camera and Google Photos apps on the new Pixel 10, enabling tamper-evident provenance metadata for images, video, and audio. The Pixel Camera app achieved Assurance Level 2 in the C2PA Conformance Program, the highest mobile rating currently defined. Google says a combination of the Tensor G5, Titan M2 and Android hardware-backed features provides on-device signing keys, anonymous attestation, unique per-image certificates, and an offline time-stamping authority so provenance is verifiable, privacy-preserving, and usable even when the device is offline.

🔁 Google describes its Central Fleet program as a centralized, fungible pool of compute, memory, and storage that replaces team-level machine procurement. Teams request intent-based quotas rather than specific servers, and the fleet uses software-level orchestration via Borg to allocate and reallocate resources dynamically. Google reports that in 2024 the program avoided procurement with an embodied impact of roughly 260,000 metric tons CO2e, highlighting reductions in e-waste, embodied carbon, and improved energy efficiency while promoting a circular-economy approach.

📸 Google is integrating C2PA Content Credentials into the Pixel 10 camera and Google Photos to help users distinguish authentic, unaltered images from AI-generated or edited media. Every JPEG captured on Pixel 10 will automatically include signed provenance metadata, and Google Photos will attach updated credentials when images are edited so a verifiable edit history is preserved. The system works offline and relies on on-device cryptography (Titan M2, Android StrongBox, Android Key Attestation), one-time keys, and trusted timestamps to provide tamper-resistant provenance while protecting user privacy.

📷 Google announced Pixel 10 phones will embed C2PA Content Credentials in every photo captured by the native Pixel Camera and display verification in Google Photos. The Pixel Camera app achieved Assurance Level 2 by combining Tensor G5, the certified Titan M2 security chip, and Android hardware-backed attestation. A privacy-first model uses anonymous enrollment, a strict no-logging policy, and a one-time certificate-per-image strategy to prevent linking. Pixel 10 also supports an on-device trusted timestamping mechanism so credentials remain verifiable offline.

🎖️ Google Public Sector is opening registration for a no-cost, three-week virtual program, Google Launchpad for Veterans, offering foundational generative AI training and a path to the Gen AI Leader certification. The Gen AI Leader training includes a two-day kickoff on November 13–14, optional exam prep sessions, and a complimentary exam voucher. Participants will learn core LLM concepts, how to navigate the AI ecosystem, and practical business applications using Gemini and NotebookLM to drive organizational transformation.

🔍 BigQuery's new Column Metadata (CMETA) index is an automated, highly scalable metadata index that improves query pruning and reduces compute for extremely large tables. CMETA stores snapshots of block- and column-level statistics and is maintained transparently by BigQuery with no user intervention. Early adopters report up to 60x faster queries and up to 10x lower slot usage for selective filters, particularly on clustered columns.

🔎 Google will let users set AI mode as their default search tab, replacing the traditional blue links view for those who opt in. The change will be user-controlled via a toggle or button so individuals can choose AI-driven summaries as their primary experience while the classic Web tab remains accessible. Google says it is studying the impact on ads and publishers.

⚖️The European Commission has fined Google €2.95 billion ($3.5 billion) for abusing its dominance in the digital advertising technology market and favoring its adtech services over competitors. The regulator ordered Google to stop anti-competitive "self-preferencing" practices and to take measures to mitigate conflicts of interest in adtech. Google said the decision is wrong and plans to appeal, warning the changes could harm thousands of European businesses. Separately, France's CNIL fined Google €325 million for placing ads in Gmail without proper consent and violating cookie rules.

⚖ The French data protection authority CNIL has fined Google €325 million for placing advertising cookies and showing ads in Gmail's 'Promotions' and 'Social' tabs without valid user consent after investigations in 2022–2023. CNIL found Google failed to inform new account holders that accepting advertising cookies was required to access services, breaching Article L.34-5 and the French Data Protection Act (Article 82). The authority said the cookie-related practices affected over 74 million accounts (53 million individuals saw the ads), described the conduct as negligent and cited prior sanctions; it also fined Shein €150 million the same day for separate cookie violations.

⚖️ The French data protection authority, CNIL, has fined Google €325 million ($379 million) and Shein €150 million ($175 million) for placing advertising cookies without valid consent. CNIL found users were nudged to accept personalized ad cookies during Google account creation and that information remained unclear even after an opt-out option was added in October 2023. The regulator also said targeted ads placed inside Gmail's Promotions and Social tabs required explicit consent under the CPCE. Shein has updated systems and plans to appeal; Google must comply within six months or face €100,000-per-day penalties.

🔍 Target rebuilt its on-site search to combine lexical keyword matching with semantic vector retrieval, using AlloyDB AI to power filtered vector queries at scale. The engineering team implemented a multi-index architecture and a multi-channel relevance framework so hybrid queries can apply native SQL filters alongside vector similarity. The overhaul produced measurable gains — ~20% improvement in product discovery relevance, halved "no results" occurrences, and large latency reductions — while consolidating the stack and accelerating development.

🔒 Google has released the September 2025 Android security update addressing 84 vulnerabilities, including two zero-day flaws observed in limited, targeted exploitation: CVE-2025-38352 (Linux kernel) and CVE-2025-48543 (Android Runtime). The bulletin also patches four critical issues — including an RCE in the System component and three Qualcomm vulnerabilities affecting modem and data stacks. Users are urged to install security patch level 2025-09-01 or 2025-09-05 via Settings > System > Software updates > System update.

🔒 Google has released its September 2025 Android security updates addressing 120 vulnerabilities, including two issues that Google says have been exploited in limited, targeted attacks. The two highlighted flaws are CVE-2025-38352 (CVSS 7.4), affecting the Linux Kernel, and CVE-2025-48543, impacting the Android Runtime; both can enable local privilege escalation with no user interaction. Google issued patch levels 2025-09-01 and 2025-09-05 to let partners deploy common fixes more quickly and credited Benoît Sevens of TAG with reporting the kernel issue.

🔐 New research demonstrates practical, dangerous promptware attacks that exploit common interactions—calendar invites, emails, and shared documents—to manipulate LLM-powered assistants. The paper Invitation Is All You Need! evaluates 14 attack scenarios against Gemini-powered assistants and introduces a TARA framework to quantify risk. The authors reported 73% of identified threats as High-Critical and disclosed findings to Google, which deployed mitigations. Attacks include context and memory poisoning, tool misuse, automatic agent/app invocation, and on-device lateral movement affecting smart-home and device control.

🔔 Google has disputed reports that it issued a blanket warning asking 2.5 billion Gmail users to reset passwords following a recent breach that allegedly affected some Workspace accounts. In a Monday blog post the company called those headlines false and emphasized that Gmail's protections block over 99.9% of phishing and malware. Google advised users to enable two-step verification and adopt passkeys, and it criticized the spread of unverified claims by media and security vendors.