Google is having an incredibly busy year

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Google has had a very busy year so far. By my count, the company has announced 40 distinct software or platform products since January, and they just keep on coming. As someone who follows the company’s chaotic product adventures with alacrity, I knew that only a small number had actually been widely released, but it wasn’t until seeing a comment in this article about Google’s new Noto 3D emoji that I thought to put a number to the madness.

Google often announces products months before they become widely available, particularly outside North America. But in the Gemini era, that reality has been compounded by Google’s own tiered AI lineup.

In fact, of the 40 products that Google has announced this year, only 13 of them have rolled out widely, and many of them are still limited to US users. Big-ticket features like Gmail’s AI Inbox, announced at CES back in January, are still only available to Google AI subscribers in the US.

Things really get backlogged when you jump ahead to the Android Show and Google I/O. In the two months since Google’s developer showcase, we’ve heard little about the company’s new Googlebook laptops or Universal Cart, the AI-powered shopping experience built on top of UCP (which itself has been suspiciously quiet since April), and we’re no closer to knowing when Adobe Premiere will premiere on Android.

Google’s homegrown Home Speaker was released a few weeks ago, but Gemini’s impending expansion to third-party speakers is still missing in action. Similarly, Google announced Gemini 3.5 Pro alongside its cheaper and more lightweight 3.5 Flash counterpart in May, but according to reporting from Bloomberg, it’s been delayed because internal benchmarking isn’t hitting expectations.

Not everything Google’s announced in 2026 has been a no-show, though: users are loving AirDrop support on more Android phones, and Spark, the agentic workhorse built into Gemini, has rolled out to AI Ultra users in the US, with an expansion to the cheaper Pro tier “soon.” And Android 17 was released a few weeks ago to some acclaim, complete with support for multitasking Bubbles, Screen Reactions, and Ask Photos support in more countries.

In the past, Google’s “trollouts” were confined to certain devices or countries. Now, high-demand (and high-compute) AI features are being restricted to expensive Gemini Ultra plans, too, fragmenting the company’s product lineup further. Everything it has announced will eventually be released, and there’s plenty of time for Google to hit its many, many “coming later this summer” milestones, but for many Google users hoping for AI’s promises to bear fruit, the wait continues.

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• The first beta of December’s Android release is now available for some reason. Google’s Android beta releases are pretty hard to keep track of — Android 17 stable was just released, and we’re seven betas into the September quarterly update — but the company’s getting a nice head start on QPR2. Get it while it’s (making your phone) hot.
• Samsung’s new Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 is still huge, but it’s getting a massive battery boost in the bargain. I’m not a big fan of Samsung’s Ultra smartwatch design, which I think leans a bit too much on its oversized ruggedness to make it a practical daily driver, but this year’s upgrades appear to be mostly under the hood.
• BTS shows Samsung fans the goods. A not-so-subtle marketing tie-in between K-pop royalty and BTS member J-Hope has us looking at the first real-world images of the wider, frankly adorable Galaxy Z Fold 8. We’ll know more very soon: the phone gets announced tomorrow.
• The Pixel 11’s face unlock will somehow improve on perfection. Despite not having the 3D face unlock tech found in the iPhone, the Pixel’s face unlock is fast, reliable, and secure. According to a leak, it’s getting even better on the Pixel 11, particularly in low light. Bring it on.
• The Pixel 11 Pro is still “Dune” it for me. Google’s own Google Fi portal accidentally posted a photo of the upcoming Pixel 11 Pro in the orangey “Dune” colorway, and it’s getting me even more excited for the product launch next month — even if they’ll be more expensive.
• It’s the end of the road for the Pixel 6. According to Google’s own documentation, the 5-year-old Pixel 6 and 6 Pro will stop receiving updates after December’s Android 17 QPR2 update.
• The gatekeepers must lower the drawbridge. The EU is forcing Google to start sharing search and Gemini inference data with competitors like Microsoft and OpenAI starting in January 2027. The new ruling, which forms part of its expanded DMA regulations, also makes Android give AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT the same access to system resources as Gemini.
• Notebook LM is getting a glow-up and a rebrand. Google’s research tool beloved by students and teachers alike is being renamed to Gemini Notebook. Its big Gemini 3.5+Antigravity update is also now available to AI Pro users, significantly lowering the price bar to entry.
• Nothing and Google defy the RAMageddon downturn in India. According to numbers from Counterpoint, Nothing was the fastest-growing brand in India last quarter; Google’s Pixel lineup shot up 68% in the “ultra-premium” space by bucking the price-raising trend. Go figure.
• You can now order your groceries or design a poster through Google Search. Google Search’s AI mode is now able to connect directly with Instacart and Canva, as well as YouTube Music, through its expanded Connected Apps support.
• As OnePlus dies, its devices will magically become OPPOs. With OnePlus ceasing operations in the US and Europe, parent company OPPO is laying out plans to transition devices from OxygenOS to ColorOS. Those who choose not to update will still get occasional “maintenance support,” but new Android versions will require the jump starting next year.

🤑 Action items

For most of the country the weather is still too hot to think about holiday gift buying, but Best Buy’s Black Friday in July sale reminds us that it’s never too early to pretend you’re actually saving money.

While you’ll have to wait until November to get the really good deals, there are a few that stood out to me. I will espouse the virtues of spending good money on a Dyson vacuum because they last forever, and the V15 Detect at $500 matches its lowest-ever price from a couple of years ago. I’ve had mine going on two years now, and it’s in perfect condition despite getting hours of use every week. And if that’s too rich for your blood, my other stick vacuum, Shark’s Pet, is down to $180, just $10 off its all-time low.

I’m a huge LG OLED guy, and this is the lowest price you’ll likely see for a 55-inch model released in 2026. The B6E is a slightly cut-down version of the B6, lacking two AI upscaling features of its more expensive counterpart, but they share the same panel and underlying processor, and you can’t go wrong at this $800 price point. Unfortunately the 65-inch model isn’t nearly as discounted at $1400, but you’ll find a lot of decent TV sales if you look hard enough.

Finally, under no circumstances should you buy this almost three-year-old Moto G Play for $100, but the Motorola Razr Ultra (2025) at $700 is a pretty fantastic deal on one of my favorite devices of last year.

🙃 FWD:

This section has some of our favorite stuff from around the internet. Great videos, weird memes, fun reads, recommended apps, whatever. Send us your recommendations!

As of this writing, the Avengers: Doomsday trailer has accrued over 30 million views in just under 14 hours, but for good reason: this thing is packed to the gills with nearly every living (and some not-so-living) Marvel superhero of the last decade.

Narrated in an appropriately dramatic fashion by the son of Odin himself, we see glimpses of the X-men, including Channing Tatum as Gambit; the Fantastic Four; Ant-Man; Shang-Chi; the new Black Panther, as well as Namor; and many others.

With AMC reporting its highest-ever quarterly revenue in Q2 (PDF) on a surge of people returning to movie theaters, Avengers: Doomsday may actually be the movie that gets people rooting for Marvel’s return. We’ll know in five short months.

🗑️ Trash

Speaking of movies, I’ve always been a fan of Neill Blomkamp’s audacity, if not the actual movies he creates. District 9 is a solid film wrapped inside a tremendous VFX demo reel, and there were many things to admire about Elysium and Chappie.

Now the erstwhile film director has debuted a 13-minute short called “Nightborne” made with no cameras at all. Generated entirely using Bytedance’s popular Seedance 2.0 generative AI tool, Blomkamp claims the short film used “the faces and voices of 32 real people,” and that it is a precursor to a “full feature in this format.”

While clearly technically impressive, there is a discomfiting uncanniness evident throughout the entire runtime that’s difficult to ignore. It’s also so, so badly written.

It’s not surprising that we’re seeing mainstream directors like Blomkamp, along with even bigger names like Darren Aronofsky and Gareth Edwards, embracing the technology at a time when it’s increasingly difficult to get big-budget films made.

But will anyone ever make an AI film worth watching? That’s what I want to know.

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