Send tips/talk to abner@9to5mac.com or @technacity (open DMs).
Abner Li has worked at 9to5Google since 2015 and in late 2020 took on the role of editor-in-chief. He is keenly focused on tracking what happens at Google, and is often the first to spot new features in Google’s ever-growing family of applications that are updated on a daily basis, including Search, Assistant, Maps, Workspace, Android, Chrome/OS, Wear OS, and YouTube Music.
To him, what Google does greatly impacts the technology space and modern life. Inside the company, he is particularly interested in the key products mentioned above, as well as services like Google Podcasts and Google Lens. Each are massive platforms that can be unwieldy to grasp, with Abner keenly bent on understanding their philosophy and future direction. He is most excited about Google’s plans for augmented reality glasses.
Abner spearheads the APK Insight program at 9to5Google to chronicle all changes in the company’s Android apps, often finding new features before they are officially announced. This includes redesigns and revamps, launches, and new products.
A big area of interest is Google’s hardware division, including Pixel, Fitbit, and Nest. He detailed all of the Pixel 3’s camera features before launch and scooped the 2nd-generation Nest Hub’s Soli-powered Sleep Sensing capability, including how it would integrate with Google Fit.
Recently, Abner detailed the Pixel Watch’s specs in full before launch, including bands and pricing. He also got wind of the Pixel Tablet’s ultimate form factor.
The likes of Google and Facebook are often cited as the reason for declining newspaper revenue. A research study commissioned by Google is now pushing back against that belief and pins declining newspaper revenue on the loss of classified print ads.
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Following the 2nd-generation Nest Hub, the next major new product from Made by Google is the Pixel Buds A-Series. As the name implies, Google is offering a more affordable pair of truly wireless earbuds that build on the company’s success with mid-tier phones.
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Last month, YouTube TV became available in the main YouTube app as a workaround for the Roku dispute. That integrated YouTube TV experience is now coming to newer Vizio SmartCast televisions.
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Google Fonts is a catalog of over 1,000 free licensed font families and, most recently, icons. New additions to that library have now made their way into Google Docs and Slides.
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The last visual revamp for Assistant in late 2020 saw the light bar come to all Android devices. Google is now working on what looks to be a new design that takes advantage of dropdown menus to show more information, while Assistant is getting new microphone sounds.
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Google is making it easier to review, reply, and resolve comments in Sheets with a new consolidated sidebar that matches the one already available in Docs.
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In an update today, YouTube revealed that it paid $4 billion to the music industry over the last 12 months, while Premium and Music Premium subscriptions saw notable growth at the start of this year.
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Android 12 will feature a slew of privacy features from a new Setting dashboard to the ability to disable app access to the camera and microphone. Another update later this year will make it so that users are better able to opt-out of personalized ads in Android applications.
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The human brain is one of the most complex structures in existence. Google, in collaboration with Harvard University, today released a browsable 1.4-petabyte reconstruction of a very small part of the human cortex.
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Following the desktop update last week, Chrome OS 91 is beginning to roll out today. There’s one particularly big feature addition in this release and a handful of other enhancements, which will be available over the coming days.
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For the second generation of Pixel phones, Google made a relatively last-minute decision to shelve an HTC-made Pixel 2 XL for the LG one that launched. There were a handful of reports about this change in 2017, but the first pictures of the “muskie” Pixel 2 XL prototype have now emerged.
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On your phone, responses to most Assistant commands return web results, various cards, or directly open an app. Some Google Assistant responses that include text replies have now been tweaked so that the font is much larger to aid visibility.
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In addition to rolling out a redesigned web UI, Meet is introducing what Google calls “gentle quality notifications” aimed at giving users recommendations on how they can improve performance and call quality.
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Fitbit revealed it was making a premium Wear OS watch at I/O 2021 last month. However, until that’s released, the latest Fitbit OS update is rolling out with a slew of updates for the Fitbit Sense and Versa 3.
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For June 2021, Google is adding four games to Stadia Pro in a continuation from last month. The first three titles have already launched, but Blue Fire will debut with the subscription.
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Save for Fi integration, the Messages for web experience hasn’t seen too many updates in recent years. The latest Google Messages for Android makes an odd tweak that renames the web client set-up process to “Device Pairing.”
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Last year, Google’s mobile browser introduced a custom share menu to replace the system default. Chrome for Android is now adding a built-in screenshot tool.
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The experience of using an iPhone on Fi has come a long way from when it was not officially supported but still worked during the “Project” days to today, where it’s advertised (though 5G does not yet work). That said, iPhone owners on Google Fi yesterday received a random text message yesterday, but there should be nothing to worry about.
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Google’s vision for the future of productivity involves making Gmail the one application you use for everything. In addition to email, messaging, video calls, and editing, the Gmail mobile apps now have a quick shortcut to change your Google profile picture.
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Manifest V3 is the latest specification for building Chrome extensions. The update was controversial in that it affected ad blockers, but Google maintained that privacy was the priority. Mozilla announced yesterday that it would support Manifest V3 extensions in Firefox to “maintain a high degree of compatibility to support cross-browser development.”
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Ahead of the opening this summer, we got a sneak peek yesterday at the first Google Store in New York City. The company has said that the retail location is an “important next step” for its hardware division. For prospective visitors, what are you most looking forward to doing at a Google Store?
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At the start of June, the Google Photos storage policy change announced last year will come into effect. Ahead of that, Google Photos is rolling out the promised “review and delete” tool and a renamed “Storage saver” tier.
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DeepMind is Alphabet’s AI research lab, and today, it unveiled AndroidEnv as a platform that allows reinforcement learning agents to “interact with a wide variety of apps and services commonly used by humans through a universal touchscreen interface.”
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Following an update that Google rolled out yesterday, some Nest Learning Thermostats are turning on/off AC systems every few minutes. Version 6.1.1-2 looks to be responsible for the issue, but it’s unclear how widespread the problem is.
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