Last year, Google introduced activity cards to quickly return to past queries and page visits. Google Search is now optimizing activity cards for jobs, recipes, and online shopping.
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Sending clips of audio, instead of texting or even transcribing, is increasingly a commonplace action. Google Assistant now has a dedicated UI for sending audio messages with just your voice.
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At the start of this month, Google laid out how Play Music will stop working starting in October. The move is controversial to some, and the company today sent out a survey to YouTube Music users that have transitioned their library.
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One element of Google’s latest design language is having your profile image appear in the top-right corner of every application to emphasize how you’re logged in. This Google Account switcher is now getting tweaked to launch a fullscreen interface.
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Following the August 3rd announcement, Google immediately opened pre-orders for its latest mid-range phone. First coming to the US, the Pixel 4a is now beginning to ship from the Google Store.
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While there’s wide HTTPS adoption today, HTTP content on secure pages still persists. Google has been working to stamp that out, and Chrome is now turning its attention to and warning about insecure forms.
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Earlier this year, Google announced Core Web Vitals as a metric for building fast sites. In addition to being used for ranking Search results, Chrome will now leverage those measurements to label “Fast pages” and other “high quality” sites.
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In a nod to its “News & Weather” origins, Google News has always included the current temperature and condition at the top of the app. A recent update sees Google News add weather alerts.
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“What to watch” is a perennially asked question that often results in long bouts of browsing instead of actual viewing. Asking that query to Google Search will now recommend what’s currently on TV, while sporting results will now include live watch options.
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Noting a summer uptick in people looking for “places to go on vacation,” Google is providing travel trendlines and other information when you search for hotels and flights. It’s meant to “help you make travel decisions with confidence.”
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Last month, Google announced that its new “home for work” consolidates communication and document editing into one app. The new Gmail is now rolling out to G Suite customers on Android and the web.
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URLs can be manipulated to make people think they’re visiting a legitimate site. Google has long wanted to solve this problem, and Chrome in version 86 will test just showing the domain in the address bar.
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The latest batch of emoji that will debut with Android 11 in the coming weeks features 55 new skin tone and gender variants, with Gboard for Android now offering a much-improved table interface for selecting them.
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Google Classroom is a homepage for students and teachers alike that brings together assignments, discussions, and instructions. It’s now adding a to-do widget, link-based invites to simplify the joining process, and “enhanced” originality reports.
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Ahead of the upcoming (or already under way) school year, Google Meet is gaining a number of features for students and educators. At its back-to-school event, Google today provided a Meet education road map for upcoming moderation tools and other functionality intended to boost interactivity amid distance learning.
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For the past several weeks, we’ve been tracking a math solver for Google’s visual search tool. Today, the Google Lens “Homework” filter was officially detailed and it covers more than just equations.
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YouTube Music in recent weeks has seen a spurt of new features from a revamped Now Playing screen to cloud library uploads. A related change now sees Google link to YouTube Music when you’re searching for albums.
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Chrome Apps were Google’s original version for having web technologies offer an “experience comparable to a native application.” The modern web is now more than capable, and a final deprecation timeline was set earlier this year. However, Google is now pushing back some of the dates.
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Last week, Google started rolling out the ability to import Google Wifi networks into the Home app. This is part of a bigger update that sees Google Home add the Wifi app’s “advanced networking” settings, which means you no longer have to use two clients.
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In June, the classic Hangouts to Google Chat migration started in earnest for G Suite customers. Free accounts are expected to get transitioned next, and there are now signs that this is underway. Over the past few days, classic Hangouts users are receiving messages in Google Chat.
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Google today announced two big features for its mapping service on Apple platforms. After removing in 2017, Google Maps is bringing back its Apple Watch app, as well as adding support for CarPlay Dashboard.
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With the rise of video conferencing, Google is increasingly pushing Meet across its products. Gmail for Android and iOS are adding a dedicated “Meet” tab and the ability to quickly make/take calls inside the app.
Back in April, Google revamped YouTube Music’s Library to work more like Play Music, and now the Artists view is getting another upgrade to just show saved songs. It comes as the company this week detailed the shutdown timeline for Google Play Music.
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Last summer, Amazon, Apple, and Google were criticized for not properly disclosing how human reviewers analyze audio snippets from each of their assistants. Google in response paused the practice for Assistant and other products, but is now resuming and making audio recordings entirely opt-in.
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