For nearly two decades, a Gmail address has been a digital permanent record. Whether you chose a professional-sounding name or a handle inspired by a high school hobby like soccerstar2004 @gmail.com, that choice was largely set in stone. Today, Google is officially breaking that mold by launching Gmail Identity Refresh, a highly anticipated feature that allows users to change their primary @gmail.com address while keeping their entire digital life intact.

This move comes after years of user feedback requesting a way to update email identities due to marriage, professional rebranding, or simply outgrowing a childhood username. Until now, the only solution was to create a brand-new account and manually migrate years of emails, contacts, and subscriptions – a process so tedious that many users simply gave up.

Why Now? The Evolution of Digital Identity

“We realize that who you were when you first opened your Gmail account isn’t necessarily who you are today,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet. “An email address is more than just a destination for mail; it’s your digital passport. By introducing Identity Refresh, we’re giving our users the flexibility to evolve their digital presence without the friction of starting from scratch.”

The update is designed to be seamless. When a user changes their address, Google’s backend infrastructure automatically reroutes all existing data. This includes Google Photos, Drive documents, YouTube subscriptions, and Play Store purchases, ensuring that the transition is invisible to everything except the recipient’s inbox.

How It Works: The “Bridge” System

To prevent the chaos of lost messages, Google is implementing a “Permanent Forwarding” system. When you select a new address, your old handle is effectively retired but remains linked to your account as a legacy alias.

Key Features of the Update:
Seamless Migration: All folders, labels, and archived chats move instantly to the new address.

Legacy Forwarding: Emails sent to your old address will still arrive in your inbox for a minimum of two years (with an option to extend).

Identity Protection: To prevent impersonation, old usernames are placed in a “cooldown” period and will not be available for other users to claim for several years.

Automatic Notifier: An optional feature allows you to send a one-time “I’ve changed my email” notification to your most frequent contacts.

Security and Verification Measures

Google is acutely aware of the security risks involved in changing a primary account identifier. To ensure this feature isn’t exploited by bad actors, the “Change Address” process requires mandatory Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and a 24-hour “cooling off” period before the change finalizes.

“Security was our primary concern during the development of this feature,” noted the Gmail Product Lead. “We’ve built in safeguards to ensure that if an account is compromised, the attacker cannot instantly ‘rename’ the account to lock the owner out. Recovery options remain tied to the user’s original metadata and verified phone numbers.”

Availability and Rolling Launch

The Gmail Identity Refresh will begin rolling out to Personal Google Account holders starting next week. Google Workspace (Business and Education) users will see similar functionality later this year, though administrators will retain control over whether employees can change their handles.

Users can check their eligibility by navigating to Settings > See all settings > Accounts and Import in the Gmail web interface. The first change is free for all users, with subsequent changes (limited to once every 12 months) potentially carrying a small administrative fee to discourage spam and platform abuse.

Google I/O 2025 proved to be a landmark event that catapulted artificial intelligence into the spotlight like never before. This year’s conference was brimming with transformative announcements designed to reshape our digital experiences—from intelligent search to groundbreaking creative tools. Let’s take a deeper look into the major highlights unveiled at the event.

Gemini AI Takes Center Stage

At the heart of many announcements was the continued evolution of Gemini, Google’s powerful AI model. We saw:

Agent Mode: An experimental feature for Google AI Ultra subscribers, Agent Mode allows Gemini to understand a high-level goal and then perform the necessary actions across various applications. Think of it as your personal digital assistant, truly taking the initiative.

Gemini 2.5 and DeepThink: The latest iteration, Gemini 2.5, boasts significant improvements in reasoning, multimodal understanding, and long-context capabilities. Even more exciting is “DeepThink,” an experimental mode for Gemini 2.5 Pro, designed for highly complex mathematical and coding problems. It’s clear Google is pushing the boundaries of what AI can “think” about.

Gemini in Search (AI Mode): This was arguably the biggest news for everyday users. Google Search is getting an “AI Mode” that fundamentally changes how we get information. It allows for longer, more complex queries, uses a “query fan-out” technique to break down searches, and can even incorporate “Personal Context” from your other Google products to give you truly tailored results. Imagine asking Google to plan your week, taking into account your calendar and past searches!

Gemini Live: The conversational capabilities of Gemini are expanding, with Gemini Live now allowing natural language interactions and the ability to use your phone’s camera to “show” Gemini things in your real-world environment. Plus, it’s now available on both Android and iOS, with screen sharing!

Creativity Unleashed: Veo 3 and Imagen 4

For creators and developers, I/O 2025 delivered a treasure trove of new tools:

Developer-focused AI: Google is making it easier than ever for developers to integrate AI into their apps. Updates include new ML Kit GenAI APIs, an agentic Colab experience, and enhancements to Gemini Code Assist for more intuitive coding. They even introduced “Jules,” an asynchronous coding agent that can tackle your backlog of bugs and even take the first cut at building new features!

Veo 3 and Flow: Google’s text-to-video capabilities are evolving rapidly with Veo 3, which can now generate video with audio and produce 4K footage. Building on this, Flow is a new AI-powered filmmaking app that allows users to create AI-generated video clips from text prompts or images, with tools to stitch them together for longer narratives.

Imagen 4: Google’s text-to-image model is getting even better, generating more photorealistic images with enhanced detail and better handling of tricky elements like typography.

Stitch UI Design Tool: For designers, Stitch is a game-changer. This AI-powered tool can create high-quality UI designs and frontend code from simple text prompts, accelerating the design workflow significantly.

Android XR and Immersive Experiences

Google is making a serious play in the extended reality (XR) space:

Android XR Smart Glasses: After years of experimentation, Google unveiled its Android XR platform, specifically highlighting new smart glasses developed in partnership with companies like Gentle Monster and Warby Parker. These aren’t just notification machines; they promise features like live translation, directional navigation, and the ability to view immersive 360-degree videos, all powered by Gemini.

Google Beam: This is straight out of a futuristic movie! Google Beam is a new platform that uses AI to transform standard 2D video calls into incredibly realistic 3D experiences, making it feel like you’re in the same room as the other person. HP and Zoom are already on board to bring the first Google Beam devices to market.

Creative Tools and Developer Delights

For creators and developers, I/O 2025 delivered a treasure trove of new tools:

Veo 3 and Flow: Google’s text-to-video capabilities are evolving rapidly with Veo 3, which can now generate video with audio and produce 4K footage. Building on this, Flow is a new AI-powered filmmaking app that allows users to create AI-generated video clips from text prompts or images, with tools to stitch them together for longer narratives.

Imagen 4: Google’s text-to-image model is getting even better, generating more photorealistic images with enhanced detail and better handling of tricky elements like typography.

Stitch UI Design Tool: For designers, Stitch is a game-changer. This AI-powered tool can create high-quality UI designs and frontend code from simple text prompts, accelerating the design workflow significantly.

Developer-focused AI: Google is making it easier than ever for developers to integrate AI into their apps. Updates include new ML Kit GenAI APIs, an agentic Colab experience, and enhancements to Gemini Code Assist for more intuitive coding. They even introduced “Jules,” an asynchronous coding agent that can tackle your backlog of bugs and even take the first cut at building new features!

Quality of Life Improvements and More

Beyond the flashiest announcements, Google continued to refine its core products:

Gmail Smart Replies: These are getting even smarter, analyzing your writing style and past emails to suggest truly personalized responses.

Virtual Try-On for Shopping: You can now upload a photo of yourself to virtually try on different clothes directly within the Google Shopping experience.

New AI Subscription Plans: Google introduced new AI plans, including an AI Pro plan and the more comprehensive Google AI Ultra plan, offering higher usage limits and access to experimental tools like Agent Mode and Veo 3.

Oracle and Google Cloud have unveiled a groundbreaking collaboration, introducing an industry-first partner program and powerful new capabilities for Oracle Database@Google Cloud. This partnership aims to redefine multicloud solutions, offering customers enhanced flexibility, scalability, and innovation.

The announcement includes the planned availability of the Oracle Base Database Service on Oracle Database@Google Cloud, alongside expanded capabilities such as support for Oracle Exadata X11M and Oracle Interconnect for Google Cloud for U.S. Government Cloud customers. Additionally, 11 new regions are set to launch within the next 12 months to meet growing customer demand.

The new partner program will enable Oracle and Google Cloud partners to purchase Oracle Database@Google Cloud through the Google Cloud Marketplace and resell it to their customers. This initiative is designed to empower technology partners to integrate Oracle Database@Google Cloud into their solutions, fostering innovation and addressing emerging use cases.

Karan Batta, Senior Vice President, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure said, “The upcoming reseller program for Oracle Database@Google Cloud is not only a first for us but also for the multicloud market overall. This milestone reflects our commitment to meeting the evolving needs of organizations worldwide.”

While also, Andi Gutmans, Vice President and General Manager of Databases, Google Cloud said, “Our collaboration with Oracle has always prioritized our joint customers’ needs. The availability of Oracle Base Database Service will further accelerate cloud migrations with the technical strengths required for business-critical workloads.”

This partnership underscores Oracle and Google Cloud’s dedication to delivering innovative multicloud solutions, enabling businesses to harness the combined strengths of Oracle’s database technology and Google Cloud’s analytics and AI tools.

Additional Features

1. Advanced Analytics Integration: Emphasize how the database capabilities seamlessly integrate with Google Cloud’s advanced analytics tools to provide actionable insights.
2. AI-Driven Innovations: Mention any potential AI tools that could leverage Oracle Database for enhanced predictive analytics and machine learning applications.
3. Improved Security: Detail cutting-edge security features ensuring data protection across multicloud environments.
4. Global Accessibility: Highlight the accessibility of the database across various geographical regions with high-speed interconnects.
5. Enhanced User Experience: Include usability improvements, such as simplified onboarding or user-friendly interfaces for database management.
6. Industry-Specific Solutions: Showcase tailored solutions for industries like healthcare, finance, and retail.

Benefits

1. Cost-Efficiency: Outline savings through optimized database services and reduced cloud migration costs.
2. Scalability for Growth: Stress the ability to scale services to meet growing data and performance requirements.
3. Streamlined Multicloud Operations: Emphasize smooth integration across multiple cloud platforms, reducing complexity and downtime.
4. Partner Program Advantages: Share how the new program supports partners in accelerating their innovation, offering them broader opportunities to deliver cutting-edge solutions.
5. Faster Deployment Times: Highlight reduced deployment times for critical workloads due to streamlined processes.

Other such cloud database partnerships that were successful

Here are a few successful examples of collaborations between cloud providers and database companies:

1. Oracle and Microsoft Azure Partnership: This collaboration introduced the OCI-Azure Interconnect, enabling seamless multicloud operations with low-latency connections. It allowed customers to use Oracle Database services alongside Microsoft Azure applications, providing flexibility and cost savings.
2. AWS and MongoDB: Amazon Web Services (AWS) partnered with MongoDB to offer managed database services, enhancing scalability and performance for applications requiring NoSQL databases.
3. Google Cloud and SAP: Google Cloud collaborated with SAP to integrate SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems with Google Cloud’s AI and analytics tools, enabling businesses to optimize operations and gain deeper insights.

These partnerships demonstrate how combining strengths can lead to innovative solutions and improved customer experiences. Let me know if you’d like to explore any of these examples further!

Google Cloud concluded its highly anticipated annual event, Google Cloud Next 2025, held at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas from April 9 to April 11. The event brought together industry leaders, developers, and innovators to showcase groundbreaking advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and enterprise solutions.

The event featured over 700 sessions, 10 keynotes, and interactive demos, providing attendees with hands-on experiences and insights into the future of technology. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, emphasized the transformative potential of AI, stating, “With Google Cloud, we see AI as the most important way we can help advance your mission. The opportunity with AI is as big as it gets.”

Key Highlights of Google Cloud Next 2025

AI Breakthroughs

Google unveiled its most advanced AI model, Gemini 2.5 Pro, featuring enhanced multimodality and native image and audio generation capabilities. The company also introduced Gemini 2.5 Flash, a cost-efficient model optimized for low latency.

For organizations that need to run their workloads on-premises for regulatory or sovereignty reasons, Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) now brings Gemini models on-premises via partners like NVIDIA and Dell.

Next-Generation Hardware

• The Ironwood TPU represents a significant leap in AI computational architecture. It is designed to handle the immense demands of next-generation AI workloads, including large language models (LLMs) and advanced machine learning tasks.
• Each Ironwood pod integrates up to 9,216 liquid-cooled chips, delivering an astounding 42.5 exaflops of compute power. This makes it one of the most powerful AI systems available, surpassing even the world’s largest supercomputers2.
• The TPU features advanced SparseCore technology, which accelerates applications like recommendation systems and financial modeling. It also boasts 192 GB of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) per chip, ensuring rapid data access and reduced latency.
• Energy efficiency is a key focus, with Ironwood delivering double the performance per watt compared to its predecessor, thanks to optimized chip design and innovative cooling systems

Generative Media Models

New tools like Imagen 3 for text-to-image generation, Chirp 3 for audio creation, and Lyria for music generation were showcased, further solidifying Google’s leadership in generative AI.

Enterprise Solutions

Google announced updates to its Workspace tools, including AI-powered features like “Help Me Analyze” in Sheets and audio summaries in Docs. The Cloud Wide Area Network (Cloud WAN) was also unveiled, offering enterprises faster and more cost-effective connectivity.

AI Agent Development

The launch of the Agent Development Kit (ADK) and Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol empowers developers to create and manage multi-agent systems with ease.

AI Hypercomputer Launch

Google introduced a revolutionary AI hypercomputer, purpose-built to optimize AI workloads. This system combines the power of Ironwood TPUs and advanced GPUs, enabling faster and more cost-effective training of AI models. With over 9,000 chips per pod and 42.5 exaflops of compute power, the hypercomputer sets a new benchmark for AI infrastructure.

Expanded Generative AI Tools

Google showcased significant upgrades to its generative AI suite. Imagen 3 now offers enhanced image quality and the ability to repair missing or damaged parts of images. Chirp 3 can generate realistic voice samples from just 10 seconds of audio input, while Lyria transforms text prompts into 30-second music clips, opening new creative possibilities.

AI Agent Ecosystem

The introduction of the Agent Development Kit (ADK) and Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol marked a transformative step in AI collaboration. These tools allow developers to create sophisticated multi-agent systems with minimal coding and enable seamless communication between AI agents across diverse technologies.

Google Workspace Enhancements

New AI-powered features were unveiled to boost productivity. “Help Me Analyze” in Sheets provides instant insights from data, while Docs now offers audio summaries of content. These updates aim to make everyday tasks more efficient and intuitive for users.

Cloud WAN Expansion

Google announced the global availability of its Cloud Wide Area Network, designed to deliver faster, more secure connectivity for enterprises. This network offers speeds up to 40% faster than the public internet and reduces total cost of ownership by up to 40%.

Sustainability Initiatives

Google emphasized its commitment to sustainability with the Ironwood TPU, which delivers double the performance per watt compared to its predecessor. The hardware innovations align with Google’s sustainability goals, focusing on reducing energy consumption while delivering unparalleled performance. The liquid cooling systems and energy-efficient designs are pivotal in addressing the growing environmental impact of AI

Similar to the previous edition of Google Cloud Next 2024, Google Cloud Next 2025 underscored the company’s commitment to innovation, specially in AI, sustainability, and empowering businesses worldwide. With a $75 billion investment in AI and cloud infrastructure for 2025, Google is poised to lead the next era of technological transformation.

Google Cloud Next 2024, held from the 9th to 11th of this month, lived up to its billing as the company’s premier AI event. With a focus on innovation and transformation, Google unveiled a suite of new features and services designed to empower businesses with the power of artificial intelligence.

The Google Cloud Next ’24 keynote focused on the transformative power of Generative AI (GenAI) and its integration across Google Cloud services.

Overall, the keynote painted a clear picture of Google Cloud’s vision: a future empowered by AI, where businesses can leverage its capabilities to unlock new possibilities and gain a competitive edge.

A core theme of the event was the integration of AI into all aspects of Google Cloud’s offerings. This included the announcement of Google Vids, a revolutionary AI-powered video creation tool for businesses. Vids promises to streamline the video creation process, making it easier for companies to produce high-quality content.

AI and Machine Learning (AI/ML)

• Gemini 1.5 Pro on Vertex AI: Developers can now leverage the power of Google’s latest large language model (LLM), Gemini 1.5 Pro, through Vertex AI and other AI development platforms (public preview).
• AI Hypercomputer Enhancements:
  • Cloud TPU v5p: This next-generation AI accelerator promises significant performance improvements for demanding workloads.
  • A3 Mega VMs powered by NVIDIA H100 GPUs: This collaboration with NVIDIA offers new virtual machine instances with double the bandwidth per GPU compared to A3 instances, ideal for large-scale AI training and inference.
• Vertex AI and Generative AI: Google Cloud is making it easier for developers to build generative AI applications with tools and services within Vertex AI. “Vertex AI Agent Builder allows people to very easily and quickly build conversational agents,” Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said. “You can build and deploy production-ready, generative AI-powered conversational agents and instruct and guide them the same way that you do humans to improve the quality and correctness of answers from models.”
• Imagen 2: This is inside its Vertex AI developer platform and has more of a focus on enterprise. Imagen 2 is now generally available and comes with some fun new capabilities, including inpainting and outpainting. There’s also what Google’s calling “text-to-live images” where you can now create short, four-second videos from text prompts, along the lines of AI-powered clip generation tools

Databases

• Gemini comes to databases: Google calls Gemini in Databases a collection of features that “simplify all aspects of the database journey.” In less jargony language, it’s a bundle of AI-powered, developer-focused tools for Google Cloud customers who are creating, monitoring and migrating app databases.
• AlloyDB AI Enhancements: Google’s serverless SQL database gains new vector capabilities, simplified access to remote models, and improved natural language processing support.
• BigQuery Takes Center Stage: Google Cloud emphasizes BigQuery as its unified data analytics platform, including its multi-cloud capabilities with BigQuery Omni.
• Data & Search Integration: Businesses can now incorporate Google Search results into their models, enabling them to leverage the latest and most comprehensive information.

Chrome Enterprise Premium

Google is expanding its Chrome Enterprise product suite with the launch of Chrome Enterprise Premium. What’s new here is that it mainly pertains to security capabilities of the existing service, based on the insight that browsers are now the endpoints where most of the high-value work inside a company is done.

Compute and Networking

• New General-Purpose VMs: C4 and N4 virtual machines powered by 5th Generation Intel Xeon processors offer enhanced compute capabilities.
• Google Axion Chip: Google unveils its first custom Arm-based CPU designed specifically for data center use, promising improved efficiency. Google says its Axion instances offer 30% better performance than other Arm-based instances from competitors like AWS and Microsoft and up to 50% better performance and 60% better energy efficiency than comparable X86-based instances.

Google Distributed Cloud (GDC)

• NVIDIA GPUs on GDC: Businesses can now leverage NVIDIA GPUs for both connected and air-gapped configurations within Google Distributed Cloud.
• GKE on GDC: Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), the container orchestration platform, becomes available on GDC, offering a consistent experience for managing containerized workloads.
• Pre-validated AI Models on GDC: Google Cloud is validating various open-source AI models, including Gemma and Llama 2, for deployment on air-gapped and connected edge environments within GDC.

Workspace Innovations

• Google Vids: This AI-powered video creation tool empowers businesses to produce high-quality video content more efficiently. Google claims users can make videos alongside other Workspace tools like Docs and Sheets. The editing, writing and production is all there. You also can collaborate with colleagues in real time within Google Vids.
• Enhanced Docs and Sheets: New features in Docs include improved Live Caption Translation, while Sheets gains new table formatting and building block templates for faster spreadsheet creation

Security

AI Security Add-on for Workspace: This add-on leverages AI to automatically identify and secure sensitive files within Google Drive, offering an extra layer of protection for businesses.

Open Source

• JetStream and JAX Advancements: Google is committed to open-source AI development with enhancements to JetStream (large model training) and JAX (numerical computation library).
• PyTorch/XLA Releases: Collaboration with the PyTorch community to improve performance through XLA (Accelerated Linear Algebra).

By focusing on AI, security, open-source development, and an enhanced user experience, Google Cloud is making a strong push to empower businesses in the digital age.

Google Cloud Next ’24 painted a clear picture: AI is no longer a future technology, it’s the present. By offering a comprehensive suite of AI-powered tools and services, Google Cloud is poised to empower businesses of all sizes to leverage the power of AI and unlock new possibilities.

Bard in India, no more waitlists! As part of Google’s announcement, made during the Google I/O 2023 event, that there wont be any more waitlist process and will now be available across 180 countries!

As India begins playing around with Bard, lets try to understand everything about it!

What is Bard

Bard is a large language model, also known as a conversational AI or chatbot trained to be informative and comprehensive. It is trained on a massive amount of text data, and is able to communicate and generate human-like text in response to a wide range of prompts and questions. For example, it can provide summaries of factual topics or create stories.

As a creative and helpful collaborator, Bard can supercharge your imagination, boost your productivity, and help you bring your ideas to life—whether you want help planning the perfect birthday party and drafting the invitation, creating a pro & con list for a big decision, or understanding really complex topics simply.

How is Bard different from ChatGPT?

Bard and ChatGPT are both large language models, but they have some key differences.

Data source: Bard is trained on an “infiniset” of data chosen to enhance its dialogue and has access to the internet in real time, whereas ChatGPT is trained on a pre-defined set of data that hasn’t been updated since 2021.
Accuracy: Bard uses LaMDA for dialogue applications, while ChatGPT uses GPT-3.5. LaMDA was built on an open source network to understand natural language. It’s trained to find patterns in sentences and between words to create dialogue versus individual words.
Creativity: Bard is more creative than ChatGPT, and it can generate more original text formats, like poems, code, scripts, musical pieces, email, letters, etc.

Overall, Bard creates more chunks of information, while ChatGPT creates content in a single text prompt.

What is the difference between Conversational AI and Generative AI?

Conversational AI is the Artificial intelligence (AI) that can engage in conversation and refers to tools that allow users to communicate with virtual assistants or chatbots. They mimic human interactions by identifying speech and text inputs and translating their contents into other languages using massive amounts of data, machine learning, and natural language processing. While Generative AI often uses deep learning techniques, like generative adversarial networks (GANs), to identify patterns and features in a given dataset before creating new data from the input data.

Can the responses of AI be trusted?

Any AI is built upon the data fed to it during its training, so any response from any AI bot should be taken with a pinch of salt and must be cross-checked. Since the AI industry is still developing, its too early to write a comparison between which AI technology is better or more accurate and which is not.

Accelerating people’s ideas with generative AI is truly exciting, but it’s still early days, and Bard is an experiment. While Bard has built-in safety controls and clear mechanisms for feedback in line with our AI Principles, be aware that it may display inaccurate information or offensive statements.

Can Bard help with coding?

Yes, Bard can help with coding and topics about coding, but Bard is still experimental and you are responsible for your use of code or coding explanations. So you should use discretion and carefully test and review all code for errors, bugs, and vulnerabilities before relying on it. Code may also be subject to an open source license and Bard provides related information.

How to access Bard?

Visit Google’s Bard site, read and agree to some terms and conditions and you are then free to use it!

Google IO 2023 started with CEO Sundar Pichai’s keynote. The key announcements include Google Pixel Fold, Pixel Tablet, Pixel 7a, Android 14 and lots and lots of AI announcements. You can watch the complete keynote here…

Google Search

Undoubtedly Google’s most successful product, search is at the very core of Google’s mission. Google Search will be getting 2 new features.

Bringing Google’s generative AI Bard to its search platform, Generative AI capabilities in Search will help you when deciding what to buy. It taps into Google’s Shopping Graph, the world’s most comprehensive dataset of constantly-changing products, sellers, brands, reviews and inventory.

With the new generative AI experience in Search, you’ll get even more from a single search. You’ll be able to quickly make sense of information with an AI-powered snapshot, pointers to explore more and natural ways to ask.

What’s new from Android

Large-screen Android devices will be better than ever with more than 50 Google apps have been optimized for large screens, including Gmail, Photos and Meet. And your favorite apps like Spotify, Minecraft and Disney+ look beautiful and feel intuitive on larger screens.

With the foldables becoming the driving force to revive the tablets market, Google has been focusing on improving the Android experience on tablets.

The next screen real estate getting popularity is the smart watch market. Wear OS has grown over five times since the launch of Wear OS 3 in 2021, and it is the fastest-growing smartwatch platform in the world. Developers are investing in the platform as well. Soon, WhatsApp is bringing their first-ever smartwatch app to Wear OS, and more great experiences are coming this year from Gmail, Calendar and more.

Bringing the power of generative AI to Android, soon, you’ll be able to give your compose-itions an extra spark of personality. Magic Compose, a new Messages feature powered by generative AI, will help you transform your text message to your desired vibe before you hit send.

Pixel 7a

Pixel 7a, the next generation Pixel phones, is powered by Google’s Tensor G2 chip, 8GB RAM, 6.1 inch screen, a much larger camera sensor and will be going on sale today at the Google Store for $499. As a launch offer, Google is giving away their PixelBuds A-Series free of cost for a limited time!

Pixel Tablet

Large screens still have a lot of potential. PixelTablet is built to deliver uniquely helpful experiences—11 inch display, AI powered Google Tensor G2 chip, amazing battery life and a completely reimagined docking stand!

When the Pixel Tablet is in the docked or as Google calls it, in the hub mode, it turns into a digital photo frame and a voice assisted smart home controller.

Pixel Fold

One of the big announcements, unveiling the foldable Pixel phone. It’s also quite thin while folded, at 12.1 millimeters, the hinge is a big part of that. This is 180-degree fluid friction hinge, which means that you can put it to any place you want.

PixelFold is the thinnest foldable on the market. Comes with and expansive 7.6-inch immersive display and a 5.8-inch front display.

The device houses a three-camera system: a 48-megapixel main, 10.8-megapixel ultrawide and a 10.8-megapixel telephoto with 5x optical Zoom and 20x Super Res Zoom. The front-facing camera, meanwhile, is 9.5 megapixels. Is a IPX8 water-resistant design.

The real secret sauce in the Pixel Fold experience is, unsurprisingly, the software. The app continuity when switching between the external and internal screens is quite seamless, allowing you to pick where you left off as you change screen sizes. Naturally, Google has optimized its most popular third-party apps for the big screen experience, including Gmail and YouTube.

The system is powered by the same Tensor G2 chip you’ll find in the Pixel 7, 7a and Pixel tablet.

Starting at $1799, this ultra-premium device combines personal AI, Google Tensor G2, and innovation for a Pixel smartphone that unfolds into an incredible compact tablet. Google is giving away free Pixel Watch for limited time pre-orders!

Find my device, even when offline

Currently, Find My Device helps you locate misplaced devices that have location capabilities and are connected to the internet. However, Google will be launching a refreshed Find My Device experience that makes it easier than ever to locate your devices and belongings quickly and securely by ringing compatible devices or viewing their location on a map in the app – even when they’re offline.

The new Find My Device network will harness over a billion Android devices across the world to help you locate your missing belongings like headphones, tracker tags, or even your phone via Bluetooth proximity.

RCS adoption

When you are texting in a group chat, you shouldn’t have to worry about what kind of phone everyone is using – sharing high-quality images and video, seeing typing notifications and staying protected with end-to-end encryption should just work. Out with the old (SMS & MMS) and in with the new. RCS is a modern standard that provides end-to-end encryption and supports high quality videos and photos in texts. There are now over 800 million people with RCS, on the way to 1 billion by the end of the year.

Bard – Conversational AI from Google

Bard lets you collaborate with generative AI. Google is not only removing its waitlist for Bard and making it available, in English, in over 180 countries and territories, but it’s also launching support for Japanese and Korean with a goal of supporting 40 languages in the near future.

As a creative and helpful collaborator, Bard can supercharge your imagination, boost your productivity, and help you bring your ideas to life—whether you want help planning the perfect birthday party and drafting the invitation, creating a pro & con list for a big decision, or understanding really complex topics simply.

Bard will soon become more visual in a couple of helpful ways. Bard will incorporate relevant images in its responses. It’ll also become easy for you to prompt Bard with images, giving you even more ways to explore and create.

Google Maps

Google Maps unveiled a new “Immersive View for Routes” feature in select cities. The new feature brings all of the information that a user may need into one place, including details about traffic simulations, bike lanes, complex intersections, parking and more. You can even see air quality, weather and traffic.

PaLM 2

PaLM – Pathways Language Model from Google, a 540-billion parameter, dense decoder-only Transformer model trained with the Pathways system. PaLM 2 will power Google’s updated Bard chat tool, the company’s competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and function as the foundation model for most of the new AI features the company is announcing today.

Sec-PaLM, introduced last month, is trained on security intelligence and powers new Google Cloud offerings that help organizations and security analysts detect, understand and defend against threats.

Med-PaLM 2 can help answer questions and summarize insights from a variety of dense medical texts.

Workspace

From the very beginning, Google Workspace was built for collaborating in real time with other people — and now you can also collaborate in real time with AI!

These new Workspace features can help you turn ideas into action. Simply describe what you’re trying to accomplish, and Google Sheets will generate a plan that helps you get organized.

New AI tools in can help you level up your Slides presentations. Simply pick a slide and use a simple text prompt to generate an original visual that conveys your unique artistic vision.

All of these new features are part of a powerful new way of working that Google is calling Duet AI for Google Workspace.

It can get really irritating if an email containing an event that you didn’t ask for, or don’t want to attend, directly gets added to your Google Calendar. This in effect is spamming your calendar.

Google has now brought in an easy way to keep your calendars clean. If you’ve never interacted with someone, their invitations won’t be added automatically to your calendar unless you indicate that you do know them. You’ll still be able to respond to the invitation sent to you in the email and change this behaviour at any time in Settings > General > Event settings > Add invitations to my calendar. Here you can select whether you would like to add invitations from everyone / only if the sender is known / when I respond to the invitation in email.

On Android, you can check your device’s permissions to prevent untrusted third-party apps from adding events to your calendar.

Google has decided to appeal Competition Commission of India’s fine over ‘unfair’ business practices on Android.

Google was fined $113.60 million by Competition Commission of India in relation with Play Store policies in October 2022. The Competition Commission of India found Google requiring device manufacturers to pre-install its entire Google Mobile Suite and mandating prominent placement of those apps “imposition of unfair condition on the device manufacturers” and thus was in “contravention of the provisions of Section 4(2)(a)(i) of the Act.

Google informed that it has decided to approach National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), the nation’s appellate tribunal, to appeal against the fine.

Ever tried to search for something in Google and due to some unfortunate event, didn’t receive a response? Ever wondered is there a problem with your network or with Google? Are you amongst the ones who’d open Google Search to simply check if your network is working?

Google finally launches its own official Google Search Status Dashboard, where you can check exactly this. Ofcourse with this, you can check if the issue is with your network or with Google. But while at it, one can even check if their search engine is all up and running. If their crawlers are crawling the world wide web. If the search engine is indexing the pages and ofcourse if the search engine itself is working or not.

In the past, Google would update the Google Search Central Twitter Account with updates to disruptions in service.

This dashboard provides status information on the systems that power Google Search. The dashboard shows issues that affect many sites or users, so if you see an issue listed in the dashboard, it may be related to the problem you’re experiencing.

Head to the user guide on how the Google Search Status Dashboard works to understand all about the process on what happens when an issue gets listed, how it gets investigated, the followup information and finally how the detected issue gets fixed or migrated.

The Dashboard also lists historical system statuses and incidents in its Summary and History pages for incidents that have occurred duing the past 5 years.