Tim Sweeney on Epic’s antitrust victory royale over Google
Tim Sweeney finally has a win. On Monday, a federal jury surprised the world by siding with Fortnite maker Epic Games in its fight to break Google’s control over Android apps — even though “walled garden” rival Apple almost entirely won a similar case two years ago. The nine-person jury decided that Google has an…
Google Fiber is offering early access to $250 per month 20-gig service
The new 20Gbps internet service, which comes through Google’s GFiber Labs, won’t come cheap: it’ll cost customers $250 per month. Google plans to offer the connection initially in Kansas City, North Carolina (Triangle Region), Arizona, and Iowa. The service availability coincides with last-mile infrastructure upgrades by Google that include the installation of new Nokia 25G PONs,…
Epic win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight
Three years after Fortnite-maker Epic Games sued Apple and Google for allegedly running illegal app store monopolies, Epic has a win. The jury in Epic v. Google has just delivered its verdict — and it found that Google turned its Google Play app store and Google Play Billing service into an illegal monopoly. The jury…
Google is finally saying goodbye to Google Play Movies & TV
Google is about to fully move on from the Google Play Movies & TV. It had already moved Android and iOS users to the Google TV app, removed the app from every Roku and most smart TVs, and pulled the app from Android TV in October. In a recently published support document, however, Google detailed…
Epic v. Google: everything we’re learning live in Fortnite court
“Impairment means something is there, it’s being used, it just isn’t as good. Prevented means you shut it down.” Epic’s expert Bernheim argues that Google’s expert Gentzkow “ignores four critical aspects of Google’s conduct,” including: 1. Google impairs competition without preventing it entirely 2. Google’s conduct targets comeptition as it emerges 3. Google is dominant…
Google Messages might let you edit texts after they’re sent
Google could be developing a new feature for its Messages app that would let you edit a message after having sent it, according to code spotted by TheSpAndroid. References to the feature first appeared in a beta version of the app on November 19th, and there are four flags that appear to reference it, though…
Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis Says Gemini Is a New Breed of AI
Demis Hassabis has never been shy about proclaiming big leaps in artificial intelligence. Most notably, he became famous in 2016 after a bot called AlphaGo taught itself to play the complex and subtle board game Go with superhuman skill and ingenuity. Today, Hassabis says his team at Google has made a bigger step forward—for him,…
Google Just Launched Gemini, Its Long-Awaited Answer to ChatGPT
Increasing talk of artificial intelligence developing with potentially dangerous speed is hardly slowing things down. A year after OpenAI launched ChatGPT and triggered a new race to develop AI technology, Google today revealed an AI project intended to reestablish the search giant as the world leader in AI. Gemini, a new type of AI model…
Google Gemini, Lego Fortnite, and everything else to try this week
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 17, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also, you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage. I also have for you a new Mastodon app, a bunch of new AI…
Apple, Google, and Comcast’s plans for L4S could fix internet lag
A few months ago, I downgraded my internet, going from a 900Mbps plan to a 200Mbps one. Now, I find that websites can sometimes take a painfully long time to load, that HD YouTube videos have to stop and buffer when I jump around in them, and that video calls can be annoyingly choppy. In…