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MapQuest climbed from No. 8 to the top spot on the U.S. App Store this week after declining to comply with an executive order renaming Lake Ontario as 'Lake America,' a change Google Maps and Apple Maps both adopted. Sensor Tower estimates 632,000 U.S. downloads since the order, while MapQuest claims over 1.5 million installs across the U.S. and Canada combined.
Google has shipped Gemini 3.8 Flash, its third Flash-tier model in six weeks, built to handle complex agentic workflows more effectively than earlier versions. Alongside it, the company introduced Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, a specialized version aimed at vulnerability detection and automated patching, though that variant is currently restricted to participants in Google's Fairwind Program.
Google has launched Gemini 3.8 Flash, its third Flash-tier model release in just six weeks, alongside a specialized variant called Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber aimed at vulnerability detection and mitigation. The company touts it as its strongest reasoning and coding model to date, with introductory API pricing of $0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens through year-end before doubling.
An early build of Google's Device Intelligence app, discovered ahead of the Googlebook laptop launch, reveals an opt-in feature that automatically groups related local files into topic-based collections, such as trip planning documents. These collections can be viewed through desktop widgets, and Google states the sorting happens on-device without files leaving the machine or being used for AI training.
A federal judge who previously found Google operates an illegal monopoly in advertising technology has stopped short of ordering the company to sell off that business. Instead, the ruling leaves Google's ad tech operations largely intact, drawing sharp criticism from advocacy groups who argue the remedy fails to match the severity of the monopoly finding.
An independent developer ran a three-week ChatGPT ad campaign for event-seating software PerfectTablePlan, spending £289.52 for 2,988 clicks at an average 10p per click. The campaign yielded just 14 installs, a 0.46% conversion rate and a 69% bounce rate, versus roughly 5% conversion and under half the bounce rate on Google Ads and organic ChatGPT referrals. Working with ad-fraud researcher Dr Augustine Fou, the developer used analytics tooling to rule out bot traffic, pointing instead to poor targeting as the likely cause of the weak results.
Federal Judge Leonie Brinkema rejected the DOJ's push to force Google to divest its AdX ad exchange, despite having ruled last year that Google illegally monopolized two ad tech markets. Instead, she accepted unspecified 'behavioral remedies' that reportedly require Google to open its ad tech tools to competitors, with the ruling issued under seal for now.
Google has agreed to purchase nearly 400 megawatts of electricity from Fervo Energy's Cape Station geothermal plant in Utah, set to come online in 2028, with an option to buy 600 megawatts more through 2030. The power will support a new Google data center as the company seeks additional electricity sources to meet rising AI computing demands.
A federal judge has decided that Google will not be required to divest its ad exchange, formerly known as AdX, despite the company's 2025 loss in the Justice Department's ad tech antitrust case. Judge Leonie Brinkema found Google had illegally tied publishers to its exchange but rejected claims of wrongdoing on the advertiser side of the business. The full set of remedies, which may include fines and mandated changes to business practices, remains sealed for two weeks while parties negotiate redactions.
Google has launched Gemini 3.8 Flash, a successor to Gemini 3.7 Flash released just weeks earlier, which the company says performs more reasoning steps and iteratively calls tools on complex tasks. Input and output token pricing remains unchanged from the prior model, but Google cautions that the new model may consume more tokens overall to boost performance, particularly at higher effort settings. Early analysts note it beats rivals like Anthropic's models on coding, finance, and legal benchmarks, though it can end up pricier in practice due to higher token usage.
Google is rolling out two updates to its Translate app's Live Translate feature. Android users can now keep translations running in the background while switching between other apps, and iPhone users are gaining access to 'listening mode,' which lets them hear translated speech by holding the phone to their ear without headphones.
Google briefly published a Play Store listing for an app called Look Up, tied to its upcoming Googlebook laptop platform, before removing all screenshots and details. Some testers managed to sideload the app on Pixel phones running Android 17 even after it was pulled from public listing. The tool lets users highlight text and instantly query it through Search, Maps, and Flights, plus a chatbot box for follow-up questions.