GoKawiil
Tech News
Google told the New York Times it will disable Google Search for school accounts that choose to ban AI features entirely, because the company has tied Search and its Gemini AI/AI Overviews products together. Google education VP Chris Phillips said students at such schools would instead see a message saying search is unavailable.
Searching Google for "Zelda" or "Ocarina of Time" now triggers an animation leading to a retro version of the search results page styled like 1998, complete with blue hyperlinks and the old "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, timed to Nintendo's Ocarina of Time remake launch. The effect only applies to game-related searches and reverts to Google's current results page, including AI Overviews, for anything else.
AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini now search the web on users' behalf, combining live search results with knowledge stored in their training data before presenting a polished, generative-style answer. The reliability of these answers varies: well-documented facts are usually returned correctly, while obscure queries with limited online references are more prone to errors.
Meta's advertising revenue rose 26% year-over-year to $63.1 billion in the third quarter, compared with 12% growth to $63.4 billion for Google's Search division. The 14-point gap is the widest in Meta's favor since 2021, as Meta scales AI-driven ad targeting on Facebook and Instagram while Google faces competition from chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude and its own Muse.
Alphabet reported 25% revenue growth to $127.6bn and a 103% jump in Google Cloud revenue, but quarterly profit fell 25% and free cash flow turned negative by more than $9bn, roughly double the prior quarter's shortfall. The company's market value dropped from $3.97tn to $3.46tn as its stock fell nearly 13% on Thursday, one of its worst single-day showings this year.
Reddit reported third-quarter revenue of $895 million and EPS of $1.40, both above analyst estimates, but gave weak fourth-quarter sales guidance that sent shares down more than 15%. CEO Steve Huffman said the company will begin testing a requirement for all users to create accounts to access the site, starting outside the U.S. in the fourth quarter, with no firm timeline for a full rollout.
Google is rolling out advertisements within AI Mode search results to Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Singapore, with Brazil, Mexico, and the UK to follow later this year. In the US, Google is introducing 'multiturn' ads that can appear across follow-up queries, not just the initial search.
In the quarter ending September 2026, Google Search generated $63.4 billion of Alphabet's $128 billion total revenue, or 49.7%. This marks the first time Search has fallen below 50% of revenue since Alphabet began breaking out the figure separately, down from a range of 52.8% to 62.0% over the prior 31 quarters.
Alphabet reported nearly $128 billion in Q3 2026 revenue and over $26 billion in net income, up 25% year-over-year but with earnings per share of $2.12, well below the $3.02 analysts expected. Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler noted search volume grew 12% year-over-year, down from 17% in Q2 and 19% in Q1, with search revenue flat, while Google Cloud topped $30 billion, beating forecasts.
Alphabet's stock dropped more than 11 percent on Wednesday, erasing over $500 billion in market value, after the company reported that its AI Mode search feature generates less revenue than its traditional text-link search ads. Google's Q3 revenue rose 25 percent year-over-year to $127.6 billion, but search revenue growth slowed to 12 percent from 14.5 percent a year earlier, even as capital expenditures on AI more than doubled to $51.4 billion. Chief business officer Philipp Schindler attributed the softer search growth to 'lower monetization' in AI Mode, according to Search Engine Land.
Alphabet stock fell more than 10% in premarket trading after the company posted its first simultaneous EPS and revenue miss since late 2022, driven by Search revenue falling short of forecasts for a second consecutive quarter. Google Cloud revenue more than doubled, with the CFO calling its TPU systems a 'meaningful contributor,' but that growth wasn't enough to offset investor worry over Search. Microsoft, by contrast, rose in premarket trading as Azure grew 48% to become its largest business, even as a lighter capex figure weighed on cloud-infrastructure stocks.
Alphabet reported search and other segment revenue grew 12% year-over-year to about $63 billion, missing analyst estimates for a second straight quarter even as the company said search query volume grew at its fastest pace in five years. Shares fell roughly 10% in after-hours trading after the company also posted negative free cash flow of $9 billion, triple what analysts expected. Executives attributed the revenue slowdown mainly to foreign exchange effects, which they said would weigh even more heavily next quarter.