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Tech News
Alphabet reported quarterly results in which Google search revenue came in below Wall Street expectations, raising concerns about competitive pressure from AI chatbots. The company also posted negative free cash flow for the period, and shares are on track for a significant post-earnings decline.
Thrive Holdings, led by Joshua Kushner, is acquiring home security company ADT in an all-cash deal worth $7.6 billion. The deal, first reported by Bloomberg, would take ADT private and is expected to close in early 2027. ADT CEO Jim DeVries said the partnership would bring new resources to accelerate innovation and improve customer experience.
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.
An Android Authority contributor details Pixel settings he routinely turns off after setup, including auto-adding new app icons to the home screen, the always-listening 'Now Playing' song-recognition feature, and the camera's Top Shot mode. He cites clutter, battery drain, and privacy concerns around constant listening as reasons for disabling these defaults.
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.
Google is facing difficulty generating advertising revenue from its AI Mode search feature, according to a report. The shift toward conversational, AI-generated answers appears to be complicating the company's traditional ad-based business model.
South Korea's Korea Media and Communications Commission fined Google KRW 42.9 billion ($32 million) and Apple KRW 20.81 billion ($15.6 million) for violating the Telecommunications Business Act. The regulator's investigations, begun in 2022, found both companies forced in-app payment methods, charged a 26 percent commission on third-party payments, blocked external payment options, and delayed app reviews without explanation; Apple was also found to calculate commissions differently for Korean versus overseas developers.
Android Authority contrasts Google's approach of weaving Gemini AI into core Android functions like messaging and photography with Apple's more restrained AI rollout on the iPhone 18 Pro. The piece notes Apple has focused on building on-device processing to keep AI features local and private rather than pushing users toward cloud-connected tools.
A hands-on review of the Hisense UR8 RGB MiniLED TV compared its picture quality against the pricier UR9 model and LG's Micro RGB Evo TV across several streaming titles. The UR8 delivered accurate, vivid colors in scenes like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, but showed less shadow detail, dimmer skin tones, and reduced contrast compared to the higher-end models in dark or nuanced scenes.
Google has launched Gemini 4 Carbon, a frontier AI model it says tops rival systems from OpenAI and Anthropic on the AA Index v5.0 benchmark and leads in categories like agentic coding, computer use and science. The company highlighted particularly strong results in cybersecurity, claiming the model is better at finding, prioritizing and patching vulnerabilities at the root cause, and twice as likely to generate secure code as its predecessor, Gemini 4 Argon. Carbon will initially be restricted to select cybersecurity defense firms for testing before wider release through Google's Fairwind Program.
Samsung has confirmed via an in-app notice that it will discontinue Samsung News on December 21, 2026, halting all content delivery and widget updates. The company is advising Galaxy users to remove the widget from their home screens, and personal data collected through the service will be deleted except where local regulations require retention.
Google updated Gemini in Sheets so AI-generated cells now display the web sources used to populate them, letting users verify data without searching separately. The update also increases Gemini's processing capacity to 3,000 cells per request, with Google claiming some 500-cell tasks run up to 55 times faster than manual entry. Google Sheets is additionally rolling out compact pivot tables and improved Excel compatibility to all users.