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Tech News
Mode has purchased JibJab, the e-card and video company known for its 2004 Bush-Kerry viral video, in a deal valued at up to $29.5 million. The acquisition is part of Mode's broader strategy of buying consumer software businesses and offering users free premium access or other rewards in exchange for sharing their data, including for AI training purposes.
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.
Google is rolling out sponsored listings in AI Mode search results to India, Australia, Canada, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Singapore, with Brazil, Mexico and the UK slated to follow later in Q4 2026. The company says ads will carry a 'Sponsored' label to separate them from AI-generated answers, and in the US it is also testing ads that appear during follow-up questions within the same AI Mode conversation.
Alphabet's shares dropped more than 10% in after-hours trading after earnings of $2.12 per share missed estimates of $3.01, even as quarterly revenue rose 25% to $127.6 billion. Executives said Google's AI Search mode generates less ad revenue per query than classic search, and capital expenditure more than doubled year over year to $51.4 billion, pushing free cash flow negative.
Google announced during Alphabet's Q3 earnings call that it is rolling out ads within AI Overviews and AI Mode to international markets, alongside new multi-turn ad formats in the U.S. Alphabet reported $127.6 billion in revenue, up 25% year over year, but Search ad growth slowed to 12% from 17% in Q2 and 19% in Q1, and Alphabet shares fell 8% after the results. Chief business officer Philipp Schindler said click-through rates on sponsored listings in AI Mode now match those of organic listings.
Google's AI Mode in Search gives a direct answer confirming Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election when queried from outside the United States, but avoids stating that fact plainly for users located in the US. Google has acknowledged the inconsistency and says it is working on a fix.
Testing by Ars Technica found Google's AI Mode responded to queries about who won certain presidential elections, including 2020, 2024 and 2012, by directing users to outside sources like the FEC rather than stating a winner directly. The same tool answered questions about other elections, including those from 2000 through 2016, with direct, correct responses. Different staffers at the outlet got inconsistent results depending on which election years they asked about.
Perplexity has updated the voice mode in its Mac app and web version to run on OpenAI's gpt-live-1 model, which can listen while it speaks. The update, available now to Pro and Max subscribers, lets users manage multiple Computer sessions, start new tasks, and handle Projects within a single voice session.
The Browser Choice Alliance, a group of rival browser makers, commissioned the Behavioural Insights Team to study Microsoft's tactics for keeping users on Edge. The resulting report identifies 10 'dark patterns,' including ads that discourage downloading rival browsers, incomplete default-browser switches, Windows S mode restrictions, and links in Widgets, Search, lock screens, Outlook and Teams that open in Edge regardless of a user's chosen default.
Android Auto includes settings that let drivers swap the position of the map and media player, mirror their phone's wallpaper onto the car display, force day or night mode on maps, and disable automatic media playback at startup. Wallpaper mirroring must be enabled from the car's Android Auto settings rather than the phone, via a toggle for 'Use Phone's Wallpaper'.
Ghostty's 1.4.0 release delivers performance and memory improvements, a complete Kitty graphics protocol implementation including animation, and SSH integration upgrades, built from 2,889 commits by 172 contributors over seven months. The maintainers also disclosed and patched five security vulnerabilities, including paste-protection and tmux control mode crashes affecting versions 1.3.0 and 1.3.1.
Apple's Lockdown Mode, a feature that restricts iPhone functionality to block sophisticated spyware attacks, blocked the 2023 'Blastpass' exploit that installed Pegasus spyware via iMessage on unprotected devices. Apple pays double its usual bug bounty to researchers who find ways to bypass the feature, and allows users to exempt specific contacts, apps, and websites from its restrictions, though doing so reduces protection.