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Ireland's Data Protection Commission has fined Google €403 million for violations of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation. The decision makes Google one of the companies hit hardest by European privacy enforcement and is likely to fuel ongoing debate about how major technology firms handle users' personal data and whether regulators' penalties are a sufficient deterrent.

Elon Musk plans to more than double xAI's computing capacity by the end of the year, expanding the startup's fleet to over 1.2 million Nvidia GPUs. The rapid buildout underscores the escalating race in artificial intelligence infrastructure, as xAI competes with rivals like OpenAI and Google while Nvidia's chips remain the essential hardware powering the AI boom.

Meta has unveiled Muse, an AI model that analysts on Wall Street describe as arriving 'out of nowhere' as the company tries to catch up in the AI race. Financial commentators are debating whether the release signals Meta can close the gap with rivals, and what it means for the company's heavy AI spending.

Daniel Gultsch, developer of the Android XMPP chat app Conversations, has announced the app is breaking up with Google Play and is now free. The move ends distribution through Google's app store, and the essay explains the reasoning behind leaving the platform and making the app available at no cost.

Google has announced Project Suncatcher, a research initiative to run machine learning infrastructure on solar-powered satellite constellations in orbit. The plan, outlined on Google's research blog, envisions data centre-scale compute in space to tap unlimited solar energy as terrestrial energy demands from AI grow. Early discussion centres on feasibility, launch costs, and whether orbiting hardware could realistically scale.

A new Norwegian science study reports that children and teenagers aged 9 to 18 are increasingly turning to AI chatbots instead of Google for information and everyday questions. Researchers say the shift is happening fast, but its consequences for how young people learn, judge sources and handle misinformation are still largely unknown, prompting calls for closer attention from educators and parents.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed a lower court's dismissal of patents covering internet advertising technology owned by a party challenging Google. The court found the claims ineligible under Section 101 of the Patent Act, which governs whether inventions are patentable subject matter. The decision is being closely watched by intellectual property practitioners, as it adds to the line of Federal Circuit rulings limiting software and business-method patents in the digital advertising space.

OpenAI has paused model training following a further AI incident, according to the claim being circulated. Commenters say the series of problems at the company keeps growing and are asking when regulators or the industry will act. The report is being shared alongside references to other AI players including Anthropic, Meta, Google and Grok, framing the pause as part of a broader pattern of AI safety concerns.

Elon Musk's xAI and X Corp have removed Apple from their antitrust lawsuit over AI partnerships, leaving the iPhone maker with one fewer legal battle. The suit had accused Apple of favoring OpenAI's ChatGPT in its App Store rankings. Reports are asking whether Apple's legal worries over its AI dealings are now easing, though Google remains a defendant in the case.

Google is planning to launch an experimental satellite into orbit, marking Big Tech's first concrete move toward building artificial intelligence data centers in space. The idea is to test whether computing infrastructure can operate off-planet, where solar power is constant and cooling constraints differ from Earth. The announcement has drawn wide attention as tech companies scramble for energy to power the AI boom.

Google has confirmed that its Gemini 4 model is replacing Gemini 3.5 Pro entirely, making it the company's current flagship AI offering. The announcement indicates that users and developers on Gemini 3.5 Pro will be transitioned to the newer model. Details on timelines, pricing and feature changes have not been spelled out in initial coverage.

Google's Android developer verification requirement is often being described as a blanket ban on sideloaded APKs, but that is not what it does. Starting September 30, it applies initially in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand, and only to installs from designated participating stores onto certified Android devices. Direct APK downloads from the web are not covered at this stage, and ADB-based development and on-device testing continue as before. Writers are walking through how the rules differ by distribution method and what to check before the scope widens.

Google is marking its 28th anniversary, with coverage recalling how the company began as a search engine project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and went on to reshape how people find information online. Outlets are revisiting the company's history, from its Stanford origins to its growth into one of the world's dominant technology firms under Alphabet.

Google is reportedly preparing a challenge to Meta's Muse in the competition to develop agentic AI systems. The report highlights the escalating rivalry between the two tech giants over AI tools that can act autonomously on a user's behalf. Details on Google's counter-offering remain limited, but the move signals that agentic AI is becoming the next major battleground in big tech.

Google researchers say the hacking group ShinyHunters has broadened its attacks targeting Oracle's PeopleSoft software. The group, known for large-scale data theft and extortion, is reportedly exploiting vulnerabilities to breach organizations using the enterprise platform. The findings raise concerns for companies running PeopleSoft, as security teams are urged to patch systems and monitor for intrusion attempts linked to the campaign.

Alibaba has launched Qwen Intelligence as a full-stack agentic AI platform designed for smartphones. The platform is positioned to let phone makers run AI agents that can handle tasks on a user's behalf, extending Alibaba's Qwen model family beyond cloud services and into on-device mobile experiences. Coverage so far frames it as Alibaba's push to compete in the fast-moving smartphone AI space, where Google, Apple and Chinese rivals are also racing to embed assistants.

A published critique takes aim at Demis Hassabis, the Google DeepMind chief and Nobel laureate, over his remarks on artificial intelligence and creativity in visual art. The piece challenges the claim that AI systems can genuinely be creative, arguing that machine-generated images lack the intention and lived experience behind human artistic work. It reflects a wider, ongoing debate among artists and technologists about whether AI tools produce real art or mere imitation.

Google is using AI tools together with differential fuzzing to rewrite critical C dependencies in Rust, aiming to keep behavior identical while removing memory-safety issues. The approach lets automated comparison between old and new implementations verify correctness, and it marks another step in Google's broader push to move security-sensitive infrastructure from C to memory-safe Rust.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority has revised its plan for Google, proposing a 12-slot search choice screen for Android and Chrome users that would include AI assistants alongside traditional search engines. The proposal also requires clear attribution of publisher sources. It signals UK regulators moving to extend choice-screen remedies beyond search into the AI era.

Google is phasing out its custom Gemini chatbots known as Gems and migrating their functionality into a new feature called Skills. The change means users will have to adapt as existing Gems are transitioned automatically. German tech coverage notes the move as Google continuing to reshape its Gemini assistant platform.

Google has begun testing a feature that lets users in India buy products from Flipkart, the Indian e-commerce platform owned by Walmart, directly through its Gemini assistant and AI Mode in Search. The trial points to a broader push to turn AI chat and search experiences into shopping channels, as tech companies race to blend conversational AI with online commerce.

Portugal's national football team is in the spotlight as a matchup against Norway trends across Google in multiple countries, including the US, UK and India. Interest comes alongside fan criticism of Cristiano Ronaldo, who faced verbal attacks after a shocking near-miss in Portugal's game against Wales. Match build-up and Ronaldo's form are driving the conversation.

TensorFlow, Google's open-source machine learning framework, is trending on GitHub this week. The repository provides tools for building and training machine learning models, and is written largely in C++ with interfaces for Python and other languages. The posts visible are simply links to the repository with its standard description, so there is no specific release, announcement, or discussion evident from the snippets. Trending likely reflects renewed attention from developers, but the exact trigger is not clear from the posts.

Google is testing AI-powered shopping in India, letting users buy products from Walmart-owned Flipkart directly through its Gemini chatbot and AI Mode. The move allows purchases via conversational AI and is seen as a significant step toward agentic commerce, where AI assistants complete transactions on behalf of users rather than just recommending products.

Google has announced Project Suncatcher, an initiative to test its AI chips in space for the first time. The plan points to putting data-processing hardware aboard satellites, a step that could eventually move parts of AI computing off Earth. The announcement is drawing attention across the tech and semiconductor world, with observers weighing the engineering challenges of running chips in orbit and what it could mean for the future of data centers.

Google is moving forward with an unusual experiment to test running data centers in orbit, a project long discussed as a way to harness continuous solar power and ease the energy and cooling demands of AI computing. The news that the project is finally leaving Earth is drawing attention across the tech press, with observers weighing whether space-based infrastructure could become a realistic answer to data centers' growing power needs.