When Google launched its long-awaited Find My Device network in April 2024, it arrived to… well, what's the opposite of "fanfare"? A slow network rollout and damning reviews dampened enthusiasm for what was supposed to be a wave of Android-powered rivals to Apple's AirTag. But a year's a long time in tech, and Google has been promising improvements almost since Find My Device was first switched on. I wanted to know: have things gotten any better?

To find out, I set about testing the latest trackers from the three main companies that make compatible models: Pebblebee, Chipolo, and Motorola. For now Google doesn't make its own Pixel or Nest-branded tracker, and Samsung's SmartTags use its own SmartThings Find network, not Google's. In the name of science, I also got hold of an Apple AirTag and a Tile tracker to serve as reference points for Google's chief competitors.

I found a network that's clearly improved in the year since launch, one that in good conditions - a busy city, a tracker that's not moving - is every bit as good as Apple's and Tile's. It's when tracking gets trickier, in rural settings or with moving tags, that a gap between Google and the competition still opens up …

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Testimony this week from Google’s antitrust trial shows that Google gives Samsung an “enormous sum of money” each month to preinstall the Gemini AI app on Samsung devices, reports Bloomberg. Now that Judge Amit Mehta has ruled Google’s search engine is an illegal monopoly, its lawyers are sparring with the DOJ over how severe a potential penalty should be.

Peter Fitzgerald, Google’s vice president of platforms and device partnerships, testified on Monday that Google’s payments to Samsung started in January. That’s after Google was found to have violated antitrust law, partially due to similar arrangements with Apple, Samsung, and other companies for search. When Samsung launched the Galaxy S25 series in January, it also added Gemini as the default AI assistant when long-pressing the power button, with its own Bixby assistant taking a back seat.

The Information reports that today Fitzgerald testified that other companies had pitched Samsung on deals to preinstall their AI assistant apps, including Perplexity and Microsoft. But a DOJ lawyer pointed out that Google’s letters attempting to amend its deal with phone makers, which the company presented at the hearing, were only sent last week, just ahead of the trial. Also, internal slides presented today apparently showed that Google “was considering more restrictive  distribution agreements that would have required partners to preinstall Gemini alongside Search and Chrome,” The Information writes.

According to Bloomberg, Fitzgerald said the Gemini deal is a two-year agreement that, along with fixed monthly payments, sees Google giving Samsung a percentage of its subscription revenue for the Gemini app. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyer David Dahlquist called the fixed monthly payment an “enormous sum,” Bloomberg says. Exactly how enormous isn’t known.

If the DOJ has its way, the results of these hearings could mean Google is forbidden from striking default placement deals in the future, would sell Chrome, and would be forced to license the vast majority of the data that powers Google Search. Google has argued that it should only have to give up the default placement deals.

Correction April 26th: This story previously said Samsung receives a percentage of ads revenue from the Gemini app, as originally reported by Bloomberg. We’ve updated the story to reflect that Google shares Gemini subscription revenue instead.

• Tech giants are known for their challenging interviews.
• Google, Meta, and Nvidia top the list of rigorous interviews with multiple rounds and assessments.
• But tough questions show up across industries, according to employee reports on Glassdoor.

It's tough to break into high-paying companies.

Google is notorious for having a demanding interview process. Aside from putting job candidates through assessments, preliminary phone calls, and asking them to complete projects, the company also screens candidates through multiple rounds of interviews.

Typical interview questions range from open-ended behavioral ones like "tell me about a time that you went against the status quo" or "what does being 'Googley' mean to you?" to more technical ones.

At Nvidia, the chipmaking darling of the AI boom, candidates must also pass through rigorous rounds of assessments and interviews. "How would you describe __ technology to a non-technical person?" was a question a candidate interviewing for a job as a senior solutions architect shared on the career site Glassdoor last month. The candidate noted that they didn't receive an offer.

Tech giants top Glassdoor's list of the hardest companies to interview with. But tough questions show up across industries — from luxury carmakers like Rolls-Royce, where a candidate said they were asked to define "a single crystal," to Bacardi, where a market manager who cited a difficult interview, and no offer, recalled being asked, "If you were a cocktail what would you be and why?"

The digital PR agency Reboot Online analyzed Glassdoor data to determine which companies have the most challenging job interviews. They focused on "reputable companies" listed in the top 100 of Forbes' World's Best Employers list and examined 313,000 employee reviews on Glassdoor. For each company, they looked at the average interview difficulty rating as reported on Glassdoor.

Here's a list of the top 90 companies that put candidates through the ringer for a job, according to self-reported reviews on Glassdoor.

Google's oldest smart thermostats have an expiration date. The company has announced that the first and second generation Nest Learning Thermostats will lose support in October 2025, disabling most of the connected features. Google is offering some compensation for anyone still using these devices, but there's no Google upgrade for European users. Google is also discontinuing its only European model, and it's not planning to release another.

Both affected North American thermostats predate Google's ownership of the company, which it acquired in 2014. Nest released the original Learning Thermostat to almost universal praise in 2011, with the sequel arriving a year later. Google's second-gen Euro unit launched in 2014. Since launch, all these devices have been getting regular software updates and have migrated across multiple app redesigns. However, all good things must come to an end.

As Google points out, these products have had a long life, and they're not being rendered totally inoperable. Come October 25, 2025, these devices will no longer receive software updates or connect to Google's cloud services. That means you won't be able to control them from the Google Home app or via Assistant (or more likely Gemini by that point). The devices will still work as a regular dumb thermostat to control temperature, and scheduling will remain accessible from the thermostat's screen.

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Chromebooks on Arm processors are about to get a big boost as developers prepare new versions of ChromeOS with support for Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon chips, reports Chrome Unboxed.

According to a new developer commit message posted in the Chromium project Gerrit code review, the SoCID for a Qualcomm X1P42100, aka the Snapdragon X Plus, is now being included in the Chromium repository, which likely means active development of Chromebooks with the chip is underway.

The Snapdragon X Plus isn’t Qualcomm’s flagship “Elite” processor used in some of the top Windows 11 Arm laptops, but it is capable of the same 45 TOPS of AI performance from its NPU.

Qualcomm’s previous Arm-powered Chromebooks haven’t exactly been powerhouses. The 2021 Acer Chromebook Spin 513 that we’ve tested has great battery life, but a very slow Snapdragon 7c chip powers it. And although the 7c Gen 2 version was faster in devices like the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3, Qualcomm ended up not bringing the Gen 3 to Chromebooks. That left Chromebooks with chip options from MediaTek and Intel, the latter of which hasn’t been known for excellent battery life.

Google has just announced that it’s ending software updates for the first-generation Nest Learning Thermostat, released in 2011, and the second-gen model that came a year later. This decision also affects the European Nest Learning Thermostat from 2014. “You will no longer be able to control them remotely from your phone or with
Google Assistant, but can still adjust the temperature and modify schedules directly on the thermostat,“ the company wrote in a Friday blog post.

The cutoff date for software updates and general support within the Google Home and Nest apps is October 25th.

In other significant news, Google is flatly stating that it has no plans to release additional Nest thermostats in Europe. “Heating systems in Europe are unique and have a variety of hardware and software requirements that make it challenging to build for the diverse set of homes,“ the company said. “The Nest Learning Thermostat (3rd gen, 2015) and Nest Thermostat E (2018) will continue to be sold in Europe while current supplies last.”

Losing the ability to control these smart thermostats from a phone will inevitably frustrate customers who’ve had Nest hardware in their home for many years now. Google’s not breaking their core functionality, but a lot of the appeal and convenience will disappear as software support winds down. The early Nest Learning Thermostats can at least be used locally without Wi-Fi, which isn’t true of newer models.

Still, this type of phase-out is a very real fear tied to smart home devices as companies put screens into more and more appliances. Is 14 years a reasonable lifespan for the these gadgets before their smarts fade away? There’s no indication that Google plans to open source the hardware.

In a clear attempt to ease customer anger, Google is offering a $130 discount on the fourth-gen Nest Learning Thermostat in the US, $160 off the same device in Canada, and 50 percent savings on the Tado Smart Thermostat X in Europe since the Nest lineup will soon be gone.

The original Nest thermostats were released while the company was an independent brand under the leadership of former Apple executive Tony Fadell. Google acquired Nest in 2014 for $3.2 billion.

• Google's AI answers will give you a definition of any made-up saying. I tried: "You can't lick a badger twice."
• This is exactly the kind of thing AI should be really good at — explaining language use. But something's off.
• Is it a hallucination, or AI just being too eager to please?

What does "You can't lick a badger twice" mean?

Like many English sayings — "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," "A watched pot never boils" — it isn't even true. Frankly, nothing stops you from licking a badger as often as you'd like, although I don't recommend it.

(I'm sure Business Insider's lawyers would like me to insist you exercise caution when encountering wildlife, and that we cannot be held liable for any rabies infections.)

If the phrase doesn't ring a bell to you, it's because, unlike "rings a bell," it is not actually a genuine saying — or idiom — in the English language.

But Google's AI Overview sure thinks it's real, and will happily give you a detailed answer of what the phrase means.

Greg Jenner, a British historian and podcaster, saw people talking about this phenomenon on Threads and wanted to try it himself with a made-up idiom. The badger phrase "just popped into my head," he told Business Insider. His Google search spit out an answer that seemed reasonable.

I wanted to try this myself, so I made up a few fake phrases — like "You can't fit a duck in a pencil" — and added "meaning" onto my search query.

Google took me seriously and explained:

So I tried some others, like "The Road is full of salsa." (This one I'd like to see being used in real life, personally.)

A Google spokeswoman told me, basically, that its AI systems are trying their best to give you what you want — but that when people purposely try to play games, sometimes the AI can't exactly keep up.

"When people do nonsensical or 'false premise' searches, our systems will try to find the most relevant results based on the limited web content available," spokeswoman Meghann Farnsworth said.

"This is true of Search overall — and in some cases, AI Overviews will also trigger in an effort to provide helpful context."

Basically, AI Overviews aren't perfect (duh), and these fake idioms are "false premise" searches that are purposely intended to trip it up (fair enough).

Google does try to limit the AI Overviews from answering things that are "data voids," i.e., when there are no good web results to a question.

But clearly, it doesn't always work.

I have some ideas about what's going on here — some of it is good and useful, some of it isn't. As one might even say, it's a mixed bag.

But first, one more made-up phrase that Google tried hard to find meaning for: "Don't kiss the doorknob." Says Google's AI Overview:

So what's going on here?

The Good:

English is full of idioms like "kick the bucket" or "piece of cake." These can be confusing if English isn't your first language (and frankly, they're often confusing for native speakers, too). My case in point is that the phrase is commonly misstated as "case and point."

So it makes lots of sense that people would often be Googling to understand the meaning of a phrase they came across that they don't understand. And in theory, this is a great use for the AI Overview answers: You want to see the simply-stated answer right away, not click on a link.

The Bad:

AI should be really good at this particular thing. LLMs are trained on vast amounts of the English written language — reams of books, websites, YouTube transcriptions, etc., so being able to recognize idioms is something they should be very good at doing.

The fact that it's making mistakes here is not ideal. What's going wrong that Google's AI Overview isn't giving the real answer, which is "That isn't a phrase, you idiot"? Is it just a classic AI hallucination?

The ugly:

Comparatively, ChatGPT gave a better answer when I asked it about the badger phrase. It told me that it was not a standard English idiom, even though it had the vaguely folksy sound of one. Then it offered, "If we treat it like a real idiom (for fun)," and gave a possible definition.

So this isn't a problem across all AI — it seems to be a Google problem.

This is somewhat different from last year's Google AI Overview answers fiasco where the results pulled in information from places like Reddit without considering sarcasm — remember when it suggested people should eat rocks for minerals or put glue in their pizza (someone on Reddit had once joked about glue in pizza, which seems to be where it drew from).

This is all very low-stakes and silly fun, making up fake phrases, but it speaks to the bigger, uglier problems with AI becoming more and more enmeshed in how we use the internet. It means Google searches are somehow worse, and since people start to rely on these more and more, that bad information is just getting out there into the world and taken as fact.

Sure, AI search will get better and more accurate, but what growing pains will we endure while we're in this middle phase of a kinda wonky, kinda garbage-y, slop-filled AI internet?

AI is here, it's already changing our lives. There's no going back, the horse has left the barn. Or as they say, you can't lick a badger twice.

You may not use Gemini or other AI products, but many people do, and their ranks are growing. During day three of Google's antitrust remedies trial, the company presented a slide showing that Gemini reached 350 million monthly active users as of March 2025. That's a massive increase from last year, showing that Google is beginning to gain traction among competing chatbots, but Google's estimation of ChatGPT's traffic shows it still has a long climb ahead of it.

The slide was presented during the testimony of Sissie Hsiao, who until recently was leading Google's Gemini efforts. She was replaced earlier this month by Josh Woodward, who also runs Google Labs. The slide listed Gemini's 350 million monthly users, along with daily traffic of 35 million users.

These numbers represent a huge increase for Gemini, which languished in the tens of millions of monthly users late last year. Gemini's daily user count at the time was a mere 9 million, according to Google. Since then, Google has released its Gemini 2.0 and 2.5 models, both of which have shown demonstrable improvements over the previous iterations. It has also begun adding Gemini features to more parts of the Google ecosystem, even though some of those integrations can be more frustrating than useful.

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The remedy phase of Google's antitrust trial is underway, with the government angling to realign Google's business after the company was ruled a search monopolist. The Department of Justice is seeking a plethora of penalties, but perhaps none as severe as forcing Google to sell Chrome. But who would buy it? An OpenAI executive says his employer would be interested.

Among the DOJ's witnesses on the second day of the trial was Nick Turley, head of product for ChatGPT at OpenAI. He wasn't there to talk about Chrome exclusively—the government's proposed remedies also include forcing Google to share its search index with competitors.

OpenAI is in bed with Microsoft, but Bing's search data wasn't cutting it, Turley suggested (without naming Microsoft). "We believe having multiple partners, and in particular Google's API, would enable us to provide a better product to users," OpenAI told Google in an email revealed at trial. However, Google turned OpenAI down because it believed the deal would harm its lead in search. The companies have no ongoing partnership today, but Turley noted that forcing Google to license its search data would restore competition.

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Google has made an unusual announcement about browser cookies, but it may not come as much of a surprise given recent events. After years spent tinkering with the Privacy Sandbox, Google has essentially called it quits. According to Anthony Chavez, VP of the company's Privacy Sandbox initiative, Google won't be rolling out a planned feature to help users disable third-party cookies. Instead, cookie support will remain in place as is, possibly forever.

Beginning in 2019, Google embarked on an effort under the Privacy Sandbox banner aimed at developing a new way to target ads that could preserve a modicum of user privacy. This approach included doing away with third-party cookies, small snippets of code that advertisers use to follow users around the web.

Google struggled to find a solution that pleased everyone. Its initial proposal for FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) was widely derided as hardly any better than cookies. Google then moved on to the Topics API, but the company's plans to kill cookies have been delayed repeatedly since 2022.

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