YouTube (GOOGL) Hopes to Improve User Interactions with Two New AI Features
YouTube (GOOGL), the top video streaming platform in the world, has just announced two new AI features designed to improve the way that users find and interact with videos. One of the new tools is a carousel-style display that appears during search results. This AI-powered feature shows short video clips and descriptions created by content creators. For instance, if someone searches 'best beaches in Hawaii,' they will see a scrollable row of video previews, like 'best snorkel spots' or 'volcanic beaches,' along with helpful summaries and suggestions.
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For now, the carousel feature will only be available to YouTube Premium members in the U.S., and it will focus on searches related to shopping, travel, or things to do in a certain location. YouTube also shared that it will start offering its conversational AI tool to some non-premium users in the U.S., after receiving positive feedback from Premium members. This AI tool can answer questions and recommend more videos without pausing or stopping the one that is already playing, therefore making the experience smoother for users.
Separately, parent company Alphabet launched Gemini CLI, which is a new open-source AI tool that lets users access its Gemini AI model directly through the command line. Designed to be fast and easy to use, it's great for coding, but also handles tasks such as content creation, research, and task management. Google has also integrated Gemini CLI with its Gemini Code Assist tool, so that developers on any plan—free or paid—can use AI-driven coding features in both VS Code and the terminal.
Is Google Stock a Good Buy?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on GOOGL stock based on 29 Buys and nine Holds assigned in the past three months. Furthermore, the average GOOGL price target of $199.20 per share implies 14.8% upside potential from current levels.
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Los Angeles Times
42 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
As Gen Z and millennial women look to get money-smart, Dow Janes is trending upward
After Britt Baker graduated from Harvard Business School in 2016, her friends back in California begged for a souvenir: the best investment advice she'd learned. Baker, 37, indulged them, starting out of her Fairfax, Calif., living room a finance club that eventually became her present-day financial education startup, Dow Janes — which boasts an Instagram following of nearly half a million. But the wisdom she doled out at those early club meetings didn't actually come from business school, she said. It came from her parents and grandparents, who instilled in her from childhood the importance and mechanics of managing money wisely. Not all of Baker's peers were so fortunate, she said. Indeed, research has shown that many parents in the U.S. are unlikely to teach their children, particularly their daughters, about managing money beyond packing a piggy bank. More than half of Americans said their parents never discussed money with them in a 2024 Fidelity survey. Additionally, a 2021 survey revealed a significant gender gap when it came to early financial education, with 22% of female respondents never having received such education from their parents compared with 15% of male respondents. A 2024 PNC Investments survey similarly found that at a young age, female respondents received less instruction about wealth-building strategies than their male counterparts. These education gaps have led to low financial literacy rates among women in the U.S., especially those belonging to Gen Z. But social media-savvy money experts like Baker in recent years have aimed to change that with accessible financial education content. Their engagement has surged as a volatile stock market and global turmoil surrounding Trump's tariffs have left American consumers, especially those new to managing their money, desperate for guidance. On Instagram, finance education accounts like Dow Janes use anything from infographics to trending meme formats to repackage complex economics concepts for public consumption. In recent months, special interest topics like Trump's tariffs and recession threat have gotten more attention. The goal, Baker said, is to get more finance-related content in front of more eyes. 'The more people are talking about money, the better, because it gets less serious,' Baker said. 'It's like, 'Oh, I've heard about a high-yield savings account because of some influencer, so now I'm going to look it up.' 'It's less scary because [they've] heard it mentioned so many times,' she said. Dow Janes' YouTube and social media posts consist mainly of what Baker called 'building block content,' covering finance essentials from creating a budget to improving a credit score. Anyone can access those materials for free. But for those looking for more personalized coaching and guided learning, the startup offers a 12-month financial literacy course, Million Dollar Year. Priced at $4,000 — discounted 50% for those who opt to join after attending a Dow Janes webinar — the program is a self-study video curriculum, Baker said, with corresponding fill-in-the-blank workbooks covering financial concepts 'broken down into bite-sized pieces.' Million Dollar Year is Dow Janes' primary revenue stream, supplemented by occasional live events and Zoom retreats throughout the year. Baker declined to disclose financial details about the company, but she said Dow Janes is a full-time gig for both herself and co-founder Laurie-Anne King. 'We really hold your hand through the whole process,' Baker said. On top of completing their solo homework, participants attend weekly office hours and coaching calls as well as a monthly 'mindset call,' wherein participants practice positive thinking and self-compassion when they've failed to meet certain financial goals. 'It's not just, 'How to save an emergency fund and where to save it,'' Baker said. Instead, Dow Janes encourages its members to shift their long-term habits by healing their relationship with money. For program participant Meg Collins, 72, that psychologically informed approach was the thing she felt was missing from the series of financial courses she completed before finding Dow Janes. Collins is no longer just tracking her spending, she said, 'but I'm understanding why I'm purchasing things, what the triggers are for me.' During a program exercise wherein Collins wrote a letter to 'Mr. Money,' she discovered she blamed her father for not teaching her everything he knew about saving and investing, which was a lot. Then, she blamed the education system for failing to catch her up. 'Somehow or other, the guys will get together and talk about investments,' Collins said, but young women are rarely included in those conversations, and they fall behind. This pattern of women not having agency over their finances is rooted in history, said financial educator Berna Anat. A self-professed 'financial hype woman' and the author of 'Money Out Loud: All the Financial Stuff No One Taught Us,' Anat, 35, said she aims with her beginner-friendly financial content to empower people, especially first-generation women, to build sustainable wealth. Anat makes anywhere from $65,000 to $125,000 per year as a 'finfluencer,' or finance influencer, primarily through speaking engagements and brand partnerships. The Bay Area-based creator doesn't have any finance certifications or a business degree, a fact she's transparent about on social media. But over the years, she's built a following of more than 100,000 on Instagram and brought finance content to a younger demographic than most finance gurus typically reach. As a first-generation daughter of Filipino immigrants, Anat said she is familiar with the obstacles women like her have historically faced in their pursuit of financial freedom. 'It was, like, a generation and a half ago that we couldn't even get our own credit cards,' she said. 'So there's so much catching up that women have to do, not because we're worse at money or we're worse at logistics or math, [but] because we were structurally, purposefully held back from understanding money, accessing our own money and becoming empowered with our own money.' Yet women tend to internalize that knowledge gap, leading them to adopt the identity of being 'bad at money,' Anat said. 'We blame ourselves for not being as good at money as some of our male peers,' Anat said, 'not remembering that a lot of these men have had generations of financial confidence and generations of secrets and knowledge being passed [down] in boys clubs, from father to son, grandpa to whoever.' Anat acknowledged that 'finfluencers' alone cannot and should not close that gap, given they are not held to the same legal and ethical standards as accredited financial planners, certified public accountants or tax attorneys. Regulatory bodies including the Securities and Exchange Commission Investor Advisory Committee in recent years have pushed for broader classification of 'finfluencers' as statutory sellers and investment advisors, which would in turn subject them to higher codes of conduct. However, many are still protected via regulatory loopholes, such as exemptions for those providing only impersonal advice not tailored to any particular client or issuing such advice for free. Even 'finfluencers' who are technically subject to Federal Trade Commission and SEC guidelines, Baker said, often simply don't follow them and benefit from regulatory bodies lacking the bandwidth to rectify that. After graduating from Cal State Fullerton in 2022, Alice Samoylovich, 25, felt she had a decent handle on her savings. But when she began hearing 'finfluencers' like Tori Dunlap of @HerFirst100K talk about wealth-building strategies and investing, she thought, 'Oh s—, I need to catch up.' That feeling of panic worsened when she and her peers recently began seeing sharp drops in their 401k plans due to fluctuations in the stock market. Everyone was thinking, 'Why is that so much lower than it was before?' Samoylovich said. As the daughter of immigrants growing up in Orange County, Samoylovich said she wasn't taught much about money management: 'It was only the kids of, like, the uber-rich get to get that education.' Even now, her friends rarely speak about finances. But with the current administration 'getting more and more into heated situations internationally,' and Gen Z falling further into debt with little prospects for home ownership or sustainable retirement, Samoylovich is fearful about the economic future of the U.S. In a recent Advisor Authority study, 40% of surveyed Gen Z investors said they felt worried about their ability to pay their bills in the next 12 months, citing loans and debts as a competing financial priority. Additionally, 77% of the GenZers reported being concerned about a U.S. economic recession in the same time frame. Anat said people have even started leaving comments on her years-old videos asking her to explain what stagflation is or how to prepare for a recession. Given the widespread panic, she said it's 'all hands on deck' for online finance educators. Baker has also seen increased traffic on Dow Janes' socials, with the Million Dollar Year program's enrollment on the rise and skewing younger than in previous years. (The startup's typical demographic is women between 30 and 50 years old.) Among Dow Janes' 8,000 current program members, Baker said anxiety is mounting. As for what they should do in the face of all this economic uncertainty, Baker said, 'What we always come back to is, control what you can control.' Maybe tariffs do upend the market, she said, but 'if you're investing for a long enough time horizon, generally, historically, the market is up over time.'
Android Authority
42 minutes ago
- Android Authority
Happy hour with Gemini: How I built my perfect summer bartender
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority If you open the liquor cabinets (plural) in my home, you'll find an eclectic collection of spirits ranging from the mundane to the random and unique bottles my husband and I have bought in some small or unknown town during our travels. My husband likes to joke that I gifted him a basic bartending course and now I'm benefiting from it, but in my mind, it was a sound financial investment for both of us. The problem, though, is that there isn't a course varied enough to cover all of our niche spirits, and sifting through tons of online recipe sites for one weird ingredient often yields super complicated cocktails with more ingredients that I don't have at hand. Meanwhile, it's sad to see dozens of bottles sitting unopened, waiting for the perfect cocktail or recipe inspiration to hit. So I decided to take matters into my own hands, or into Gemini model's proverbial hands, and create a bartender who understands me and my ingredient list. The results are often hits, sometimes misses, but you bet that I'm having a lot of fun 'testing' this feature for science, and work, of course… Have you used Gemini (or any other AI chatbot) to get cocktail ideas? 0 votes Yes, all the time. NaN % Yes, from time to time. NaN % Once, I didn't like what it suggested. NaN % No, never. NaN % I don't drink. NaN % Stage one bartender: Quick chat with Gemini Live Rita El Khoury / Android Authority My first experience with my Gemini bartender was a quick chat with Gemini Live. I had a lot of leftover celery leaves with some mint, and I was wondering if they could be used in a cocktail. I asked Gemini if they'd fit in a cocktail, and it suggested a celery and mint mojito. Nothing fancy, but not something I would've thought about off the top of my head — I'm still a baby bartender after all. The celery and mint mojito that Gemini suggested was perfectly balanced and so refreshing that I've done it many times since. The result, though, was so nice and refreshing that I had to do a few double-takes because I didn't think celery leaves would work this well in a cocktail. The ratio was perfectly balanced with the mint. The mix was so good that whenever I've had a bit of celery for other purposes since that fateful day, I've been cutting off some extra leaves to redo this same cocktail. It's a fantastic summer winner. Point, Gemini. Stage two: Trying to replicate restaurant or bar cocktails Rita El Khoury / Android Authority From that day on, I knew I had a tool to help me craft interesting cocktails from scratch (or from other online recipes that I'm too lazy to sift through), but what about replicating existing ones? See, whenever I order a drink at a bar or restaurant and I like it, I have trouble replicating it at home. I am not addicted to alcohol enough to go through many stages of trials and errors; I'd rather just get the recipe right from the get-go. But no bar or restaurant is ever gonna share their specialty, so to Gemini I turn. I can easily recreate my favorite cocktails from my favorite bars and restaurants at home. I've been sharing the ingredient description of the best specialty cocktails I find and asking Gemini to figure out the recipe. The results are better than what my personal approximation would've been, to be honest, with the right balance between spirits, syrups, lemon juice, simple syrup, and others. It feels less like fumbling and more like an educated guess; Gemini puts me on the right track, and I can make minor adjustments to get as close as possible to the original creation. Without lemon juice With lemon juice Thanks to this, I've been able to replicate the most balanced and refreshing summer cocktail I've ever had at any restaurant/bar (Smäak in Tours, France) with rosemary-infused gin, elderflower liqueur, and crème de cassis. Gemini's original recipe didn't include any lemon juice, but in my fading memories, there was a bit of sourness to the original cocktail, so I asked Gemini to add it, and the result was absolute perfection. Now, two years later, Smäak is sadly closed in Tours, but its cocktail lives on in my home. Another Gemini win. Stage three: Giving Gemini the keys to my entire spirits cabinet Rita El Khoury / Android Authority After all that experimentation, I realized the final boss stage in my battle would be to create my own bartender — an agent that knows me, what I have in my liquor storage, what I don't always have at hand, what I like, and what I don't. And that required building my personal bartending Gemini gem. I started by making a spreadsheet of all the spirits and cocktail ingredients in our deep-lying cabinets. It's a simple Google Sheet with one ingredient per row that I can easily keep updated by adding or removing items. Then, I went to Gemini, clicked on Explore Gems > New Gem, and linked my Google Drive file into the Knowledge panel at the bottom. That way, I don't have to re-teach Gemini my ingredients every time; I can update the document, and it has access to the new additions or recent removals. Rita El Khoury / Android Authority On top of that, I gave Gemini extra instructions, explaining the staple ingredients I have, what I like, and told it to always give me three suggestions when building recipes. It took a few tweaks, but the instructions are now well-suited for my use. Whenever I want some fresh inspiration, I ask Gemini for a new cocktail by giving it one main ingredient or flavor request, and it delivers. Rita El Khoury / Android Authority This has led to weird experimentation with fresh basil and rum in a daiquiri (not recommended), then with aniseed liqueur instead (a surprising new favorite!), and with licorice liqueur (a middling result). Rita El Khoury / Android Authority I've been having fun since February, and at a rate of one new cocktail per week or two weeks, you can guess that there are several non-photographed creations here, from a fig and thyme sparkler with gin (recommended) to a berry and yogurt liqueur smoothie that Gemini cheekily suggested could be a nice breakfast and cocktail in one. It's always 5 PM somewhere, as they say! Making my own Gemini Bartender using a gem that knows my preferences and has access to my spirits collection was a game changer. Of all the Gemini use cases and all the special gems I've created, I must admit that this is the best one — and not only because of the delicious cocktails! It's so easy to keep the spreadsheet updated, and it's awesome to have all the instructions ready in a gem, so I don't have to retype all of them or forget something. Plus, it's been fun to push Gemini with random ingredient suggestions or simply let it get creative by telling it 'surprise me.' Honestly, if I had the time to read or watch all the bartending creators out there, I'd do it; I prefer the personal touch, recommendations, and tips. But sadly, this is a quick hobby for me, so I do enjoy the AI shortcut and having a massive smarter search engine at my disposal, if only because it won't waste my time by surfacing cocktails with ingredients I don't have at hand. If you're a spirits collector like me, I suggest you build your own spreadsheet and gem, too. You might be surprised by all the inspiration it'll bring.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Cantor Fitzgerald Reiterates a Hold Rating on Alphabet (GOOG)
Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is one of the 13 Best Long Term Growth Stocks to Invest in Right Now. In a report released on June 25, Deepak Mathivanan from Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated a Hold rating on Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) with a price target of $171.00. The company's fiscal Q1 2025 results showed a 12% year-over-year growth in consolidated revenues to $90.2 billion, with double-digit growth rates reported in Google Search & other, YouTube ads, Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices, as well as Google Cloud. Net income for the quarter rose 46%, and EPS grew 49% to $2.81. A laptop and phone open to Google's services in an everyday setting. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) also reported a 28% rise in Google Cloud revenues to $12.3 billion, attributed to growth in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) across core GCP products, AI Infrastructure, and Generative AI Solutions. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is a holding company with segments including Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets. The Google Services segment operates various services and products, including Android, Google Maps, Google Play, Chrome, Search, and YouTube. While we acknowledge the potential of GOOG as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: The Best and Worst Dow Stocks for the Next 12 Months and 10 Unstoppable Stocks That Could Double Your Money. Disclosure: None. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
