Latest news with #Google.com
News18
07-07-2025
- Business
- News18
Google's AI Overviews Face Major Battle With EU Regulators After New Complaints
Last Updated: Google AI features like Overviews have taken over the search results with content offered by publishers and media companies. Google's AI moves have got everyone's attention, including its rivals. But this is another case of AI being run through with the help of data that is widely available across the internet. The new AI Overviews are effectively showing you content from across the platforms and summarising for an easy read. But the content is being sourced through publishers who have raised concerns and shared their issues with the European Union regulators this month. The company is investing big in AI, which is why you have features like Overviews, AI mode and more. Google AI mode was introduced at the I/O 2025 earlier this year and now people in US and India can try out the new Search avatar. But it seems the reach and knowledge about the new feature is limited, so Google is taking matters into its own hands and making it easily available through the main Google webpage. Google is using AI mode as its centre of attraction with its recent Doodle. New products need a lot of visibility and what better way than to use the best real estate on the web, which has to be the webpage where people go to search for answers and other materials. About the Author S Aadeetya First Published: July 07, 2025, 14:26 IST
News18
02-07-2025
- Business
- News18
Google Really Wants You To Try The New AI Mode, Promotes On Homepage Doodle
Google AI mode looks to bring Search in a new avatar and is available for people in the US and India on mobile and web. Google AI mode was introduced at the I/O 2025 earlier this year and now people in US and India can try out the new Search avatar. But it seems the reach and knowledge about the new feature is limited, so Google is taking matters into its own hands and making it easily available through the main Google webpage. Google Doodles are generally used to mark an occasion or celebrate a popular personality but for this time, Google is using AI mode as its centre of attraction. New products need a lot of visibility and what better way than to use the best real estate on the web, which has to be the webpage where people go to search for answers and other materials. AI Mode On Google Homepage: Trying Much? So why does Google need to promote AI mode on its homepage? Well, it is a new feature and the company is investing billions into its AI ecosystem, where Search is going to be a big part of the future. In fact, AI overviews have changed the dynamics of the media publishing industry where people have been forced to tweak their content strategy to appease the AI lords. Google has been quoted in a recent CNBC report, where the company says putting the AI mode on its homepage was just a fun promo, which may sound true but there is a lot more to this move than just being fun. The New Search AI mode is now available for people in India, and why not, Google's biggest market outside of the US, where people use its products in large numbers. You get the cheapest mobile data in the world, and what better way to ramp up its user base than to launch it in India. You will find the new AI Mode for Search listed in the Google Labs section which you can open by clicking on the Beaker icon on the top-left of the Google mobile app, and top-right if you have Google Search open on the desktop. You are greeted with the 'Meet AI Mode' message at the top of the screen and below that you have the dialog box where you can ask anything.
Yahoo
16-06-2025
- Yahoo
Hackers are sneaking malware into your browser using Google's link, and antivirus software can't stop it
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Attackers use real Google URLs to sneak malware past antivirus and into your browser undetected This malware only activates during checkout, making it a silent threat to online payments The script opens a WebSocket connection for live control, completely invisible to the average user A new browser-based malware campaign has surfaced, demonstrating how attackers are now exploiting trusted domains like to bypass traditional antivirus defenses. A report from security researchers at c/side, this method is subtle, conditionally triggered, and difficult for both users and conventional security software to detect. It appears to originate from a legitimate OAuth-related URL, but covertly executes a malicious payload with full access to the user's browser session. The attack begins with a script embedded in a compromised Magento-based ecommerce site which references a seemingly harmless Google OAuth logout URL: However, this URL includes a manipulated callback parameter, which decodes and runs an obfuscated JavaScript payload using eval(atob(...)). The use of Google's domain is central to the deception - because the script loads from a trusted source, most content security policies (CSPs) and DNS filters allow it through without question. This script only activates under specific conditions. If the browser appears automated or the URL includes the word 'checkout,' it silently opens a WebSocket connection to a malicious server. This means it can tailor malicious behavior to user actions. Any payload sent through this channel is base64-encoded, decoded, and executed dynamically using JavaScript's Function constructor. The attacker can remotely run code in the browser in real time with this setup. One of the primary factors influencing this attack's efficacy is its ability to evade many of the best antivirus programs currently on the market. The script's logic is heavily obfuscated and only activates under certain conditions, making it unlikely to be detected by even the best Android antivirus apps and static malware scanners. They will not inspect, flag, or block JavaScript payloads delivered through seemingly legitimate OAuth flows. DNS-based filters or firewall rules also offer limited protection, since the initial request is to Google's legitimate domain. In the enterprise environment, even some of the best endpoint protection tools may struggle to detect this activity if they rely heavily on domain reputation or fail to inspect dynamic script execution within browsers. While advanced users and cybersecurity teams may use content inspection proxies or behavioral analysis tools to identify anomalies like these, average users are still vulnerable. Limiting third-party scripts, separating browser sessions used for financial transactions, and remaining vigilant about unexpected site behaviors could all help reduce risk in the short term. These are the best VPNs with antivirus you can use right now Take a look at our pick of the best internet security suites HP unveils the future of super-HD video meetings, but it comes at a huge price
The Star
06-06-2025
- Business
- The Star
Google's new AI-powered search has arrived. Proceed with caution
Recently, I asked Google to help me plan my daughter's birthday party by finding a park in Oakland, California, with picnic tables. The site generated a list of parks nearby, so I went to scout two of them out – only to find there were, in fact, no tables. 'I was just there,' I typed to Google. 'I didn't see wooden tables.' Google acknowledged the mistake and produced another list, which again included one of the parks with no tables. I repeated this experiment by asking Google to find an affordable carwash nearby. Google listed a service for US$25 (RM106), but when I arrived, a carwash cost US$65 (RM276). I also asked Google to find a grocery store where I could buy an exotic pepper paste. Its list included a nearby Whole Foods, which didn't carry the item. I wasn't doing traditional web searches on I was testing the company's new AI Mode, a tool that is similar to chatbots like ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, where users can type in questions to get answers. AI Mode, which is rolling out worldwide in the coming weeks, will soon appear as a tab next to your search results. The arrival of AI Mode underscores how new technology is redefining what it means to search for something online. For decades, a web search involved looking up keywords, like 'most reliable car brands,' to show a list of relevant websites. Now, with generative AI, the technology that powers chatbots by using complex language models to guess what words belong together, you can ask more specific questions or make complicated requests. That could include directing it to create a chart comparing the five most reliable 2025 sedans. Google, which has already been showing AI-generated summaries on its search pages for the past year, said AI Mode was a new frontier for search that would complement – but not yet replace – its traditional counterpart. 'We're really trying for AI Mode to be best at a new class of questions that are harder, more specific, and really the best for when you're going back and forth trying to get something done,' Robby Stein, a Google executive who oversees the search product team, said in an interview. The prominent placement of AI Mode on shows that AI is rapidly becoming unavoidable. Meta has added a chatbot, Meta AI, in Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, and Microsoft has integrated AI into its Bing search engine and its latest Surface computers. What's unique about AI Mode is that the technology stitches together data from Google's vast empire of Internet services to provide an answer to a query. When you type a question, it could pull data from search queries on location information on Google Maps and Google's shopping data on consumer products. To help assess whether AI is the future of search, I tested the new tool against traditional Google searches for a multitude of personal tasks over span of about a week, including shopping for a toddler car seat, preparing for a Memorial Day barbecue and understanding the plot twists of a popular video game. The results were mixed, with lots of hits but also lots of misses, so I encourage people to use AI Mode with caution. Here's how it went. AI Mode vs Google Search For each of my experiments, I opened AI Mode in one browser tab and with its traditional search bar in another. I typed the same query in each tab, then compared AI Mode's answers with Google's top list of search results. That helped determine whether AI Mode was more effective or I was better off clicking on search results to find the answers. Searching for Things and Places My earlier examples of picnic tables, a grocery item and a cheap carwash were similar in that they involved asking Google to find places or objects in the real world. Each of those queries prompted Google's AI to pull my location information and scan sources found on the web. – Google's AI Mode list included two parks with no picnic tables, but when I used to do the same search, its top three results included parks nearby that had tables. – Google's AI Mode suggested that the carwash I visited was US$25 based on one user review that mentioned this price. But a Google search showed several Yelp reviews of the business, where people reported a more accurate range of US$50 (RM212) to US$70 (RM297). – Google's AI Mode generated a list of grocery stores, including Whole Foods, that potentially sold the aji amarillo paste I needed to make Peruvian chicken for a Memorial Day barbecue. When I did a normal Google search for the paste nearby, the search engine took me to an Instacart listing confirming that one of the stores listed by AI Mode, Berkeley Bowl, carried the paste. Winner: Google search by a long shot. AI Mode's suggestions were sometimes accurate, but failing to check its answers could lead you down the wrong path and waste your time. Google said users of AI Mode could share feedback so it could quickly learn. 'It's early days, and these are technologies that are just starting to roll out now,' Stein said. 'As we learn about how to improve it, we'll improve it as quickly as possible.' Product research In another test, I asked Google's AI to help me research toddler car seats. This is where I saw the technology's potential to become very useful. Unlike a traditional web search, which would require me to read reviews of various car seat models and jot down a list including their pricing and features, AI Mode did all of this for me. I typed: 'I'm shopping for a convertible car seat. Create a table for me including popular models from Graco, Chicco and others and include pricing and main features.' Google immediately generated a handy chart to make comparing five car seats easy. There were some hiccups: Some information was missing from the table, and I noticed that the pricing was wrong for two of the seats. Still, it was simple for me to ask the AI to make corrections, and overall, picking a car seat with this bespoke chart sped up the process for me compared with the old-school method. I tested AI Mode to research other products like birthday gifts for a 1-year-old and the best electric toothbrush. The suggestions were useful. Winner: AI Mode. It's a nifty shopping tool, though it's still wise to do a Google search to double-check the prices. Pop culture After becoming a sleep-deprived father with the attention span of a goldfish, I got in the habit of reading summaries of movies and TV shows with convoluted plots. Recently, I finished a popular video game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 , which had a complex storyline. So I asked Google to summarise what had happened. Google gathered information from various video game blogs, Reddit posts and YouTube videos to piece together a cohesive summary of the game's plot and many twists. It was a satisfying recap. I tested AI Mode on other pieces of pop culture, like the Apple TV show Severance and HBO's The Last of Us , including how the latter show was different from the video game on which it's based. The tool generated similarly useful summaries. Winner: AI Mode. A traditional Google search will show you plenty of plot summaries of TV shows, games and movies on various sites. But sometimes you just want a quick and dirty bullet-pointed recap. Bottom line A traditional Google search is still best for the simple act of looking for things to do nearby, but AI Mode could prove to be a nifty tool for more tedious tasks like product research for online shopping – an instant chart comparing baby car seats is helpful, even if imperfect. Just always check the answers. As for whether this is the future of search, consumers will probably decide that over time. If most of you prefer to use AI Mode, it probably will gradually replace Google as we know it. I still prefer an old-school search, but my feelings could change one chart of baby gear at a time. – © 2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times
The Journal
01-06-2025
- Business
- The Journal
What the hell happened to Google search?
LET'S SAY YOU want a list of Irish ministers. So you google it, of course. The fact that it's its own verb sums up pretty neatly Google's total dominance of online search. 'I'll Bing it,' said no-one, ever. (Sorry, Microsoft.) is the world's most used website . Ninety percent of internet searches go through the company's search engine. It's the front door to the internet, and a navigational tool on which we have become entirely dependent. Who among us has typed out a url in the last decade? Whether you have an Android or an Apple phone, that's Google search you're using when you open your browser. But something has gone wrong. Search for 'Irish ministers' and the top result is… Pat Breen? ( The Journal checked this on several users' desktop browsers with the same result.) Breen was never a minister. He was a junior minister – and that was a while ago now. He lost his seat two elections ago, in 2020. A government website with a full list of current government ministers is quite a bit down the results page. Pat Breen, the Platonic ideal of an Irish minister, according to Google. Google Google Sponsored posts The utility of the search engine has been particularly eroded when it comes to anything that could be sold to you, with top results likely to all be from companies that have paid to skip up the ranking to a position where they would not have organically surfaced. These paid-for top results, which take up more and more space on the search engine results page, are also partly based on your browsing history rather than what you are currently looking for. So a search from an Irish location for 'the best place to buy children's shoes', for instance, can contain sponsored top results for (a) shops that don't sell children's shoes or (b) British online-only retailers. (Good luck buying children's shoes without trying them on.) There are useful results amid the debris of sponsored links and below the paid-for top table, but it feels like harder work than it once was to find them. This isn't helped by the fact that sponsored links are not very visually distinct from organic results. It's hard not to click on them. Ads on search are how Google makes most of its money. ChatGPT's challenge to Google And then, of course, there's the new AI Overview that, for the past year, has appeared in response to certain types of queries. Now, the integration of AI into search is about to be turbocharged as Google goes on the offensive against ChatGPT. It may not be its own verb yet, but for many people, OpenAI's chatbot is becoming as automatic and intuitive a go-to as Google. Liz Carolan, a tech consultant and author of The Briefing newsletter, says that while Google hasn't shared data on the drop-off in people using its search engine, all the signs are that the switch to ChatGPT has been 'profound'. Where once we would have googled, 'what time is the Eurovision', now we are asking chatbots. So Google is becoming a chatbot too. In May, Google began to roll out the next step up from AI Overview. AI Mode, which has been launched in the US, will deliver customised answers to users' questions, including charts and other features, rather than serving up a lists of links. These answers will be personalised based on past browsing history. You will even be able to integrate it with your Gmail account to allow further personalisation. At first, AI Mode will be a distinct option in search, but its features and capabilities will gradually be integrated into the core search product, Google has said . Carolan says this will be as fundamental a change to how we interact with the internet as the original arrival of Google search. 'Instead of navigating between links, we're going to end up using a single interface: a chatbot querying the websites that exist and delivering back to you its interpretation of that, in a conversational style,' she explains. An example of an AI Overview result in Google. Google Google AI nonsense The first problem is, Google's AI results can be nonsense . Kris Shrisnak, a senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties working on AI and tech, says people need to understand one fundamental point about the large language models (LLMs) on which chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google's Gemini AI are based: they are not designed to be accurate. 'When they're accurate, they are coincidentally accurate,' Shrisnak says. 'They're accurate by accident, rather than by design.' For example, Carolan recently wanted to check how many working days there are in June. Google's AI-generated top result helpfully explained that there are 21 working days and no public holidays in June. If you specify 'in Ireland', Google says there are 22 working days and no public holidays. Both answers are wrong. There are 20 working days in June, and the first Monday is always a public holiday. ChatGPT didn't know that either. It counted the bank holiday twice. Google isn't planning to take Monday off. Google Google 'It's just blatantly inaccurate,' Carolan says. 'People are relying on it, and it's giving them inaccurate information.' Aoife McIlraith, managing director of Luminosity Digital marketing agency, says Google had almost certainly released its AI search product sooner than it wanted to. 'There's huge pressure on them. It's the first time they actually had competition in the market for search. It will definitely get better, but it's going to take some time,' McIlraith says. Google defended AI Overviews, telling The Journal that people prefer search with this feature. It said AI Overview was designed to bring people 'reliable and relevant information' from 'top web results', and included links. Advertisement Enshittification Even setting aside the incorporation of undercooked AI answers into results, Google's traditional search product does not seem to be working as well as it once did. Journalist Cory Doctorow coined the term 'enshittification ' in 2022 to describe the pattern whereby the value to users of platforms – be it Amazon, TikTok, Facebook or Twitter – gradually declines over time. Doctorow argued that platforms start by offering something good to users (like an excellent search engine), then they abuse their users to serve business customers (search results buried under ads), and then they abuse both users and business customers to serve their shareholders. Documents released in 2023 as part of a US Department of Justice antitrust case against Google gave a rare insider view of the top of the company, revealing that in 2019 there were tensions over the direction of search. The documents suggested a boardroom struggle over whether Google's search team should be more focused on the effectiveness of the product, or on growing the number of user queries (a better search engine would mean fewer queries, and therefore fewer ads viewed). In one email, the head of search complained his team was 'getting too involved with ads for the good of the product'. Google said this weekend that this executive's testimony at trial had 'contextualised' these documents and clarified the company's focus on users. 'The changes we launch to search are designed to benefit users,' Google said. 'And to be clear: the organic results you see in search are not affected by our ads systems.' Carolan says it's impossible to know exactly what has happened within Google's algorithm, but the quality filters that were once in place to keep low-quality results further down the ranking seem to be struggling to hold back the tide. Visibility on Google can be gamed using certain practices known as search engine optimisation (SEO). SEO is the reason why, for example, online recipes often contain weird, boring essays above the list of ingredients. All publishers use SEO, but the quality of search results is degraded when low quality websites are able to abuse SEO to boost their Google ranking. 'Maybe investment within search engines are going more towards AI than they are towards just sustaining the core search product,' Carolan says. 'It's very hard to say because all of this is happening in very untransparent ways. Nobody gets to see how decisions are being made.' McIlraith says it's widely believed in her industry that recent changes to Google's algorithm – in particular an August 2022 update called, ironically, 'Helpful Content' – have corrupted results. She believes this is having a bigger impact in smaller markets such as Ireland, with more . websites appearing in Irish users' results, for example. 'A lot of people in my industry have been shouting about this, particularly in the past 18 months,' McIlraith says. Google said it makes thousands of changes to search every year to improve it, and it's continuously adapting to address new spam techniques. 'Our recent updates aim to connect people with content that is helpful, satisfying and original, from a diverse range of sites across the web,' it said. For what it's worth, Shrisnak doesn't use Google now, favouring DuckDuckGo, an alternative search engine based on Google that feels a lot like the Google of old. It doesn't collect user data (and is capable of correctly identifying the current government of Ireland). What happens next? Google says AI is getting us to stay where it wants us: on Google. CEO Sundar Pichai has suggested that AI encourages users to spend more time searching for answers online, growing the overall advertising market. Google says AI Overviews have increased usage by 10% for the type of queries that show overview results. Soon, Irish users are likely to see advertising integrated into AI Overview. The company is telling advertisers this will be a powerful tool, putting their ads in front of us at an important, previously inaccessible moment when we are just beginning to think about something. But AI raises existential questions for the production of content for the web as we know it, both in its ability to generate content and as it's being applied in search. In the jargon of digital marketing, the problem is known as 'zero click'. You ask Google a question and get an answer – maybe an AI-generated one – without ever having to click on a blue link. McIlraith says: 'The biggest challenge for all of my clients and the wider industry is that Google is flatly refusing to give us any data around zero click. We cannot see how much our brand is showing up in search results where no click is being attributed.' Until now, there was an unwritten contract: websites provided Google with information for free, and benefited from Google-generated traffic. This contract is broken when Google morphs into a single interface scraping the web to feed its AI in a way that negates the need to click through links to websites to find information. 'The challenge then really becomes, why would I create content?' McIlraith says. 'Why would I create content on my website just for these AIs to come along and scrape it?' Already there are challenges to ChatGPT's practices, with publishers led by the New York Times suing OpenAI over its use of copyrighted works. News/Media Alliance, the trade association representing all the biggest news publishers in the US, last month condemned AI Mode as 'the definition of theft'. 'Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue,' the alliance said. 'Now Google just takes content by force.' Google CEO Sundar Pichai was grilled about this by US tech news website The Verge last week. He said AI Mode would provide sources, adding that for the past year Google has been sending traffic to a broader base of websites and this will continue. He did not give a definitive answer when asked by whether a 45% increase in web pages over the past two years was the result of more of the web being generated by AI, stating that 'people are producing a lot of content'. Carolan speculates that in the single interface, linkless future, with the business model of web publishing broken, the risk is that the internet starts to eat itself: regurgitating AI slop rather than sustaining the production of original material. The information Google's AI Mode and ChatGPT and the rest are feeding off will then degrade. Late stage enshittification. AI search itself may improve, but these improvements will be undermined by this disintegration of the information environment. Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... Our Explainer articles bring context and explanations in plain language to help make sense of complex issues. We're asking readers like you to support us so we can continue to provide helpful context to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. Learn More Support The Journal
