Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge The latest version of ChromeOS (M124) is out with a couple of nice upgrades, including faster split screen setup and a new web traffic prioritization feature. The update brings other updates with it as well, like a settings UI refresh and updated gesture controls. Judging from screenshots published by 9to5Google, the new “Faster Split Screen Setup” feature will be familiar to Windows users. After you snap an app to one side of the screen, previews of other apps pop up on the other side — pick one, and it pins there for you. Before this update, you ha ..read more

Illustration: The Verge The fate of Google’s search business is now in the hands of Judge Amit Mehta, as closing arguments concluded in the landmark trial on Friday. The Department of Justice and plaintiff states made their last arguments Thursday on Google’s alleged anticompetitive conduct in the general search market, and on Friday focused on its allegedly illegal conduct in search advertising. Google was also under fire (separately) for failing to retain chat messages that the DOJ believes could have been relevant to the case. The government is trying to show that Google locked up key dist ..read more

Illustration: The Verge Google has had a longstanding ban on sexually explicit ads — but until now, the company hasn’t banned advertisers from promoting services that people can use to make deepfake porn and other forms of generated nudes. That’s about to change. Google currently prohibits advertisers from promoting “sexually explicit content,” which Google defines as “text, image, audio, or video of graphic sexual acts intended to arouse.” The new policy now bans the advertisement of services that help users create that type of content as well, whether by altering a person’s image or generati ..read more

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge The Rabbit R1 is not good. Neither is the Humane AI Pin. Does that signal the end of the AI gadget revolution before it ever really got started? Or is it just that two companies shipped too little, too soon? The whole AI industry is moving fast, and it sometimes makes you wonder where it’s actually headed — or if there’s anywhere at the end of the road. On this episode of The Vergecast, we discuss our reviews of these new devices, their potential going forward, and whether there’s ever going to be an AI gadget that isn’t just your phone. Because the phone AI is c ..read more

Illustration: The Verge Google has not one but two Department of Justice antitrust trials this year — and the first one, over Google Search, is finally coming to a close. On Thursday, lawyers showed up at the district court in Washington, DC, for the first of two days of closing arguments in the bench trial before Judge Amit Mehta. This was the first tech anti-monopoly lawsuit the government had filed in two decades since US v. Microsoft. Its outcome directly affects one of the most valuable companies in the world. At this stage, the judge will only determine whether Google is liable for the a ..read more

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images Follow along as websites, apps, and services adopt passkeys in preparation for a passwordless future. The need to remember lengthy, complicated passwords to sign in to your accounts could soon be a thing of the past thanks to passkeys: a new login technology that replaces passwords with the authentication mechanisms built into your own devices. Unlike passwords or PINs, which can be stolen, they link access to the websites, apps, and services that support passkey sign-on with Face ID on your iPhone, Windows Hello on your PC, or the fingerprin ..read more

Illustration: The Verge An article in by HouseFresh, a site dedicated to air quality, hit a nerve in February: it outlined how independent publishers have been gradually bumped out of Google search results, with big media companies taking their place. Months later, the situation has only gotten more dire, according to a follow-up published by HouseFresh. In February, HouseFresh managing editor Gisele Navarro called out publishers like BuzzFeed and Rolling Stone as some of the culprits that publish content about air purifiers despite a lack of expertise — but Google rewards these sites with hig ..read more

Artificial intelligence might someday make technology easier to use and even do things on your behalf. All the Rabbit R1 does right now is make me tear my hair out. “You’re holding a taco.” My Rabbit R1 told me that the other day. I was sitting at a table at a cafe on the National Mall in Washington, DC, and I had just picked up this $199 orange rectangle of a gadget and pointed it at the food in my hand. With unwavering, absolute confidence, the R1 told me it was a taco. It was a Dorito. A Cool Ranch Dorito, to be specific. I’d shown the R1 the bag just a few seconds earlier and asked about t ..read more

Google may start asking users that still utilize passwords instead of their passkeys to wait 24 hours before they can access their account. | Illustration: The Verge Google is kicking off World Password Day by updating us on its efforts to replace the often hacked, guessed, and stolen form of authentication with passkeys. Their passwordless approach relies on device-based authentication instead, making logging in faster and more secure. In a blog post on Thursday, the company announced that over 400 million Google accounts (of the at least 1.5 billion reported since 2018) have used passkeys si ..read more

An ethernet port! | Screenshot: Superdell-TV Walmart is apparently getting ready to release a new Onn “Pro” Google TV 4K streaming box that’s also a smart speaker. Yesterday, YouTuber Superdell-TV hosted a livestream where he showed off the streaming device, which he said he had bought from the retailer in-store for $50. As 9to5Google noted today, the Onn Pro was already previously rumored but hasn’t been announced, so it may have been stocked by mistake, as it still doesn’t appear on Walmart’s website. The device is essentially a higher-end version of the Onn Google TV streaming box that Walm ..read more