Google’s Pixel 11 gives Gemini an agentic power that reads every app on your screen — banking and messages included — to act on your behalf. A genuine leap in usefulness, and the most intimate access an AI has ever had to your phone. What it means, especially for Europe.
Google’s $15 billion Indian data centre has drawn protests reading “We cannot drink DATA.” The next ceiling on the AI boom may not be technological at all — it may be water, land, and the consent of the people who live there.
Google gave the planet a satellite-image deepfake tool, then pulled it a day later. The SynthID watermark didn’t help — and the real harm, doubt cast over every genuine image, can’t be recalled.
The European Commission today issued two non-compliance decisions against Google under the Digital Markets Act — €460 million for self-preferencing its own shopping, hotel, transport and sports results in Search, and €430 million for restricting businesses from steering customers to cheaper channels outside Google Play. It is the largest DMA penalty to date. But the more consequential document was adopted seven days earlier: a binding specification requiring Google to open eleven Android features to rival AI assistants by 2027 and to share search data with competing AI chatbots. Europe just banned the Search playbook before it could be run on AI. gafam.ai’s European analysis.
The EU Court of Justice today dismissed Google’s final appeal and upheld the €4.125 billion fine for abusing Android’s dominance — ending an eight-year legal fight with no further recourse. The original 2018 case was about forcing Google Search as the default. But the Android machine the court just ruled on is now the same machine distributing Gemini and Google’s AI to billions of devices. gafam.ai reads today’s ruling through the one lens the mainstream coverage misses: AI distribution.
Google AI Mode — the AI-powered search experience that has already reduced click-through rates to publishers by up to 61% — surpassed 1 billion monthly users this week. The same week, a security researcher disclosed that Gemini API keys remain fully active and usable after explicit deletion — a design flaw with significant enterprise security implications. And European consumer group BEUC filed Digital Services Act complaints against Google, Meta and TikTok over financial scam ads. Three Google stories. One European perspective. gafam.ai.