Google

cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/45756214

Gmail has good news for anyone who regrets their email address.

For the first time in the platform's 22-year history, account holders now have the ability to change their Gmail address name. Previously, Gmail users who wanted to do so had to create a brand new account.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai shared the announcement in a post on X.

"2004 was a good year, but your Gmail address doesn’t need to be stuck in it. To say goodbye to v0t3f0rp3dr02004@gmail.com or mrbrightside416@gmail.com (or whatever you were into at the time), go to your Google Account settings and choose any name available. You’ll keep your old username and you can sign in with both," he said.

GFiber and Astound to merge with Alphabet selling majority stake to Stonepeak.

Google Fiber, now officially called GFiber, is being sold to private equity firm Stonepeak and will be combined with cable-and-fiber firm Astound Broadband to create a larger Internet service provider.

Google owner Alphabet announced Wednesday that it will keep only a minority stake in the fiber ISP that launched with grand ambitions in 2012 but scaled back its expansion plans in 2016. Alphabet and Astound owner Stonepeak announced “an agreement to combine GFiber with Astound Broadband, creating a leading independent fiber provider,” with the merged company to be “majority owned by Stonepeak, an investment firm specializing in infrastructure and real assets.”

tried to open a YT link a friend sent me, and got greeted with this. Freetube and yt-dlp are also affected

Our Results about you tool can now help you find and request the removal of Search results containing your government-issued IDs, like a passport, driver's license or social security number.

We are introducing a new way to request the removal of non-consensual explicit images on Search.

Google agreed to pay $68 million to settle claims its voice assistant illegally spied on users to, among other things, serve them advertisements, Reuters reports.

Google did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement of the class-action case, which accused the firm of “unlawful and intentional interception and recording of individuals’ confidential communications without their consent and subsequent unauthorized disclosure of those communications to third parties.” The suit further claimed that “information gleaned from these recordings was wrongly transmitted to third parties for targeted advertising and for other purposes.”