2023 Google News

When it comes to battles of the titans, nothing beats a good one-upmanship between Google and Apple.

Just weeks after Apple dropped the new iPhone 15, Google responded with the Pixel 8. But now, Google threw another “top this, will ‘ya” at Apple by releasing the new Android 14 system – an update that’s packed with many features Apple may have to lean on its engineers to match.

The updates include a new Pixel camera interface, more ways to extend battery life and better navigation for kids who use Android-driven tablets. Here’s a device-by-device breakdown of what’s what:

The camera and lock screen

Google claims the system’s new camera interface allows users to toggle easier between photo and video modes by planting an icon for each on the bottom of the phone app. Supposedly, users can make their favorite modes system camera defaults so they can access them quicker and, then, when they want to expand their horizons a bit, they can easily slide over to the new modes they might have missed.

Photographers with advanced skills will like what Google has done in regard to RAW images, too. It's now easier than ever to edit RAW images taken on Pixel 6 and newer phones as well as the Pixel Tablet. RAW images can be automatically opened in your favorite RAW editor directly from the Photos interface.

Power features

Got a drawer full of USB cables? Yep, everyone does. But while they should all, in theory, act the same they don’t. Some recharge a device in no time flat, others are slower than molasses.

On both Pixel 6 and newer phones and on Pixel Tablet, the user will be notified if their power adapter or USB cable is charging their device slowly or not at all.

Battery Saver gets an upgrade, too. Instead of waiting to notify you when your device is an hour or so away from losing power, the new Battery Saver can be brought up anytime to show you what is being restricted on your Pixel, allowing you to select essential apps that can continue to run when you toggle on Extreme Battery Saver.

You can also turn on Battery Saver or Extreme Battery Saver with automatic notifications at 10% and 20%.

Improved privacy

Health and wellness apps – especially ones for pregnancy and mental health – have been a minefield lately. App stores have done their best to let app users know what data is collected by each app, but some sneaky app makers decided they could say one thing and do another and limit a user’s visibility and control over their data.

To hopefully get that issue back in the consumer’s favor, Google is introducing Health Connect, a module built into the new Android 14 settings as a central way to store all your data in one place and stay in control of your privacy.

“And your data is securely encrypted on your phone, which ensures Google or anyone else can't see or use it for any other purpose,” Google’s Dave Burke, vice president of Engineering, Android, said. Just connect and sync your favorite health and fitness apps — like Oura, Peloton and Whoop — to get started.

Another pain point Google is trying to cure is location data. With the new Android 14 rollout, you should have more visibility into how your data is being used by apps that are requesting access to your data.

“Now, when you’re asked to grant apps permission to information like your location you’ll be notified when an app is sharing location data with third parties and can make a more informed decision on whether or not to grant access,” Burke added.

Giving the kids a break on navigation

If you have a little tyke who’s got an Android tablet, there’s now a kid-friendly mode called Google Kids Space, which is chock full of kid-friendly content and a new streamlined navigation bar that takes out the geekiness of navigating, switching apps, etc. 

Helping out the hard-of-hearing and vision-impaired, too

One of the most impressive features Android 14 has in store is for low-vision and hard-of-hearing users. For the hearing impaired, Google has more intuitive ways to connect and interact with hearing aids all from a shortcut on the phone’s screen. 

For low-vision users, Google has improved the magnifier, so now when you want to enlarge some text, it’s a simple pinch-and-zoom maneuver – one that’s easily customized in the new Magnifier Settings panel. You can also establish the baseline and maximum font size to better suit your vision range.

One other thing that’s good for the vision- and hearing-impaired, but could come in handy for anyone who wants a different setting for Notifications is “Flash notifications”. With this setting, you get visual light flashes when you have incoming notifications instead of audio pings.

Better Chromebook and phone/tablet integration

It’s always been a drag when you’re streaming something on your phone and when you sit down to your laptop, you have to reconnect the stream or log into the app again. Google says no more.

On the new system, you can begin using an app on your Pixel device and, then, switch seamlessly and start using it on your Chromebook. Everything you typically do on your phone, too – including messages, check on deliveries, etc.

It's a common annoyance. You search for a specific product or company and click on the first thing that pops up. Only it's a completely different company or product.

Google is kicking off September by hog-tying sneaky advertisers that run ads hoping to fool consumers into taking action that could lead them down the wrong road.

If how a brand that is mentioned in an ad is unclear, references another brand’s name or likeness in response to a user’s search for that brand, or any other brand masquerading, that's kind of fakery will get a company sent to the bench until it adheres to the new policy.

The company is also going all-out to protect users from being hounded by ads that chase them around after they've searched for a particular topic.

Imagine if you will, you’re trying to book a flight to New York City on Delta Air Lines. Before, ads might pop up that were trying to get you to believe that they were Delta.

Now, however, the “vast majority” of the ads you see in a search result like that are supposed to be related to things that naturally relate to that search: either Delta itself, or its competitors, hotels in the area, and other advertisers that a history of policy compliance and transparency. 

​If an advertiser tries to pull off that hustle or doesn't have a record of good behavior, it might find its ad impressions are limited until it builds a trustworthy track record on Google’s ad platform.

“While we want to allow users the opportunity to interact with relevant and helpful ads, this policy will reduce the chance that they'll see a misleading or confusing ad from an advertiser with an unproven track record,” Google’s Alejandro Borgia, Director, Product Management, Ads Safety, wrote.

Keeping sensitive topics and ads to a low roar

As you know, when you click on an ad, there are “trackers” that ride along and gather information about who you are, what your interests are, etc., so an advertiser can send you what they think you’d also like to see.

Now, with the updated Google Ad Center, you can customize your ad experience to see more ads about things you like and fewer ads about things you don't.

You can: 

• Tell Google which topics and brands you would like to see more or fewer ads.
• You can keep Google from showing you ads about certain sensitive topics, such as alcohol, dating, pregnancy and parenting, weight loss, or gambling.

Here’s how you can limit ads about sensitive topics:

1. Go to My Ad Center.

2. Select Customize Ads > Sensitive.

3. Select the toggle next to each topic you’d like to limit.

4. Confirm your selection.

To allow ads about the sensitive topics you’ve limited again, repeat the steps above. 

And, if you’re tired of an ad or brand chasing you around after you’ve searched for, say “weight loss,” you can ask to see fewer ads about that topic or from a brand trying to sell you on how it can take care of that situation. 

However, the company says that when you flip that switch, it’s not a death sentence for that particular topic or that advertiser, but its ad engine will try its best to push out more relevant ads about that topic and from that advertiser as well as different brands or topics.

Here’s how to accomplish that in "My Ad Center:

1. Go to My Ad Center

2. Select Customize > Ads Topics or Brands.

3. Select See more, or See fewer, on the topics or brands you want to see, or don't want to see.

But does it work?

ConsumerAffairs gave Google's My Ad Center a chance to show its stuff and we have to admit it handed us the keys to do everything it promises.

Block repetitive ads, block topics that we had no interest in, tell Google that we don't want anyone to see our birthday, not let what we watched on YouTube be used to personalize ads, etc.

One important note, though: If you have more than one Google account (and most people to), you'll need to change the My Ad Center settings for each account. 

If you’re sitting on an inactive Gmail or other Google-driven account like Docs or Google Drive, you need to know that the company is getting closer to deleting those accounts. Any account that has been inactive for two years will be eligible for deletion beginning December 1, 2023.

Given that Google has allowed people to have all the accounts they want, some may have gone overboard and have more than they really need, so the move is a reasonable purge. It also cuts down on the number of accounts Google has to police and protect.

“Every day Google works hard to keep you and your private information safe and secure by preventing unauthorized access to your Google Account with our built-in security protections,” the company wrote to account holders with potentially dormant accounts in an email. 

“And keeping you safe means having strong privacy practices across our products that minimize how long we store your personal files and any data associated with them. We want to protect your private information and prevent any unauthorized access to your account even if you’re no longer using our services.”

What this means for a Google account holder

If you have used a Google account in the last two years, you can breathe easy. If the company has ID’ed an account that it thinks has been mothballed and left unused, it will send several emails to both the Gmail address of the account in question and the user’s main account (the “recovery” email address) just to make sure the user knows what’s on the front burner.

 If that account is deleted, the Gmail address for the deleted account is gone forever and cannot be used again when creating a new Google Account.

How to keep your account active?

“The simplest way to keep a Google Account active is to sign in to the account at least once every two years,” the company reminded inactive account users. 

“If you have signed in to your Google Account recently in the past two years, your account is considered active and will not be deleted.”

There are seven other ways that users can keep any Google account alive:

• Reading or sending an email
• Using Google Drive
• Watching a YouTube video
• Sharing a photo (Google Photos)
• Downloading a Google app 
• Using Google Search
• Using sign in with Google to sign in to a third-party app or service

There are some exceptions to this policy, such as a Google Account that has YouTube channels, videos or comments or an account that has a gift card with a monetary balance. Other exceptions to this policy are available here.

Google’s willing to help

Google’s not going to leave anyone out in the cold and says it’s offering tools to help manage your Google Account and provide options to back up your data, including the ability to download your data using Google Takeout. It would also be wise to confirm that your recovery email is up to date.

The U.S. government’s antitrust lawsuit against Google goes to trial in September in what could be one of the biggest antitrust trials of the century.

The government’s case claims Google has gained a monopoly in internet search, not by building a better mousetrap but by pushing competitors to the sidelines. Government attorneys no doubt will ask how Google’s dominant position has helped serve consumers, answering their own question by suggesting it hasn’t. 

Does Google no longer deserve to be your go-to? 

The case coincides with arguments by critics and many consumers that Google's search results have gotten less helpful to consumers in recent years, even as it still dominates the search field.

Dominic Chorafakis, P.Eng, CISSP and principal at Akouto, a technology firm, believes some of the dissatisfaction with the search engine stems from how Google monetizes its business, putting paid placement in the mix with non-paid search results.

“From a usability perspective, it can be argued that results have gotten worse over time since Google put ads in line with search results and made them look very similar to non-paid search results,” he said.

In addition, said Chorafakis, internet content as a whole has gotten worse, driving down the quality of search results.  “There's a whole industry that has sprung up around search engine optimization which employs a number of tricks to try and get Google and other search engines to rank the importance of a page to be higher than it might be in reality,” Chorafakis said.

And consumer use of smartphones could explain some of the perception that Google has gotten worse, suggests Joe Karasin, CMO & founder at Karasin PPC. He says consumers used to be more direct and exact with their search queries, but in recent years, typing on their phones, they have come to rely more on the algorithm to figure things out. 

“They don't want to type in long-tail queries, which is often the way to get the best search result possible,” he said. 

“For example, if I need to hire a lawyer, I will usually type in 'best criminal defense attorney near me' and I will get pretty relevant results. If I just type 'best lawyer' my results won't be as relevant. The latter is how most consumers search these days due to the cumbersome nature of typing on their phones rather than a keyboard.”

Google earned its advantage initially

Experts we spoke to were quick to credit Google’s ascension to dominance to the company’s technology. 

“Google figured out how to do two things very well – return accurate search results via a more advanced algorithm than their competitors and monetize the search engine business model," said Karasin, who has worked in the search engine marketing field for the past 12 years and has watched Google's ascent.  “Between these two innovations, Google was able to become the top search engine for consumers.”

Chorafaki believes Google won by focusing on building its own platform rather than relying on off-the-shelf technology.

“Solving fundamental problems with processing large amounts of data allowed Google to scale faster and more cost-effectively than their competitors,” Chorafakis told us.

“The second factor was the advantage of Google's algorithms over those of their competitors for ranking the importance of web pages. This allowed Google to produce much more relevant search results than their competitors which quickly made them the search engine of choice.”

How well are users served?

The case will flesh out two complex, interrelated questions: Has Google violated antitrust laws by competing unfairly, and has Google simply grown too large for other competitors to enter or survive in the space?

The U.S. Justice Department complaint alleges that Google monopolizes key digital advertising technologies, collectively referred to as the “ad tech stack,” that website publishers depend on to sell ads and that advertisers rely on to buy ads and reach potential customers. 

The complaint also alleges that over the past 15 years, Google has engaged in anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct that consisted of neutralizing or eliminating ad tech competitors through acquisitions. 

It also accuses the company of wielding its dominance across digital advertising markets to force more publishers and advertisers to use its products and make it harder to use competing products. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco says ad tech businesses have been harmed financially. Consumers, she says, have been harmed by the lack of competition in search.

Potential result

Nothing may happen very quickly. The trial is likely to be lengthy and if the court rules against Google, the tech giant can be expected to appeal. But should the government ultimately prevail, what might the result look like?

Karasin thinks Google may have to allow other search engines to be used as the default on Android devices, similar to what Microsoft had to do with Internet Explorer at the turn of the century. 

Chorafakis says the outcome is difficult to predict but agrees the court could force Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to divest some of its assets related to search. For instance, Google’s YouTube is also considered a search engine. The government could argue it should have separate ownership.

“More likely scenarios would be requiring Alphabet to provide competitors with access to APIs (automated programming interface) that allow them to integrate their services and offer compelling alternatives, impose price regulations to allow smaller rivals to compete, or prohibit Alphabet from tying or bundling one service with the other,” he said.

For consumers, the result could be a return to the late 1990s when there was no dominant search engine. Consumers of a certain age may remember when Yahoo was a major player in search, along with smaller players such as Lycos and Excite.

Ever searched for yourself on Google? Find something you thought was posted with the intent to harm you? A photo of your signature? Your medical record?

Until now, there wasn't much you could do. But Google is following up on its Results about you tool – the one designed to make it easy for people to request the removal of search results that contain personal phone number, home address or email – and it's got step number two ready.

Now, the company says it’s “significantly updated and improved” the tool, enabling people to keep track of their personal contact information in Google Search and having Google ping them when it finds anything so they can have it removed.

“In the coming days, we’ll be rolling out a new dashboard that will let you know if web results with your contact information are showing up on Search,” Danielle Romain vice president of Trust at Google, said.

“Then, you can quickly request the removal of those results from Google — right in the tool. We’ll also notify you when new results from the web containing your contact info pop up in Search, to give you added peace of mind.”

How to access the tool

Google says people can access this tool in the Google app by clicking on their Google account photo and selecting “Results about you,” but when ConsumerAffairs tried that method, it was a dead end.

The better method we found was google/resultsaboutyou. ConsumerAffairs also found that the experience on mobile devices is different, too. Google provides a quick animation of what that process looks like, here.

From there, it’s a matter of clicking on the three dots next to the search results you want removed and filling out a simple request form. Google says it’ll take things from there, but with the tool barely out of the box, there’s no word on how long that will take.

What you can and can’t have removed

Google does have a lot of power, but it does have limitations on what it can and can’t remove from search results that contain personal information.

“The contact information displayed on the result has to be your personal, not professional, information,” is the company’s stance. “As Google Search seeks to provide users with useful info, it won’t remove info that’s valuable to the public.”

Personally identifiable information (PII) that people can request to have removed from Google Search results includes:

• Confidential government identification (ID) numbers, like US Social Security Number
• Bank account numbers
• Credit card numbers
• Images of handwritten signatures
• Images of ID docs
• Highly personal, restricted, and official records, like medical records
• Personal contact info (physical addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses)
• Confidential login credentials

But if you’re listed in an obituary or a directory listing or a post about you from 30 years ago when you streaked the homecoming game, well, sorry, but you might have a problem.

As ConsumerAffairs understands it,  the search results must show your contact info “with an intent to harm you” or must “contain illegal info.”

Google does give that “intent to harm” caveat serious consideration, though. To request to remove professional information that’s been posted with that intent, all one has to do is use the detailed request form. 

Don’t like a social media post you’re in? Not Google’s problem. Nonetheless, if you want anything like that done, the company lists the steps necessary to make that happen.

To request to remove professional information that’s been posted with the intent to harm you, use the detailed request form. 

Families get more protection, too

One of the most daunting problems parents have in sitting their child down in front of a computer is all the who-knows-what that the child could encounter. If the child isn't careful, one mistyped keystroke or domain name version put put all sorts of explicit imagery like violent or adult graphic content right before their very eyes.

Google is updating that safeguard and those types of graphics will now be blurred by default when it appears in Search results. Of course, if you’re big enough to handle such, you can modify the settings SafeSearch blurring setting or turn it off at any time, unless a parent or someone at school has locked the setting.

Romain said the company is also making it easier to find parental controls directly in Search. “Just type in a relevant query like ‘google parental controls’ or ‘Google family link’ and you will see a box with information on how to manage your parental controls,” she instructed.

Who would’ve thought that Google’s quest for world domination would include taking the place of our wallet, but things are moving in that direction.

Since photos have moved from our wallets to a place on our phones and credit cards are starting to make that migration, Google Wallet thinks there are even more possibilities to reduce our dependence on those accessories and keep everything in one place on our smartphones.

The option rate for using phones as a payment method is going in the right direction, but it’s still got a ways to go. Jenny Cheng, vice president and general manager of Google Wallet, told PYMNTS that the adoption rate is less than 40% penetration in the U.S. for consumers over the age of 40, but younger generations are picking up on the notion much quicker.

A lot of the reluctance is that we have come to count on wallets as a catch-all for things we don’t fully understand how to digitize and put on our phones. Tickets. Healthcare and insurance cards. Driver’s licenses. If there’s something that IDs who we are, then it’s probably in our wallets somewhere. 

Are you ready to try some of this?

But for us to put our leather wallet in our dresser drawer for good, a lot has to happen and that’s where Google is now applying some effort. And Cheng likes the company’s chances, too. Google thinks the key to that is educating the consumer on just how simple this process can be.

To start, Cheng’s team is focusing on four things it thinks it can teach consumers to do easily and, hopefully, get them to a place where they take to this like a duck to water.

Anything with a barcode. “While Google Wallet already supports a wide range of pass types, there are passes that haven’t always been easily saveable to your device,” Cheng admitted. “For example, I have a physical gym membership card that I use whenever I go to work out. It's small and can easily be misplaced, but since it has a barcode on it, I’ll soon be able to simply take a photo of my card and create a secure, digital version of it in Wallet.”

She said that QR codes will work in Google Wallet, too, which will be helpful for things like transit tickets, parking passes, even when you’re returning something to Amazon and you have to have a QR code when you drop it off to be shipped.

Health insurance cards. One more piece of paper we can move from our leather wallets to our phone are health insurance cards. If you’re a Humana customer, you’re ahead of the game because it and Google are developing a digital version of their health insurance card to save to Google Wallet. So, when someone gets to their doctor’s office and the receptionist says she needs to see your insurance information, it’s all right there on your phone.

ID cards. The third thing Google is trying to move to its Wallet app is our plastic government-issued ID cards, such as drivers licenses. Already, people with a Maryland ID or driver’s license are able to add their ID to Google Wallet on any phone running Android 8.0 or later that has device lock enabled. In the coming months, residents of Arizona, Colorado and Georgia will join them.

Maryland-issued IDs saved to Wallet can also be used at TSA PreCheck lines at select airports. Cheng said that later this year, Google will begin rolling out ways to book a car or verify other online accounts via Wallet.

Another ID-related goal is to incorporate corporate badges in Google Wallet and Cheng said that will happen later this year, giving employees convenient and secure access to buildings, cafeterias and more. Naturally, there are privacy and security concerns that people might raise in regard to company IDs, but Cheng says the company is prioritizing both aspects. 

Travel tickets. Travel preparation, whether for business or pleasure, can be stressful. The worst feeling is when you realize you can't find your paper boarding pass at your gate or on the train.

In the near future, people who use Google's Messages app with RCS enabled will be able to check in for travel entirely through Messages. Ticket or boarding pass will be sent directly to their Messages app, where they can save it in Wallet. 

“To have all of this in one place is what’s going to continue to allow that tie-in of payments, identity, and passes … so that everything you need to do, in the real world, is easier and safer,” Cheng told PYMNTS.

If you have more than one Gmail account, you might want to take a look at the one you use least because it could disappear. Google is going on a cleaning spree and deleting Gmail accounts it considers to be just taking up space.

The average person has 1.9 Gmail accounts. It might not be surprising that people tend to get lazy with their secondary accounts when it comes to reusing passwords and security like two-factor authentication.

Google has to deal with more than a billion superfluous email accounts and with nuisances like spam, account hijacking, security threats, and phishing scams going after all of those, Google's action shouldn't be a surprise.

Who’s getting cut and when

If you haven’t used or signed into a Google account in two years, everything tied to that email address is at risk. And when we say everything, we mean everything — Gmail, Docs, Meet, Calendar, and even Google Photos.

However, this policy change only applies to personal Google Accounts, and will not affect accounts for organizations like schools or businesses.

Google is giving everyone some breathing room, so don’t throw yourself into a tizzy, yet. The earliest Google will begin deleting accounts is December 2023.

“We will take a phased approach, starting with accounts that were created and never used again,” Ruth Kricheli, vice president, Product Management, said.

“Before deleting an account, we will send multiple notifications over the months leading up to deletion, to both the account email address and the recovery email if one has been provided.”

How to keep your account active

Despite having about six months to pull the trigger on older accounts, it would be wise to go on and do it, now, so you don’t have to worry about it for another two years. You should probably set up a ping on your main account’s calendar so you don’t run the risk the next time the Google cleaning crew comes a-knocking.

Finding all your extra accounts can be easy if you only have a couple of those. Google suggests going to that account by clicking on the profile icon to the right of the address bar in Chrome (it’s a circle), logging into that profile, and then do one of the following:

• Reading or sending an email

• Using Google Drive

• Watching a YouTube video

• Downloading an app on the Google Play Store

• Using Google Search

• Using Sign in with Google to sign in to a third-party app or service

If you have an existing subscription set up through your Google account, for example to Google One, a news publication or an app, Google also considers this account activity, and your account will not be impacted. Oh, yeah – the company does not have plans to delete accounts with YouTube videos, at least not now.

Don't know how many Google accounts you have?

If you've had a number of side hustles and wanted special emails or, had something else going on on the side, you might not remember all the Google accounts you have.

As ConsumerAffairs found out, if you have more than a few accounts, all of those might not show up in the account profile. At that point, it requires a little extra work to identify all of those with the key element being looking up your accounts by using your telephone number, not your email address.

Rather than explain the process in a step-by-step fashion, it might be easier to follow the instructions on this YouTube video. Remember, the key is to use your phone number.