Ars Technica: “The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop”

Google has updated Android’s Quick Share feature to support Apple’s AirDrop, which allows users of Apple devices to share files directly using a local peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connection. Apple devices with AirDrop enabled and set to “everyone for 10 minutes” mode will show up in the Quick Share device list just like another Android phone would, and Android devices that support this new Quick Share version will also show up in the AirDrop menu.

---

But earlier this year, the EU adopted new specification decisions that required Apple to adopt new interoperable wireless standards, starting in this year’s iOS 26 release. If you don’t want to wade through the regulatory documents, this post from cloud services company Ditto is a useful timeline of events written in plainer language.

The rulings required Apple to add support for the Wi-Fi Alliance’s Wi-Fi Aware standard instead of AWDL—and in fact required Apple to deprecate AWDL and to help add its features to Wi-Fi Aware so that any device could benefit from them. This wasn’t quite the imposition it sounded like; Wi-Fi Aware was developed with Apple’s help, based on the work Apple had already done on AWDL. But it meant that Apple could no longer keep other companies out of AirDrop by using a functionally similar but private communication protocol instead of the standardized version.

Andrew Cunningham

I didn’t pay much attention to the initial reports about this – AirDrop always struck me as the type of feature Apple fanboys incessantly fawn about while everyone else shrugs off because there are many alternatives to share files between people that aren’t confined to Apple devices – but this angle of reporting is certainly intriguing. This would not be the first time Apple was compelled by regulation to relax its tight control on its devices and users, the most famous being the forced adoption of USB-C on iPhones.

Financial Times: “How Lidl accidentally took on the big guns of cloud computing”

Starting with a system built for internal use in 2021, Lidl owner Schwarz Group now offers cloud computing and cyber security services to corporate customers.

Its IT unit, Schwarz Digits — which became a standalone operating division in 2023 — has signed up clients including Germany’s biggest software group SAP, the country’s most successful football club Bayern Munich and the port of Hamburg. Last year, the unit generated €1.9bn in annual sales and it employs 7,500 staff.

We did not start with a commercial motivation in mind but just wanted to address our own needs, Christian Müller, co-chief executive of Schwarz Digits told the Financial Times in a rare interview. We’re on a very steep growth path.

A main selling point of its service is that all client data is processed and stored exclusively in Germany and Austria, which have stringent privacy and data protection laws.

Olaf Storbeck

Exciting development for a European business to build its own cloud computing system from the ground up – and striking how closely this origin story resembles Amazon’s AWS. I would say this is a good example of how regulation can foster business opportunities. It would probably have been faster and cheaper for Schwarz Group to contract an existing US cloud provider, but since their products are not prioritizing privacy, the more compliant answer was to build an internal solution.

The Verge: “Why Google decided now’s the time to move on from Chromecast”

The Chromecast is going away after more than a decade in Google’s hardware portfolio, with the company phasing it out to make room for the new Google TV Streamer. In 2013, the timing was perfect for the Chromecast’s success. Most TVs of that era had rudimentary entertainment apps that were often slow, so beaming content from your phone to a TV made a lot of sense.

But times have changed. With the Chromecast with Google TV in 2020, Google pivoted in the opposite direction with a much more traditional, lean-back entertainment experience. Casting took a back seat to carousels of content recommendations, and native apps returned.

---

And yet, even right after the announcement, some of our commenters were frustrated that Google had settled for just a 22 percent boost in CPU speed. There’s a good chance this thing will still benchmark underneath the fairly ancient Shield. Why not just drop a Tensor chip into it?

It comes down to cost and keeping the Streamer at a price that’s acceptable for average consumers. We don’t know if there’s functionality that would actually convince people to buy pricier price points than this, but the market is generally telling us right now people are probably not ready for it, Govil-Pai said.

Chris Welch

I have been quite skeptical initially of the Chromecast, but after I purchased one to stream HBO to my non-so-smart former TV I have grown to appreciate its utility and simplicity. While I understand the reasoning behind the decision to discontinue it (nowadays TVs ship with Google TV and Chromecast protocols built-in; I myself have abandoned my old Chromecast when I upgraded the TV last year), it still feels a bit sad and disappointing.

TechCrunch: “Apple Maps launches on the web to challenge Google Maps”

Apple announced on Wednesday that Apple Maps is now available on the web via a public beta, which means you can now access the service directly from your browser. The launch puts Apple Maps in direct competition with Google Maps, which has long been available on the web.

Maps on the web is accessible in English and is compatible with Safari and Chrome on Mac and iPad, as well as Chrome and Edge on Windows PCs. Apple plans to bring support for additional languages, browsers and platforms in the future.

Apple Maps on the web works like it does on the mobile app. You can get driving and walking directions; order food from the Maps place card; browse curated guides and reviews; and more. Apple plans to bring additional functionality, like its 360-degree panoramic views “Look Around” feature, to the web version in the coming months.

Aisha Malik

Seven years on, I guess it’s time for another comparison between Apple and Google where it counts most for me: my hometown. Last time around I found Apple Maps utterly lacking, failing to show a large lake and the surrounding park on the map. This version is far closer to reality: Herăstrău lake is properly outlined, and so are several businesses and landmarks around it. But the park itself is still weirdly truncated: only the southern half is colored green to indicate vegetation, while the rest is tinted the dull dark grey of the offices and housing areas around it. The level of detail in the roads and alleyways in the park is also evidently lower than in Google Maps. On this basic test, Apple falls short of Google Maps one again, despite the praise in (US) tech circles about its massive improvements.

Android Authority: “I’ve already ditched the new Google Home widget and watch tile”

It feels like the Google Home team took forever and a day to gift us with the most basic Android feature of all: a home screen widget to control our smart home devices. And basic it is, even if, at first glance, it looks quite neat with its sexy Material You color scheme.

---

So yup, for now, it seems like we get an all-or-nothing approach of favorites. Still better than nothing, eh? Until you add the widget and realize it’s a matter of all or nothing with most controls too. Lights? On or off, there’s no brightness or color wheel. Fan? Robot vacuum? Air purifier? Same. Even the few controls that Google Home is generous enough to give us in its app aren’t available here.

And if, like me, you think, “Eh, no fuss, I’ll just tap and hold to access more options”, then no, that won’t work. Tapping and holding triggers the widget movement and editing mode, not the selected device’s extra options.

Rita El Khoury

Sadly, that was my experience with this experimental Google Home widget as well. I added it to my home screen as soon as it launched last month, but it lacked many basic features and even in this bare-bones state it didn’t work reliably. Sometimes the status of smart lights wouldn’t update, other times the widget would ignore my first tap and send the command only after a second tap, while in other cases a tap would open the full Google Home app instead. At this stage it’s preferable to just open the app than to take your chances with a buggy widget.

The Wall Street Journal: “AI Work Assistants need a Lot of Handholding”

CIOs interested in moving forward with the technology are now working hard to clean up and manage their data so they can take full advantage.

Bala Krishnapillai, vice president and head of the information technology group at Hitachi Americas, said the organization has encountered instances of inconsistent, duplicated, and incorrect data, leading to contradictory information that confuses AI outputs.

He said the company is regularly updating and refining its data to ensure accurate results from AI tools accessing it. That process includes the organization’s data engineers validating and cleaning up incoming data, and curating it into a “golden record”, with no contradictory or duplicate information.

---

Google Cloud Chief Evangelist Richard Seroter said he believes the desire to use tools like Gemini for Google Workspace is pushing organizations to do the type of data management work they might have been sluggish about in the past.

If you don’t have your data house in order, AI is going to be less valuable than it would be if it was, he said. You can’t just buy six units of AI and then magically change your business.

Isabelle Bousquette

An entirely foreseeable obstacle for anyone working in operations, as opposed to top management who get their information about the company’s internal mechanisms neatly delivered to them in a glossy presentation. I have been through enough jobs to know that most large companies are built on a jumble of disconnected legacy systems that rarely communicate seamlessly. Also, most C-level executives are reluctant to invest into upgrading and modernizing the data infrastructure, fearing disruptions to regular operations and sunk costs without tangible benefits. Expecting an AI system to leapfrog these issues and deliver perfect results with no human input was always a rose-tinted proposition – if not downright delusional.

Android Police: “Google Maps Timeline now stores your location data on-device”

Right off the bat, it isn’t a Google change unless something is lost or killed off, and unsurprisingly, it’s time for Timeline on the web to bite the dust. Explaining the change, Google says it won’t have any data to display on the web interface after the switch to on-device location data management through the Maps app.

To retain access to your old Timeline data and ensure subsequent collection is localized, you’ll need to update to a recent version of Maps and follow the instructions in a push notification, in-app alert, or email you receive. You just need to specify your data management preferences on a device of your choice. That’s because the new system curates Timeline for each of your devices independently. Alternatively, you can back your Timeline data to Google servers manually or automatically. This can come in handy if you’re planning to switch to a new phone or tablet without losing the Timeline data.

The email we received mentioned that users have until December 1, 2024, to keep their saved visits and routes on the device or back them up. It warns that inaction could result in partial or complete loss of old data. If you miss the deadline, Google will try to move the last 90 days of location history to the first device you sign in to after the cutoff date, and all the older trips will be auto-deleted. We suggest keeping an eye out for this email.

Chandraveer Mathur

I haven’t received this email notification yet, so I’m still holding on to a slim hope that Google might reconsider until December. Needless to say, this news made me suddenly angry at Google for what I can only regard as a self-serving, user-hostile, and plainly stupid decision. Despite privacy concerns by some, Timeline was one of the best features of Google Maps, and I regularly checked that the places I visited were accurately recorded. The whole point of Timeline is to store your travel logs forever, so that you can revisit those years later to remind yourself of past trips and maybe find inspiration for new ones. Erasing this data automatically after some number of days or when you switch devices defeats this purpose entirely and makes Timeline borderline irrelevant.

The Atlantic: “The Horseshoe Theory of Google Search”

Earlier today, Google presented a new vision for its flagship search engine, one that is uniquely tailored to the generative-AI moment. With advanced technology at its disposal, Google will do the Googling for you, Liz Reid, the company’s head of search, declared onstage at the company’s annual software conference.

Googling something rarely yields an immediate, definitive answer. You enter a query, confront a wall of blue links, open a zillion tabs, and wade through them to find the most relevant information. If that doesn’t work, you refine the search and start again. Now Google is rolling out “AI overviews” that might compile a map of “anniversary worthy” restaurants in Dallas sorted by ambience (live music, rooftop patios, and the like), comb recipe websites to create meal plans, structure an introduction to an unfamiliar topic, and so on.

---

Generative AI, then, is in some ways providing a return to what Google Search was before the company infused it with product marketing and snippets and sidebars and Wikipedia extracts—all of which have arguably contributed to the degradation of the product. The AI-powered searches that Google executives described didn’t seem like going to an oracle so much as a more pleasant version of Google: pulling together the relevant tabs, pointing you to the most useful links, and perhaps even encouraging you to click on them.

Matteo Wong

My gut reaction to AI Overviews was: welp, so rather than rooting out listicles and low-grade content farms, Google has embraced them, featuring its own aggregated AI-answers on its front page!

The Keyword: “Nearby Share for Windows on Android is now available”

Nearby Share for Windows, available as an app download on PCs around the world, has now been installed by more than 1.7 million people. With photos and videos being the most popular file types to send, we’ve seen over 50 million files transferred between PC and Android devices since launch. No need to search for any cables or cords – sharing media to your own devices or with nearby friends and family is possible with just a few clicks.

Today marks the official launch of Nearby Share with Windows, offering improved performance and new functionality that can make it even easier for you to share content and stay productive.

Ronald Ho

I have never been quite satisfied with most methods to share files between phones and PCs. The initial way of connecting them with a USB cable has the fastest transfer speed, so it’s great for backing up photos (especially because I shoot RAW on my smartphone as well) and other files, but for a small number of files it’s unwieldy to gather the cable and navigate folders to locate the files. Uploading them to OneDrive or other cloud services can also be time-consuming, as the app sometimes logs you out and you still have to search for the files. I could never get used to Microsoft’s Phone Link, as in its earlier iterations it failed to connect more often than not and newer versions were obnoxious with its constant notifications and permissions requests – not to mention I simply don’t need most of its features.

Ethan Zuckerman: “How Big is YouTube?”

Here’s how this works: YouTube URLs look like this: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=vXPJVwwEmiM

That bit after “watch?v=” is an 11 digit string. The first ten digits can be a-z,A-Z,0-9 and _-. The last digit is special, and can only be one of 16 values. Turns out there are 2^64 possible YouTube addresses, an enormous number: 18.4 quintillion. There are lots of YouTube videos, but not that many. Let’s guess for a moment that there are 1 billion YouTube videos – if you picked URLs at random, you’d only get a valid address roughly once every 18.4 billion tries.

We refer to this method as “drunk dialing”, as it’s basically as sophisticated as taking swigs from a bottle of bourbon and mashing digits on a telephone, hoping to find a human being to speak to. Jason found a couple of cheats that makes the method roughly 32,000 times as efficient, meaning our “phone call” connects lots more often. Kevin Zheng wrote a whole bunch of scripts to do the dialing, and over the course of several months, we collected more than 10,000 truly random YouTube videos.

---

Once you’re collecting these random videos, other statistics are easy to calculate. We can look at how old our random videos are and calculate how fast YouTube is growing: we estimate that over 4 billion videos were posted to YouTube just in 2023. We can calculate the mean and median views per video, and show just how long the “long tail” is – videos with 10,000 or more views are roughly 4% of our data set, though they represent the lion’s share of views of the YouTube platform.

Ethan Zuckerman

Fascinating method – and fascinating results! If these are anywhere near accurate, in 2023 there was a new YouTube video for every other person living on the planet! The stats also highlight the extreme inequality in traffic between a tiny minority of popular uploads and the typical YouTube video, which can’t even top 10,000 views.

Ars Technica: “Gmail unleashes ‘email emoji reactions’ onto an unsuspecting world”

You can now reply to an email just like it’s an instant messaging chat, tacking on a “crying laughing” emoji to an email instead of replying. Google has a whole support article detailing the new feature, which allows you to express yourself and quickly respond to emails with emojis. Like a messaging app, a row of emoji reaction counts will appear below your email now, and other people on the thread can tap to add to the reaction count. Currently, it’s only on the Android Gmail app, but it’s presumably coming to other Gmail clients.

Of course, email is from the 1970s and does not natively support emoji reactions. That makes this a Gmail-proprietary feature, which is a problem for federated emails that are expected to work with a million different clients and providers. If you send an emoji reaction and someone on the email chain is not using an official Gmail client, they will get a new, additional email containing your singular reactive emoji. Google is not messing with the email standard, so people not using Gmail will be the most affected.

---

If the idea of emoji reactions to email has you selecting the puke emoji, as far as we can tell, there’s no way to just turn this off.

Ron Amadeo

This so-called feature rolled out to my Gmail account on the web just last week, and I have to say it’s a serious contender for most useless update of 2023 – too bad Silicon Valley doesn’t have something like the Golden Raspberry Awards. Not only is it utterly unoriginal, since every messaging app and social network has something similar, it fits very badly into the more longform and serios medium of email. At this point, most personal communication flows through messaging, not email, and the types of discussion taking place over email are not well suited to quick emoji reactions.

The Washington Post: “Flawless or fake? Google’s AI now fixes smiles”

Here’s how it works: The AI in Best Take is not actually inventing smiles or other expressions. Instead, the software combs through all the shots you took over a several-second interval to propose a few alternatives for each face it can identify. Based on what you select, it pulls the face out of the alternative and uses AI to blend it into your original. It’s an instant AI version of using Photoshop to cut someone’s head out of one photo and stick it on another.

---

Google has also been quick to release other AI photo-editing tools such as Magic Eraser that can remove whole people and objects from photos.

What’s to stop Best Take 2 from opening up to faces captured any time, instead of just in those few seconds? People have filled up their Google Photos collections with years of source material. Then how much harder would it be for Google to offer entirely synthetic versions of the people in your photos, like you can already get in AI selfie apps like Lensa? Next stop: “Hey, Google, make all the people in this photo look more in love/surprised/happy.”

Lost along the way: What’s a photograph, after all? If not a record of a moment, then perhaps we have to figure out how to stop treating it like a memory.

Geoffrey A. Fowler

I fully expect people to use Magic Eraser (or similar AI-based photo-manipulation tools) to wipe out their exes from past photos after breaking up – or even to replace them with their current partner.

The Verge: “How Google Reader died — and why the web misses it more than ever”

Google’s bad reputation for killing and abandoning products started with Reader and has only gotten worse over time. But the real tragedy of Reader was that it had all the signs of being something big, and Google just couldn’t see it. Desperate to play catch-up to Facebook and Twitter, the company shut down one of its most prescient projects; you can see in Reader shades of everything from Twitter to the newsletter boom to the rising social web. To executives, Google Reader may have seemed like a humble feed aggregator built on boring technology. But for users, it was a way of organizing the internet, for making sense of the web, for collecting all the things you care about no matter its location or type, and helping you make the most of it.

---

Reader appealed primarily to information junkies, who wanted a quick way to keep up with all their favorite publications and blogs. (It turned out there were two types of Reader users: the completionists, who go through every unread item they have, and the folks who just scroll around until they find something. Both sides think the other is bonkers.) The team struggled to find ways to bring in more casual users, some of whom were put off by the idea of finding sites to subscribe to and others who simply didn’t care about reading hundreds of articles a day.

David Pierce

Good recap of the (struggling) life and (untimely) death of Google Reader, 10 years after its shutdown. However the narrative that Google Reader was on the verge of becoming ‘something big’ repeats the same fallacy that most tech products fall trap to sooner or later: if the engineers that passionately built the product and its highly engaged first adopters both love it, surely everyone else can’t wait to experience it as well, right?!

Google Saved items–and where to find them

After I’ve updated my smartphone earlier this year, I started casually using a new built-in feature on the Home Screen to read various news and articles. It's apparently called Google Discover, after going through various iterations, like many other Google products, and it presents a feed of articles pulled from the web that might interest you. The algorithm relies rather heavily on your past Google search and YouTube watch history. I was never particularly impressed with the selection, it tends to surface a high mix of low quality posts, or headlines I’ve already seen, and seems fairly redundant if you’re already reading Google News, which surfaces a much better selection of content in my experience.

Occasionally I did came across some articles of interest; when you open the links, there’s a button on the top to ‘Save’ them, so over the months I collected a number of articles there. But this presented a dilemma: where could I find these saved links later?

Google Online Security Blog: “So long passwords, thanks for all the phish”

When you add a passkey to your Google Account, we will start asking for it when you sign in or perform sensitive actions on your account. The passkey itself is stored on your local computer or mobile device, which will ask for your screen lock biometrics or PIN to confirm it’s really you. Biometric data is never shared with Google or any other third party – the screen lock only unlocks the passkey locally.

Unlike passwords, passkeys can only exist on your devices. They cannot be written down or accidentally given to a bad actor. When you use a passkey to sign in to your Google Account, it proves to Google that you have access to your device and are able to unlock it. Together, this means that passkeys protect you against phishing and any accidental mishandling that passwords are prone to, such as being reused or exposed in a data breach. This is stronger protection than most 2SV (2FA/MFA) methods offer today, which is why we allow you to skip not only the password but also 2SV when you use a passkey. In fact, passkeys are strong enough that they can stand in for security keys for users enrolled in our Advanced Protection Program.

Arnar Birgisson & Diana K Smetters

I’m no expert in security, but being able to log in seamlessly, without a password, a password manager, or 2FA, sounds like a genuinely useful feature. Microsoft has something similar through the Authenticator app, where you can sign in with only your email address and a confirmation in the app.

CNBC: “Google to cut down on employee laptops, services and staplers for ‘multi-year’ savings”

Among the equipment changes, Google is pausing refreshes for laptops, desktop PCs and monitors. It’s also changing how often equipment is replaced, according to internal documents viewed by CNBC.

Google employees who are not in engineering roles but require a new laptop will receive a Chromebook by default. Chromebooks are laptops made by Google and use a Google-based operating system called Chrome OS.

It’s a shift from the range of offerings, such as Apple MacBooks, that were previously available to employees. It also provides the best opportunity across all of our managed devices to prevent external compromise, one document about the laptop changes said.

---

Under a section titled “Desktops and Workstations”, the company said CloudTop, the company’s internal virtual workstation, will be the default desktop for Googlers.

In February, CNBC reported the company asked its cloud employees and partners to share desks by alternating days and are expected to transition to relying on CloudTop for their workstations.

Jennifer Elias

Adopting various savings measures is a fine way to adapt to a challenging economic outlook – certainly better than bluntly laying people off, or cutting their maternity and medical leaves – but these should be handled prudently as well. Cutting down on snack bars and cafeterias is a no-brainer, especially since employees are not coming into the offices five days a week as prior to the pandemic – in fact, I struggle to see why these services haven’t been downsized much sooner, in 2021 or even last year.

The Verge: “Google’s long-awaited Tasks and Reminders consolidation starts in March”

Putting a timetable on the move it announced in September, Google says users will be able to manage all tasks created across various Google apps from Google Tasks starting in March. Beginning May 22nd, Google will automatically move reminders created in the Google Assistant and Calendar apps to Tasks, though users can voluntarily start doing so ahead of time.

---

The move addresses a major complaint we’ve long had with Google’s task management system and makes it easy to now see everything in one place. It also brings it more in line with Microsoft’s more useful To Do app, which already integrated tasks across Outlook, Planner, and Teams.

The new Google tasks and reminders system still has some issues to iron out. For example, reminders created in Google’s note-taking Keep app will not move to Tasks. Though they’ll remain in the Keep app, this means they will no longer show up in Google Calendar, either. Also, Google Tasks still lacks features other project management apps offer, like the ability to search through your tasks and prioritize them.

Sheena Vasani

Google’s repeated stumbling in messaging may get more attention, but it’s certainly not the only area where the company is fumbling along, launching products with overlapping features that don’t quite match up against the competition and fail to get traction. Google’s tasks and reminders are the perfect example of these confusing and redundant experiences. You can create reminders in Calendar, through Google Assistant, the Tasks app, or in Google Keep, and this works fine on a basic level: you are reminded of that thing you needed. But good luck finding a single place to manage these items!

CNET: “Chrome banishes JPEG XL Photo Format that could Save Phone Space”

JPEG XL is an industry standard, but Google likes a rival it helped develop called AVIF, and Apple iPhones shoot photos in yet another format, HEIC.

There’s more to like about JPEG XL than space savings. It’s tuned for photographic use, doing a better job at preserving fine details and textures than video-derived formats like AVIF and HEIC. JPEG XL also improves image quality through HDR support, one of the reasons that Adobe -- ordinarily conservative with new file format support -- endorsed it. Facebook praises JPEG XL’s speed, and Intel thinks JPEG XL is the best of the next-gen photo format options.

Google doesn’t have veto power over JPEG XL’s future, but as the maker of the world's most-used browser, it can effectively block its use on the web.

Stephen Shankland

Speaking of image formats and browser support, here’s another example of Google using Chrome’s dominance to favor its own interests on the web, in this case by refusing to support an industry standard on questionable grounds. From everything I’ve read about JPEG XL it’s superior in almost every way to both JPEG and AVIF. But hey, this is what happens when developers cheer on browser engine consolidation because it makes their lives easier; eventually the dominant player gets to veto which standards receive attention and which fade into oblivion.

WebP image support in Blogger

Blogger has not exactly been pushing out updates over the past years – in fact, its official blog has been silent since 2020. One might even suspect it’s on life support inside Google, and the only reason it’s up and running is that higher-up executives largely forgot it’s still around (although with the current tech slump they might rediscover and seek to eliminate this errant source of expenses). When updates do happen, users are caught by surprise and have to chase details on the help forums – for instance earlier this year after an update to the image delivery system that altered URLs, removing the initial image file name, and annoyed many people. Fortunately, the file name returned after a couple of weeks, maybe because of the complaints, maybe because the team behind it realized it was a silly choice to display a random string of characters instead of a readable file name.

Wired: “How Google alerted Californians to an Earthquake before it hit”

Here’s how it works: When an earthquake occurs, it sends softer seismic waves, known as P waves, through the ground. Not everyone in the earthquake’s area will feel these, but a network of 1,300 USGS sensors do. When four sensors are simultaneously triggered, they send an alert to a data processing center. If that data meets the right criteria, the ShakeAlert system determines that stronger S waves, the kind that can cause damage and hurt people, could be on the way. It’s then that warning systems, like Google’s, an app called MyShake, or government agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency and transit systems, will interpret the data and send out alerts.

---

Google has also turned individual phones into miniature earthquake sensors. All smartphones have accelerometers that can pick up signals of an earthquake. If triggered, the phone sends the message to a detection server, along with rough location data, like the city a device is in. The server then pieces together where the earthquake is happening from data collected on multiple phones and beams out the relevant alerts.

Stogaitis says phones only pick up the waves when plugged in and locked. That helps to avoid confusion from phones jostling around in bags and pockets. The long-term goal is to send signals with even more speed. We’re looking at trying to make the time from which [an earthquake begins] and the time that we detect it and send an alert as fast as possible, says Stogaitis.

Amanda Hoover

Coincidentally there was an earthquake in Romania in the early hours of the morning today. I don’t usually sense earthquakes when I’m sound asleep, but this time I woke up despite its small magnitude. To my surprise, a push notification from Google was waiting for me on the phone and it reminded me of this article from a couple of days ago.