Last year marked the beginning of Google's explicit focus on AI search, and this year's I/O solidified that shift. As Google's search VP Liz Reid said during the keynote, "Google search is AI search." This change is well underway, and the very reasonable objections to this path will not dissuade the company. All the metrics that matter to Google say this is the right move. But at the end of the day, Google can get whatever outcome it wants because it's just that big and influential.

Google started testing AI Mode for search just over a year ago, making the shift official at I/O 2025. You hear a lot of complaints around the Internet about how AI is changing Google's search products, but Google is getting what it wants: more searches. Reid revealed at I/O 2026 that AI Mode usage has been doubling every quarter. There are now more than 1 billion people using AI Mode every month.

It's not hard to see how that could be true. AI Mode invites a conversational experience—it asks you questions—and each of those follow-up queries counts as searches. Google has also pushed AI Mode very hard, including prominent links and nudges to get people to use its search chatbot instead of the traditional product. And unlike many of Google's other AI experiences, you don't have to pay anything to AI search. Everyone who uses Google search gets the full AI experience.

You can hardly escape AI Mode as it is, and Google is announcing even more AI Mode integrations at I/O this year. AI Overviews may be the most prominent element of Google's AI search shift, but that's increasingly looking like a stopgap as AI Mode spins up. Google has a new "seamless" search experience that ties AI Mode into AI Overviews. Most Google searches now produce an AI Overview. Google is expanding a mobile feature that lets you move from an Overview into AI Mode. This feature is now available across desktop, too.

Google is getting what it wants from AI search. Credit: Ryan Whitwam

The AI Mode nudge hovers at the bottom of the Overview, actually hiding the top of the organic search results. This will, no doubt, inflate the number of AI Mode searches even more. It may also disincentivise users from scrolling down to see the 10 blue links. It makes organic results feel more like footnotes than the core of the search experience.

Reid also says Google's new search box is the biggest change in its entire 25-year history. A search box isn't very complicated (or didn't used to be), but the new version again guides users toward AI Mode. It expands dynamically as you type more, and it will attempt to autocomplete your searches. Google definitely doesn't want you to call it autocomplete, though! It uses generative AI technology to guess at your intent, guided by what Gemini knows about you. This change is rolling out today globally.

Search vibes

Google's more-AI-than-ever search experience is also veering into experiences that don't really feel like a search engine. Search will employ agents to answer your questions in new ways, powered by Gemini 3.5 Flash. Google says it has integrated Antigravity as a harness for the new model's AI agents in search. This powers two different ways of finding information with vibe coding that are similar but technically distinct.

When you ask questions in regular search (AI Overviews) or AI Mode later this summer, Google's AI may choose to create generative UI. These are single-shot simulations that help you understand concepts like, for example, the golden ratio or the behavior of black holes. These interfaces will have sliders, buttons, and other elements conjured from the AI ether.

AI Mode builds custom mini-apps from a single prompt, but it might not show you the code at launch. Credit: Ryan Whitwam

The other experience is currently limited to AI Mode, and it goes a step further. If your query calls for it, Search will create a custom app to help you with the problem. Currently you have to ask for an app (e.g. make or build 'x' for me), but the line between generative UI and apps may blur over time.

What is that supposed to do for you? Maybe you want to plan a family outing for the weekend, so you ask search to build an itinerary. In that case, Search can create a UI with event suggestions, reviews, map embeds, and calendar integration. It pulls this data from Google's platform as well as from around the web. The early demos of search agent dashboards actually show you the code as it's generated, but Google is most likely going to hide this for the full rollout later this summer. Showing a simplified workflow of chain of thought would avoid confusing the average user who just wants a pretty UI and doesn't care that it was generated on the spot.

You can revisit and change the dashboard by accessing your AI Mode history in the sidebar. These generated apps can be customized with follow-up prompts, and you can share them with others via a link. The other party can even customize the app to their liking. Currently, there is no way to share those modifications, but that's something Google is exploring. It may also be possible in the future to manually modify the code of these mini-apps line by line.

Swallowing the Internet whole

The overarching trend here is fewer blue links and more AI-generated everything. Google says the greater efficiency of Gemini 3.5 Flash enables all these new AI experiences, and we can expect more of them in the future. The agentic app generation in particular may benefit from the pending improvements in Gemini 3.5 Pro, which might even be available before everyone gets search agents.

Googlers talk about these moves as a way to more efficiently extract the information people want from webpages that have become weighed down with extraneous text that forces you to scroll past more and more ads. That is a genuine problem with the current state of web content, but Google's hands aren't clean. Many websites have ended up in this state only after years of chasing search rank and compensating for low ad rates.

Despite what many see as a decline in Google search quality, the company's search products remain far and away the primary way people find things online. Even after a year of Google's AI search overhaul, DuckDuckGo, Bing, Brave, and the rest of the competition continue to be little more than a rounding error. Google appears to take its continued dominance and growth as proof that it's on the right track with AI.

Google has decided this is how search works, and the rest of us are just along for the ride.

Read full article

Comments

After nearly a quarter of a century operating as a private company, with its financial accounts a closely guarded secret, SpaceX on Wednesday afternoon released a detailed accounting of its business in a nearly 400-page S-1 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

SpaceX, founded in 2002 and still led by Elon Musk, submitted the filing in anticipation of an initial public offering of its stock as soon as June 12.

The document revealed no major surprises about the company's space operations, but there was a trove of details about its sprawling operations, which now encompass launch, spaceflight, space-based Internet, and, thanks to its recent acquisition of Musk's xAI, social media and AI.

The company reported revenues of $18.67 billion in 2025, up significantly from $14.02 billion the year before. However, after turning a small profit in 2024, the company lost $4.94 billion in 2025 largely due to spending on artificial intelligence development.

That's a big market you've got there

SpaceX projects a "total addressable market," or TAM, of $28.5 trillion across its present and future offerings in space, data, and AI services. However, of this amount, only about $2 trillion is directly related to space or the company's Starlink network. The remaining $26.5 billion is believed to come from AI, largely from enterprise applications.

SpaceX estimate of total addressable market. Credit: SpaceX S-1 filing

"We believe we have identified the largest TAM in human history," the company states on page 171 of the filing. "We believe our next trillion-dollar market is AI compute, which we contemplate will leverage our rockets and satellites for massive orbital deployment."

The company said its estimates for this large market were based on a number of sources.

"Our AI market estimates are based in part on projections of global data center compute demand from third-party sources, including estimates published by RAND Corporation, together with internal assumptions regarding the portion of global compute capacity that may be utilized for AI workloads and other operational assumptions such as power usage, utilization rates and pricing," the filing states.

Compensation details

The document includes some interesting details about the company's leadership. After the IPO concludes and SpaceX becomes a public company, Musk will retain 85.1 percent of the "combined voting power" in leading SpaceX. He will serve as the company's chief executive officer and chairman of the board of directors. It will be very difficult to remove him from this position.

Musk's salary in 2025 was $54,080, a value tied to California’s minimum salary for exempt employees. Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer of the company, received a salary of $1.08 million in 2025, but including stock awards, her total compensation was valued at $85.8 million.

The S-1 filing notes that Musk has served as an advisor to President Trump and alludes to the possibility that changes in politics might materially affect the company's future.

"The current political environment in the United States is highly polarized, and shifts in the composition of the US Congress or changes in the presidential administration can result in significant changes in government spending priorities, regulatory posture, and the allocation of contracts and resources across industries and programs," the filing states. "Our relationships with US government agencies and the favorability of the regulatory and procurement environment in which we operate may be affected by which political party controls the presidency or one or both chambers of the US Congress."

The space business

There is relatively little new information in this document about the company's launch business. For example, there is no breakdown of the Falcon 9's internal launch cost (believed to be about $15 million per launch) relative to the base public price of $74 million.

As for the larger Starship vehicle, the filing states that SpaceX aims to reduce the price per kilogram to orbit to at least $185. SpaceX intends to begin launching V3 Starlink satellites during the second half of this year on the super-heavy rocket, but this is predicated on a series of test flights that will resume as early as Thursday from Starbase in South Texas.

The filing also acknowledges the significant work that SpaceX has yet to complete with Starship to make it a fully reusable rocket capable of delivering large payloads to the Moon and Mars.

"These systems involve significant technological, engineering, and operational challenges, including the need to develop habitable transportation and surface environments, and perform complex in-orbit operations," the document states. "Solving these challenges will require developing solutions that are novel or untested and will require substantial capital investment."

The AI business

By staking its future on AI, SpaceX makes the case that it is the best-placed company to build a massive constellation of orbital data centers.

"We believe we are the only company with a commercially viable path to building orbital AI compute at scale," the filing states. "This is underpinned by our unique ability to launch substantial mass into orbit cost efficiently through reusable rockets and manufacture secure, reliable, and high performance satellites at low cost and high volume. Our goal over time is to launch 100 gigawatts of compute to space each year."

SpaceX said it expects to begin deploying its orbital AI compute satellites as early as 2028.

This company, founded with an initial goal of launching a small rocket known as the Falcon 1, has come a long way since its humble beginnings. It has become the world's most accomplished launch company and annually puts about 80 percent of all mass into orbit. It operates more satellites than the rest of the world combined.

And yet, to reach its stratospheric valuation and addressable market, SpaceX must evolve from a space company into an AI company and continue growing rapidly. These are huge bets. It will be up to investors to decide in the coming months and years whether these are also good bets.

Read full article

Comments

Larry Bushart, a retired Tennessee cop who was jailed for 37 days for posting a Trump meme on Facebook, won an $835,000 settlement Wednesday after suing the county and sheriff that he said jailed him in order to censor him.

In a press release, Bushart's legal team at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) confirmed that Bushart agreed to dismiss his lawsuit in exchange for the "substantial settlement."

"I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated," Bushart said. "The people’s freedom to participate in civil discourse is crucial to a healthy democracy. I am looking forward to moving on and spending time with my family."

The settlement will help assure that Bushart and his wife have a comfortable retirement. That was threatened when Bushart was jailed, as he lost his post-retirement job. But the settlement doesn't make up for other losses. The grandfather missed the birth of his grandchild while he was stuck behind bars for more than a month, as he couldn't afford to pay his eye-popping $2 million bond.

"No one should be hauled off to jail in the dark of night over a harmless meme just because the authorities disagree with its message," Adam Steinbaugh, FIRE senior attorney, said. "We’re pleased that Larry has been compensated for this injustice, but local law enforcement never should have forced him to endure this ordeal in the first place."

Cops came for Bushart after he posted a meme that he neither created nor altered on Facebook. The meme accurately quoted Donald Trump as saying, "we have to get over it," following a school shooting at Perry High School in Iowa.

Bushart posted the meme on a Facebook thread promoting a vigil for Charlie Kirk in Perry County in Tennessee after the right-wing influencer was assassinated.

A county sheriff, Nick Weems, saw the meme and was seemingly offended. He took advantage of the fact that the school referenced in the meme, Perry High School in Iowa, could possibly be confused with his area high school, Perry County High School. And he issued a warrant for Bushart's arrest "based on the absurd notion that the meme could be interpreted as a threat" of a shooting at a high school in his county, FIRE said.

Seemingly, Weems hoped the threat of arrest would pressure Bushart into removing the post, but Bushart refused to be censored.

Video from the arrest shows that Bushart told the arresting officer he never made such a threat, and some cops at the jail seemed similarly confused about the basis of his arrest. In one exchange caught on footage reviewed by The Intercept, Bushart even shared a laugh with an officer over how silly his arrest seemed to be:

"Just to clarify, this is what they charged you with—Threatening Mass Violence at a School," a Perry County jail officer told Bushart.

"At a school?" Bushart asked.

"I ain’t got a clue," the officer responded, laughing. "I just gotta do what I have to do."

"I’ve been in Facebook jail, but now I’m really in it," Bushart said, joining him in laughing.

Weems later admitted that "he knew at the time of the arrest that Larry’s Facebook post was a pre-existing meme that referred to an actual shooting that took place in a different state, over 500 miles away," FIRE said. But he arrested Bushart anyway, violating Bushart's "constitutional rights in retaliation for his protected speech," FIRE said.

FIRE noted that Bushart is one of 600 people that Reuters found were punished for making controversial online statements about Kirk's death, following a government-backed campaign targeting political speech. Bushart's win shows that the First Amendment can stand up to censorship attempts, FIRE staff attorney Cary Davis suggested.

"It’s in times of turmoil and heightened tensions that our national commitment to free speech is tested the most," Davis said. "When government officials fail that test, the Constitution exists to hold them accountable. Our hope is that Larry’s settlement sends a message to law enforcement across the country: Respect the First Amendment today, or be prepared to pay the price tomorrow."

Read full article

Comments

As of July 1, at 12:01 am UTC—or June 30 at 8:01 pm ET—people seeking access to Plex's media server features through a one-time purchase will have to pay $750. That’s three times the current price of $250.

The new price will not affect current Lifetime Plex Pass holders.

A Lifetime Plex Pass allows you to stream from your own Plex Media Server to a device connected to your own network, to stream from the server remotely, and to allow others to stream remotely from your server.

When first launched in 2012, a Lifetime Plex Pass was $75. In 2014, Plex increased the price to $150 because “at 2.5x the price of a yearly, it was priced in an unsustainable way for us,” Plex said in a blog post at the time. Eventually, lifetime passes were available for $120 for years until March 2025, when the price skyrocketed to $250. That brings us to today’s announcement.

In an email and blog post to customers today, Plex said that it sold lifetime passes early in its existence “because we knew many of our customers would rather pay a higher, one-time fee for software that they can depend on every day.” However, as evidenced by several price hikes, Plex has struggled to reconcile lifetime passes with its own financial goals. The company’s message says:

We’ve considered eliminating the Lifetime Plex Pass in the past, given that recurring subscriptions help us sustain long-term development, but we know it’s still a valuable option for many in our community. So instead of retiring it, we’re keeping it available at a price that reflects the real, ongoing value of the software we’re committed to building and maintaining for years to come.

The 200 percent price hike and Plex’s admission that it has mulled killing Lifetime Passes illustrate Plex’s shifting priorities as it seeks profitability. Notably, Plex didn’t announce any pricing hikes for its monthly or annual subscription tiers.

In its blog, Plex offered further reasoning for the upcoming price hike:

Over the years, as our software and product has evolved, the breadth of features and benefits included with your Plex Pass has expanded. This increase ensures we can continue to invest resources into building and maintaining the Plex personal media software, while continuing to offer a Lifetime option.

As noted in the announcement, Plex would rather people pay monthly or annually for its media server features than a one-time fee. With annual subscriptions currently $70, it would take 11 years for a $750 lifetime subscription to be a better value.

Plex's price hike is an extreme example of streaming service providers continuously increasing prices amid struggles to reach and maintain profitability while keeping prices stable and dealing with ongoing costs, like licensing fees for rental movies and app updates.

Plex claims to be working on numerous new features for its platform, including: adding all server and library management features currently available on app.plex.tv to Plex's mobile and, where applicable, TV apps; “boosting dialogue and normalizing loudness,” per today's announcement; transcoding improvements; IPv6 support; and the abilities to group downloads by show, automatically download new episodes, and make and edit playlists in mobile apps. New features that Plex has added recently include the ability to create custom metadata agents and an open API for server integrations.

Beyond new features, Plex has previously cited rising costs for the hike, including supporting various types of devices and codecs.

Plex moving beyond media serving

Plex’s various forays into areas outside of its original media server business also contribute to its rising costs. In recent years, Plex has expanded from a media server company to a streaming service provider that has hundreds of free ad-supported TV (FAST) channels, rents out movies, and dabbles in social features. It also made a failed venture into gaming.

Legacy customers, however, have grown wary of Plex’s expanding interests and their potential impact on Plex's media server users. While adding streaming and social features, Plex killed free remote streaming access and its Watch Together feature and issued a controversial app redesign. Plex also has reason to put more focus on its streaming business since more people have been using Plex’s online streaming service than its media server capabilities since 2022, Scott Hancock, Plex’s then-VP of marketing, said in 2023.

The good news is that Plex has given months of warning before jacking up Lifetime Plex Pass prices. But as Plex seeks profitability, it will continue evolving from the pure-play, affordable media server company that it originally was and, in turn, drum up interest for rival platforms, like Jellyfin, Emby, and Kodi.

Read full article

Comments

Bitwarden appears to be undergoing a quiet shift in leadership and messaging. Its longtime CEO and CFO have stepped down, while the company has removed "Always free" from a prominent password-manager page and replaced "Inclusion" and "Transparency" in its GRIT values with "Innovation" and "Trust." Fast Company reports: In February, longtime CEO Michael Crandell moved to an advisory role, according to LinkedIn, with no announcement from the company. His replacement, Michael Sullivan, former CEO of both Acquia and Insightsoftware, touts his experience with "all facets of mergers and acquisitions" on his own LinkedIn page, including experience working with leading private equity firms. CFO Stephen Morrison also left Bitwarden in April, replaced by former InVision CEO Michael Shenkman. Both Crandell and Morrison joined the company in 2019. Kyle Spearrin, who started Bitwarden as a fun hobby project in 2015, remains the company's CTO. Meanwhile, Bitwarden has made some subtle tweaks to its website. The page for its personal password manager no longer includes the phrase "Always free." Previously this appeared under the "Pick a plan" section partway down the page, but that section no longer mentions the free plan, though it remains available elsewhere on the page. Bitwarden made this change in mid-April, according to the Internet Archive. Bitwarden has also stopped listing "Inclusion" and "Transparency" as tentpole values on its careers page. The company has long defined its values with the acronym "GRIT," which used to stand for "Gratitude, Responsibility, Inclusion, and Transparency." After May 4, it changed the acronym to stand for "Gratitude, Responsibility, Innovation, and Trust." The phrase "inclusive environment" still appears under a description of Gratitude, while "transparency" is mentioned under the Trust heading. They're just no longer the focus.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A federal judge reportedly said she will not rubber-stamp a settlement between Elon Musk and the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying the deal raises red flags and needs scrutiny over whether Musk is getting special treatment from the Trump administration.

As we reported last week, the Trump administration agreed to let Musk pay a $1.5 million fine to settle a lawsuit that originally sought at least $150 million. In 2022, before buying Twitter outright, Musk purchased a 9 percent stake in the social network and failed to disclose it within 10 days as required under US law. The SEC lawsuit filed during the Biden administration said the late disclosure allowed Musk to keep buying shares at artificially low prices and underpay shareholders by at least $150 million.

Under the settlement with the SEC, a trust in Musk’s name would pay a $1.5 million civil penalty to the government and not admit that Musk committed any violation. The deal requires court approval, and Judge Sparkle Sooknanan expressed skepticism at a hearing yesterday in US District Court for the District of Columbia.

“I am not going to rubber-stamp this settlement, and I cannot rubber-stamp this settlement," the judge said, Bloomberg reported. “Is Mr. Musk getting some kind of special treatment in this case?” Sooknanan was also quoted as saying.

Sooknanan said that dropping the demand for $150 million and imposing the settlement terms on a trust instead of Musk himself are both "red flags," a Reuters report said. "Sooknanan also noted that SEC lawyers at a prior hearing to discuss the case had appeared surprised when lawyers for Musk revealed that they had been in settlement talks with the agency," Reuters reported. Sooknanan called that fact another red flag.

Musk, SEC ordered to answer questions

After yesterday's hearing, Sooknanan issued a short order telling attorneys for Musk and the SEC to submit a brief by June 1 "addressing the Court's questions as stated on the record at today's hearing." Bloomberg's report said Sooknanan told attorneys that the brief should explain "how the parties reached the deal, including why the proposed settlement involves a trust tied to Musk instead of the billionaire himself."

SEC attorney Nicholas Grippo told the judge, “These are important, fair questions. Happy to answer them,” according to Bloomberg. The SEC historically operated with independence from the White House until Trump issued an executive order declaring that independent agencies must take orders from the president.

In a previous order last week, Sooknanan said that precedents require the court to consider whether "the settlement is fair, adequate, reasonable and appropriate under the particular facts," "whether it resolves the claims in the complaint, and whether it was tainted by improper collusion or corruption."

The SEC filed the lawsuit in January 2025 with only days remaining in the Biden presidency. In December 2024, SEC attorneys reportedly asked Musk to pay over $200 million to settle the allegations.

The disclosure rule that Musk was accused of violating is enforced under a “strict liability” standard, meaning that it doesn’t matter whether a rule violation was intentional or inadvertent. Musk unsuccessfully tried to get the lawsuit moved to a Texas court, and Sooknanan rejected his motion to dismiss the case in February 2026.

Read full article

Comments