This week, Google released the June 2026 spam update, Google said it was a normal spam update but it does feel like this one started a bit earlier and was a big one. Yes, we covered on Sunday what we thought...

Google Ads seems to be rolling out Maximize Conversion Value bidding within Standard Shopping campaigns. You might see under the Budget and bidding optimization setting for your Standard Shopping campaigns, the bid option for "Maximize conversion value."

Google announced new security controls for Merchant Center for Agencies, specifically around user access controls for admins and standard roles. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, said that these changes are "to help streamline workflows and improve security."

The Google Ads API will stop allowing advertisers to create Smart Campaigns on August 3, 2026. Google has been transitioning from Smart Campaigns to Performance Max campaigns for years now.

Google has added the messages button back to the Google Business Profile dashboard within Google Search. Google use to have a feature like this but I believe removed it but now it is possibly coming back.

Earlier this month, we covered Google's announcement of the Google-hosted lead form. Well, now it is going live for some advertisers in their Google Ads advertiser accounts.

An open specification for finding and verifying tools, skills, and agents across the web.Agents are ...

Microsoft is raising Xbox console prices again, citing higher memory and storage costs as the Xbox Series X rises to $800 in the US.

The post Xbox Console Prices Rise Again as Microsoft Cites Memory Costs appeared first on TechRepublic.

The best applicant tracking systems for 2026 include Rippling for all-in-one HR, Pinpoint for scalable hiring, and Freshteam by Freshworks for easy candidate management.

The post 10 Best Applicant Tracking Systems in 2026 appeared first on TechRepublic.

Google settled YouTube claims brought by a Florida teen, leaving Meta, TikTok, and Snap to face a July trial over social media addiction.

The post YouTube Exits Teen Addiction Lawsuit as Meta, TikTok, Snapchat Head to Trial appeared first on TechRepublic.

DiffusionGemma is an experimental text-generation model built on the Gemma 4 architecture that uses diffusion-based parallel generation instead of token-by-token autoregression, enabling much faster inference, bidirectional context awareness, and real-time self-correction while remaining deployable on consumer GPUs. Its architecture generates and refines 256-token blocks in parallel through iterative denoising, allowing it to handle complex constraint-based tasks such as Sudoku more effectively than traditional language models and demonstrating strong gains from fine-tuning. The model integrates with vLLM and other popular inference frameworks, giving developers access to a new non-autoregressive approach that combines high performance, efficient long-context scaling, and straightforward customization and deployment.

Google has announced the new Google Pay & Wallet Developer MCP server, an open-standard tool designed to securely connect AI development assistants and IDEs with real-time API and account context. The server allows developers to remain within their development environment to search official documentation, validate Wallet pass definitions, check integration status, and manage merchant accounts. Ultimately, this integration aims to reduce friction and accelerate development workflows by minimizing context switching and providing up-to-date, grounded AI support.

We are excited to bring Express checkout with Google Pay for Android native apps enabling developers...

Apple reportedly cleared Samsung Display to make OLED panels for its first foldable iPhone, with hinge issues still shaping launch timing.

The post Samsung Reportedly Starts OLED Panel Production for Apple’s First Foldable iPhone appeared first on TechRepublic.

Microsoft’s July Windows 11 update adds practical fixes for update pausing, recovery, Bluetooth, Widgets, File Explorer, and more.

The post Microsoft’s July Windows 11 Update Focuses on Fixing Everyday PC Frustrations appeared first on TechRepublic.

A Danish court ordered the state to compensate TDC NET after the removal of Huawei fiber-network equipment, raising questions about telecom security costs.

The post Denmark Ordered to Pay $12M Over Huawei Equipment Removal appeared first on TechRepublic.

Interpol’s latest Asia and South Pacific cybercrime assessment shows how phishing, ransomware, DDoS attacks, infostealers, and AI-enabled scams are raising security risks across APAC.

The post Interpol: Cybercrime Hits 30% of Recorded Crime in Surveyed APAC Countries appeared first on TechRepublic.

Google has officially launched the TPU Developer Hub, a centralized educational resource designed to help model builders and developers maximize the performance of Google Cloud TPUs. The hub offers code-first resources, open-source recipes, and deep-dive documentation covering hardware architecture, software optimization, debugging, parallelism, and networking. These materials are tailored for both human developers and AI-assisted tools to streamline everything from large-scale training to low-latency inference workloads.

Google is enhancing Sign in with Google by introducing new OIDC standard claims—specifically auth_time and amr (Authentication Methods Reference) to provide developers with deeper session metadata. These updates allow verified apps to verify the "freshness" of a user's login and the specific authentication methods used (such as MFA or hardware keys), enabling more dynamic, risk-based access controls. By leveraging these federated identity signals, platforms can better prevent account takeover and fraud while implementing granular security policies like step-up authentication for sensitive actions.

The Google Tunix Hackathon on Kaggle challenged developers to transform small, non-reasoning base models into general reasoning engines using Kaggle TPUs and a limited compute budget. The winning teams achieved this by implementing multi-stage post-training pipelines that combined Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) with advanced alignment techniques like GRPO and SimPO. Ultimately, the competition democratized AI development by proving that highly capable, structured reasoning models can be successfully trained by the community using accessible, open-source resources.