Google is working on a new look for Google Maps on Android Auto. After a previous attempt earlier this year caused problems, the company is now testing a centered map again. This time, it looks like users might actually like the change.
Earlier this year, Google updated Android Auto to center the map instead of keeping it on the right side. However, the update caused the destination menu to block part of the route, which made it hard to see the road. Many users found this annoying, and Google quickly switched back to the old layout.
Now, the centered map is back in testing, but without the menu blocking the screen. Drivers can see their route more clearly, and navigation looks cleaner.
Image via Reddit (steelbreeze9)
Some users report that centering works automatically when navigation starts, though it may disappear sometimes. If that happens, it can be restored easily by tapping the three-pane button and then the Maps screen.
Centering the map helps drivers see more of their route and surroundings. Before, the main issue was the blocked view, but now that problem seems fixed. A centered map can make it easier to follow directions without constantly moving the screen around.
After a first attempt, Google may have finally found the right way to center maps on Android Auto. If it works well, Android Auto users may soon get a clearer, less cluttered map view. Stay tuned.
The post Google Maps preparing improved centered view on Android Auto – Here’s what’s new appeared first on Sammy Fans.
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Remember when ChatGPT launched and everyone predicted Google’s search empire would crumble? Yeah, about that. Here’s the reality check nobody saw coming. A massive new report from Datos, a Semrush company, just analyzed billions of desktop searches from millions of users across the US and Europe. The data reveals an unexpected AI search evolution: Google isn’t just surviving the revolution, it’s absolutely crushing it with a 95% market share in both regions.
And as for all those headlines about OpenAI killing Google with ChatGPT’s search features? Turns out they were way off base.
Don’t get me wrong. ChatGPT and its AI buddies have definitely made an impact. Usage has nearly tripled over the past year. More than 30% of US desktop users and over 40% of Europeans are now using ChatGPT. Tools like Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity have their loyal fans too.
On the surface, it sounds like Google might have just lost 30-40% of its users to AI. But here are some numbers to put it into perspective: AI tools only make up about 1.3% of total browsing activity.
Despite every tech pundit on Twitter declaring that AI would replace Google, it barely makes a dent in how people actually search for stuff online. AI isn’t replacing traditional search at all. It’s just another tool in your digital toolbox. You might ask ChatGPT to help you debug some code or brainstorm ideas. Then you’ll hop over to Google’s AI Mode to find that new Thai restaurant or check if your favorite shoes are on sale.
Okay, so Google’s not dead. However, it does have one major issue that publishers are grappling with. Zero-click searches.
Almost 27% of Google searches now end without anyone clicking anything. This is up from 24.4% just a year ago. People are getting their answers right there on the search results page and calling it a day.
For anyone running a website or trying to drive traffic, this is kind of scary. You’ve done all your SEO homework, you put in the effort into crafting the best articles. All this just so you could rank number one on Google. But then you still get zero visitors because Google just answered the question itself. And the worst part is that these answers might have been scraped from your own website.
Google’s AI Overviews feature is a big part of this. These AI-generated summaries now show up in over 13% of searches, and that number keeps climbing. Some estimates say they could appear in more than 80% of informational searches soon.
In August, Google straight up denied that AI search was hurting website traffic. Publishers weren’t buying it. Multiple reports showed traffic tanking, especially for news sites, but Google said everything was fine.
But if you really want to know what’s actually shaking up the search game, it’s not some fancy AI tool. It’s an oldie but goodie: Reddit.
The community-driven platform has absolutely exploded in popularity. It’s overtaken Facebook in desktop visits in the US and is catching up fast in Europe. Reddit now sits comfortably in the top five destinations people reach from search engines, right alongside YouTube, Amazon, Wikipedia, and Facebook.
This is because people are tired of reading polished, SEO-optimized garbage that tells them nothing useful. When you Google “best budget laptop Reddit,” you’re saying loud and clear that you want real opinions from real people, not some affiliate marketing nonsense. Reddit got so valuable that Google paid them $60 million for access to their data to train AI models.
This is actually a fascinating turnaround. In the past, websites strived to provide readers with neutral commentary and let them make the decisions themselves. But now? We’re missing the human touch so much that sometimes diving deep into an echo chamber like Reddit might yield more interesting (and controversial) opinions and perspectives that traditional websites might not have.
While AI is stealing traffic from some sites, it’s completely failing to disrupt others.
YouTube remains untouchable. It’s the top destination from traditional search in both the US and Europe. It’s also the second-most visited site from AI tools.
But why can’t AI touch video content? Because watching someone actually do something is way more valuable than reading about it. You can’t replace a 10-minute tutorial on fixing your sink with a text summary. Try learning a new dance move from ChatGPT. Good luck with that.
This reveals something important about what AI is actually disrupting. Sites offering basic, factual, “evergreen” content are getting hammered. Wikipedia, for example, lost 5% of its human traffic year over year while bots and scrapers grew massively. Stack Overflow, Chegg, and similar Q&A sites are bleeding traffic.
But platforms offering fresh perspectives, community discussions, and video content? They’re actually thriving. YouTube’s citation rate in AI answers jumped from 37% to 54%. Reddit gets mentioned by ChatGPT as often as it gets cited. These platforms offer something AI can’t replicate: real human experiences and visual demonstrations.
So, what does this mean for anyone trying to drive traffic or build an audience? It’s time to toss out the old playbook and start writing a new one. Creating generic “what is” articles and “how to” guides used to be a solid strategy. Now? AI just scrapes that content, summarizes it, and nobody ever visits your site.
Some publishers are already shifting their strategy. Instead of cranking out evergreen content that AI can easily replicate, they’re focusing on what AI can’t steal: original research, unique data, customer stories, and fresh perspectives that haven’t been said a million times before.
Think about it this way: ChatGPT can tell you what SEO is. But at the same time, it can’t tell you about the weird bug you just discovered in Google Search Console this morning. AI can explain Reddit. But can it spill the tea unfolding in your favorite subreddit right now?
From what we’ve gathered, the content that survives is either too specific for AI to care about, too fresh for AI to have learned yet, or too personality-driven for AI to replicate. As for everything else? Well, you might think of it like roadkill on the information superhighway.
The fear and resistance around AI search evolution isn’t new. We’ve watched this exact movie play out before.
There are strong parallels between how traditional artists reacted to the rise of digital art and how some content creators today feel about AI-generated content. When digital art first emerged, many traditional artists felt threatened, dismissed it as “cheating,” or questioned its legitimacy as “real art” because it offered new tools and shortcuts that made certain aspects of creation easier or faster.
Now, doesn’t that sound familiar?
Early reactions to digital art in the 2000s mirror today’s AI anxiety perfectly. Traditional artists viewed digital tools with skepticism, often calling it “not real art” because it lacked the physicality and manual skill associated with traditional mediums. Some artists felt that digital tools made art creation too easy, reducing the perceived value of the artist’s effort and skill. There was intimidation, as digital art allowed for rapid production and easy corrections, which contrasted with the more labor-intensive and irreversible nature of traditional art.
Just as digital art was once seen as a threat to traditional art, AI-powered search tools are now viewed by some as a threat to traditional websites and publishers. Both faced backlash for being labeled as “cheating” or “not legitimate,” often due to misunderstandings about the creative process and the skills required.
Over time, digital art gained acceptance as artists and audiences recognized that it required its own unique set of skills and creative decisions, much like traditional art. A similar evolution is happening with AI search right now. The tools aren’t replacing the craft. Instead, they’re expanding what’s possible.
Google’s 95% market share isn’t going anywhere. ChatGPT’s search tools didn’t kill traditional search. They just gave us another option.
The real story of this AI search evolution isn’t about AI destroying Google. It’s about how we’re all learning to use multiple tools for different jobs. You’ve got Google for quick facts and finding stuff. You can also use ChatGPT for brainstorming and complex questions. Then, you can always hop on Reddit for real opinions, and finally, YouTube for how-tos.
Some things obviously need to be addressed. Zero-click searches are forcing websites to completely rethink their strategy. Generic content is dead, and community platforms and video are winning.
As for the AI revolution everyone predicted, it feels more like a gentle evolution in search. The reality is less dramatic than the headlines suggested, but way more interesting when you look at how people actually use the internet now.
So, maybe the future of search isn’t about one platform winning. It’s about all of them carving out their own space. Now, it’s up to content creators learning which types of content are worth making in an AI-powered world.
The post Everyone Predicted Google's Death in 2024, Google Hit 95% Market Share Instead appeared first on Android Headlines.
Halloween is a special time of year for many in the US, as it allows them a reason to acquire and scarf down copious amounts of sweets or hand them out to others to do the same, and it’s a reason to dress up in costume and hang spooky decorations, much like Google has recently done with its Android statues around the company campus.
Yes, Google is going all in on spooky season with the Android statues, placing decorations around parts of the campus, and draping ghostly or web-like decorations across statues. One statue now has a sheet over it to disguise the statue as a simple ghost. Meanwhile, another is wrapped in fake spider webs with a few rather sizeable fake spiders crawling all over it. Google has even thrown fake webbing over Stan the dinosaur while placing a few “trick or treat” signs in the ground around it.
Halloween is the perfect time to spread around some decorations, especially if it’s one of your favorite holidays. Seeing Google decorate its Android statues for Halloween begs the question of whether or not it would do the same for others. We couldn’t find any evidence of this being done before, but there’s no reason to suggest that it wouldn’t be done in the future. Seeing as how other holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas are celebrated widely around the country, it would make sense for Google to decorate the Android statues during those times as well.
The images showing the Halloween decorations originated from a user named rafal_wziatek on Instagram, and were spotted by Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz. While there are just these few images that were taken, it’s probably a safe bet that other statue decorations could be found elsewhere.
And if more decorations were abound, then there’s a good chance Google plans on being festive with the statues and around campus during other big holidays. This is just speculation, of course. But it’s fun to think about during these times, imagining statues of the Android mascot being dressed up to match the theme of the holiday.
The post Spooky season catches up with Google's Android statues appeared first on Android Headlines.
Amazon’s third-quarter profits rose 38% to $21.2 billion, but a big part of the jump had nothing to do with its core businesses of selling goods or cloud services.
The company reported a $9.5 billion pre-tax gain from its investment in the AI startup Anthropic, which was included in Amazon’s non-operating income for the quarter.
The windfall wasn’t the result of a sale or cash transaction, but rather accounting rules. After Anthropic raised new funding in September at a $183 billion valuation, Amazon was required to revalue its equity stake to reflect the higher market price, a process known as a “mark-to-market” adjustment.
To put the $9.5 billion paper gain in perspective, the Amazon Web Services cloud business — historically Amazon’s primary profit engine — generated $11.4 billion in quarterly operating profits.
At the same time, Amazon is spending big on its AI infrastructure buildout for Anthropic and others. The company just opened an $11 billion AI data center complex, dubbed Project Rainier, where Anthropic’s Claude models run on hundreds of thousands of Amazon’s Trainium 2 chips.
Amazon is going head-to-head against Microsoft, which just re-upped its partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI; and Google, which reported record cloud revenue for its recent quarter, driven by AI. The AI infrastructure race is fueling a big surge in capital spending for all three cloud giants.
Amazon spent $35.1 billion on property and equipment in the third quarter, up 55% from a year earlier.
Andy Jassy, the Amazon CEO, sought to reassure Wall Street that the big outlay will be worth it.
“You’re going to see us continue to be very aggressive investing in capacity, because we see the demand,” Jassy said on the company’s conference call. “As fast as we’re adding capacity right now, we’re monetizing it. It’s still quite early, and represents an unusual opportunity for customers and AWS.”
The cash for new data centers doesn’t hit the bottom line immediately, but it comes into play as depreciation and amortization costs are recorded on the income statement over time.
And in that way, the spending is starting to impact on AWS results: sales rose 20% to $33 billion in the quarter, yet operating income increased only 9.6% to $11.4 billion. The gap indicates that Amazon’s heavy AI investments are compressing profit margins in the near term, even as the company bets on the infrastructure build-out to expand its business significantly over time.
Those investments are also weighing on cash generation: Amazon’s free cash flow dropped 69% over the past year to $14.8 billion, reflecting the massive outlays for data centers and infrastructure.
Amazon has invested and committed a total of $8 billion in Anthropic, initially structured as convertible notes. A portion of that investment converted to equity with Anthropic’s prior funding round in March.
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