When you think of Google Maps, the first thing that springs to mind may be, well, maps—flat representations of streets and locations. For all their comprehensiveness and intelligence, they still have a lot in common with a Rand McNally Road Atlas from the previous century.
But as Google charts a future for the mapping app, it’s increasingly focusing on features that go beyond its most obvious responsibility of directing you from one point to another. Today, at a
Google announced a suite of new features meant to simplify the shopping experience on Search at its annual Search On event on Wednesday.
Personalization is key when it comes to a platform that has more than 35 billion product listings on its shopping graph, its AI-enhanced model that connects things like product data that is utilized to show users relevant listings. Google says that, starting later this year, consumers will be able to get tailored results on Search. In order t
Ahead of an expected initial public offering later this year, Instacart is launching a slew of new features as part of a health initiative aimed at making healthy foods more accessible.
The Instacart Health project touts three goals: simplifying healthy grocery shopping, improving nutrition security, and bolstering the concept of food as medicine.
“Study after study have shown that some of America’s biggest health problems are actually food pr
Gig work has transformed transportation, hospitality, and food. Why not law, too?
Lawtrades, a legal gig work platform founded by Raad Ahmed and Ashish Walia, launched its app this month to help connect its 2,000-plus legal professionals with customers (mostly mid-market and enterprise companies). The goal is for corporate attorneys to essentially run their own practices and take back their time.
For Ahmed, the idea for the app was spurred by first-person accoun
Lyft debuted autonomous vehicles on Thursday for riders in Austin through a partnership with self-driving startup Argo AI and Ford.
The announcement marks Lyft’s latest foray into the autonomous vehicle (AV) space via partnership. Lyft is far from alone on that front: Competitors, including Uber and DoorDash, have also worked with outside autonomous companies to bring robots to consumers.
Gig companies have long eyed automation as a means to cut down cost
On Monday, an app designed to help pull timely information from email messages, like package tracking numbers, was unveiled by one of the companies that helped bring email to the masses: Yahoo.
While many people have moved on from their Yahoo addresses since the company’s heydey in the Web’s infancy—Yahoo first launched free email accounts 25 years ago in October 1997—the company says that one in four U.S. consumers still has a Yahoo Mail accou
Meta said Thursday it has figured out how to teach an AI to create original video content based on text input. The result is a still-in-development generative tool called “Make-a-Video.” You might type in “make a video of a dog riding a horse,” and voilà: AI creates the image. The system can also create videos based on images or other video fed into the system.
That could be great, even revolutionary, for content creators—but also a boo
“Somebody once said ‘numbers is the language of business.’ No, it’s not. Language is the language of business,” says Brian Chesky, cofounder and CEO of Airbnb. “The key is that, it’s not that creativity should drive everything. It’s that it should be in the room. It should be in the conversation.”
On this week’s Most Innovative Companies Podcast (can’t access a link), Chesky shares how he navigated bot
Amazon came out swinging at last week’s annual hardware event with the announcement of a slew of new gadgets due out this fall, including a pen-equipped Kindle, an upgraded Fire TV streaming box, and a bedside clock with contactless sleep sensors.
But the most interesting part of the news wasn’t any individual gadget. Rather, it was the benignity of the products: Instead of seeing flying security-camera drones and virtual barking guard dogs to fend off perceived threa
Google’s introduction of its new Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro phones Thursday features renewed attention to what can seem the least interesting part of these devices: the app through which you place and receive phone calls.
“We see a big opportunity to apply Google’s AI to yield a better experience,” says Jonathan Eccles, group product manager for Google’s Phone app. “Time spent on a phone should be time well spent.”
The Pixel 7