In a 23-page document (PDF) filed late Wednesday, U.S. regulators asked a federal judge to break up Google after a court found the tech giant of maintaining an abusive monopoly through its dominant search engine. As punishment, the DOJ calls for a sale of Google's Chrome browser and restrictions to prevent Android from favoring its own search engine. The Associated Press reports: Although regulators stopped short of demanding Google sell Android too, they asserted the judge should make it clear the company could still be required to divest its smartphone operating system if its oversight committee continues to see evidence of misconduct. [...] The Washington, D.C. court hearings on Google's punishment are scheduled to begin in April and Mehta is aiming to issue his final decision before Labor Day. If [U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta] embraces the government's recommendations, Google would be forced to sell its 16-year-old Chrome browser within six months of the final ruling. But the company certainly would appeal any punishment, potentially prolonging a legal tussle that has dragged on for more than four years.

Besides seeking a Chrome spinoff and a corralling of the Android software, the Justice Department wants the judge to ban Google from forging multibillion-dollar deals to lock in its dominant search engine as the default option on Apple's iPhone and other devices. It would also ban Google from favoring its own services, such as YouTube or its recently-launched artificial intelligence platform, Gemini. Regulators also want Google to license the search index data it collects from people's queries to its rivals, giving them a better chance at competing with the tech giant. On the commercial side of its search engine, Google would be required to provide more transparency into how it sets the prices that advertisers pay to be listed near the top of some targeted search results. The measures, if they are ordered, threaten to upend a business expected to generate more than $300 billion in revenue this year. "The playing field is not level because of Google's conduct, and Google's quality reflects the ill-gotten gains of an advantage illegally acquired," the Justice Department asserted in its recommendations. "The remedy must close this gap and deprive Google of these advantages."

According to Bloomberg, the U.S. Justice Department wants Google to sell off its Chrome browser as part of its ongoing search monopoly case. The recommendations will be made official on Wednesday. 9to5Google reports: At the top of the list is having Google sell Chrome "because it represents a key access point through which many people use its search engine." There are many questions about how that works, including what the impact on the underlying Chromium codebase would be. Would Google still be allowed to develop the open-source project by which many other browsers, like Microsoft Edge use? "The government has the option to decide whether a Chrome sale is necessary at a later date if some of the other aspects of the remedy create a more competitive market," reports Bloomberg. Google, which plans to appeal, previously said that "splitting off Chrome or Android would break them."

Bloomberg reports that "antitrust officials pulled back from a more severe option that would have forced Google to sell off Android." However, the government wants Google to "uncouple its Android smartphone operating system from its other products, including search and its Google Play mobile app store, which are now sold as a bundle." Meanwhile, other recommendations include licensing Google Search data and results, as well as allowing websites that are indexed for Search to opt out of AI training.

Google is reportedly working on a multi-year project to migrate Chrome OS into Android, aiming to unify its operating systems and better compete with the iPad. This transition involves incorporating Chrome OS features like extensions and Linux app support into Android, with upcoming updates focused on improving desktop functionality and device compatibility. Android Authority reports: To better compete with the iPad as well as manage engineering resources more effectively, Google wants to unify its operating system efforts. Instead of merging Android and Chrome OS into a new operating system like rumors suggested in the past, however, a source told me that Google is instead working on fully migrating Chrome OS over to Android. While we don't know what this means for the Chrome OS or Chromebook brands, we did hear that Google wants future "Chromebooks" to ship with the Android OS in the future. That's why I believe that Google's rumored new Pixel Laptop will run a new version of desktop Android as opposed to the Chrome OS that you're likely familiar with.

While Google hasn't publicly confirmed its intentions to turn Chrome OS into Android, it did mention back in June that Chrome OS would become more like Android by "embracing portions of the Android stack, like the Android Linux kernel and Android frameworks." Chrome OS already makes use of some Android tech, such as the operating system's Bluetooth stack code-named "Fluoride," so the announcement that it would start to use even more of Android came as no surprise. However, Google's announcement didn't tell the full story, as we've since discovered that not only is Google building a new version of Chrome for Android with extensions support but also a Terminal to run Linux apps on Android. The former is intended to achieve feature parity between Chrome for Android and Chrome OS, while the latter is intended to deliver a Crostini-like experience when Chromebooks transition to Android.

However, there are still a lot of things that Google has to do to achieve feature parity between Android and Chrome OS. The desktop windowing changes that Google is introducing in the first quarterly platform release of Android 15 are just the beginning, as Google is working on a huge number of new Android features including improved keyboard and mouse support, external monitor support, multiple desktops, and more. All of these changes, we're told, are part of Google's internal Android-on-laptop project, though they'll also obviously benefit tablets like the upcoming Pixel Tablet 2.

Slashdot unixbhaskar writes: Linus has released a fresh Linux kernel for public consumption. Please give it a try and report any glitches to the maintainers for improvement. Also, please do not forget to express your appreciation to those tireless folks who did all the hard work for you.
The blog OMG Ubuntu calls it "one of the most biggest kernel releases for a while," joking that it's a "really real-time kernel." The headline feature in Linux 6.12 is mainline support for PREEMPT_RT. This patch set dramatically improves the performance of real-time applications by making kernel processes pre-emptible — effectively enabled proper real-time computing... Meanwhile, Linus Torvalds himself contributes a new method for user-space address masking designed to claw back some of the performance lost due to Spectre-v1 mitigations.

You might have heard that kernel devs have been working to add QR error codes to Linux's kernel panic BSOD screen (as a waterfall of error text is often cut off and not easily copied for ad-hoc debugging). Well, Linux 6.12 adds support for those during Direct Rendering Manager panics...

A slew of new RISC-V CPU ISA extensions are supported in Linux 6.12; hybrid CPU scaling in the Intel P-State driver lands ahead of upcoming Intel Core Ultra 2000 chips; and AMD P-State driver improves AMD Boost and AMD Preferred Core features.
More coverage from the blog 9to5Linux highlights a new scheduler called sched_ext, Clang support (including LTO) for nolibc, support for NVIDIA's virtual command queue implementation for SMMUv3, and "an updated cpuidle tool that now displays the residency value of cpuidle states for a clearer and more detailed view of idle state information when using cpuidle-info." Linux kernel 6.12 also introduces SWIG bindings for libcpupower to make it easier for developers to write scripts that use and extend the functionality of libcpupower, support for translating normalized error addresses reported by an AMD memory controller into system physical addresses using a UEFI mechanism called platform runtime mechanism (PRM), as well as simplified loading of microcode patches on AMD Zen and newer CPUs by using the family, model, and stepping encoded in the patch revision number...

Moreover, Linux 6.12 adds support for running as a protected guest on Android as well as perf and support for a bunch of new interconnect PMUs. It also adds the final conversions to the new Intel VFM CPU model matching macros, rewrites the PCM buffer allocation handling and locking optimizations, and improves the USB audio driver...

Google appears to be working on an email-forwarding alias system, according to the blog Android Authority, giving users a new way to "shield" their main email address.

The site performed a teardown on the newest Google Play Services' APK looking for work-in-progress code , and spotted "a whole boatload of strings referencing and in support of something called 'Shielded Email'." Just from that text, we're able to infer quite a lot about what we're looking at here, and it appears that Shielded Email consists of a system to create single-use or limited-use email aliases that will forward messages along to your primary account. And while we could imagine that something like this might be pretty useful in Chrome, here it looks like Google is building it specifically to address apps that ask for your email address. The messages in there touch on a couple reasons beyond spam that you might want to keep your main email private, like reducing the extent to which your online activities can be tracked, and mitigating your personal risk from potential future data breaches.
They also sighted a reference to "Shielded Email" in the Autofill settings menu — though their article acknowledges that even features hinted at by work-in-progress code may not ultimately make it into a public release.

But Forbes suggests that the idea sounds similar to Apple's Hide My Email service, which "provides an automated random email address creator to help keep your personal email address private when subscribing to services."

Google is rolling out AI-powered scam call detection for Android phones, aiming to protect users from increasingly sophisticated phone fraud schemes. The new feature, available in beta for Pixel 6 and newer devices, analyzes conversation patterns in real-time to identify potential scams. When suspicious patterns emerge, such as urgently requesting fund transfers, the system alerts users through audio, haptic, and visual warnings.

The detection system operates entirely on-device using Google's machine learning models, with no call audio or transcripts stored or transmitted externally. While Pixel 9 devices utilize Google's advanced Gemini Nano AI model, earlier Pixel phones use the standard machine learning for detection, the company said. The feature, which is opt-in and can be disabled at any time, is currently limited to English-speaking Phone by Google beta users in the United States. Google plans to expand availability to additional Android devices in the future.

Android Authority's Rita El Khoury argues that the decline in punctuation use and capitalization in social media writing, especially among younger generations, can largely be attributed to the iPhone keyboard. "By hiding the comma and period behind a symbol switch, the iPhone keyboard encourages the biggest grammar fiends to be lazy and skip punctuation," writes El Khoury. She continues: Pundits will say that it's just an extra tap to add a period (double-tap the space bar) or a comma (switch to the characters layout and tap comma), but it's one extra tap too many. When you're firing off replies and messages at a rapid rate, the jarring pause while the keyboard switches to symbols and then switches back to letters is just too annoying, especially if you're doing it multiple times in one message. I hate pausing mid-sentence so much that I will sacrifice a comma at the altar of speed. [...]

The real problem, at the end of the day, is that iPhones -- not Android phones -- are popular among Gen Z buyers, especially in the US -- a market with a huge online presence and influence. Add that most smartphone users tend to stick to default apps on their phones, so most of them end up with the default iPhone keyboard instead of looking at better (albeit often even slower) alternatives. And it's that same keyboard that's encouraging them to be lazy instead of making it easier to add punctuation.

So yes, I blame the iPhone for killing the period and slaughtering the comma, and I think both of those are great offenders in the death of the capital letter. But trends are cyclical, and if the cassette player can make a comeback, so can the comma. Who knows, maybe in a year or two, writing like a five-year-old will be passe, too, and it'll be trendy to use proper grammar again.

Google will require all new mobile chipsets launching with Android 15 to support its Android Virtualization Framework (AVF), a significant shift in the operating system's security architecture. The mandate, reports AndroidAuthority that got a hold of Android's latest Vendor Software Requirements document, affects major chipmakers including Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Samsung's Exynos division. New processors like the Snapdragon 8 Elite and Dimensity 9400 must implement AVF support to receive Android certification.

AVF, introduced with Android 13, creates isolated environments for security-sensitive operations including code compilation and DRM applications. The framework also enables full operating system virtualization, with Google demonstrating Chrome OS running in a virtual machine on Android devices.

The Atlantic complains that our chaos of different plug types "was supposed to end, with USB-C as our savior." But part of the problem is what they call "the second circle of our cable hell: My USB-C may not be the same as yours. And the USB-C you bought two years ago may not be the same as the one you got today. And that means it might not do what you now assume it can." A lack of standardization is not the problem here. The industry has designed, named, and rolled out a parade of standards that pertain to USB and all its cousins. Some of those standards live inside other standards. For example, USB 3.2 Gen 1 is also known as USB 3.0, even though it's numbered 3.2. (What? Yes.) And both of these might be applied to cables with USB-A connectors, or USB-B, or USB-Micro B, or — why not? — USB-C. The variations stretch on and on toward the horizon.

Hope persists that someday, eventually, this hell can be escaped — and that, given sufficient standardization, regulatory intervention, and consumer demand, a winner will emerge in the battle of the plugs. But the dream of having a universal cable is always and forever doomed, because cables, like humankind itself, are subject to the curse of time, the most brutal standard of them all. At any given moment, people use devices they bought last week alongside those they've owned for years; they use the old plugs in rental cars or airport-gate-lounge seats; they buy new gadgets with even better capabilities that demand new and different (if similar-looking) cables. Even if Apple puts a USB-C port in every new device, and so does every other manufacturer, that doesn't mean that they will do everything you will expect cables to do in the future. Inevitably, you will find yourself needing new ones.

Back in 1998, the New York Times told me, "If you make your move to U.S.B. now, you can be sure that your new devices will have a port to plug into." I was ready! I'm still ready. But alas, a port to plug into has never been enough.
Obligatory XKCD.

Google is rolling out a dedicated weather app on Pixel phones (model 6 and newer with Android 15) that integrates AI-generated summaries and customizable widgets. Ars Technica reports: There's a prominent "AI generated weather report" on top of the weather stack, which is a combination of summary and familiarity. "Cold and rainy day, bring your umbrella and hold onto your hat!" is Google's example; I can't provide another one, because an update to "Gemini Nano" is pending. You can see weather radar for your location, along with forecasted precipitation movement. The app offers "Nowcasting" precipitation guesses, like "Rain continuing for 2 hours" or "Light rain in 10 minutes."

The best feature, one seen on the version of Weather that shipped to the Pixel Tablet and Fold, is that you can rearrange the order of data shown on your weather screen. I moved the UV index, humidity, sunrise/sunset, and wind conditions as high as they could go on my setup. It's a trade-off, because the Weather app's data widgets are so big as to require scrolling to get the full picture of a day, and you can't move the AI summary or 10-day forecast off the top. But if you only need a few numbers and like a verbal summary, it's handy. Sadly, if you're an allergy sufferer and you're not in the UK, Germany, France, or Italy, Google can't offer you any pollen data or forecasts. There is also, I am sad to say, no frog. You can download the app here.

Google is advancing the release timeline for Android 16, shifting it to the second quarter of 2025 to better align with new device launches and accelerate access to its latest AI and machine learning resources. It should also "enable app creators and phone companies to prepare their products for the new software more quickly," reports CNET. From the report: [I]n a big-picture sense, the change could help facilitate a new wave of apps with more AI integration, considering developers will get access to Google's latest machine learning and AI resources even sooner. "We're in a once-in-a-generation moment to completely reimagine what our smartphones can do and how we interact with them," Google's Seang Chau, who took on the role of vice president and general manager of the Android Platform earlier this year, said in an interview with CNET. "It's a really exciting time for smartphones, and we've been putting a lot of thought into what we want to do next with them."

In addition to moving up the major release, Google will roll out a minor update in the fourth quarter of 2025 with feature updates, optimizations and bug fixes. It's a notable switch from Google's usual release timeline, but it's just one of several changes the company has made to the way it distributes Android updates in an effort to add features more frequently. [...] "Things are moving quite fast in the AI world right now," Chau said. "So we want to make sure that we get those developer [application programming interfaces], especially around machine learning and AI, available to our developers so they can build these capabilities faster and get them out to our users faster."

Nintendo has announced a mobile app called Nintendo Music, which lets users listen to classic video game soundtracks from Nintendo games spanning the last few decades, including Splatoon, Animal Crossing, and The Legend of Zelda. According to The Verge, the app is available on iOS and Android but only Switch Online subscribers will be able to stream the tunes. From the report: The app features curated playlists themed around games, moments, moods, or characters, though you can also build your own. It also supports streaming as well as downloading tracks for offline listening. Curiously, it includes a spoiler feature that lets you filter out tracks that, somehow, might spoil a game you haven't played or finished yet. And if you just want some Hyrule white noise, the app also lets you "loop songs or extend select tracks to 15, 30, or 60 minutes for uninterrupted listening." Here's a list of all the regions the app will be available in.

The Register's Laura Dobberstein reports: Huawei formally launched its home-brewed operating system, HarmonyOS NEXT, on Wednesday, marking its official separation from the Android ecosystem. Huawei declared it released and "officially started public beta testing" of the OS for some of its smartphones and tablets that run its own Kirin and Kunpeng chips.

Unlike previous iterations of HarmonyOS, HarmonyOS NEXT no longer supports Android apps. Huawei maintains top Chinese outfits aren't deterred by that. It cited Meituan, Douyin, Taobao, Xiaohongshu, Alipay, and JD.com as among those who have developed native apps for the OS. In case you're not familiar, they're China's top shopping, payment, and social media apps.

Huawei also claimed that at the time of its announcement, over 15,000 HarmonyOS native applications and meta-services were also launched. That's a nice number, but well short of the millions of apps found on the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store. The Chinese tech player also revealed that the operating system has 110 million lines of code and claimed it improves the overall performance of mobile devices running it by 30 percent. It also purportedly increases battery life by 56 minutes and leaves an average of 1.5GB of memory for purposes other than running the OS.

Libreboot is a distribution of coreboot "aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS firmware contained by most computers."

So then what exactly is GNU Boot? Its home page explains... In November 2022, Libreboot began to include non-libre code. We have made repeated efforts to continue collaboration with those developers to help their version of Libreboot remain libre, but that was not successful. Now we've stepped forward to stand up for freedom, ours and that of the wider community, by maintaining our own version — a genuinely libre Libreboot, that after some hurdles gave birth to this project: GNU Boot.
But today, Phoronix writes: While priding itself on being "100% free", last December [GNU Boot] had to drop some motherboard support and CPU code after discovering they were shipping some files that are non-free by their free software standards. Today they announced another mistake in having inadvertently been shipping additional non-free code.

GNU Boot discovered an issue with non-free code affecting not only them but also some of the Linux distributions that pride themselves on being fully free software / 100% open-source. This latest snafu they say is "more problematic" than their prior non-free code discover due to impacting the free software Linux distributions too. The issue at hand though comes down to test data contained within the archive and that containing non-free code in the form of microcode, BIOS bits, and Intel Management Engine firmware.
"We also contacted Replicant..." according to the announcement, "a free Android distro that also ships vboot source code." And in addition, "We had to re-release all the affected tarballs." (Which at this point is three release candidates...)

"Google is developing a Linux terminal app for Android," reports the blog Android Authority. "The Terminal app can be enabled via developer options and will install Debian in a virtual machine.

"This app is likely intended for Chromebooks but might also be available for mobile devices, too." While there are ways to run some Linux apps on Android devices, all of those methods have some limitations and aren't officially supported by Google. Fortunately, though, Google is finally working on an official way to run Linux apps on Android... This Terminal app is part of the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF) and contains a WebView that connects to a Linux virtual machine via a local IP address, allowing you to run Linux commands from the Android host...

A set of patches under the tag "ferrochrome-dev-option" was recently submitted to the Android Open Source Project that adds a new developer option called Linux terminal under Settings > System > Developer options. This new option will enable a "Linux terminal app that runs inside the VM," according to its proposed description. Toggling this option enables the Terminal app that's bundled with AVF...

Google is still working on improving the Terminal app as well as AVF before shipping this feature... What's particularly interesting about the patch that adds these settings is that it was tested on "tangorpro" and "komodo," the codenames for the Pixel Tablet and Pixel 9 Pro XL respectively. This suggests that the Terminal app won't be limited to Chromebooks like the new desktop versions of Chrome for Android.

Microsoft will offer direct game purchases through its Xbox app for Android starting November, following a U.S. court ruling against Google's app store monopoly. The move allows Microsoft to circumvent Google's revenue cut on in-app purchases and signals renewed focus on mobile gaming, bolstered by its recent $75.4 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition.

In a new 32-page filing (PDF), the Department of Justice indicated that it was considering a possible breakup of Google as an antitrust remedy for its search and advertising monopoly. The remedies necessary to "prevent and restrain monopoly maintenance could include contract requirements and prohibitions; non-discrimination product requirements; data and interoperability requirements; and structural requirements," the department said in the filing. CNBC reports: The DOJ also said it was "considering behavioral and structural remedies that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search and Google search-related products and features -- including emerging search access points and features, such as artificial intelligence -- over rivals or new entrants."

Additionally, the DOJ suggested limiting or prohibiting default agreements and "other revenue-sharing arrangements related to search and search-related products." That would include Google's search position agreements with Apple's iPhone and Samsung devices -- deals that cost the company billions of dollars a year in payouts. The agency suggested one way to do this is requiring a "choice screen," which could allow users to pick from other search engines. Such remedies would end "Google's control of distribution today" and ensure "Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow."

A U.S. federal judge has mandated significant changes to Google's Android app store operations. Judge James Donato's ruling in Epic v. Google requires Google to allow rival app stores within its Play Store and grant them access to its app catalog for three years, beginning November 2024.

The order prohibits Google from requiring its payment system for Play Store apps and permits developers to inform users about alternative payment methods. Google is also barred from offering incentives for app launch exclusivity or sharing app revenue with potential app store competitors. The ruling restricts Google from providing financial perks to device makers and carriers for Play Store exclusivity.

Google is developing a version of Chrome for Android that supports browser extensions, a feature long absent from mobile versions, AndroidAuthority reports. The report adds: Specifically, the company is experimenting with "desktop" builds of Chrome for Android. These "desktop" builds are currently intended for Chromebooks as they transition to use more parts of Android, but there's hope the work will benefit mobile devices, too.

An anonymous reader shared this post from the blog It's FOSS It has been more than two years since K-9 Mail (an open-source email client for Android) joined the Mozilla Thunderbird project. Instead of making a new mobile app from scratch, Mozilla decided to convert K-9 Mail slowly into the new Thunderbird Android app.

While we have known about it for some time now, we finally have something to test: Thunderbird for Android (Beta). Mozilla is looking for users to test it and plans a stable release at the end of October. The new Thunderbird app is now available on the Play Store as a beta version for user testing. So, we are closer to the stable launch than ever before.
The article includes a few screenshots of the app...

"For the functionality side, you can expect things like light/dark theme, email signature, unified inbox, ability to enable/disable contact pictures, threaded view, and opt out of data usage collection for privacy..."