Technology

Apple announced that later this year it will improve messaging between iPhone and Android users by adopting advanced communications services, a standard that Google and others built into their messaging apps years ago. Texts sent between iPhone and Android will remain green, but images and videos will be higher quality. Losing your Apple wallet For iPhones, the reference app for making mobile payments in shops is Apple Wallet and for Android users the equivalent app is Google Wallet. The experience of using each wallet app was identical: I loaded my credit cards and the Clipper card for Bay Area Rapid Transit. The Justice Department's criticism of Apple Wallet centers on how Apple gives its app access only to the iPhone's payment chip, preventing competing wallet services from using...

Liz Reid, Google's recently promoted head of search, wrote in a blog post Thursday that the company has pared back its AI overviews in certain ways, implementing "additional opt-in refinements" to provide more health-conscious responses, disabling misleading advice and limiting the inclusion of satire and user responses from forums like Reddit. “We will continue to improve when and how we show AI insights and strengthen our protections,” he wrote, adding that Google is working on updates to improve broad sets of search results. Ashley Thompson, a spokeswoman for Google, said in a statement Friday that the company has made more than a dozen technical updates to its systems. “AI overviews help people answer a large number of search queries today, serving as a starting point for content on t...