Weekly Issue: 2026-17

In all our years of tracking the Chromium repositories, we have never seen a single baseboard spawn this many offshoots. To put it in perspective, a typical “prolific” baseboard might see 8 to 10 variants.

In all our years of tracking the Chromium repositories, we have never seen a single baseboard spawn this many offshoots. To put it in perspective, a typical “prolific” baseboard might see 8 to 10 variants.

According to the official Chromium Dash schedule, the stable release of ChromeOS 147 was slated for yesterday, April 21st. As of this morning, we are still waiting for the green light.

According to the official Chromium Dash schedule, the stable release of ChromeOS 147 was slated for yesterday, April 21st. As of this morning, we are still waiting for the green light.

Today we’re excited to announce the next generation of our FinOps product suite to help our customers increase operational efficiency, better understand their costs, and control them with Spend Caps.

In the agentic era, the role of enterprise data is shifting from a passive resource to a dynamic System of Action. That’s why we announced the Agentic Data Cloud — a unified architecture that integrates models, analytics, and operational databases into a single, AI-native system.

AI is evolving from answering questions to reasoning and taking action. Companies who want to lead in today’s agentic era require computing infrastructure designed and optimized for these new requirements.

This week at Google Cloud Next ‘26, we are sharing the evolution of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), delivering leading performance, efficiency, security, and scale for your most demanding and complex workloads, and the next generation of AI and agentic applications.

Editor’s note: This is an adapted transcript of Thomas’ keynote remarks for Next ‘26 where we are announcing a number of new innovations including: Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, a comprehensive platform to build, scale, govern, and optimize agents.

At Google Cloud Next, we’re announcing a range of compute capabilities to enable your core general purpose and AI workloads for the agentic world with higher performance and lower costs.

By combining the analytical depth of Looker with Google’s Agentic Data Cloud, the potential to transform how we model, interact with, and act on our data appears limitless.

Succeeding in the agentic era requires a transformation in your data strategy: moving from human-scale to agent-first workloads, evolving from reactive intelligence to proactive action, and shifting from raw data to semantic knowledge that agents can use to reason accurately.

aside_block The AI era demands a new security era. Organizations are facing the dual challenge of harnessing the potential of AI while defending against its malicious use, and Google Cloud can help you adapt and thrive.

At Google Cloud Next, we are announcing innovations across every layer of our storage stacks — performance, intelligence, and management — to ensure your data is as fast and as useful as the AI models, apps and agents you are building.

While generative AI sparked a revolution, the true paradigm shift is the rapid evolution from standalone AI models to multi-agent autonomous systems. In this new era, the network transcends basic connectivity to become the critical integration layer for your agentic enterprise.

Today, we announced the preview of Spanner Omni, a downloadable version of Spanner, that expands its industry-leading distributed database capabilities beyond Google Cloud.

Today at Google Cloud Next, we’re announcing new capabilities in Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) that bring Gemini and our advanced AI stack to wherever your data is, so you don’t need to compromise between AI innovation and sovereignty. This will serve as a catalyst for a sovereign neocloud architecture.

Traditional lakehouses were engineered for the era of reporting, not the high-velocity, multimodal demands of AI agents. To bridge this gap, architecture must evolve into an AI-native foundation — one that replaces batch processing with continuous feedback loops and live data streams.

To act at the speed of business, AI agents must operate in fast and trusted reasoning loops. They need to “think” by reasoning across both your historical context and your live operational reality. Only by understanding this complete, real-time picture can they “do” — taking immediate action.

In the early days of generative AI, building safe and reliable business tools took massive engineering effort and a high tolerance for trial and error. We helped solve that with Vertex AI, our trusted AI development platform.

Chromebooks have become a popular choice for adults who want a lightweight, affordable device that handles everyday tasks with ease. While they were once seen as limited for gaming, modern Chromebooks now support a wide range of entertainment options—from cloud gaming to Android apps and browser-based experiences.

For all the fancy-schmancy things our modern-day technology promises to do for us, one thing Google has yet to give us is a simple and reliable way to sync the clipboards on our Android phones and computers.

For all the fancy-schmancy things our modern-day technology promises to do for us, one thing Google has yet to give us is a simple and reliable way to sync the clipboards on our Android phones and computers.

The Beta channel is being updated to OS version 16640.13.0 (Browser version 148.0.7778.43) for most ChromeOS devices.

The Long Term Support Candidate LTC-144 has been promoted to ChromeOS LTS-144 and is rolling out to most ChromeOS devices. The current version is 144.0.7559.248 (Platform Version: 16503.80.0).

When we talk about ChromeOS being re-baselined to the Android kernel—known internally as Project “Aluminium”—the conversation almost always revolves around AI. But for a core group of ChromeOS enthusiasts, there is a lingering fear right now: what happens to Linux support?

When we talk about ChromeOS being re-baselined to the Android kernel—known internally as Project “Aluminium”—the conversation almost always revolves around AI. But for a core group of ChromeOS enthusiasts, there is a lingering fear right now: what happens to Linux support?

Google’s building a Chrome tool that can replace images on websites, but what will we use it for?

Google’s building a Chrome tool that can replace images on websites, but what will we use it for?

The way we interact with our browsers has recently undergone a massive shift. What used to be a simple window into the internet is rapidly becoming an active, AI-powered assistant.

The way we interact with our browsers has recently undergone a massive shift. What used to be a simple window into the internet is rapidly becoming an active, AI-powered assistant.

Resilience and digital sovereignty are emerging as defining priorities in enterprise IT amid rising multicloud complexity and AI adoption. In response, organizations are betting on open, modular architectures and partner ecosystems to reclaim flexibility and control. Resilience is often tied to sovereignty and security.

Resilience and digital sovereignty are emerging as defining priorities in enterprise IT amid rising multicloud complexity and AI adoption. In response, organizations are betting on open, modular architectures and partner ecosystems to reclaim flexibility and control. Resilience is often tied to sovereignty and security.

Wasabi Technologies Inc. today said it has secured a $250 million credit facility, choosing to forego equity financing for the flexibility of debt. The decision highlights an issue that often faces growth-stage companies: how to fund expansion without overburdening the business or diluting ownership.

Wasabi Technologies Inc. today said it has secured a $250 million credit facility, choosing to forego equity financing for the flexibility of debt. The decision highlights an issue that often faces growth-stage companies: how to fund expansion without overburdening the business or diluting ownership.