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Google Assistant can now find your iPhone
Plus "new" Routine features and Duplex-powered takeout order billing autofill
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Google has just announced four "new" features for the Google Assistant, including some new Routine functionality, the ability to pay for takeout orders via a little Duplex magic, and a feature for lost iPhones. As usual, some of these are new-new, others are things Google's been silently testing for a while and which many of our readers may have already been using for some time.
RIP LG: South Korean giant officially exits the smartphone market
Software support extended until... whenever
After months of rumors, LG has made it official: it will exit the smartphone business on July 31.
Google's Screenwise Meter app and its rewards program are now dead
Audience Measurement comes to a close
Google has wrapped up its Audience Measurement program, one that operated in a similar way to how a ratings company like Nielsen tracks media consumption. Participants who were incentivized to use the Screenwise Meter app to record their web browsing habits are being told to offload the software and claim their rewards within the next month.
Google killing off free voice calls from smart speakers and displays in the UK
Got an Assistant device? You'll be stuck with Duo starting next month
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One little-known but neat piece of infrastructure Google provides for its Assistant speakers and displays is the ability to make free calls to most any U.S. and Canadian, or U.K. number. But Britons won't be able to take advantage of that feature for much longer.
Google got rid of its obnoxious App Preview Messages
You probably disabled it right away and forgot about it
There may be effective ways to convince people to use an app, but it seems that Google's App Preview Messages were not one of them. The program, which notified Android users when someone is trying to communicate with an app they haven't installed, is officially deprecated, having never left its early access stage in the 4 years it has existed.
Android 11 can automatically enable dark theme at certain times or sunset
Something that Samsung's One UI could do two years ago
The first developer preview of Android 11 is finally out, and now that there are OTA images we can flash to devices, we're starting to discover more features than what Google mentioned in the official announcement. One of those hidden features is a scheduled mode for dark theme, something that was strangely missing from last year's Android 10 release.
After nearly 8 years in service, Google has called time on its social network effort, Google+. By now, any user that might have had some worthwhile memories on the platform should have downloaded their data — yesterday was the last day to do so. But from the last day to the first, the site was mired with challenges through and through.
As some of us are painfully aware, Inbox is set to die next Tuesday, April 2nd. Google has been pushing Inbox users back to Gmail since the original announcement last September. Initially, that transition was eased with promises that Gmail would eventually inherit Inbox's bundling, the email client's most useful feature. Six months later, a mere week before Inbox's euthanasia, Gmail still doesn't have bundles.
"We're living in a new kind of computing environment," says Urs Hölzle, SVP Technical Infrastructure and Google Fellow in a new post to Google's official blog. The search giant has resolved to make a second sweep at spring cleaning that began two years ago. After this round of cleaning is complete, the total number of features and services Google will have closed will number 70.