Google’s March 2026 Pixel Drop adds Gemini automation, Circle to Search upgrades, desktop mode, and new security features for Pixel devices.

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Enterprise-ready multitasking power and 26-hour battery life delivered at a price for cost-conscious teams.

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Conductor is a new Gemini CLI extension that promotes context-driven development. It shifts project context from chat logs to persistent Markdown files for formal specs and plans, ensuring AI agents adhere to project goals, style, and tech stack. This structured workflow is great for "brownfield" projects and teams, allowing for safe iteration and consistent code contributions while keeping the human developer in control.

Read our LastPass review covering pricing, security, features, pros and cons, and whether LastPass is safe or free.

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PDF Converter Pro is an all-in-one tool that allows you create or convert PDF documents into a variety of formats or from a variety of formats with ease.

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Google has removed a whole section from its JavaScript SEO documentation because it was outdated and Google says loading content with JavaScript does not make it hard for Google Search.

Google is testing a new AI Mode widget within the main search results that drives searchers away from the core search results and recipe listings/cards and into AI Mode, which then shows those horrible AI-generated Frankenstein recipes.

Google seems to be rolling out a new format for some of the AI Overviews it shows within search. This format shows a drop-down, expandable, accordion-style interface that you can expand to show more.

Google announced it updated AI Mode to link to more recipe sites and bloggers. "Starting today, when you search for meal ideas like 'easy dinners for two,' you can tap on the dish to see links to relevant recipe sites, plus a short overview of the dish to help with inspiration," Robby Stein from Google said on X.

Google has added a new attribute to the Google Merchant Center availability options within vehicle listings. The new one is named "Build to order" and only works for Google Vehicle ads.

Data Commons has launched a free, hosted Model Context Protocol (MCP) service on Google Cloud Platform, eliminating the need for users to manage complex local server installations. This update simplifies connecting AI agents and the Gemini CLI to Data Commons, allowing Google to handle security, updates, and resource management while users query data natively.

Google is launching the Developer Knowledge API and MCP Server in public preview. This new toolset provides a canonical, machine-readable way for AI assistants and agentic platforms to search and retrieve up-to-date documentation across Firebase, Google Cloud, Android, and more. By using the official MCP server, developers can connect tools directly to Google’s documentation corpus, ensuring that AI-generated code and guidance are based on authoritative, real-time context.

Finetuning the FunctionGemma model is made fast and easy using the lightweight JAX-based Tunix library on Google TPUs, a process demonstrated here using LoRA for supervised finetuning. This approach delivers significant accuracy improvements with high TPU efficiency, culminating in a model ready for deployment.

Google has introduced FunctionGemma, a specialized 270M parameter model designed to bring efficient, action-oriented AI experiences directly to mobile devices through on-device function calling. By leveraging Google AI Edge and LiteRT-LM, the model enables complex tasks—such as managing calendars, controlling device hardware, or executing specific game logic in the "Tiny Garden" demo—to be performed entirely offline with high speed and low latency. Available for testing in the Google AI Edge Gallery app on both Android and iOS, FunctionGemma allows developers to move beyond simple text generation toward building responsive, "agentic" applications that interact seamlessly with the physical and digital world without relying on cloud processing.

Google I/O returns May 19-20. Watch the livestreams for updates on Android, AI, Chrome, and Cloud. Registration is open on the Google I/O website.

To simplify the user experience and prevent startup failures, the Gemini CLI has introduced structured extension settings that eliminate the need for manual environment variable configuration. This update enables extensions to automatically prompt users for required details during installation and securely stores sensitive information, such as API keys, directly in the system keychain. Users can now easily manage and override these configurations globally or per project using the new Gemini extensions config command.

Introducing the Agent Development Kit (ADK) for TypeScript, an open-source framework for building complex, multi-agent AI systems with a code-first approach. Developers can define agent logic in TypeScript, applying traditional software development best practices (version control, testing). ADK offers end-to-end type safety, modularity, and deployment-agnostic functionality, leveraging the familiar TypeScript/JavaScript ecosystem.

Gemini 3 Flash is now available in Gemini CLI. It delivers Pro-grade coding performance with low latency and a lower cost, matching Gemini 3 Pro's SWE-bench Verified score of 76%. It significantly outperforms 2.5 Pro, improving auto-routing and agentic coding. It's ideal for high-frequency development tasks, handling complex code generation, large context windows (like processing 1,000 comment pull requests), and generating load-testing scripts quickly and reliably.

Meta’s AI-optimized data centers and infrastructure are an investment in the future of the American economy. American AI is creating skilled jobs, increasing productivity, helping businesses grow, and advancing scientific research. As this transformative technology progresses, we believe it will become ever more valuable to us in our daily lives. But these aren’t just investments in technology — they’re investments in people and communities across the United States. 

For 15 years, Meta has built and operated some of the most efficient and innovative data centers in the world, and we work hard to be a good neighbor in communities where we have data centers. We do this by focusing on four key areas: responsible energy use, supporting jobs and workforce development, minimizing our impact on water and the environment, and supporting community priorities, schools, and nonprofits.

Powering Innovation

Meta pays the full costs for the energy used by our data centers, so they aren’t passed on to consumers. We know data centers use a lot of energy, so we work closely with utilities to plan for and meet our energy needs years in advance of our data centers coming online, and on an ongoing basis afterwards. We pay for new and existing grid infrastructure needed to serve our data centers, so these costs don’t impact customers. This longstanding principle will continue to be a core part of our work as our infrastructure grows. We also publicly report on our annual energy usage for each operational data center.

We work with utilities and market operators who have a holistic understanding of local grids, meaning that they can plan for and procure the infrastructure needed to reliably serve all customers and ensure other customers are not negatively impacted by our energy use. This includes supporting rate structures like large load tariffs, a mechanism that ensures we pay for infrastructure added to benefit us — including new power sources and transmission lines — as well as our share of other grid infrastructure. Regulator-approved rate structures like these help ensure consumers are protected from shouldering the costs of infrastructure needed for our data centers.

Through our energy agreements, we’re helping utilities grow and modernize the grid to benefit everyone. And we’re committed to working with utilities and grid operators to support grid reliability during periods of emergency and heightened demand, including evaluating programs to reduce our grid energy usage at these times. 

For more than a decade, we have helped add new energy to the grid. Through our agreements with energy companies, and additional energy purchases, we’ve supported major infrastructure projects benefitting the grids where we operate. These projects represent billions in domestic capital energy investments and hundreds of energy jobs, and make us one of the most significant purchasers of nuclear energy in American history. 

Supporting Job Opportunities

We support local jobs and economic opportunities in communities where we have data centers and beyond, and in many data center communities we are among the biggest local employers. Our support for jobs and economic opportunity spans three key areas:

• Long-term operational and construction jobs: A typical data center represents a multi-billion investment in the local community, supporting long-term operational jobs for electricians, HVAC specialists, server and network techs, and engineers, as well as thousands of multi-year skilled trade jobs for steel workers, pipefitters, electricians, fiber technicians, foremen, and more. We work hand-in-hand with our community partners to hire local workers when and where we can.
• Jobs across the supply chain: Each year, we support billions of dollars in business for American employers that provide essential products for building and operating data centers.
• Workforce training policies and programs: We help people hone skills and connect them to job opportunities building and operating data centers and energy infrastructure. With our general contractors and national partners like Be Pro Be Proud, we partner with community colleges and technical schools to offer training programs for trades, ensuring community members have access to high-quality, future-ready careers in technology, operations, and skilled trades.

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Our goal is to be water positive in 2030, meaning we will restore more water than we consume in the watersheds in which we operate. We approach water stewardship with the responsibility and technical expertise it deserves. Our approach has three pillars:

• Minimizing water use: We design our data centers to minimize water use, and use water as efficiently as possible in our operations. For example, at our New Albany data center in Ohio, we’re cooling so efficiently that we use less than half the amount of water it takes to irrigate an average golf course in the southwest. 
• Water restoration: We support projects that address shared water challenges in the watersheds where we operate. 
• Transparency: We publish detailed information in our annual sustainability report about our water withdrawals, restoration projects, and progress toward becoming water positive.

As with energy, Meta pays the full cost associated with water and sewer usage to ensure our projects don’t negatively impact other customers. We’ve invested over $550 million in water and wastewater infrastructure supporting communities where our data centers are based. This includes any new infrastructure and enhancements needed to serve our data centers, which frequently strengthen community water resilience without passing on costs to ratepayers. 

Beyond our water stewardship efforts, we focus on responsible development and management of the land where we have data centers. We preserve sensitive ecosystems and focus on supporting local native habitats through restoration and enhancement that complements and benefits the natural surroundings and regional character of the communities we build in. 

Being a Good Neighbor

We’re proud to call the communities where we have data centers our home, and we want to make sure we’re giving back. As part of our work with local governments to plan for and meet our infrastructure needs, we fund upgrades to local infrastructure beyond the walls of our data centers, including public roads and other infrastructure that benefit all residents and support local economies. 

We also contribute to important causes that benefit our communities. For example, the Meta Data Center Community Action Grant Program is an annual initiative that provides direct funding to schools, registered nonprofits, and community organizations in locations where Meta has data centers. 

We provide free digital-skills training that supports local businesses, schools, and nonprofits in our data center communities. Through the White House AI Youth Education Pledge, we’re working with Pearson Education to build a suite of AI-powered tools to support teachers in districts serving military families. 

We support local small businesses through Community Accelerator events that build digital skills and teach small businesses how to leverage AI tools, including Meta AI, to help them grow. And we support electricity bill assistance programs in each new data center community, aimed at helping low-income households cover their heating and cooling costs. 

Our mission is to build the future of human connection, and our data centers make that possible. But they do so much more: support jobs, help schools and local communities thrive, and deliver economic impact. Learn more about Meta’s data center initiatives and our commitment to responsible growth at datacenters.atmeta.com.

The post How Meta’s Data Centers Support American Energy, Jobs, the Environment, and Local Communities appeared first on Meta Newsroom.

Poor ergonomics is one of the most common (and most preventable) sources of occupational injuries for office workers. Here's what the research says, and what it means for your workplace.

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