Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

To bridge the gap between static model knowledge and rapidly evolving software practices, Google DeepMind developed a "Gemini API developer skill" that provides agents with live documentation and SDK guidance. Evaluation results show a massive performance boost, with the gemini-3.1-pro-preview model jumping from a 28.2% to a 96.6% success rate when equipped with the skill. This lightweight approach demonstrates how giving models strong reasoning capabilities and access to a "source of truth" can effectively eliminate outdated coding patterns.

We've been keeping track of the bots, spiders, OpenAI has been releasing. OpenAI just posted about a new bot for ads, it is named OAI-AdsBot.

Here are some early screenshots and videos of the ChatGPT ad management interface that some OpenAI advertisers have access to. You can see that you can create campaigns, ad groups, budgets, CPC limits, conversions and much more.

Microsoft Advertising has announced the launch of several new AI features and upgrades across the ad platform. This is to "To help businesses succeed across all three eras of the human, LLM, and agentic web," Microsoft wrote.

Google Ads has a new help document on AI-Qualified Call Conversions. Google says AI-qualified call leads use Google AI to evaluate call recordings to determine the actual quality of the conversation.

Google Ads Advisor, which officially began rolling out last November, is rolling out three new features. These features include proactive troubleshooting, 24/7 security monitoring and instant certifications.

A UK tribunal has allowed a £2.1 billion lawsuit over Microsoft’s cloud licensing to move forward, adding new pressure to how Windows Server is priced outside Azure.

The post Microsoft Must Face £2.1B UK Cloud Licensing Lawsuit appeared first on TechRepublic.

This blog post introduces a suite of six protocols, such as MCP and A2A, designed to eliminate custom integration code by standardizing how AI agents access data and communicate. Using a "kitchen manager" agent as a practical example, it demonstrates how these tools handle complex tasks like real-time inventory checks, wholesale commerce via UCP, and secure payment authorization through AP2. By leveraging the Agent Development Kit (ADK), developers can also implement A2UI and AG-UI to deliver interactive dashboards and seamless streaming interfaces to users.

When you’re prototyping locally with AI agents like Gemini CLI, Claude Code, or your own agent, thei...

Google has updated its account settings to allow U.S. users to change their @gmail.com usernames while keeping all existing account data and inboxes intact. For developers, this means that while old email addresses will remain active as aliases, apps that rely solely on email addresses for identification may face issues with account duplication or lost access. To ensure a seamless user experience, Google recommends migrating to the "subject ID" as the primary user identifier and allowing users to manually update their contact information within app settings.

The launch of Agent Development Kit (ADK) for Go 1.0 marks a significant shift from experimental AI scripts to production-ready services by prioritizing observability, security, and extensibility. Key updates include native OpenTelemetry integration for deep tracing, a new plugin system for self-healing logic, and "Human-in-the-Loop" confirmations to ensure safety during sensitive operations. Additionally, the release introduces YAML-based configurations for rapid iteration and refined Agent2Agent (A2A) protocols to support seamless communication across different programming languages. This framework empowers developers to build complex, reliable multi-agent systems using the high-performance engineering standards of Golang.

The newly introduced continuous checkpointing feature in Orbax and MaxText is designed to optimize the balance between reliability and performance during model training, addressing issues with conventional fixed-frequency checkpointing. Unlike fixed intervals—which can either compromise reliability or bottleneck performance—continuous checkpointing maximizes I/O bandwidth and minimizes failure risk by asynchronously initiating a new save operation only after the previous one successfully completes. Benchmarks demonstrate that this approach significantly reduces checkpoint intervals and results in substantial resource conservation, especially in large-scale training jobs where mean-time-between-failure (MTBF) is short.

At Platform//2026, Scale Computing showed how Taco Bell and a K-12 district use edge infrastructure to simplify IT and improve uptime.

The post Scale Computing Spotlights Edge Wins in Retail, K-12 appeared first on TechRepublic.

Compare the best Square competitors based on pricing, features, and business fit.

The post Best Square Competitors (2026): Compare Top POS Alternatives appeared first on TechRepublic.

Gemini CLI has introduced subagents, specialized expert agents that handle complex or high-volume tasks in isolated context windows to keep the primary session fast and focused. These agents can be customized via Markdown files, run in parallel to boost productivity, and are easily invoked using the @agent syntax for targeted delegation. This architecture prevents "context rot" by consolidating intricate multi-step executions into concise summaries for the main orchestrator.

Google has introduced enhancements to the Google Pay API to provide developers with greater flexibility and control over merchant-initiated transactions (MIT). The update includes new objects within the PaymentDataRequest to specifically handle recurring subscriptions, deferred payments like hotel bookings, and automatic account reloads. By allowing merchants to clearly define future payment terms, these changes improve transparency for users and help reduce transaction declines through better token management. Developers can now implement these features to create more seamless and secure long-term payment experiences.

Google DeepMind has launched Gemma 4, a family of state-of-the-art open models designed to enable multi-step planning and autonomous agentic workflows directly on-device. The release includes the Google AI Edge Gallery for experimenting with "Agent Skills" and the LiteRT-LM library, which offers a significant speed boost and structured output for developers. Available under an Apache 2.0 license, Gemma 4 supports over 140 languages and is compatible with a wide range of hardware, including mobile devices, desktops, and IoT platforms like Raspberry Pi.

A2UI v0.9 introduces a framework-agnostic standard designed to help AI agents generate real-time, tailored UI widgets using a company’s existing design system. This update simplifies the developer experience with a new Agent SDK for Python, a shared web-core library, and official support for renderers like React, Flutter, and Angular. By decoupling UI intent from specific platforms, the release enables seamless, low-latency streaming of generative interfaces across web and mobile applications. Integrating with broader ecosystems like AG2 and Vercel, A2UI v0.9 aims to move generative UI from experimental demos to production-ready digital products.

Tulsa, Oklahoma will be home to Meta’s newest AI data center — our first data center in the state, 28th in the US, and 32nd in our global fleet. Once operational, this data center will be optimized for our AI workloads, helping to bring our technologies and AI ambitions to life so  people around the world can connect, find their community, and grow their businesses. 

Investing in the Tulsa Community

Meta is committed to playing a positive role in the communities where it operates. Once completed, our Tulsa facility will represent an investment of more than $1 billion in the region. We anticipate over 1,000 construction workers will be onsite at the peak of construction, and once complete, the data center will support approximately 100 operational jobs. We’re also investing more than $25 million in local infrastructure improvements, including roads and water infrastructure.

Local partners are essential to our goal of improving the communities where we have data centers. That’s why we’re providing Eastside Rise with a grant to expand its neighborhood enhancement program across East Tulsa, supporting projects that range from community gardens and public art to home repairs for Tulsa residents. We’re also partnering with Tulsa Tech and Tulsa Community College to support a new, cross-institutional workforce development program and learning lab for digital infrastructure careers. We anticipate this partnership will create a pipeline of 200+ graduates annually in technical trades, including cooling simulation, fiber optics, and structured cabling, along with AI and data analytics programming.

 

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We strive to be good water stewards in communities where we have data centers, and design our data centers to minimize water use. We plan to use a water-efficient closed-loop, liquid-cooled system that recirculates the same water and will use zero water for a majority of the year at our new Tulsa data center. 

We also pay the full costs of water and wastewater service required to support our data centers so the costs aren’t passed on to consumers. We’re partnering with the Tulsa Community Foundation to establish a fund that will support Tulsa residents who are struggling to pay their water bills or are in need of water service line repair and replacement. 

We aim to be water positive in 2030, meaning we will restore more water to local watersheds than we consume. We’re partnering with Phytech on a water restoration project that will provide irrigation technology to Tulsa area farmers to help them minimize water withdrawal while optimizing yields, saving energy and reducing costs. This ten-year project will implement Phytech’s innovative plant-sensor technology across approximately 1,500 acres of vital commodity crops, including corn, soybeans, and winter wheat, to save over 50 million gallons of water per year.

Supporting the Grid

As with all of our data centers, we’ll pay the full costs of the data center’s energy use so they aren’t passed on to consumers. Through our utility bills, we’ll be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on grid infrastructure, like substations and transmission lines, that benefit all consumers and the data center’s electricity use will be matched with 100% clean energy. We have a long history of successfully supporting energy projects and are adding over 1,500 megawatts of clean energy to the grid in Oklahoma. 

We’ll also provide an annual contribution to the Public Service Company of Oklahoma’s (PSO) Light a Life Program, an initiative made possible through PSO’s partnership with the Salvation Army. Our donation to Light a Life will provide financial assistance to help customers in Oklahoma who are struggling to pay their energy bills.

Designing, building, and maintaining facilities that are positive contributors to our communities matters to us. We look forward to collaborating with the Tulsa, Oklahoma community to bring this data center online. 

The post Breaking Ground on a New AI-Optimized Data Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma appeared first on Meta Newsroom.