Google

Search and Destroy

Ads are showing up on Google’s AI Mode now

Hope it doesn’t go the same route as Google Search!

11/21/25 12:59PM

We knew it was coming, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it.

Google has officially turned on the ad spigot in AI Mode, the search giant’s answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Ads started showing up in Google’s AI Overviews about a year ago, and now they’re coming to the company’s flagship conversational search experience.

That means the roughly 75 million daily active AI Mode users will see not only the AI’s best guess at their queries, but also sponsored results alongside them. Ad Age reported this summer that in AI Mode, Google serves ads based on a person’s conversation with the AI — not just on keyword matches, as was the case in traditional Search.

In my own quick tests — about a dozen searches and short conversations — I was served just one sponsored result: a link to a local car dealership tucked at the bottom of the answer, below other organic links.

Google has to walk a fine line here. Advertising is its primary moneymaker, the engine that turned Search into one of the most powerful products on the planet. But Search also suffered from its own success, as results became increasingly clogged with sponsored content and SEO filler. One could argue that this ad saturation helped drive users toward AI competitors like ChatGPT, which, for now, remains blissfully ad-free.

Figure’s robots just sorted packages for 200 hours straight

What started as a 10-hour human-versus-robot challenge turned into a continuous marathon shift spanning nine days of continuous work.

Jon Keegan5/22/26

Rani Molla5/22/26

Report: Uber considers full Delivery Hero takeover to take on DoorDash outside the US

Uber appears to be considering upping its competition with DoorDash outside the US, exploring a potential full takeover of Frankfurt-listed Delivery Hero, Bloomberg reports. Earlier this week the US-based ride-hailing service disclosed a 19.5% stake in the food delivery company, but now that could go higher.

The $11.8 billion German company could be particularly vulnerable to a takeover right now, with its CEO having recently stepped down following pressure from activist investors to sell off assets. A full acquisition would give Uber a massive foothold in over 60 countries to combat DoorDash’s European-focused Wolt unit.

Uber has been involved in a lot of deal-making of late, mostly in the autonomous vehicle space, where it now has more than 30 partnerships globally.

Uber extended its losses on the news and is currently down around 1.7%.

Uber Said to Study Full Takeover of European Rival Delivery Hero

Uber has been involved in a lot of deal-making of late, mostly in the autonomous vehicle space, where it now has more than 30 partnerships globally.

Uber extended its losses on the news and is currently down around 1.7%.

Rani Molla5/22/26

Meta released a Reddit dupe. Reddit investors don’t like it.

Fresh on the heels of releasing a Snapchat dupe, which sent Snap down earlier this month, Meta seems to be meddling with Reddit, quietly releasing a Reddit-like Facebook app called Forum yesterday. After news of the “dedicated space built for deeper discussions, real answers and the communities you care about,” Reddit’s stock is down 4.5% today.

Last month, Reddit’s earnings report handily beat analysts’ expectations, but it continues to struggle with the perception that bigger tech companies — including Meta — investing heavily in AI will eat its lunch. The stock is down nearly 40% year-to-date.

Jon Keegan5/21/26

Report: OpenAI’s Q1 revenue was $5.7 billion, beating Anthropic

The neck-and-neck race between OpenAI and Anthropic as the AI companies barrel toward their expected IPOs this year is shaking out some internal numbers for would-be investors to ponder.

The Information is reporting that OpenAI’s first-quarter revenue was ~$5.7 billion, about $1 billion ahead of Anthropic’s revenue for the same period.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Anthropic is on course to more than double its first-quarter revenue of $4.8 billion to $10.9 billion in the second quarter. It is not known what OpenAI is projecting for Q2.

Recently, The New York Times reported that Anthropic’s current fundraising round seeking to raise between $30 billion and $50 billion comes with a valuation of up to $950 billion, putting it ahead of OpenAI’s latest reported valuation of $850 billion.

OpenAI Held $1 Billion Revenue Lead Over Anthropic in First Quarter

Rani Molla5/21/26

Alphabet’s Waymos are still getting caught in floods after recall

Waymo, the self-driving subsidiary of Alphabet, has paused operations in Atlanta after a new report of a vehicle driving into a flooded roadway and getting stuck, TechCrunch reports. The news comes just weeks after the company recalled its fleet of nearly 4,000 driverless cars to deal with a previous flood incident in San Antonio, where the service is also paused.

After that incident, Waymo instituted an “interim remedy” to make the vehicles “exclude additional operating conditions that present an elevated risk of encountering a flooded, higherspeed roadway,” but added that it was still “developing the final remedy for this recall.”

As we’ve noted, Waymo has mostly kept its rollout — now public in 11 cities — to more temperate climates, as severe weather poses more challenges to autonomous vehicles.

Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods | TechCrunch