Google Buys Spirit Airlines (Data) and hits 1 Billion Users on Gemini!

Duration: 9:43 1936 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

Google has recently celebrated a significant milestone as its Gemini AI app reached one billion users, marking the fourteenth product from the tech giant to achieve this feat. While the company attributes this success to the steady integration of Gemini across various platforms like Search, Android, and Workplace, the video host raises questions about how Google defines an "active user." The claim that over a billion monthly active users are engaging with Google's AI mode in search suggests that anyone performing a search query might be counted as a user, which blurs the line between passive interaction and genuine engagement. Furthermore, the data reveals that 63% of Gemini users interact directly with the voice assistant, a figure far higher than expected, while the system generates over 150 million images daily, highlighting both the massive scale of adoption and the intriguing ways people are utilizing AI tools. In another major development, Google acquired a substantial amount of data from Spirit Airlines during its bankruptcy proceedings for just $10 million, a deal that included access to 100 million emails and 500 million Microsoft Teams chats. Although the transaction was conducted under strict conditions ensuring that no personally identifiable information was transferred, the primary intent behind this acquisition is clearly to train advanced AI models like Gemini 3.5. The host notes that while $10 million seems like a bargain for such a vast dataset, it represents only a fraction of the billions Google spends on data collection elsewhere. This move underscores Google's aggressive strategy to gather diverse datasets, particularly conversational logs from platforms like Teams, to make their AI models sound more natural and human-like. Beyond these successes, Google faces ongoing regulatory scrutiny regarding its dominance in the digital marketplace. A recent court ruling found specific behaviors within the Google Play Store to be anti-competitive, giving the company until August 20th to implement three specific interface changes that allow rival app stores to gain traction. While Google's legal team has agreed to these corrections, the situation highlights the tension between a massive tech entity maintaining its ecosystem and adhering to fair competition laws. This regulatory pressure comes alongside broader industry issues, such as the ongoing lawsuit against Meta in California, where states are seeking up to $1.4 trillion in damages over alleged harm to children's mental health and unauthorized data collection, illustrating the high stakes involved when social media platforms design features that foster addiction among young users. The video concludes with a cautionary note on cybersecurity vulnerabilities affecting open-source tools like Metabase, an analytics platform popular for its semantic layers and business logic capabilities. Despite being a robust tool available in both open-source and paid versions, Metabase recently suffered from critical zero-day SQL injection exploits that allowed attackers to breach customer instances and steal data. The host expresses surprise that such fundamental security flaws persist in modern systems, noting that SQL injections are well-known threats that should be easily preventable yet continue to plague various companies. This incident serves as a reminder that even with patches applied quickly, the consequences of data theft can be severe for affected users, reinforcing the need for constant vigilance in an increasingly complex digital landscape where both corporate giants and smaller tools face significant challenges.

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Hello everybody and welcome back to another video where we talk about everything in tech, data, and AI. And in this week, we have a lot of things to cover. And interestingly enough, we have a lot of things about Google. The first one being that the CEO of Google just announced that the Gemini app, which is their AI app, just reached 1 billion users. Now, this is their 14th product to hit 1 billion users. Now, I am not saying that that is not a huge thing. But what I am super curious about is how they know that they have 1 billion active users. If we look at this article talking about this milestone, it says right here, "The company has steadily been integrating Gemini across its products from search and workplace to Android and its standalone app. Google's AI mode in search in particular has achieved a lot of success with over 1 billion monthly active users globally." Now, again, I personally use Google. I like Gemini. I think it's a great product. But I'm very curious to see how they're actually doing this. Does this mean that anybody who goes on to Google, like google.com, and asks a question and gets their AI kind of description that they are just known for now, does that mean that they are an active user? Because that just means everyone who's Googling anything is going to be an active user within these parameters. So, I'm not exactly sure how they were measuring this. But one of the thing note is that it also says that Google also shared numbers of how people actually use the chatbot with 63% of Gemini users talking directly to the assistant using the voice feature. And that they're generating over 150 million images every single day. Uh 63% is incredibly high. I mean, I am honestly pretty shocked by that. I would have guessed it would have been like 20%. Uh but 63% is very high. So, if nothing else, it's super interesting to see how people are actually using AI, how people are using Gemini. But purely from like a data standpoint, I'm just wondering, are people like actually going out of their way to use the AI functionality within Google or they just happen to be using it or using the system that has AI integrated into it and they're counting that as an active user. I mean, as a genuine question. The next thing that Google is in the news for is right here. Google wins bankruptcy auction for Spirit Airlines emails, chats, and documents. That's right, the airline company that went under water recently, they are selling off bits and pieces of it and Google won this auction and they won it for a what I would consider a very small amount. It says right here that Google won a bankruptcy auction for the data agreeing to pay $10 million for the information. Now, it says the deal includes 100 million emails and 500 million Microsoft Teams chats, according to a court filing. Now, what are they going to use this data for? You guessed it. They're going to be using it for AI training. It will use the data to improve its products and AI models, which right now, I mean, they're just really pushing their AI stuff. They're trying to train their models. Uh they have their Gemini 3. I think 7 out right now or whatever it is. And so, they're going to be using that data to train their models for sure. Interestingly enough, they did specify in here cuz I was curious about this myself, the data does not contain any personally identifiable information. They're going to basically de-identify this data before they use it. Uh yeah, it says it right here, meaning it won't be associated with individual people and the buyer agrees not to attempt to re-identify the users. So, Google can't go out here and say, "Okay, this person uh Alex Freeburg is a Spirit Airlines customer." They can't know that information. They shouldn't know that information. I think $10 million is an absolute steal for this data. I guarantee you that Google is spending billions of dollars elsewhere buying data from a ton of other places. This is probably a small, you know, percentage of all the data that they're collecting, but I mean, this is really useful information, especially that 500 million Microsoft Teams chats because they want their AI to sound really natural and really human, and that's just a great thing to train their data on. So, I'm not surprised that they were interested in this data. It's just interesting that Spirit Airlines went under, and now here's Google, you know, buying the leftover pieces and scraps of data. Believe it or not, we have one more story on Google this week, and this mostly affects developers or app developers. It says, "Google buried rival app stores in their Play Store, and judge gives them a week to fix it." Now, this is very recent. You can even see right down here. They have to fix this by August 20th, and there are three specific interface changes or UX changes that they have to make by that date. It says that the court found specific Play Store behaviors anti-competitive, and Google's own counsel agreed to all three corrections on the record. So, at least they're like, "Hey, yeah, we know this is an issue. We probably shouldn't be doing this, and we'll make those changes." If nothing else, that's a good thing, but the fact that they're, you know, putting these things out there, allowing these changes to be made to where specific apps just aren't gaining any traction, even by big players, and you can look into this. I'll have this, uh, you know, down in the description if you want to check this out. It's just really interesting to me. And so, some positive things by Google, some, you know, not so things by Google, but Google's a very, very, very large entity, and so, again, there's going to be some good with the bad. The last story we have is about Meta, and this article talks about it right here. It says, "States take Meta to trial in California in the biggest fight yet over social media harm to children." Now, this has been a big thing for a long time, right? There's a lot of negative effects to social media, especially for kids. And what they're doing on California right now, I'm actually a big supporter of. I mean, there's a lot of harm that can come to children, and they are, at least in theory, totally as much as 1.4 trillion in damages. And that's a huge amount. And to no one's surprise, it is about mental health crisis and addiction. It says, "The lawsuit accuses these social media giant of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features that get children addicted to their platform. It also claims that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents' consent in violation of federal law. Now, we could really dive into this, but I think you guys are really well aware of how a lot of these things have played out in the past, right? They get a slap on the wrist, they get fined, and then they keep doing it because they make so much money from this, and they kind of get people addicted in social media to where for the rest of their lives. And so, they're willing to pay out however much money they end up paying out. I doubt it's going to be this 1.4 trillion. My guess is it'll be like, you know, 50 billion, which is a lot of money, but to these big tech companies, that's nothing. That's just like their marketing budget for quarter four. And so, it's no big deal to them. They're going to be, you know, A-OK, uh you know, whatever they get fined. For our very last story, have you guys heard of Metabase? Uh I have. It's a really cool platform. It's an open-source AI analytics platform where you can basically build out semantic layers, business logic, and all these different things. It's all open-source. It is really cool, and it's super huge on GitHub. And of course, they have like a paid option that you can get a lot more features for, but this is all open-source, which is really, really cool. The unfortunate part of this is that Metabase is in some really hot water over some zero-day exploits with none other than SQL injections. It says right here, "A critical Metabase SQL injection vulnerability was exploited zero-day attack to breach customer instances in data theft attacks known to impact Framework and Tally, which are two separate companies." The funny thing is that SQL injections are not new, and honestly, you should be able to really easily not allow that. But somehow, they did. And so, people are like, "Hey, SQL injection, that's like the first thing you try when you have access to, you know, API endpoints or, you know, different things where they grant you access to run code." It says right here, the company says attacks may be identified by a post request to API session reset password returning a 400 status followed by a successful get request to API user current. And Metabase warns that the system logs showing these entries have likely been compromised. In my humble opinion, and again, I'm not in cybersecurity, but I did work in IT for analytics, this should not be happening. Uh this shouldn't happen in any company. But it does happen. It still happens. And SQL injections are something that you should be aware of, especially when you're giving access for someone to write code or to write anything into a database or any window where you can write code. They have now since patched this, but of course, there are affected users where all their data got taken. Honestly, this is nothing new. It's just really interesting that companies are still getting hit with SQL injections and they're still working. That's the shocking part. So, with all that being said, that is all we have for this week. Again, we have a lot of Google stuff. They were just in the news a lot uh that I was personally seeing. And I'm And not shocked that they reached a billion users. Uh in fact, in this GIF that they used right here from uh Sundar Pichai, I am not shocked that that is uh you know, an AI image. It looks like an AI image. But uh 1 billion users is a huge amount. That's a lot of people. I mean, uh that's like, you know, an eighth of the world. It's a lot of people. And so, I wonder how many are bots, how many are real people. I wonder how they're collecting that data, how they actually define active user. Right? There's a lot of things that have questions on and you know, I guess that we just won't know. They just have a billion users. But it is really impressive nonetheless. That is a lot of people and a lot of people using their apps and their platform. With that being said, thank you guys for joining me today. If you like this video, be sure to like and subscribe and I will see you next week. >> Hey.