The Verge

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney might be one of the most outspoken people in the history of the world. He fought two of the world's most valuable and powerful companies almost all the way to the US Supreme Court, insulting them again and again: "crooked," "deceitful," "insanely sneaky," calling Android a "fake open platform," calling both [...]

Today, Google killed its 30 percent app store fee, partially uncoupled Google Play from Google Play Billing after they were declared an illegal monopoly in the US, and much more. From July, depending on where you live, Google will now generally charge developers 20 percent for in-app purchases, or 10 percent for subscriptions - but [...]

Epic Games and Google are burying the hatchet, but documents released today reveal that they aren't only aligned on how Google is shaking things up for app stores. The two companies have also agreed to terms about a new class of apps that they're calling "metaverse browsers," according to a heavily redacted section of a [...]

Google's NotebookLM can now turn users' research and notes into fully animated "cinematic" videos, going a step further than the original video overview feature Google introduced last year. Previously, video overviews could only generate narrated slideshows, but the upgraded video overview feature uses a combination of Google's AI models, "including Gemini 3, Nano Banana Pro [...]

Powered by the new M5 chip, Apple's latest MacBook Airs are more powerful than ever with double the base storage (512GB), but they also cost $100 more than their predecessor. Fortunately, though, we've found a few ways to save. Best Buy is offering the new 13-inch M5-powered MacBook Air for $1,099 with a $50 gift [...]

Tesla, Ford, and Volvo occupy the top three spots in a new ranking of 18 global automakers based on their efforts to eliminate carbon emissions, environmental harms, and human rights violations from their supply chains. Toyota, meanwhile, lurks near the bottom of the list, underscoring the persistent difficulty in getting the world's largest car company [...]

The near future of game consoles could look a lot like the past. Once a hallmark of the industry, over the last few years console-exclusive games have steadily become rare, as the likes of Sony and Microsoft experimented with offering titles on multiple platforms. Heck, who knows what an Xbox even is anymore? But it [...]

Google is bringing Canvas to everyone in the US using AI Mode in Search. The feature opens up a dedicated workspace within its AI-powered search tool, allowing it to use the latest information from Search to organize plans, develop tools, and draft documents in a panel alongside your chat. Though Google initially launched Canvas inside [...]

In November, Epic and Google jointly proposed a settlement that would change Android's fate globally without cracking open Google's Android monopoly quite the way it otherwise might. Today, Google has decided it's not waiting for that settlement to be approved: it's moving forward with many of its proposed changes right now, rolling them out globally [...]

Downdetector and Speedtest - the free platforms that allow people on the web to quickly check internet speeds or see if an online platform may be down - will soon have a new owner. On Tuesday, the consulting and IT services provider Accenture announced that it has agreed to acquire the Ookla-owned platforms from Ziff [...]

After over four months of teasing, I've finally been able to see Honor's Robot Phone in action. And after all that, it looks pretty legit - just so long as you weren't actually expecting a robot. The Robot Phone could more accurately be called the Gimbal Phone, though I suspect the company's marketing department would [...]

My first thought when Apple announced the MacBook Neo today was "okay, but why not just get an older Air?" If you're thinking that too, you might be right. If you can find one. The Neo starts at $599 with an A18 Pro processor, 8GB of memory, and 256GB storage, and ends at $699 with [...]

A lawsuit filed on Wednesday accuses Google's Gemini AI chatbot of trapping 36-year-old Jonathan Gavalas in a "collapsing reality" that involved a series of violent missions, ultimately ending with his death by suicide. In the days leading up to his death, Gemini allegedly convinced Gavalas that he was "executing a covert plan to liberate his [...]

Google's Pixel 10a is set to arrive on March 5th, but if you'd prefer the more powerful Google Pixel 10, Woot is currently selling it unlocked through March 6th for $599 ($200 off) with 128GB of storage. While we've seen it drop to $449 during Black Friday, this is one of the best prices we've [...]

The MacBook Neo is Apple's newest, most affordable laptop. Although the MacBook Air has been known to occasionally drop by a couple of hundred dollars - rendering it more on par with a host of midrange Windows laptops - the Neo will take things a step further when it launches at a competitive $599 on [...]

It was first announced last month without pricing or availability details, but BenQ has now shared all the specs for its new 27-inch 5K display designed for Mac users. The MA270S matches the size and 5,120 x 2,880 resolution of the new Studio Display and Studio Display XDR Apple announced yesterday, including a Nano Gloss [...]

Apple's week of product announcements kicked off with the iPhone 17E, a phone designed for those who don't want to spend north of $700 on their next upgrade. The iPhone 16E follow-up won't officially launch until March 11th; however, preorders are now open at Best Buy and Apple's online storefront, as well as carriers like [...]

Apple is kicking off March with a flurry of product announcements ahead of a special Apple experience" on March 4th in New York City, London, and Shanghai. Apple started on March 2nd by announcing the iPhone 17E. The new $599 phone has a lot of welcome additions over the iPhone 16E, like support for MagSafe [...]

Apple announced the $599 iPhone 17e earlier this week, and we just got a chance to play with one for a few minutes at the company's "experience" for media in New York City. The 17e is more or less exactly what you'd expect - a cheaper, simpler riff on the iPhone 17 that replaces the [...]

Apple just announced a new entry-level MacBook that runs on the same A18 Pro chip that launched two years ago in its iPhone 16 lineup and starts at $599. The MacBook Neo features a 13-inch (2408 x 1506) display, 8GB of RAM, 256GB or 512GB of storage, a Magic Keyboard, multi-touch trackpad, 1080p camera, two [...]

Here is the MacBook Neo, Apple's new entry-level Mac laptop. Its colorful chassis options easily set it apart from current MacBook Air and Pro models. But the biggest difference is that inside the Neo is an A18 Pro iPhone chip instead of an M-series processor Apple typically uses in its laptops and recent desktops. The [...]

Hello and welcome to Regulator, the newsletter for Verge subscribers that goes inside Washington's increasingly existential clashes between tech and politics. If this was forwarded to you, can I interest you in a full-fledged subscription to The Verge for only $40 a year? You'll get so much more than doomer scenarios. We cover non-existential fun [...]

AI tools like Claude Code have made it possible for users to build software with no coding knowledge whatsoever. That's not to say the process is easy, though: You may not need to write code directly, but you need to understand how your computer's terminal works, how to deploy and maintain software, and deal with [...]

Jailed during the 2021 coup in Myanmar, American journalist Danny Fenster spent six months as a political prisoner. For much of his incarceration he battled boredom and fear, subsisting on meditation and podcasts on an SD card smuggled in by mail, sent by his girlfriend, Juliana. Now, nearly five years after his release, he collaborated [...]

Does anyone really need a remote for a device you're already either holding or using at arm's length? E-readers have saved us from the risk of paper cuts and the burden of physically turning pages, but Kobo is making it even easier by releasing a wireless page-turning remote. The Kobo Remote might be indulgent and [...]

In early January, a group of 90 or so political, community and thought leaders gathered in a New Orleans Marriott for a secret conference on artificial intelligence - so secret, in fact, that no one knew who else had been invited until they walked into the room. Church leaders and conservative academics were sitting next [...]

One of the most trusted leakers for Call of Duty will no longer share confidential information about the gaming franchise after being hit with a cease and desist order. TheGhostOfHope (also known to the community as "Hope") announced on X that he is complying with legal demands from developer Activision to "stop leaking and disseminating [...]

Bad news: most Americans are about to lose an hour of sleep next week. Good news: if you have trouble falling (or staying asleep), Newegg is currently selling Anker's Soundcore Sleep A20 earbuds for $113.99 ($66 off) when you use coupon code MMSF88 at checkout, which drops them to just $6 shy of their lowest [...]

In a downtown Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday, lawyers for the US Justice Department and 40 state and district attorneys general warned a jury that the concert industry was being squeezed by a monopolist: Live Nation-Tickemaster. After amassing dominance over ticketing and artists' use of large amphitheaters, lead DOJ counsel David Dahlquist alleged, Live Nation constructed [...]

Fuel prices surged after the Trump administration launched strikes against Iran on Saturday, immediately raising questions about whether the war would increase energy costs for Americans, put more pressure on power grids, and push companies to pump out more oil and gas in the US. If conflict drags on, that could potentially play into Donald [...]

If you know where to look, you can often score deals on Apple's ever-expanding AirPods lineup. Both the AirPods Max and AirPods 4 (with and without ANC) now consistently receive discounts, as do the newer AirPods Pro 3. And while more recent shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday delivered some of the steepest [...]

The US version of TikTok is once again experiencing issues due to an Oracle outage, just a month after coming back online from a similar outage in February. The service disruption, impacting Oracle's Ashburn, Virginia data center, began early Tuesday afternoon, with Downdetector reports spiking around 1PM Eastern. TikTok USDS confirmed in a post on [...]

Another high-profile live-service game is shutting down soon after launch: this time it's the free-to-play squad shooter Highguard. Developer Wildlight Entertainment says that, even though Highguard reached 2 million players, the game will be shut down permanently on March 12th. That's less than two months after the game debuted on January 26th. "Despite the passion [...]

The Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal is SharkNinja's latest robot vacuum and mop. A flagship model with a multifunctional dock that empties the dustbin and refills and washes its mop, the Reveal's signature feature is a UV light designed to "find" stains on your floors. It costs $1,299.99 and is available now. Combined with an RGB [...]

Google is rolling out an Android update that includes the ability to share the location of your missing luggage with an airline. It's similar to the luggage-tracking feature Apple brought to the iPhone, allowing you to view the location of your Find Hub tag or accessory on a map, and provide your airline with a [...]

Google is adding several new features to Pixel phones with its latest March update, including the ability for its Gemini AI assistant to do things for you, like order groceries or book a ride. This feature, which was first shown off during Samsung's Unpacked event last week, is rolling out now to the Pixel 10, [...]

Google is bringing a new desktop mode to its Pixel phones and tablets. The feature comes as part of Google's March Pixel drop, allowing users with a Pixel 8 and newer to connect their device to an external monitor via USB-C for a "desktop-like multi-window experience." You can use a mouse and keyboard with the [...]

Google has a big update in store for the Pixel Watch, which will now allow you to make a range of payments by simply tapping your watch to a retail terminal without opening the Wallet app. The feature, called "express pay," is coming to the Pixel Watch 2 and later. It's similar to "express mode" [...]

Engadget, the long-running tech news website, has a new owner. Yahoo sold the publication to Static Media in a deal that was signed in early February and is scheduled to close later this March. (Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.) The deal hasn't yet been publicly announced, but a source familiar with the publication says [...]

We've been talking to phone companies both big and small this week at MWC and they've basically all agreed on one point: the RAM crisis is hitting hard, and phone prices will almost certainly increase where they haven't already. For a major global brand like Xiaomi, volume is one lever the company can pull. To [...]

In the days that followed the US and Israel's joint military strike on Iran on Saturday, floods of images and videos that supposedly document the war have appeared online. Some are old or depict unrelated conflicts, are made or manipulated with AI, and in some cases, are actually taken from military-themed video games like War [...]

In September, Apple launched its latest batch of smartwatches, including the Apple Watch Series 11, the SE 3, and the Ultra 3. Each has its own pros and cons, but the introduction of Apple's newest wearables also means there are now more Apple Watch models on the market than ever before - and a lot [...]

Google is moving its Chrome browser to a two-week release cycle, instead of the current four, or the six-week cycle that existed for the decade before that. The change starts in September. "Building on our history of adapting our release process to match the demands of a modern web, Chrome is moving to a two-week [...]

Microsoft is moving its annual Build developer conference from Seattle back to San Francisco and making some changes along the way. This year, the event will be held at Fort Mason, the former US Army post located in the San Francisco Bay Area, instead of the bustling downtown of Seattle. Microsoft is moving Build to [...]

In 1987's The Living Daylights, James Bond presses a dashboard button to activate retractable tire studs, giving the Aston Martin V8 Vantage he's driving more traction on a frozen lake. That tire technology is no longer limited to the movies. Later this year, Finnish tire brand Nokian is planning to launch a new snow tire [...]

On Tuesday, during Apple's weeklong product launch event, a listing for the "MacBook Neo (Model A3404)" appeared on a regulatory compliance page on Apple's website under its lineup of 2026 MacBooks. First spotted by MacRumors, the listing appears to be an accident and has since been removed, but may have been a leaked reference to [...]

EA is adding some big changes to The Sims 4: Later this month, it's introducing an in-game marketplace where users can buy creator-made items using a new in-game currency called "Moola." The announcements mark another big shift for the game, which went free to play back in 2022. Creators who want to sell in-game items [...]

Unihertz, known for its slab phone alternatives, has unveiled an evolution of its device with a physical keyboard: The Titan 2 Elite. It's smaller and sleeker than the (aptly named) Titan that precedes it, comes in the orange color that's all the rage right now, and looks a heck of a lot like a Blackberry. [...]

Mobile World Congress 2026 is still in full swing in Barcelona, Spain, with announcements continuing to come from the mobile-focused show that runs until March 5th. To make sure you don't miss the best new smartphones, laptops, concepts, and accessories, we're rounding up all the most newsworthy gadgets that have debuted so far at MWC [...]

Let me let you in on a little secret: Amazon's kid-friendly e-readers are a better deal than the standard models. Each so-called Kids" device is identical to its non-Kids counterpart, except that it comes with a protective case, an extended two-year warranty against damage, and six months of Amazon Kids Plus. They also include optional [...]