👀 Google never left

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Welcome to your Tuesday, {{first_name | friend}}. Somewhere between HAL 9000 and the self-checkout machine yelling “unexpected item in bagging area,” McDonald’s decided to let AI run the drive-thru. No more humans. Talk to the box, get your Big Mac. What could possibly go McWrong?

🍔 What did the AI add to customer orders before the experiment ended: A) Nine sweet teas (when they ordered one), B) Bacon on a vanilla ice cream cone, C) 260 Chicken McNuggets ($222 worth) or D) All of the above? The answer is pulled up at the next window at the end.

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⚡ TL;DR

📖 Read time: 3 minutes

While the internet was busy making listicles of everything Google announced at I/O last week, nobody was asking the obvious question.

What was Google actually doing?

Not the features. Not the demos. The strategy. Because if you line up every single announcement side by side and zoom out, the picture gets uncomfortably clear.

Google isn’t building products. It’s building a complete map of your life.

Start with the one that flew past most people. Gemini Spark is a general-purpose AI agent that runs continuously in the background. It connects to your Gmail, your Google Docs, your Google Calendar and your files. It reads, monitors and acts on your behalf around the clock.

The pitch is that it handles things before you even have to ask. Ok, that sounds great.

Well, that really means an AI is reading every email you get, watching every document you open and sitting in the front row for your entire life. Twenty-four hours a day. That part went by very fast in the keynote.

Then there’s Universal Cart, a shopping agent that works across every major retailer. It tracks what you’ve browsed and what you’ve bought. Convenient. Also a detailed financial profile of everything you want and everything you buy.

Ask YouTube lets Gemini dig through videos and surface answers without you watching them. Brilliant. Also means Google will know every video you almost watched, not only the ones you did.

And smart glasses hit stores this fall. Turn-by-turn directions, texts, photo-snapping. No phone required. Your location, your conversations, your sightlines. All of it.

Every feature is useful. I’m not dismissing that. Navigation glasses alone could be a lifeline for a lot of people.

But every single innovation requires Google to know more about you. Your inbox. Your schedule. Your purchases. Your location. Your browsing. One announcement at a time, one permission at a time.

You don’t have to opt out of everything. You should know what you’re opting into.

Go to myaccount.google.com. Click Data & Privacy. Pay attention to Web & App Activity, Location History and YouTube History. Turn off what you don’t recognize. You can always turn it back on. You can’t un-share what you’ve already shared.

🗣️ TEXT/POST THIS STAT: Google’s new AI, Gemini Spark, runs 24/7 in the background of your phone, reading your emails and monitoring your calendar without you asking. The off switch is buried in your settings. Find it at GetKim.com.

📩 Send this to someone who uses Google for everything and loves it. Use the links below to share this super quick.

(Starts at 50:01) Forget Vera Wang. This bride is walking down the aisle in “Vera AI.” How? She used ChatGPT. It’s the ultimate five-figure wedding hack!

Listen on Komando.com →

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🎧 Or search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.

👨🏽‍🚀 Musk needs a spaceship: Elon Musk filed SpaceX's IPO last week, and buried in the S-1 is the most unhinged pay package in history. His 1 billion bonus shares only vest if SpaceX hits a $7.5 trillion market cap AND creates a permanent colony on Mars with at least 1 million residents. He could become the world's first trillionaire from the IPO alone. But the bonus? He has to colonize another planet first. No pressure. Guess that performance review is out of this world.

Library fare fake: I wish it were true. A recent video with nearly 30 million views (paywall link), claims a couple saved hundreds on flights by booking using a public library computer. How? No search history, no logged-in account, cleaner IP address, fewer digital fingerprints for airfare sites to price-sniff. Cute idea. Also doesn’t work. The library desktop isn’t a magic coupon with a mouse. Somewhere, a librarian became a travel agent with better posture.

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The Pope and the AI guy: Didn't have this on my bingo card. Pope Leo XIV released a 42,300-word document demanding governments regulate AI before it widens inequality, destroys jobs, and strips away what makes us human. Anthropic's co-founder and atheist stood onstage at the Vatican alongside two cardinals to present it. Leo signed it on the 135th anniversary of the last papal letter addressing a world-changing technology. That one tackled the Industrial Revolution. This one's about your soul.

🌀 Facts left town: This is one of those things you share with your circle and they have no idea it exists. A software developer built this fake Wikipedia where every page is AI-invented, from made-up societies to fake historical panics. It launched online about a week ago and already pulled 150,000-plus users. The founder joked donor money helps pollute LLM training data. Cute, until users started boosting hate-bait pages. Apparently even pretend history needs a hazmat team. I lost five minutes to Halupedia, you can too.

From TomToms to BlackBerrys, let’s look at the luxury gadgets that time (and your smartphone) forgot.

Listen on Komando.com →

🎧 Or search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Your mouse is slowing you down in Chrome. Press Ctrl + Tab to move one tab right or Ctrl + Shift + Tab to move one tab left. On Mac, use Cmd + Option + → / ←. Need tab No. 5? Press Ctrl or Cmd + 5 and jump straight there. 9 takes you to the last one. Tiny shortcut, major time-saver.

Lend your phone, not your life: Let someone use one app without giving them a backstage pass to everything else. On iPhone, go to Settings > Accessibility > Guided Access. On Android, try Settings > Security and privacy > Allow apps to be pinned. Open the app, lock it in place, and they’ll need your passcode to escape.

🛑 Stop wasting money on expensive, ineffective creams. They only treat the surface. The real reason your skin wrinkles, your hair thins and your knees ache is that your body stopped making enough collagen. I fix it from the inside with NativePath. I put a scoop in my tea every morning to restore what time takes away. Get up to 45% off plus free shipping and free gifts right now.*

👎 Tell Facebook to knock it off: If your Feed’s gone off the rails, reset the vibes. In the mobile app, go to Settings & privacy > Content preferences. Turn down political or sensitive content, snooze annoying groups or unfollow them entirely. See a post you hate? Tap the three dots > Not interested. Consider it an algorithm intervention.

📬 Swipe without the sabotage: One accidental phone swipe shouldn’t make an email vanish. In Gmail, open Settings > General settings > Swipe actions to pick what left and right swipes do. On iPhone, go to Settings > Apps > Mail > Swipe Options and choose actions like Mark as Read. Much better.

📝 Free note-taking app: Joplin isn’t for grocery lists. Write notes, attach diagrams, add math equations and keep video or audio right alongside them. Share notes with colleagues, or open them for collaboration. It works offline and syncs between phone and PC. Download it here.

A humanoid robot at a tech store in Shenzhen, China, attempted a Michael Jackson impression to “Billie Jean.” It quasi-moonwalked across the stage, tripped, face-planted and started flailing like a fish on a dock. 

Staff dragged its lifeless robo-corpse offstage while the song kept playing. Nobody turned it off. The show must go on. 

The whole thing is on video, and it’s glorious. Let’s enjoy this era while it lasts. Because when robots finally take over, this is the first clip they’ll show at the trial.

You have to watch all the action here.

🔜 Tomorrow: Your meeting app can take notes, write summaries and remember every awkward pause. I’ll tell you what’s really happening.

And the trivia tomorrow, it’s about a homeless cat that is worth a fortune thanks to social media. Yeah, you’ll never look at your cat the same way again.

💲 Stop getting ripped off. Be honest. When was the last time you actually looked at your phone bill? Your carrier is counting on you not to question it. If you’re 50 or older, you can get two unlimited lines for just $60 a month. And when you switch, you will also get $200 off your bill with code KIM200.* Same coverage, same networks, zero contracts. Hurry, this offer ends soon!

🍔 The answer: D) All of the above. Yes, really. The AI struggled with accents, background noise and overlapping voices. I mean, it even added butter and ketchup packets to people’s milkshakes. That should be a crime.

McDonald’s hasn’t given up entirely, saying voice AI will return. Meanwhile, Wendy’s launched FreshAI with Google in 2024, and Chipotle has been quietly testing avocado-cutting and chip-bagging robots called Autocado and the Augmented Makeline.

Sounds like McDonald's will soon be offering fillet steaks too. They'll call it a Big McStake.

Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily

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🎉 Keep it going! You got this! — Kim

Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, Wavytalk, @ErenChenAI via X

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