News
- Google revenue is up 14%, driven by a 32% growth in Google Cloud revenue
- The cloud division's annual revenue run-rate is now $50 billion
- The Gemini App has 450 million monthly active users
Alphabet has exceeded quarterly revenue expectations by a not-so-insignificant $2.43 billion by posting $96.43 billion in its second quarter 2025, marking a health 14% year-over-year increase, with the company having AI and its cloud services to thank.
Google Cloud revenues rose by 32% in the quarter to $13.6 billion – considerably more than the 12% rise in Google Services revenue, which covers areas like Search, subscriptions, devices, YouTube ads and more.
In a blog post breaking down the earnings, CEO Sundar Pichai revealed Google Cloud's annual revenue run-rate has now passed the $50 billion mark.
Google Cloud boosting Alphabet's overall revenue"We are seeing significant demand for our comprehensive AI product portfolio," Pichai explained in the post.
"We operate the leading global network of AI optimized data centers and cloud regions."
Pichai added nine million developers have now built with the company's Gemini 2.5 family of models, while 70 million videos have already been generated using Veo 3, which Pichai described as a "viral hit."
Speaking about Google Cloud revenue in particular, Pichai revealed the number of large contracts worth more than $250 million has more than doubled year-over-year. Google Cloud also signed the same number of $1 billion+ deals in the first half of 2025 as it did in the whole of 2024.
Wayfair, Mattel, Target, Capgemini and BBVA were cited among Google Cloud's major clients, with OpenAI also recently confirming that it would use Google Cloud infrastructure to support ChatGPT in the US, the UK, Japan, the Netherlands and Norway.
On the consumer side, the Gemini App now has more than 450 million monthly active users, and daily request have grown by more than 50% since last quarter.
All of this saw stock prices rise by about 3% in after-hours trading, with Google currently ranking as the world's fifth-most valuable company with a market cap of $2.315 trillion, just a few paces behind Amazon.
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From the outside looking in, the AI coding assistance market might seem like one big blur of assisted coding. The reality is far more nuanced and moving at breakneck speed.
What started as simple code completion has evolved through distinct generations, each representing a fundamental shift in how developers work with AI tools. And if you're not paying attention, you're already behind.
The First Generation: When AI Learned to “Complete Our Sandwiches Sentences”The AI coding revolution began modestly with code completion - think of it as autocomplete on steroids. Early pioneers like Kite paved the way, but it was GitHub Copilot that brought this capability to the masses through Microsoft's vast distribution channels. By 2024, 62% of developers reported using AI tools for writing code, with code completion as the gateway drug.
But here's where the industry got it wrong: the marketing promised a revolution while delivering an evolution. GitHub aficionados touted 20% productivity improvements, skeptics countered that it was a net-negative trend generating garbage code, and the truth, as always, lived somewhere in between. It was a wonderful, helpful capability that developers genuinely liked.
But game-changing? Not quite.
The numbers tell an interesting story. As of 2024, over a quarter of all new code generated by Google is written by AI. Yet despite this massive adoption, according to the 2024 DORA report, speed and stability have actually decreased. The first generation delivered on quantity but struggled with quality - a classic case of solving the wrong problem.
The Second Generation: From Assistant to AgentThen, at the beginning of 2024, something fundamental changed. Cursor, Zencoder, and other AI tools that live in developers' IDEs got completely new brains with radically different capabilities.
These weren't just code completers anymore - they were in-IDE coding agents. What enabled this generational shift is the new class of models that are more agentic, specifically, they are better at using tools, understanding your project environment, and keeping their wits together over longer sessions.
The shift was deceptive because visually, nothing changed. Same interface, same integration points, but under the hood? A completely different beast. The agents could fix a bug in a large repository or help users "vibe code" an entire prototype using unfamiliar technology.
It’s one of those rare cases of “same UI, different UX” - the use cases have changed, and the usage has changed with them. Developers spend 10 times more on these second-generation tools, burning significantly more tokens as they offload increasingly complex tasks.
The Third Generation: SDLC-Integrated Software Engineering AgentsMark the second quarter of 2025 in your calendars as the early emergence of the third generation, and it's happening faster than most realize:
-May 9th: Zencoder launched Zen Agents, marking a shift from individual productivity to team-based agents covering full SDLC.
-May 16th: OpenAI launched Codex, allowing you to use ChatGPT semi-autonomously in your GitHub.
-May 19th: GitHub Copilot launched agentic DevOps.
-May 20th: Google announced an asynchronous Jules agent.
-May 22nd: Anthropic announced Claude 4, upgrading its Claude Code tool that supports command line automation.
-June 10: Zentester is launched to bring automated verification into AI SDLC
The industry is keen on unlocking the next level of value by moving from IDE-based coding agents to software engineering agents integrated across the entire software development lifecycle. These agents can grab issues from your backlog, implement features, run automated tests, and leverage your CI/CD pipeline's security scanners. They will soon be self-correcting the errors that appear in this cycle.
I’m a big fan of collective intelligence and human ingenuity. Over the last four decades and 100M engineers (who are still the golden standard of intelligence), the industry has evolved a sophisticated suite of tools and processes to support software engineering.
I have always felt that early attempts to train LLMs to replace tools like compilers or debuggers were commercially and scientifically a dead end, and that teaching LLMs to leverage existing tools and processes is a better route. That philosophy (leveraging existing tools) moved the industry to the second generation, and now that philosophy (leveraging dev ops) is leading to the third generation.
The Reality Check: We're Still in BetaHere's the crucial caveat: just as first-generation code completion evolved from buggy and primitive to genuinely helpful, this third generation is still nascent. The capabilities are there, but they're rough around the edges. For the next six months, plan to re-evaluate these tools every two months - that's a breakneck pace at which we'll see step-function improvements. As is common with AI, you can get tremendous value if you deploy it in the right scenario with the right context.
The promise of 10x engineers is coming to life, and the biggest shift is happening this calendar year. In my career, it took 5-15 years to see generational changes in any particular software category, and we now see them twice within 12 months. First-generation tools needed strong code LLMs and fill-in-the-middle benchmarks.
Second-generation agents acquired longer context windows, tool usage capabilities, and the ability to navigate development environments. Now, third-generation agents are leveraging better models that can navigate websites for end-to-end testing, understand CI/CD tools, and orchestrate multiple specialized agents working in concert.
What This Means for YouThe industry is moving from AI coding assistants to in-IDE coding agents to SDLC-integrated software engineering agents. Each transition represents not just an improvement but a fundamental reimagining of how developers work with AI. By the end of 2025, most start-ups and forward-looking enterprises will heavily use second-generation in-IDE agents and will offload a sizeable chunk of routine work to the third-generation agents integrated into CI/CD.
The future of software development isn't about typing faster - it's about thinking bigger while AI handles the implementation details. Keep your eyes open, update your tools frequently, and most importantly, adjust your expectations and evaluations. The age of software engineering agents has arrived, and it's moving faster than any of us anticipated.
We list the best Large Language Models (LLMs) for coding.
This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro
- Five Nights at Freddy's 2 has an official trailer
- The horror movie is confirmed to be released in cinemas on December 5
- Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail and Matthew Lilard reprise their roles from the first movie
The Five Nights at Freddy's 2 official trailer has been released ahead of the sequel movie's cinema premiere on December 5. The upcoming new movie has, strangely, bypassed the Halloween release window, so fans will have to wait until closer to the festive season.
The sequel is set to unleash more animatronics out into the wild than the first Five Nights at Freddy's did, as it will take us beyond Freddy Fazbear's pizzeria – and notably, Scott Cawthon is involved in adapting the screenplay again.
Looking at the trailer, fans can expect Easter eggs and some new faces – or lack thereof – when it comes to Withered Bonnie, the broken rabbit animatronic from the second game.
What is Five Night's at Freddy's 2 about?Set a year after the first Five Nights at Freddy's movie, the official plot synopsis teases that the stories of the pizzeria have been "twisted into a campy local legend, inspiring the town’s first-ever Fazfest".
So yep, you guessed it, people have developed a morbid fascination with what went down and now there's a festival dedicated to the creepy animatronics, which totally isn't a recipe for disaster or anything.
We'll once again follow former security guard Mike and police officer Vanessa, who are doing everything they can to protect Mike's 11-year-old sister Abby. But when Abby sneaks out to try and see the animatronics again, she "reveals dark secrets about the true origin of Freddy's, and unleashing a long-forgotten horror hidden away for decades".
Not a bad way to continue the story, in my opinion, but despite the last movie being Peacock's biggest ever launch, it was a critical flop, so there's a chance I'll stick to playing the games instead.
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- Splitgate 2 is being put back into a beta state but will remain playable
- 1047 Games has said it will rework major parts of the game following player feedback
- The studio is also laying off employees and shutting down the original Splitgate servers to accomadate Splitgate 2's overhaul
1047 Games has announced that its free-to-play first-person shooter Splitgate 2 is returning to beta following player feedback.
The studio shared its decision in an X / Twitter statement, saying that the game, which launched on June 6, will go "back to beta" and the team will be reworking the game until early 2026.
After admitting it rushed certain features, 1047 Games said major parts of the game will be overhauled, including progression, gameplay, and monetization.
"We’ve heard your feedback, and we agree with you: we launched too early," 1047 Games said. "We had ambitious goals with Splitgate 2, and in our excitement to share it with you, we bit off more than we could chew. We rushed certain features, made some boneheaded mistakes, and most importantly – we didn't give you the polished, portal-filled mayhem you fell in love with.
"So we're going back to beta. We'll be heads down until early next year, rebuilding major parts of the game to capture the spirit of what made Splitgate special. That means reworking progression from the ground up, adding more portals to our maps, simplifying monetization, refocusing on classic game modes you've been asking for, and more, which we’ll share soon."
As a consequence, and just over a month since cutting an undisclosed number of jobs, 1047 Games is laying off additional staff members, to "shift our resources to focus on this rework".
"This is heartbreaking. These are our teammates and our friends, and they helped build what we have today," 1047 said. "They're receiving severance and job placement support, and we're committed to doing everything we can to help them through this transition. We hope to bring them back when we can."
In addition, the original Splitgate servers will also be shutting down this month, "in an effort to retain as many team members as possible", but is considering the possibility of supporting offline or peer-to-peer matches.
"While we'd love to keep servers online indefinitely, it's cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past couple of years, and we have to prioritize our team," the studio explained.
Although Splitgate 2 is returning to beta, the game will remain playable, and Chapter 3 will still ship as intended, along with bug fixes and "high-priority changes."
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- Secretlab has announced its new OTT Adjustable Legrest, launching July 24
- The new accessory is designed as a companion for any Secretlab chair and features Secretlab's PlushCell memory foam cushioning
- The legrest can be adjusted for almost any sitting position
Secretlab has revealed its new OTT Adjustable Legrest, designed specifically for desk lounging and as a companion for any Secretlab chair.
As part of Secretlab's Footrest and Legrest Collection, this latest accessory features dedicated leg and foot support and combines the company's PlushCell memory foam cushioning for added comfort.
It also offers research-backed ergonomic adjustments that can be altered any way the user wants. There are three independent points of adjustability, height, tilt, and distance from the chair, which can be personalized for almost any sitting position to reduce the build-up of stress in the muscles.
The cushion is sculpted in a pebble shape and designed as a seamless extension of one of the best gaming chairs, the Secretlab Titan Evo, with curves that help pressure distribution for the feet.
Alongside microscopic memory pockets that deliver optimal density and pressure relief for long hours of comfort, the legrest also features four reinforced glass-filled nylon legs that anchor it in place and can be moved as close to a Secretlab chair as possible.
"Many of us instinctively want to kick up our feet when we sit down, and often improvise by propping our feet up on makeshift stools, boxes, inflatable seats, and even hammocks," said Vincent Sin, head of industrial design at Secretlab. "The problem is that these flimsy surfaces don’t offer the right angles for comprehensive support. Meanwhile, conventional legrests have limited adjustments that force your legs into one fixed position.
"When designing the Secretlab OTTO Adjustable Legrest, we were intentional about engineering a versatile chair accessory that our users would look forward to returning to, no matter what they’re doing at their desk. And when paired with a Secretlab chair, it combines the pure comfort of lounging with a full range of adjustments for your desired leg and feet support—no other legrests offer this level of personalization."
The Secretlab OTT Adjustable Legrest launches on July 24, 2025.
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The world of rock lost one of its father figures when Ozzy Osbourne, the frontman for legendary British metal band Black Sabbath, sadly died this week, at the age of 76.
Ozzy, as he was affectionately known to his fans, had completed his farewell ‘Back to the Beginning’ concert just three weeks earlier, to rapturous reviews.
As you’d expect, heartfelt tributes to the late self-styled “Price of Darkness” flooded in on my social feeds. My Facebook feed (I’m Gen X, so yes, I still use Facebook, sorry) was full of tributes, but one in particular I found a bit unnerving and off-color...
It was an AI-generated video retrospective through the key moments of Osbourne’s life, like his marriage to Sharon Osbourne, the release of his comeback album No more tears, and being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Each moment was represented by a photo, but AI had generated video of Osbourne moving between the photos and getting younger with each one. The overall effect was somewhat unnerving. Especially his transition from wheelchair to throne. See for yourself:
The overall effect is of a weirdly plastic-skinned, uncanny valley version of Ozzy smiling away at the camera as he grows ever younger and travels back through time.
To make matters worse, the background music to the video is Forever Young by Alphaville from 1992, and while I've got nothing against Alphaville, its music cannot remotely be described as being either rock or metal.
That’s not the sort of thing I'd expect to hear on an Ozzy Osbourne video, especially when he has a song like Mamma I’m coming home in his back catalog, which would be more appropriate for a tribute video.
It gets worse - when you look closer at the text on screen, you start to notice mistakes. For example, at the end of the video, it says, “Co-founds Legendary Band Black Sabbat” instead of “Black Sabbath”.
Paranoid?Then, I found out that there’s a whole collection of these sorts of videos, created for pretty much every famous person who has died relatively recently, or is simply old and still alive! All the videos use the same music. George Michael, Audrey Hepburn, Steve Irwin, the list of celebrities it covers goes on and on.
The whole thing just feels wildly inappropriate, sloppily done, and represents the worst of AI slop. That is, videos generated cheaply using AI simply for garnering views on social platforms.
When Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, talks about a future where AI inspires creativity and lowers the barriers of entry for people to start being creative, he says things like the "upsides will be tremendous for society."
I really hope these sorts of videos aren't in the future he’s imagining.
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