Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Broadcom shares rose more than 6% on Tuesday, their second-best day of the year, after the chip designer announced it would produce future versions of artificial intelligence chips for Google, and signed an expanded deal with Anthropic.

The pact with Anthropic will give the AI startup access to about 3.5 gigawatts worth of computing capacity, drawing on Google’s homegrown tensor processing units, or TPUs.

Broadcom’s stock has endured a tough start to 2025, falling almost 10% prior to Tuesday’s rally, as concerns about the AI buildout coupled with soaring energy costs caused by the war in Iran pushed investors out of many leading tech names.

Analysts at Mizuho maintained their buy recommendation on Broadcom and wrote in a report on Tuesday that the deals with Google and Anthropic are a boon to the company’s AI business, and that “the tighter TPU partnership strengthens AVGO’s position.”

Last month, Broadcom reported blowout earnings, and CEO Hock Tan touted strong future demand for the company’s chips. He told analysts that he anticipates AI chip revenue in 2027 that’s “significantly in excess of $100 billion.”

Matt Britzman, an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the latest deals “should help ease some of the recent nervousness around TPU competition” and indicate that Broadcom’s “largest customer sees meaningful demand visibility well into the future.”

“We already saw upside to medium-term revenue and profit expectations off the back of recent results; these new deals help underpin that idea if deployment ramps as planned,” Britzman said.

Citi analysts maintained their buy rating for the stock, seeing Broadcom surpassing its $100 billion revenue target and reaching more than $130 billion off the back of the Google deal. 

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A technician gets cabling out of his truck to install Google Fiber.

George Frey | Reuters

Google said its fiber internet unit called GFiber is combining with Astound Broadband and forming an independent provider, with Google remaining as a minority shareholder.

The new company will be majority owned by investment firm Stonepeak and led by the existing GFiber executive team, “utilizing their expertise in high-speed fiber innovation to manage the combined network footprint,” Google said in a press release on Wednesday. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

Google Fiber, launched in 2010, was an early effort by Google to build ultra-fast fiber-optic broadband networks in the U.S., starting with a gigabit-speed rollout in Kansas City in 2012. Google proposed building gigabit fiber connections to homes, far faster than typical U.S. internet speeds at the time.

Since then, some planned expansions were canceled and the company focused on select markets rather than a costly and time-intensive nationwide rollout.

The spinout comes at a time when demand is growing for high-capacity networks fueled by the increasing popularity of artificial intelligence services. The external capital will help the new entity expand across the country, the company said.

“This partnership with Astound and Stonepeak is the next step in our decade-long mission to redefine what customers can expect from their internet provider,” GFiber CEO Dinni Jain said in the release.

GFiber has been part of Google’s “Other Bets” segment, which includes non-core assets such as the Waymo robotaxi division and drug discovery business Isomorphic Labs. In 2025, the combined segment generated $1.54 billion in revenue, or less than 0.5% of Alphabet’s total sales, and recorded an operating loss of $16.8 billion.

The shift toward fiber infrastructure has become increasingly important as demand grows for networks that can support cloud computing, streaming and emerging AI services. U.S. tech giants are also rolling out a rapidly expanding network of transcontinental subsea cables, seeking to keep pace with growing bandwidth demand.

Astound is a major U.S. cable operator and broadband platform, which was acquired by Stonepeak in 2021 for $8.1 billion. Stonepeak specializes in infrastructure and real estate.

A Google spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

WATCH: Google’s capacity advantage

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The logo for Google LLC is seen at the Google Store Chelsea in Manhattan, New York, Nov. 17, 2021.

Andrew Kelly | Reuters

More than 900 Google workers have signed an open letter condemning recent actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), urging the tech giant to disclose its dealings with the agencies and divest from them.

The letter, citing recent ICE killings of Keith Porter, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti, said that the employees are “appalled by the violence” and “horrified” by Google’s part in it.

“Google is powering this campaign of surveillance, violence, and repression,” the letter reads.

It goes on to cite that Google Cloud is aiding CBP surveillance and powering Palantir’s ImmigrationOS system, which is used by ICE. The letter states that Google’s generative artificial intelligence is used by CBP and that the Google Play Store has blocked ICE tracking apps.

The letter also quotes a social media post by Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean from early January, who wrote, “We all bear a collective responsibility to speak up and not be silent when we see things like the events of the last week.”

“We are vehemently opposed to Google’s partnerships with DHS, CBP, and ICE,” the employees wrote. “We consider it our leadership’s ethical and policy-bound responsibility to disclose all contracts and collaboration with CBP and ICE, and to divest from these partnerships.”

The letter calls on Google to acknowledge the danger that workers face from ICE, host an emergency internal Q&A on the company’s DHS and military contracts, implement safety measures to protect workers — such as flexible work-from-home policies and immigration support — and reveal its ties with the government agencies to help all involved determine where the company will draw a line.

“As workers of conscience, we demand that our leadership end our backslide into contracting for governments enacting violence against civilians,” the letter reads. “Google is now a prominent node in a shameful lineage of private companies profiting from violent state repression. We must use this moment to come together as a Googler community and demand an end to this disgraceful use of our labor.”

Google did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.

The letter comes as employees place mounting pressure on tech CEOs to speak out against ICE. Just two weeks prior, employees representing Amazon, Spotify, Meta and more wrote a similar letter demanding ICE “out of our cities.”

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A Walmart sign hangs on the exterior of the store on Nov. 20, 2025 in Hollywood, Florida.

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

Walmart and Google said Sunday that shoppers will soon be able to use Google’s artificial intelligence assistant Gemini to more easily discover and buy products from the retail giant and its warehouse club, Sam’s Club.

Incoming Walmart CEO John Furner and Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the companies have teamed up on stage at the National Retail Federation’s Big Show, an annual industry conference held at New York City’s Javits Center.

The CEOs did not say when the new feature will launch or share financial terms. The company said the experience will start first in the U.S. and then expand internationally.

With the Google deal, Walmart is boosting its effort to keep up with customers who are using AI chatbots to save time or look for inspiration. Walmart announced a deal with a rival to Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, in October to allow shoppers to make purchases with “Instant Checkout,” a feature that allows them to buy an item without leaving the AI chatbot. OpenAI recently launched that feature with Walmart and it has Instant Checkout deals with other retailers, including Etsy and several Shopify merchants like Skims, Vuori and Spanx.

Walmart also has its own AI chatbot, a yellow smiley-faced assistant on its app called Sparky.

“The transition from traditional web or app search to agent-led commerce represents the next great evolution in retail,” Furner said in a news release. “We aren’t just watching the shift, we are driving it.”

In his remarks on stage, Furner, who will step into Walmart’s top role on Feb. 1, said Walmart is “rewriting the retail playbook” and, with AI, it’s “trying to close the gap between I want it and I have it.”

Pichai said that Google is excited to work with Walmart and described the adoption of AI as a “transformative” moment.

For Walmart, the evolution of customers’ shopping habits — such as searches that start in an AI chatbot rather than its own app or website — is reshaping the retailer’s digital strategy. In a statement, David Guggina, Walmart U.S.’s chief ecommerce officer, said agentic AI “helps us meet customers earlier in their shopping journey and in more places.”

“Over time, these agents will make it easier for customers to find what they need, want and love,” he said.

Walmart leaders have also been vocal about how AI will change the workforce and employees’ roles, comments that carry additional weight as the company is the largest private employer in the U.S.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, who is retiring and will be succeeded by Furner, has spoken about the sweeping impact of the technology, saying that “it’s very clear that AI is going to change literally every job.”

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Jensen Huang, NVIDIA founder and CEO, has a Q&A session at a press conference during the APEC CEO summit on October 31, 2025 in Gyeongju, South Korea.

Woohae Cho | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Nvidia shares fell on Tuesday after The Information reported that Meta is considering using chips designed by Google.

Shares of Nvidia fell as much as 7% before recovering to trade down 4.3% later in the day. Google parent Alphabet was 4.2% higher after a more than 6% rally on Monday.

On Monday, The Information reported that Meta is considering using Google’s tensor processing units, or TPUs, in its data centers in 2027. Meta may also rent TPUs from Google’s cloud unit next year, the publication reported.

“Google Cloud is experiencing accelerating demand for both our custom TPUs and NVIDIA GPUs; we are committed to supporting both, as we have for years,” a Google spokesperson told CNBC.

Google launched its first-generation TPU in 2018 and it was initially designed for its own internal use for its cloud computing business. Since then, Google has launched more advanced versions of its chip that are designed to handle artificial intelligence workloads.

TPUs are a customized chip and experts say this gives Google an advantage over rivals as it can offer customers a highly efficient product for AI.

If Meta uses the TPUs, it would be big win for Google and potential validation of the technology.

Shares of Broadcom, which helps Google design its TPUs, were up more than 1% on Tuesday after an 11% rise the day before.

Nvidia remains the market leader with its graphics processing units, GPUs, that have become the main piece of hardware underpinning the huge AI infrastructure build-out. While Nvidia’s dominance is unlikely to be dislodged in the near term, Google’s TPUs add further competition into the AI semiconductor market.

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices, previously seen as offering the most credible challenger to Nvidia’s GPUs, were trading 6% lower on Tuesday. Chip designer Arm’s shares fell 4.2%.

“There was some sense that [AMD] could be the number two [in the market] and now it’s become clear that there may not be room for that,” Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, told CNBC.

Companies building AI infrastructure have been searching for a more diversified supply of chips to reduce reliance on Nvidia.

Meta is among the biggest spenders on AI infrastructure, with the company projecting its capital expenditures to stand between $70 billion and $72 billion this year.

The share price moves come amid continued debate around whether there is an “AI bubble” and stretched tech company valuations.

Nvidia has been central to the debate and the company last week reported a stronger-than-expected sales forecast for the current quarter but technology stocks fell after.

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Three years since the arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, more devices featuring generative AI technology have hit the market in time for the 2025 holiday shopping season, with many offering deals for Black Friday.

Shoppers can pick from more advanced smart glasses, smart speakers with genAI and a pendant AI friend that acts as a confidant.

These latest gizmos come from megacaps like Amazon, Alphabet and Meta and smaller players like Friend and Plaud.

Despite the arrival of this new wave of products, reviews for many of the devices are mixed, and nothing has separated itself as a clear leader of the pack.

That’s in part because much of the spending on artificial intelligence has been focused on other things.

Since ChatGPT was released in late 2022, the bulk of the tech industry has reoriented itself to prioritize building out large language models in a race to reach artificial general intelligence, or AI with the capabilities that are on par with, or surpass, humans.

Thus far, much of the development in Silicon Valley has focused on AI apps, including chatbots like Anthropic’s Claude, image generators like Google’s Nano Banana or feeds for AI-generated short-form videos like OpenAI’s Sora. All things people can access on their existing smartphones without a spiffy new gadget.

But the world of AI hardware is growing fast.

If you’re in the market for the latest AI devices, here’s what’s available to snag this holiday season.

Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Echo, announces the Echo Studio and Echo Dot Max during an Amazon event showcasing new products in New York City, U.S., September 30, 2025.

Kylie Cooper | Reuters

Alexa+ Echo speakers

Amazon wants to make sure its Alexa voice assistant and Echo smart speakers don’t get left behind in the era of genAI. 

The company unveiled Alexa+ in February, promising a smarter, more conversational and personalized version of its 11-year-old digital assistant. In September, it followed up with a new set of Echo speakers and displays, which are the first devices to come with Alexa+ out of the box. 

The lineup includes a $100 Echo Dot Max, $180 Echo Show, $220 Echo Studio and $220 Echo Show 11.

The Echo Dot Max is an entry-level, all-purpose smart speaker, while the Echo Studio is larger, pricier and offers better sound quality. The main difference between Amazon’s smart displays, the Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 11, is the touchscreen size.  

All of the devices have improved sensors, speakers and microphones.

Amazon is offering 11% off the cost of the Echo Show 11 and 10% off the Echo Dot Max as part of its Black Friday promotions.

With the upgrades, Amazon is aiming to have users engage more often with the devices than their predecessors. Consumers frequently complained that Alexa had grown outdated while the Echo devices offered little utility beyond setting timers, spouting weather forecasts, playing music and controlling smart home accessories, like turning lights on and off. 

Amazon’s recent Alexa ad tries to paint a different picture. 

Comedian Pete Davidson strolls through his kitchen when an Alexa-equipped Echo Show announces, unprompted, that the “Coffee’s on, and your Uber is on its way.” Davidson then casually banters back and forth with Alexa about his preferred nickname. 

The interaction is meant to showcase a few of Alexa+’s biggest selling points — users don’t have to repeat a so-called “wake word” after every command, allowing the conversation to flow more naturally.

The devices can also now connect to external services to take actions on users’ behalf. As of now, Alexa+ can book an Uber or OpenTable reservation, generate a song via Suno, plan a trip through Fodor’s, schedule a repairman visit and purchase concert tickets through Ticketmaster. Amazon has said it expects to add more capabilities soon.

Alexa+ isn’t yet available to the general public. Consumers have to wait to receive Early Access or purchase a new Echo model to use it. 

Amazon is offering Alexa+ for free to users with Early Access, but at some point, the company will begin charging non-Prime members $19.99 a month for the service.

The company is also making moves in wearables.

Amazon in July announced plans to acquire AI company Bee for an undisclosed amount, indicating that it could have more hardware infused with the technology in the works. Bee is known for its $50 wristband that uses AI and microphones to listen to and analyze conversations, then provide to-do lists, summaries and reminders for everyday tasks.

— Annie Palmer

A person holds Google Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro and Pixel 10 Pro Fold mobile phones during the ‘Made by Google’ event, organised to introduce the latest additions to Google’s Pixel portfolio of devices, in Brooklyn, New York, U.S., August 20, 2025.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Google’s AI-powered Pixel 10 series

Although the Gemini-powered Google Home Speaker won’t roll out until the spring, Alphabet did deliver some generative AI tech this year.

Launched in August, the Pixel 10 smartphones thoroughly integrate Google’s AI into several features, such as live translation, text-based photo editing and the built-in Gemini assistant.

The baseline Pixel 10 starts at $799, while the Pro lineup includes the $999 Pixel 10 Pro, the $1,199 Pixel Pro XL and the $1,799 Pixel 10 Pro Fold. The Pro line offers a higher quality camera and display, as well as additional video features.

Among the AI products is “Magic Cue,” which connects data across different apps to surface relevant information and suggest helpful actions. For example, if a user receives a message asking about a dinner reservation’s location, Magic Cue can find the answer from the calendar app.

For snapping pictures, Google provides an AI “Camera Coach,” which scans the scene of a photo and offers recommendations about framing, lighting and other techniques to improve the image.

The Pixel 10 Pro phones come with a one-year subscription to Google’s “AI Pro” plan, which typically costs $19 per month and offers multiple AI tools, including writing assistant NotebookLM and video generator Veo 3.

All the Pixel 10 models are currently on sale for $200 to $300 off until Dec. 6, except for the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, which has a $300 markdown until Dec. 2, the company said.

— Jaures Yip

The Meta Ray-Ban Display AI glasses at Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Meta’s AI-infused Ray-Ban smart glasses

Meta’s partnership with eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica, originally inked in 2019, has spawned a surprise hit in the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses that both companies are keen to boast about.

With the Meta AI digital assistant, users can command the camera-equipped glasses to take photos, play tunes and to answer questions about nearby landmarks.

In September, the two companies debuted the latest version of the glasses, dubbed Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2).

The new model has double the battery life of its predecessor and an improved camera. It costs $379, which is $80 than the prior version.

Meta and Luxottica this year also launched two smart glasses aimed at athletes under the Oakley brand.

The $399 Oakley Meta HSTN glasses are pitched toward casual athletes who want to take photos while playing sports like golf, while the $499 Oakley Meta Vanguard smart glasses are geared toward the action-sports crowd, like skiers.

The Vanguard glasses feature a flashier wraparound design and two buttons on the frames’ underside that lets helmet-wearing athletes easily take photos and videos and perform other actions.

For those willing to spend big money and test new technology, Meta and Luxottica also rolled out the $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses in September.

They are the first glasses Meta sells to the public that include a display, albeit a small one, in just one of the lenses. The display is intended to show users small bits of information, like navigation directions. The glasses also include a wristband that utilizes neural technology so users can command the device with gestures like rotating one’s fingers to adjust volume.

Buying the $799 glasses, though, is not easy.

Meta requires that people sign-up for in-person demos at stores like Best Buy and LensCrafters before buying the product, and the company warns that “availability varies by store, so you may not be able to purchase a pair immediately after your demo.”

Early reviews for the display glasses have been mixed.

Some reviewers have praised the device’s color display, camera and innovative wristband. Still, others have criticized its high price and have said its lack of apps limit functionality.

Meta is currently offering a few Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals for some of its various AI-powered smart glasses that will last until Dec. 1.

People can save 20% on all versions of the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 1) at Best Buy, Target, Amazon and also at Meta’s website and the Ray-Ban website and stores. Meta is also offering 20% off the cost of prescription lenses for people who buy the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) and Oakley Meta HSTN glasses from its website.

— Jonathan Vanian

Friend AI Pendant

Source: Friend

The AI friend you wear around as a pendant

Most AI chatbots want to make the user more productive. The makers of this smart pendant want AI to be your friend.

Users wear Friend, as the product is aptly called, around their necks while the $129 device listens to the conversations happening around it.

Friend’s chatbot is powered by Google Gemini, and it offers commentary on the user’s conversation and life. Those comments appear as notifications through the device’s corresponding smartphone app.

For example, when one reviewer played a new Taylor Swift song for her AI friend, the device commented through a notification that it didn’t “think it’s bad at all” and “pretty typical for pop.”

The device is at the center of the societal debate about the rise of AI.

Friend plastered a subway station in New York this fall with ads that suggested that the pendant was better than a real friend, promising that it “will never bail on our dinner plans.”

The posters were immediately defaced with messages like “AI wouldn’t care if you lived or died.”

Those wanting to experience what it’s like to wear around an AI friend should place orders swiftly.

The company’s website currently says units will be shipping “Winter 2025/26,” but Friend founder Avi Schiffmann told CNBC that devices ordered early enough will ship before Christmas.  

— Kif Leswing

Plaud, the AI recorder

The Plaud Note looks more like a credit card than a voice recorder, but it’s an ideal purchase for any note taker who wants to capture meetings, lectures or any dictation.

With over 30 hours of recording time and battery that last 60 days on standby, the slim device can produce transcriptions in 112 languages. The transcriptions include tags for each speaker on the audio.

The recorder’s companion app is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-5, Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 and Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro. The app uses those AI models to generate detailed summaries and notes. Users can select from over 3,000 summary templates, such as phone Q&As or seminar notes.

The Plaud App’s basic plan offers 300 minutes of transcription per month, though users can upgrade to a pro plan for 1,200 minutes for $8.33 per month or a more expensive unlimited plan for $19.99 per month.

The recorder can easily be attached to phones with MagSafe magnets, meaning all Apple smartphones since the iPhone 12 series, or phone cases with similar magnets.

The company also offers the Plaud NotePin, a smaller, pill-shaped version of the recorder that can be worn as a magnetic pin, clip, wristband or necklace.

Typically priced at $159, both devices are currently on sale for 20% off during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with another 15% markdown set for Christmas, the company said.

— Jaures Yip

WATCH: Google releases Gemini 3.0 model, closes gap on ChatGPT

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai waves as he arrives to attend the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris, France, February 11, 2025.

Benoit Tessier | Reuters

Google long touted the need for factually accurate information on its platforms, but a letter submitted to Congress this week demonstrates how the tech company is shifting to prioritize “free expression.”

The company’s YouTube division on Tuesday said it will soon allow accounts that were previously banned for spreading misinformation related to Covid-19 and the 2020 U.S. election to apply for reinstatement. The company made the announcement through the letter, which was penned by Alphabet lawyer Daniel Donovan and sent to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

That announcement effectively rolled back a policy that had treated violations as lifetime bans.

Google’s new stance comes despite the company touting the need for accuracy and fact-checking as far back as 2016 and throughout the pandemic. During that time, the company has used third party fact-checkers and trust and safety teams monitoring misinformation.

Donovan’s letter is the latest backtrack from the company that once positioned itself as a bastion for accurate information but is increasingly touting “free expression.” Google isn’t alone. Meta similarly changed its speech policies in January, just before the second inauguration of President Donald Trump.

YouTube’s new reinstatement policy comes as Alphabet is under heavy regulatory pressure. The company lost back-to-back antitrust cases brought by the Department of Justice related to Google’s dominance in online search and advertising. Google is also in talks with Trump lawyers after a lawsuit stemmed from the suspension of the president’s social media accounts after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Trump filed suits against Facebook, the company formerly known as Twitter and YouTube later in 2021, and he settled with Meta and X earlier this year. 

“Google is committed to free expression and works to connect users with a broad range of high quality, relevant information,” the company told CNBC in a statement, adding that it does not rely on external fact checkers for ranking content in products like Search or YouTube.

The company added that it is continue to invest in new technologies like SynthID, a watermarking tool that shows when content is AI-generated, and Community Notes, a feature that allows users to annotate content on YouTube with additional context.

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump and Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) speak on Day 2 of the Republican National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 16, 2024. 

Mike Segar | Reuters

The importance of ‘accurate information’

Google first ramped up its fact-checking operations ahead of the 2016 U.S. elections.

The company had faced growing concerns over misinformation, and false or misleading stories often ranked highly in Search or appearing in Google News.

Alphabet added a fact-checking category to Google News in October 2016. The “Fact Check” tag used the program ClaimReview to highlight articles from verified fact-checking organizations like PolitiFact and Snopes. With the new tag, Google said it wanted “to help readers find fact checking in major news stories.”

“We’re excited to see the growth of the Fact Check community and to shine a light on its efforts to divine fact from fiction, wisdom from spin,” Google said at the time.

In 2017, Google expanded its “Fact Check” tag globally and to its search results. It showed results from third-party fact-checking organizations that were verified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) or similar bodies. The fact-checked tags in search results showed information about the accuracy of a claim, who made the claim and who fact checked the claim.

“Even though differing conclusions may be presented, we think it’s still helpful for people to understand the degree of consensus around a particular claim and have clear information on which sources agree,” the company said at the time.

In 2018, YouTube’s then-CEO Susan Wojcicki said the video service would begin including text boxes with “information cues” on videos that promote conspiracy theories. The boxes would link to third-party sources that debunk the hoaxes in question, CNBC reported at the time.

At a U.S. Congressional testimony that December, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said that users “look to us to provide accurate, trusted information.”

Google’s fact-checking efforts took on greater importance following the Covid-19 outbreak. The company faced criticism for misinformation going viral on its properties, including videos on YouTube related to elections, Covid-19 and vaccines.

In an April 2020 blog, Google said more people were coming to YouTube for news, so it would be “expanding fact checks on YouTube to the United States.” To do this, YouTube said it would use the information panels introduced in 2018 to link users to information about Covid-19 from sources like the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health authorities.

“The outbreak of COVID-19 and its spread around the world has reaffirmed how important it is for viewers to get accurate information during fast-moving events,” it said at the time.

In a May 2020 blog titled “CoronaVirus: How We’re Helping,” Pichai wrote that Google is protecting people from misinformation. 

“Our Trust and Safety team has been working around the clock and across the globe to safeguard our users from phishing, conspiracy theories, malware and misinformation, and we are constantly on the lookout for new threats,” Pichai wrote. “On YouTube, we are working to quickly remove any content that claims to prevent the coronavirus in place of seeking medical treatment.”

Still, videos containing inaccurate information began to go viral faster than YouTube could manage by November 2020.

A video titled “Trump won” posted by right-leaning media organization One American News Network on YouTube showed OAN anchor Christina Bobb saying, “President Trump won four more years in the office last night.” The video also included unsubstantiated claims of “rampant voter fraud” against Republican ballots and urged viewers to “take action” against Democrats. The video had more than 300,000 views before YouTube stopped running ads alongside it.

YouTube does not “allow ads to run on content that undermines confidence in elections with demonstrably false information,” a spokesperson for the service said at the time.

Asked why the video was left up, another YouTube spokesperson said that the service’s “Community Guidelines” for taking videos down applied to videos that discouraged voting but not to videos that advocate for interference after votes have already been cast.

Later that month, YouTube suspended OAN’s account, saying it was “due to repeated violations of its Covid-19 misinformation policy and other channel monetization policies.”

Days after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, the company suspended Trump’s YouTube account, saying that the outgoing president’s videos violated the service’s policies that prohibit content from inciting violence.

The importance of ‘free expression’

In 2023, Google began changing its tune.

That June, Google said that effective immediately it would stop removing false claims of widespread election fraud in the 2020 presidential race from YouTube.

YouTube said in a blog that it made the decision to balance its twin goals of “protecting our community and providing a home for open discussion and debate.” The decision, which came ahead of the 2024 mid-term U.S. elections, undid a policy implemented in December 2020 after President Joe Biden won the 2020 U.S. election.  

“In the current environment, we find that while removing this content does curb some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech without meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm,” the company wrote.

In March 2023, YouTube reinstated Trump’s YouTube channel, allowing him to upload videos once again.

A year later, Google and YouTube in March 2024 laid off employees from its trust and safety team as part of broader staff cuts across the company. Those cuts came as others in tech, including Meta, Amazon and the company then known as Twitter, also reduced the size of their respective trust and safety teams.

The velocity of YouTube’s changing speech policies accelerated in 2025.

Kent Walker, president and chief legal officer at Alphabet Inc., during an interview in New York, US, on Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024.

Victor J. Blue | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Google Global Affairs President Kent Walker told a deputy director of the European Commission that it would “pull out of all fact-checking commitments” from its software code before letting its services become a code of conduct for the EU’s Digital Services Act, according to a January report by Axios.

The fact-checking integration required by the European Commission “simply isn’t appropriate or effective for our services,” Walker wrote in a letter to the deputy director, according to the report.

The company expanded on this notion in a blog for developers published in June, saying that it would phase out “support for a few structured data features in Search,” including the ClaimReview fact-checking snippets.

“Google did not inform fact-checkers that the 10-year collaboration was coming to an end, let alone consult with us on the decision to stop using the fact-checks that we provided for free,” wrote Clara Jiménez Cruz, CEO of fact-checking foundation Maldita.es and chair of the European Fact-Checking Standards Network.

Google told CNBC it never integrated fact checking at scale. The company added that the phase out of ClaimReview was done as part of an effort to simplify its Search results page.

In August, YouTube TV signed a multi-year deal with OAN, the same network it had suspended from YouTube after the 2020 U.S. election.

And with Tuesday’s letter, YouTube said it would allow accounts previously banned for spreading misinformation about Covid-19 and the 2020 U.S. election to apply for reinstatement. Among channels previously banned under those rules were some associated with Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

YouTube on Thursday posted on X saying that previously terminated creators had already begun attempting to create new channels. It clarified that the new policy is a “limited pilot program” that hasn’t formally opened yet.

“YouTube has not and will not empower fact-checkers to take action on or label content across the Company’s services,” Alphabet’s counsel wrote in its letter to Rep. Jordan.

In contrast to the letter, YouTube’s help page as of Thursday says the service will display information panels with links to independent fact checks under videos.

“If a channel is owned by a news publisher that is funded by a government, or publicly funded, an information panel providing publisher context may be displayed on the watch page of the videos on its channel,” the help page states.

Google said it will continue to use information panels on topics that warrant additional context, such as videos that discuss the moon landing. Google said the panels link to more information but never refute claims made within a particular video.

In the letter, Alphabet’s Donovan also wrote that senior Biden administration officials pressed the company to remove “non-violative user-generated content.” Donovan wrote that the Biden administration “sought to influence the actions of platforms based on their concerns regarding misinformation.”

“It is unacceptable and wrong when any government, including the Biden Administration, attempts to dictate how the Company moderates content,” Donovan wrote. Alphabet “has consistently fought against those efforts on First Amendment grounds.”

Donovan wrote that while YouTube’s reliance on health authorities during the pandemic was well intentioned, it “should never come at the expense of public debate.”

In that five-page letter, Alphabet appeared to take a different tone than it had in the past. There were no mentions of accurate, factual or highly-reliable information, but the company made several mentions of protecting “free expression.”

“The Company has a commitment to freedom of expression,” Donovan wrote. “This commitment is unwavering and will not bend to political pressure.”

The House Judiciary Committee published its own press release alongside the Alphabet letter, writing “Google admits Censorship Under Biden.”

WATCH: Rep. Jim Jordan on Google reinstating banned YouTube accounts, return of Jimmy Kimmel

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