When I walked into a conference room in Google's San Francisco building last week, I expected to find the typical tech briefing setup with rows of chairs facing a wall of screens and a corporate voice managing a slide deck.

Novelty aside, Wall Street seems to believe that Alphabet has seized the momentum against its Magnificent 7 peers and other AI names. The past 12 months show a clean, decisive divergence. While the Big Tech stocks have traded as a group through most of this summer, shares of Alphabet broke out from the pack in September.

The internet giant has released new AI software and struck deals, such as a chip tie-up with Anthropic PBC, that have reassured investors the company won’t easily lose to ChatGPT creator OpenAI and other rivals.

Google is celebrating Thanksgiving with a new Doodle. The image above the search bar now features Tiny Chef dancing among pies and bread loaves.

Google is upgrading Circle to Search with AI Mode, delivering richer, more context-aware follow-up answers and making visual search far more useful on Android devices.

Developers have been busy updating Google Messages, and are working to change how you save media, share your location, and interact with Gemini.

Today’s FT News Briefing was hosted and edited by Marc Filippino, and produced by Fiona Symon, Victoria Craig and Sonja Hutson. Our show was mixed by Kelly Garry. Additional help from Gavin Kallmann, Michael Lello and David da Silva. The FT’s acting co-head of audio is Topher Forhecz. The show’s theme music is by Metaphor Music.

Google could soon place its Nano Banana image generator directly inside the Search AI mode. A new “Create images” option spotted in testing hints that turning ideas into fun visuals may happen right from your search bar,

Testing shows Nano Banana Pro excels at quickly creating seasonal, mood, and lighting variations for visuals, making it ideal for ideation and rapid asset generation.

Alphabet is closing in on a major milestone as investor excitement around AI accelerates. A recent high-level agreement could significantly alter how global institutions manage their most sensitive data.