GM. This is Take Off, the DJ of the tech world. We'll spin the latest tracks, remixes, and mashups that keep your tech knowledge in tune and your portfolio dancing to the beat.

Here's what we're serving up today:

• Google I/O or Google A/I? 🤖

• Under the Hood at RobinHood 📱📈

• Asteroids ☄️

• ToolBox Thursdays ⚒️

Google I/O or Google A/I? 🤖

So, Google I/O 2023 just wrapped up, and it was a rollercoaster of awesome announcements. If you weren’t able to watch the 2 hour keynote yesterday, don't worry, we’ve got ya’ covered.

Needless to say, Google’s major focus yesterday was AI!

Unfortunately, we decided to play a drinking game of taking a shot every time Pichai said AI and it's no wonder why yesterday is a complete blackout!

Here are all the announcements that we were able to cover while still being some-what sober!

AI

1. Bard: Google's chat tool gets smarter (thankfully), supports more languages, and even conjures images in its responses.

2. Google Search: More transparency with AI-generated images and a conversational mode. Plus, a "Perspectives" filter to make your search experience more well-rounded.

3. PaLM 2: Google's new language model, ready to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT. It's also into writing and debugging code.

4. MusicLM: Type a phrase, get a song. This experimental AI tool is maybe the DJ of the future?

Hardware

1. Pixel 7a launches at a wallet-friendly price, offering a great camera experience without breaking the bank at $499.

2. Pixel Fold launches at definitely not a wallet-friendly price, boasting some of the best folding phone features while definitely breaking the bank at $1799.

Google I/O was a huge show for Google where they had to perform and it seems like, perform they did.

The Wolfs on Wall Street definitely seemed to like what G had to show as they pumped the stock by 5% instead of wiping out billions of dollars like they did on Bard’s debut.

Or just maybe, they were the playing the same game as us and no one had any clue as to what they did yesterday in the markets! Just Maybe!

Under the Hood at RobinHood 📱📈

Ahoy, stock traders and night owls! If you’ve dabbled in stocks in the US stock market, you most definitely know Robinhood, which had it’s earning call yesterday.

Even though the retail trading frenzy has cooled off since 2021, Robinhood still managed to beat Wall Street's expectations for Q1 reporting a revenue of $441M growing by +16%.

• Revenue from options trades rose 7% to $133 million when compared to the prior quarter, while revenue from stock trades jumped 29% to $27 million. Crypto revenues fell 1% to $38 million.

• Monthly active users dropped to 11.8 million from last year's 15.9 million.

• Thanks to the U.S. Federal Reserve's rate hikes, Robinhood's interest income got a nice little boost. While Robinhood's main trading arm experienced a slump, their net interest revenue quadrupled to $208 million, making it rain dollar bills.

At least someone is thankful to Jerome Powell for increasing the interest rates every other month!

They also announced that they're launching 24-hour trading of selected stocks and ETFs, 5 days a week. So essentially, we can lose money during the entire day now instead of just trading hours!

Robinhood has been on the path to adding more and more features and services in their roster of services and we definitely see this feature scratching the trading addiction itch. What’s your take on it?

☄️ Asteroids ☄️

Disney's Two Become One Stream-fest. Disney's merging Hulu and Disney Plus into one app, and the ad-free subscription price is set to rise. Hold onto your wallets, folks! 📺💸😬

Vodafone's 3G Breakup: Old Phones Ghosted. Vodafone's 3G phase-out has campaigners worried about "digital poverty" as older phones lose connectivity. Will this tech break-up force 3G lovers to find a new network boo? 😢📞💔

Microsoft Puts Salary Hikes on Ice. Microsoft has decided to halt salary increases for its employees. Meanwhile, they're investing heavily in artificial intelligence in the hope that these tech innovations can boost their future prospects💡💻🚀

⚒️ ToolBox Thursdays ⚒️

PDF.ai - Chat with any document

Podsift - AI generated summaries of your favourite podcasts

BrieflyAI - Transform your meeting transcripts into polished documents and post-meeting deliverables.

Kadoa - Scrape Websites Easily With AI

ChatTube - Chat with any YouTube video

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