🚀 Google’s Gemma 3, Big Tech Backs Nuclear, Waymo Expands

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🚀 Google’s Gemma 3, Big Tech Backs Nuclear, Waymo Expands

Plus: Google Tightens Chrome Rules; Tata Tech Data Leaked.

Jose Montes de Oca

Mar 12, 2025

Transcript

Good morning. It’s Wednesday, March 12. Today we are covering:

Google announces Gemma 3 as 'world's best single-accelerator model'
Amazon, Google and Meta support tripling of nuclear capacity by 2050
Waymo expands its robotaxi service across Silicon Valley
Google changes Chrome extension policies following the Honey link scandal
Hackers leak stolen Tata Technologies data following ransomware attack

Let’s dive in

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Google announces Gemma 3 as 'world's best single-accelerator model'

By Abner Li via 9to5Google

Google has announced Gemma 3, its latest open model for developers, claiming it as the "world's best single-accelerator model" with superior performance over competitors like Llama-405B and DeepSeek-V3.
The model supports advanced text and visual reasoning, includes a 128k-token context window, and offers function calling, structured outputs, and quantized versions for faster, efficient performance.
Safety features include the ShieldGemma 2 image safety checker and extensive governance to minimize misuse risks; Gemma 3 is available on Google AI Studio, Kaggle, and Hugging Face.

𝕏: Highest intelligence compression we have seen in any open model. (Also beats o3-mini). Multimodal. Multilingual. Tool calls. Weights on huggingface. So many reasons to be excited about this! - Delip Rao e/σ (@deliprao)

Amazon, Google and Meta support tripling of nuclear capacity by 2050

By Amanda Chu via Financial Times

Amazon, Google, and Meta have joined a pledge coordinated by the World Nuclear Association to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050, aiming to meet rising energy demands and reduce carbon emissions.
The pledge, also supported by Occidental and Dow, calls for smoother regulations and stronger government support to accelerate nuclear expansion, though Microsoft and Apple did not sign.
Despite optimism, challenges remain for small modular reactors (SMRs), with industry leaders citing technical, regulatory, and funding risks, and predicting meaningful deployment only by the late 2030s.

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Waymo expands its robotaxi service across Silicon Valley

By Sean O'Kane via TechCrunch

Waymo is expanding its Waymo One robotaxi service to Mountain View, Los Altos, Palo Alto, and parts of Sunnyvale, extending its Silicon Valley coverage to 27 square miles.
The expansion adds to the company's existing 55 square miles of coverage in the San Francisco Bay Area, with vehicles available 24/7.
Waymo is also advancing its presence in Austin, Atlanta, and Miami, while planning to test in up to 10 new U.S. cities in 2025, bolstered by a $5.6 billion funding round that valued the company at $45 billion.

𝕏: Thrilled to bring Waymo back to Silicon Valley! This is where our journey first began, it's where our HQ is, and it's home to so much of our team. We're eager to deepen our roots here and continue expanding access to @Waymo One across the Bay. - Tekedra N Mawakana (@TechTekedra)

Google changes Chrome extension policies following the Honey link scandal

By Jay Peters via The Verge

Google has updated its Chrome extension policies following accusations that PayPal's Honey extension was improperly swapping affiliate links to capture influencer revenue.
The new rules require that affiliate links in extensions provide a direct and transparent user benefit, prohibiting undisclosed link injections without related user actions.
The controversy gained momentum after YouTuber MegaLag's viral video and a lawsuit by Legal Eagle against PayPal, alleging deceptive affiliate practices.

𝕏: Looks like Google was not happy with @honey's stealing of affiliate revenue from other publishers exposed recently by @MegaLagOfficial either, so they just outlawed the practice in Chrome extensions… - Artem Russakovskii (@ArtemR)

Hackers leak stolen Tata Technologies data following ransomware attack

The Daily Star

Hunters International, a ransomware group, has leaked over 1.4 terabytes of data allegedly stolen from Tata Technologies, including personal details of employees and confidential business documents.
The breach, affecting over 730,000 files, follows a January 2025 cyberattack that Tata Technologies had confirmed but claimed did not impact client services.
Hunters International is believed to have links to the disrupted Hive ransomware gang, known for previous attacks, including a 2022 breach of Tata Power.