Google’s Magic Pointer could be the next evolution of AI on laptops
Google
The humble mouse pointer has barely changed in decades. It moves, clicks, selects, drags, and occasionally turns into a spinning wheel of frustration. Google now wants to turn that tiny arrow into one of the most powerful AI tools on your laptop, which sounds ridiculous until you think about how often you use it.
The company has announced Magic Pointer for Googlebook, its new category of Gemini-powered laptops. The feature gives the cursor AI abilities, allowing it to understand what you are pointing at and help you act on it without needing a long prompt or a separate chatbot window.
Can the cursor become the new AI button?
In a new DeepMind post, the company explained how it is rethinking the pointer for the AI era. The idea is to make Gemini understand the exact part of a webpage, image, table, document, or video frame the user is referring to. That turns the cursor from a basic navigation tool into a kind of AI remote control for the entire screen.
This is where the whole thing starts to sound wonderfully absurd. A pointer could turn a table into a chart, compare products you select on a webpage, summarize a PDF into bullets for an email, or identify a building in a photo and pull up directions. The cursor, once used mainly to click tiny buttons, is suddenly being asked to understand context, intent, and action.
Why does this matter for Googlebooks?
Google has taken inspiration from the way people already communicate offline. You usually do not describe every object in a room before asking someone to move it. You point and say, “move this” or “fix that.” Magic Pointer brings that same idea to the screen. The cursor tells Gemini what you are referring to, while short commands such as “add this,” “merge those,” or “what does this mean?” tell it what action to take.
This new feature will be deeply integrated into Googlebook laptops, as Magic Pointer is being announced as part of that platform. That means Googlebook users should be able to use it more freely across the laptop experience, instead of being limited to a single app or browser window.
For everyone else, this AI pointer will be limited to Gemini in Chrome for now. Google says users can point to specific parts of a webpage and ask questions, such as comparing multiple selected products, summarizing technical specs from a product listing, or instantly converting prices into a different currency.
If Magic Pointer works well, everyday AI tasks may no longer need a prompt box at all.
I’ve got about 4 years of experience, mostly covering gaming, PC hardware, and smartphones. In my free time, I like…
Alexa for Shopping is a chatty new AI assistant with some cool tricks to make you spend at Amazon
Alexa now remembers your plans and turns them into shopping lists
After years of using Alexa to answer questions, control smart homes, play music, and handle everyday tasks, Amazon has found a more obvious job for it. Alexa is becoming your personal shopper, meant to help you find what you need faster and get it into your cart with fewer second thoughts.
Amazon is rolling out Alexa for Shopping to U.S. customers on the Amazon Shopping app, Amazon.com, and Echo Show devices. It combines the existing Rufus shopping chatbot with Alexa+ personalization, enabling the assistant to use product knowledge, shopping history, browsing behavior, past purchases, preferences, and Alexa conversations to improve recommendations. The assistant is free for signed-in Amazon customers and does not require Prime, an Echo device, or the Alexa app.
This see-through smart ring translates sign language and almost works like magic
For people who are hard of hearing, sign language isn’t just a communication tool; it’s their primary language. The problem is that sign language is not taught to people with regular hearing, thus creating a barrier that’s hard to bridge. Now, a team of researchers in South Korea may have just found a surprisingly elegant solution to this age-old problem.
According to a new study published in Science Advances, the system, called WRSLT (wirelessly connected, ring-type sign language translator), can recognize and translate both American Sign Language and International Sign Language words with around 88% accuracy. And yes, it works in real time.
The Android Show 2026: Gemini Intelligence, Googlebook, Android 17 updates, and everything else
Gemini Intelligence, Googlebooks, Android 17, and redesigned Android Auto. Google didn’t hold back at its pre-I/O show, and the main event is still a week away.
Every year, Google front-loads its Android announcements in a separate pre-show the week before its annual I/O conference. This year, the company did exactly that, and The Android Show: I/O Edition was anything but a warmup act.
Google showed up well prepared, with plenty of software and a major hardware announcement that took everyone by surprise. One by one, let’s talk about everything, including a deeply integrated AI overhaul, a long-overdue security upgrade, an Android Auto makeover that feels like it was designed for 2026, and a brand-new laptop category.
