Tell Google What You Want: “Tailor your feed” Brings Prompt-Powered Control to Discover

Imagine opening Google Discover and being able to say, in plain English, “Show me cozy home-cooking videos, but only dairy-free recipes,” or “Keep politics out for a while — show me science and college basketball instead.” That’s the idea behind Google’s new experimental Labs feature called “Tailor your feed,” spotted in testing this week.

Why this feels different

For years, Discover has quietly learned from what you search, click, and ignore. It nudges you toward topics it thinks you’ll like, but the control panel has always been a bit clunky: tap three dots, mark something “not interested,” or favorite a source. “Tailor your feed” moves that control into natural language prompts — you talk to Discover like you would a helpful friend, and its AI updates your recommendations instantly.

This is not a full public rollout. It’s a Search Labs experiment in the Google app, currently limited to early testers (US English was reported), but the approach signals a bigger shift in how Google wants us to manage passive, algorithmic content.

What to know right now

• The feature appears in the Google app’s Search Labs (tap the beaker icon in the top-left).
• You open a prompt box labeled “Ask for the kind of content you want,” type a request, and Discover updates your feed instantly.
• Prompts can include topics, formats, tones or “vibes,” publishers to prioritize, or content to avoid (e.g., “Stop showing me negative news”).
• Google says Discover will remember these preferences and you can adjust them anytime; activity links back to My Activity.
• The experiment is early and rolling out slowly — not everyone will see it yet. (Reported Dec 15–16, 2025.)

The practical examples that caught attention

• Add a project-based topic: “I signed up for my first half marathon; give me training advice.”
• Remove a stale topic: “I’m back from a NY trip — stop showing me travel tips.”
• Narrow formats or dietary constraints: “Show me meal-prep videos that are dairy-free.”
• Adjust tone: “Make my feed feel calm and cozy.”
• Favor publishers: “Show more from The Washington Post.”

These examples illustrate how specific you can be — goals, formats, sources, and even mood are fair game.

Why Google is doing this

• Personalization, made faster: Natural-language prompts shortcut the months-long feedback loop of behavior-based learning.
• Engagement and retention: If people get what they want, they’ll spend more time in Discover (and the Google app).
• Better signals for relevance (and ad targeting): More explicit preferences are valuable for content ranking — and for ad relevance.
• Experimentation culture: Google Labs lets the company try riskier UI and AI ideas without committing to a wide release.

The potential upside

• Faster, clearer control: Users can correct misfires quickly without hunting through menus.
• Useful for life changes: Short-term goals (training for a race, planning a move) become easier to surface.
• Better format discovery: If you want videos, explain it — Discover can prioritize that format.
• Reduces noise: If you need a break from heavy topics like politics, you can simply say so.

The trade-offs and concerns

• Filter bubbles deepen: Explicitly asking to favor certain topics or tones may reduce exposure to diverse viewpoints.
• Publisher discoverability: Smaller outlets might lose traction if users ask for a narrow set of sources or vibes.
• Privacy and activity linking: The prompt history links to My Activity; anything you tell Discover becomes another personalization signal.
• Misunderstanding and misuse: Natural-language interfaces can misinterpret vague prompts, requiring additional back-and-forth.

How this changes the Discover experience

Think of Discover sliding along a spectrum from passive surfacing to semi-curated reading list. “Tailor your feed” pushes it closer to a hybrid: still recommendation-driven, but with on-demand curation. That could make Discover feel more intentional for users who want it — and more “sticky” for Google.

My take

Giving users a conversational way to tweak their feed is a smart move. It matches how people already describe preferences — in goals, vibes, and formats — and it reduces friction. But expect the usual tension: personalization makes life easier and more pleasant, yet it also tightens your content bubble. Ideally, Google will offer nudges that encourage variety and let users reset or explore outside their requested tastes.

If you’re curious and see the Labs beaker in your Google app, it’s worth trying — it’s an experiment, after all. Use it deliberately: try a goal-based prompt for a few weeks, then toggle it off to see how much Discover relied on that instruction.

Sources

• Google letting you customize Discover using prompts with ‘Tailor your feed’ Lab — 9to5Google.
  https://9to5google.com/2025/12/15/google-discover-tailor-prompts/

• Google will let you tell Discover what you want to see — Android Authority.
  https://www.androidauthority.com/google-discover-tailor-your-feed-experiment-3625403/

Google’s Willow, tiny quantum hardware, and industry moves that matter

Quantum news can feel like a parade of breakthroughs and cautious headlines — dazzling demos on one side, a long slog to useful machines on the other. This Monday’s round-up stitches together three threads that matter for researchers, builders and investors alike: Google opening Willow to UK teams, a palm‑sized device that could help scale quantum systems, and industry partnerships (including Western Digital backing Qolab) that point toward commercialization. Below I pull those stories together, explain why they’re connected, and offer a practical read on what comes next.

Why this week matters

• Access to working hardware (like Google’s Willow) is how ideas stop being academic exercises and start becoming real experiments.
• Miniaturized, CMOS‑friendly components could lower the cost and complexity of scaling quantum systems.
• Partnerships between chipmakers, cloud/tech giants, and startups show the industry is moving from isolated labs toward integrated supply chains.

What Google’s Willow being offered to UK researchers actually means

Google announced a collaboration with the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) to open access to its Willow processor for UK research teams. Willow — announced by Google in late 2024 and highlighted for its advances in reducing error growth as qubit grids scale — is now available by proposal through the NQCC program with grants and expert support.

Why that’s important:

• Researchers get hands‑on time with a leading error‑mitigation architecture rather than only cloud simulators, which accelerates real‑world application discovery.
• A government‑industry program with funding and formal review criteria increases the likelihood of focused, impact‑oriented projects (not just demo runs).
• For Google, placing Willow in a national program builds partnerships, softens adoption friction in a key market, and seeds use cases tuned to its architecture.

Context to keep in mind:

• Willow is a milestone in architecture and error behavior, not a magic key to all problems. It still sits far from the scale needed for tasks like breaking current public‑key cryptography — a point Google has emphasized. But hands‑on access shortens the time from “possible in principle” to “tested in practice.”

The tiny device that could help scale quantum systems

A research team supported by the U.S. Department of Energy reported a device that uses microwave vibrations to modulate laser light for trapped‑atom and trapped‑ion systems. The kicker: it’s nearly 100 times smaller than a hair, fabricated with CMOS‑compatible techniques.

Why this is a quiet but big deal:

• Many quantum platforms still rely on bulky, power‑hungry photonics and control hardware. Shrinking control optics and modulators onto chips reduces size, power and cost — the same ingredients that scaled classical computing.
• CMOS compatibility means existing foundries and volume processes could eventually manufacture these components, lowering barriers for startups and established fabs to participate.
• Integrating more functions on a chip simplifies system engineering, which is essential once you aim for hundreds or thousands of qubits.

The broader implication: miniaturized, low‑power control hardware is a prerequisite for moving quantum from lab racks to datacenters and specialized edge use cases.

Microsoft + Algorithmiq: chemistry, error reduction, and practical tooling

Microsoft’s partnership with Algorithmiq focuses on fault‑tolerant methods for chemistry and drug‑discovery workflows. They’re working to achieve “chemical accuracy” while keeping resource costs (like circuit depth and measurement overhead) manageable.

Why this matters:

• Chemistry is both a promising early application for quantum advantage and a stringent testbed: it requires high accuracy and many resources on quantum hardware.
• Tooling that reduces measurement steps and prepares molecules efficiently will be indispensable when users transition from toy molecules to industrially relevant ones.
• Microsoft’s cloud and developer ecosystem (Quantum Development Kit) make it practical for computational chemists to try these tools without building hardware themselves.

Western Digital backs Qolab: supply‑chain players entering quantum

Qolab, a superconducting‑qubit chip startup, received backing from Western Digital. That kind of partnership — a storage/precision‑manufacturing firm working with a quantum chip maker — highlights how classical hardware suppliers are positioning themselves in the quantum ecosystem.

Why partner with a startup?

• Component and materials expertise (precision parts, novel materials handling, packaging) is directly transferable to quantum chip fabrication and assembly.
• Legacy hardware suppliers bring scale, process maturity, and supply‑chain relationships that startups often lack.
• For Western Digital, quantum tech is a strategic adjacent market; for Qolab, it’s credibility, manufacturing know‑how and potential path to scale.

Movers and shakers: talent and cross‑pollination

A quick inventory of recent hires shows the field is maturing:

• Companies are recruiting executives with enterprise and AI go‑to‑market experience to translate lab wins into customer offerings.
• Hiring for error correction, IT scale, and commercialization roles signals a shift from pure R&D to productization and user enablement.

This reflects an industry that must suddenly master not just physics and algorithms but also engineering, manufacturing, regulation and sales.

What this all adds up to

• Hands‑on access programs (like Google + NQCC) accelerate application discovery and create a feedback loop between hardware, algorithms and users.
• Small, CMOS‑compatible control components lower the cost-of-entry for building and scaling quantum systems, making wider adoption more plausible.
• Strategic hardware partnerships and talent moves indicate that the sector is assembling the industrial stack needed to move beyond lab prototypes.

Put simply: the pieces that used to be isolated (hardware demos, algorithm papers, niche startups) are being stitched together into an industrial roadmap — modest progress each week, but steady.

My take

We’re not at the point where quantum will immediately reshape industries, but these developments show purposeful, realistic progress. Opening Willow to researchers is a smart play: it creates practical testcases, educates users, and surfaces requirements that will guide future hardware design. At the same time, the push to miniaturize control hardware and fold in classical supply‑chain partners is the quiet engineering work that will determine whether quantum stays a handful of expensive lab systems or becomes a broadly available class of specialized computers.

For anyone watching the space — researchers, engineering teams, or investors — the useful signals are less the splashy press releases and more the structural shifts: access programs, modular components that enable scale, and stronger links between startups and established manufacturers. Those are the trends that will show results over the next 3–7 years.

Practical implications

• Researchers: apply for hardware access programs and design experiments that require real devices, not just simulators — that’s where the field will learn fastest.
• Engineers: prioritize CMOS‑compatible approaches where possible; they’re more likely to scale and find manufacturing partners.
• Investors and strategists: watch partnerships between classical hardware firms and quantum startups for clues about which technologies have viable paths to scale.

Further reading

• For Google’s announcement and the NQCC call for proposals, see Google’s blog and the NQCC press page.
• For the TipRanks roundup that inspired this post, see the original item summarizing the week’s moves and hires.

Sources

• TipRanks — Quantum Computing News: Google’s Willow Chip, Microsoft’s New Partner, and Western Digital Backs New Startup
  https://www.tipranks.com/news/quantum-computing-news-googles-willow-chip-microsofts-new-partner-and-western-digital-backs-new-startup

• Google Blog — Google’s Willow quantum processor will power cutting‑edge UK research through the NQCC
  https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/united-kingdom/googles-willow-quantum-processor-will-power-cutting-edge-uk-research-through-the-nqcc/

• National Quantum Computing Centre — Access Google Quantum AI Willow processor through the NQCC
  https://www.nqcc.ac.uk/nqcc-and-google-quantum-ai-collaboration/

Iowa State without its scoring engine — but for how long?

There are few storylines in women’s college basketball right now as compelling as Audi Crooks’ season. She’s not just piling up points; she’s reshaping how opponents game-plan against the Cyclones. So when the nation’s leading scorer sat out Iowa State’s 81-53 win over Northern Iowa on Sunday, it felt like a reminder of how fragile momentum can be — and how deep this Cyclone roster might be when tested.

What happened (and why it matters)

• Audi Crooks, averaging about 27–28 points per game and leading Division I in scoring, did not play in the Cyclones’ Sunday win over Northern Iowa. (espn.com)
• The injury stems from a head impact Crooks suffered in Iowa State’s upset-style win over No. 11 Iowa earlier in the week; the school didn’t disclose specifics beyond saying she would finish return-to-play protocol early this week. Coach Bill Fennelly suggested Crooks could be available when Iowa State opens Big 12 play against Kansas next Sunday. (espn.com)
• In Crooks’ absence, junior Addy Brown stepped up with 28 points and 12 rebounds, underscoring that the Cyclones can still find ways to win without their superstar — at least in the short term. (kcci.com)

Why this is more than a one-game story

• Audi Crooks isn’t just a top scorer; she’s a central matchup problem. Teams defend Iowa State differently because of her: double teams, collapse-and-kick strategies, and adjustments that free up teammates. Losing such a player — even temporarily — forces a different offensive identity. (espn.com)
• How a team responds when its focal player is out reveals coaching, depth, and culture. Sunday’s 81-53 win showed resilience: balanced scoring, efficient 3-point shooting, and role players stepping into meaningful minutes. That matters most when the schedule tightens in conference play. (kcci.com)
• There’s also the player-health dimension. Head injuries and RTP (return-to-play) protocols are unpredictable; hoping for a return “next Sunday” is different from guaranteed availability. Managing Crooks’ health now could affect not just one game but the team’s season-long prospects.

What to watch this week

• Official updates from Iowa State on Crooks’ return-to-play status. The timeline the school gave is early this week, with optimism about availability next Sunday versus Kansas — but expect conservative, stepwise progress. (espn.com)
• How coach Bill Fennelly adjusts minutes and rotations if Crooks is cleared: will she return to starter minutes immediately, or will Iowa State ramp her up off the bench to limit contact and ease rhythm?
• Continued emergence of secondary scorers — Addy Brown’s performance Sunday matters. If Brown and others can sustain high-level contributions, Iowa State is less likely to be derailed by an absence. (kcci.com)

A few quick takeaways

• The Cyclones showed they can win convincingly without Crooks, which is a credit to their depth and coaching. (kcci.com)
• Crooks’ injury appears to be head-related; RTP protocols are in place and Iowa State is cautious — that’s the right call for a player of her importance. (espn.com)
• Her anticipated return versus Kansas would be a key early Big 12 moment; whether she plays could swing that matchup and set the tone for conference play. (espn.com)

My take

Talent like Audi Crooks’ is rare: elite scoring efficiency, game-to-game consistency, and the ability to change matchups. But the best teams aren’t only great when their superstar is healthy — they’re great enough that a star’s absence becomes an opportunity for growth. Iowa State showed glimpses of that Sunday. If Crooks returns fully healed, the Cyclones will be scarier. If her return is delayed, this team has taken an encouraging step toward being a true collective in 2025–26.

Sources

• Audi Crooks misses Iowa State win; could be back Sunday — ESPN.
  https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/story/_/id/47309757/audi-crooks-misses-iowa-state-win-back-sunday

• Addy Brown leads No. 10 Iowa State past UNI as Crooks sits out — KCCI (AP coverage).
  https://www.kcci.com/article/addy-brown-leads-iowa-state-past-uni-without-crooks/69722550

• Addy Brown scores season-high 28 points in No. 10 Cyclones' 81-53 win over UNI, Audi Crooks sits out — FOX Sports (Associated Press).
  https://www.foxsports.com/articles/wcbk/addy-brown-scores-seasonhigh-28-points-in-no-10-cyclones-8153-win-over-uni-audi-crooks-sits-out