Last Friday, Google won an auction to acquire a huge amount of Spirit Airlines data.

The data doesn’t include personal information or customer data, but instead nearly covers the airline's entire employment and workplace record.

To ensure that no individual can be identified in the dataset, Google agreed to use a court-appointed ombudsman to oversee a process to strip any personally identifying information (PII) from the data before it’s transferred to Google. Under the deal, Google agreed to maintain the data in this de-identified form and to never intentionally re-identify the data. And if Google sells access to the data, third parties would supposedly be bound by the same terms.

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Google's approach to making smartphones has changed a lot over the years. It started with Nexus phones aimed at the tinkerer and enthusiast niche back when there were countless companies making smartphones. Today, there are far fewer, and Google's hyper-polished Pixel lineup is seeing less competition and higher sales. So maybe Google thinks it can just keep doing what works. The new Pixel 11 series is Google's most refined yet, featuring sleek designs, smart software, and incredible screens. They're also rather boring.

Google made precious few hardware changes in its 2026 phones, shaving off a fraction of a millimeter here and dropping a gram there. The design language has been the same now for three generations, all while prices continue to inch upward. And this year, Google's hardware has actually regressed in a few key areas. Despite that, the Pixel 11 phones aren't bad—they're some of the best 2026 has to offer. But it feels like Google is forgetting that it's not just competing against Apple and Samsung. It also has to compete against the Pixels of yesteryear.

The same old (but great) design

Just like last year's Pixel 10 series, Google's 2026 lineup includes three flat phones and one foldable. The flat Pixels are the same size, and even side-by-side, it's hard to tell them apart from their predecessors. We've got almost identical aluminum and glass sandwich designs, which do admittedly look very nice. They still have Pixelsnap, too.

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