"asi"?

Grey goo needs energy input. Mere ambient temperature or even strong sunlight isn't enough to tear apart chemical bonds of ordinary matter of any kind and put it back together as a replica. It's a thermodynamic fairy tale.

> Then molecular nanotech went out of fashion.

But it's still a crucial component of AGI catastrophe lore, just underplayed by people who conclude by saying things like "and that will be the end of cellular life."

> engineer proteins to fold up into the machines

Actually he emphasized "nano-assembers" which were far less bioengineering and more novel materials science for which there was no foundational support.

> You and people around you have scared our children. I don't expect you to stop, but I hope others in the chemical community will join with me in turning on the light, and showing our children that, while our future in the real world will be challenging and there are real risks, there will be no such monster as the self-replicating mechanical nanobot of your dreams.

-- Richard Smalley

Google ex-divisio would place ads with and display them from the divested newco just as Google's customers do today. Customers such as (checks notes) Facebook: https://mlexmarketinsight.com/news-hub/editors-picks/area-of-expertise/antitrust/google-acknowledges-it-foresaw-possibility-of-probe-of-jedi-blue-advertising-deal-with-facebook

The suit doesn't claim Google's other businesses are leveraging an illegal monopoly, but the part of Maps which does is their ad business.

No, they come from email addresses that Gmail thinks you've somehow interacted with. Thank goodness they've easy enough to turn off.

The independent ethics review panel process is generally good and certainly better than prior approaches, but it hides the ethics discussion from the public. This is clearly one of the cases where laypeople and experts alike are obviously going to be interested in the ethics implications, so you're right it's odd and sad we don't get at least a short paragraph summary.