Alphabet's Verily has created a joint venture with health company ResMed to research sleep apnea. The partnership will combine Alphabet's data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence with ResMed’s collection of data on sleep and medical products designed for the treatment of sleep apnea. Each company is investing an undisclosed amount into the venture. Verily has also partnered with Johnson & Johnson on a venture called Verb Surgical. — CNBC

New report says Apple’s App Store revenues are nearly double those of Google Play in the first half of 2018. According to app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower, Apple’s App Store generated about $22.6 billion in app revenue for the first half of the year. In comparison, Google’s Play Store generated about $11.8 billion in revenue. Apple’s App Store has consistently generated more revenue than Google’s offering for a variety of factors, including Android users historically spending less on apps than iOS users and a variety of different app stores that Android users can choose from. Apple’s App Store is available in China, while Google’s is not. This may change, however, as Google expands its interest in the mobile gaming space. — TECHCRUNCH

Google is using AI to map the brain’s neurons. The company published its research in Nature Methods. It included a Google team training an artificial neural network to sift through 663 GB of images of a zebra finch bird’s brain to construct a 3D model of every neuron and synapse. The data was provided by the Max Planck Institute in Germany, with a goal toward figuring out how the birds learn to sing. — QZ

Waymo released images of its new self-driving Jaguar I-Pace vehicles. Alphabet’s self-driving vehicle unit says it has three of the vehicles driving around the San Francisco Bay Area collecting design requirement data and developing durability tests, although the vehicles lack any self-driving hardware or software at the moment. Waymo and Jaguar Land Rover had announced a deal to build thousands of self-driving I-Paces to be used on an autonomous ride-hailing network being developed by Waymo. — THE VERGE 

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Alphabet has spun off drone and internet balloon projects into independent companies. Drone delivery system Project Wing and internet delivery balloon company Project Loon were spun out of Alphabet's X research division. Alastair Westgarth will act as CEO of Loon, while Wing’s CEO will be James Ryan Burgess. Both are already involved with Alphabet X projects. Other “graduated” X companies include Waymo, Verily, Dandelion and Chronicle. — CNBC

YouTube TV apologized for an outage during Wednesday's World Cup match by offering subscribers a free week. YouTube's live streaming TV service experienced nationwide interruptions in the middle of Fox's broadcast of the semifinal match between England and Croatia. YouTube has offered subscribers a week of free streaming to make up for the outage, which considering the $40 per month subscription plan, comes out to about a $10 value. – ENGADGET 

Google Cloud’s Los Angeles region is now live. Google announced last month that the new region, aimed at serving the media and entertainment industry, would go live during July. Google now has five cloud regions in the United States, adding four in just the last three years, and 17 around the world. – TECHCRUNCH

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Facebook has hired Shahriar Rabii, a former head of chip development at Google, to be a vice president and head of silicon. Facebook started to assemble a team to design chips earlier this year, likely with an eye toward making its own chips to power its Oculus Go headset. The company also is reportedly working on smart speakers with AI features that may use a custom chip. — THE VERGE

Google's DeepMind has developed a way to measure the abstract reasoning ability of a neural network. The company presented its research at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) in Sweden this week. The team tested the systems by generating questions involving an abstract set of factors, similar to IQ tests that humans take, to determine if the systems could infer concepts or reason to come up with answers. Some of the models had a 75 percent success rate. — VENTUREBEAT

YouTube will release a new tool next week that lets creators know if their videos are being uploaded by others. Named Copyright Match, the tool will be available to users with over 100,000 subscribers and roll out to more creators over time. The scanning service will only be able to detect if complete videos are being re-uploaded, not clips. YouTube had a previous program in place called Content ID, though the tool was more limited than Copyright Match and allowed content owners to monetize unauthorized uses of their videos. — THE VERGE

YouTube announced it would introduce new features geared towards making news on its platform more reliable. It also plans to provide $25 million in grants to “authoritative” news sources. The video platform says the grants, which are part of the $300 million Google News Initiative, will help credible news organizations grow their video operations and improve their reach. YouTube will link to Google News articles above news-related videos to help prevent hoax videos from rising to the top of its recommendations. Neal Mohan, YouTube's chief product officer said “What I think we can do is, instead of telling users what to think, give them as much information as possible, so that they can make those decisions themselves.” — WIRED  

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Google is partnering with Shopify via its ad portal. Shopify users will be able to buy Google ads directly through the Shopify platform, making it easier for retailers to run ads through Google’s ad portal. According to EMarketer, retailers currently represent about 20 percent of the online ad market. Shopify is one of the largest e-commerce platforms available for small businesses, allowing businesses to set up websites for their goods and services. Amazon’s market share in the ad business continues to grow. — BLOOMBERG

Google Cloud’s agreement with FitBit could have an impact in court cases. Samuel E. Britt, III, a lawyer based in Atlanta, argues that FitBit data stored in Google’s Cloud could be presented as evidence by defense attorneys against injury claims. FitBits have the ability to track a person’s movement and sleep patterns, along with other health information, that could potentially be important in debating the merits of an injury claim. – LAW.COM 

Google has introduced a new forecast feature to help project Google Cloud usage costs. The new bill feature will allow customers to see how much they will likely spend on cloud usage in a particular month. This can come in handy as different businesses have different capacity needs throughout the year. -EWEEK

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Google is bringing its Machine Learning Crash Course (MLCC) series to India. The "Study Jam" will feature free, in-person sessions. The program covers machine learning fundamentals and some advanced theories such as classification models and neural networks. Developers in India can register now for the free course, which will run until November. — NDTV

Lawmakers are asking Alphabet for details on how the company handles smartphone users’ personal data. In a series of letters, leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee raised questions about the practices of Google's parent company. The questions referred to reports that Android's operating system collects location data even if the user disables location services. The same committee probed Facebook earlier this year over the misuse of the personal data of 87 million users. — WSJ

Google will likely face a new fine from EU regulators for Android settings. On Android, the operating system assigns Google’s Chrome mobile web browser and Google’s search engine as the defaults. If it follows through with fines, this would be the second time EU antitrust authorities have punished Google for unfair practices. Google was fined $2.7 billion for allegedly ranking its own comparison shopping service higher than competing tools. — WAPOST

Google co-founder Sergey Brin says Google failed to be on the “bleeding edge” of blockchain. Brin, currently serving as president of Alphabet, admitted that he doesn’t know “a whole lot about cryptocurrency,” but helped his son set up an amateur mining rig. Google has been said to be exploring development of its own blockchain-related technology, which would help support its cloud business. — BLOOMBERG

YouTube creators are making longer videos to gain favor with its recommendation algorithm. Longer videos allow creators to include more ads per video, especially with mid-roll ads. With YouTube cracking down on videos that are eligible for monetization, more ads per video will give creators a better chance at some of their ads running. YouTube comedian Cody Ko says he’s increased the length of his videos from six or seven minutes to now average between 12 and 16 minutes in an attempt to have more content eligible for ads. -- DIGIDAY

YouTube has been added as a defendant in the class-action lawsuit against BitConnect. The suit alleges that the crypto investment platform issued unregistered securities and obtained funding through Ponzi scheme tactics. Plaintiffs claim their personal losses totaled $771,000. YouTube is accused of failing to delist and demonetize videos about BitConnect. The top ten BitConnect affiliates on YouTube posted more than 70,000 hours of content which received around 58 million views. — COINTELEGRAPH