Gemini expansion, Assistant shutdown, Search control, and AI commerce

Gemini has reportedly reached 1B monthly users and is replacing Assistant on Android, with Skills replacing Gems and AI Mode increasingly absorbing visual-search, study, and shopping tasks. The reported Gemini 4 Argon release adds a potentially important frontier-model milestone, but its benchmarks and availability remain insufficiently substantiated. Zero-click behavior, weak source visibility and attribution, incomplete measurement, youth safety, privacy, and EU, UK, and US scrutiny remain active concerns.