Google and Microsoft are moving more aggressively into the AI coding market led by Anthropic and OpenAI, as big tech competes to keep developers tied to its AI models, platforms and cloud services. Analysts say the battle is less about selling tools than about ecosystem control. Market forecasts point to rapid growth. Companies such as MongoDB and Snowflake are using multiple services rather than committing to one provider.

Google\'s always-on AI assistant Gemini Spark showed higher-than-expected practicality in everyday tasks such as summarising emails, organising schedules and searching for information, an assessment said. Running continuously on a Google Cloud-based virtual machine, it is designed to handle online work without leaving a laptop on. Tests highlighted solid results in lists and summaries, but also errors, limited links to external services and missing integrations such as Google Keep support.