# Google Chrome Vertical Tabs and AI-Powered Map Contributions

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-04-08

## Transcript

This is TechCrunch.
It finally happened, folks.
Chrome's finally getting vertical tabs.
I'm Imran Shake, and your Tuesday Daily Crunch featuring three big tech headlines starts right now.
Google's rolling out new features to make it easier for users to contribute local knowledge to maps.
The company announced this all on Tuesday.
Now, most notably, Gemini can now create captions when users are looking to share a photo or video about a place.
Once users select photos that they want to share, Gemini will analyze the images to create captions.
Users can then choose to edit or remove the caption.
The company says the new tools designed to give users a head start on captions when sharing content.
Caption suggestions are available now in English on iOS in the US and will expand globally and to Android in the coming months, Google says.
The company's also making it easier to find the right image for sharing with the community.
If users turn on media access for Google Maps and their phone settings, they'll see photos and videos from their recent experiences directly in the Contribute tab.
From there, they can tap on a photo and, well, post it.
Photos and videos you post help people better understand a place, like the overall vibe or the newest menu.
Google explains like an uncle trying to be hip and cool in a blog post.
It continued, now we're making it easier to find the right image for sharing.
Also, Google's making it easier for users to track the impact of their contributions, as they'll now see total points earned displayed in the contribute tab.
Also also, local guide levels will be highlighted on profile pages.
For context, local guides can earn points by adding photos, writing reviews, answering questions, and checking facts to improve Google Maps.
Google's saying these new features are designed to support its community of over 500 million contributors who share photos, reviews, and videos to help others decide what to do and where to go.
What a noble endeavor.
Given that Maps largely relies on contributors to keep information fresh and updated, it makes sense for the company to streamline the process of these contributions.
A new movie and TV tracking app, Binge, hailing from the indie developer behind other creative apps like the social app Mammoth and AI News Reader Bulletin, has a clever feature.
You see, it will warn you when the jump scares are coming.
Now, to do so, the app takes advantage of Apple's live activities.
You know, the feature that brings real-time notifications to your device's lock screen and dynamic island.
You've seen other apps that track ongoing events use the feature for tracking things like food deliveries, Uber arrivals, sports scores, and more, but Binge taps into the feature to let you know when the scary scenes are coming.
The app's entering a crowded space where other popular apps like Letterboxd, TV Time, Just Watch, Tract, and others already have a sizable audience.
However, Binge aims to differentiate itself by making use of Apple specific features like live activities and iCloud Sync, as well as introducing a handful of features.
Not all the other apps have, like the ability to add private notes, details about the post credit scenes, awards, breakdown, timelines, episode ratings, graphs, integrations with other tracking apps, and a whole bunch more.
Other features include the ability to rate movies and shows, browse recommendations, view Academy Awards winners, breakdowns, create custom collections, add tags to indicate you own a movie, add widgets to the home and lock screen, use an add to calendar feature, and access a ton of in-app customization options.
The apps are available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
It's free to download, but requires either a subscription or a one-time payment to unlock premium features, like the jump scare warnings.
After years of resisting, Google Chrome is finally adopting vertical tabs, a feature more recently popularized by the Arc browser, a predecessor to the AI browser Dia.
You see, Google announced on Tuesday that Chrome users will have the option to enable vertical tabs, which will move the tabs to the side of the browser window, making it easier to read full page titles and manage tab groups.
Once enabled, vertical tabs will remain the default setting until the user changes it back.
The company is adding support for vertical tabs alongside a refreshed version of reading mode.
It's a distraction-free text-focused reading experience.
The changes indicate how growing competition from modern day browsers has influenced Chrome's development, while also potentially limiting the pool of rivals aiming to differentiate their browsers with features.
Chrome Ain't Got.
The company notes that the new vertical tabs can be enabled at any time by right-clicking on a Chrome window and selecting Show Tabs Vertically.
The company says there's no hard limit on the number of tabs that can be opened beyond what would be limited already by the user's hardware.
And don't worry, the vertical tabs work just as the horizontal tabs do, meaning you can have different Chrome windows with their own set of tabs or tab groups.
People who prefer vertical tabs tend to be power users or researchers who regularly keep many open tabs in their browser and often have trouble finding the right tabs when things become crowded, shall we say.
Imran, thank you.
An Indian startup Rocket is betting that the next big opportunity is the part before vibe coding, having AI help people decide what to build.
It has launched a platform that produces consulting style product strategies.
The startup on Tuesday launched its platform, Rocket 1.0, which connects research, product building, and competitive intelligence in a single workflow.
The platform generates detailed product strategy documents, including pricing, unit economics, and go to market recommendations.
Rocket's subscription plans range from $25 per month for building applications to $250 for strategy and research capabilities and up to $350 for the full platform, including competitive intelligence.
And that'll do it for me.