Dear Google, Please Don't Ever Mention Doom Again - CNET

Our gifting experts are obsessively searching for holiday gifts that are unique, thoughtful and suitable for any budget. Our expert, award-winning staff selects the products we cover and rigorously researches and tests our top picks. If you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. Commentary: Doom was a landmark creative achievement, while Google I/O's two-hour ode to AI seemed to lack even the barest semblance of genuine ingenuity. Google I/O 2026 was deathly boring. Speakers talked about AI — of course — tokens, agents and other things that put me to sleep. Until I was shocked awake by Google’s Varun Mohan. He took the stage and dealt me a psychic blow I wasn’t prepared for when he included Doom in his portion of the presentation. Mohan showed Google using its AI agent-infused development platform Antigravity to build an operating system and asked it to play Doom as a sort of QA test. It couldn’t because it lacked video and keyboard drivers, he explained. Mohan then prompted Antigravity to add the necessary drivers, which it did, allowing him to launch Freedoom, the free open-source game based on one of the most influential video games ever made. Doom is a foundational fi