The race to regulate artificial intelligence infrastructure has arrived at a crossroads in Washington state.

After weeks on the sidelines, Microsoft publicly declared its opposition to a controversial state bill that aims to rein in the environmental and economic impacts of the massive data centers powering the AI boom.

Labeling the proposed regulations “uniquely anti-competitive,” Microsoft’s senior director of Washington state government affairs, Lauren McDonald, urged Senate leaders on Friday evening to reconsider key features of House Bill 2515.

“We respectfully urge the committee not to advance the bill without significant changes,” McDonald said in testimony before the Senate Committee on Ways & Means.

The bill aims would require utilities and data center companies to create agreements that protect rate payers from increased power costs and brings transparency to the environmental impacts of the facilities.

Microsoft, which operates roughly 30 data centers in Washington alone, plans to spend up to $140 billion on global infrastructure this year, while has Amazon committed to spending $200 billion this year on capital expenditures worldwide, predominately for its Amazon Web Services cloud business.

Elected officials, communities and tribal leaders nationwide are increasingly anxious about data center deployments driving up electricity rates with their power-hungry electronics and consuming vast quantities of water to cool the devices. President Trump and other officials are pursuing commitments to ensure tech companies protect ratepayers from price increases.

Tech companies, labor organizations and municipalities that have seen job creation and the benefits of taxes generated by the facilities have pushed back against the regulations. Microsoft President Brad Smith last month launched a community-focused initiative pledging to bear its own electrical costs and emphasizing its support of local taxes.

At the same time, the Seattle Times reported today that Microsoft and Amazon have been working aggressively behind the scenes to weaken HB 2515, and that Amazon is currently “neutral” on the bill. The company, which has historically concentrated its Pacific Northwest data center footprint in Oregon, has not testified publicly on the legislation.

The legislation

HB 2515 has passed the House and is edging closer to a vote from the full Senate — though tech sector opposition could sink the measure. The bill is shifting and evolving with different amendments and new language under consideration. The legislation’s main components include:

• Ratepayer Protection: Utilities must create tariffs or policies that insulate ratepayers from short- and long-term financial risks associated with data center energy use.
• Transparency: Date centers must publish annual reports on water, energy, refrigerant use, and air pollution, with a comprehensive sustainability report every three years.
• Resource Forecasting: Data centers must coordinate with regulators and utilities on energy load forecasting.
• Carbon Credits: The availability of free carbon credits to meet state regulations would be limited.
• Clean Energy Certification: Facilities that open or expand after July 1, 2026, must certify their use of new clean energy, using 80% clean power by 2030 and all clean energy by 2045.

MacDonald raised concerns at the hearing about the legislation preventing a data center in Malaga, Wash., that was built in 2023 from being able to open later this year, presumably due to the clean energy requirements.

One particularly controversial piece — which was not included in the version of the bill that passed the House but is still being discussed — requires data centers to curtail or stop drawing power from the grid in energy emergency situations. Opponents said the rule could disable facilities that support essential operations such as access to electronic medical records or tech to dispatch first responders.

Seeking statewide standards

Proponents of HB 2515 frame the measure as a necessary step to put rules in place for a sector that is rapidly expanding, stoked by the soaring use of artificial intelligence.

“The game is changing on data centers before our very eyes,” Zach Baker, policy director for the nonprofit NW Energy Coalition, told lawmakers. “The common sense guardrails in this bill are needed to protect affordability, grid reliability and the environment.”

Washington is currently home to approximately 126 data centers and related facilities. Microsoft has the most data centers in the state out of any company, while Sabey Data Centers has eight of the facilities, according to the research firm Baxtel.

Rep. Beth Doglio, D-Olympia, lead sponsor of the legislation, earlier this month testified that 16 new data center projects are planned for Walla Walla and an expansion underway in Vantage is tapping new gas-powered energy.

The bill would create a statewide standard for utilities siting new facilities in their communities, she said. “I just hope that we are able to make sure that we do data centers right in this state.”

RELATED:

• Washington state has embraced data centers – but now it’s looking to set terms of engagement
• ‘Meaningless’ theater? As tech giants pledge ratepayer protections in D.C., others question real-world impact
• Microsoft responds to AI data center revolt, vowing to cover full power costs and reject local tax breaks

Did you know that you can host HTML/CSS/JS demos with execution and source code display on GitHub? All you need is a few include commands in a markdown file and your html/css/js files in a folder.

Try it out here: https://codepo8.github.io/code-hosting-demo/example/
See the source here: https://codepo8.github.io/code-hosting-demo/example/index.md

	

		
My Code Demo
	

	
## Try it out

	
{% include_relative demo.html %}





	
## HTML

	
`​``html

{% include_relative demo.html %}

`​``

	
## JavaScript

	
`​``javascript

{% include_relative script.js %}

​`​``

	
## CSS

	
`​``css

{% include_relative styles.css %}

`​``

How to do it

You can start by forking this example repo.

In order to see the demos being rendered, you need to turn on GitHub pages and the build process:

1. Go to the settings of the repository and go to pages in the secondary navigation:

2. Select `Deploy from a branch` under `Build and deployment`, choose the `main` branch and the `root` folder and press save.

This triggers the build of the page.

3. Check the `Actions` tab of the main navigation to see the page being built.

Whilst building this shows a yellow animated dot. When it is done it turns into a green check mark. If there are some issues it will show an error icon and explain what went wrong. Once it is in the green, your changes are live.

4. When the page is done building you can see in the `Pages` section that it has been deployed.

Your page is now available on the web as an HTML/CSS/JS capable environment. For example, this one is at https://codepo8.github.io/code-hosting-demo/.

The structure is `https://{​{user}​}.github.io/{​{repository_name}​}/` and comes from the repository URL at `https://github.com/{​{user}​}/{​{repository_name}​}`.

The next step will be to style the paged differently to what GitHub shows them as. Stay tuned for part 2.

See Builder pattern in action with a complete real-world C# example. Step-by-step implementation of a configuration system demonstrating step-by-step object construction.

Microsoft first began rolling out Copilot connectors to Windows Insiders in October 2025, positioning them as a way to let the AI assistant search across personal services like OneDrive, Outlook, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts using natural language.

These connectors are meant to give more contextual information to Copilot through various services, even third-party ones. Once enabled, Copilot can pull context from linked accounts to answer questions, locate files, find emails, or reference calendar items without you manually switching apps.

The Google Contacts connector, specifically, allows Copilot to retrieve saved contact details like phone numbers and email addresses directly from your Google account.

However, Google Contacts took its sweet time to be generally available to the public, but has now rolled out to everyone using Copilot web and the Copilot Android app. Some users have also received it in the standalone Copilot Windows app, but unfortunately, it’s not available in mine.

But I did get the connector for Google Contacts in both my Copilot Android app and web version, and curiosity got the best of me. I decided to enable it and see how well it actually works. To make things interesting, I also compared it with Google’s Gemini.

How to link Google Contacts to Microsoft Copilot

There are three ways to enable the Google Contacts connector in Copilot. I’ll tell the fancy one first:

Open a chat in Copilot web and literally ask it to check Google Contacts and tell the phone number of someone from your Google contact list.

Copilot will then tell you that it needs your consent to access Google Contacts. You can click the “Connect” button here, and Copilot will prompt you again, with the benefits and reassurances. Interestingly, Copilot allows you to connect to any Google account that you have, and it doesn’t have to be the one you’ve signed in with. Click the “Continue to Google Contacts” button to proceed.

You’ll then see the familiar “Sign in with Google” page. Since I have already enabled other Google connectors like Drive, Gmail, and Calendar, it shows Copilot needs “additional access” to my Google account.

This window also shows what permissions we have to give to Copilot, and unsurprisingly, giving access to Google Contacts will give Copilot the permission to not just see, but also download our contacts, which means that it would be up in Microsoft’s Cloud.

Click “Continue” and you’ll be back in the Copilot chat interface.

The second method is to enable the Google Contacts connector near the text field in Copilot. Click the connector icon and enable Google Contacts. You’ll get the same options to sign in with Google and give permissions to Copilot.

You can also enable Google Contacts connector from Copilot settings. Click your profile, select Settings, choose Connectors and then enable the toggle for Google Contacts.

For each connector from Google, you’ll have to sign in separately with Google. As of writing, only the Copilot web has got access to Google Contacts. The standalone Copilot app will gradually get it, though.

Testing Google Contacts connector in Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft’s official support document notes that you can only retrieve contact information using connectors, such as “What is John’s email address?”

That’s it. You cannot create new contacts or edit existing contacts. You can’t even ask Copilot to send a text message to a particular Google Contact.

About a year ago, the Copilot app got Phone Connection, with which you could set alarms and timers, and view and send text messages. That is a completely different feature that connects Copilot with Phone Link, but in our testing during that time, it was a bit finicky and not everything worked as expected.

However, Copilot was able to fetch the phone number correctly using Phone Connection.

This was before connectors. Doing the same now would show the contact info of the person from Outlook, since I have already synced my contacts to Outlook/OneDrive, and the Connection too is enabled.

Now let’s see if the connectors for Google Contacts work as expected, because not all people enabled Phone Connection, and not everyone syncs their contacts with OneDrive. People with Android smartphones already have their contacts synced with Google.

Earlier, I asked Copilot to fetch me Mayank’s phone number from Google Contacts, which was when it asked me to give permission. After enabling all permissions, I tried again, but Copilot was unable to fetch the number, saying that there was no entry under the same name.

Then I tried another contact, and Copilot gave me the right response, which prompted me to prompt (pun intended) to fetch another contact’s number, and Copilot worked here as well. It even got the pronouns right, which I have no idea how it did.

I again asked Copilot to fetch a fourth contact and a fifth contact. One worked while the other didn’t.

But this time, I understood why Copilot was unable to show the phone numbers of some contacts. For some reason, Copilot can show a contact’s phone number only if that person’s email ID is added in the contact info. The first contact’s phone number I asked for was Mayank, and his email ID wasn’t added to the contact info that I saved in Google Contacts. I tried the prompt again after adding his email ID and guess what…

After adding his email ID, Copilot shows phone number and email ID, with a Google logo, confirming that the info was indeed taken from Google Contacts.

I confirmed it with a few other contacts as well. Copilot shows the phone number only if they have email IDs stored in the contact details. Although I couldn’t find an official explanation for this odd behaviour, my theory is that Microsoft did this for privacy reasons (remember this, as it would come in handy in just a few moments).

Comparing Copilot Connectors with Google Gemini

While Microsoft’s Copilot has its connectors, Google’s Gemini has Connected Apps, and if social media is proof of anything, it’s that Copilot is far behind when compared with Gemini. However, it was Microsoft that started early in the AI race to make an “Agentic OS” and this head start has definitely got some upsides to it, despite the general public despising the company’s AI efforts.

Gemini is truly a more advanced AI model when compared, and there is no doubt about it, but it isn’t as good as Copilot when it comes to a simple task of fetching a contact’s phone number or even sending them an email.

For context, I have a Gemini PRO subscription, and its Connected Apps toggle is already turned on for Google Workspace, which includes Gmail, Google Drive, and the lot.

As for Copilot, I am not a paid subscriber, for obvious reasons, and it’s on the free tier.

I asked the same prompt I gave to Copilot, hoping that Gemini would easily fetch Mayank’s phone number, considering that Google Contacts belongs to Google, and that I also added Mayank’s email ID to Google Contacts.

However, I was surprised to see that Gemini was unable to retrieve his phone number. To be fair to Google, their Workspace doesn’t explicitly say anything about including “Google Contacts”. But I digress, as both of these are Google products, and I was half expecting Gemini to say something like “this is Mayank’s phone number, do you want me to send a text message?”

Of course, Copilot can’t send a text directly, and it can only retrieve phone numbers and email IDs. However, it does have the ability to draft an email and, with one click, open Outlook to send an email.

Naturally, one would expect Gemini to do even better, considering it already connects to Gmail and that it is a PRO subscription. Also, note that I have already sent an email to Mayank from Gmail, so retrieving it could be a piece of cake for Gemini, but I was wrong.

Gemini, despite having direct access to the Gmail workspace, was unable to give me a link that would automatically add the subject and body. In fact, it didn’t give any link at all. And I can’t be fair with Google here, because at first it wasn’t even capable of finding Mayank’s email ID.

It was only after I sent an email to Mayank in Gmail that Gemini was able to fetch his email. Still, it was unable to find the phone number or give me an easy link to send him an email.

Copilot, despite being in the free tier, was able to use its connectors to find phone numbers and email addresses and also craft an email with a link that directly opened Outlook with the subject and body already intact. Isn’t this what AI is supposed to do?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not praising Microsoft for all the AI that they have poured over in Windows 11, but credit where it’s due, the company’s head start in AI and aggressive push towards an Agentic OS did bring about a system that behaves more like an agentic AI and not a mere large language model.

That being said, I’m also aware of the agentic features coming to Android soon, but Copilot isn’t far either, as Microsoft announced Copilot Tasks, which is a proper agentic mode that interprets your prompts and makes them into step-by-step tasks and executes them in the background.

Sure, the hate around Copilot is understandable considering how aggressive Microsoft was with the branding, and throwing away every bit of logic to slap the Copilot name and logo throughout Windows. But in the end, an AI assistant is only as useful as the amount of data about us that it has. In that case, Copilot comes on top, even above Gemini.

The privacy-conscious people wouldn’t go anywhere near Copilot, but what they fail to realise is that Agentic features, even the ones coming to Android, iOS, and macOS, all require explicit access to your data.

Nevertheless, if you do not want multi-trillion-dollar companies to tell your contact information, you can always turn it off. And Copilot connectors, too, are just a toggle away.

The post Tested: Microsoft Copilot can now access your Google Contacts, and it’s better than Gemini integration appeared first on Windows Latest