Information is Wealth.

Volvo said Monday it will sell tens of thousands of vehicles to Uber Technologies Inc. starting as early as 2019 that will serve as the ride-hailing company's self-driving taxi fleet. The so-called base vehicles will be developed off of  car  architecture currently used on Volvo's 90 series cars and the XC60 midsize SUV. Volvo said in a statement that its engineers have worked closely with Uber to develop the technology on another SUV currently on the market. The autonomous vehicle fleet will number 24,000 vehicles, according to the Wall Street Journal. It's unclear when the vehicles would be put on the road. Financial terms were not disclosed. Jeff Miller, head of auto alliances at San Francisco-based Uber, said in a statement that the agreement puts the company on a "path towards mass produced self-driving vehicles at scale." The Swedish carmaker, acquired by Chinese automaker Geely Holding in 2012, said it also plans to use the base vehicle in the developme...

Google has confirmed it can track the location of Android users via the addresses of local mobile phone masts, even when location services were turned off and the sim cards removed to protect privacy. Revealed by a report by Quartz, Google’s Android system, which handles messaging services to ensure delivery of push notifications, began requesting the unique addresses of mobile phone masts (called Cell ID) at the beginning of 2017. The information was captured by the phone and routinely sent to Google by any modern Android device, even when location services were turned off and the sim card was removed. As a result Google could in theory track the location of the Android device and therefore the user, despite a reasonable expectation of privacy. A Google spokesperson said: “In January of this year, we began looking into using Cell ID codes as an additional signal to further improve the speed and performance of message delivery. “However, we never incorporated Cell ...

Almost  three years ago to the day , Mozilla switched a decade-long search strategy that placed Google as Firefox's global default search provider and began carving up territories. It signed a deal for Yahoo to be the default for US Firefox users and left Google as the default for the rest of the world, except Russian and China. Now, Mozilla has given Yahoo the shove and reinstated Google as the default for users in the US. The change in the default US search provider came as Mozilla launched Firefox Quantum, version 57, a faster and lighter browser thanks to a major  overhaul of the rendering engine , new multi-core support, and more efficient handling of tabs. Mozilla, a non-profit corporation, historically has earned most of its revenue from search. As CNET  reported at the time  Mozilla switched to Yahoo in the US, its 2012 revenues were $311m. Newer regional search deals with Google, Baidu, Yahoo, and Yandex helped bump Mozilla  revenues to $421m by 2015...

Google for the first time has uncovered evidence that Russian operatives exploited the company’s platforms in an attempt to interfere in the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the company's investigation. The Silicon Valley giant has found that tens of thousands of dollars were spent on ads by Russian agents who aimed to spread disinformation across Google’s many products, which include YouTube, as well as advertising associated with Google search, Gmail, and the company’s DoubleClick ad network, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters that have not been made public. Google runs the world’s largest online advertising business, and YouTube is the world’s largest online video site. The discovery by Google is also significant because the ads do not appear to be from the same Kremlin-affiliated troll farm that bought ads on Facebook -- a sign that the...

Earlier this year, a small Vancouver software firm called Equustek earned an extraordinary legal win against Google. The Supreme Court of Canada  ordered the search giant  to de-index all pages from a former Equustek distributor—not just in Canada, but worldwide. Google's response to that was to  file a lawsuit in US federal court  asking a judge to rule that the Canadian order is unenforceable in its home country. Google called the Canadian order "repugnant" to the First Amendment, and it pointed out that the Canadian plaintiffs "never established any violation of their rights under US law."  It looks like Google is going to win that case, but not as a result of any high-minded legal arguments. Its opponent simply failed to show up. In a  motion (PDF)  filed Tuesday, Google said that Equustek CEO Robert Angus faxed Google's lawyers a letter "stating that Defendants would not be defending this action." Equustek hasn't hired a US lawyer or sh...

Most everyone has heard of KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Why is simple web design so popular? In most cases, it quickly draws attention to a website’s most valuable content, improving the user experience and delivering a return on your investment in the short attention span you have. The concept is rooted in minimalism, with origins in the arts from the 1950’s. In web design, it gained popularity in the early 2000’s, with the core philosophy of reducing complexity and confusion ( Nielsen Norman Group ). Most of you may remember how cluttered some of those early websites in the 90s and early 2000s were. Today, minimalist web design is much more than displaying a certain percentage of blank space on a web page. Let’ dig into some examples. Image Source:  Themeforest Diux – Portfolio Theme The Why of Simple Web Design In the  UX Industry Reports  from UserTesting.com, it’s reported that year over year, companies are allocating a higher volume of resources to User Ex...

Nokia-HMD Global Android phone launch in India may happen on June 13 🏿Alexa Can Now Help You Set Reminders 🏿Amazon is offering a rare discount on Google Wifi, Google’s mesh wireless system 🏿Google, the world’s biggest online advertising company, will start blocking online ads next year 🏿Snapchat firm launches camera glasses in Europe Facebook ‘to launch new teen messaging app that can be monitored by parents’