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Google says it has successfully used beams of light in the air to carry an Internet signal. It says the technology won't work everywhere but could be a useful solution in specific places. Project Taara works on a broadly similar principle to fiber ... optic cables, with pulses of light carrying a signal that translates into the 0s and 1s of computer code. The "Free Speech Optical Communications" system uses a narrow beam of light invisible to the human. It's a similar technology to that which Google used in a previous project to connect balloons in the sky. The new system instead connects ... (view more)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has voted unanimously to enforce "right to repair" laws. The rules should make it harder for manufacturers to maintain monopolies over fixing gadgets such as phones. The FTC follows an executive order from the ... President that covered economic competition issues in general but included a specific reference to smartphones. (Source: theverge.com ) The moves aim to tackle companies such as phone makers which either block or restrict third-party companies or device buyers from carrying out repairs. This involves a range of tactics such as refusing to supply ... (view more)

Google is to warn users when results for a search might not provide reliable information. It's designed mainly for breaking news stories. The warning will be an update feature for the existing "About this result" tool that Google has been testing ... publicly since February. The tool means results on mobile devices now have a menu option that brings up a pop-window that describes the source, with the description taken from Wikipedia. The idea is to give users a quick insight into sources they don't recognize and help them decide how authoritative or otherwise they may be. Warning Message Issued ... (view more)

The House of Representatives will examine five different proposals for curbing the power of big tech companies. The bills take very different approaches to the task, though it's unclear if any but the least dramatic has a shot at becoming law. There ... could be a couple of reasons why lawmakers have thrown out so many ideas. One is simply a numbers game with the hope that more attempts means more chance of something becoming law. Another is to present some more drastic measures that get rejected in the hope that the "weaker" bills then look more reasonable and balanced. The five bills, as ... (view more)

Internal Google documents suggest the company intentionally made it harder for users to stop it accessing their location data. The documents have become public through a lawsuit that claims Google broke data consent rules. The state of Arizona is ... suing over the way Google handles location tracking. Officials say that even when users switched off location tracking for specific apps, Google continued tracking in the background. It only stopped when users switched off a tracking setting for the entire Android system. That's led to the lawsuit, based on the logic that Google made profits from ... (view more)

Google has been accused of failing to do enough to tackle rip-off ads. The issue involves advertisers who mislead customers into paying for government services that should be free of charge. The accusation comes from the BBC News site and involves a ... series of services such as applying for driving or travel permits. While the official costs vary from country to country, such services often have little or no cost from a government agency. Third party sellers run websites that are vague about their status and then charge users inflated fees to apply on their behalf. Such sites are often legal as ... (view more)

Android phones could soon warn users to stop using their device when walking. The feature will be "entirely optional." The warnings will come in Google's Digital Wellbeing app. Google's rules say all devices running Android 9 ("Pie") or later must ... have some form of Digital Wellbeing app, with many manufacturers choosing to simply install Google's version rather than create their own. The apps, which are optional to use, have so far concentrated on factors such as monitoring screen time and alerting users how long they have spent using their device in different ... (view more)

Google will have to go to court to answer claims it misled users by tracking their online activity in a supposed private browsing mode. A judge agreed a lawsuit seeking $5 billion can go ahead with class action status. That status doesn't change ... Google's chances of winning or losing, but could mean much bigger consequences if it does lose. It means anyone meeting set criteria could effectively be treated as a plaintiff, eligible for any financial awards, without having to launch their own case. The case appears largely to come down to whether Google's wording is clear enough, rather than it ... (view more)

If you use Chrome, you need to make sure it's up to date. The browser has been hit by a dreaded zero-day flaw . In this case, hackers are aware of the bug and are actively exploiting it before Google has a chance to issue a security patch. The name ... comes from the fact that Google has "zero days" head start in getting the patches out. Google confirmed that it "is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2021-21166 [the bug in question] exists in the wild." (Source: googleblog.com ) High Severity Flaw The security flaw is rated as "high severity" on Google's rankings of how much ... (view more)

Long-time Hotmail and Outlook users may face a choice between seeing old messages deleted or paying $70 a year. Microsoft is legitimately enforcing storage limits but critics say it didn't do enough to remind users they were approaching those ... limits. The policy affects users of Outlook.com, with those most likely to be affected being Hotmail users that migrated over back in 2013 when Hotmail closed. As part of the move, users could keep their old Hotmail address, but were subject to a 15GB storage limit as with all other Outlook users. That includes both sent and received messages and file ... (view more)