GOOGLE engineers have developed and tested technology that allows cars to drive themselves, a posting on the company’s official blog revealed.

The automated cars use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to “see” other traffic, as well as detailed maps to navigate the road ahead, software engineer Sebastian Thrun said.

So far, he said, the self-driving cars have logged over 140,000 miles (225,000 km) around California. “We think this is a first in robotics research,” the engineer added.

For safety reasons, Thrun said, the cars are never unmanned. They have a trained driver behind the wheel who can always take over while a trained software operator in the passenger seat monitors the software.

The project was still “very much in the experimental stage,” he added.

Government will send notices to Google and Skype asking them to set up servers in the country and give access to its internet data, a top interior ministry official has said.

Concerned about militants using BlackBerry or Internet to plan attacks, India is pushing the smartphone maker Research in Motion, Google and Skype to open up its data for government monitoring.

India’s BlackBerry users heaved a sigh of relief late Monday after the government gave the smartphone’s Canadian manufacturer a two-month window to provide a permanent solution to avert a ban on its messaging services.

India is also targeting “virtual private networks”, which give employees secure access to their company networks when they are working out of the office.

The maker of the BlackBerry, Canada’s Research in Motion (RIM), has proposed setting up a server in India through which BlackBerry messages can be routed, giving security forces access, the home ministry said in a statement.

RIM’s proposals for “lawful access” to its messages would be “operationalised immediately” and their feasibility assessed, the ministry said.

A RIM official said the company had not compromised its public commitment to make no special deals with governments. Analysts note other security-conscious nations such as China and Russia appear to be satisfied that their intelligence agencies have sufficient access to BlackBerry communications although the arrangements between RIM and these countries are not known.

BlackBerry has also been facing a threatened October 11 ban by the United Arab Emirates and has been negotiating with Saudi Arabia on security issues.

For the Indian government, a ban on BlackBerry services, used widely by India’s elite, could have caused serious communication problems with the Commonwealth Games due to take place in New Delhi in just over a month.

Apple Inc and Nokia, RIM’s two biggest smartphone rivals, may have the most to gain if India blocks BlackBerry services. Nokia said on Monday it will host an email server in India from Nov. 5.

The migration of Yahoo’s web and mobile search functions to Microsoft’s Bing search engine has been completed. The step has been taken under a plan as both the giants hope that their combined market power can overshadow Google market. They also believe that the coming together of both the tech companies may provide a more significant threat to the dominance of Google.

The two technology giants Yahoo and Microsoft capture around 28 per cent share in the US search market. And the Google has approximately 66 per cent share.

The integration took more than a year to take place after Yahoo and Microsoft announced their 10-year search deal under which Microsoft will power Yahoo’s search site, while Yahoo manages sales for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

“This is a great milestone for Bing and Yahoo and our customers, and we are happy to report the transition has gone smoothly and we feel great about the progress our search alliance has been making over the summer,” wrote Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft’s online services division, in a blog post.

Yahoo hopes the deal to save it the high cost of developing its own cutting edge search capability, while combining the two companies’ customers is expected to entice advertisers to pay more for paid search ads.