Google Inc on Thursday confirmed that an executive behind leading mobile device software Android is leaving the company to create an incubator for hardware startups.
Andy Rubin became a Google executive in 2005 when the Internet titan bought Android Inc, which was then a small startup that Rubin cofounded two years earlier.
Rubin led the Android team at Google until last year, by which time Android was the most widely used smartphone operating system in the world.
Rubin switched to managing the robotics team at Google.
“I want to wish Andy all the best with what’s next,” Google chief executive Larry Page said in an e-mail statement.
“With Android he created something truly remarkable with a billion plus happy users. Thank you,” Page wrote.
SPAIN VS GOOGLE
Separately, Spanish lawmakers annoyed Google on Thursday by passing a law that allows media organizations to charge the Internet giant for the right to reproduce their news content.
The US search engine had threatened to shut down its Google News page in Spain if the measures were passed, but the Spanish parliament approved them in a vote on Thursday.
The government hailed the move, saying the measures, part of a new intellectual property law, “recognize the right of publishing companies and news producers to be paid for the use of their content.”
Google responded in a statement: “We are disappointed with the new law because we think services like Google News help publishers to draw traffic to their websites.”
“We will continue working with Spanish publishers to help them increase their revenues while examining our options under the new regulations,” it said.
The law has been dubbed the “Google tax” in Spain, but it would also apply to other big Web companies with pages that reproduce and link to news content, such as Yahoo.
The government said in its statement on Thursday that social networks such as Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc “are not subject” to the law.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”