Google: They Power Your Website Search Engine Optimisation and Will Soon Be Driving Your Car!

You trust Google to power your search engine results and respond to your website search engine optimisation, but do you trust them to automatically drive your car? What? Yes, that’s right, you heard it here first, Google is experimenting with technology that enables cars to drive themselves.

Google are on a mission – although I hardly think it is as ethically driven as they claim – to reduce accidents and increase global car safety by programming cars to drive using video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to see other traffic. Detailed maps will provide direction, and I am assuming that’s where Google Maps comes into the equation. So what does this mean for search? Not much that I can think of right now, but in terms of privacy it could be a legal nightmare. Google will end up having data on every car owner as well as knowing what sites they surf before bedtime.

Google have already driven over 140,000 miles on auto with trained test drivers, but don’t expect this technology to be available anytime soon. Any speculation on how this would all fit into the world of search or Google’s empire would be somewhat premature, but nevertheless it is compelling to think what the future might bring, Google explained, “While this project is very much in the experimental stage, it provides a glimpse of what transportation might look like in the future thanks to advanced computer science. And that future is very exciting.”

The New York Times has a broader feature you can check out here demonstrating a robot car in action. http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/10/09/science/1248069147736/look-ma-no-hands.html