Have you ever driven across the country? It's an adventure everyone should experience, going from the big city of New York to the majesty of Yosemite and even taking an opportunity to follow the path of Jack Kerouac. You obviously can't see everything so you need to plan the journey wisely.

If you miss things along the way then Google may be able to help. The company is boasting its Street View images that take you from the East to West coast and show you what is in between.

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German tabloid Bild has made a bold move with its website -- blocking anyone using an adblocker from accessing content. Visitors to the site who want to use a tool such as Adblock Plus are now faced with a stark choice: add Bild.de to a whitelist so ads are displayed, or cough up for a €2.99 monthly fee to remove ads.

This is not a move that -- at the moment at least -- every website could get away with. Bild finds itself in the unique position of being the top-selling tabloid newspaper in Europe; it can afford to lose a few visitors with this experiment. With adblocking back in the limelight at the moment, it's time to ask the question: would you rather disable your adblocker or pay to access content?

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Google is so ubiquitous that it has become much more than just a company. It is a verb, an ecosystem, a way of life. But just as with anything that you experience every day, it's easy to take it for granted or overlook what's under your nose.

With your Android smartphone in your hand (or an iPhone for that matter), the Google app is a portal to a wealth of information; all you need to do is speak to your phone. It's easy to forget just how helpful the app is -- but Google is here to remind you that it is more than capable of taking on Siri and Cortana. The company has released a trio of videos highlighting what the app can do for you. And you know what? They're actually pretty decent.

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One of Google's slightly more unusual hardware releases is the OnHub wireless router. At $200, it's a network device that some might consider expensive, but at the same time its performance has impressed. A router is a router is a router, you might say, but Google's OnHub is somewhat different to the majority.

A teardown by iFixIt revealed the guts of the router, showing that it's a TP-Link device (confirming what Google had already said) with a somewhat unusual antenna design. It's an intriguing piece of hardware that Exploitee.rs has referred to as being "at heart a Chromebook without a screen modified as a router". The good news for anyone who likes to get their hands dirty with some hardware hacking? It is rootable and Exploitee.rs reveals all.

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Mozilla will kill "most" NPAPI plugins in Firefox almost two years after Google took the same action with Chrome. Back in September 2014, Google announced that NPAPI support would be removed starting in January 2015. Mozilla is now playing catch-up, and plans to end NPAPI support by the end of 2016.

When Google announced its decision, speed, stability, and security were cited as reasons for ditching plugins, and Mozilla is taking much the same line. The company also points out that many features and functions that only used to be possible through the use of NPAPI plugins can now be achieved through native web APIs. But what is this going to mean for users?

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With Apple embracing ad blocking and the likes of AdBlock Plus proving more popular than ever, content blocking is making the headlines at the moment. There are many sides to the debate about blocking ads -- revenue for sites, privacy concerns for visitors, speeding up page loads times (Google even allows for the display of ads with its AMP Project), and so on -- but there are no signs that it is going to go away.

Getting in on the action, Mozilla has set out what it believes are some reasonable principles for content blocking that will benefit everyone involved. Three cornerstones have been devised with a view to ensuring that content providers and content consumers get a fair deal, and you can help to shape how they develop.

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A recently released report by advocacy group Citizens for Tax Justice has revealed the staggering amount of money being held in offshore accounts by US technology firms.

Offshore Shell Games 2015 discloses that almost 72 percent of businesses listed on the Fortune 500 operated tax haven subsidiaries as of the end of last year.

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We've already seen that conventional cars can be vulnerable to attacks by hackers. But it seems that self-driving vehicles may be equally vulnerable.

It's possible to trick a self-driving Google car into stopping or taking evasive action using around $60 worth of hardware according to a leading security researcher.

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With the release of Marshmallow (Android 6.0) the usual question rears its head. It's the eternal question that Android users ask themselves every time Google releases a new version of its mobile operating system: will my phone get the upgrade? If you have a Nexus device, you are probably in luck -- unless it's really old, of course -- but what about everyone else?

Unlike Apple's iPhone, which has a very long support lifecycle when it comes to iOS upgrades, Android is famous for its fragmentation. Marshmallow may have been released, but it's down to individual handset manufacturers and carriers to push out the updates. So... is your handset in line for the upgrade? Here's what we know so far.

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Google today announced a project which has the aim of speeding up the web for mobile users -- Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP. While there are clearly benefits for users in speeding up the web, Google is pushing the benefits that advertisers could reap: if a page takes too long to load, visitors may give up and not see any ads at all.

The AMP project is an open source initiative that gives publishers the ability to optimize their site code for mobiles so it will "load instantly everywhere". The aim is to be as platform independent as possible, allowing for optimize-once workflow. The result of a collaboration between Google, Twitter, WordPress, LinkedIn and others, a new open framework called AMP HTML has been put together from existing web technologies.

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After three weeks of discussion over the punishment for Google, Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service has ordered the company to unbundle applications on Android.

The complaint, originally filed by Yandex, asked for a change to Google’s pre-installation of apps. Instead of Google deciding what apps should and shouldn’t be on a mobile, the manufacturer will be able to pick and choose from a variety of services.

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After upgrading to Android 6.0 Marshmallow on your Nexus device you have likely noticed that there is still no way to change how the battery information is displayed in the status bar or choose which Quick Settings toggles are shown in the notifications panel. Google continues to be quite limiting in this regard, which is a bit puzzling considering others like Samsung allow this kind of customization. (After all, who wouldn't like to see a battery percentage instead of a bar that is hard to interpret?)

Fortunately, both of those things can be easily customized without relying on third-party apps or rooting. All you need to do is enable System UI Tuner, a control panel that is included, but hidden by default, in the latest version of Android. Here is how you can do that.

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Chatter on Twitter suggests that Google will be present at Microsoft's grand "Windows 10 Devices" event tomorrow, and it would announce Android apps support for Windows 10 Mobile devices. Bolstering the theory is the two company's seemingly improving relationship, the biggest testament of which was up on display when the two recently agreed to drop 20 patent lawsuits they had filed against each other. If it indeed true, what does it mean for Microsoft's mobile operating system? Revival.

It's no secret that Android and iOS are the two dominant mobile operating systems out there -- whether you like it or not. Windows Phone has been playing catch up ever since its inception -- quite literally as Microsoft was late to arrive in the mobile operating system party. Perhaps it didn't get the memo. This race left the company's mobile operating system non-beneficial for mobile developers to make apps for it. And how can you blame them? Windows Phone had less than 5 percent of market share. So a majority of these developers never made apps for Windows Phone.

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Google has released Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the latest iteration of its mobile operating system. The update will be rolled out over the air for a number of handsets starting from Nexus 6, Nexus 5, Nexus 7 (2013), and Nexus 9, but you can speed up the process by using the factory images.

As you might be familiar, factory images need to be installed on your device manually. In case you don't remember the procedure, here's how you can get the latest flavor of Android on your device.

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The widespread Stagefright vulnerability has lead Google and Samsung to announce plans for monthly Android updates, which would minimize the time it usually takes to fix security bugs in their distributions. LG has quickly followed suit with a similar pledge of its own, but, when asked if it will do the same, HTC has basically said "no".

HTC is among the few Android vendors that deliver major software updates in a timely fashion, so this comes as a bit of a surprise. HTC America president Jason Mackenzie says that such a commitment is "not realistic", pointing at carrier approvals as the main reason why it is extremely difficult to guarantee a monthly release schedule.

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