With the news that California has become the second state, after Nevada, to permit self-driven cars (also known as ‘self-driving cars’, ‘robotic cars’ or ‘robot cars’), many are waiting in anticipation for other states to follow suit. With Google co-founder Sergey Brin estimating that driverless cars are going to be a reality for the public within five years, many car and tech enthusiasts are eagerly awaiting the day that they can get their hands on one and start driving it, or rather, being driven by it.

On Tuesday California Governor Jerry Brown passed Senate Bill 1298, legalizing robot-controlled cars, or self-driving cars (also known as ‘self-driven cars’, ‘robotic cars’ or ‘robot cars’), with high praise from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who says that driverless cars will be a reality within 5 years.

The Iranian government has blocked Gmail and Google until further notice. In an announcement, that included sending a notice to citizens via text message, government officials stated that the services would be filtered, and indeed it appears that, while Google is accessible, it doesn’t actually work for searching purposes.

Mapplegate is taking over the Internet world. Apple released their iOS 6 two days ago with one change in particular that has people buzzing – their new Maps app. Many are comparing this to Apple’s infamous 2010 “Antennagate,” when Apple released an iPhone with shoddy antennas, prompting a hasty PR cleanup job by then-CEO Steve Jobs.

Google has made every geek heart sing with the unveiling of today’s Google Doodle: an homage to the 46th anniversary of the original Star Trek series. Google has outdone themselves by taking users through a little vignette, quickly re-enacting the well known scene from the “Arena” episode.

We can all probably agree that one of the most frustrating things about belonging to so many social networks is managing all of them. Different passwords, profile pictures, and account and privacy settings can be a lot to keep up with in your regular day. Enter BlissControl.com, the website that now allows you to manage the settings on all of your social media accounts with the click of a button.

Investors are quickly bailing as Groupon experienced a new closing low on Friday, with shares down 5% at $4.75. Their stock-price declined even more last week after their second-quarter results reflected a decline in customer growth and revenue.

Anti-spam service Postini is closing, being shuttered by Google (which acquired Positini in 2007), and Google is transferring all Positini customers to Google Apps. So, what do you, as a Postini customer, have to do about this? According to Google, not much.

If you want insanely cheap flights while still being able to book flights online, you can now get cheap flight deals, and compare flights, through Google flights. And these are not cheapo flights from some sort of questionable airline that you have never heard of, these are discounted flights from well known airlines such as US Airways, United, JetBlue and Delta.

The latest survey from the American Customer Satisfaction Index shows that Facebook is at an all-time low in customer satisfaction, and that Google+ rated higher in customer satisfaction. In fact, Facebook’s rating was so low that it was it was among the five lowest-scoring companies in the entire social media category. And that is out of over 230 companies surveyed.

Yahoo surprised the world by announcing that they have hired Google executive – and Google CEO Larry Page’s ex – Marissa Mayer, making her Yahoo’s 5th CEO in as many years. This move puts Mayer, 37, among the tech business female elite, with the likes of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this move is Mayer’s young age and lack of experience for such a big undertaking.

Next time you use that iPad or iPhone, give a silent thanks to In-Q-Tel (pronounced “in q tel” or “incutel”), the CIA-run venture capital fund that has been integral in many technologies commonly used today, such as the touch screen. In q tel, also responsible for investing in what was the beginnings of the technology that became Google Earth, began in the late 90s and was born out of the CIA’s need to manage their huge mountain of data.

Google has found themselves in hot water over privacy issues yet again. As we previously reported, it was discovered that the Google Street View vehicles were collecting data illegally, while taking street pictures in the US, Australia and Europe. In fact, they were doing it for three years, between 2007 and 2010, by harvesting personal data through open wifi routers as the Street View car drove by. This data included entire emails, site visit history, passwords, and other private information that the average citizen probably does not want floating around.

Google is hard at work on a lot of things, including one of the most important and difficult things of all: improving Internet security. Five years ago, Google introduced Safe Browsing, an effort designed to protect Internet users – people who browse with Chrome, Firefox, or Safari, as well as anyone who searches the Web with Google – from malware and phishing. Through this effort, Google detects, among other things, 9,500 malicious sites every day. Allow us to repeat that: Google detects 9,500 malicious sites every day.

We were really surprised to see that today’s Google doodle did not honor author Ray Bradbury, who passed away this morning. Oh sure, we’re sure that they put a lot of time into the Google doodle that they had lined up for today – the Google Drive-In Theatre Doodle – what with how it included video and all. But still, it’s Ray Bradbury!