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Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday acknowledged the importance of making its search engine the default in keeping users loyal -- a key point in a once-in-a generation US antitrust fight focused on billions of dollars Google paid to be the default on laptops and smartphones. Google, which started paying for default status on devices in 2005, monitored for compliance. At one point, the company expressed concern to Apple that its Safari browser would send particular queries, especially lucrative ones, to companies like Amazon.com. "We were obviously doing the deal for default placement," said Pichai. Under cross-examination, Pichai said of Google's tens of billions in annual payments for default status: "We definitely see value." The US government brought the case over whether Google acted illegally to maintain its dominance of online search and parts of search advertising. If the government wins, the company may be forced to scrap some...

NASA recently delivered $10 million in funding to Ad Astra Rocket Company of Texas for further development of its Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR), an electromagnetic thruster proficient of propelling a spaceship to Mars in just 39 days. NASA’s funding was part of the “12 Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnership.” Ad Astra’s rocket will Travel ten times quicker than today’s chemical rockets while using one-tenth the amount of fuel. The VASIMR system would cut the trip to Mars by months according to Franklin Chang Diaz, a former MIT student, NASA astronaut, and now CEO of Ad Astra. According to Diaz, “this is like no other rocket that you may have seen in the past. It is a plasma rocket. The VASIMR Rocket is not used for launching things; it is used for things already in orbit. This is called “in-space propulsion.” VASIMR heats plasma , an electrically charged gas, to exceptionally high temperatures using radio waves. The system then offers ...