Eight US technology firms in the US wrote an open letter to President Barack Obama, calling on government to impose stricter controls on online surveillance.

Former Square Wallet technical lead David Byttow and former Google product manager Chrys Bader-Wechseler are raising USD1.2 million in seed funding for their new startup called Secret.

Google Inc has quietly acquired more than a half-dozen companies for a new robotics groups led by Andy Rubin, formerly in charge of Google's popular mobile software, according to a report in the New York Times on Wednesday.

Google acquired seven robotics firms in the past six months to create manufacturing and logistics robots for a project under Android founder Andy Rubin to compete with Amazon's flying delivery drones.

Jacob Cook's private cloud project ArkOS has beaten its funding goal of USD45,000 with a total pledge of USD45,189 from 859 backers with less than a week remaining in a self-hosted crowdfunding campaign.

Online shopping website Amazon is set to dominate this holiday season, rising above other ecommerce rivals and traditional retailers and hitting a 54% increase in its stock this year.

In its APK Teardown of the Android YouTube app, the website Android Police found "Music Pass" that hints of a possible launch of a YouTube music subscription service.

A report from Synergy Research Group said Amazon has trumped other cloud players like Microsoft, IBM and Google when it comes to generating money from cloud computing.

The New York Times cited reports that have suggested that Level 3 Communications, which controls most of the fiber optic cables that connect everyone to the Internet, may have greenlighted the NSA to tap data from Yahoo and Google. Both companies have announced that they will now start encrypting their data.

California-based private messaging app Wickr had redesigned and is in the middle of a USD7.4 million fundraising, according to a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today.