Yes, I did check the date. No, it isn’t 1st April.

“Google has a broader mission than people might think,” says Eric Schmidt, the company’s chief executive. A mission that could, perhaps, even extend to cutting the number of deaths on the road? “If we really put our minds to it, I’m pretty sure we can reduce those deaths,” Page says. He touched on the topic of self-driving cars – vehicles embedded with complex navigation technology and spatial sensors that can plot the obstacles (and other traffic) around them. Many car makers are already experimenting with self-driving cars, but Google’s mapping and geo-tagging expertise could provide information that’s crucial to success.

Full story: What is Google’s next move? Daily Telegraph, 21 May 2009.