California green lights driverless cars, Apple is making not-so-subtle strides into healthcare, and Google Shopping bans everything with the word gun in it.
For the first time, California will allow fully autonomous cars, without safety drivers, to test on public roads. The announcement came from the state’s department of motor vehicles, and people on LinkedIn quickly came together to discuss it. DMV director Jean Shiomoto says safety is the organization’s top priority moving forward. Companies will be able to apply for three different permit types; testing with a safety driver, driverless testing and deployment. Shiomoto says the DMV is ready to work with manufacturers that are prepared to test fully driverless vehicles in the state.
Also on LinkedIn, people are talking about Apple’s plans to open health clinics for employees and their families. Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook, has previously expressed interest about the healthcare industry, but the recent discovery of a website for an organization called AC Wellness Network has made it clear that those ambitions are true. The website, acwellness.com, says it will deliver compassionate, effective healthcare to the Apple employee population and is launching Spring 2018. This comes on the heels of Amazon’s planned partnership with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, which Amazon says will create a new non profit healthcare company for its employees.
And finally, a lot of chatter around Google’s decision to ban everything gun-related from Google Shopping. The company is trying to crack down on people shopping for firearms on its website, and has prevented customers from searching for anything that has the word “gun” in it. As of this recording, the term water-gun resulted in a notification that said “did not match any shopping results.”