Ron Amadeo

Google will no longer be keeping a backup of the entire Internet. Google Search's "cached" links have long been an alternative way to load a website that was down or had changed, but now the company is killing them off. Google "Search Liaison" Danny Sullivan confirmed the feature removal in an X post, saying the feature "was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn't depend on a page loading. These days, things have greatly improved.

Google's radar-based gesture control system for mobile devices, Project Soli, isn't dead yet. The project, which was announced all the way back in 2015, has popped up at the Federal Communications Commission, where it has been approved for use in the 57- to 64-GHz frequency band. Project Soli's goal is to build a tiny radar system on a chip that can be used to detect hand gestures made above a device. Soli is only at the experimental stage right now, but Google usually pitches Soli as a concept control scheme for smartwatches, speakers, media players, and smartphones.

A month ago, Google started warning developers about a coming crackdown on apps that use the Android accessibility APIs for things other than accessibility. For years, the accessibility APIs have been a way for power-user apps to hook into the operating system, but Google apparently had a change of heart last month, telling developers they had 30 days to explain how an app using the Accessibility APIs was helping a user with disabilities or face removal from the Play Store.

Here's a fun new trick that Google just patched into Google Now, the company's card-based personal assistant: it can now keep track of where you parked.

While there are plenty of apps out there that can help you remember your parking space, they all require you to open them and save your spot manually. In contrast, Google's parking tracker will save your parking location automatically.

First noticed by Android Police, the new feature is part of Google Search 3.4, which is rolling out to Android devices running 4.1 and above right now. Google Now automatically detects your parking spot through Android's Activity Recognition system.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft and Google are both out to stifle any device that doesn't have a firm allegiance to either Android or Windows.

The report says that both companies have told Asus to end its dual-OS product lines and that Asus is complying. The WSJ says Asus' newest dual-boot product, the Transformer Book Duet TD300, which we wrote about during CES 2014, will never see the light of day. Asus' all-in-one PCs, the Transformer AiO P1801 and P1802, will be pulled from the market.

The report seems to indicate that Microsoft is unhappy that Android would be packaged with both Windows 8 and Windows Phone, which is interesting given that Microsoft has an upcoming Windows Phone update that supports on-screen buttons, which would mean Android hardware could be reused for Windows Phone. Apparently switching operating systems in the factory is OK, but allowing consumers to do so at will is a step too far.