Google is getting dragged into court once again for mining data in emails. On August 12, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued an order denying Google’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by plaintiff Daniel Matera. Matera alleged Google violated federal and state wiretapping laws in its operation of Gmail. In its defense, Google argued scanning emails was a part of its service, an “ordinary course of business” exemption in the Wiretap Act.

Hyundai, lagging behind the competition to develop autonomous vehicles, is seeking a partnership with Google, according to reports. John Krafcik, the former Hyundai U.S. chief who joined Google in 2015 to lead its self-driving car project, could be behind the any collaboration. In the past, Hyundai and affiliate Kia Motors have "shunned joint ventures" to make vehicles.

Accents in voice search and voice activation features could slow adoption, according to some experts. The problem has become so prevalent that some computer scientists have identified something they call a "machine voice," reports The Verge. It is a "standardized way of speaking that individuals with accents adopt in the hope of being understood." The Verge provides details along with insight on a possible fix, which requires companies to collect more data. James Vincent explains.

Google made several announcements Tuesday around its cloud platforms. The company launched general availability of its offerings, from Cloud SQL to Cloud Datastore and Cloud Bigtable. The focus is on improved performance and security. 

Most consumers look for a new car at the end of the year. They either want to save money by buying the outgoing year's models or get a jump on next year's model. In any case, most people use Google search to find a new car, and 69% of people use Google Search to find answers when they need automotive services. Larry Kim digs into WordStream data to find that more than half of consumers searching for car-related queries do so on a mobile phone. Here's why mobile location will become more important. 

Google Ventures head Bill Maris is leaving the venture capital arm. As such, “Maris [is] the third high-ranking executive to depart from the Alphabet units outside of the main Google search business in recent months, as the tech giant continues to stumble through the transition into its new corporate structure,” Recode notes.

Bill Maris, the investor who started Google Ventures, now known as GV, said he is stepping down. David Krane, a managing partner for the venture arm, will take his place as chief. After eight years with the firm, Maris said he believes it's time to step down on a high note and spend more time with his wife and child. When asked about future ventures, he told Re/code to "definitively expect to see something from me. I’m not just going to go on the beach this week."

The next evolution of search is the ability to process, categorize and index sensations gained from images, smells and textures, similar to the way search engines process text-based queries today. The first step on that journey is to teach a machine to see. The variations of objects make it increasingly complicated. A team within Microsoft in Redmond, Washington is attempting to categorize every known object in the world to make visual search possible. Microsoft explains.

Google updated the Google My Business Insights feature, where business owners can view analytics around how people find and interact with their Google local listings. The new features include a breakdown of how many people see a company's listings from Google Search versus Google Maps. It focuses on new insights in Google Search and Maps, and removing Google+ statistics from the dashboard. 

Google announced Monday that it has acquired Orbitera, which offers a cloud marketplace designed for businesses to buy and sell software, and will integrate the company into its cloud services business. More than 60,000 enterprise stacks have been launched on Orbitera, which was founded by Firas Bushnaq, a serial entrepreneur, and Brian Singer, an enterprise software product leader.