Google's week: Bug bounty, Apple iCloud, and robot selling

The search company also found time to update its search algorithm

Google had a busy seven days, having put its robotic firm Boston Dynamics up for sale, updated its search algorithm, and doubling the Chrome hack bounty.

The search company also had its Cloud Platform adopted by Apple and saw its AlphaGo artificial intelligence beat a champion Go board game player.

Google to update search algorithm with renewed focus on mobile design

Google announced it will be pushing out an update to its search algorithm in May that will further take into account the mobile versions of websites to determine their ranking within its search results.

The firm first introduced a major change to its search algorithm last year to focus on mobile sites, in a move that increased pressure on firms yet to optimise their websites for tablets and smartphones.

Alphabet-owned Google puts robot firm Boston Dynamics up for sale

Google parent company Alphabet put its robot-making division Boston Dynamics up for sale due to the company's failure to develop a marketable product.

No companies have shown interest publicly in buying the robot-maker, but it is rumoured that car maker Toyota may be interested in integrating Boston Dynamics into its Research Institute division.

Apple adopts Google Cloud Platform for iCloud services

Google scored a coup over its main rivals in the cloud market after Apple moved its iCloud services onto the Google Cloud Platform.

The move indicates Apple is shifting away from its reliance on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for cloud infrastructure.

Google doubles Chromebook hack bounty to $100,000

Google doubled the bounty for anyone who successfully hacks its Chrome OS to $100,000.

As part of its expanded bug bounty programme, Google has also added a Download Protection Bypass bounty, which means it's offering cash rewards for methods that bypass Chrome's Safe Browsing download protection features. The reward for this is a mere $1,000, though.

Google's AlphaGo AI crushes puny human four games to one

Google's AlphaGo artificial intelligence (AI) beat board game Go champion Lee Sedol four games to one, demonstrating how far AI has advanced.

Despite the victory Facebook, which is also working on its own Go-playing AI, challenged Google to make AlphaGo win purely through reinforcement training rather than by pre-training the AI.