Alphabet's delivery drone subsidiary, Wing, will begin its first European trial programme in Finland next spring, starting in Helsinki (TechCrunch). A new page invites Finnish residents to enter their post code and the kind of thing they'd like to have delivered by drone, from breakfast to emergency nappies and car ice scrapers.
Epic Games – the developer of Fortnite and the Unreal Engine underlying many of today's most popular 3D games – has announced that it's to launch its own digital storefront, in direct competition to industry leader Valve's Steam platform (Rock Paper Shotgun). Speaking to Gamesindustry.biz, Epic boss Tim Sweeney confirmed that the store will take only a 12 per cent revenue share, support DRM-free releases and will initially launch on Windows and macOS, with Android to follow.
Qualcomm has announced its next-generation Snapdragon 855 processor, a 64-bit ARM-compatible system-on-chip package with heavily-promoted hardware support for on-device neural networks, augmented and virtual reality and 5G mobile broadband (The Register). It's to appear in phones in 2018, but reports from Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit – intended to include a 'real-world' 5G demonstration – was marred by poor connection speeds and limited access to hardware.
Tech giants are no longer among the top ten places to work in the UK, according to new data from employer-ratings site Glassdoor (WIRED). Google, which topped the rankings last year, is only 13th on the new list, while Apple has slid from ninth to 43rd, and Facebook has dropped out of the top 50 entirely.
A Windows Central report says that Microsoft is developing a new web browser, based on Google's open source Chromium rendering engine, rather than its own EdgeHTML (Ars Technica). This would mean than its Edge browser – which performs solidly but has rather basic features and extensions – could be retired in favour of a Chrome-like default browser for Windows.