Google’s plan to connect Africa with Australia via an undersea fiber optic cable could have significant implications for internet connectivity and economic development in the regions involved. Such a cable could greatly enhance internet speeds, reliability, and capacity for users along the route, fostering greater digital connectivity and enabling various sectors such as education, healthcare, and commerce to flourish.

Expanding internet infrastructure across continents has the potential to reduce the digital divide and empower communities with greater access to information and opportunities. Additionally, it could stimulate economic growth by facilitating international trade and investment, as well as fostering innovation and collaboration across borders.

Investments in undersea fiber optic cables demonstrate the growing recognition of the importance of reliable and high-speed internet connectivity in our increasingly interconnected world.

Part of it has already been laid, but the continents are not yet connected. It will probably be some time before that happens. Google plans to lay the first undersea fiber optic cable connecting Africa and Australia. It is called Umoja, which means “unity” in Swahili. The aim is to better digitally connect both African countries and Australia and thus “accelerate economic growth,” as Google puts it .

The rural section of the cable in Africa has already been laid with the help of Liquid Technologies. Umoja starts in Kenya and runs through Uganda, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe and finally South Africa, where it also runs through the so-called cloud region around Johannesburg. There, companies can use Google’s cloud with particularly low latency. However, the section of the fiber optic cable that connects Africa with Australia has not yet been laid. It is not yet known when exactly Umoja will be completed.

Google Sheets has introduced a new function designed to significantly reduce users’ workload. Although this feature is new to Google’s spreadsheet program, Microsoft’s Excel has been providing this kind of relief to its users for a long time. Anyone who frequently uses Google Sheets will probably  be familiar with the problem: you want to pack unsorted data into a table and sort it clearly using various filters – but this takes some time. Thanks to a new feature that Google has now announced for Sheets , much of this work will be done for you.

In the future, you can simply mark the data and select the Convert to Table option on the Format tab  . Google Sheets will then automatically create a delimited table and adjust the formatting for you. This means you no longer have to change cells manually so that they all look even and the entries are at the same height.

You can adapt the table created in this way to your wishes with just a few clicks. For example, simply click on a column header under which you have written “Priorities” to turn it into a drop-down column. You can now easily select the priorities in each cell using the drop-down menu. If you want to group the data, you can click on the table symbol above the individual columns. Here Google Sheets gives you the choice of which parameters the sorting should take place. If you select which person the task is assigned to, you will get an overview of who still has which tasks ahead of them.

Google has given Chrome another update – for the third time in just a week. Again it’s about a security hole for which an exploit exists. And Chrome isn’t the only browser affected.

Currently, exploits for zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome seem to be increasing. This could allow cybercriminals to exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities in the Google browser . A quick update is therefore absolutely necessary.

Another Chrome update

After Google has already released two updates in the past few days, there is now another update to close security gaps. A total of nine additional vulnerabilities will be closed with the Chrome update.

Chrome update: How to get it started

The Chrome update should start automatically when you open the browser. After restarting, Chrome should be available in the current version. You can check this in the Chrome settings in the “About Google Chrome” section. If necessary, the update can also be initiated manually.

After the successful update you should see the message “Chrome is up to date”. For Windows, Linux and Mac, the current version numbers are 125.0.6422.60 and 125.0.6422.61 respectively. The newly discovered security gaps have already been patched.

Update for Edge users on the go

Users of other browsers, such as Microsoft’s Edge, should also look out for update options. The errors affect the Chromium web browser, on which browsers like Edge are based. Accordingly, they could also be affected by the security gaps and exploits.