Warren Buffett discussed making a $3 billion investment into Uber, but talks broke down over deal terms, according to Bloomberg.
Bottom line: Backing Uber would have been surprising given Buffett's known devotion to business moats, but he also has a history of backing big brands in crisis.
New York taxi drivers, emboldened by five suicides in their ranks and desperate financial straits, are pressing for laws to protect them against ride-hailing companies.
Why it matters: Like cabbies around the world, New York drivers have suffered a plunge in income since the rise of Uber — and other ride hailing services — and city leaders say they are considering laws to help them, including a cap on ride-hailing vehicles in the city.
The Code Conference gave Facebook an opportunity to show that it is tackling its many problems head on — but the executives who preceded Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and CTO Mike Schroepfer on stage also had some valuable insights for the embattled tech giant.
Why it matters: A lot of people on and off Capitol Hill still believe that Cambridge Analytica-style data hijacking is exactly what Facebook is optimized for. Facebook has learned how to take an effectively humble tone — but it has yet to persuade a skeptical world it's got integrity.
A rift has opened between Democrats over a proposal to address consumer data privacy concerns — as a freshman congressman from Silicon Valley barrels ahead with the idea while some of his colleagues want him to slow down.
Why wasn’t anyone at Facebook fired over the situation with Cambridge Analytica?
Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg took that first question on stage at the Code Conference Tuesday and replied, "We do fire people at Facebook. We don’t trot them out and make examples of them."
Buck stops with Zuck: Ultimately, Sandberg said, these problems lie on the shoulders of the company's founder and CEO: "Mark [Zuckerberg] has said very clearly on Cambridge Analytica, he designed the platform and he designed the policies and he holds himself responsible."
Snapchat's CEO, Evan Spiegel, told an industry crowd that he doesn't obsess over Facebook's habit of adapting his social network's ideas.
“I think it bothers my wife more than it bothers me," Spiegel said at the Code Conference Tuesday evening. "Fundamentally, it is important to understand that Snapchat is not just a bunch of features.”
The context: Facebook has borrowed liberally from Snapchat's most successful features, including Stories, which are now popular across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Snap is gearing up to debut tools for third-party developers including a login button and camera features, dubbed SnapKit, according to TechCrunch.
Why it matters: Snap has long been reluctant to open itself up to outside apps, but it's choosing an interesting time to do so — fresh on the heels of Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, which forced the social media giant to pull back on its platform. Snap's app, however, doesn't collect as much user data as other social apps, so its tools will likely be used a bit differently. In March, Mashable noticed a "Connected Apps" tab in a beta version of the Snapchat app, presumably part of the same effort. Snap declined to comment.
The entire country of Papua New Guinea will have access to Facebook turned off for a month in order to study the platform's impact on fake news and the spread of misinformation, according to the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier.
Why it matters: The directive from the Communications and Information Technology Department is meant to give the government the ability to assess the impact of the social media site on users.
The Financial Times has a new tracker, featuring race cars and a checkered flag, "Track the market cap race to a trillion: Will Apple, Amazon, Microsoft or Alphabet reach the ‘quatro commas’ club first?" (Subscription.)
The state of play: "Apple is closest to becoming the first [public] company to achieve a $1tn valuation, but Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft are not far behind."
