10 things in tech you need to know today
Good morning! Here's the news you need to know this Friday.
1. Snapchat parent Snap's share price surged 44% on its stock market debut, after the company raised $3.4 billion (£2.8 billion) in its initial public offering. It was valued at $33 billion (£27 billion) at the opening price, and CEO Evan Spiegel is estimated to have a $4.5 billion (£3.7 billion) stake in the business.
2. Amazon blamed a major outage on Tuesday on an employee "incorrectly" entering an input command, removing a number of servers from service. The glitch meant sites including Quora and Slack were down for most of the afternoon.
3. Susan Fowler, the former Uber engineer who documented her sexual harassment complaints in a viral blogpost, has said the company is blaming her for users deleting their accounts. Uber denied the allegations and said it wasn't investigating Fowler personally.
4. Google will roll out Google Assistant more widely across Android M and N devices from today. The virtual assistant was initially limited to Google's own Pixel smartphone, but will launch for US users, then in Germany, Australia, Canada, and the UK.
5. SolarCity, the solar power company owned by Elon Musk's Tesla, cut around 20% of staff jobs last year, marking a sharp reversal on its previous growth. The company cut staff across operations, installations, manufacturing, sales and marketing, possibly due to a slowdown in the rooftop solar market.
6. Uber is applying for permits to test its self-driving vehicles in California, marking a U-turn on its previous position. The company had originally packed up its self-driving cars and taken them to Arizona for testing, after Californian authorities said it didn't have the correct permits.
7. US Vice President Mike Pence used an AOL email address to send sensitive messages while he was governor of Indiana - which was then hacked. Pence's emails dealt with issues like terror attacks, but the account was compromised by a scammer who sent fake messages to his contacts.
8. Snapchat creator Mike Platco has 500,000 followers but he can't even get a meeting at the company's HQ. "That was the very first in a long history of instances where Snapchat really solidified its position as giver of zero fucks," Platco told BuzzFeed News. It might cost the company: Several major creators are moving their audiences to Instagram, where they say they get more support.
9. Chinese shopping giant Alibaba will invest $177 million (£144 million) in one of India's biggest ecommerce businesses, Paytm. Alibaba is leading a $200 million investment round which values the company at $1 billion.
10. Nintendo made the cartridges for its new Switch console taste awful so that kids wouldn't swallow them by accident. The games company coated the cartridges in the same agent used in anti-nail biting solution, which has an extremely bitter taste.