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Google has told employees not to protest YouTube at Pride.
Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Tuesday.
- Google is warning employees who want to march with the company at San Francisco's Pride parade that they're not allowed to protest YouTube's LGBTQ+ policies. A Google spokesperson confirmed with Business Insider on Monday that employees would be in violation of its corporate policy if they were to protest the company while marching with its float.
- Apple is making a big expansion into Seattle, with plans to put 2,000 employees in two towers blocks away from Amazon's HQ. The new office at 333 Dexter, in the shadow of Amazon's HQ, is composed of two, 12-story towers that are LEED platinum certified for sustainability.
- Facebook's head of global affairs and a top lieutenant to CEO Mark Zuckerberg Nick Clegg, suggested the company is not an "exclusive club" like Apple. Clegg was parading Facebook's mission as a force for good in connecting the world at a time when it is facing unprecedented regulatory scrutiny.
- Clegg also said people risk "overreacting to the bad" of social media. The former UK Deputy Prime Minister said the company has been made a scapegoat for the rise of nationalist populism.
- Alphabet's smart city unit just released its master plan for a Toronto waterside district, promising not to sell the personal data it collects on residents. The proposal is designed to provide affordable housing, alleviate traffic, and fight climate change and inequality.
- The House Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing on July 17 about Facebook's upcoming cryptocurrency Libra, the Hill reports. Chairwoman Maxine Waters announced the hearing on Monday afternoon, and sources told the Hill Project Libra lead David Marcus will give evidence.
- Intel reportedly plans to slash chip prices, and analysts say the move makes sense at a time when the tech giant is falling behind archrival AMD. Analysts say Intel has lost its manufacturing technology edge which rivals like AMD have historically struggled to match.
- The NY wood pellet salesman who claimed Zuckerberg gave him half of Facebook was freed by Ecuador's President, but the US says he's a fugitive. Paul Ceglia claimed that Zuckerberg had signed a 2003 contract giving him half of a planned social networking website that became Facebook, but a judge said the contract Ceglia produced was doctored.
- California's governor warned Facebook, YouTube, and other social media giants that government regulation is coming. California Gov. Gavin Newsom warned the tech industry of impending federal regulation in a recent interview with Axios.
- SpaceX's Falcon Heavy is set to launch the first-ever "solar sailing" spacecraft LightSail 2 powered purely by light."This is history in the making - LightSail 2 will fundamentally advance the technology of spaceflight," Bill Nye, CEO of The Planetary Society, said in a press release.
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