Reuters
FILE PHOTO: Google CEO Pichai speaks at El Centro College in Dallas
Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Wednesday.
- Google recommended all North America employees work from home over coronavirus fears. Google had previously instructed workers at its offices in the San Francisco Bay Area, Dublin, and Seattle to avoid going into the office.
- Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's charity wants to 'quadruple' the Bay Area's COVID-19 testing capacity in under a week by buying diagnostic machines. The task force will also include members from Stanford University and UCSF.
- Google set up a fund to offer paid sick leave to contractors and temp workers who can't work due to COVID-19 symptoms or quarantines. Google relies on roughly 120,000 such workers, who outnumber its 100,000 full-time employees, according to the New York Times.
- Elon Musk says Tesla is scouting locations for a Cybertruck factory in the 'central USA.' Musk also tweeted that the automaker is looking to produce its Model Y crossover SUV on the east coast.
- Snap's second-ever partner summit will now be online only, amid the cancelation of major tech events. In a statement to invitees seen by BI, Snap said it would make its keynote speech and product announcements online "out of an abundance of caution for the well-being of our partners and our team."
- Two attendees of the RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco tested positive with coronavirus, after it became one of the few big tech trade shows not to cancel. One of the employees, a 45-year-old man with a heart condition, is very ill, Bloomberg reports.
- Early Google and Apple backer Sequoia Capital hired its first partner in Europe, marking its formal expansion into the continent. The VC has poached Accel's Luciana Lixandru as its first European partner.
- Stock trading app Robinhood was crippled by another major outage as markets absorb the historic coronavirus related sell-off. Robinhood, popular with young investors, experienced another major outage on Monday amid market turmoil.
- Microsoft announced a coordinated takedown of Necurs, one of the largest spam and malware botnets known to date. The company worked with partners in 35 countries to take down the botnet which is believed to have infected more than nine million computers worldwide, according to ZDNet.
- Two prominent European investors say hedge fund-style alternative data will give them an edge over rival VCs. Jigsaw VC is a new $75 million early-stage investment vehicle founded by former Global Founders Capital investor Dan Jones and ex-Anthemis Exponential VC Dan Smith.
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