10 things in tech you need to know today

Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Monday.

1. German enterprise software giant SAP is to buy feedback company Qualtrics for $8 billion, just days before its IPO. Qualtrics was on track for an IPO that would have valued the company at $4.8 billion in the middle of its price range.
2. Facebook has followed Google and dropped forced arbitration for sexual harassment cases involving employees. The move follows an unprecedented global protest from Google employees earlier this month.
3. Famed tech investor Mary Meeker is aiming to raise about $1.25 billion for her new growth fund. Meeker, a longtime partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, recently split off from the firm to create her own growth fund.
4. Apttus is scrambling to calm employees and partners following accusations of sexual misconduct against its former CEO. David Murphy, the chairman and interim CEO, told staff on Monday that he had to address the concerns of people like Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
5. Japan’s SoftBank plans to take its mobile unit public at a $21 billion IPO. The unit will be listed on December 19.
6. Roku’s investors may not have been pleased with the company’s third-quarter earnings report, but CEO Anthony Wood insists that everything’s going just fine. Despite beating expectations, investors found the results disappointing, sending Roku’s stock down 12% in after-hours exchanges Wednesday.
7. Medium founder Ev Williams needs more money for the blogging service, which he says is still not profitable. He said: “We are coming out of this phase where it was assumed that the best quality journalism is free in unlimited quantities.”
8. Alibaba had the biggest online shopping day of all time, nearly tripling every company’s 2017 Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales combined. Alibaba made e-commerce history on Sunday, with $30.8 billion in sales over the last 24 hours as part of the company’s massiveSingles’ Day celebration. 
9. After a victory on sexual harassment, the Google walkout protesters have turned their attention to racial discrimination. They say Google must address issues of “systemic racism and discrimination.”
10. Twitter is struggling to curb fake Elon Musk accounts promoting cryptocurrency scams. Cryptocurrency scammers are pretending to be Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Twitter, and some of their tweets are being promoted onto timelines through Twitter’s ad service.

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