10 things in tech you need to know today, September 14

Larry Page has gone quiet.
Getty

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

1.
Eric Alexander, an executive who was fired from Uber in 2017, has
filed a lawsuit against Rachel Whetstone, a well-known and
powerful PR and public policy pro who was Uber’s PR boss at the
time. According to Alexander, Whetstone spread false
rumours about him.

2. Multiple
Google employees are leaving the company over its plans to
re-enter China, according to BuzzFeed. One employee,
research scientist Jack Poulson, said he was shocked by the
plans.

3.
Jeff Bezos is launching a $2 billion fund to support homeless
families and education using Amazon’s methods. A
little bizarrely, Bezos said that “the child will be the
customer” when describing plans for early education schools.

4.
Google’s introverted cofounder, Larry Page, has mysteriously
disappeared from public life and is reportedly spending more time
on his private Caribbean island. Page has been
noticeably absent as scrutiny of Silicon Valley steps up,
focusing less on Google’s day-to-day dealings and more on
investing in futuristic projects like flying cars.

5.
Tesla’s biggest institutional investor, Baillie Gifford, said it
was questioned by US securities regulators about Elon Musk’s
now-abandoned plans to take Tesla private and that Musk needed
help running the company. Baillie Gifford’s James
Anderson said: “He needs help, and I mean that psychologically as
much as practically.”

6.
Mark Zuckerberg has warned 2 months before the US midterms that
Facebook can’t fight election interference alone. In
a lengthy essay about how Facebook will protection upcoming
elections, Zuckerberg said governments, journalists, and
non-profits could all help.

7.
SpaceX announced on Thursday night that it plans to launch
“the world’s first private passenger” around
the moon. CEO Elon Musk said the person will be
named on Monday.

8.
Uber is spending millions of dollars in Toronto to open an
engineering hub and expand its self-driving car
operations. The new indicates that the company
hasn’t totally given up on autonomous vehicles.

9.
There’s speculation that Apple may have made a rare blooper with
the AirPower wireless charger. Apple didn’t announce
the charging accessory, originally teased last year, on
Wednesday, and earlier reports suggest its development has hit
setbacks.

10.
British startup Babylon Health announced it would put $100
million into expanding the use of its artificial intelligence
tech in healthcare. But CEO Ali Parsa was scathing
of critics who questioned the firm’s impact on the UK’s health
service, and who asked why the firms claims had not been
submitted to peer review.

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