Google protests, Amazon and Microsoft execs decry and Uber looks to change its narrative with admittedly big news. That and more in The Daily Crunch for January 31, 2017.

1. Google stages a company-wide protest of Trump's refugee ban

Google saw employees worldwide gather to protest Donald Trump's dangerous refugee executive order late on Monday. The protests were supported by the company, and both CEO Sundar Pichai and Sergey Brin spoke at the protests, encouraging the demonstration.

It's a testament to Silicon Valley and the temperament of the tech industry's employees that this even happened at all, and a rare hopeful glimpse in troubled times.

2. Amazon and Microsoft CEOs speak out

In the same vein, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella are also speaking out about the ban and its impact, in internal communications to employees that the companies are also providing publicly. The messages vary depending on the character of the executive, and you can see their ordinary speaking patterns and tendency towards being demonstrative or not shine through, but at this point it's pretty much universally tech vs. Trump when it comes to this ill-conceived order.

3. Daimler is going to field self-driving cars on Uber's network

Uber just made a big announcement about its future plans for autonomous ride-hailing: Daimler is the first partner for its open self-driving vehicle platform, which will see it offer ride hailing services and network operations to any car maker that wants to own and operate autonomous fleets. It'll be interesting to see if auto OEMs prefer to do this, or to build their own service offerings.

4. Lego's new social network could be genius

Lego is getting into the social network game! It's probably not going to be as much of a growth rocket ride as Snapchat, but it sounds smart and like a virtual extension of what you used to do as a kid with your own Lego in person anyway.

5. Carnegie Mellon's AI is better than you at poker

Does this mean the televised competitive poker fad is finally dead? Please? Pretty please?

6. Super Mario Run is converting around 5 percent of players – but that's actually pretty good

Only around 5 percent of the people who download Super Mario Run, Nintendo's first in-house mobile game, are also buying it. But those conversion numbers are good in the mobile world. The question will be whether Nintendo can also comfortably judge success by the mobile industry's standards.

7. The ACLU is joining Y Combinator's next startup class

Y Combinator's winter class has a new member: The American Civil Liberties Union. It's joining to find out how to best utilize the huge influx of donations it received this past weekend towards growth from the growth experts. Interesting, to say the least.

Google protests, Amazon and Microsoft execs decry and Uber looks to change its narrative with admittedly big news. That and more in The Daily Crunch for January 31, 2017.

1. Google stages a company-wide protest of Trump's refugee ban

Google saw employees worldwide gather to protest Donald Trump's dangerous refugee executive order late on Monday. The protests were supported by the company, and both CEO Sundar Pichai and Sergey Brin spoke at the protests, encouraging the demonstration.

It's a testament to Silicon Valley and the temperament of the tech industry's employees that this even happened at all, and a rare hopeful glimpse in troubled times.

2. Amazon and Microsoft CEOs speak out

In the same vein, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella are also speaking out about the ban and its impact, in internal communications to employees that the companies are also providing publicly. The messages vary depending on the character of the executive, and you can see their ordinary speaking patterns and tendency towards being demonstrative or not shine through, but at this point it's pretty much universally tech vs. Trump when it comes to this ill-conceived order.

3. Daimler is going to field self-driving cars on Uber's network

Uber just made a big announcement about its future plans for autonomous ride-hailing: Daimler is the first partner for its open self-driving vehicle platform, which will see it offer ride hailing services and network operations to any car maker that wants to own and operate autonomous fleets. It'll be interesting to see if auto OEMs prefer to do this, or to build their own service offerings.

4. Lego's new social network could be genius

Lego is getting into the social network game! It's probably not going to be as much of a growth rocket ride as Snapchat, but it sounds smart and like a virtual extension of what you used to do as a kid with your own Lego in person anyway.

5. Carnegie Mellon's AI is better than you at poker

Does this mean the televised competitive poker fad is finally dead? Please? Pretty please?

6. Super Mario Run is converting around 5 percent of players – but that's actually pretty good

Only around 5 percent of the people who download Super Mario Run, Nintendo's first in-house mobile game, are also buying it. But those conversion numbers are good in the mobile world. The question will be whether Nintendo can also comfortably judge success by the mobile industry's standards.

7. The ACLU is joining Y Combinator's next startup class

Y Combinator's winter class has a new member: The American Civil Liberties Union. It's joining to find out how to best utilize the huge influx of donations it received this past weekend towards growth from the growth experts. Interesting, to say the least.