Uber's throwing a lot of authority at its sexual harassment issues, but is that enough to turn around a toxic climate? The answer to that and more in The Daily Crunch for February 21, 2017. 1. Uber is launching an independent investigation into harassment claims Uber is going to set up an independent investigation into claims by former employee Susan Fowler about sexual harassment practices that sound deep-seated and pervasive. The company will bring in ex-US Attorney General Eric Holder to lead the efforts, which will also involve Uber board member Arianna Huffington. Uber is also going to start releasing its own diversity report, as the company tries to move to counter the powerful (and justified) negative reaction to this new report. Uber's also not the only company with these problems in Silicon Valley, and this could be a watershed moment for more light shone on these issues in general. 2. WhatsApp also clones Snapchat Facebook's whole product roadmap is basically Snapchat now, across subsidiaries like WhatsApp even. That's good business, but it sure feels crappy. Still, smart moves from FB management to cut a rival off at the knees and drive higher engagement, growth and retention. 3. Verizon drops $350M from its Yahoo offer Huge data breaches will cost you in the corporate M&A world: Verizon has dropped $350 million from its original offer for Yahoo, which I think is actually still a pretty good deal given the size of the breaches involved. Verizon is TC's parent company, but I can still call this deal what it is: An increasingly messy mess. 4. BMW and Mobileye team up for smart car maps Mobileye's real-time mapping solution for autonomous cars will need OEM partners, so it's good news for them that BMW is now on board in addition to Volkswagen. The more cars feeding real-time road data back to this constantly updated cloud map, the better. 5. UPS's test drones are still more show than substance Drone deliveries are still probably about 75% hype, and that's being charitable. a recent test showed why that's the case, with an abortive attempt at a run during a flashy first demo. Let's leave this tech in the cooker a while longer, shall we? 6. The timeline of Atlassian buying Trello It was one of the biggest deals in enterprise M&A in recent member – so how did it happen? Frederic has the timeline on how Atlassian picked up Trello in a $424 million deal. 7. Hearables? I hate the word, but the gadgets have potential. These Here One by Doppler labs look interesting, but it's very clearly still early days for this category of tech. |