*By Jacqueline Corba*
Google's chief executive Sundar Pichai wasted no time Tuesday addressing one of the most vexing issues facing the tech giant.
"It came to my attention we had a major bug in one of our core products," Pichai said Tuesday. "It turns out we got the cheese wrong in our burger emoji."
Determined to be as transparent as possible at a time when tech companies are coming under increasing scrutiny for opaque terms of service agreements and data privacy concerns, Pichai owned up to another gaffe that surprised ー and may have tickled ー the crowd at Google's annual developers conference.
The beer emoji, often used alongside the burger emoji, appeared to defy the laws of gravity.
"I don't even want to tell you the explanation the team gave me as to why the foam was floating above the beer," Pichai said. "But we restored the natural laws of physics."
To be fair, given the breaches of data security, mounting concerns over the role of technology in our lives, and the ways Silicon Valley firms treat their employees and customers, these emoji mishaps hardly rate. But it provided a light-hearted way for Pichai to kick off his keynote speech at Google's I/O conference in Mountain View, Calif.
And emojis really matter to consumers, said Jeremy Burge, Emojipedia's chief emoji officer.
"Companies in the last year or so have figured out people love emojis," Burge said.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-leads-developer-conference-with-emoji-controversy).
Facebook parent Meta’s miss on Q4 earnings raised alarm bells amongst investors. The tech giant lost users for the first time as it invests a lot into the metaverse, its virtual realm, in the hopes that consumers will move their social media consumption there. The stock dropped around 25 percent on the report, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg chalked it up to people flocking toward apps like TikTok, even as his own platform attempts to make a big pivot to the metaverse future. "It's gonna take a long time to develop and it's gonna take a long time to bring to fruition," Rebecca Walser, president of Walser Wealth Management told Cheddar. "In the meantime, the world is moving on. We have a very short attention span, especially on social media, and we want the short little videos. And Tiktok has just taken off."
Just this week, Facebook's parent company Meta released an update for its 3D avatar creation on Facebook and messenger. This update is encouraging users of Instagram to create their virtual selves, and it is an early step towards making the metaverse vision a reality. David Ewalt, editor-in-chief at Gizmodo joins Cheddar News to discuss.
Ed Butowsky, managing partner at Chapwood Investments, joined Wake Up With Cheddar to break down the disappointing takeaways from Spotify's Q4 earnings report, which sent the stock plunging.
Google parent company Alphabet saw yet another successful quarter reporting its final earnings report for 2021 on Tuesday. The tech giant beat Wall Street expectations across the board with much of that success owed to not only the growth of its cloud business, but also its multi-platform advertising. Joanna O'Connell, Principal Analyst at Forrester explains why advertising may be one of the keys to Alphabet’s future success.
Solid-state battery maker Factorial Energy recently raised $200 million in a Series D round led by Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis. Factorial says the funding will be used to accelerate commercial production and deployment of its solid-state battery technology, which the company says is safer, and offers up to 50% more driving range than current lithium-ion technology. Factorial also has joint development agreements (announced in late 2021) with Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Hyundai, three of the top 10 global automotive manufacturers, to commercialize its batteries. Factorial CEO Siyu Huang joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Google's parent company Alphabet reported blockbuster fourth quarter earnings, boosted by better-than-expected Google ad revenue and Google Cloud revenue. The results sent Alphabet's stock soaring, and the company could come close to hitting a $2 trillion market valuation similar to other tech giants Apple and Microsoft. The company also announced a 20-for-1 stock split, which would make shares more accessible to would-be investors. Mark Lehmann, CEO at JMP Securities, a Citizens Company, joins Closing Bell to discuss Alphabet's earnings report, whether the company will reach a $2 trillion market cap, its stock split, and more.
