*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).

Share:
More In Technology
Tech leader who navigated the internet’s 90s crash weighs in on AI
Former Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers learned all about technology’s volatile highs and lows as a veteran of the internet’s early boom days during the late 1990s and the ensuing meltdown that followed the mania. And now he is seeing potential signs of the cycle repeating with another transformative technology in artificial intelligence. Chambers is trying take some of the lessons he learned while riding a wave that turned Cisco into the world's most valuable company in 2000 before a crash hammered its stock price and apply them as an investor in AI startups. He recently discussed AI's promise and perils during an interview with The Associated Press.
Tesla sales jump after months of boycotts
Tesla reported a surprise increase in sales in the third quarter as the electric car maker likely benefited from a rush by consumers to take advantage of a $7,500 credit before it expired on Sept. 30. The company reported Thursday that sales in the three months through September rose 7% compared to the same period a year ago. The gain follows two quarters of steep declines as people turned off by CEO Elon Musk’s foray into right-wing politics avoided buying his company’s cars and even protested at some dealerships. Sales rose to 497,099 vehicles, compared with 462,890 in the same period last year.
OpenAI now worth $500 billion, is the world’s most valuable startup
OpenAI could now be the world’s most valuable startup, ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and TikTok parent company ByteDance, after a secondary stock sale designed to retain employees at the ChatGPT maker. Current and former OpenAI employees sold $6.6 billion in shares to a group of investors, pushing the privately held artificial intelligence company’s valuation to $500 billion, according to a source with knowledge of the deal who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. The valuation reflects high expectations for the future of AI technology and continues OpenAI’s remarkable trajectory from its start as a nonprofit research lab in 2015.
Load More